1996
The COMDEX trade show is held Monday, November 18 through Friday, November 22 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event features more than 2,100 companies demonstrating over 10,000 products, and 215,000 people from over 120 countries attend the event. At the event, Bill Gates announces Windows CE 1.0, a new operating system for the handheld computers to an audience of 1,500 people. Intel CEO and President Andrew Grove predicts that by 2011, Intel processors will integrate one billion transistors and operate at 10GHz and 100,000 MIPS. Visit the event’s official website.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) announces a US government-approved encryption framework to secure data over the Internet. The system is called the International Cryptography Framework (ICF). The system provides various levels of encryption strength, depending on government regulations in the US and importing countries. In some cases, ICF will allow US manufacturers to export the strongest encryption system approved for export by the US government to date.
A panel of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company experts announce industry awards created to recognize the founding fathers of the PC industry. Award winners include William D. Mensch, Jr. who was fundamental to the development of the Motorola microprocessor and the 6502 chip at MOS Technology, Chuck Peddle for the 6502 microprocessor and helped develop the PET computer at Commodore, Federico Faggin for the Z80 microprocessor, Masatoshi Shima and Ralph Ungermarm for the Z80 microprocessor, William B. Pohlman for the 8088 microprocessor, Tom G. Gunter for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, Jon Crawford for the Intel 80386, Bill Joy for the SPARC microprocessor by Sun Microsystems, Avtar Saini for the Pentium microprocessor. The awards are presented by Nolan Bushnell, Dan Bricklin, Gordon Eubanks, Jr., Rod Canion, Michael Slater, and Theodore Waitt.
1997
America Online (AOL) experiences a third major service brownout within a thirty day period, this time five hours in length.
Borland International, Inc. announces plans to acquire Visigenic Software, Inc. for US$130 million.
Cyrix shareholders approve a merger with National Semiconductor valued at US$550 million.
1998
Macy’s Department Stores holds a news conference in New York to unveil one of the largest Internet Shopping websites ever launched by an established retailer. Visit the retailer’s official website.
Syquest Technology Inc. reveals that it has filed for bankruptcy protection and has reached a pending agreement to sell substantial assets including patents, intellectual properties, equipment, inventory, works-in-progress, raw materials, and parts. The buyer isn’t announced.
US District Judge Ronald Whyte issues a preliminary injunction against the Microsoft Corporation giving the company ninety days to update Windows 98 and Internet Explorer to conform to Java programming language standards and to cease labeling its products that contain Java technology as being the “official” Java implementation.
2000
The Brazilian website of Derba is hacked by the hacking group “crime boys”. The hacked server had been running on Windows 2000. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2001
Nintendo releases the GameCube video game console in North America. The system features a 128-bit custom 485MHz IBM “Gekko” PowerPC CPU, a 162MHz ATI Flipper graphics processor, 24MB 1T-SRAM, 16MB DRAM, a 16-bit Macronix DSP Sound Processor, and four controller ports. It is the Nintendo’s fourth game system. Visit the system’s official website. Price: US$199.95
2002
At the COMDEX trade show, Dell Computer unveils the Dell Axim X5 handheld computer, featuring a 300MHz Intel XScale processor, 32MB SDRAM, CompactFlash type II slot, a Secure Digital and MMC slot, 65,536-color transreflective TFT display, speaker, microphone, and Pocket PC 2002 operating system. Price: US$249 or US$349 (400MHz processor and 64MB RAM) Weight: 6.9oz
2003
Apple Computer introduces an iMac featuring a twenty-inch LCD display.
Apple Computer releases new Power Mac G5 computers, featuring processors ranging from a single 1.66GHz to dual 2GHz G5 processors and a 80 or 160GB hard drive.
Rockstar Games releases the horror game Manhunt for the PlayStation 2. The game, which will be well-received by critics, will become highly controversial due to the extremely graphic manner in which players are allowed to kill their opponents. In the UK, the murder of a fourteen year old boy, Stefan Pakeerah, by his seventeen year old friend, Warren Leblanc will be blamed on the game’s influence. The incident will trigger a series of lawsuits by Pakeerah’s mother and a media firestorm that will have social ramifications for the game industry for years to come. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)
2004
Google launches Google Scholar, a search engine that indexes scholarly literature. Visit the official Google Scholar website.
2005
The Gen Con SoCal 2005 gaming convention is held November 18 -20 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. The event is attended by 6,326 people. Visit the event’s official website.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) announces that it has finished authoring the first Blu-ray Disc (BD) to contain a full-length, high-definition feature film. The movie is Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
Warner Bros. releases the fantasy film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, directed by Mike Newell and starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, and Michael Gambon, to 3,858 US theaters. It is based on the novel of the same name by J.K. Rowling. Produced on a budget of US$150 million, it will gross US$102,685,961 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 33 mins
2006
Cray releases the Cray XT4 supercomputer, an updated version of the Cray XT3, is released.
2008
NASA successfully tests the first deep space communications network using disruption-tolerant networking (DTN) software. The system effectively extends the Internet into outer space for the first time. In a press release, Adrian Hooke, manager of space-networking architecture at NASA, commented that “This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet.” Read more at the NASA website.
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