1999
Eric Burns, age 19, of Shoreline, Washington, who used the computer screen name “Zyklon,” is sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and a restitution payment of $36,240 for hacking. Burns pled guilty on September 7, 1999 to intentionally hacking a protected computer and causing damage. He admitted that he had hacked and damaged computers in Virginia, Washington state, Washington, D.C., and London, England, including computers hosting the United States Information Agency (USIA) and NATO pages, as well as the web page of the Vice-President of the United States, “21st Century.gov”. Burns also admitted that he had advised others on how to hack computers at the White House in May 1999. Burns identified system vulnerabilities using a program he had written called, “Web Bandit.” In most cases Burns replaced legitimate web pages with pages of his own, which referred to himself, “Zyklon”, and a woman he loved named “Crystal”.
Nintendo releases the versus fighting game Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 in Europe. Visit the game’s official website.
The People’s Republic of China launches its first spacecraft, the unpiloted Shenzhou 1, which will orbit the Earth fourteen times reentering the atmosphere and landing 110km north-west of Wuhai, Inner Mongolia.
2001
Microsoft releases the Office v. X office suite for Mac OS X. The suite includes Word X, Excel 5, and PowerPoint 4.
One hundred fifty-six websites hosted hosted by Vietnam’s largest ISP and only Internet gateway are hacked by a group calling themselves “revengetheplanet”. Most of the sites hacked are either owned by the ISP or government organizations, such as the Communist Party.
2002
At the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announces the release name for the processor code-named Clawhammer: AMD Athlon 64.
2003
The four-match chess contest between Garry Kasparov and X3D Fritz ends in a draw.
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Similitude” first airs. (No. 310) Tucker becomes comatose after a plasma manifold explodes. A clone of Trip is created for the purpose of harvesting brain tissue. Archer’s order to kill the clone is met with resistance when the clone, named Sim, becomes a member of the Enterprise family. Memory Alpha entry
2004
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “The Forge” first airs. (No. 407) Earth’s embassy on Vulcan is partially destroyed by a bomb, killing Admiral Forrest. Archer & T’Pol travel to Vulcan in search of an alleged terrorist group blamed for the explosion, of which T’Pol’s mother is a member. Memory Alpha entry
Wizards of the Coast release the Unhinged (UNH) expansion set for the card game Magic: The Gathering. It is the second humorous set, full of puns and jokes. The set includes 141 cards, including: 55 common, 40 uncommon, 40 rare, 5 basic lands, and 1 ultra-rare card. Visit the set’s official website.
2006
The massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Second Life closes briefly as the result of an attack on its system servers by a self-replicating worm dubbed “Grey Goo,” which created increasing numbers of rings within the game to consume system resources. The worm’s name is a reference to the hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario often used as a plot device in science fiction, grey goo. Read more at the BBC.
Nintendo releases the Wii video game system in North and South America. It includes a wireless Wii remote controller, a Nunchuk controller attachment, and video game Wii Sports. Unlike the other game systems of this generation, the Wii doesn’t have an internal hard drive, but it uses 512MB of internal Flash memory instead and features support for removable SD card storage. It also comes bundled with Wii Sports. Visit the game’s official website. Price: US$249.99, CDN$279.95
2007
Amazon.com releases its e-book reader, the Amazon Kindle, in the U.S. The device, developed by Lab126, features a 6 inch (diagonal) 4-level grayscale display with E Ink with sixteen shades of gray, 250MB of internal memory, and an SD card slot. The Kindle will sell out in less than six hours and will remain out of stock for another five months. Price: US$399
2008
NASA conducts the first successful test of the first deep-space communications protocol, known as Delay-Tolerant Networking or Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN), which NASA hopes will one day pave the way for an Interplanetary Internet.
2009
Google releases the source code of its open source operating system Chrome OS as part of the Chromium OS project. It includes the system’s current code base, initial designs for ongoing development, and user interface experiments. Read the official announcement.
Mininova, one of the most popular bitorrent indexers on the web, serves its ten billionth torrent file since the site’s launch in 2005. The landmark comes less than two years after the site served its five billionth torrent in May 2008, but it also comes in the wake of a Dutch judge’s ruling that the site must remove all torrents that link to content that infringes on copyright. Visit the official Mininova website.
2010
Warner Bros. Pictures releases the fantasy film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, directed by David Yates, to 4,125 U.S. theaters the day after the film’s international release. Produced on a budget of US$250 million (in combination with its immediate sequel), it will gross US$125,017,372 domestically in its opening weekend. It grosses US$24 million in its North American midnight showing alone, marking it as the highest IMAX midnight gross in history and the third highest midnight gross overall. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 30 mins
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