1998
Amazon.com, an ecommerce book reseller, announces that their board of directors have voted and approved a three-for-one common stock split. Shareholders will receive their additional shares Friday, December 18. Visit the company’s official website.
At the COMDEX trade show, Sony unveils the Memory Stick card and memory card drive. An 8MB storage card measures only 1.5 inches in length. Visit the format’s official website. Price US$40
The first module of the International Space Station is launched on a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The US$240 million Zarya cargo block will be followed two weeks later by the US Unity connecting module. Visit the station’s official website.
Touchstone Pictures releases Enemy of the State, directed by Tony Scott and starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet, Regina King, Jack Black, and Scott Caan, to 2,393 US theaters. In it, a lawyer flees from a corrupt politician and a group of NSA agents after he receives video footage of a politically motivated murder. The film’s central theme is the dangera of unchecked surveillance technologies. Produced on a budget of US$90 million, it will gross US$20,038,573 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 2 hrs 11 mins
2000
At the COMDEX trade show, Intel introduces the Pentium 4 processor, at speeds of 1.4 and 1.5GHz, featuring a 8KB Level-1 cache, a 12KB Level-1 instruction cache, a 256KB Level-2 cache, and a 400MHz system bus. The processors includes MMX and SSE instructions, and add 144 new multimedia instructions, Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2). The processor incorporates 42 million transistors in a 0.18-micron process. Several major computer manufacturers release desktop computers based on the new processors, including Dell Computer, Compaq Computer, Gateway, and International Business Machines (IBM). Code-name: Willamette Prices: US$819 and US$644 respectively, in 1000-unit quantities
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! ShoppingVision.
2001
In accordance with the joint case brought by Buma/Stemra, the Dutch organization for the defense of copyright, and the Dutch wing of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the Court of Amsterdam orders Sharman Networks to shut down its KaZaA peer-to-peer filesharing network within two weeks or pay a penalty of US$40,000 dollars for each day of non-compliance. However, in December, KaZaA will ignore the order of the Court.
NeuStar assumes operational responsibility for the .us top-level domain (TLD). Visit the company’s official website.
Playboy.com is hacked by the group “Ingreslock 1524″, and the website’s database of customer credit card data is stolen.
Twenty-five church websites are hacked by the hacking group “Hacking for Satan”.
2002
Intel releases 2.1 and 2.2GHz Celeron processors, featuring 128KB Level-2 caches and 400MHz system buses. Price: US$89 and US$103 respectively, in 1000-unit quantities
Klez.H, a variant of the worm discovered in November 2001, becomes the largest malware outbreak in terms of machines infected, but it will cause little monetary damage.
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Singularity” first airs. (No. 209) In it, Enterprise charts a course through a trinary star system to investigate a black hole but the crew finds themselves with a case akin to Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Memory Alpha entry
2003
Attorney General John Ashcroft announces the arrest or conviction of more than one hundred twenty-five individuals and the return of over seventy indictments in a coordinated global operation dubbed “Operation Cyber Sweep,” which was designed to crack down on the leading types of online economic crime, including credit card fraud, hacking, software piracy, and the sale of stolen goods over the Internet.
Version 1.0 of the MercuryBoard bulletin board system is released. Visit the application’s official website.
2004
NASA launches the robotic satellite Swift, to investigate gamma ray bursts. Visit the satellite’s official website.
2005
Microsoft hosts a thirty hour “Zero Hour” launch party for the Xbox 360 in Palmdale, California. At the event, five hundred Xbox 360 systems are available for the two thousand invited guests to use to try the system’s eighteen launch titles.
The NASA Spirit Rover marks its one (Martian) year anniversary on the surface of Mars. Visit the mission’s official website.
2007
20th Century Fox releases the action film Live Free or Die Hard on Blu-ray and DVD in both an unrated and theatrical version. The DVD versions of the film mark that first time a movie is sold with a digital copy specifically designed to be played on computers or portable video players.
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