1986
Paramount Pictures releases the science fiction film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard Nimoy and starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Majel Barrett, Grace Lee Whitney, Mark Lenard, and Jane Wyatt, to 1,349 U.S. theaters. In it, Kirk and his crew go back in time to retrieve a set of humpback whales to save Earth from an alien probe seeking the species in a future in which they are extinct. In the film, Scotty, attempting to secure a supply of acrylic glass, enters the molecular formula for “transparent aluminum” into a Apple Computer Macintosh Plus using its keyboard after a failed attempt to speak to the system through its mouse. Produced on a budget of US$25 million, it will gross US$16,881,888 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins
1990
The first Delta II rocket is launched. Visit the rocket’s official website.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. acquires Music Corporation of America (MCA) for US$6.6 billion.
1995
The NetBSD Foundation releases version 1.1 of the NetBSD operating system. Visit the official NetBSD website.
1997
PGP Inc. publishes PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) 5.5.3 freeware for Windows 95, Windows NT, and Macintoshes. This version is no long backward-compatible with the keys PGP versions 2.6x. Shortly after it’s release, it will be illegally exported from the U.S.
Twentieth Century Fox releases the science fiction film Alien: Resurrection, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon, and Ron Perlman, to 2,415 U.S. theaters. Two hundred years after her death, Ellen Ripley is revived, and she must continue her battle against the Aliens. Produced on a budget of US$75 million, it will gross US$16,474,092 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins
The website of China Agricultural University is hacked by “LSD”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
1999
GT Interactive released the first-person shooter Unreal Tournament for Windows in the U.S. ESRB: M (Mature)
Sega announces its plans to make the Dreamcast video game console the center of its Web strategy, focusing on multiplayer online gaming.
2000
The Brazilian website of Associacao Educacional Sao Jose is hacked by the hacking group “crime boys”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
The Brazilian website of Znica Telecomunicates e Informatica Ltd is hacked by the hacking group “prime suspectz”. The website is hosted on a server running Linux. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2001
Intel announces that its researchers have developed an innovative transistor structure with new materials that represent a dramatic improvement in transistor speed, power efficiency and heat reduction. The technology development is an important milestone in the effort to maintain the pace of Moore’s Law and remove the technical barriers that Intel and the semiconductor industry have only recently begun to identify. The Intel TeraHertz transistor solves a key barrier to bringing future chips into volume production that enable a whole new range of applications like face recognition and computing without keyboards as well as significantly improved battery life. Intel is expected to begin incorporating elements of this new structure into its product line as early as 2005.
Two former Cisco accountants are sentenced to thirty-four months for breaking into company computers to steal stock.
2002
The Astra-1K satellite, the world’s largest communications satellite, is launched aboard a Russian Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Manufactured by France’s Alcatel Space corporation for Societe Europeene des Satellites of Luxembourg, the satellite will be lost after it goes into the wrong orbit.
Square and Enix announce they are merging to form Square Enix by April 1, 2003. Visit the company’s official website.
2003
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Carpenter Street” first airs. (No 311) In it, Archer, Daniels, and T’Pol travel back in time to 2004 Detroit after discovering that a group of reptilian Xindi have traveled there to create a biological weapon. Memory Alpha entry
Version 0.4 of the Desktop Light Linux (DeLi Linux) operating system is released. Visit the official DeLi website.
2008
Lycos Europe closes its web portal and begins selling off key parts of its business.
2009
Alan Ralsky, the so-called “Godfather of spam,” is sentenced by a Detroit federal judge to fifty-one months in prison for wire fraud, mail fraud, and violations of the CAN-SPAM act after pleading guilty in June 2009.
Popular bittorrent site Mininova announces that, because it has failed to find an effective method of preventing copyrighted content from being posted to its site in compliance with the ruling of the Utrecht trial, it will limit its platform to Content Distribution torrents. All other torrents, copyrighted or not, are removed from its listings. The website’s traffic will decline by over 66% over the course of the new few days and downloads will drop to roughly 4% of their previous levels. On the day of the announcement, Alexa lists Mininova among the top 100 ranked websites in the U.S. By January 30, 2010, Mininova will drop out of even the top 1,000. Visit the official Mininova website.
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