1991
Version 4.0a of Crack, a Unix password cracking application designed to allow system administrators to locate users who may have weak passwords vulnerable to a dictionary attack, is released. This version is often credited with putting Crack on the map, introducing several important features, including a programmable dictionary generator and distributed network password cracking. Visit the application’s official website.
1994
Version 1.0 of the Red Hat operating system is released. It is the first Linux distribution to use RPM as its packaging format. Visit the system’s official website.
1995
John Matheison submits his resignation to the Atari Corporation to join Richard Miller in his start-up company. Matheison is often referred to as the father of the Atari Jaguar.
1997
Umax Computer introduces the C500/240 Macintosh-compatible computer, featuring a 240MHz PowerPC 603e, a 3GB hard drive, 24MB RAM, and a CD-ROM. Price: US$1,295
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Denmark, Yahoo! Norway, and Yahoo! Sweden.
1998
The computer that operates the Salt Lake City Air Traffic Control Center as well as a failing back-up system are shut down. The shut-down effectively blacks out radar that tracks about two hundred passenger planes over five western states including Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming for almost a full minute. Control during the failure was passed to a manual system.
1999
RealNetworks publicly admits that it has been collecting information about exactly what users of its RealJukebox player listen to with its application. The company hadn’t previously informed users of the monitoring, and it will subsequently be hotly criticized by its competitors, privacy advocates, and a wide variety of users. The company will immediately apologized to the public for the concern it caused, releases a patch to disable detailed reporting, changes its public privacy statement to notify users about the data collection, and swears that the data collected to date hasn’t been aggregated in any way that would allow a person to track the specific interests of any one user. Despite the measures, the admission brings software privacy rights to the forefront of government and media outlets.
2000
BattleBots appears on the The Tonight Show. During the segment, host Jay Leno reveals that he has built his own superheavyweight robot, Chin-Killa.
Columbia Pictures releases the action film Charlie’s Angels, directed by McG and starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Bill Murray, Sam Rockwell, Crispin Glover, and Tom Green, to 3,037 US theaters as well as Canadian theaters. The film is based on the classic television series of the same name. In it, the motherboard of an Apple Power Mac G3 appears as part of a mainframe computer. Produced on a budget of US$93 million, it will gross US$40,128,550 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 38 mins
2003
Microsoft announces it has licensed processor technology from International Business Machines (IBM), and chipset technology from Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), for use in its next video game system, which will later be known as the Xbox 360.
Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) announces the founding of the Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Beijing, China, a new division that is to focus on developing innovations.
Version 4.3.4 of the PHP programming language is released. Visit the language’s official website.
2004
Nintendo begins taking orders for the Nintendo DS over the Internet. After receiving two million orders in the first day, most sites are closed to further orders.
2005
The Gen Con UK 2005 gaming convention is held November 3 – 6, 2005 in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, England. Visit the event’s official website.
Google begins serving the entire contents of public domain works and government documents that it has indexed from five major libraries. The release marks the first of what will be a long line of works that will be indexed by search engine.
Jeanson James Ancheta, age 20, of Downey, California, is arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on charges of conspiracy, accessing protected computers without authorization to commit fraud, attempting to cause damage to protected computers, causing damage to computers used by the federal government in national defense, and money laundering. According to prosecutors, Ancheta is a member of the “Botmaster Underground” who wrote viruses and malware, spread that code to legions of computers, and sold access to the resulting “zombie” network for the purpose of launching distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks and distributing spam. Among the some four hundred thousand infected are computers at the Weapons Division of the United States Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, as well as computers belonging to the Defense Information Systems Agency, a component of the United States Department of Defense. On January 23, 2006, Ancheta will plead guilty in US District Court in Los Angeles and be sentenced to a four to six year in prison, restitution of US$15,000, and forfeiture of a 1993 BMW and US$58,000.
Mozilla announces that the market share of it’s browser, Firefox, has increased by 2.8 percent to 11.5 percent, while the market share of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has declined by 1.2 percent to 85.5 percent.
NASA astronomers publish an analysis of photographs taken by the Spitzer space telescope, demonstrating that they may contain light from the very first generation of stars formed after the Big Bang.
2006
After ten years of service, the last signal is received from the Mars Global Surveyor. Scientists will later theorize that the space probe’s solar panel was damaged or malfunctioned. NASA originally launched the probe on September 11, 1997.
Apple Computer introduces an iPod Nano with an 8GB storage capacity (double the previous 4GB capacity), citing “outstanding customer demand,” for expanded storage capacity. Price: US$249 Visit the official iPod Nano website.
Judge Paz Aldecoa of the Number 3 Penal Court in Santander, Spain dismisses a case against an anonymous 48 year-old man who had downloaded digital music from the internet. He rules that filesharing is “a practised behaviour where the aim is not to gain wealth but to obtain private copies,” and thus, is not subject to criminal prosecution.
2008
The three billionth photo is uploaded to Flickr by garrett_ryan_smith. Visit the official Flickr website.
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