1997
Activision releases the first-person shooter (FPS) Quake II for personal computers in the U.S. It is not a sequel to the storyline of the blockbuster game Quake, but, rather, it is an entirely new game using the name Quake for marketing purposes. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)
1998
Blizzard Entertainment releases the expansion pack for the real-time strategy (RTS) game StarCraft: Brood War for personal computers. ESRB: T (Teen)
Sega announces that it has sold 150,000 units of its new Dreamcast video game console in its first day of sales in Japan. Price: ¥29,800
1999
Business.com, a search engine, is sold for US$7.5 million after it was purchased in 1997 for US$150,000. Visit the website.
The European Union Council of Telecommunications Ministers passes the Electronic Signature Directive (1999/93/EC), a law that gave legal status to digital signatures. Electronic signatures allow users receiving data over electronic networks to determine the origin of the data and to check that that data hasn’t been altered. The Directive defines the requirements for electronic signature certificates and certification services so as to ensure minimum levels of security and allow their free movement throughout the Internal Market.
Judge Richard Posner, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, begins meeting with Microsoft representatives and the U.S. Justice Department in an attempt to mediate a settlement in the pending antitrust trial. Posner was asked by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to mediate negotiations between the two parties after Jackson ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly.
Microsoft releases Service Pack 6a for the Windows NT 4.0 operating system.
2000
The hacking group “prime suspectz” defaces the Brazilian websites Dell Computadores, Governo do Estado de Sao Paulo, and Senado Federal. The websites are hosted on a server running Windows NT. View an archived version of the defaced Dell, Governo, and Senado websites.
2004
Fortran 2003 is released.
Longtime Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings finally loses, leaving the show with US$2,520,700, the largest prize in U.S. television history.
The optical network speed record is broken by the so-called High Energy Physics team with a sustained speed of 101GB per second between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, the equivalent of 180 DVD movies a minute.
Version 2.4 of the Python programming language is released. Visit the language’s official website.
Version 5.8.6 of the Perl programming language is released. Visit the language’s official website.
2005
d0c releases version 0.7.0 of the Rufus bittorrent client for Windows. The client is notable for being written in Python. Visit the application’s official website.
Sony Computer Entertainment announces that, as of November 29th, its PlayStation 2 video game has shipped one hundred million units, 5 years and 9 months since its launch in Japan in March 2000. The achievement comes three years and nine months faster than its predecessor, the PlayStation, which had also established a record as the fastest-selling video game console of all time.
Version 1.5 of the Firefox web browser is released. Visit the application’s official website.
2006
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 2600MHz Athlon 64 FX-70, 2800MHz Athlon 64 FX-72, and 3000MHz Athlon 64 FX-74 processors, featuring two 1,024KB Level-2 Caches, 1,000MHz hypertransport.
At a press conference held at NASDAQ MarketSite in Times Square, Microsoft releases the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system and Microsoft Office 2007 to volume license customers, mostly corporations. It is the first major upgrade to the Windows line of operating system in the five years since Windows XP, and its release comes two years behind schedule. Not only does the release come later than expected, it is riddled with bugs, and Microsoft will require another two months to release a consumer version. Read the official Microsoft press release. Visit the system’s official website.
2007
Amazon.com launches Askville.com, a user-driven website where users can ask questions to be answered by other users similar to AnswerBank or Yahoo Answers. The site has been in beta testing since December 2006 and has already been open to a few users.
Dell reports having shipped over forty thousand computers with the Ubuntu operating system pre-installed since Dell began offering them on May 24, 2007.
New Zealand police question Owen Thor Walker (known by webhandle “AKILL”), age 18, on the suspicion that he infiltrated 1.3 million computers in order to skim millions of dollars from victims’ bank accounts. The move comes following the indictment of Ryan Goldstein, age 21, of Ambler, Pennsylvania in the same case. The U.S. FBI believe that the pair were involved in a botnet attack that crashed the servers of the University of Pennsylvania engineering school on February 23, 2006. On February 29, 208, Walker will be charged with two counts of accessing a computer for dishonest purpose, damaging or interfering with a computer system, and possessing software for committing crime, along with two counts of accessing a computer system without authorization. Walker will plead guilty to six charges of computer hacking, but at the High Court in Hamilton, Justice Judith Potter will decline to convict him, choosing instead to ordered him to pay damages and ordering him to stay off computers. In 2008, TelstraClear, the New Zealand subsidiary of Australian telecommunications company Telstra, will raise a controversy by hiring Walker to work as a consultant for the company’s security division, DMZGlobal.
2010
The European Commission announces that it will conduct an investigation into Google’s business practices, following allegations of abuses leveled by Foundem, a British price comparison site. The investigation will be the first anti-trust to be conducted against the company anywhere. [1]
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