The Great Geek Manual

2001
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 1.1GHz Duron processor. Price: US$103 in 1,000 unit quantities

Apple Computer releases a new iMac computer to retail outlets, featuring 64MB memory and a CD-ROM drive. Price: US$799

Intel releases the 733MHz Mobile Celeron processor based on the P6 microarchitecture, featuring a 128KB Level-2 Cache and a 133MHz Front Side Bus.

2003
The 4Chan image board is launched by “moot,” primarily for the purpose of discussing anime and mange. Eventually, however, the site will grow into a cultural phenomena that spawn numerous activism projects and Internet memes, including lolcats, Pedobear, Project Chanology, and Rickrolling. The Anonymous community that will eventually spring up among the boards many users will ofter garner mainstream media attention for it often outrageous stunts. Visit the official 4Chan website.

2005
H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society releases the horror film The Call of Cthulhu, directed by Andrew Leman, to DVD in the U.S. It is a black-and-white silent film adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name, made to appear as if it had been made in 1926, in the year that Lovecraft wrote the story. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing Running Time: 47 mins

2006
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) image standard officially becomes free.

Nathan Peterson, administrator of the iBackups website, is sentenced in an Alexandria, Virginia District Court to more than seven years in prison and enormous fines, setting a record of the longest sentence ever passed down on charges of software piracy, which have typically averaged twenty-two months. iBackups was an ecommerce service that sold bootleg copies of popular software for backup purposes to anyone claiming to own a legitimate copy of the software.

2007
Adobe Systems announces plans to acquire Virtual Ubiquity, the developer of the word processor Buzzword, in a move designed to make the company competitive with Google and Microsoft.

Lego releases an Ultimate Collector Series edition Millennium Falcon set. With 5,195 pieces the set is the largest (and most expensive) that Lego has ever released. Visit the set’s official website. Price: US$499.99

2008
Comcast, the largest cable operator in the U.S., begins capping its customers’ Internet usage at 250GB in an attempt to ensure a more uniform distribution of bandwidth among its subscribers. However, in light of the company’s recent attempts to shape its users’ network traffic, some speculate that the true motivations behind the move is to curb user filesharing. Under the new policy, customers who exceed the 250GB limit will be notified of the excessive use, but customer who exceed the limit twice in a six month period will have their service terminated for a year. The move is expected to be followed by other leading ISPs across the nation. Read more at Reuters. Visit the official Comcast website.

2009
A High Court in the UK uses the micro-blogging service Twitter to serve an injunction against an anonymous web user who had been using the Twitter account BlaneysBlarney to impersonate Donal Blaney, the owner of the Griffin Law law firm, who had been operating a legitimate blog of his own using that name. The court’s decision to issue the writ via Twitter is hailed as a landmark precedent that will allow other courts a wider ranger of choices when dealing with users who hide behind the anonymity of the internet. Read more at the Telegraph.

MSN Launches “My Health Info,” a personal health management tool for uploading and organizing medical data.

2010
Columbia Pictures releases the drama The Social Network, directed by David Fincher and starring Jesse Eisenberg, to 2,771 U.S. theaters. The film is an adaptation of the 2009 novel The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, which is a dramatization of the founding of the social networking website Facebook. Produced on a budget of US$40 million, it will gross US$22,445,653 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs

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