The Great Geek Manual

2006
Comedy Central airs the South Park episode “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” lampooning the game World of Warcraft. (No. 147) In it, one of the characters wears a t-shirt reading “Dwarf Needs FOOD!”, a reference to the Gauntlet video games.

Scientists announce that the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered sixteen objects about the size of Jupiter near the center of the Milky Way and that the discovery is strong evidence for the theory that planets are abundant in other parts of the galaxy.

2007
Following two days of testimony and approximately five hours of deliberations, the jury in the first music piracy case to ever go to trial in the U.S., Capitol v. Thomas, decides to hold Jammie Thomas, a single Minnesota mother of two, liable for infringing upon the copyright of twenty-four songs and orders her to pay US$9,250 per violation. While the US$222,000 in penalties is substantially less than the maximum US$3.6 million she could have been ordered to pay, the amount is shockingly higher than the minimum penalty of US$18,000. The incident is a landmark case not only because it was the first such case to go to trial, but also because the plaintiff, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), wasn’t required to prove that filesharing software had been installed on her computer or that Thomas had been the one using the computer at the time of the infringement. The case was supported only by evidence of the defendant’s Internet protocol (IP) address and cable modem identifier in association with 1,702 songs on the Kazaa network. During jury instructions, U.S. District Court Judge Michael J. Davis instructed the jurors that merely making songs available constituted copyright infringement in and of itself. September 24, 2008, this instruction will cause the same judge to declare a mistrial. The question of whether or not making files available constitutes filesharing will become the center of Jammie Thomas’ second trial.

Microsoft introduces HealthVault, a platform for storing health records for easy access. Visit the official Microsoft HealthVault website.

2011
Apple Inc. announces its much-anticipated iPhone 4S at the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event in Cupertino, California. The phone’s marketing slogan is “The most amazing iPhone yet.” Apple will begin taking pre-orders on October 7th and begin delivering the product on October 14th. Analysts and media outlets immediately express disappointment that Apple had chosen to upgrade the iPhone 4, rather than release the much-rumored, much anticipated iPhone 5, as fans had been anticipating, however, two hundred thousand units will be pre-ordered just through AT&T on October 7th. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint will all sell out of pre-order stock by October 8th. Though the device shares the exterior design of its predecessor, it features a number of hardware and software advances. Most notably, the iPhone 4S features a voice controlled personal assistant application called Siri. Read the official Apple press release. Visit the official iPhone website.