The Great Geek Manual

1898
Reverend Hannibal Williston Goodwin receives a patent for his celluloid photographic film, which he describes as “nitro cellulose transparent flexible photographic film pellicles.” (US No. 610,861)

1899
The first American automobile fatality occurs when Henry H. Bliss is run over as he exits a streetcar at the intersection of Central Park West and 74th Street in New York City. He steps into the path of an approaching horseless carriage driven by Arthur Smith. Bliss, age 68, is taken to a hospital, where he will die of his injuries. The driver is arrested and held on US$1,000 bail.

1922
The world’s highest shade temperature is recorded at the African village of Al Aziziyah, about twenty-five miles (40km) south of Tripoli, the capital of Libya. Temperatures reach upwards of 136.4ºF (58ºC). The village is a major trade center of the Jifarah plain, just a few miles south of the Mediterranean Sea.

1956
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) introduces the first commercial computer to feature a magnetic disk storage system (hard drive), the IBM 305 RAMAC. The drive itself, which was introduced on September 4, features fifty double-sided twenty-four inch diameter disks or “platters,” each of which is operated by an arm and one read/write head. Each disk has a capacity of about 5MB each, with a transfer rate is 8800 characters per second. RAMAC is an acronym for “Random Access Method of Accounting and Control.” It marks a revolution in computing as it the first business computer designed to provide businesses with real time accounting. In 1957, the first RAMAC will be installed at Chrysler’s MOPAR Division.

1969
The animated series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? premieres on CBS at 10:30AM EST in the US. Visit the franchise’s official website. TV.com entry

1974
The sci-fi series Kolchak: The Night Stalker premieres on ABC, with the episode “The Ripper.” (No. 1) The series follows a newspaper reporter who investigates crimes with mysterious and unlikely causes that the proper authorities won’t accept or pursue. The series will be canceled after a single season of twenty episodes, partly due to mediocre ratings and partly due to the dissatisfaction of the series’ star, Darren McGavin, who had become discontent with the “monster of the week” storyline of the series. IMDB listing

1981
Control Data introduces the Control Data 110 microcomputer. Price: US$4,995

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Phillipe Blanchard scores a record-setting 267,600 points playing the Sun Electronics arcade game Kangaroo at the Nathan’s Game Room arcade in Miami Beach, Florida. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

Universal Pictures releases the comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, directed by Amy Heckerling and starring Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Brian Backer, Robert Romanus, Ray Walston, and Forrest Whitaker, is released to 498 US theaters in a limited release. In it, Sean Penn plays Jeff Spicoli, a teenage surfer whose dialog is liberally punctuated by several slang terms, such as “awesome” and “radical” (rad), that are quickly adopted into youth culture and come into popular use in BBS communities. It marks the first major change in language that can be clearly dated using the web. Produced on a budget of US$4.5million, the film will gross US$2,545,674 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 32 mins

1983
The Osborne Computer Corporation, which produced the first portable computer, the Osborne I, declares bankruptcy. Designed by company founder Adam Osborne, the twenty-four pound, US$1,795 system features software worth an estimated US$1,500, a five-inch display, 64KB of memory, a modem, and two 5¼-inch floppy disk drives.

1985
Nintendo releases the platform game Super Mario Bros. for the Famicon in Japan.

Steve Jobs informs John Sculley that five Apple Computer employees will resign to join him in leaving Apple to form a new company, including: Bud Tribble, Dan’l Lewin, George Crow, Rich Page, and Susan Barnes.

1989
An immense British banking computer error awards £2 billion to banking customers that didn’t belong to them within a thirty minute period. According to a Citibank subsidiary, .7 per cent of the funds were never returned.

1992
A US Court of Appeals rules that reverse engineering is a legitimate business practice. The ruling comes in the Nintendo v Atari copyright infringement case. The court rules, however, that Atari had infringed Nintendo copyrights for other reasons.

1994
The Ulysses robotic space probe passes the Sun’s south pole.

1996
Hayes Microcomputer Products,Inc., announces they will close its manufacturing plant in Thousand Oaks, California and put up to 375 persons out of work. The company claims the company will save up to US$6 million annually after an initial US$6.5 million in costs to close the facility.

1998
A group of computer hackers calling themselves “Hacking for Girlies” deface The New York Times website, renaming it HFG. The hackers express anger at the arrest and imprisonment of Kevin Mitnick, the subject of the book “Takedown” co-authored by Times reporter John Markoff. In early November, two members of HFG will tell Forbes magazine that they initiated the attack because they were bored and couldn’t agree on a video to watch.

1999
3Com Corporation reveals plans to spin off its Palm Computing Unit, which they originally obtained through their US Robotics acquisition.

The Drudge Report website is defaced by the “United Loan Gunmen”.

Hackers deface South Africa’s official statistics website, replacing legitimate economic information with critical comment about the nation’s telephone company, Telkom, such as “Telkom stop your … lame-ass monopoly or we will disconnect you.”

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) unveils the new line of IBM RS/6000 workstations based on the Unix operating system and targeting customers of Sun Microsystems, Inc. The IBM RS/6000 B50 starts at less than US$4,000.

Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (SCEJ) and its subsidiaries make a number of announcements regarding PlayStation 2 just preceding the Tokyo Game Show. Amongst them is the news that the new generation of PlayStation has been named PlayStation 2. It will be released in Europe and the United States in the Fall of 2000. SCEJ also announces that it will establish the PlayStation 2 as an Internet-based platform for electronic distribution of digital content.

Version 6.00 of Corel Paint Shop Pro, a bitmap and vector graphics editor, is released for Windows. Visit the application’s official website.

2000
At the Paris Apple Expo, Apple Computer releases a public beta version of Mac OS X with promises that version 1.0 will be available sometime in early 2001. Surprisingly, one hundred thousand copies of the beta are hold to avid Apple fans. Price: US$29.95

2002
Version 7.3.1 of the Fermi Linux operation system is released. Fermi Linux is a catch all designation for Linux distributions used by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), which are based on Scientific Linux. Visit the application’s official website.

2005
Cameron Lacroix (“cam0″), age 17, pleads guilty and is sentenced to eleven months in a Massachusetts adolescent apprehension facility for gaining access to the T-Mobile International cellular network and exploiting Paris Hilton’s Sidekick. In January, the teen hacked into the records system of T-Mobile using a security flaw in the company’s website that allowed him to reset the password of anyone using a Sidekick, a mobile device that allows user to store data on T-Mobile’s central computer servers. A month later, he used that flaw to gain access to Hilton’s Sidekick and leaked screen shots. Read more at the Wahington Post.

Macromedia releases Macromedia Studio 8, a suite of graphic and web design applications, including Contribute 3, Dreamweaver 8, Fireworks 8, Flash 8, Flash 8 Video Converter, and FlashPaper.

Nintendo releases the latest version of its GameBoy handheld video gaming system, Game Boy Micro, is released in Japan. Code-name: Oxygen Price: ¥8,000

2006
The Blade: The Series episode “Conclave” first airs. (No. 12) In it, Marcus makes the final move on the Purebloods and also discovers the whereabouts of Blade’s and Shen’s main hideout. This leads to a final showdown between Marcus and Blade as well as Krista and Chase! It is the twelfth and final episode of the series. TV.com entry

Dell releases its first desktop computers to feature Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processors, the Dimension E521 and C521, both of which are available with Athlon 64, dual-core Athlon 64 X2, or Sempron processors. Visit the official Dell website.

The dwarf planet 2003 UB313, the largest in the solar system, is renamed Eris. It’s satellite is renamed Dysnomia.

Microsoft wins what it describes as the largest civil judgment ever won from a spammer in Europe, £45,000 (US$83,000). The case, which was filed against Paul Fox, was not an allegation of spamming, but a complaint that Fox breached the Hotmail service’s terms and conditions of service, which state that, “You may not use any [Microsoft] Services to send Spam. You also may not deliver Spam or cause Spam to be delivered to any of Microsoft’s Services or customers.” To gauges the extent of Fox’s campaign, which promoted a pornographic website, Microsoft sampled twenty thousand of its over two hundred million user accounts and discovered that seventy of them had been targeted, some with over two hundred fifty messages in a single day. Read more at the Register.

Nintendo releases the DS Lite handheld video game system in two new colors in North America: coral (pink) and onyx (black).

Version 1.5.0 of Rdesktop operating system, an open source Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) protocol client, is released under the GNU General Public License. Visit the system’s official website.