Day in Tech History

2008 – Some watched in horror. Others watched thinking it was a joke. Still, Abraham Biggs was a troubled teen. He decided to end it all and do it in front of a live audience. He got on Justin.tv and told people he was taking sleeping pills. After a little while, he went to lie on his bed while the chat room continued on. Some posts encouraging him to continue were seen. Of course, in the end, Abraham Biggs could not be saved.

Justin.tv closed its doors in August 2014

• The First ARPANET link is established
• Toy Story is released to audiences. It is the first feature film created by computer animation
• Nintendo releases the DS system

2013 – AOL shocked a lot of geeks when they announced WinAmp.com would be shutting down and the software would be no longer available come December 20th.  The next day rumors surfaced that Microsoft was planning to buy it – which didn’t go further than the inital report. The service did not shut down though.

On January 14th, 2014 it was announced a Belgian radio website called “Radionomy” had purchased the Nullsoft brand, including WinAmp and Shoutcast.

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On this day, the word “hacking” was used in an issue of “the tech”, which is a massachusetts institute of technology newspaper.

Here is a snippet of the article:

Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system…

Basically, hackers were tying up phone lines between Harvard and MIT.

• AT&T launches the Teletype
• Intel launches the Pentium 4

1993 – The Ionizer – Otherwise known as Michael Elanky, recieved 28 months in prison for posting bomb-making instructions on his BBS. There have been other instances of this throughout history, but Elansky was a member of the International Information Retrieval Guild, a computer group very much concerned with freedom of speech and freedom of information. Like the group with which he was affiliated, Michael felt strongly about our First Amendment rights.Therefore, he posted on his BBS – called the Warehouse – instructions on making bombs.

Michael was arrested back in July 1993 and couldn’t post the $500,000 bail. Therefore he spent 4 months in jail. The instructions were originally written by “Deth Vegetable”.

• Micropolis files for bankruptcy
• Wildcat BBS sold to Snatronics Software
• Guns N Roses announce their album will be on MySpace 1 week before release

1894 – The first Sunday Comics section is printed by the New York World.

1985 – 91 years later, Bill Watterson syndicates a comic about a boy and his stuffed Tiger. Calvin and Hobbes will bring laughter to millions for the next ten years. It reached through 2,400 newspapers (at it’s height) and spun off 18 books. Bill Watterson ended the comic on December 31st, 1995 and has left it retired since.

• A court says Microsoft is free to market BASIC
• International Cryptography Framework (ICF).
• DivX sues Yahoo over Google-Yahoo deal
• Macy’s Department Store launches largest Internet shopping website to date.
• Psystar loses their anti-trust case against Apple

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2008 – After battle upon battle between Microsoft, Google and shareholders (including Carl Icahn), Jerry Yang finally announced to all he was stepping down as CEO of Yahoo! The previous days, Steve Ballmer said they are not going forward with any future purchase of Yahoo! Because of this, stock hit it’s lowest share price, $8. That, the failed Google affiliation (due to antitrust issues), and a very despondent group of investors, Jerry felt it best to step back in his roll.

• USB 3.0 Specification is released
• Apple vs. Carl Sagan
• Veronica is released

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1977 – Most of the time, we skip over movie releases, unless it has had a definite impact on the Tech and geek community. That is the case with this movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind – Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Richard Dreyfuss, and Teri Garr was released to 272 US theaters. It was produced on a budget of US$20 million, amd would gross US $5,379,460 in the opening weekend.It also changed the way I ate mashed potatoes.

• 3Dfx Interactive unveils the Voodoo
• ICANN selects 7 top level domains (TLD)
• Intel launches the i7
• Google Music debuts

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1971 – Intel announced the 4004 microprocessor in an ad in Electronic News Magazine. Intel called it a micro-programmable computer on a chip, this was the first single-chip processor. It was also concidered to be the precursor to the x86 processor. The 4004 was followed with the 8008, 8080 and 8085 processors. Federico Faggin was the chip lead designer. He holds 2 of the chip’s patents.The 4004 could run 60,000 interactions per second (0.06 MIP). The clock rate on the chip was 108 KHz and was accompanied by the Intel RAM chip. It only cost $200. The chip made it’s debut on March 2, 1973 – More information on the Intel 4004

• Corel Linux OS 1.0
• SURFnet and Internet2 Abilene connect via Gigabit ethernet
• Neopets are founded

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During the 80’s and 90’s, there was a little show called COMDEX. It stood for Computer Dealer Exhibition. For a while, there were 2 versions: The Spring COMDEX (Alternating for a while between Altanta and Chicago) and the Fall COMDEX (Las Vegas). The show was attended by many and there were vendors galore. I remember seeing Bill Gates at the 1998 Comdex for the Blue screen error when they plugged in a scanner. I also saw President William Clinton give a keynote.COMDEX finally fell in 2003. Nonetheless, a lot of History falls between this time and about April from the show. Therefore, the next few days there will be a lot of “At the COMDEX Show”.

• Mosaic becomes Netscape
• Power PC CHRP
• Ubuntu on ARM

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2006 – In February 14, 2005, 3 former Paypal employees started a website that let you upload and share your video. YouTube brought a new idea of putting your creations on the internet. However, their creation got very popular. It cost a lot of money to run and the company couldn’t keep up with costs. Enter: Google. They purchased the site from the founders for $1.65 billion on October 9. Today marked the completion of this acquisition.

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2002 – Gary McKinnon has been in the news ever since his arrest. Back in 2002, he hacked into networks run by NASA, the Pentagon, along with other military bases around the US. He claims he was on a hunt to find evidence that the US has been covering up alien contact.What makes this a tough case is that McKinnon lives in the UK. Since the arrest, he has been waging a war against being extradited to the United States. He has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome – a form of Autism.

BTW – this is the largest military hack known to have been perpetrated by one individual.

• 2012 – John McAfee goes into hiding because his neighbor (Gregory Faull) was found dead from a gunshot the day before. Belize police wanted McAfee to come in for questioning, but McAfee stated the police were “out to get him”. He fled to Guatemala where he was arrested for illegal entry. He was deported to the US on December 12th.
• The World Wide Web proposal is published by Tim Berners-Lee
• Intel introduces the 45nm Penryn chips
• On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungs-problem – is published by Alan Turing