In 2004, the first official version of the popular Firefox browser was released. Finally out of beta, it began slowly taking away market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which development of had been stagnant for four years. Born from the Mozilla Project launched by Netscape in 1998, Firefox took the…
This was the first cell phone virus and it appeared in June of 2k4. A network worm dubbed Cabir, it was a proof of concept. It spawned several later variants and spread between mobile phones by using a Symbian operating system distribution file that was modified to masquerade as security…
In January 2k4 the MyDoom.A virus appeared, spreading quickly and setting records for the number of infections. A potent worm that also left behind a trojan, it is estimated it was found in one of every 12 emails. Millions of infected messages were discovered at the peak of it’s spread,…
On January 25th, 2003 Slammer made it’s appearance rapidly, spreading to nearly 75,000 machines. Exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s SQL Server and MSDE database, the worm quickly attacked the buffer overflow holes in those products. Thousands of companies and organizations suffered massive downtime because of their reliance on MS SQL and…
From an Apple press release: CUPERTINO, California—August 18, 2003—Apple today announced that it has begun shipping the two single processor models of its Power Mac® G5, the world’s fastest personal computer featuring the first 64-bit desktop processor and the industry’s first 1 GHz front-side bus. The dual 2.0 GHz Power…
From an AMD press release: SAN FRANCISCO — September 23, 2003 –AMD (NYSE: AMD) today marked the next frontier in computing, introducing the world’s first and only Windows-compatible 64-bit PC processor – the AMD Athlon™ 64 FX processor – and paving the way for a jaw-dropping PC experience. The AMD…
The Sobig-F worm appeared in August of 2003, not long after the Blaster worm. It went down in history as the fastest spreading virus ever. Carrying it’s own internal SMTP engine, it was able to email copies of itself at an explosive rate.
The Blaster worm appeared in early August of 2003 and promptly infected millions of PCs because of a security flaw in Microsoft’s Windows OS. The hole allowed the worm to download itself to vulnerable systems, which meant it didn’t require any action by the user to infect the machine. It…
CNN article; February 9th, 1998 Military researchers have developed a new bomb that is guided by satellites instead of lasers so pilots can hit their targets even during cloudy weather. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, pilots couldn’t always hit their targets with laser-guided bombs in cloudy weather because clouds…
Short for DVD-Rewritable, a re-recordable DVD format similar to DVD+RW. The data on a DVD-RW disc can be erased and recorded over numerous times without damaging the medium. DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM are supported by Panasonic, Toshiba, Apple Computer, Hitachi, NEC, Pioneer, Samsung, and Sharp.