This Day in Computer History: October 24

This Day in Computer History: October 24
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This Day in Computer History

1995

The Federal Networking Council, an organization representing diverse federal agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. Department of Defense in matters of network communications, met to pass a resolution to officially define the term “Internet.” The document reads, in part, “Resolution: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term “Internet”. “Internet” refers to the global information system that - (I) was logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (II) was able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (II) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.”

2003

Apple Computer released an update of its MacOS X operating system, MacOS 10.3 or “Panther.” The system featured significant improvements to both its user interface and processor utilization. It also included Exposé, FileVault, a new Finder utility, Font Book, iChat AV, and Xcode. Price: $129

The Sober computer worm was first discovered. Written entirely in Visual Basic, Sober distributes copies of itself as an e-mail attachment using its own SMTP engine. When a Windows user opens the attachment, which includes a .bat, .com, .exe, .pif, or .scr file extension, the worm alters the Windows registry, deactivates any other Sober variants already present on the system, and disables popular antivirus applications.

2005

Thirty-eight year-old Chan Nai-ming of Hong Kong was convicted of violating copyright ordinances by allegedly uploading a number of films to a bittorrent network, including Daredevil, Miss Congeniality, and Red Planet. He was released on HK$5,000 bail to await sentencing. On November 7, 2005, he would be sentenced to a three month jail sentence, but then granted bail pending an appeal, which would be dismissed by the Hong Kong’s Court of First Instance on December 12, 2006 largely due to a lack of legal precedence. The case publicly establishes the difficulty of prosecuting filesharing cases in Hong Kong.

MySQL AB released version 5.0 of MySQL under an open source GPL license.

2006

The Fedora Project released version 6.0 of the Fedora Core Linux distribution. The system includes GNOME 2.16, KDE 3.5.4, X.org 7.1, and the version 2.6.18 of the Linux kernel. Code-name: Zod, named for General Zod from Superman franchise.

Microsoft released the Windows Defender anti-spyware utility for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.

This post is part of the series: A Chronology of Computer History for the Month of October: This Day in Computer History

This series provides a daily account of what happened on this day in the history of computing and technology. It discusses developments, breaking news, new releases and global implications that occurred as a result of these ground breaking events.

  1. This Day in Computer History: October 4
  2. This Day in Computer History: October 5
  3. This Day in Computer History: October 6
  4. This Day in Computer History: October 7
  5. This Day in Computer History: October 8
  6. This Day in Computer History: October 9
  7. This Day in Computer History: October 10
  8. This Day in Computer History: October 11
  9. This Day in Computer History: October 12
  10. This Day in Computer History: October 13
  11. This Day in Computer History: October 14
  12. This Day in Computer History: October 15
  13. This Day in Computer History: October 16
  14. This Day in Computer History: October 17
  15. This Day in Computer History: October 18
  16. This Day in Computer History: October 19
  17. This Day in Computer History: October 20
  18. This Day in Computer History: October 21
  19. This Day in Computer History: October 22
  20. This Day in Computer History: October 23
  21. This Day in Computer History: October 24
  22. This Day in Computer History: October 25
  23. This Day in Computer History: October 26
  24. This Day in Computer History: October 27
  25. This Day in Computer History: October 28
  26. This Day in Computer History: October 29
  27. This Day in Computer History: October 30
  28. This Day in Computer History: October 31