• News: J.J. Abrams will be Producing Samurai Jack: The Movie. Is Aku the smoke beast?
• News: Steven Spielberg Teams with Stephen King for an Under the Dome miniseries.
• Cinematical names the Top Seven Movies that Start Fights, including The Matrix Reloaded.
• Paste Magazine compiled a great list of The 25 Best Movie Performances of the Decade.
• SciFi Squad picks the The Top Ten Most Memorable Astronaut Movies in honor of the upcoming Planet 51.

Internet

• CollegeHumor has come up with the perfect Internet Application for Adults. I say, let’s make it mandatory!
• Check out what AdSense pairs with this Robert Pattinson website.
• Get the scoop on Flarf, the poetry of Googled search terms.

Literature

• Interview: Cormac McCarthy speaks with Row Three.
• Interview: CNN profiles Twilight author Stephenie Meyer.
• Interview: On their new video service, The Business of Writing by Tad Williams & Deborah Beale answer the question Why Did You Become a Writer?
• Interview: The Library of America interviews Peter Straub.
• Interview: The World SF News Blog interviews Sebastian A. Corn.
• News: Coraline author Neil Gaiman received ‘hate mail’ for liking Rudyard Kipling.
• Why SF fans (and authors) can benefit from reading other genres.

Science

• A NASA website called “Be A Martian” allows users to play games while at the same time sorting through hundreds of thousands of images of the Red Planet.
• There may be fish-sized life on one of the moons of Jupiter right now. I say we deploy nukes!

Television

• According to Sci Fi Wire’s “V deathwatch,” the ratings of the latest episode have dropped yet another eighteen percent.
• CollegeHumor envisions hilarious versions of Honest HBO Warnings. My favorite is “Non-Masterbatable Nudity,” cuz seriously, you shouldn’t get a guy’s hopes up.
• Gunaxin has come up with a list of Six Awesome TV Characters Who Need Their Own Shows, to which I would like to add two words: Air Homers.

Writing

• The Web Worker Daily offers a Realist Take on Freelancing, and Tobias Buckell hops on board and heaps on even more depressing truth.

Before we work on artificial intelligence why don’t we do something about natural stupidity?

- Steve Polyak

1920
KDKA becomes the first radio station credited with broadcasting regularly scheduled professional programming.

1931
The first commercial teletype service was introduced by American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T).

1947
A permanent television is installed on a seagoing vessel for the first time.

1950
The NTSC color television system comes into effect as a standard in the US.

1951
William A. Higinbotham and Boyce B. McDaniel are issued a US patent for a Counter Chronograph, one of the first digital timing systems. (US No. 2,575,759) The invention was invented in Los Alamos in 1945.

Production of color television receivers for sale to the public is banned in the US under Order M-90 issued by the National Production Authority.

1963
The earliest known use of the term “hacking” appears in an issue of “The Tech“, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology student newspaper. In the article, the paper reports, “Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. [...] The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. [...] Because of the ‘hacking,’ the majority of the MIT phones are ‘trapped.’” Read the original article.

1964
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) announces the IBM System/360 Model 20. The Model 20 is the least expensive of the six computers in the IBM System/360 family.

1980
Steve Ptacek pilots the Solar Challenger on it’s first solar-powered flight. The aircraft was designed and built by AeroVironment, Inc..

1984
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), an organized effort to detect extraterrestrial life, is founded. Visit the organization’s official website.

1985
Microsoft releases the 16-bit graphical operating environment Windows 1.0 in four versions: 1.01, 1.02, 1.03 and 1.04. Version 1.02 was the first multi-lingual version and has editions in several European languages. Version 1.03 is, unlike 1.02, only released in a US version, however, it includes drivers for European keyboards and additional screen and printer drivers. Version 1.04 introduces support for the new VGA graphics standard. The system offers limited multitasking for MS-DOS programs, and it is widely regarded as a front-end to the MS-DOS operating system. It will be adopted very slowly, largely due to a lack of a “killer ap.” This release comes two years after the initial announcement of the product. Price: US$99.99

1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Vengeance Factor” first airs. (No. 309) In it, The Enterprise tries to negotiate an end to raids between two warring factions, but a murder aboard the Enterprise threatens to prevent peace. When Riker begins to suspect that his love interest is involved, he launches an investigation that reveals she isn’t what she seems to be. Memory Alpha entry

1997
America Online (AOL) Studios acquires Extreme Fans, Inc.

The role-playing game publishing house Issaries, Inc. is officially incorporated, however, it turns out that the company’s plan to raise money is complicated by the difference in legal regulations in different states. The company’s place to find five hundred investors to finance the start-up is also complicated by the fact that the number would force the company to report its finances publicly. Issaries’ legal issues won’t be sorted out until 1999. The company’s flagship game, Hero Wars, will be released in 2000 and its second edition, HeroQuest, will be released in 2003. Visit the company’s official website.

Tinkering is what happens when you try something you don’t quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination, and curiosity. When you tinker, there are no instructions, but there are also no failures, no right or wrong way of doing things. It’s about figuring out how things work and reworking them.

- Massimo Banzi, one the developers of the Arduino project

1879
Eugen Skladanowsky presents the first public projection of photographs at the Floria Theatre in Berlin.

1894
The “New York World” publishes the first regular Sunday comic section.

1929
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin demonstrates a television receiving system called the Kinescope to the Institute of Radio Engineers in the US.

1951
See It Now hosted by Edward R. Murrow becomes the first live coast-to-coast commercial television broadcast in the US. The program will become well know for its high journalistic standards.

1952
The fifty millionth telephone in the United States is installed on the desk of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1963
Bell Telephone introduces the push button telephone for the first time ever. The phones are manufactured by Western Electric Manufacturing and feature ten buttons (not twelve) set into a round back so that they resemble the earlier rotary phones, and they are available for an extra charge to Bell System subscribers. The new push-button phones are first used in Pennsylvania.

International Business Machines (IBM) releases the IBM 1231 optical mark page reader.

1970
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates gets his start in computer programming at the Lakeside School in Seattle. The school owns several early computers that Gates and his friends spend all their spare time programming. Time on Lakeside and other machines in the Seattle area is costly, however, so the newly formed Lakeside Programmers Group will offer Information Sciences Inc. free programming services on its PDP-10 in exchange for free time on the computer. The group will design a payroll program for the company.

1977
A court decides that Microsoft is free to market its BASIC programming language to others. Within months, Microsoft will licenses BASIC for the Commodore PET and TRS-80 computers, and begins negotiating with other companies.

1981
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) releases the IBM 4321 processor, the IBM 4331 Model Group 11 processor, and the IBM 4341 Model Group 10 and Model Group 11 processors, which have twice the maximum main storage as the IBM 4341 Model Group 2 processors. IBM also releases the Small Systems Executive/Virtual Storage Extended, a simplified operating system for the IBM 4321 and IBM 4331 processors.

1982
The Amusement and Music Operators Association (AMOA) show is held Thursday, November 18 through Saturday, November 20 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. At the event, Atari introduces three new coin-operated arcade games Liberator, Millipede, and Pole Position.

1985
The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, is first syndicated. The strip will be syndicated through December 31, 1995. At its height, the comic will be carried in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide, and more than thirty million copies of the eighteen Calvin and Hobbes compilations that will be printed. Visit the comic’s official website.

1987
Silicon Graphics releases version 2.0 of the IRIX operating system. Visit the official IRIX website.

1991
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “A Matter of Time” first airs. (No. 509) In it, a historian from the twenty-sixth century appears on the Enterprise, while the crew races to prevent nuclear winter from engulfing a planet. Memory Alpha entry

1993
Atari releases the Atari Jaguar video game console in the US. Promoted as the “first 64-bit system,” the system features 2MB RAM and five processors residing in three chips. Two of chips, dubbed Tom and Jerry, are proprietary. The third chip is a Motorola 68000 coprocessor. The system supports games stored on cartridges with capacities up to 6MB each. The system will be marketed under the slogan “Do the Math” and a campaign that claims superiority over competing 16-bit systems. Price: US$249.99

1994
Oral arguments are heard in the David LaMacchia BBS Piracy Case, in which LaMacchia is accused of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud for allegedly operating the pirate bulletin board system (BBS) “Cynosure” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a period of about six weeks. LaMacchia was indicted on April 7 in the Federal District of Massachusetts for facilitating the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted software by other unknown persons. The government doesn’t allege that LaMacchia violated the federal copyright or computer fraud statutes or that he uploaded, downloaded, or transmitted any copyrighted material. Rather, the prosecution charges him with engaging in a criminal conspiracy to violate the federal wire fraud statute, which was enacted in 1952 to prevent the use of the telephone wires in interstate fraud schemes. The case raises significant issues concerning how the freedom of speech applies to cyberspace. It will be dismissed on December 29, 1994.

In San Diego, California, Nintendo holds the Nintendo PowerFest World Championships 1994 video game competition, over three days. Michael Iarossi of New Jersey wins the grand prize of US$5,000 and a new Ford Mustang car.

Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.

- Thoughts and Aphorisms by Sri Aurobindo, 1913.

1960
Customer trials of the world’s first electronic Telephone Central Office in Morris, Illinois begin.

1967
Surveyor 6 becomes first man-made object to lift off the Moon.

1970
Douglas Engelbart receives a patent for the first computer mouse. (US No. 3541541) The patent, titled “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System,” is a simple hollowed-out wooden block, with a single push button on top.

The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. It is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and was released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.

Lunokhod 1, a self-propelled vehicle controlled by Soviet mission control on earth, rolled out of the Luna 17 landing probe, and became the first wheeled vehicle to travel on the moon.

1977
International Business Machines (IBM) releases the IBM 3250 graphics display system.

1978
The two-hour Star Wars Holiday Special air for the first and only time on CBS network. In it, Chewbacca and Han Solo visit Kashyyyk, Chewbacca’s home world, to celebrate Life Day. Along the way, they are pursued by agents of the Galactic Empire who are searching for rebels on the planet. The film will never be re-aired or officially released, but it will be widely boot-legged and eventually become a cult-classic, largely due to the unintentional campiness of the production. Visit The Star Wars Holiday Special fan site for more information.

1985
Craig Neidorf (Knight Lightning) and Taran King and release the first issue of PHRACK Magazine, which will, after twenty years, become the longest running electronic publication on the hacker scene. Initially distributed by bulletin board services, it will eventually moves to the Internet. Visit the publication’s official website.

1992
Veronica, an early search engine system for the Gopher protocol, is released by the University of Nevada. Veronica is an ever-expanding database that includes the names of almost every menu item on thousands of Gopher servers. The name, although officially an acronym for “Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives”, was chosen to match that of the FTP search service known as Archie. Archie and Veronica being characters in the Archie Comics.

1994
Apple settles a lawsuit brought by Carl Sagan after engineers at Apple code-named a computer for the famed astronomer. Though the code-name remained internal, Sagan took offense and sued Apple for defamation of character.

Sam Tramiel announces that the settlement terms that were made public in September with Sega have been concluded and that Atari has received a cash infusion of approximately US$90 million. Tramiel jokingly warns Atari employees in a company memo that he does not personally carry more than US$20 on his person at any one time.

1997
The COMDEX trade show is held in Las Vegas, Nevada, over five days. The event features 4,718 exhibitors and 519,000 people attend.

1998
Amazon.com announces that they have added videos to their product selection and a virtual gift store to their online book reseller functions.

SyQuest Technology, an early developer of removable hard disks, suspends its operations and files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Shopping.

1999
Slashdot reports, “There is a cool new tool out there called Napster that allows anyone to become a publicly accessible FTP site – tapping in to that huge resource of personal MP3 collections that everyone has, but have not been able to share… RIAA should be scared out of their minds because users are not logged on permanently, so it’s hard to track them down to take legal action.” Visit the official Slashdot website.

2000
Miramax Films releases the film Bounce, directed by Don Roos and starring Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow is released to US theaters. It was the first film to have been digitally delivered via a satellite to a theater. Earlier in the week, a digital edition of the film was bounced off a Boeing satellite using military encryption methods. The film took about eight hours to transmit in its entirety and was saved to massive hard drives at the AMC Empire Theater in New York’s Times Square.

Britannica.com announces its intention to cut seventeen percent of its employees or about seventy-five jobs. The Chicago-based firm is one of the most popular reference sites on the Internet and employs about 450 people. Visit the official website.

2005
Computer security experts warn that the software provided by Sony to uninstall its XCP tools creates additional vulnerabilities.

2006
Sony releases the PlayStation 3 game console in North America. The system features a 3.2GHz PowerPC CPU, 256 MBXDR DRAM, built-in Wi-Fi, and a 60GB hard drive. Sony only releases four hundred thousand units of the PlayStation 3, and chaos erupts at several locations in the US due to retailers’ inability to meet the high demand for the system. Across the country, violence breaks out. In one incident, two men are shot in one incident, and in several other incidents, armed robbery was committed by those trying to take one of these first systems. It is the first gaming system to use Blue-ray Discs as its storage medium. Visit the system’s official Canadian website or US website.

We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.

- William E. Vaughan