1980's, Stoll happened across a 75-cent discrepancy in a defunct ’s Intellecs June 4th account. It turned out that a June 4-8, 1973 hacker was using the LBL as a jumping-off point into the Intel's Intellec Hacking Marconi ARPANET, and from there to were among the first ever sold, MILNET [April 4], and various predating the [Dec June 4, 1903 Department of Defense 19] by a year, but released just computers. The intruder was a after the N [Jan 15]. The British stage magician, and young German hoping to get rich Intellec 4 used the manager of the Anglo-American quick by selling secrets to the [Nov 15], but the Intellec 8 Telegraph Company, Nevil KGB. The investigation is switched to the 8008 [April 00]. Maskelyne hacked into a explained in great detail in demonstration of Guglielmo Stoll’s entertaining "The However, Intel didn’t market the Marconi’s [Dec 12] radio Cuckoo’s Egg" (1989), Intellec as a general-purpose communications system being , but rather as a held at the Royal Institution in Stoll is also remembered for development system for London. various predictions he made in programming chips that would his 1995 tome, "Silicon Snake later become part of embedded Marconi's plan was to send a Oil". He posited that e-commerce systems such as . message from Poldhu in was baloney with no Cornwall to John Ambrose future, but was Fleming [Nov 7] at the institute. optimistic about the But Maskelyne hijacked the future of printed news signal, and repeatedly publications (“no online transmitted the word “rats” database will replace instead. He followed that with your daily newspaper”). the phrase, “There was a young Stoll commented in fellow of Italy, who diddled the 2010: “Of my many public quite prettily,” and mistakes, flubs, and various rude lines from howlers, few have been Shakespeare. as public as my 1995 The Intel Intellec 4 MOD 40. Maskelyne wanted to ridicule howler” Photo by Kyle Owen. CC BY-SA Marconi’s claims of “secure and Stoll currently sells blown-glass 3.0. private communication" based Klein bottles, which he stores on the transmitter being tuned underneath his home, and to broadcast on a precise accesses with a homemade Nevertheless, the Intellec 8 wavelength. Maskelyne also robotic forklift. disliked Marconi because his could drive a teletype [April 00], patents kept hindered a punched paper tape reader, Maskelyne’s own research. and a CRT. Its software included DRAM Patent a simple OS, assembler, and Fleming subsequently sent an debugger. angry letter to The Times, June 4, 1968 denouncing the “scientific hooliganism”, calling it “an Robert H. Dennard, working at outrage against the traditions of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Star Trek II: The the Royal Institution”. He asked Center, was granted a patent for the newspaper’s readers to help one-transistor dynamic random Wrath of Khan him find the culprit, and four access memory (DRAM) (US days later a gleeful letter from 3,387,286). A DRAM cell Released Maskelyne, confessing to the contains little more than a June 4, 1982 attack, was printed. capacitor and transistor, a design that makes it ideal for Admiral James T. Kirk [March Other firsts in telegraphic building low-cost, high-capacity 22] (William Shatner) and the messaging occurred on [Dec 12] memory. crew of the USS Enterprise [Sept 1901 and [Jan 18] 1903. 8] faced off against the Soon after, Intel built a 1-kilobit genetically engineered Khan DRAM chip (the Intel 1103 [Oct Noonien Singh (played by 00]) using a three-transistor cell Ricardo Montalbán). Clifford Paul Stoll design, which rapidly became Born: June 4, 1950; very popular. By the mid- On the special effects side, the 1970's, 4-kilobit chips using movie is remembered for “The Buffalo, New York Dennard's design had become Genesis Effect”, the first While working as a sysadmin at widespread. complete computer-generated the Lawrence Berkeley sequence in a movie; it was the Laboratory (LBL) in the mid- brainchild of ex-Boeing engineer

1

Loren Carpenter, working at was a backup system, but that George Lucas’ Industrial Light & failed in the same way. WHATWG Magic (ILM [Sept 12]). The The problem had existed in the June 4 2004 sequence cleverly utilized the software used by the Ariane 4, look of earlier satellite fly-by Representatives from Mozilla but hadn’t revealed itself since simulations made by Jim Blinn [Jan 23] and Opera [July 14], led the Ariane 4 was a slower [Aug 3] for NASA’s Jet by Ian “Hixie” Hickson, formed rocket. Propulsion Lab. the Web Hypertext Application Even worse, the offending code Technology Working Group The ILM graphics group, led by was only used to optionally reset (WHATWG). It was founded in Alvy Ray Smith (who later co- the system before launch, and response to the W3C’s [Oct 1] founded Pixar [Feb 3]), could have been disabled if the recent change of focus away produced the visuals using a technicians had been aware of from the semantic web, in favor DEC VAX and an Evans and the problem. Instead, the of XML [Feb 10]. Sutherland [May 16] Picture engineers (being prudent) had System. The clip lasted just over WHATWG concentrated on decided to leave those routines a minute, but took two person- improving upon W3C’s HTML running for the first 40 seconds years of work to complete. 4.0, which was probably a wise of flight to make it easier to move since W3C eventually For more “Star Trek”, see [Sept reboot the system in the event of decided that its XHTML 2.0 8], [Nov 26], [Oct 28]. a hold in the countdown. approach was impractical and For more numerical errors, see pivoted back towards WHATWG [Feb 10], [Feb 25], [Aug 1], [Sept so they could work together on a Ariane 5 Explosion 23], [Oct 24]. single proposal; the HTML 5 specification was released on June 4, 1996 [Oct 28] 2014. Europe’s newest satellite- Video Game Pain WHATWG can be pronounced in launching rocket, the Ariane 5, various ways, including what- was intentionally blown up 36.7 June 4-6, 2003 wee-gee, what-wig, and what- seconds after being launched double-you-gee. There is clearly A study, “Differential Effects Of from Kourou, French Guiana, a need for some standardization. after it began to veer off course. Video Gameplay on Pain Threshold and Tolerance: On board was a $500 million Cognitive vs. Action Games”, co- package of four scientific authored by Bryan Raudenbush, satellites, and was the first flight Jerrod Koon, and Sarah Lilley of the rocket after a decade of was presented at NASPRA development costing $7 billion. (North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity). Their work indicated that video games can be an effective way of making patients forget about pain, with the most “distracting” genres being sports and fight- based. Six types – action, puzzle, arcade, fighting, sports, and boxing – were examined in the study, with the participants playing each type for ten minutes before a cold pressor test. This involved the subject having their hand immersed in an ice water bucket, usually for a Ariane 5 mock-up (full size). minute. Changes in the person's Photo by Poppy. CC BY-SA 3.0. blood pressure and heart rate were measured. Upon investigation, it turned out that the guidance system had Raudenbush noted, “Physicians tried to convert sideways could possible implement this in velocity from a 64- floating their office to aid in distraction point value to a 16-bit signed during a painful procedure such integer. The number was too big, as an injection or dental work.” and an overflow resulted. There

2