they (perhaps unsurprisingly) called "C News". Nov. 21st First Commercial Westworld Telex Network Released Nov. 21, 1931 Nov. 21, 1973 Westworld is a SF western AT&T's Teletypewriter movie, written and directed by Exchange Service (TWX) was the Michael Crichton. It starred Yul first commercial teletype Brynner as a somewhat faulty service. It could only manage android working in a Wild West- transmission speeds of around themed amusement park, and 60 words per minute, which may Richard Benjamin and James explain why an average of just Bertrand Meyer (not dead). Brolin as two ill-fated guests. 50 TWX messages were sent Photo by Fuchsias. CC BY- daily during its first year. SA 4.0. Westworld was the first feature to use digital effects to pixillate Depending on your definition, The hoax lasted for five days images, in this case to simulate teleprinters date back to the before the article was corrected. android vision. It took eight 1910's, when they Meyer responded in a hours to produce each 10 communicated via dedicated gentlemanly fashion, publishing seconds of footage, which lasted telegraph lines. TWX was a positive evaluation of for a total of 2.5 minutes in the cheaper because it employed Wikipedia that concluded: “The film. voice telephone lines, with the system succumbed to one of its messages routed by modified potential flaws, and quickly Crichton had originally wanted telephone switches. healed itself.” the work done at the Jet Propulsion Lab, but was Telex was superceded by fax, disheartened to hear that two email, and text messaging, but minutes of animation would was still being used in some take nine months and cost countries into the 2000's. Mary Ann Horton $200,000. Eventually it was Indeed, radiotelex – telex via HF formerly Mark R. Horton completed more quickly and radio – is still widely employed Born: Nov. 21, 1955; cheaply by John Whitney in the shipping industry. Richland, Washington Jr. [April 8] and Gary Demos at Although TWX was the first Horton contributions to Information International commercial telex network, the Berkeley UNIX (BSD [March 9]), Inc. (III; aka “Triple I” [Oct 00]). first public one was opened included work on , the They employed a FR-80 film between Berlin and Hamburg by terminfo database, and recorder (a modified PDP-15 the German Reichspost on Oct. uuencode, the first email [Nov 00] that could process 16, 1933. attachment tool, which proved graphical information read from invaluable for the growth of magnetic tape). Its machine code [Jan 29] in the 1980's. also appeared on screens in the Bertrand Meyer In Google's USENET collection Westworld main control room, (https://groups.google.com), the as realistic set decoration Born: Nov. 21, 1950; earliest archived post is from Westworld also featured the France Horton, dated May 11, 1981, a first comparison of a computer Meyer is responsible for the response to a message from malfunction to a disease. One Eiffel object-oriented language Rusty Wright from an hour character (wearing a lab coat) (1985), and "design by contract" before that wasn't saved. says “…there’s a clear pattern which extends abstract data In 1981, Matt Glickman (still in here which suggests an analogy types with preconditions, high school) and Horton created to an infectious disease process, postconditions, and invariants. "", which offered spreading from one…area to the Indeed, a key element of Eiffel is performance and user interface next.” One of the replies is: “I its promotion of programming improvements over the very must confess I find it difficult to methodologies, including design first news reader, "A News", by believe in a disease of by contract, and command- Steve Daniel and Tom Truscott. machinery.” However, the movie query separation. "B News" was eventually never used the word “virus”, superseded by a newsreader whose computing application On Dec. 28, 2005, a reckless dates from [Nov 3] 1983. individual modified Meyer’s written by Geoff Collyer and German Wikipedia’s [Jan 15] Henry Spencer [?? 1955], which A sequel, called Futureworld article to state that he was dead. was released on [July 28], 1976,

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and the movie was remade as a The custom chips were for the sins of the clergy against TV series in 2016. necessary since the main CPU the Australian Aborigines. was a slow, modified 8-bit chip His successor, Pope Benedict with a 16-bit bus. XVI, was the first with a Twitter Super Famicon SNES games could include third [March 21] account; his first party enhancement chips in the tweet on Dec 12, 2012 was: (SNES) Released games cartridge which were 'plugged' into the main “Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Nov. 21, 1990 architecture when loaded. The Twitter. Thank you for your best known of these was the The Super Nintendo generous response. I bless all of Super FX chip, used to render 3D Entertainment System was a 16- you from my heart.” bit game console with a variety shapes in games such as "Star of names: "Super NES", SNES, Fox" [Feb 21] and "Stunt Race An hour later, he had amassed and in Japan, the Super Famicom FX". some 700,000 followers. (its predecessor, the NES [Oct The Vatican's website includes 18], had been called the views from cameras set up at Famicom in Japan). In South Legend of Zelda key spots including: the dome of Korea, the SNES was the "Super St Peter’s, St Peter‘s Square, Comboy," because the NES had Nov. 21, 1998 Rome seen from the dome of the been sold as the Comboy. "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of basilica, the tomb of St John Paul Its release in Tokyo caused such Time" (aka OoT) was a fantasy II, the Governorate Palace, and fevered excitement that the action-adventure game for the Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s government subsequently asked Nintendo 64. It was the fifth summer residence. Nintendo and other game game in the Zelda series [Feb companies to restrict hardware 21], and the first to use 3D releases to weekends. graphics. The game introduced Nintendo DS several features that have since become common in 3D Released games, such as a target-lock system and context-sensitive Nov. 21, 2004 buttons. The game engine was The Nintendo DS’s (“Developers’ re-used for later installments System” or “Dual Screen”) had in the series. two color LCD screens. The The storyline is set in the upper one was the main display kingdom of Hyrule, where a while the lower one was touch- callow youth named Link must sensitive so could serve as an The North American SNES prevent the evil Ganondorf from input device. (c.1991). Photo by Evan-Amos. obtaining the Triforce, a magical There was a built-in relic of awesome power. microphone, a stylus for writing The first 300,000 units were The game employed a time- or drawing on the touch screen, sold in just three days, and it travel element which allowed and wireless connectivity within eventually became the best- for the inclusion of some nice a range of about thirty feet. This selling console of the 16-bit era puzzles, and there's even a allowed consoles to despite its relatively late start, fishing mini-game included, communicate with each other and fierce competition from which is a welcome break from locally, which was ideal for Sega’s Genesis/Mega Drive [Oct saving the world. multiplayer games. 29]. The battle between them was sometimes called the OoT comes near the top of many Prior to its release, the DS was “console war”. “greatest games of all time” lists, marketed as an experimental, and sold nearly 8 million copies “third pillar” in Nintendo’s The SNES was designed by over its lifetime. It's listed by console lineup, complementing Masayuki Uemura, who gave it Guinness World Records as the the "Game Boy Advance" [March more advanced graphics and highest-rated video game in 23] and GameCube [Sept 14]. sound capabilities than other history, with a Metacritic score However, backward systems of the time. On the of 99 out of 100. compatibility with "Game Boy downside, the SNES had a Advance" titles and strong sales reputation of being hard to soon established it as the program due to its reliance on successor to the Game Boy custom chips to produce effects. Papal series. For example, the mysterious "mode 7" distorted a flat image Nov. 21, 2001 The system’s promotional into a 3D shape, and was applied slogans revolved around the St John Paul II sent the first to background images to create word “Touch”, with the US papal email, a letter of apology landscape with perspective.

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Conficker Worm Detected Nov. 21, 2008 Conficker (aka Downup, Downadup, and Kido) was a worm targeting MS Windows, which may have infected over ten million computers. It exploited a network service vulnerability in Windows, and also used dictionary attacks to uncover administrator passwords. Once on a machine, the worm turned into a botnet slave and installed scare-ware to scam money off the user. Microsoft issued a patch against the networking vulnerability almost a month before the first Conficker attack was reported, which perhaps illustrates the effectiveness of voluntary software upgrades. On Feb. 12, 2009, Microsoft offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the Conficker developer, with George Stathakopulos, of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group, saying “People who write this malware have to be held accountable.” The US Department of Homeland Security also formed a Conficker Working Group, with members from CISCO, Facebook, ICANN [Sept 18], Microsoft, and other companies, to investigate Conficker’s long-term impact. Conficker is also reported to have affected IoT devices [Sept 21], including MRI machines and police body cameras. For more virus nasties, see [Jan 26; March 26; April 30; May 5; July 13; July 15; July 17; Sept 5; Oct 26].

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