…1977: JVC announces its video home system, better known as VHS, via an advertisement in a Japanese newspaper. The system is expected to dominate the home video market despite its technical inferiority to Betamax – it is believed that acceptance and use by US “adult entertainment” was the key to VHS's success.
…1997: “Security specialists” declare that the encryption of US cell phones has been overcome. Following growing concerns about privacy and calls for stronger encryption, the US secret service NSA (National Security Agency) is speaking out against it, as terrorists could otherwise confer with each other undetected.
…1998: Two teenagers hack T-Online's servers. The two 16-year-old hackers later describe Deutsche Telekom's security measures to prevent an intrusion like theirs as absolutely primitive.
…2000: Intel is launching fresh Pentium III versions with 850 and 866 MHz – the former with 100 MHz FSB, the latter with 133 MHz. The full names of the processors manufactured using 0.18 micrometer technology, which according to the infamous advertising campaign “accelerate the Internet”, were Intel Pentium III Processor 850 MHz E and Intel Pentium III Processor 866 MHz EB – the suffixes indicate the manufacturing process (E) and the FSB (B). At that time, Intel was already struggling with AMD's enormously powerful Athlon processors, which proved to be the faster processors in almost all cases.