Perl

Perl, which was created almost single-handedly by Larry Wall, stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. But did you know that Larry also endorsed an alternative meaning - 'Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister'?

Ian Goldberg

On January 28, 1997, Ian Goldberg took on RSA Data Security's challenge and cracked the 40-bit code by linking together 250 idle workstations that allowed him to test 100 billion possible "keys" per hour. In three and a half hours Goldberg decoded the message, which read, "This is why you should use a longer key."

Symantec Probe Network

Did you know that the Symantec Probe Network currently has more than two million decoy accounts, which attract email messages from 20 different countries around the world, allowing Symantec to gauge global spam and phishing activity?

Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, once said in an interview that Mario wore a cap because he found it difficult to draw hair. Of course, technology restrictions in the mid-'80s prevented them from animating hair.

Smoke Test

A Smoke Test is a rudimentary form of testing applied to electronic equipment following repair or reconfiguration, in which power is applied and the tester checks for sparks, smoke, or other dramatic signs of fundamental failure.

Teergrube

Teergrube, which is the German word for tar pit, is a trap for spammers who use an address harvester; a mail server deliberately set up to be really slow. To activate it, scatter addresses that look like users on the teergrube's host in places where the address harvester will be trolling. The address harvester will collect the address. When the spammer tries to mailbomb it, his mailer will get stuck.

Jester

On March 10, 1997, a hacker named 'Jester' disabled a key telephone company computer servicing the Worcester Airport, cutting off the Federal Aviation Administration tower. Jester was sentenced to pay restitution to the telephone company and complete 250 hours of community service. This was the first time that federal charges were brought against a juvenile for a computer crime.

Phenakitstoscope

In 1831, Dr. Joseph Antoine Plateau and Dr. Simon Rittrer constructed the Phenakitstoscope, which produced an illusion of movement by allowing a viewer to gaze at a rotating disk containing small windows, behind which was another disk containing a sequence of images. When the disks were rotated at the correct speed, the synchronization of the windows with the images created an animated effect.

Gedanken

Gedanken is the German word for 'thought' and it has a pejorative connotation among hackers. It refers to a project, especially one in artificial intelligence research that is written up in grand detail without ever being implemented to any great extent. Such a project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry.

Hysterical Reasons

The term "Hysterical reasons", a variant on the phrase "for historical reasons", indicates specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility and that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place.