Featurectomy

Featurectomy is the act of removing a feature from a program. There are two types of featurectomies, the "righteous" and the "reluctant". Righteous featurectomies are performed when the remover believes the program would be more elegant without the feature, or there is a better way to achieve the same end. Reluctant featurectomies are done to satisfy some external constraint such as code size or execution speed.

Hao Jinglong & Hao Jingwen

In 1998, a Chinese court sentenced to death the twin brothers, Hao Jinglong and Hao Jingwen, for breaking into the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China computers and stealing $87,000. The Yangzhou Intermediate People's Court in the eastern Jiangsu province rejected Jingwen's appeal and upheld the death sentence, while suspending Jinglong's sentence in return for his testimony.

Atari Pong

When Atari Pong, the home version of the popular Atari arcade Pong game, was released in 1975, it made a huge cultural splash and started the video game boom. The game, sold through Sears-Roebuck, had two built-in controllers and of course, only played Pong.

The Book of Mozilla

Did you know that if you are using Netscape Navigator and type 'about:mozilla' as a URL, you should see a passage from The Book of Mozilla?

Ninety-Ninety Rule

The Ninety-Ninety Rule is an aphorism attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs. "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time."

Atari's VCS

Atari's VCS (Video Computer System) also called 2600, released in 1977, was the first Atari 8-bit video console that revolutionized the home video game market by refining the concept of a game system that used interchangeable cartridges. Available until around 1990, the console has the longest market time in history.

John Scoch

John Scoch created the idea of a worm at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the late 1970s. The worm was meant to travel through computers on a network, looking for those that were idle and not at work. The worm would then allow people who needed computer time to borrow the idle PC's processing power.

Guiltware

Guiltware is a piece of freeware decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one does not immediately send him loads of money.

Washing Machines

Did you know that the term Washing Machines refer to old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets? They were so called because of the size of the cabinet and the 'top-loading' access to the media packs and because they were always set on 'spin cycle'.

Virtual Beer

Virtual beer could either signify praise or thanks. The term is used universally in the Linux community. Originally this term signified cash, after the famous incident in which some Brits, who wanted to buy Linus a beer, sent him the money to do so in Finland.