Beepilepsy

Beepilepsy is the brief seizure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions and stopping speech in mid-sentence.

Spontaneous Program Combustion

Spontaneous program combustion is when an application, which has been running normally for hours and in the absence of any other unusual phenomena, suddenly crashes.

Audion

In 1906, Lee de Forest developed the three electrode vacuum tube amplifier, which he called the Audion. The device was used as a detector of radio signals, an amplifier of audio and an oscillator for transmitting.

Burble

Burble is a message posted with the intention to insult and provoke, similar to flame, except here the "burbler" is totally clueless and ineffectual. The word comes from Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, Jabberwocky.

Bit Twiddling

Bit twiddling is an exercise in tuning in which incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code becomes incomprehensible.

BELLE Computer

Did you know that in 1982 the U.S. State Department confiscated the BELLE computer as it was heading to the Soviet Union to participate in a computer chess tournament? The Department claimed it was a violation of a technology transfer law to ship a high technology computer to a foreign country.

Cyberpiracy

Cyberpiracy refers to the purchase of an Internet domain name that includes a company's registered trademark name, with the intention of selling the domain name to the company.

Kenji Urada

In 1981, a self-propelled robotic cart crushed Kenji Urada, 37, as he was trying to repair it in a Japanese factory. This was the first reported death caused by a robot.

Eudora

Did you know that the Eudora email program was named after the American writer Eudora Welty? Welty had written a short story called 'Why I Live at the P.O.'

Aluminum Book

Aluminum Book refers to the second edition of Guy L. Steele Jr.'s 'Common LISP: The Language' published in 1990. Due to a technical snag some printings of the second edition are actually what the author calls 'yucky green'.