Friday, September 01, 2006

Drunk Mouse Syndrome

Drunk Mouse Syndrome, also known as Mouse on Drugs, refers to a malady exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual mouse.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Cokebottle

Did you know that the term Cokebottle refers to any very unusual character, particularly one you cannot type because it isn't on your keyboard?

Internet Connectivity

Did you know that the United States, Canada, France, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, and Mexico were the first ten countries to have Internet connectivity?

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Sony PlayStation

Did you know that Sony's PlayStation began its life as a CD attachment for the Nintendo Super NES? When the two companies failed to agree on how the new device would sell, Sony decided to further develop it into a game machine of its own and released the PlayStation in 1995.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", often invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using an unpleasantly heavyweight technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of software. Taken from Robert Heinlein's classic "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Gibson Security Research

On May 4, 2001 Gibson Security Research Corp. came under DDoS attack and taken off-line by a 13-year-old hacker, because he believed that Steve Gibson had called him a name and later went ahead with it because it was fun.

Friday, August 11, 2006

David Levy

In 1968, International Master David Levy made a $3,000 bet with John McCarthy, researcher in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford, that no chess computer would beat him in 10 years. He won his bet.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

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.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

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.