Yottabyte

A Yottabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one septillion (one long scale quadrillion or 1024) Bytes (one quadrillion Gigabytes). As of 2010, no system has yet achieved one Yottabyte of storage. In fact, the combined space of all the computer hard drives in the entire world does not amount to even one Yottabyte.
1 Yottabyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Bytes

Guilt ridden employees missing out on doctors appointments

A recent poll by one of the world's largest health sites, www.ehealthforum.com, shows that almost a third (30.22%) of people surveyed feel guilty about taking the time to attend a doctor's appointment during office hours. The results showed that 28.69% of people in the U.S. felt mild to extreme guilt, 28.27% of Canadians and 35.4% of Brits followed suit.

Technology Key to Identifying High-Risk Behaviors Among Adolescents

According to a new study conducted by researchers at the Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practices in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, technology may be the key to identifying high-risk behaviors among adolescents.

Injury risk, depressive symptoms and drug and alcohol use are the leading causes of adolescent morbidity and mortality; yet pediatricians often lack the time to screen for these behavioral concerns. This paradox of care is the motivation behind a new study, which found adolescents who participated in computerized screening with real-time results were more likely to be identified as having a problem by their pediatrician than adolescents whose screening results were delayed.

Google, Virgin to Colonize Mars

Google Inc. and Virgin Group have launched of Virgle Inc., a jointly owned and operated venture dedicated to the establishment of a human settlement on Mars.

The Virgle 100 Year Plan's milestones will include Virgle Pioneer selection (2008-2010), the first manned journey to Mars (2016), a Virgle Inc. initial public offering to capitalize on the first manned journey to Mars (2016), the founding of the first permanent Martian municipality, Virgle City (2050), and the achievement of a truly self-sustaining Martian civilization with a population exceeding 100,000 (2108).

Reducing Software Piracy

According to a new IDC study released by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), reducing software piracy in Asia by 10 percentage points over the next four years could generate 435,000 new jobs, over $40 billion in economic growth and over $5 billion in tax revenues above current projections.

World's Tiniest Nanophotonic Switch

IBM announced recently that its scientists have built the world's tiniest nanophotonic switch. The switch has a footprint about 100X smaller than the cross section of a human hair.

Nanophotonic switches use light pulses instead of electrons to send information inside a computer chip.

IBM's new nanophotonic switch is an important building block to control the flow of information inside future chips and can significantly speed up the chip performance while using much less energy.

BELLE

BELLE, built by Ken Thompson In 1977, was the first computer to use custom design chips to increase its playing strength from 200 positions per second to 160,000 positions per second. The chess computer, which used over 1,700 integrated ciruits, costed $20,000 and was used to solve endgame problems.

KAISSA (ICL 4/70)

In 1974, KAISSA (ICL 4/70), programmed by Donskoy and Arlazarov, and created at the Institute of Control Science, Moscow, won the first world computer chess championship. The second place went to CHESS 4.0.

CHESS 3.0

In 1970, the first all-computer championship was held in New York and won by CHESS 3.0 (CDC 6400), a program written by Slate, Atkin and Gorlen at Northwestern University. Six programs had entered the first Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) North American Computer Championships.

MacHACK VI

In Spring 1967, MacHACK VI became the first program to beat a human, at the Massachussets State Championship. By the end of the year, it had played in four chess tournaments, winning 3 games, drawing 3 and losing 12. In the same year the program was made an honorary member of the US Chess Federation.

Sega Dreamcast

Did you know that the Sega Dreamcast released in 1999 was the first console game machine to sport 128-bit architecture? The console had a 200 MHz processor, a 64 channel audio chip and 26 MB of RAM.

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. Levy won his bet.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Did you know that Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 as a direct response to Nintendo's Super NES gaming system? The game capitalized on the speed of the Genesis processor and soon became a hit.

Alex Bernstein

Alex Bernstein wrote a chess program in 1957 for an IBM 704, which could do 42,000 instructions per second and had a memory of 70K. This was the first full-fledged game of chess by a computer and it did a 4-ply search in 8 minutes.

Screensavers

Screensavers were originally designed to protect computer monitors from phosphor burn-in. Early CRT monitors had problems with the same image being displayed for a long time. The phosphors used to make the pixels in the display would discolor the glass surface of the CRT when they would glow at a constant rate for a long period of time. This discoloration would then be visible as a faint image overlaying whatever else was displayed on the monitor.

Alick Glennie

In 1952, Alick Glennie, who wrote the first computer compiler, defeated Alan Turing's chess program, TurboChamp. Alick was the first person to beat a computer program at chess.

The Hackers Manifesto

The Hackers Manifesto is a small article written in 1986 by a hacker who went by the pseudonym of "The Mentor". The article is considered an important item of hacker culture, and it gives an insight into the psychology of early hackers.

Alan Turing

In 1946, Alan Turing made his first reference to machine intelligence in connection with chess-playing and in the following year specified the first program for chess. In 1950, he wrote the first computer chess program, and in the same year, proposed the Turing Test that in time, a computer could be programmed to acquire abilities that would rival human intelligence.

NEC Turbografx-16

The NEC Turbografx-16, which was released in Japan in 1988 as the PC-Engine, was the first system to have a CD player attachment. It had an 8-bit CPU with a 16-bit graphics chip.

Cationic Cocktail

Cationic cocktail is a diluted fabric softener sprayed on computer room carpets to prevent static electricity from being built up by feet shuffling on carpet. It is also referred to as Downy cocktail.