Computer Facts 3

Rare Facts That You Never Heard Before

• According to BBC report , the Creation of a desktop PC usually requires ten times the PC's weight in fossil fuels and chemicals, most of them toxic.

• Another crazy thing : Open notepad in XP and type "Bush hid the facts", save the document and reopen it. You will see the text garbled. Dont jump immediately to conspiracy theories. The bug has something to do with ANSI encoding.

• Recycles.org is a website that can match you up with nonprofit agencies that use old equipment. Freecycle.org is another network with few India chapters.

• An interesting Google post talks about the use of quantum computing to recognise and sort images, videos and objects. Several research teams have been working on the development processors that can store data as quantum bits. These qbits can represent both the 0 and 1 simultaneously allowing for much more effiecient processing and information storage. To consider an example given by Google, an average computer requires 500,000 peeks to find a particular object hidden in one of a million drawers on an average. But such a quantum computer could locate the position the ball by just peeking into 1000 out of the million drawers.

• According to a study paper on RescourceSaver.org, one metric tn of electronic scrap from personal computers could get you more gold than that recovered from 17 tonnes of gold ore!

• The QWERTY keyboard was designed to prevent jams on a keyboard. The early typewriters used arms to impress a letter on paper. If neighbouring keys were used in rapid sucession, then the arms were likely to jam, which was a serious issue. The keyboard was designed to prevent commonly used key combinations from being next to each other. It is widely believed that the keyboard was designed to slow down typists, which is not true.

• Grace Hopper, a woman Admiral in the navy, was the inventor of COBOL. Admiral Hopper wrote COBOL to be a programming language for general business use. It was supposed to be easier to understand than either Fortran or assembly language.

• The name 'worm' appeared in the 1970 movie 'Shockwave Rider' to describe a program that propagates itself through a computer network.

• Apple based their Lisa(later Macintosh) operating system on work done on graphical user interface at PARC which was run by Xerox. It was here that idea of the desktop and the mouse as we have it today was created.

• Estimates suggest as much as 50 percent of the power used in desktop PCs is wasted as heat and expelled through fans on the power supply.

• All the three founders of Apple Inc - Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne - worked at Atari before creating Apple.

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Computer Facts 2

Rare Facts That You Never Heard Before

• Before Microsoft, Bill Gates was apparently counting cars. His first business was Traf-o-data, a company that read raw data from roadway traffic counters to create meaningful reports for traffic controllers.

• Contrary to popular belief Apple wasn't started in a garage, it was started in a bedroom at 11161 Crist Drive in Los Altos.

• In the 1950s computers were commonly referred to as "electronic brains".

• Lenovo stands for "new legend" . It's an amalgamation of the words "Le" for Legend and "novo" for new.

• The DVORAK keyboard is said to be at least 70% more efficient than a QWERTY keyboard.

• Apple too had some flop launches in its time. Their famous Lisa line which preceded Macintosh, didn't sell very well. In 1989, Apple disposed fo approximately 2700 unsold Lisas in a guarded landfill il Logan, in order to receive a tax write-off in the unsold inventore.

• Ever wondered what browser safe colors are? There are certain colours that are rendered the same way on both PC an Mac. They are totally 216 colors in all.

• It is impossible to create a folder with the name "con" of "Con" on any Microsoft operating system.

• Intel's first microprocessor the 4004 was originally meant to be a pocket calculator.

• Did you know that most of the virus writers work for organised crime syndicates. And many of these are controlled from eastern European countries.

• In all the years since the invention of computer, none can take an input from a telegraph key in morse code.

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Computer Facts

Rare PC Facts That You Have Never Heard Before

• The first 1 GB hard drive was sold in 1950s, weighed 250 kg and cost about $40,000. Imagined carry that bad boy in your back pack!

• The first Apple II computers that went on sale in 1977 had 1MHz processor speed and 4kB RAM.

• Named after the McIntosh variety of Apples, the Macintosh was released in 1984. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to have a graphical user interface and a mouse.

• According to the UNEP(United Nations Environmental Programme), each year, the world generates 20 million to 50 million metric tons of e-waste.

• You've heard of computer bugs right? Minor glitches in code that hamper smooth operation. But in 1947, when a computer (Harvard Mark 1) was running a test of it's multiplier and adder function engineers noticed something was wrong despite rechecking everything. On further investigation engineers found a moth in Panel F. The moth was trapped, removed and taped into computer's logbook with the words : "FIRST ACTUAL CASE OF A BUG BEING FOUND".

• It's surprising but Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, while Unix is a registered trademark of AT & T.

• A study by Dell some time ago claimed that 12,000 laptops go lost, missing or are stolen each week in the US!

• Although the iPod started selling in 2001 it wasn't until 1.5 years later that Apple sold a Windows compatible iPod - the second generation iPod.

• The worst MS-DOS virus ever, Michelangelo (1991) was so named because it activated itself on March 6, the birth day of the famous renaissance painter. The virus attacked the boot sector of hard drives and any floppy drive inserted into a computer. Upon activation it destroyed data.

• The most expensive laptop in the world costs a whopping 1 million dollars and is produced by Luvaglio, the luxury technology makes from London. Reportedly only one is ever going to be made and in typical fashion is going to be encrusted with all sorts of precious metals and gems.

• Ever wondered where the ubiquitous Laptop came from? It is believed that Laptop's great grandaddy was Gavilan SC, a truly portable computer introduced back in 1983.

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