Computer Facts 18

Computer Facts That You Never Heard Before

• A blogger Kyle MacDonald made history in 2006 by trading his way to glory. Starting out with a paper clip, he traded his way to increasingly costlier items and of value included a years rent and an afternoon with Alice Cooper. He eventually traded a film role for a two-storey farmhouse Kipling, Saskatchewan.

• After Microsoft purchased 2% of facebook for $30 million, it gained a value of $15 million in 2007.

• Despite IPv4's 4.3 billion unique addresses, it is forecasted that by 2011, the address space will be consumed. A newer scheme called IPv6 is slowly replacing IPv4 in some countries. IPv6 has the capability to address 2^128 computers. To give perspective to this very big number, the world's population of 6.5 billion people as of 2006 can be given 295 unique addresses.

• Open source technology dominates the web. The most common software used for web serving is called LAMP standing for the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP scripting language.

• Over 20 million copies of Super Mario World were sold, and it went on to become the bestselling game of it's generation. This made the staggering 20,000 hours that went into developing it totally worthwhile.

• The maximum score possible in Pac-Man is 3,333,360.

• UK actress Rhona Mitra was the first official Lara Croft model.

• A whopping 11.5 million subscribers play World of Warcraft - that's more or less the population of Goa.

• George Boole published his Mathematical Analysis of Logic, inventing Boolean algebra in 1854. This became the basis for computer design.

• Almost 150 billion spams mails are sent out everyday, a carbon footprint of 17 million tons of CO2 every year. One in 12 million spam mails are replied to.

• The microprocessor to make a real splash in the market was the Intel 8088, introduced in 1979 and incorporated into the IBM PC.

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Computer Facts 6

Rare Facts That You Never Heard Before

• A 'blue-bomb' is a technique for causing the Windows operating system of someone you are communicating with to crash.

• Alexander Graham Bell originally wanted the greeting for the telephone to be "Ahoy" but Thomas Edison voted for "Hello" a word he coined in 1877.

• Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is a technology that enables a computer motherboard to switch itself on (and off) based on signals arriving at the computer's network card.

• The idea of Bluetooth technology was born in 1994. The name Bluetooth is derived form a Danish Viking King, Harald Blatand translated as Bluetooth in English - who lived in the latter part of the 10th century. Blatand united and controlled Denmark and Norway, hence the inspiration for the name, as in 'uniting devices' through Bluetooth'.

• RDF (Resource Defenition Framework) is a set of rules for creating descriptions of information available on the World Wide Web.

• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol for client-server communication that sends and recieves information 'on top of' HTTP.

• Most intercontinental Internet traffic passes through underwater fibre-optic cables. The first such layout was across the Atlantic, in 1988.

• A typical fibre-optic cable five thousands of an inch thick can carry up to 2.5 billion bits of data per second, or 32,000 simultaneous telephone calls.

• In the mid-1980s, engineers at Apple Computer developed a high-speed method of transferring data to and from the hard drives in Macintosh desktops while simplyfying the internet cabling. They called it FireWire.

• The cellphone is actually a very complicated radio that communicates with the cell tower in the area.

• Programs that are small and un-useful, but demonstrate a point, are called 'Noddy' programs. Noddy programs are often written by people learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program is the "hello world" program, which is simply a program that outputs the phrase. In North America, this might be called a 'Mickey Mouse' program.

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Computer Facts 5

Rare Facts That You Never Heard Before

• Many Nokia phones come with a reserve battery. To activate the battery, key-in *3370# your cell will restart with this reserve and your instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.

• The name Epson for the popular brand of printers was coined when the subsequent models of their first printer 'Electronic Printer 101' were called 'Sons of electronic Printers'

• A CD-RW disk can, in general, be-written about a thousand times. In contrast, a hard disk can be written over virtually an unlimited number of times.

• When desktop scanners were first introduced, many manufacturers used florescent bulbs as light sources.

• CD-ROM XA (Compact Disk-read-only memory, extended architecture) is a modification of CD-ROM that defines two new types of sectors that enable it to read and display data, graphics, video and audio at the same time.

• The first optical data storage disk, developed by Philips, had 60 times the capacity of a 5.25 inch floppy disk.

• Though the highest possible encryption in Windows 2000 was 128 bit, Microsoft only sent the 40-bit version to India, because India was under US sanctions after Pokhran.

• WinPad was Microsoft's failed handheld PC operating system, which it developed and killed before coming up with Windows CE, Microsoft scrapped the WinPad project reportedly because they couldn't figure out how to squeeze a variant of Windows into an affordable handheld size.

• MS-DOS was a rough imitation of CP/M, one of the first portable operating sytems. 'Portable' here means that the OS could run on different hardware.

• Finger' is an Internet tool for locating people on other sites. It gives access to non-personally identifiable information.

• The term 'petabit' is used in discussing possible volumes of data traffic per second in a large network.

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Computer Facts 4

Rare Pc Facts That You Never Heard Before

• David Bradley wrote the code for the [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Del] key sequence.
  
  
  
• The worlds most widely used operating system, Windows, was originally named interface manager.
  
  
  
• Consider this carefully: The Macintosh Business Unit, a division of Microsoft, is the largest software developer for long term rivals Apple. It's latest release is Office 2011 for Mac.
  
  
  
• The stair-step effect that can be seen in diagonal lines of some computer graphics is called 'the jaggies'.
  
  
  
• The first patent for the bar code - US Patent #2,612,994 was issued to inventors Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver on October 7,1952.
  
  
  
• Possibly, the first known example of biometrics in practise was a from of finger printing being used in China in the 14th century, as reported by explorer Joal de Barros of Portugal.
  
  
  
• When the CD was being designed, Sony and Philips were instrumental in deciding how long each CD could play. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was used as a standard, the performance of which lasted for 74 minutes.
  
  
  
• When Windows 3.1 was launched, 3 million copies were sold in the first two months.
  
  
  
• Windows 95 can officially run on a 386DX at 20MHz with just 4MB of RAM.
  
  
  
• The Japanese version of MS Office has a character you can't find in any other version. The 'Office Lady' is a virtual assistant that bows and serves tea.
  
  
  
• The Windows 95/98 logos were created with Freehand on a Macintosh.
  
  
  

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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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