Trivia Pot : 2

 Trivia pot : 2

Here’s I am back with some more facts and Trivia….

 

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

 

Ø  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

Ø  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.

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

Ø  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 of approximately 2,700 unsold Lisas in a guarded landfill in Logan, Utah, in order to receive a tax write-off on the unsold inventory.

Ø  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 succession, 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.

Ø  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 interfaces at PARC which was run by Xerox. It was here that the idea of the desktop and the mouse as we have it today was created.

Ø  ICQ was the first instant messenger program, and that’s notable because it’s still running, although it’s been bought by AOL.

Ø  Sony’s VAIO stands for ‘Video Audio Integrated Operation’

Ø  The Japanese version of MS Office has a character you can’t find in any other version. The ‘Offi ce Lady’ is a virtual assistant that bows and serves tea.

 

Ø  David Bradley wrote the code for the [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Del] key sequence.

Ø  A typical fiber-optic cable five thousandths of an inch thick can carry up to 2.5 billion bits of data per second, or 32,000 simultaneous telephone calls

Ø  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 simplifying the internal cabling. They called it FireWire.

Facts and Trivia Pot : 1

Here are some Facts and Trivia collected by me since last few months

     

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

    IBM holds the record for the most number of patents held by any company or individual in the world. An astounding 29,021 patents in the last 12 years!

     

    Lenovo stands for “new legend”. It’s an amalgamation of the words “Le” for legend and “novo” for new.

     

    According to a study paper on ResourceSaver.org,

One metric ton of electronic scrap from personal computers could get you more gold than that recovered from 17 tons of gold ore!

     

    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.

     

    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.

     

    The world’s most widely used operating system, Windows,  was originally named interface manager.

     

    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.

     

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

   

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

     

    The idea of Bluetooth technology was born in 1994. The name Bluetooth is derived from 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’.

     

    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.

     

    Stinger was the codename Microsoft used for its smart phone platform that was unveiled in 2001, now called Windows Mobile.

     

    The Palm OS fits in less than 100K, which is less than one per cent the size of Windows 98 or the Mac OS.

     

    LISP is a programming language written in LISP itself. When you define functions in LISP, the entire language gets modified.

supershashikant : story of Mini-Bo

It was December 2008 when I was running sort of any good name for my ****** account. Actually I was in search of such a name that was unique or which give zero result or at least very few results on googling it. Then the word supershashikant triggered in my mind and I adopted it as my web nick name. The best part is that ‘supershashikant’ was completely free from the reach of any other web walker and thus I landed on a safer name. well…..exception exist everywhere  to create some dilution in the symmetry and so happened with my super name at youtube. But it’s not the juiciest topic to talk upon. So I will decompose this topic here and take a new route.
    My last two posts were dedicated to the Ojass : our annual techno-management fest. Now It’s over and it held very nicely. It is one of the few events which cost great deal of mental and physical labour of students. My last two posts were the combined spirit of a blogger and a P.R Team member of Ojass’11. Ojass enjoys large participation from NIT Jamshedpur and other engineering colleges of India including IITs and NITs every year. The theme of this year’s Ojass was “Going Green” emphasis was lain on using the Green Technology in everyday life. Three days; April 1 to April 3, were packed with the whole bunch of technical stuffs ranging from robotics to softrace. This year Ojass plugged many new events which were unique and still undiscovered by the tech-fest of other prominent engineering colleges of India including IITs and other NITs. For better grip, please land on the Ojass official website.
    Being a computer science student, I was ready to compete in prelims of the competitions of my concern but in addition to that I was tempted to create something physical and of course Robotics could crunch this desire. Three Shashi got together to build up our first Robot of our life. We were not placing our aim to win the event but to enjoy the building process and to play with it after its successful built-up. We all three were completely new in it and had zero experience in Robot development. After a few days we added another member to reduce the cost per person and to complete the team. We had a lot of fun in building it. There were many robotics events but we were participating in “Shape Shifter”. We were thinking freely and doing each and every job by ourselves but when we looked to the other teams, they were serious and they had big and beautiful plans for winning the event.   Contrary to this, we were tension free and we freed-up our thoughts to fly in any direction and worked according to our own thoughts. We also helped our friends in welfare for their fitness by giving them a chance to laugh after watching our Bot(Robot). When we finished with its development, it looked very strange to others. We had used very general things from our surrounding instead of buying special components and had done all jobs by ourselves to reduce the cost so that can save some of our pocket money from burning out in the Bot. We were confused in providing it a name. Since it was small, so I called it “Mini-Bo”. I got it after dropping ‘T’ from the word ‘mini Bot’. We used for our play in this process we had done a lot of practice with it. We handled it in all possible circumstances.
      Now we were in the Arena Hall. A large number of teams had participated and its count was still gearing high. We were feeling embarrassed after watching the neatly and beautifully manufactured Bots of other teams. Some Bots were looking so neatly build that i assumed it to be made by professionals of a company for the sell in the market. Anyway, we couldn’t hide our ‘Mini-Bo’ for a long as we have to get into the arena for qualifying round. We had seen many great looking Bots working so ugly that their owner could only dream to get into next rounds. Specially girls feel better to spend money than to get their hands dirty with the Bot. Few controllers were controlling their bots in such a way as they were riding a mad horse. At the arena I concluded that girls always love beauty. Their bots were looking beautiful and nice as they are crafted by experienced persons but very little work had been done on its mechanism. We were hating ourselves for not making our ‘Mini-Bo’ eye capturing, it was rather ugly.
   Our turn for performance came and we scored ...............the maximum!!!! It was not a luck but it was the result of our genuine hard work and great practice. We had worked for the thing and we got the fruits. We had watered the plant at its roots without worrying for cleaning the leaves to make it nice looking. In further rounds also we were at the top. Final was consisting of two halves. I first half we had scored much greater than our competitor and we required to just prick a single balloon to become the champion. We did more than the required and all finished for our favour.
   Later we came to know that the team which had reached in the final with us was winner of robotics event in many NITs. We were the most junior in designation, in experience and in knowledge but now, we have the trophy. Same type of matter was there when I was selected in the final round of web-weavers. My team name ‘Techflair’ was single name from first year batch and this team was the only team which had only one member, that was I, myself.
I haven’t written here to boost but I am just revealing my personal experience. Most of the first year students (if not every) have same circumstances like mine. I will suggest all first year students to take part in all such events because its for you. When we are junior we always compete with seniors or batch mates and its always beneficial. You will not feel embarrassed after losing because you have been defeated by your seniors but in case you win then it will be a great confidence booster for you. Don’t look at others for an idea or any plan. There are endless ideas sleeping in your own mind, you need to search for it.
      After this summer vacation I will be in next semester and juniors will come to cover the place behind us. Really, it is painful for me to lose the title of junior. Being junior, I have learn a lot.

   If you have done really very well in AIEEE exam, then you can opt NIT Jamshedpur at higher place in the counseling. I welcome my potential juniors for the next batch...........Take care........I'll be back here in a couple of days.....