Computer Trivia is written by Glenn Caton who owns and operates Computer Fixx in Wilmington, NC. He provides computer repair and consulting to business and residential customers in all of New Hanover County. He provides remote computer repair and mail-in laptop repair nationwide.
25% of Americans own a tablet computer
December 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
By October 2012, 25% of adult Americans owned a tablet computer. This is a 6% increase in tablet ownership since January 2012. The survey also found that 27% of women own tablets and 24% of men. This information was released by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
Apple stock was sold first on December 12, 1980
June 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The IPO for Apple stock was first available for sale on December 12, 1980. It sold for $22.00 per share. According to Wikipedia, it generated more captial than any IPO since Ford Motor Company came out in 1956. Through the purchase of this stock, 300 people instantly became millionaires. It sold out in minutes.
Stuxnet – The Most Sophisticated malware Ever Discovered
March 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Stuxnet was first discovered in June 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm located in Belarus. Researchers say it was designed to weaken nuclear weaponry in Iran. It was discovered that Stuxnet exploited four different vulnerabilities in Windows and spread through infected USB flash drives.
It has been reported that 60% of the computers infected with Stuxnet were located in Iran and that the worm severely destroyed PCs in nuclear facilities that regulated centrifuges.
When Stuxnet first infected a PC, it recorded normal centrifuge speed data for several days, then it began playing back the recording showing normal data. Finally, it started modifying centrifuge speed causing them to break apart.
No one knows how a USB stick containing Stuxnet originally made its way onto computers in the Iranian nuclear plant, and no one knows which country designed it. Many suspect the United States, Israel, or Russia might have created it.
The World’s Most Powerful Computer
October 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment
According to www.top500.org, which lists the world’s fastest supercomputers, the world’s most powerful computer is Japan’s “K Computer” built by Fujitsu.
The cost to build the K Computer hasn’t been released but it’s speculated that it must have been in the billions. It’s estimated that it costs about $10 million per year to run it.
The K Computer can perform more than 8 quadrillion calculations per second
The First “Windows” Based Operating System Released By Microsoft
August 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Windows 1.0 was released in 1985 and ended the need to type MS-DOS commands. Now all you had to do was move your mouse and point and click your way through windows and menus. It had drop-down menus, scroll bars, icons, and dialog boxes that made programs easier to learn and use. The name Windows stuck because it best described the boxes and menus that the operating system utilized.
Windows 1.0 shipped with several programs including Paint, Windows Writer, Notepad, Calculator, and a calendar, card file, and clock. It also included a game called Reversi.
ICANN-Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
June 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment
ICANN Headquarters - Marina del Rey, California
According to Wikipedia, the US government controlled the domain name system of the Internet at first. Then on 9/30/98, in an effort to improve the technical management of Internet names and addresses, the government created ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is a not-for-profit corporation managed by a global Board of Directors and is located in Marina del Rey, California.
Ebay Founder Pierre Omidyar
March 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Pierre Omidyar--Photo by Joi
According to Wikipedia, Ebay was founded in September of 1995 by Pierre Omidyar in his San Jose, California home. Omidyar, who was 28 at the time, originally named the online marketplace AuctionWeb. The first item sold there was a broken laser pointer for which he got $14.00. In 1997 Omidyar changed the name to the now famous Ebay.
Omidyar was born in Paris on June 21, 1967 to Iranian parents who had immigrated to France to attend college. His family moved to the United States when he was six.
Today Ebay is a multi-billion dollar corporation that does business in over thirty countries.
The First Website ever built
March 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the first website ever built was http://info.cern.ch. It was launched online on 8/6/91. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee in Brittan. Its purpose was to explain what the Internet was and how to use it.
Who created Google?
February 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Larry Page(photo by aweigend)
Sergey Brin (photo by enlewof)
According to Wikipedia, Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google. The pair met when they were both enrolled in a Ph.D program in computer science at Standford University. Google started out as a research project nicknamed “BackRub.” The program became popular at Stanford and they suspended their Ph.D studies to start up Google in a rented garage.