Interesting Facts

Photographer Charles O'Rear took the iconic photograph, Bliss, that has adorned many computer screens around the world; the default wallpaper in Windows XP. https://plus.google.com/115724842162075287959/posts/WHHAYFpncaP (He took the photo 60 miles north of San Francisco in a wine region of Napa Valley called Carneros. It is now a vineyard, so that particular landscape no longer exists, but although the operating system is no longer supported by Microsoft, the image will live on for this generation. Estimates say that ‘Bliss’ may have been seen by over a billion people around the world, from Buckingham Palace in London, factory control rooms in North Korea to the situation room of the White House in Washington DC.)

Astrid Byro is a Technical project manager, in 2013 she planned to work remotely from 5,000 metres above sea level in the Himalayas. (The idea was to prove that working remotely was possible. She was planning to use a Kindle Fire tablet to access an online project tracking system, Jira.  What makes this really interesting, apart from the fact that it is interesting in its own right, is there doesn't seem to be any information on how this attempt went.  Her blog http://www.abc-ebc.blogspot.co.uk/ simply stops. Does anyone know anything?)

According to a report from parliament's public spending watchdog, the failed NHS (National Health Service) patient record system has so far cost the British taxpayer nearly £10bn (I say "so far" because the final bill, for what would have been the world's largest civilian computer system, is likely to be several hundreds of millions of pounds higher, it has been described as "the biggest IT failure ever seen".   Nice use of the superlative.  I wonder if the British taxpayer can sue?)

According to a survey ­carried out by the ­British ­Chiropractic Association, two in three of us Brits have suffered serious neck or back pain by the time we hit 35, and what's worse, a survey Simplyhealth showed that 84% of 18-24 year olds admit to having suffered back pain in the last 12 months. (The biggest culprits? Computers, tablets and smartphones. So, sit up straight - stretch, and now, if you can, go for a walk for a couple of minutes.)

According to preliminary figures released by research firm Gartner, PC maker Lenovo has replaced Hewlett-Packard as the world's top PC maker. (Lenovo shipped 13.8 million units in the third quarter, compared with HP's 13.55 million, and they were the only PC maker, among the world's top five, that increased its shipments to the US during the third quarter. Lenovo are based in Beijing, China, but before you decry the rise of Chinese manufacturing, they make the ThinkPad, which was originally designed, developed and sold by IBM. Maybe we should be asking, "Who decided to sell off the IBM PC business in 2005?")

A company called Knight Capital started losing literally $10 million [£6.4m] a minute when they switched on a computer program for trading on the New York stock exchange. (They ended up losing $440 million [£281m], and their shares have now lost 71pc of their value since the error.  The result is the trading company is awaiting a rescue package from a rival firm.  Someone should make a film of the whole thing, and call it "When algorithms collide".)

Psychiatrists estimate that the number of people who have become digitally dependent has risen 30 per cent over the past three years. (Hospitals in the UK now offer technology-addiction services. Psychiatrist Dr Nerina Ramlakhan, author of Tired But Wired, said "People are getting locked into a cycle of technology at work, and then surf the net or use Facebook to unwind. They become exhausted, but cannot switch their brains off." If you're worried about this, log off the net, switch your computer off, go home and go out for a walk with the family - oh and leave your smartphones at home.)

China produces almost the entire world supply of rare earths. (China produces more than 95% of the world's rare earth metals, which are used in high-tech goods like mobile phones, computers and flat screens TVs. They include: Scandium; Yttrium; Lanthanum; Cerium; Praseodymium; Neodymium; Promethium; Samarium; Europium; Gadolinium; Terbium; Dysprosium; Holmium; Erbium; Thulium; Ytterbium; Lutetium . Try pronouncing that lot!)

In a recent poll of youngsters in the US only 45% of youngsters aged between 2 and 17 regularly read books. (This compares with 91% who regularly play computer games, and the fastest growth of gamers is in the age range of 2 to 5.  What on earth do they play?)

Well, virtual monkeys. Seemingly a computer programmer, Jesse Anderson, programmed a few million virtual monkeys to randomly bash keys on virtual typewriters in an attempt to re-create Shakespeare. (He set out to prove or disprove the long-standing saying of how an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time could write Shakespeare.   The virtual monkeys are small computer programs uploaded to Amazon servers. They regularly pump out random sequences of text nine characters long, each string of text is checked to see if it appears anywhere in the works of Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard.  Using these constraints, mathematicians say it would take “far, far longer than the age of the Universe” for monkeys to write Shakespeare. I haven't got that long, so I'll stick with the original.)

Google has found a search hijacking virus on 1 million computers. (The virus hijacks Google and other search requests and redirects them to websites that pay the cyber criminals behind the scam for traffic. According to security blog KrebsonSecurity, Google users will be greeted with a yellow warning at the top of their search results if they are infected. I'm off to Google now to do a quick search, fingers crossed.)

Laws in the UK that make it illegal to rip (copy) content from CDs and DVDs onto computers, iPods, iPads and other devices are set to be scrapped. (Millions of people routinely transfer music and films they have bought on CD and DVD onto such devices for personal use, but under current copyright rules, this copying, or ‘format shifting’, is technically illegal. The music industry has accepted the proposals, but has suggested that some companies and artists should be compensated for any income lost as a result of copying through a levy applied to the price of iPods and similar devices, or CDs, DVDs and downloads. Show me the money! They cried. Well I would like to be compensated for my husband having to buy CDs of LPs and Tapes he had already bought.) Source

The US president has the authority to disconnect computer systems and servers from the internet in the event of a national emergency. (Seemingly a law was passed in 1942, when after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt was given the broad power to commandeer or shut down telephone and telegraph networks. 70 years on there are no telegraph networks, and the telephone is only one of many means of communication. Although the 1942 law makes no mention of the internet it does say "any facility or station for wire communication". The good news is wifi should be safe.)

An Apple computer has sold for £133,250.00 ($210,000.00). (Why would anyone pay so much for a computer that usually retails at around £1,000.00? Well this is one of the first batch of Apple personal computers, one of only 200 of the model ever made. It originally sold for $666.66 when it was introduced in 1976. 666? OMG!)

China has the world's fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A supercomputer, which is capable of carrying out more than 2.5 thousand trillion calculations a second. (The computer has more than 7,000 graphics processors and 14,000 Intel chips and has taken over the top spot from America's XT5 Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, which can only carry out 1.75 petaflops. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.  I still love the word "petaflop".  It reminds me of Sam.)

There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different possible configurations of the coloured squares on any Rubik's Cube. (But now an international team of enthusiasts in California, using one of Google's supercomputers, have calculated that you're never more than 20 moves away from solving this famously annoying puzzle. And, what's even worse, if like me you've never figured it out, is that only 300 million arrangements – a small fraction of the total number – require a full 20 moves, the majority of solutions should only take between 15 and 19! I'm going to have to get up in the attic to find mine, and give it another go, after all, I can always just move the stickers.) Source: The Independent

According to WebProWorld the USA is responsible for the most spamming. (Here's a list of the worst culprits:- Here's a list of the countries who were responsible for the most spam between January-March 2010. 1. USA 13.1% 2. India 7.3% 3. Brazil 6.8% 4. S Korea 4.8% 5. Vietnam 3.4% 6. Germany 3.2% 7. United Kingdom 3.1% 8. Russia 3.1% 9. Italy 3.1% 10. France 3.0% 11. Romania 2.5% 12. Poland 2.4% Others 47.3% Well to me it looks like The Others are the worst offenders.)

The word digerati (or digiterati) is used to describe the elite of the computer industry and online communities. (It's a combination of the words "digital" (data technology that uses discrete 'discontinuous' values) and "literati" (well-educated, literary people or intellectuals who are interested in literature). I'm interested in computing and literature, so does that make me me a litidigiterati?)

The average computer keyboard is reportedly infected with 3,295 germs. (As I am typing: "Yuck, yuck, yuck!")