Interesting facts about computer devices. Some interesting facts from the history of computers

It is impossible to imagine modern life without a computer. Let's take a little look back and look at some interesting facts about computers that you might not know.

The simplest games known to everyone pre-installed in Windows were not designed for entertainment at all. Their appearance in the operating system was associated with a new device - a computer mouse. Microsoft believed that these games were supposed to teach users how to properly use an unusual input device.

Symbol "@"

The “@” symbol, which is well known to users, also called “dog”, has been around for more than 500 years. Initially, it denoted a unit of measurement of volume, then migrated to the banking sector, and from there to computers.

Emoticons

When corresponding, we no longer hesitate to use various emoticons. Did you know that the idea to use a closing parenthesis as a smile appeared in 1969 from the writer Vladimir Nabokov. The emoticon in its familiar form – “:)” was created in 1982 by American professor Scott Fahlman.

"Computer"

The word “computer” itself did not previously mean electronic computers. At the beginning of the last century in the United States, this term was used to describe people who worked on adding machines (impressive-sized mechanical calculators).

"Missionary Church of Copism"

An organization with such a strange name really exists; moreover, it is officially recognized as a religion in Sweden. Its members believe that the copying of information can under no circumstances be restricted. They chose “Ctrl-C” and “Ctrl-V” as their religious symbols.

Piracy

Information piracy appeared even before the Internet spread. In the 70s, there were several precedents in the United States - record companies sued cassette recorder manufacturers, believing that the ability to record music from the radio violated their rights and business credit. By the way: the court did not satisfy their demands.

First hard drive

The history of the hard drive goes back more than 60 years - it was released in 1956. The device at that time became a real technological breakthrough - it weighed more than a ton, took up a lot of space and contained 5 MB of data.

Floppy disks

The US Army still uses floppy disks. Most of the computers that support the life of nuclear facilities are IBM manufactured in 1976. Updating the system requires enormous financial costs, but the military plans to do this in 2018.

The computer has become so familiar in our lives that we perceive it as a workhorse and little think about how many interesting things are connected with our PC. We decided to fix this. So, interesting facts about computers:

1) A modern personal computer has ten times more power than it once took to launch and land a man on the moon.

2) The CD capacity is enough for 72 minutes of music. This is exactly the duration of Beethoven's ninth symphony, which the creators of the new product were guided by.

3) A split second is enough for us to evaluate the quality of the site we have visited.

4) Chinese gamers are prohibited from playing games that promote murder, such as GTA or Postal. Hackers are also not welcome in the Celestial Empire: they face serious prison sentences, and in 1998 a couple of hackers were even sentenced to capital punishment.

5) Hackers, of course, are not worth protecting - criminals of the information space. But also don’t forget about your loved ones. Some accounts, email addresses and other personal pages on the Internet are just asking to be broken! The most popular passwords are numbers in ascending or descending order, as well as date, month and year of birth. Many users are so careless that they even enter the same set of characters in the “login” and “password” windows.

6) If you often sit at a computer for a long time, then you blink at least seven times a minute. This is how our eyes try to prevent “office vision” syndrome.

7) Bill Gates’ official email receives millions of emails every day. Need I say that the vast majority of them remain unanswered?

8) There is a lot of debate about whether a computer can catch up and surpass us in abilities. But he was already recognized as “person of the year”: in 1982, this was done by the employees of Time magazine.

9) People who are afraid of computers and everything connected with them are called cyberphobes.

10) 2/3 of Americans surf the Internet at least three hours a day. We think our compatriots are not much less...

Computer related services are considered a very profitable business. At least three out of six rich people made their fortunes in the IT sector.

11) The sysadmin holiday is celebrated in many countries. But only in the States is it called “System Administrator Appreciation Day.”

12) Contrary to popular belief, computers most often break down not from problems in the electrical network or from malicious viruses. They should “say thank you” to their owners who spill tea, coffee, soda and other drinks on the keyboard.

13) if we take all email messages transmitted in the world as 100%, then 94% of them are spam.

14) The first e-mail was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, the author of a program for exchanging messages between computers. He also suggested using the @ icon to separate the username and computer name.

15) The creators of the Google search engine wanted to name their brainchild Googol (10 to the hundredth power - that’s how many pages they were going to index), but the domain with that name was already taken.

16) The first dot matrix printer was developed in 1964. It was used in Seiko brand watches to permanently print the exact time.

17) The Internet and computer games are considered the most devastating threat to employee productivity. The amount of time workers in the average American office spend on the Internet is still unknown, but they spend about half a billion hours a year playing computer games.

18) The famous combination - the three-finger program - Ctrl-Alt-Del - was created and implemented by one of the IBM PC developers, David Bradley.

19) The first personal computers had a very limited amount of memory - only about 16 kilobytes.

20) A computer scientist is still not a woman’s profession. The world's largest IT corporation, Microsoft, employs 75% men and only 25% women.

1). In America, system administrator day is called “System Administrator Appreciation Day.” The founder of this holiday is Ted Kakatos, who works as a system administrator in the state of Chicago. He believed that system administrators should feel gratitude from users at least once a year.

2). The largest computer network is a network consisting of 6,000 computers. This network is responsible for servicing the Large Hadron Collider.

3). The world's most powerful computer is the IBM Roadrunner supercomputer. It is located in the building of the United States Department of Energy. It is used to conduct a variety of scientific and physical experiments.

4). An ordinary computer, which is installed in almost any home, wastes half of its power. Improving the efficiency of computer power supplies could save approximately $5.5 billion annually.

5). The most common passwords used by users on the Internet are the following numbers: 12345, 123456, 77777, 55555, 11111, date of birth. For four percent of users, the login is similar to the password.

6). The most common cause of computer breakdowns is liquid getting on the surface of the keyboard. The second place is occupied by sudden power surges.

7). The most common computer network is attacked daily by an average of twenty viruses.

8). The number of unwanted electronic messages (spam) amounted to 22 billion. These messages have a volume of 86.5 Terabytes, and the total percentage of all messages saved is 94 percent of all e-mail messages.

9). US employees spend approximately 500 million hours gaming while on the job. This time does not include the time spent by employees on the Internet. Losses are approximately estimated at US$10 billion.

10). Michelle Santelia used three empty keyboards and the computer typed 64 books (approximately 3.3 million words) without looking at the screen. Books include The Bible, The Odyssey and The Guinness Book of Records. Texts were typed using different languages ​​and even from end to beginning. This useless but titanic work was completed on July 26, 2007.

How were computer games and programs downloaded from paper magazines and radio broadcasts?

In the 1980s and early 1990s, ZX Spectrum computers were very popular in Europe, and then in the countries of the former USSR. Their cheapness was due to the use of a regular TV as a screen, and a household tape recorder as an external storage device. Audio cassettes with recorded games and programs were inserted into it, the sound of which was interpreted by the computer as a sequence of bits and loaded into memory. Often programs could be “downloaded” into special radio broadcasts by recording them on cassette. Also, small programs were published in magazines dedicated to the Spectrum in the form of source code - it had to be typed on the keyboard, launched and again saved to an audio medium.

Why is a hard drive called a hard drive?

In 1973, IBM released the 3340 hard drive, which was designed with two 30 MB modules. Although the final version increased the memory to 70 MB, the association of the 30/30 numbers with the popular .30-30 Winchester hunting cartridge gave the drive the codename "Winchester". This name has become a common noun for all hard drives, and in English it has already fallen out of use, but in Russian it is actively used.

What function, besides entertainment, was assigned to “Kosynka” and “Sapper”?

The well-known standard Windows games - "Klondike", "FreeCell" and "Mineweeper" - were included in the operating system for a reason. In addition to the entertainment function, they, according to the developers, were supposed to help users master the mouse and adapt to the graphical interface after the command line interface. In the mentioned solitaire games, the drag"n"drop skill was honed, and Minesweeper taught the precise positioning of clicks and the correct use of both mouse buttons.

Where is the theater where the payment for the performance depends on the number of smiles in the audience?

The Teatreneu comedy theater in Barcelona has introduced a new system of payment for laughter. Tablets with installed facial recognition software are installed in the backs of the seats in the auditorium. Each recorded smile costs 30 euro cents, and the maximum cost of the performance is set at 24 €, that is, after the 80th smile you can laugh for free. The system was liked both by the audience, whose number increased, and by the theater administration, whose income increased.

What is the HTTP error number indicating that access is restricted due to censorship?

Of all the HTTP protocol errors, users most often encounter the 404 Not Found status, when the server cannot find information from the request generated by the client. You can often see the 403 Forbidden status, which means that the server has the information, but cannot provide it to the client due to limited access rights. Among many other error messages, one can highlight status 451, indicating that access to data is prohibited at the request of government agencies or copyright holders. His number is a direct reference to Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451.

Why did billionaire Peterffy need a robot that could type on a keyboard in the 1980s?

Billionaire Thomas Peterffy was the first stock exchange player who, back in the 1970s, thought about using computers to optimize transactions. At that time, brokers did all the transactions manually in a common room, so Peterffy's engineers developed tablets, but they were too slow and did not bring any effect. In the late 1980s, when NASDAQ exchange players were already entering all commands through a computer, his team illegally connected the exchange terminal to their machine with an automatic trading program using specified algorithms. After such an innovation was banned, Peterffy instructed engineers to make a robot capable of typing the necessary commands on the terminal keyboard.

What feature did all the leading programmers of the first ENIAC computer have?

Before the invention of electronic computers, computers in the United States were workers who performed manual calculations on adding machines for complex tasks - for example, calculating shooting tables. Most computers were women, and their numbers increased even more during wartime. Many of them then successfully retrained as programmers. Thus, among the six leading programmers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, there was not a single man.

How do toy ducks help programmers debug code?

Some programmers use the duckling method to debug code. To do this, you need to put a toy duck on your desktop (or imagine it) and explain in detail, line by line, what the program should do. When resorting to this method, the programmer often encounters the error he was looking for, which he did not notice when viewing the code in the development environment.

Why is updating a computer program called a patch?

An update to a computer program that eliminates identified errors is called a patch, which literally means “patch” in English. This term arose when the main carrier of information in computer systems were still punched cards and punched tapes - paper reels with holes punched in the right places, which were read and converted into machine code. The program developer sent the corrected section of the paper tape to users, and they independently cut out the erroneous fragment and pasted in the “patch.”

What bug in development led to the concept of the Grand Theft Auto game?

In 1995, DMA Design studio developed the racing game "Race" n "Chase", in which the player could choose the role of a criminal or a police officer and complete various missions, moving both by car and on foot. The creation process was difficult, and testers did not feel involved in the game, but everything changed after a “bug” in one of the updates, which allowed computer-controlled police cars to drive more recklessly and pursue the offender without regard to speed and rules. Testers really liked it, they began to play only as criminals and ignore missions, simply enjoying the crazy chases. Seeing such a reaction, the developers changed the concept of the project and renamed it “Grand Theft Auto”.

Why is the curiosity of automatic spelling correction called the “Cupertino effect”?

In the dictionaries of early versions of spell-checking systems for word processors, the English word for "cooperation" was contained only in the hyphenated version - "co-operation". If a person typed it all together, the correction algorithm suggested replacing it with “Cupertino” (a city in California), and sometimes it changed it automatically. Because of this, a considerable number of official documents have been preserved, including from organizations such as the UN, NATO and the European Union, where you can find phrases like: “Cupertino with our Italian comrades was very fruitful.” The “Cupertino effect” is now called any such curiosity of automatic correction.

What services does a Danish company provide where 75% of its employees are autistic?

The Danish company Specialisterne provides software testing, quality control and documentation review services. The specificity of the company is that 75% of its employees are autistic and people with other autism spectrum disorders. Specialisterne was founded by Torquil Sonne, whose son is also autistic. Having worked for a long time in public organizations, Torquil realized that the characteristics of autistic people, such as increased attention to detail and the ability to quickly find inconsistencies in large data sets, could be used to advantage. The company's services are used by many corporations, including Microsoft and Oracle.

Why are the keys on the keyboard arranged in QWERTY sequence?

On early American typewriters, the keys were usually arranged alphabetically. Due to imperfections in the design, pressing adjacent keys often led to jamming and typing errors, which also went unnoticed by the operator until the carriage moved to the next line. Therefore, designers began experimenting with distributing frequently occurring letter combinations to different parts of the keyboard to increase operator productivity. In 1878, the QWERTY layout finally took shape, placed on the Remington No. 2 machine, and has survived to this day in almost unchanged form.

Why is the mouse cursor arrow tilted instead of pointing straight up?

In his explanatory drawings, the inventor of the computer mouse, Douglas Engelbart, depicted the screen cursor as an arrow pointing vertically upward. This selection option seemed the most logical, but when it came to implementing the cursor in the graphical interface of the Xerox operating system, it turned out that due to the low resolution of the monitors it was impossible to draw a good-looking small up arrow from the pixels. The engineers decided to tilt the cursor so that one face was vertical and the other at a 45° angle to it. In this form, the cursor entered all other operating systems, even after the advent of higher resolution monitors.

How did Bill Gates benefit from writing a school scheduling program?

At the age of 15, Bill Gates received an assignment from the administration of the school where he studied to write a program for assigning students to classes. Gates not only completed the task, but also reaped some benefit for himself: the program created a schedule for him such that there was a disproportionate number of interesting girls in his classes.

Which brand's logo encodes the combination of analogue and digital technologies?

In the logo of VAIO, Sony's brand of personal computers, the letters V and A form a sine wave graph, and the letters I and O represent the binary code, one and zero. Thus, the logo reflects the combination of analog and digital technologies in one whole.

Who published a book that encrypted itself after the first reading?

The founder of the cyberpunk style, William Gibson, together with artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr., released the conceptual work “Agrippa (Book of the Dead)” in 1992. It consisted of an art album, which included a floppy disk with a poem dedicated to human memory and the gradual erosion of the fragments stored in it. The peculiarity was that the poem could only be read once, since the first time it was read, the program on the floppy disk encrypted the text. Likewise, the album's drawings and inscriptions were printed with photosensitive ink, which began to fade when exposed to light.

What is the connection between the SQL airport and the nearby Oracle headquarters?

According to the international classification, the airport in the town of San Carlos in California has the code SQL. Some IT specialists believe that this has something to do with the headquarters of Oracle Corporation, known for producing database software (SQL is the most famous database query language), located in nearby Redwood City. However, the airport had this code long before the formation of Oracle, so this circumstance is explained by a simple coincidence.

What could a 1912 slot machine, considered the world's first computer game, do?

In 1912, long before the appearance of the prototypes of modern computers, Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo designed the electromechanical machine "El Ajedrecista", which is considered the first computer game in history. The device was a chessboard with a king and rook moved by a machine using electromagnets, as well as a king of a different color, which was moved by a person. The machine, even if not in the minimum number of moves, was guaranteed to complete this chess endgame with checkmate to the opponent.

How do Internet users unknowingly help digitize old books?

On many sites, to confirm that you are a real person and not a robot, you need to solve the so-called “captcha” - for example, recognize deformed letters in a picture. Among the implementation options for these systems, reCAPTCHA stands out, where the user is asked to enter two words taken from scanned books. One word is easy to read, and it is this word that is checked, but the second word is much more difficult, and its correctness is not analyzed, since it is not recognized by the automatic scanning system. These words are suggested to different people, and then the system accepts the option that is entered most often - thus millions of Internet users help computers digitize old books.

Which hyphen has been named the most expensive hyphen in history?

In 1962, the Americans launched the first spacecraft to study Venus, Mariner 1, which crashed a few minutes after launch. First, the antenna on the device, which received a signal from the guidance system from the Earth, failed, after which the on-board computer took over control. He, too, was unable to correct the deviation from the course, since the program loaded into it contained a single error - when transferring instructions into the code for punched cards, a line was missing in one of the equations, the absence of which radically changed the mathematical meaning of the equation. Journalists soon dubbed this dash “the most expensive hyphen in history” (in today’s terms, the cost of the lost device is $135,000,000).

Who was featured on the first Apple logo?

The very first Apple logo depicted Sir Isaac Newton and an apple tree from which an apple was about to fall on his head. This logo was not on the Apple I computer, only in its instructions. The overall composition of the logo was heavily overloaded with details, so a year later it was replaced by the familiar bitten fruit.

What destructive action do zip bombs perform?

One class of malicious computer programs are so-called zip bombs. These are archive files in .zip format, which increase in size many times over when unpacked. For example, one of the most famous zip bombs called 42.zip is only 42 KB in size, and the archive contains 5 layers of nested archives with 16 files per level. The size of each file at the last level is 4.3 GB, and the entire archive when unpacked takes up 4.5 Petabytes. The harmful effect of such archives is to overwhelm system resources when antiviruses or other system programs try to scan them, although currently all decent antiviruses recognize bombs in advance and do not try to open them completely.

How many bits can there be in a byte?

In the 1950s and 1960s, there was no uniform standard regarding the number of bits in a byte. In different computer systems, a byte contained from 6 to 9 bits. It wasn't until the early 1970s that most architectures began to use an 8-bit byte size, and gradually this ratio became standard. To eliminate ambiguity in computer literature, the term "octet" is sometimes used instead of the term "byte" to accurately refer to a sequence of 8 bits.

When and why was a bank computer fined, with permanent and RAM memory confiscated?

One American couple went through bankruptcy proceedings in 1992, but the bank again sent a reminder about the debt. The bank apologized, attributing the error to an automatic computer program, but after the apology, sending out reminders did not stop. After considering the spouses' complaint, the bankruptcy judge decided to fine the computer, confiscating 50 MB of permanent memory and 10 MB of RAM. The same decision stated that the fine could be canceled as soon as the computer stopped issuing new reminders.

In which country is free file sharing officially recognized as a religion?

In Sweden, the Missionary Church of Kopimism community is officially recognized as a religion, for whose members sacred acts include copying information, sharing knowledge and file-sharing networks. The sacred symbols of this new religion are the key combinations Ctrl+C (copy operation) and Ctrl+V (paste). On April 28, 2012, the first wedding took place, conducted by a Kopimist priest whose face was covered with a Guy Fawkes mask and whose voice was distorted by a modulator.

How can I determine the printer serial number, date and time of printing using printed sheets of paper?

A significant part of modern color printers prints a serial number on each sheet of paper, as well as the date and time of printing in encoded yellow dots, barely visible to the naked eye. These data were published by the human rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2005, after which printer manufacturers admitted that such a measure was implemented as part of an agreement between them, major banks and the US government to combat counterfeiting. Among the largest manufacturers, only Samsung printers do not print yellow dots.

What shuttle components did NASA buy on eBay in 2002?

The Space Shuttle was developed by NASA in the late 1970s and was equipped with then-advanced microprocessor technology, including the Intel 8086 processor. In 2002, the agency was faced with a serious problem - it was necessary to carry out large-scale replacement of components according to their aging standards on ground maintenance equipment shuttles, but Intel no longer produced such processors. Therefore, NASA was forced to buy them, as well as outdated motherboards and eight-inch floppy drives, online, mainly through eBay.

How is the Apple logo connected to the death of Alan Turing?

When in 1952, the English police discovered that the brilliant mathematician and one of the creators of computer science, Alan Turing, was homosexual, he was sentenced according to the laws in force at that time and was offered either to go to prison or receive injections of the hormone estrogen. Turing chose the second, and two years later he was found dead, the cause of which was bitten into an apple containing cyanide. There are three versions explaining this death: suicide, the machinations of ill-wishers, or simple carelessness. There is an opinion that this incident is the basis for the appearance of the Apple Corporation logo. However, its creator Rob Janoff denied this rumor, saying that the apple on the emblem does not contain any allusions, and it is drawn with a bite so that it is not confused with a tomato.

Where and why are prisoners in prisons forced to play computer games?

There is a multi-million dollar industry selling in-game money and items in online multiplayer games for real money. Virtual currency is earned by so-called “gold farmers,” for whom such games are part of their daily work. The vast majority of farmers are employed in China - back in 2005, their total number was estimated at more than 100,000 people. In addition, in many Chinese prisons, wardens and guards force inmates to play online games for illegal income.

How do punch cards affect the operation of modern mail programs?

Punch cards, which were used as input and output media on the earliest computers, were designed to be 80 columns wide. To make it easier to transfer programs, the first displays were also designed for a line width of 80 characters. When email appeared, the first protocols for it again operated on 80-character lines. And although monitors have progressed greatly since then, almost all popular email systems still break up 80-character lines to ensure compatibility with older programs. Even binary files are converted using MIME base64 into strings of letters and numbers of no more than 80 characters. We can say that the programs modify the video files we send to make them compatible with punched cards.

What accident actually brought Linux into being?

Linus Torvalds used the Minix operating system, but was dissatisfied with many of its limitations and decided to write his own system. At a certain point, a more or less stable version was released, Torvalds' interest in the project faded, and he was ready to abandon it. But during the same period, he accidentally damaged the partition on the hard drive where Minix was located, and instead of reinstalling it, Torvalds decided to finish what he started. Thus, thanks to chance, the Linux kernel and subsequently the GNU/Linux OS appeared.

When has the world been on the verge of nuclear war due to technical errors?

During the Cold War, there were many cases when the world was on the verge of nuclear war due to incorrect readings from missile launch detection systems. Thus, in 1979, the alarm was raised in the United States because a training program for a massive nuclear strike was mistakenly loaded onto one of the computers. However, the satellites did not detect any missile launches, and the alarm was canceled. And in 1983, the Soviet satellite detection system malfunctioned, transmitting a signal about the launch of several American missiles. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, sitting at the control panel, took upon himself the responsibility not to transmit information to the country's top leadership, deciding that it was unlikely that the United States would launch a first strike with such small forces. In 2006, the UN awarded Petrov as “the man who prevented nuclear war.”

How many times larger is a standard Japanese keyboard than the one Europeans are used to?

In Japanese, in addition to the hieroglyphic kanji script, borrowed from China, there are also two syllabic alphabet - hiragana and katakana - in which one character corresponds not to a word, but to a separate syllable. Traditionally, they are used to write words for which there are no hieroglyphs: katakana for borrowed terms from European languages, and hiragana for individual Japanese particles and suffixes, or when the reader may not know a certain hieroglyph. It is 47 hiragana characters that are located on keyboards, so Japanese keyboards are no different from those we are used to. In addition, special software can monitor the input of characters and automatically suggest replacing several characters with the corresponding hieroglyph.

How many founders did Apple have?

It is known that Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. However, there was a third founder named Ronald Wayne, who owned a 10% stake, but sold it to the Steves for $800.

All of us bloggers, for whom the computer is almost a “relative,” will interesting about the computer find out more.

I think that not everyone knows when the first computer was created - it happened in the early forties of the last century and was called “ENIAC”. The first computer had a decent weight - twenty-seven tons! And it also occupied quite a large area - one hundred and thirty-five square meters, so, is it impressive?!

The PC first appeared in the late seventies, and was very roughly similar to today’s PCs... Not much time has passed since then, but so many changes, so many! During the time that the PC was improved, many interesting events happened, so I’ll tell you about them. Everyone knows what the mouse cursor looks like now, but initially it was supposed to be made like a round arrow! there is enough on our planet, but a system administrator from the States, Ted Kekatos, proposed a professional holiday that honored all system administrators - and called it System Administrator Thanksgiving Day!

These hard workers should feel the gratitude of the people who use their services at least once a year! Does anyone know of a local network consisting of a huge number of computers?! And it exists - it is a network of six thousand computers and it is located in the “service” of the hadron collider. But the most “popular” reasons for PC failure are when the keyboard “communicates” with any liquid, very close - tea, water... But interruptions in the electrical network can also cause a breakdown of our “friend”...

In case of a computer breakdown, I advise you to contact the company’s website - http://www.pcremont.biz.ua/computer-repair-at-home/, which repairs computers in Kyiv! It’s very convenient, especially since the range of services will please anyone who visits the site by just clicking on the link! I advise you to take advantage of the offer. At the time when Bill Gates wrote his first, his memory contained only sixteen kilobytes, and the program required as much as thirty-four! Do you know what “cunning” standard computers are?! And they are loaded completely extremely rarely - most often they use only half of their capacity - interesting about the computer.

We often use emoticons, but who invented them, do you know?! Then meet Scott Folman! It was he who first used these funny symbols in the early eighties. Having invented the CD information storage device, the developers struggled for a long time with the question of how much capacity it needs! Then, after some time, they agreed that the capacity of the storage device should accommodate a work by Beethoven called “The Ninth Symphony”, which lasts exactly seventy-two minutes. The number of virus attacks on a computer network per day is more than twenty - just imagine!

And in the emails that we all use, there is also plenty of spam. According to statistics, spam made up ninety-four percent of all emails last year! By the way, did you know that in the year eighty-two, the Computer was declared Person of the Year, according to Time, a well-known publication. Quite symbolic, isn't it - interesting about the computer?!