Talk:List of computer term etymologies

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Computer Science[edit]

What is the etymology of this term?

I'm too new to the Wikipedia[edit]

I'm too new to the Wikipedia to want to change actual entries, but I'd like to point out two possible inaccuracies:

first, in the discussion of "Jakarta Project", I doubt that it's an accident or a "shocking coincidence" that Sun named a conference room after a city on Java. That's kind of nitpicky, though.

Agreed, that's just plain silly - the conference room was most likely named because Sun created Java. Not rocket science. I'm taking out the sentence.

Second, when Yahoo was first launched (on servers at Stanford before Yahoo.com), the acronym was explicitly expanded to "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle"; you can see by the number of Google searches that turn this up that it's an old thing, not a recent "back-formation".

Hello 68.79.151.2, welcome to Wikipedia. Create a user ID so you can have a talk page of your own.

Regarding the shocking coincidence, maybe we need to find out why the room was named Jakarta. If it was deliberate on Sun's part, then it's not a coincidence.

Regarding the yahoo back-formation, you are right. The word 'today' in the line is misleading. Jay 08:02, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Anyone know who or what started using wildcard characters in computers ? Jay 07:24, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Anyone know the origin of the name for the README file found in software installations ? Jay 11:41, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's almost certainly a play on the "Eat Me" and "Drink Me" labels from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but hard to say when and how README first came into use for software documentation. Kaleja 21:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PCMCIA[edit]

It says PCMCIA - "a wireless network card" and that is incorrect. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.216.90.75 (talk • contribs) 08:43, 15 March 2005.

Little v Big Endian[edit]

The article on Gulliver's Travels states that the computer term is derived from Swift, could someone verify and add this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.121.237.80 (talk • contribs) 02:56, 2 March 2006.

go for it! Anyone can edit Wikipedia. - Ryanfantastic 06:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Company Names[edit]

Yahoo, Google etc... are not computer terms. :-S KeKe 03:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're right! Now I've broadened the scope of this list by adding this line : "...terms used in the computing world". Jay 10:43, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cookie[edit]

Cookie: The term was coined by web browser programmer Lou Montulli after the term "magic cookies" used by Unix programmers.

Is this really helpful? The answer that it is named after "magic cookies" conveys some information, but both instances still leaves the reader in the dark about the use of the word usually associated with the edible snack. There are some odd references to a "cookie bear" comedy routine in Eric Raymond's Hacker's Dictionary that might be related. There's another reference to cruft behind left on a screen in some other places on the web. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.219.80.10 (talk) 18:26, 23 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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