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- Geek Trivia: Where no song has gone before
- Why has no one ever recorded the lyrics to the original Star Trek theme? "Space... the final frontier..." These words first hit the airwaves on Sept. 8, 1966, thereby introducing the world to Star Trek and subsequently becoming one of the auditory signatures for...
- Tags: Star Trek, Jay Garmon, Composer Alexander Courage, lyric, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Theme, Gene Roddenberry
- Technical articles 2007-06-05
- Geek Trivia: Air (and space) mail
- What stamp-collecting item did the crew of Apollo 11 secretly produce? Editor's note: Because the Trivia Geek couldn't be bothered to account for the U.S. Memorial Day holiday, we've been forced to dig into our archives to present this Classic Geek, which originally ran on June 7, 2005. Look...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Missile Mail, U.S. Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, missile, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Oxygen, TechRepublic Inc., Moon, Environment, Editor, U.S. Postal Service
- Technical articles 2007-05-29
- Geek Trivia: These aren't the stars you're looking for
- Which famous horror film shared casting sessions with Star Wars? An entire generation once proclaimed, "Never trust anyone over 30." That means that starting this week, you can stop trusting Star Wars. (That's if Episode I didn't already make this clear to you.) ...
- Tags: Star Wars, George Lucas, Jay Garmon, Geek Trivia Newsletter
- Technical articles 2007-05-22
- Geek Trivia: The (space) pen is mightier
- How much did NASA pay for the original lot of "space pens"? Raise your hand if you've ever had to sit through a meeting that recounted the anecdote of NASA spending millions of dollars developing a high-tech writing pen that could function in microgravity, while the crafty...
- Tags: NASA, Advertising & Promotion, Jay Garmon, pencil, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Marketing
- Technical articles 2007-05-15
- Geek Trivia: Lapping the competition
- What was the first portable computer labeled a laptop? Conventional wisdom among the IT crowd holds that the laptop computer is a derivative of the desktop PC, but students of computing history know that, in many respects, the reverse is true. In fact, the earliest laptop ...
- Tags: PC, Dynabook, Notebooks, Jay Garmon, PRODUCTIVITY, Desktops, laptop computer, computer, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Portable Computer, Cassini, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets
- Technical articles 2007-05-08
- Geek Trivia: One tall order
- Which proposed skyscraper will break every type of record for the world's tallest building? On June 5, 2000, Chicago's Sears Tower became the world's tallest building for the second time -- depending on how and when you pose the question. On that date, Sears overtook the...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Sears Roebuck & Co., Sears Tower, antennae, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Expectation, TVs, Corporate Communications, Tv & Home Theater, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Marketing
- Technical articles 2007-05-01
- Geek Trivia: Stunt double to the stars
- What celestial object in our solar system bears a strange resemblance to Star Wars' Death Star? What's more than 100 kilometers across; home to more than 1 million military officers, crew, and support personnel; berths more than 7,000 attack craft; and has been the recipient of such...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Death Star, Star Wars, Geek Trivia Newsletter, TechRepublic Inc., Moon, Tax, Mimas, Taxes, Financial Planning, Finance
- Technical articles 2007-04-24
- Geek Trivia: Death by operating system
- Which operating system featured a Guru Meditation instead of the more typical Blue Screen of Death? You may not realize it, but we're fast approaching the ninth anniversary of one of the most memorable moments in the development of the Windows operating system. On April 20, 1998,...
- Tags: Microsoft Windows, Jay Garmon, Operating systems, operating system, blue screen of death, Geek Trivia Newsletter, AmigaOS, Software
- Technical articles 2007-04-17
- Geek Trivia: A tax to grind
- Which company filed the largest U.S. tax return in history? It's spring in the northern hemisphere, when young men's fancies turn to thoughts of love. But if you live in the United States, thoughts of love will have to wait -- at least for another week. That's...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Taxes, Operational accounting, income, income tax, tax, Geek Trivia Newsletter, U.S., General Electric Co., Free Trade, Financial Planning, Finance
- Technical articles 2007-04-10
- Geek Trivia: 404-letter words
- What do the numbers in status code 404 signify under the formal HTTP spec? The time has come to celebrate yet another of those all-too-unrecognized geek-centric holidays which I may have just made up: 404 Day! Every April 4th, Web surfers of every persuasion should take time...
- Tags: HTTP, Jay Garmon, CERN, Tim Berners-Lee, FTP, Geek Trivia Newsletter, W3C, Web Browser
- Technical articles 2007-04-03
- Geek Trivia: Fire(arms) in the sky
- What was the only externally armed manned spacecraft ever flown? On May 3, 2003, Expedition 6 astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit, along with cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, endured a particularly nerve-racking reentry when their Soyuz capsule malfunctioned during its descent from the International Space Station before...
- Tags: Expedition 6, Soyuz, Jay Garmon, Geek Trivia Newsletter, TechRepublic Inc., Spacecraft, Craft, Orbit, Productivity, Corporate Communications, Marketing
- Technical articles 2007-03-27
- Geek Trivia: The map in the moon
- Which ancient drawings are the oldest known maps of the moon? These days, Leonardo da Vinci gets a great deal of historically inaccurate publicity for his fictional involvement in a secret quasi-religious, art-encoding, multi-millennial conspiracy. However, before Dan Brown rewrote the history of the original Renaissance...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Leonardo Da Vinci, moon, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Vinci, Knowth, Strategy, Management
- Technical articles 2007-03-20
- Geek Trivia: Fathers of the mummy
- What ancient people was the first culture known to practice mummification? The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines mummy as "a body embalmed or treated for burial with preservatives in the manner of the ancient Egyptians" or "a body unusually well preserved." In a technical...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, mummification, Egyptian, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Body, TechRepublic Inc., Culture, Fortran, Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Egyptians, Chinchorros, Nothing, Crowther, Programming Languages, Productivity, Software Development, Software/Web Development
- Technical articles 2007-03-13
- Geek Trivia: The cheat goes on
- What was the first video game to recognize the famous "Contra Code"? If you're writing a book on the evolution of video games, you need to devote at least one chapter to the various incarnations of Adventure, the cave-crawling action game that appeared on platforms ranging from...
- Tags: Games, Jay Garmon, game, Contra Code, Adventure Â, Easter Egg, video game, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Video, Crowther, Personal Technology
- Technical articles 2007-03-06
- Geek Trivia: Editorial oversight
- What fictional word accidentally appeared in five consecutive editions of Webster's Dictionary in the 1930s? If you're ever in the presence of someone who claims to be a serious lexicographer or etymologist and want to check if said person is really just full of it, throw out...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Lillian Mountweazel, Geek Trivia Newsletter, TechRepublic Inc., Problem, Edition, Webster
- Technical articles 2007-02-27
- Geek Trivia: A star of all Treks
- Who is the only actor with credited appearances in all five Star Trek TV series? I think we can all agree that the amount of Geek Trivia you could wring out of the Star Trek franchise is immeasurable. But for the sake of simplicity, let's start with...
- Tags: Star Trek, DS9, Jay Garmon, Next Gen, Next Gen episode, Ferengi, Geek Trivia Newsletter, TV, Computer, Trek, Voyager, ENIAC
- Technical articles 2007-02-20
- Geek Trivia: Mother of invention
- Which original ENIAC programmer helped develop COBOL and Fortran? For all those computer geeks out there who will spend yet another Valentine's Day in the presence of a computer rather than a significant other, it's time to change the game. Toss off the shackles of this ...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Gender and diversity, PRODUCTIVITY, Development tools, Programming languages, ENIAC Eve, Geek Trivia Newsletter, TechRepublic Inc., Women, Fortran, Programmer, Programming, Computer, COBOL, Betty Holberton, UNIVAC, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Human Resources
- Technical articles 2007-02-13
- Geek Trivia: It's not easy being Wint-O-Green
- What substance in Wint-O-Green Life Savers makes these candies more prone to triboluminescence? Editor's note: The Trivia Geek is on extended leave, but he did get off his slacker butt long enough to pull this Classic Geek, which originally ran on Sept. 2, 2003 and then again on March...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Sir Francis Bacon, Geek Trivia Newsletter, TechRepublic Inc., Light, Editor, Corporate Communications, Branding, Marketing
- Technical articles 2007-02-06
- Geek Trivia: Grossest of the gross
- What movie has the highest inflation-adjusted U.S. box office gross since the advent of television? Editor's note: The Trivia Geek is on extended leave, but he did get off his slacker butt long enough to pull this Classic Geek, which originally on July 20, 2004, from the archives. ...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Currency & Foreign exchange, movie, inflation, Titanic, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Star Wars, Box-office, Editor, TV, Agent 007, Finance
- Technical articles 2007-01-30
- Geek Trivia: Stationary perspective
- What science-fiction work was the first to propose a manned artificial satellite—a space station? Editor's note: The Trivia Geek is on extended leave, but he did get off his slacker butt long enough to pull this Classic Geek, which originally ran on April 18, 2006, from the archives. ...
- Tags: Jay Garmon, Corporate governance, Salyut 1, Geek Trivia Newsletter, Station, Editor, Satellite, Science Fiction, Edward Everett Hale, Network Technology, Networking
- Technical articles 2007-01-23
