Related:

• bathtub curve: n. Common term for the curve (resembling an end-to-end section of one of those claw-footed antique bathtubs) that describes the expected failure rate of electronics with time
  initially high, dropping to near 0 for most of the system's lifetime, then rising again as it `tires out'....
• infant mortality: n. It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at large
  his term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since first use (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile)....
• infant mortality n. It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at large
  his term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since first use (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile)....
• burn-in period: n. 1. A factory test designed to catch systems with {marginal} components before they get out the doo
  he theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the steepest part of the {bathtub curve} (see {infant mortality})....
• fritterware: n. An excess of capability that serves no productive end.
  The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see {macdink})...
• burn-in period n. 1. A factory test designed to catch systems with marginal components before they get out the doo
  the theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the steepest part of the bathtub curve (see infant mortali using a computer is so intensely involved in his project that he forgets basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, etc....
• crash: 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the {system} (q.
  v., sense 1), esp. of magnetic disk drives (the term originally described what happened when the air gap of a hard disk collapses)....
• fried: adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure
  burnt out. Especially used of hardware brought down by a `power glitch' (see {glitch}), {drop-outs}, a short, or some other electrical event....
• logical adj. [from the technical term `logical device', wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary `logical' name] Having the role of.
  If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were replaced, the replacement would for a while be known as the `logical' Les Earnest....