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Brief data transmissions being called "squirts" is common, and was more common at the time.


I've been involved with computer networking since approximately 1982, and I've never once heard someone use "squirts" outside talking about Zunes. I don't doubt that it was jargon inside very specific niches, but it has never been common elsewhere.


Before the Ballmer/Zune use of the term I remember my father talking about data being squirted to A2A missiles (he was military) prior to launch, so perhaps that is one of the niches.


I take that back. An old issue of Wired had a jargon watch mention of “squirt the bird” as bouncing something off a satellite, which I remembered only because they misspelled it and I wondered what “quirt” meant.

So yeah, maybe that’s a military or adjacent thing.


I squirt all the time on Twitter.




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