It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at large) 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). Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new system' s first few weeks such failures are often referred to as "infant mortality" problems (or, occasionally, as "sudden infant death syndrome"). See bathtub curve, burn-in period. [Jargon File] (1995-03-20)
