A program from Macromedia for viewing files created with Macromedia Director. Shockwave is freely available as a plug-in for the Netscape Navigator web browser. "Shocked" pages that incorporate documents created in Director can usually only be enjoyed by users with an ISDN or faster connection.
The propagation of failure, shutdown, meltdown, net overload, or a virus from one network node to another, resulting in a wave of inactivity across the net.