Okay, class, seekers of esoteric knowledge, and trivia mavens!

The | is called a pipe because it's used in programming (especially in Unix) to tell the computer to move the data it processes to something else. For example:

                     ps -ef | more

"pipes" the result of the ps -ef command to the more command (which allows you to see the results a little at a time on the screen, instead of having the whole thing scroll up top to bottow). You could also use

                      ps -ef | pg

and pipe the result to the pg command. The difference is that one will allow you to review the results screen-by-screen and the other line-by-line.

A * is called a splat.
A ! is called a bang.
A \ is a backslash, a / is a frontslash.
Typing _something_ like that is underlining, typing it *like* that is for emphasis. ALL CAPS is shouting.
A # is a pound sign.

Now you are all semi-qualified computer geeks.