What the heck is an oops?

[Michael B. Trausch]

OK, this is very interesting... I would like to know what an "oops"
is... I was working on my SuSE 5.2 (Kernel 2.0.33) Linux, trying to get
PPP working (I am just trying it out to see if I like it or not), and
then it said on the screen, oops: 0000, with a bunch of stuff that went
by, and the system rebooted.

1)  What is an oops, and what causes it?

2)  How do I prevent it?

        - Mike