<p>I've heard people referring to this table and was not sure what it was about.</p>

I think this wikipedia article may help clarify.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUAL_table
The DUAL table is a special one-row
  table present by default in all Oracle
  database installations. It is suitable
  for use in selecting a pseudocolumn
  such as SYSDATE or USER The table has
  a single VARCHAR2(1) column called
  DUMMY that has a value of "X"