A-B C-D E-F G-H I-J K-L M-N O-P Q-R S-T U-V W-X Y-Z
Definitions from the Sharpened Glossary
Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)
A definition of content and uses permitted on a site or network as conditions of using that site or network. AUP are often stated for ISPs, networks, organizations, and universities.
Access
Microsoft's advanced database creation and maintenance software. It is very popular among developers who maintain online databases with Windows NT.
Active Server Page (ASP)
ASPs are HTML documents embedded with scripts (typically Microsoft's VB Script or Jscript). These scripts are processed by the server prior to being transferred to the user.
ActiveX
A set of properties that define how applications are to share information with each other. These properties are known as controls.
ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. New technology to carry high speed data over ordinary phone lines. It is up to 70 times as fast as a 28.8 modem, and can be used concurrently with voice over the same line. It is gradually being offered to homes commercially now. It is called "asymmetric" because download speeds to the subscriber are faster than upload speeds from the subscriber. See DSL.
Adware
Any software which serves banner ads or pop-up ads to you while in use. It is sometimes installed in freeware or shareware which you download from the nets, and provides one more channel for advertisers to reach you. Some adware will also track your files, net usage, and software and report it back to advertisers to help them channel relevant ads to you. See spyware.
AIFF
Audio Interchange File Format. A common audio file format originally for Macs, but used with other systems, too. See the Audio Guide and the File Extension Guide for more information.
Aliased Nameservers
An aliased nameserver is a nameserver that has been labeled as yours (the reseller's) despite the fact it actually belongs to your Web hosting provider. This ensures that domains located on your server are listed as "ns.yourservername.com" instead of "ns.yourprovidersname.com". Also see NAMESERVER below.
Alpha Test
In software development, an early stage of testing by in-house personnel to identify bugs in the program. It usually involves systematically trying out all of a program's functions. Compare with beta test.
Animated GIF
A GIF graphic file, which consists of two or more images shown in a timed sequence to give the effect of motion.
Anonymous FTP
A traditional form of login to a public ftp site where the username is given as 'anonymous' and the password is your e-mail address, for example 'dolay@newista.com'. See ftp.
Apache
One of the world's most popular Web server programs, Apache was built by a group of open-source programmers and is often used because of its outstanding performance, b security features and the fact that it is free.
API
Application Program Interface. An interface between the operating system and application programs that specifies how the two communicate with each other.
Applet
An application that is downloaded from a web page and executed by browser software. Also, an HTML tag that defines an applet program.
Application Service Provider
A third party that manages software applications for servers and networks.
Archie
One of the first search engines introduced to the nets, developed by Peter Deutsch and others at McGill U. Archie is software that indexes thousands of ftp sites and lets you search for the files and software that you want. It was short for "archiver", protested Deutsch, after the search tools VERONICA and JUGHEAD followed it. To try out Archie from the web, start from NASA's Archieplex site.
Archive
1. A storage repository for software, data, or other materials to be saved and preserved.
2. A technique of combining multiple files into a single file to enable easier backup, handling or transmission. Some of the software programs used to archive files are PKZIP, WinZip, Stuffit, and tar. Files with the following extensions are likely to be archived: sea, tar, taz, taZ, tgz, and zip.
ARPANET
The network created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) that became the Internet. See the Internet History
.Art
A graphics format used on AOL. Plug-ins are available for non-AOL browsers to view graphics with a .art extension.
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard way to encode upper and lower case letters in the English alphabet, numbers, and special characters using only seven bits, and therefore limited to 128 characters. The basis for coding simple text files. See ASCII Table. To provide more characters, such as accented characters and mathematical symbols, an 8th bit is often added, providing 256 characters in all. There are different standard 256 character sets, but the most common is ISO Latin 1 (ISO 8859-1) used on the web.
ASCII Art
Artwork composed entirely of ASCII characters used as lines and shapes, not as characters with meanings. The simplest ASCII art is the simple smiley faces, but at the other end of the scale, they can be large, elaborate pictures. For a good collection of ASCII art, see the ASCII Dictionary
ASCII File
ASCII files are those that only use the 128 characters that can be encoded with 7 binary digits. This means that most text files are ASCII files. Word processed files, which include special characters and control codes are usually encoded with 8 binary digits. Some Internet protocols only support 7-bit text, such as simple mailers and newsgroups. Because of this, ways have been developed to encode binary files into ASCII form. The most common of these are uuencode and binhex, the latter for Macintosh files, primarily. Two more examples of 7-bit file systems are postscript (.ps files) and TeX (.tex files), which are word processing systems that allow encoding of complex information in 7-bit form. Common extensions for ASCII files are .txt, .uue, .xxe, .hqx, .ps, and .tex. Also files with names like README or index are almost always text files. The .doc extension may be text or may be 8-bit, and you need to know more about it to be sure.
ATM
Asynchronous Transfer Mode. A packet switching model for fast long distance communications that uses fixed packet size and allows for intelligent decisions on routing, handling, prioritization, and costing. This allows for special handling and routing for data that must be reassembled quickly and accurately, such as live Video. See differentiated service.
Avatar
In unix, a superuser--equal in privileges to root. In chat and in games, an icon or animation to represent a participant.
AVI
Audio Video Interleaved. A Microsoft video format where audio and video coding appears in alternate segments. AVI files will end with an .avi extension.
Autoresponder
This is a program or script on a mail server that automatically replies to e-mails received for a certain account. Though it is run from the mail server, an autoresponder can usually be set up by the user through a Web-based interface
B2B
Term used for Business to Business.
B2C
Term used for Business to Consumer.
Backup
Backup is a duplicate copy of a file or document kept in case the original is lost, damaged or corrupted.
Bandwidth
The amount of data transferred from one server to another. Most hosting providers set limits on the amount of data transferred, or bandwidth.
Banner Burnout
Also called banner fatigue. Occurs when the consumer has seen the banner too often and no longer notices. Also used to refer to consumers who have grown so accustomed to banner ads that they no longer notice the content of banners.
Beta
The testing stage of commercial software.
Binary
Binary is a two-digit (Base-2) numerical system, which computers use to store data and compute functions. The reason computers use the binary system is because digital switches inside the computer can only be set to either on or off, which are represented by a 1 or 0. Though the binary system consists of only ones and zeros, the two digits can be used to represent any number
BIOS
Stands for "Basic Input/Output System." Most people don't need to ever mess with the BIOS on a computer, but it can be helpful to know what it is. The BIOS is a program pre-installed on Windows-based computers (not on Macs) that the computer uses to start up. The CPU accesses the BIOS even before the operating system is loaded. The BIOS then checks all your hardware connections and locates all your devices. If everything is OK, the BIOS loads the operating system into the computer's memory and finishes the boot-up process.
Bit
The computer term "bit" comes from the phrase "Binary DigIT", which is different than that thing you put around a horse's mouth. A bit is a single digit number in base-2 (a zero or a one) and is the smallest unit of computer data.
Blog
Online journal similar to a forum. The term BLOG comes from web log.
Bookmark
Similar to a real-life bookmark, an Internet bookmark acts as a marker for a Web site. (In Internet Explorer, they're called "Favorites".)
Browser
It's what you're probably using to read this right now. A Web browser, often just called a "browser," is the program people use to access the World Wide Web. It interprets HTML code including text, images, hypertext links, Javascript, and Java applets. After rendering the HTML code, the browser displays a nicely formatted page. Some common browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, and Apple Safari.
Button
A small, clickable graphic.
Byte
A byte is a set of 8 bits that represent a single character in the computer's memory.
