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Definitions from the Sharpened Glossary
Mainframe
This is an ultra-high-performance computer made for high-volume, processor-intensive computing. They are typically used by large businesses and for scientific purposes. You probably won't find a mainframe in any household. In the hierarchy of computers, mainframes are right below supercomputers, the most powerful computers in the world.
Malware
Short for "malicious software," malware refers to software programs designed to damage or do other unwanted actions on a computer system.
Megabyte
Like the kilobyte, the megabyte doesn't contain a nice even number of bytes. Though by definition, a megabyte should contain 1,000,000 bytes, it actually contains 1,048,576 bytes (or 1,024 x 1,024). This is because 2^10 equals 1024 and not 1000.
Megahertz
One megahertz equals one million cycles per second and is used to measure transmission speeds of electronic devices. The most common area you'll see Megahertz used is in measuring processor clock speed (i.e. an 800 Mhz Pentium III). However, megahertz only measures the clock speed of the processor (how many cycles it can handle per second) -- not the overall performance. Because megahertz measures only a single aspect of a processor, it is possible that a 500 MHz PowerPC G4 is faster overall than an 800 Mhz Pentium III. Abbreviation: "Mhz".
Meta Search Engine
A server which passes queries on to many search engines and/or directories and then summarizes all the results. Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Infind, and Metacrawler, are examples of meta search engines.
Meta Tag
A markup tag, placed as part of the heading of the page (but not seen by users) that contains information about the contents of a Web page. Visitors don't see these tags, but search engines do. Two important meta tags are the description tag and the keywords tag. Search engines use the information to find, index and list the page. Effective, descriptive meta tags mean better search engine results for your Web pages.
Mirror Sites
Multiple copies of websites or Web pages, often on different servers, with the exact same, or similar, content. The process of registering these multiple copies with search engines is often treated as spam, because it artificially increases the visibility and link popularity of the pages.
MySQL Database
MySQL is a relational database management system. A relational database stores data in separate tables rather than putting all the data in one big storeroom. This adds speed and flexibility. The tables are linked by defined relations making it possible to combine data from several tables on request. The SQL part of MySQL stands for "Structured Query Language" - the most common standardized language used to access databases.
Navigation
The act of moving from location to location within a web site, or between web sites. Navigation is accomplished by clicking on text links or navigation buttons.
Netiquette
Netiquette, or net etiquette, refers to etiquette on the Internet. Good netiquette involves respecting others' privacy and not doing anything online that will annoy or frustrate other people. Three areas where good netiquette is highly stressed are e-mail, online chat, and newsgroups. For example, people that spam other users with unwanted e-mails or flood them with messages have very bad netiquette. If you're new to a newsgroup or online chat room, it may help to observe how people communicate with each other before jumping in.
Network
When you have two or more computers connected to each other, you have a network. The purpose of a network is to enable the sharing of files and information between mulitple systems. The Internet could be described as a global network of networks. Computer networks can be connected through cables, such as Ethernet cables or phone lines, or wirelessly, using wireless networking cards that send and receive data through the air.
Newbie
A new user of a technology, such as a computer, a certain computer program, or the Internet, is often referred to as a "newbie." The term originated sometime around 1990 and supposedly comes from the English phrase, "new boy," which refers to someone in their first year of public schooling. In online chat rooms, veteran net users like to call anybody who asks an easy question a newbie. If you ever get called a newbie, just shake it off -- everybody has to learn sometime.
Newsgroup
This is a discussion group that is based on postings about a particular topic. These topics range from sports, cars, investing, teen problems, and some stuff you probably don't want to know about. Users post messages to a news server which then sends them to a bunch of other participating servers. Then other users can access the newsgroup and read the postings. The groups can be either "moderated," where a person or group decides which postings will become part of the discussion, or "unmoderated," where everything posted is included in the discussion.
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