| Word or
Term |
Description or
Explanation |
| Abbreviations |
there are a number of standard abbreviations
used to save time and space in emails and postings - here are a few:
| AFAIK |
as far as I know |
| BCNU |
be seeing you (get it?) |
| BRB |
be right back |
| BTW |
by the way |
| FTF or F2F |
face to face, as opposed to screen-to-screen
interaction |
| FWIW |
for what it's worth |
| FYI |
for your information |
| IIRC |
if I remember correctly |
| IMHO |
in my humble opinion |
| IMO |
in my opinion |
| IRL |
in real life (as opposed to Net.life) |
| ISR or ISTR |
I seem to recall |
| LOL |
laughing out loud - an expression of humour, surpassed only
by ROTFL |
| OTOH |
on the other hand |
| POV |
point of view |
| ROTFL |
rolling on the floor laughing |
| RSN |
real soon now |
| RTFM |
read the flipping manual! |
| TIA |
thanks in anticipation |
| TLA |
three-letter acronym |
| WRT |
with regard to |
| YMMV |
your mileage may vary |
|
|
|
| Action button |
a button in a dialogue box which causes some
action to occur |
| Address |
on the Net, this is an electronic mail address
- addresses are often structured person@[subsite.]domain.type.country, e.g.
fred@arcade.demon.co.uk. - the type indicates the nature of the organisation
running the site, ORGanisation, COmpany, GOVernment, ACademic - not all
addresses adhere to this structure. |
| ADFS |
Advanced Disc Filing System - this is the
proprietary system used by Acorn for organising and storing data on floppy and
hard drives |
| ADSL |
Asymetric Digital Subscriber Line
(Communications) - a method for moving data over regular phone lines - an ADSL
circuit is much faster than a regular phone connection, and the wires coming
into the subscriber's premises are the same (copper) wires used for regular
phone service - an ADSL circuit must be configured to connect two specific
locations, similar to a leased line - a commonly discussed configuration of
ADSL would allow a subscriber to receive data (download) at speeds of up to
1.544 megabits (not megabytes) per second, and to send (upload) data at speeds
of 128 kilobits per second, hence the Asymmetric part of the acronym - another
commonly discussed configuration would be symmetrical: 384 Kilobits per second
in both directions. In theory, ADSL allows download speeds of up to 9 megabits
per second and upload speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second - ADSL is often
discussed as an alternative to ISDN, allowing higher speeds in cases where the
connection is always to the same place |
| AGP |
accelerated Graphics Port - an advanced bus
specification for PCs which allows a 3D graphics card faster access to the main
memory than via the usual PCI bus |
| AIM |
Another Image Manager - a suite of image
processing software produced by Delft University of Technology in the
Netherlands |
| AMD K6/K6-2 |
alternative PC microprocessors to Intel's
Pentium and Pentium II, manufactured by Advanced Micro Devices |
| AMS |
Authorised Manufacturing Sub-licensee - the
name given by RISCOS Ltd to those companies who manufacture RISC OS-based
devices under licence |
| Anonymous ftp |
this enables a user to retrieve files from an
ftp site on the Internet without having to establish a user-id and password on
the system - when you log in, type 'anonymous' (or just 'ftp') as your user-id
and give your email address as the password if one is required |
| ANSI (1) |
American National Standards Institute - the
body that, amongst other things, validates the specification for the C language
- there is also specify a character set that bears their name |
| ANSI (2) |
computers use several different methods for
deciding how to put information on your screen and how your keyboard interacts
with the screen - ANSI is one of these "terminal emulation" methods - although
most popular on PC-based bulletin-board systems, it can also be found on some
Net sites - to use it properly, you will first have to turn it on, or enable
it, in your communications software |
| Antialiasing |
a technique used by the RISC OS font manager to
improve the appearance of fonts - it removes the visual impression of jagged
edges in the characters by representing certain pixels in intermediate
colours |
| AOF |
Acorn Object Format - a way of storing computer
code |
| Application |
the more general use of this word means any job
for which the computer may be used, but it has a more specific definition - it
is used to refer to a directory (with a name beginning with a "!") which
contains a program or programs that work under RISC OS to perform a particular
function - when the application is loaded, it usually makes itself available to
the user via an icon on the righthand side of the iconbar |
| Application directory |
similar to an ordinary directory in that it
contains other files and directories but its name starts with an exclamation
mark so that when you double click on the directory, it starts up the
application rather than just opening the directory. - to open an application
directory, double click with <shift> held down |
| Apps icon |
this is an icon that appears on the lefthand
side of the iconbar (RISC OS 3 onwards) - it gives you access to a range of
applications such as Draw, Paint, etc., that are provided with each Archimedes
or RiscPC computer |
| Archie |
an index of FTP servers - the best known Archie
server in the UK is at Imperial College, London and has indexes to hundreds of
FTP sites around the world - if there's a program you're having trouble in
locating, Archie can probably help |
| Archive |
the best RISC OS magazine ever, or... a
file or group of files and/or directories that have been joined together into a
single file and, often, are compressed - this reduces the time taken to
transfer the information and also makes it simpler to handle as a single
file |
| ARM |
Acorn RISC Machine - this is the original name
for the 32-bit RISC processor designed by Acorn Computers Ltd - in the name
"ARM Ltd", the company formed between Acorn and Apple, the "ARM" actually
stands for Advanced RISC Machine |
| ARM Linux |
see under RiscBSD |
| ARP |
Address Resolution Protocol - the protocol used
to map an Internet address to an MAC address (like Ethernet) |
| ARPANet |
a predecessor of the Internet. Started in 1969
with funds from the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency |
| Article |
a message which appears on one or more Usenet
newsgroups - each article has a unique message identifier, which is sometimes
quoted in a followup article - some news servers also assign article numbers -
these are unique only to that server, and are meaningless to users at other
sites |
| ASCII |
American Standard Code for Information
Interchange - this is the most commonly used code for representing text using
8-bit binary numbers, although strictly, it is only a 7-bit code - ASCII also
refers to a method, or protocol, for copying files from one computer to another
over a network, in which neither computer checks for any errors that might have
been caused by static or other problems |
| ASCII graphics |
it is possible, using ASCII characters to draw
a rudimentary picture although it only works if the text is viewed using
mono-spaced type |
| ASIC |
Application Specific Integrated Circuit - a
single chip electronic circuit that is specially designed (by computer
simulation - what else?!) for a particular application, e.g. to provide the
logic needed to interface a '486 processor on a RiscPC second processor card to
the main ARM600 processor and its address and data buses |
| Assembler |
a compiler for converting a program written in
mnemonics into a machine code executable program |
| ATAPI |
ATA Packet Interface - a development of the IDE
standard allowing CD-ROM drives, scanners, etc., to be connected more
easily |
| ATM |
Asynchronous Transfer Mode - this is an aproach
to network design characterised by a number of features - firstly, data to be
transmitted is broken into a sequence of FIXED size packets, each of which
contain enough information to allow the packet to be routed to its destination
- secondly, ATM uses 'virtual circuits' whereby, before any data can be moved
from one node to another, a circuit must be established, much like a telephone
call across the telephone network - the third major feature is that, with ATM,
the endpoints must agree in advance (during the setup of the circuit) the
maximum bandwidth of data that will be transmitted - multiple streams of
packets can be interleaved onto the physical network hardware without any data
getting lost by virtue of the fact that the system knows the maximum data rate
of each virtual circuit and the data rate of the physical network |
| the stream nature of ATM, coupled with the
guarantee of bandwidth, makes ATM ideal for real-time communications such as
audio and video - indeed, the analogy with a telephone network is no
coincidence; these days most digital telephone networks use ATM in their
underlying layers - it is a common misconception that ATM networks mean fast
networks - the simplicity of ATM, and the very low level, does mean that it can
be made to go very fast but the data to the endpoints of a telephone network
tend to go at only 64Kb/s |
| AUN |
Acorn Universal Networking - this does not
apply to a specific product or even a network user interface but "the
overall banner for Acorn's networking policy for the '90s giving the strategic
direction of networking for Acorn computers." |
| AUP |
Acceptable Use Policy - a statement by an ISP
of the allowable uses of an account with them |