unfinished@Internet.glossary



Someday, history may regard the development of printing, photography, the telephone, radio, television, digital computers, programming languages and communications satellites as mere preludes to whatever the Internet is going to evolve into. To help you adjust, here is an unfinished, interlinked glossary of more than 170 basic Internet terms.

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Acceptable Use Policy
A set of rules that a user must agree to before being allowed access to a network. In principle, the agreement enables an ISP to enforce policies that require users to limit their use of services to lawful and non-abusive activities.

ActiveX
Microsoft term for a set of OO tools intended for network applications. An ActiveX component is a small self-contained program that can be run on most Windows and Macintosh systems. ActiveX is the means by which adware and even more malicious programs are routinely and automatically installed without the user's knowledge. Informed users frequently disable their browser's ActiveX function as a security measure.

Adware
Software that is distributed for free, but contains advertising content, often updated if an Internet connection is present. Adware may contain or be accompanied by spyware, making it virusware.

ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A high speed Internet connection that uses the standard copper telephone wiring available in most homes and offices. With filters, ADSL can support simultaneous use of the telephone line for traditional voice and fax use. Called asymmetric because the download speed (up to 9Mbps) is much faster than the upload speed (up to 640Kbps).

Analog
Signal defined by modulations of a carrier wave. Telephone handsets, loudspeakers and microphones, for example, receive and emit analog signals.

Anti-Virus Software
A program and associated database that scans a computer for viruslike activity and symptoms and attempts to correct any problems it finds. Anti-virus software provides strong protection only if its database is kept current with updates on new viruses from the publisher. Anti-virus software is strongly recommended for most Internet users.

Apache
Also the Apache Project, Apache Foundation. Name derives from A patchy Server. Founded in 1995 to continue development of and provide software patches (or fixes) for http protocol software started at the NCSA, which also developed the first truly successful browser software. Apache distributes commercial grade web server software that runs on UNIX and Windows NT platforms and is used on millions of Internet servers. The software is free and well regarded. The advantages of using Apache include low implementation costs, flexibility, stability, and free access to its source code. The disadvantages are primarily that there is no formal technical support, and there is faster server software available (for thousands of dollars more).

Apple Computer
Manufacturer of high quality, widely imitated proprietary personal computer hardware based on Motorola microprocessor closed architecture, along with associated peripherals, operating systems, programs, and user loyalties bordering on the religious, founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Historically, the company's almost omnipresent industrial design influence has far exceeded its market share (averaging at around 5%). Important computer products have included the Apple II (1977), the Macintosh (1984), and following Jobs' return in 1997, the iMac (1998), the PowerMac G3 (1999), and the PowerMac G4 Cube (2000, based on the NeXT concept). One of Apple's significant contributions to Internet technology was Quicktime, a streaming video application and development tool. Steve Jobs was also responsible for the NeXT computer.

Applet
Any small application, often a JAVA application

Application
The use of a technology. In this sense, if a program enables a user to access a technology and achieve a specific task, it's an application. Word processors, spreadsheets, email services on the Internet and the Web itself, are all applications.

Archie
Used to quickly find files on FTP sites. Useful if the exact filename or a portion of it is known.

ARPAnet
Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. A wide area network established by the US Department of Defense in 1968. One of their goals was the creation of a decentralized network capable of surviving a nuclear conflict. The first server was a Honeywell minicomputer. Universities and research organizations joined the ARPAnet throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and it eventually evolved into the Internet.

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The code used to represent 128 standard Latin characters and symbols. ASCII is recognized by almost all commonly used operating systems and is sometimes referred to as "plain text". The ASCII specification is issued by ANSI (American National Standards Institute).

ASP
Active Server Page. A Microsoft specification for a web page that uses ActiveX scripting. When a browser requests an ASP page, the server dynamically generates an HTML page in response. ASP websites are database driven and can be configured to be updated not only by the webmaster, but by any user.

Bandwidth
The frequency range of a data transmission signal. Also used to descibe the capacity of a line. In principle, the higher the frequency (in Hz), the greater the capacity. Internet bandwidth is often expressed in bps.

Bandwidth Use
Most often, a website's or ISP's daily or monthly activity. ISPs almost always charge websites by the amount of download activity, or bandwidth, that they experience. In the case of popular websites offering free downloads, a common reason for their withdrawl of free content (or disappearance altogether) is the high expense of bandwidth without corresponding income from the site to pay for it. See Mirror Site. The term is also applied in reference to the combined transmission and server resources available to all users across the Internet, such as in the phrases, "One reason Spam is unacceptable is that it wastes so much of bandwidth," or, "Responding to abusive emails only wastes more bandwidth, so just ignore them."

BASIC
Beginner's All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Text based, high level programming language. Designed in 1963 by John Kemeney and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College as a timesharing language for use on mainframes. BASIC is easy to learn, is available in many languages and versions are available for most operating systems. Has been used widely for teaching, is often used to write custom programs for business, and is included in many applications as a MACRO language. Microsoft's first product (1975) was a microcomputer implementation of BASIC.

Baud
Also Bd. Obsolete method of describing the data transfer speed of a modem. Baud refers to the number of times per second that a carrier wave changes. There was a brief period when, by hazard, the numerical bps rating of some modems was roughly similar to their baud rate. This subsequently led to the incorrect practice of using baud as a synonym for bps.

Binary
Also binary data, binary file, binary form. A reference to the base2 nature of data. In general, any computer file that uses all eight bits in a byte is a binary file, essentially a long string of ones and zeros, every one of which may have meaning. Programs, graphics and sound files, zipped archives, word processor and spreadsheet files are all binaries. Pure ASCII text files use only seven bits in each byte. The eighth is reserved for a parity check, and can otherwise be either one or zero, although it's always zero in a true ASCII. HTML files and CGI scripts are ASCII. This can be important to the user, since FTP programs can't detect the difference with absolute certainty, and require that a file transfer be specified by the user as binary or text. A binary transferred as an ASCII will be destroyed. An ASCII transferred as a binary will retain its text but its carriage-return bytes will be altered and the result won't be pretty to look at (a CGI script won't run until it has been opened in a text editor and repaired).

Bit
Binary digit. A single integer in base2, the fundamental unit of binary data. Most computers are binary, and detect data (or count) in base 2, using only ones and zeros. This is because they respond to transistors that are in either "high current" (1) or "low current" (0) states, also expressed as yes/no.

Bluetooth
International specification describing a short range, encrypted, 2.45 GHz wireless link for connecting computers, portable phones, and other handheld devices.

Bot
Contraction of robot. In IT, a software program that searches a network, often on a 24/7 basis, for the purpose of performing some predetermined task. Some search engines use bots to continually search the web for content which they can reference in their databases. Bots also inhabit IRC (for various, sometimes unfathomable reasons), and are used by spammers to harvest email addresses exposed on websites and in posts to the USENET. Botlike software is also in automated searches of the Internet called portscans.

bps
Bits per second. A way of expressing bandwidth in terms of information transfer rate. 1 Mbps=one million bits per second. 1 Kbps=one thousand bits per second.

Browser
A software program that allows the HTML based retrieval and viewing (or download) of data via the Web. The most popular browsers (such as Internet Explorer™, Opera™, and Netscape™) permit the viewing of both text and graphics, and with plugins can add dozens of sound and video formats. The first browser available for most of the major operating systems was NCSA Mosaic™, developed by a team lead by Marc Andreessen at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois (USA). Mosaic is still the basis of many commercially available browsers, most notably Microsoft Internet Explorer™.

BSOD
Blue Screen Of Death. Bright blue monolothic display familiar to users of Wintel platforms, a sure sign of a crash and cue to reboot. These users can sometimes generate BSODs by viewing a website containing heavy, badly written JavaScript or CGI, or better yet, both.

Bug
A software design error. A bug typically causes unexpected or undesired behavior in a program. This usage reportedly began with an incident in the 1940s involving the early ENIAC digital computer, which was funded by the US Army for ballistic research and whose design anticipated most of the components of later computers. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) occupied 85 cubic metres of space, weighed over 30 tons, used almost 19,000 vacuum tubes, consumed 200 kilowatts of electricity, and had about the same storage capacity and calculating power as a cheap solar powered handheld calculator. According to the story, after a malfunction, technicians traced the problem to an insect that had crawled inside one of the computer's 30 cabinets.

Byte
An octet. 8 bits of binary data. Operating systems report file sizes in terms of bytes. Incidentally, a kilobyte (1KB) is not exactly 1000 bytes. Since binary computers operate in base2, they calculate in powers of 2. As humans, we use a counting system based on our ten fingers, called base10, where 1000 is equal to 10^3. Long ago, someone observed that a computer reaches the vicinity of this value much more quickly by calculating 2^10, which equals 1024 and looks every bit as symmetrical to a computer as 1000 does to us. Thus, one kilobyte (1KB) is reported at 2^10 bytes = 1,024 bytes, one megabyte (1MB) is 2^20 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes, one gigabyte (1GB) is 2^30 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes, and one terabyte (1TB) is 2^40 bytes = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. On the other hand, because of small amounts of space that are wasted by partially used sectors at the end of each file, they tend to use more space than the simple sum of their individual file sizes.

Cable Modem
Modem attached to a coaxial television connection, capable of data transmission speeds up to around 500Kbps.

Cache
Data stored, often temporarily, for the purpose of improving speed or performance. Browser software typically caches the contents of visited websites in order to reduce unnecessary download delays. Some ISPs, especially large ones, cache popular sites in order to compensate for bandwidth and other performance limitations (this can cause users to miss recently updated content). Some search engines partially cache websites so that if the reported link is temporarily inaccessible, the user can still get an idea of the site's past contents.

Cisco
Developer and manufacturer of Internet routers and other network hardware. Founded in 1984 by computer scientists at Stanford University. The company has also been active in the development of IP.

CGI
Common Gateway Interface. A standard for programs that run on a server in response to commands from a web page. The most common application of CGI on the web allows users to fill in web based forms. It is also used for ecommerce shopping carts and many other interactive purposes.

Client
A computer connected to a network, typically employed by a human user to run applications and accomplish tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet operations, Internet surfing, game playing, and worse.

Codec
Coder/Decoder. A device or software that performs an analog/digital or digital/analog conversion. Modems and CD players are familiar devices that employ codecs. Some codecs apply compression for faster transmission.

Colocation
Providing space (usually in a rack) for a dedicated website server, along with bandwidth, an IP address, and additional support, like physically hitting the reset button in response to a desperate call from the server's webmaster.

Compression
Reducing the size of data. This is often desireable in order to use less disk space or to shorten the length of transmission. Compression is accomplished by mathematical algorithms that analyze the data and then transform it. The principle is based on finding characteristics that repeat, and then using less data to express them. Text filesizes can be reduced by about half or more. Bitmapped line art with lots of empty space in the image can sometimes be reduced with no loss by as much as 80%. ZIP is the most widespread, lossless compression format, but there are several others. Some graphics, video, and audio compression routines go further, removing information that is considered less important (the amount of loss, which influences the final file size, can often be preset). Many audio and video codecs have the capacity to apply "lossy" compression.

Computer
Any device that receives numeric data and performs an operation on it. The Internet is a vast, dispersed computer. Digital computers are conceptually designed on mathematical logic principles first described by GW Liebniz and later George Boole (namesake of Boolean Logic). In 1938, Claude Shannon published a thesis at MIT describing how these principles could be applied to true/false operations in electronic circuits. Simultaneously, Linus Turing described practical elements of a computer that could use limitless variations of algorithms to solve mathematical problems. In 1945, John von Neumann established the stored program concept of the digital computer, by which computing devices store data in static form for later use. The first practical applications of digital computers, implemented as enormous mainframes, included military ballistics, cryptology, and tax records (1940s). Later early applications included telephone switching and spaceflight navigation (1950s and 1960s).

Cookie
Standard programming term later applied to a small software mechanism used by a server to preserve information input by the user. A cookie resides on the user's client computer and can only be retrieved by the domain that issued it. Its primary benefit is that it can preserve a "persistent state" of preferences, such as logon data, purchase choices, or credit card information for the later use and benefit of the user, something that HTML, a stateless language, cannot do. A cookie's main disadvantage is that it can be used by the domain that originally served it to track user behavior in ways that the user might not approve of. Cookies can easily be deleted by an informed user.

Cracker
Fragment of code cracker (cryptology). An individual who employs programming skills in the often illegal activity of defeating software anti-piracy measures or password protection on networks or in programs. A program that does this.

Crippleware
A shareware or demonstration version of a program that disables some functions (such as saving finished work or access to advanced features) until the program has been purchased.

CRT
Cathode Ray Tube. Primary component of many computer monitors. A large vacuum tube that displays images projected by an electron gun onto a phosphor coated screen.

Database
Most often, relational database. A file (or group of files) containing information stored in a way that allows it to be viewed, managed, and added to in many different ways. Large ecommerce sites depend on databases, which sometimes can be accessed by a visitor for product and other information. Security is an important part of database design and management, to protect sensitive purchaser data such as credit card information.

Digital
Also Digital Lifestyle, Digital Revolution, Digital Planet, Digital Divide. Generally refers to the technological capacity to render and manipulate any kind of perceivable information in numeric form. In practice this means the scanning and sampling of vast quantities of mediocre images and music into binary files and posting it all on the Internet.

Distributed
Adjective applied to computational tasks that are dispersed across networks. The term was developed to describe a shift from an earlier style of IT that involved large mainframe computers working in isolation.

Domain
Also domain name. The official name of a computer on the Internet. For example, the URL http://www.cern.ch contains the domain name for CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and the top level domain ch (Switzerland). A formal domain name system was first established in 1983.

DNS
Domain name server. Any regularly updated computer on the Internet that translates between Internet domain names, such as http://xuxa.iecc.com, and the Internet IP addresses of individual computers, like http://208.31.42.42. Note that when this definition was written, the two URLs above pointed to the same webpage on the same server. This will not last, because at the very least, someone is going to eventually upgrade or move that server. As a result, it is almost always best to use the domain name.

DOS
Disk Operating System. See Windows.

DoS
Denial of Service attack. The flooding of a server with thousands or millions of nonsense messages (often pings) for the purpose of overwhelming its resources and putting it out of service. Websites can lose the confidence of their regular visitors (and in some cases, substantial revenue) as a result of a DoS. Websites employ various measures to protect themselves against DoS attacks, including the use of specially configured firewalls.

Driver
A small program that knows how to control a device (or software), used as an intermediary between that device and a program.

E1-5
See E-Carrier system

E-carrier System
European Telecommunications Carrier system. Equivalent to the T-carrier protocol used in North America and Japan. Originally specified by the Conference of European Postal and Telecommunication Administration (CEPT).

E1 carries 32 channels of 64 Kbps each, for a total bandwidth of 2.048Mbps. E1 can transmit slightly more data over a given physical medium than T1 because it employs the bits in the signal more efficiently. E1 and T1 are routinely interconnected for international use.

The higher bandwidth E-carrier protocols are multiples of E1: E2 = 4 E1s (8.448 Mbps); E3 = 16 E1s (34.368Mbps); E4 = 4 E3s (139.264Mbps); and E5 = 4 E4s (565.148Mbps).

Email
An Internet application that allows electronic mail messages to be sent via the Internet to a particular person. The Internet's most widely used feature. POP3 (post office protocol 3) is the protocol frequently used to download incoming email messages from a mail server. SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) is typically used to upload outgoing messages to the server. The use of the @ symbol began in 1972.

Encryption
Rendering of data into unreadable form, for later recovery. The study and application of encryption is called cryptology (also crypto). This activity has an ancient history. Sophisticated encryption techniques are based on algorithms that are mathematically combined with a key, or value, to transform the data. The key is then used with related algorithms to restore or decrypt the data into usable form. The system is kept secure by concealing the value of the key, and developing complex, calculation intensive sets of algorithms, and in some cases, witholding public disclosure of them. Long, random keys can make a cypher particularly difficult to penetrate. Encryption is an important issue for Internet commerce and other communications because transmissions are somewhat open and subject to interception. In most cases this isn't a concern. But if credit card data or other sensitive information is involved, the need for strong encryption becomes obvious. Secured Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol standard for secure, encrypted ecommerce.

Enterprise Server
In general, a high performance server with a professional (often UNIX or related) operating system that is dedicated to the needs of an entire organization.

FDM
See Multiplexing

Finger
Primarily a UNIX application. A short query that is used across a network to identify a user, or determine if that user is online. A program that does this.

Firewall
A software or hardware device that uses various techniques to protect a network computer from unauthorized intrusion or attack.

Flash
Vector based, hypertext link enabled animation development tool and browser plugin published by MacroMedia. Flash files are small, and the format is ideal for smoothly animated, high quality cartoon style line art and abstract graphics. Flash's primary disadvantage is that it is usually poorly implemented by webdesigners who either use it to break the HTML functionality of their pages, or are simply lousy artists.

Foo
Used by programmers and teachers as a meaningless placeholder for a variable in programming syntax examples, such as in this HTML tag for inserting a non-linked JPG into a webpage: <img src="foo.jpg">. Another common placeholder is bar, appropriated from the expression FUBAR (Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition), and used when two placeholders are desired, as in this example, which provides an alternate text message for the image: <img src="foo.jpg" alt="bar">.

Frames
A graphic architecture on a webpage consisting of two or more independant subsections, each of which is defined by an HTML file. A master HTML file containing a <frameset> tag and referencing the subsections sets their positions and proportions on the framed page. Frames can have scrollbars or be borderless. Much criticism concering the use of frames can be traced back to poor implementation. In order to ensure proper bookmarking and navigation, a master page is created for every possible frame state (all navigation paths offered to the user reference a separate master page that defines a combination of subsections). The <target="_top"> tag is used after the address in all hypertext links on the pages in order to erase the frame state and start over. This prevents the user from being presented with cascading layers of frame sets. Except for really unusual applications that require multiple frames, two subsections is a good limit. Some search engines, text browsers and a few older browsers still in use don't support frames. The <noframes> tag is used to create an alternate menu path to ensure accessibility. Frames are appropriate for scrolling graphical menus.

FreeBSD
A fast freeware implementation of the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) UNIX OS.

Freeware
Fully functioning, free software with zero or insignificant advertising content. The academic sector of the IT community has a long tradition of free accessibility to programs and software. Freeware is often copyrighted, but is distributed at no charge. Historically, small freeware utilities have tended to be of high quality. Thousands of freeware programs are available on the Internet.

FTP
File-transfer protocol. A basic, two-way Internet application for transferring files over the Internet, and requiring a login. Also the name of a program that does this. Most websites are maintained and updated via FTP. Anonymous FTP is an FTP server option that allows users without an account to login and download certain files.

Gamma
The intensity curve of light from dark to bright. Cathode ray tubes have a depressed intensity curve, which darkens the midtones. Most CRTs have a gamma of around 2.5. Natural gamma is 1.0. Some platforms correct their displays for this, and some don't. NeXT systems are fully corrected to a gamma of 1.0, Macs are partially corrected to about 1.8, and Wintel systems aren't at all unless the user has taken special measures to compensate. As a result, web images that look good on some displays may not look right on others. Since most systems are Wintel, graphics produced on Macs are most affected: Images produced on Mac or NeXT systems may look too dark on a Wintel platform. The converse is also true: Wintel generated images tend to look slightly bright on a Mac. Photographs, especially of people, tend to be more affected than line art. Since JPGs, GIFs, and most browsers are indifferent to gamma, there is no satisfactory solution. The PNG format does have a gamma description, but without browser support, graphic artists who know about this problem can only manually compensate for it. Mac artists make their images a little bright (creating a slightly washed out look on their displays), and Wintel artists primarily ensure that their images aren't excessively bright, and that the darkest portions of the image are truly black or near it. Of course, gamma compensation is futile for the delivery of graphics content to users who are indifferent to the brightness and contrast settings on their monitors, typically running them far too bright (and complaining about eyestrain). Users desiring a well saturated visual display might experiment with adjusting monitor contrast to nearly full, then dropping the brightness just to the point at which their eyes are comfortable for extended periods.

Geek
A cool person, perhaps slightly eccentric, who is passionate about computers. Gender non-specific. Originally applied to circus performers who bit the heads off of chickens. Term was pejorative, has acquired the capacity of a compliment. This usage may be attributable to three factors: 1) Trends regarding the undesireability of value judgements, which are perceived to be incompatible with the concept of an inclusive society, 2) The tendancy of a culture to reverse the meanings of words (many reasons, consult the name of this glossary for one example), and 3) A long series of profitable initial public stock offerings in technology companies.

Ghost Site
An unmaintained or abandoned website that is still available. Sometimes it can take a little time for a user to suddenly realize that all of a site's content and links are more than three years old. Some ghost sites exist because the ISP never got around to erasing the files (or is hoping the customer will come back). Many contain perfectly useful information and a clean design. It's not at all unusual to stumble upon a ghost site and never even know it. woooooo

GIF
Graphics Interchange Format. Pronounced with a soft G. Standard raster graphics format using an LZW compression algorithm. Very widely used on the web. GIFs retain precise line resolution but are limited to 256 colours (indexed colour). For this reason, a GIF is ideal for line art such as simple logos, cartoons, and buttons, but is not appropriate for photographs or highly detailed graphics such as paintings, which are better handled as JPGs. The use of GIFs for photographs originates from a period when most computer displays only supported 256 colours or less. GIF89a supports transparencies (one colour can be assigned not to display in a browser, thus creating a transparent effect, which is useful for placing irregularly shaped graphics on a page) and multiple frame animations, which can be endlessly looped to give an impression of extended motion or activity. The question of whether or not to use a new colour pallette with each frame in an animated GIF has a significant bearing on final file size and quality. One of the most common mistakes made by beginning web designers is the placement of too many animated GIFs on a page.

The LZW algorithm used in GIFs is owned by Unisys (the merged result of the old Sperry, Burroughs, Remington and Rand companies). Years after the GIF became established as a standard file format on the web, Unisys began to assert that companies publishing software capable of creating GIFs must obtain a license from Unisys, adding that websites using GIFs created with improperly licensed software might be directly liable. Over 2,000 companies (most of them software publishers) purchased licenses.

Googol
Term first used by 9 year old Milton Sirotta in a conversation with his uncle, mathematician Edward Kasner. A googol is ten raised to the tenth power, a quantity apparently larger than the number of elementary particles in the universe, and roughly equal to the number of MP3 files available on the Internet.

Gopher
An Internet application that allows searches for information by using menus (lots of menus). A session with a Gopher server is usually established by Telnet.

Grok
Verb invented by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, probably during the late 1950s. To understand something to the point of completeness. Our example of correct usage: "No way do I grok the Internet," she said, winking, "but maybe, I have a clue."

GUI
Graphical User Interface. Graphics presented by an OS and programs to facilitate user interaction. Includes everything the user sees on the screen, including toolbars, icons, scroll bars, text, and cursor. Sound may also be used. GUI design is important because it has an enormous effect on usability and user attitude. Bad GUIs can impede the user from accomplishing a task, and can be visually distracting or upsetting. This is an important factor in web design, since the graphics of a webpage become part of the user's GUI when it appears on the screen. Early user interfaces were strictly text based, often white or green letters on a black screen. The basic GUI presented by most operating systems is derived from the interface developed at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Laboratory) during the early 1970s.

Hacker
A programming expert. Usage probably originated at MIT during the 1960s. For example, a LINUX hacker is someone proficient at programming for the LINUX OS. More lately, the term implies adherence to a code of ethical or professional behavior that includes doing no damage and leaving no trace of activity when exploring networks. This word is frequently misused outside the IT community to describe a cracker.

Hexadecimal
Also Hex. Numeric expression in base16. Binary code is usually accessed and displayed in hex. 2 hexadecimal digits can express the contents of one byte, since it is comprised of 8 bits. A count to 10 in hex is 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10. Web designers are familiar with HTML's hexadecimal colour definition (black=000000, white=FFFFFF), if not its underlying meaning.

Hop
A single step between two computers taken by a data packet as it makes its intentionally unreliable way across the Internet from sender to receiver.

Host
See Server.

Hosting
Providing hard disk space, bandwidth availability, an IP address and other support for a website or other Internet service. The term Server Space Provider is sometimes used to describe an ISP that does this.

HTML
Hypertext Markup Language. The standard, non-proprietary programming language used to create web pages (like this one). Along with .htm, .html is the file extension used for files containing standard HTML code.

HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Also, Hyptertext Transmission Protocol. A connectionless (no logon), stateless, fast and light network protocol that permits an Internet server to communicate with a client computer. Although implemented primarily for the world wide web, HTTP can invoke and operate other Internet applications.

Hub
A hardware device serving as a common connection point for two or more network devices.

Hypertext Link
Also link. Fundamental unit of functionality on a webpage. Clickable text in a browser, which presents another webpage or performs some other action. Hypertext links are coded in HTML, and contain a URL. Here's an example of a working hypertext link:

<a href="http://www.cern.ch">CERN - Where the Web Began</a>

Placed into the HTML code of a page, the working link will look this:

CERN - Where the Web Began

A new browser window will open if somebody clicks on the above link, because a <target="_blank"> tag was added to the HTML that makes this page work.

IC
Integrated Circuit. Term for any electronic component produced by a process of photographic miniaturization first developed in the 1960s, whereby layers of silicon are exposed to ultraviolet light through film that bears microscopic schematic drawings of electronic circuits. Millions of transistors can be etched into an IC.

Inline Frame
The <iframe></iframe> tag creates an inline frame that is capable of including an external object (often another webpage) into an HTML document. A typical use would be the insertion of a scrolling window that contains frequently updated content from another website. There is a malicious use in HTML based email:

<iframe src=cid:foobar height=0 width=0></iframe>

Here, an invisible inline frame will be inserted into the email, where foobar could be a MIME encoded URL pointing to an ActiveX routine that installs and runs an executable when the email is opened in an HTML enabled application like Outlook. This doesn't require opening any attachment, presenting an enormous security risk. Some spam filters routinely screen for iframe src=cid: text strings. The average user should never open email from an unknown source, or from a known source if the subject line is blank or atypical of the source. An informed user always screens her email by some non-HTML enabled means before opening it.

Intel
Contraction of Integrated electronics. Electronics developer and manufacturer founded in 1968 by Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore as a memory chip company and in large part responsible for the creation of the microprocessor, a key component in most computers: The Intel 4004 was developed by a group including Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin and Stan Mazor. Released in November 1971, it contained 2300 transistors and was as powerful as the ENIAC, a 1940s era computer millions of times larger. Many hardware standards were originated by Intel.

Internet
International network of interconnected computer networks. A global application of WAN (wide area networking), with origins in the ARPAnet. At the start of the 21st century the Internet was comprised of well over 100,000 interconnected computer networks, and the number of individual computers connected at any given moment was in the hundreds of millions.

Internet Application
Also Internet service. A software standard or convention that permits (or applies) a particular function on the Internet. Email, the Web, FTP, USENET, IRC, MUD, Archie and Gopher (discontinued forerunner to the Web) are each separate Internet Applications.

Internet Backbone
Very high capacity data connections between major metropolitan areas. Most ISPs connect to a backbone by paying a subscription fee to another ISP or an IXP. The first Internet backbone was established in 1969 with a 50Kbps connection provided by AT&T between the Stanford Research Institute, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.

Internet Explorer
Tradename of the widely used browser software published by Microsoft. Originally released for free in 1995 and based on the NTSC Mosaic browser, IE has been the subject of anti-trust investigations in the United States and Western Europe. Its advantages include a clean interface, ease of use, and wide acceptance. Its disadvantages arise mainly from security problems.

Internet Expert
Also Internet Consultant. Also Internet Guru, or Manager of Internet Development Team. Reputation of someone who manages to absorb and retain most of the contents of this glossary. Anyone in a typical office environment who can type a simple working hypertext link tag freehand into a text editor on the first try.

Intranet
A private internet or network that uses Internet software. May also refer to a LAN.

ISP
Internet Service Provider. A business that provides customers with access to the Internet.

IP
Internet Protocol. A dynamic protocol that enables information traffic to be unreliably routed between and across networks with no guarantee of delivery. Additional protocols such as TCP/IP add the objectives of reliabiliy and consistancy in delivery.

IP address
The unique 32-bit identifying number of a device on a TCP/IP network. The address contains four numbers (0 to 255) separated by periods. Thus, 193.252.159.130 and 193.252.15.1 (193.252.015.001) both might be a valid IP addresses. On a private Intranet or LAN, the IP addresses should be assigned from one of the following address blocks, which are unrecognized by any DNS server on the Internet:

010.000.000.000 – 010.255.255.255
169.254.000.000 – 169.254.255.255
172.016.000.000 – 172.031.255.255
192.168.000.000 – 192.168.255.255

Devices connected directly to the Internet must be assigned registered IP addresses. Devices connected to the Internet through a modem are temporarily assigned a registered IP address belonging to the connecting server.

IRC
Internet Relay Chat. An Internet application that enables students and other Internet slackers to talk to each other in real time (rather than after a delay, as with email messages). IRC requires its own software and commands and has been partially eclipsed by web based chat rooms, which are easier for the clueless average user to navigate.

IT
Information technology. Any aspect of the development and use of computers and computing devices, software, electronic communications, networks, and data storage systems. An artificial system that processes information.

IXP
Interexchange Point. A facility that interconnects wide area networks (WANs) via very high bandwidth connections. In general, an IXP represents a major interconnection point on an Internet backbone. Many ISPs are physically located in or at close proximity to an IXP, and connect to the IXP via routers and T1 or T3 lines. A common network architecture used in IXP installations is the Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), a dual ring backbone LAN that runs at 100Mbps.

JavaScript
A widely used (or at least, thanks to its OO features, copy/pasted) high level program scripting language originally implemented by Netscape that can be combined with HTML to vastly increase the functionality of a webpage. JavaScript has similarities to Java, which was originally developed by Sun Microsystems as a cross-platform medium for small downloadable programs. JScript is the Microsoft equivalent.

JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group. Also JPG. A standard and very widely used photographic compression format that is supported by all graphical browsers and preserves true colour. Over two dozen coding routines are listed in the JPEG specification. As a result, the user can choose a wide range of quality options, picking an optimum balance between file size and quality. High resolution scans of photographs can be profesionally archived using this format. It is not suitable for line art, which will be slightly blurred.

Kermit
An early, robust file transfer protocol for dodgy serial lines, originally developed at Columbia University in 1981. Kermit has a long history with mainframe computers and was used in conjunction with many online services and BBSs before the wide acceptance of the Internet. Kermit's popularity was enhanced by its capacity to transfer binary files through connections intended only for ASCII text. Kermit continues to be used for many non-Internet data transfer applications. Also the name of a large number of programs using this protocol and distributed by Columbia University.

LAN
Local Area Network. A network of computers in a limited or local area such as a building or office, allowing the sharing of files and other basic tasks such as printing. If a LAN does not use Internet software protocols, it is not a true intranet (in practice this distinction is usually meaningless).

LINUX
Contraction of Linus' Minix. Well regarded UNIX clone for Wintel platforms. Freeware implementation of the POSIX OS specification with System V and BSD extensions developed by Linus Torvalds beginning in 1991. It is open source, meaning that its source code is available to anyone. This is attractive to developers because it is easier to write useful software programs for an OS when its source code is available. Many Internet and business servers run LINUX. Vendors sell assembled packages containing Linux and related software, but LINUX is true freeware, available on the Internet in various distribution forms under a GNU general public license, which provides at least some reassurance that it will stay that way.

Logon
The act of using a computing device to gain access to an OS, connect to a network, or enter some websites, often via a user account. This may require the entry of a username and password, and is sometimes automated.

Login
Term for logon-like behavior in a UNIX environment.

Mac
From Macintosh. A personal computer (PC) based on an Apple Computer architecture and running a Mac OS. Also, a computer from Apple's Macintosh products line first introduced in 1984. See Apple Computer.

Mainframe
Generally obsolete term for a very large computer used, often in isolation, for the high volume IT tasks of major enterprises and governments. Reference to the size of the machines and the way their components are fixed in heavy support frames. Mainframes were used for server-like functions, but were not called servers. A series of 19-inch racks filled with component servers, routers and disk arrays in the equipment rooms of an ISP, telephone company, large business or government agency may evoke the impression of a mainframe computer, but they aren't: They're much more powerful.

Meta Tag
A definition command in HTML. The description and keyword Meta Tags determine how a search engine will index and categorize the webpage that contains them. Search engines have different criteria for how they actually respond to Meta Tags, which has given rise to the practice of creating a half dozen or more opening pages (and corresponding URLs) for a website, each one submitted to the search engine for which its Meta Tags and other characteristics have been optimized. At first glance this may seem like just another desperate and messy marketing ploy designed to mask the absence of relevant content on a page, because it is.

Microchip
An IC that contains computer-related circuitry.

Microcomputer
Somewhat obsolete term for a computer system that is based on a microprocessor (by the mid 1980s essentially all computers were built on microprocessors, so the term lost its distinction).

Microprocessor
A computer processor on a microchip.

Microsoft®
Contraction of microcomputer software. See Windows™.

MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. This is a protocol that allows the attachment of binary files (like graphics) to emails and newsgroup postings by automatically changing or encoding the files into ASCII text and converting them back to binary form upon receipt. This process is invisible to most users. A portion of the MIME standard is also used by Internet servers to identify Internet Media Types for browsers.

Mirror Site
In principle, a website that contains content identical to, or mirrors, another website. Mirror sites are typically created to reduce the traffic or load on a site that experiences heavy use or downloads, which can interefere with accessibility to the site. Mirror sites may be placed at strategic locations around the globe, not only to provide nearby nodes for users, but to duplicate and disperse content, which increases its availability. Hypertext links containing the URLs of mirror sites are typically listed on the download page of the original website, or on the starting page. HTTP and the DNS system do not support the automatic referral of traffic to a mirror site if the server hosting the primary site becomes inaccessible: For the concept to work, a page that lists the mirror sites must always be available at the website's address. In the case of non-profit sites, since heavy download activity can increase bandwidth use and drive up montly expenses, space on other web servers may have been donated by individuals interested in helping the site maintain its service.

Modem
Modulate/demodulate. A hardware device that modulates a digital signal into an analog signal for transmission over a serial line, such as a telephone line, and demodulates analog signals received over that line into digital ones for use by a computing device.

Mozilla
Nickname of Netscape Navigator. During the early days of the web, Navigator was an especially popular browser. Originally developed by Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape. Also, the Mozilla Organization. Independent browser development project established 1 April, 1998. The Mozilla browser is based on Netscape Navigator's open source code. The IE browser identifies itself to servers as Mozilla, in order to use features that were originally exclusive to Navigator.

MP3
Moving Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer III. Also MPEG. An audio compression format developed by the Fraunhofer Institut and Dieter Seitzer of the University of Erlangen in Erlangen, Germany in the late 1980s. MP3 dramatically reduces the binary file size of digital audio recordings by cleverly sacrificing sound quality in a way that many individuals either can't perceive or are indifferent to. After nearly a decade of obscurity, MP3 emerged as a remarkably efficient and useful piracy tool with a user base in the tens of millions, proving once and for all that if people are given the opportunity to engage in risk-free copyright infringement and intellectual property theft, many will claim it as a right.

MUD
Multi User Dungeon, Dialogue or Dimension. An Internet application. Essentially a MUD is a role playing environment used for socializing, games, education, and, we are told, research. Users can create responsive objects that remain in the MUD after they leave, creating virtual environments that develop over time.

Multiplexing
Term for any technique that combines several different signals into a single carrier signal to multiply its efficiency. There are two basic types, both originally developed for the telecommunications industry:

TDM (time-division multiplexing) is a rotating, repetitive sequence that divides different digital signals into segments and combines them into a single carrier signal. TDM is routinely performed on data streams traveling across the Internet backbone.

FDM (frequency-division multiplexing) is a multiplexing technique for analog systems, and can combine hundreds of simultaneous low bandwidth analog signals, such as telephone conversations, into a single analog signal for transmission over a high quality line.

Nagware
Shareware or adware that frequently displays a message urging the user to purchase it. The message may also be displayed during a delay of the program's launch or closing. In extreme examples of programming and marketing incompetence, a program may simultaneously be nagware, crippleware, adware, and virusware.

NAPWAD
Not A Problem, Works As Designed. A benign bug. A design flaw or ommission that is noticeable to the user but does not interfere with the function of the program. Term may have originated with representatives of a certain database vendor.

Net
The Internet.

.NET
A marketing effort by Microsoft. The purpose, apparently, is to use the Internet to remain competitive in IT with costly server based application services and enormous ecommerce databases.

NetBSD
A free multiplatform implementation of the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) UNIX OS.

Network
In IT, two or more computing devices connected in a way that allows communication between them.

NeXT
Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 with five senior managers to design and manufacture a Motorola/UNIX based, high performance computer for the academic market. He invested $7,000,000 of his own money in the project (later supplemented by $20,000,000 from H Ross Perot of EDS, who had passed on an opportunity to buy Microsoft in 1979). After three difficult years the NeXT computer was introduced in 1988. The system's impressive looking black cube contained hardware, optical storage technology and a UNIX OS that were superior to anything available on the Wintel or Mac platforms, at double the price. The flexible system featured an intuitive point and click interface, voice email, a synthesizer, development software and other features that were years ahead of their time. Tim Breners-Lee used a NeXT system for his development work on HTML and the World Wide Web (he considered going back to a Wintel platform but was seduced by the advanced performance and interface). At first there was little useful software available for the NeXT and Jobs may have mishandled a crucial overture from Microsoft to develop applications for it. They had a capacity to manufacture 150,000 a year but only 50,000 were ever built. NeXT continued for a time marketing software until, during the holiday season in 1996, a struggling Apple offered to buy the company for an astonishing $400,000,000. The proposal included an invitation for Jobs to return. He accepted, and during subsequent years Apple introduced several successful new products.

Node
Any device attached to a network, which has an address unique to that network. Often refers to a computer.

Ogg
See Vorbis

OO
Object-Oriented Programming. Also, OOP. The division of programming tasks into classes, or objects of manipulation, rather than linear logic. The objects can eventually become the elements of code (executables, libraries, drivers, and so on) that comprise an OS or application, many of which are shared by other applications and processes. The concept was first applied to programming languages in the mid 1960s by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, Norway. The result of their work, Simula 67, embodied most of the key elements that characterize object-oriented programming. In the early 1980s, Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs was directly influenced by Nygaard and Dahl in the development of the C++ programming language. OO ultimately ended the economic and conceptual viability of most monolithic, fully self contained software programs and can be used to produce applications of expanded scope, flexibility, and data integrity with lower relative development costs. OO not only influences the structure of what is shared across the Internet, but mirrors the essence of its architecture.

Opera
High performance browser software with strong security and a clean interface, published by Opera Software ASA. Originally released in 1996, Opera was developed by Jon S von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy, based on work they began in 1994 at Norwegian telephone company Telenor. Opera is useful to website designers because, unlike Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Netscape, it is unforgiving of errors in HTML coding. If a webpage looks right and functions correctly in Opera, it is likely to work well in any other browser. This results in the only real disadvantage for users surfing with Opera, since pages with apparent technical problems (usually minor layout errors) may seem to appear a bit more often than with IE and some other browsers. The free version has unobtrusive banner ads in the toolbar.




OS
Operating system. Software that performs a computer's basic task scheduling, data storage, and peripheral device control. An operating system also presents a user interface that allows the user to more easily execute desired commands and launch applications. Some interfaces have become very elaborate and graphically rich. Widely used operating systems include UNIX, LINUX, Microsoft Windows™ (which emerged from DOS), and Mac OS (the Mac OS X is based on a UNIX kernel).

Packet
A segment of data sent over a network. To facilitate lots of simultaneous traffic on the Internet, most data received by a browser gets there after being broken into pieces called packets, which are then transmitted and reassembled upon arrival.

Patch
Computer code written to repair or bybass a flaw in an executable, library file, or other program element. Usually distributed for free over the Internet. A patch of a patch is not unusual. A patch for sale is called an upgrade. Upgrades typically contain many opportunities for new patches.

Password
A set of characters used to verify the identity of a user attempting to gain access to an OS, network, or application. Passwords are generally stored by the defending OS or application in an encypted database. When choosing a password, it is best to avoid single words that can be found in a dictionary, since programs exist that can hammer a logon procedure with them. Personal statistics like birthdays and social security numbers (including backwards forms) are also inappropriate. Random strings with odd characters are best. L6H^sR~/Gs#5u$aNz8)e is an example of a good password, since under most circumstances it would be too time consuming for a brute force password cracking program to find. Unfortunately, remembering a password like this is very difficult for most people, and writing it down presents a problem. #piK!ME#Up!@#atE! is a password style that works well, because it provides almost as much protection as a random and incorporates some patterns that make it easier to memorize. In practice, passwords like this are secure. pickmeup@ate is the sort of easy password that can deter casual snoops, but is vulnerable to a cracking routine coming from a high speed computer with a fast network connection. A long phrase like I am very radixed to thine pentiumal whine has qualities that will hold up well against both a dictionary and a brute force attempt. A password should be changed regularly. Most people don't bother, which increases the chance that it will eventually be learned by someone who might later use it when they really shouldn't.

PC
Vague, culturally loaded term for a computer. No, not that. Yes. That. The fruit excluded, exclusive to an IBM/Wintel compatible. An artifact of IBM's original preemptive marketing vocabulary, best used to refer to any reasonably sized computer designed for use by one person. A personal computer.

PCM
Pulse Code Modulation. Method for the digital transmission of analog data. In principle, the simple amplitude (or height) of an analog waveform is sampled (or measured) tens of thousands of times each second and a rounded (quantized), 8-bit binary description of each sample is encoded. The signal is played back by reconstructing and further processing this data, resulting in an extremely close approximation of the original analog signal. Several low bandwidth PCM protocols are used on the Internet. The two high bandwidth protocols commonly used in professional recording are AES/BU (Audio Engineering Society/European Broadcasting Union) and S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface).

PGP
Pretty Good Privacy. Controversial, public key, RSA encryption based, freeware cryptography application developed by Phil R Zimmermann beginning in 1991. It's so effective at what it does that legal advice may be necessary before acquiring, using, importing or exporting, depending on version and jursidiction.

PHP

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (the first word of this recursive acronym is the acronym). HTML embedded scripting language begun in late 1994 as a limited PERL hack written by Rasmus Lerdorf, and eventually incorporating elements of the programming languages C and Java, along with a few of its own. When a PHP page is accessed, the server parses and transforms its code into HTML before delivering it to the client. PHP is especially appropriate for database oriented websites, and offers a measure of security to developers since a server changes the script into static HTML before sending it to the user. In early 2003 over a million websites were using PHP.

Phreaker
Derived from phone freak (noncomformist telephony enthusiast). Term originated during the late 1960s. A person who employs programming or operational skills to operate a telecommunications system in unintended, generally illegal ways. An infamous early phreaker was nicknamed Captain Crunch, because he used a whistle from a box of breakfast cereal and an ordinary telephone handset to trigger computerized switching equipment on the AT&T network. Later, phreakers employed small, homemade hardware devices called boxes, using a colour to describe their functions (blue box, red box, black box, etc). Security measures and the Internet have made this pastime largely obsolete. The term is sometimes mistakenly used to describe a cracker of networks, which is probably the closest modern equivalent.

Ping
A short query that is transmitted across a network in order to determine if a computer is connected and responding. Mostly used for diagnostic purposes. A program that does this.

Platform
The combined OS and hardware architecture of a computer system. Cross-platform refers to capabilities on more than one platform. A widely cited strength of the Internet is its ability to be accessed from virtually any platform.

PNG
Portable Network Graphics. Also, PNG's Not GIF. A patentless alternative to the GIF format, and intended to replace it over time. Like a GIF, a PNG file is compressed with no loss and supports indexed colour, but can also display 48 bit true colour and 16 bit greyscales. PNG can carry gamma information, in anticipation of future support for this feature by browsers.

Port
In network IT, a software identity in a system of logical connections or addresses, used by a client program to specify a program on a server. Port numbers range from 0 to 65536, with 0 through 1024 reserved for privileged services. Port 80 is the default in HTTP.

Portability
Describes the degree to which a program can run or be adapted to run on a different OS. It's possible to write a program that can be easily adapted for use on multiple platforms. Portability can be a problem when, for performance or other reasons, programmers choose to adapt a program to the special features of a particular operating system. The act of adapting a program for another OS (no matter how difficult) is called porting. A Java applet is said to be 100% portable, but performance and other issues can diminish that in practice.

Portal
A website that aspires to be the default home page for millions of users by offering links, information, email, and many other things that might interest them. The primary motivation for doing this has been that the heavy traffic may result in substantial projected advertising and marketing revenue, which may in turn excite financial markets about the value of the website's stock. Portals are often associated with major ISPs. One of many bizarre moments in the history of the Internet came in 2000, when dozens of websites were attempting reinvent themselves as portals. Yahoo is an example of a well-known search engine that successfully achieved this (its stock fell anyway). AltaVista is an example of a well-known search engine that failed. Google is an example of a search engine.

Portscan
The act of scanning or examining the ports of a computer, typically one that is permanently or frequently connected to the Internet at the same IP address. The majority of portscans have a malicious intent, and are performed by botlike software routines seeking vulnerable, poorly secured computers for later exploitation, frequently as Zombies in a DoS.

POTS
Plain Ordinary Telephone Service. An analog phone line consisting of a twisted pair of copper wires.

PPP
Point-to-point protocol. A widely used protocol for directly connecting two computers over a phone line (or a serial network link that acts like a phone line).

Program
Any set of instructions that can order a computer to perform an operation.

Protocol
Any system of communication that two computers agree on. For example, in a file transfer protocol, the two computers involved (server and client) agree on a set of signals that mean "go ahead," "got it," "didn't get it, please resend," and "all done".

Proxy Server
A server that works on behalf of a client, to access an Internet server. Used by ISPs to cache data and reduce the effects of a slow system. Also useful for web browsing from behind certain types of firewalls. Normally invisible to the user.

RAID
Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Technique for storing the same data on multiple hard disks. Increases performance, extends hard disk life, and can reduce or eliminate the need for frequent data backups, depending upon the configuration. Involves a complex process of partitioning the drives into stripes in sizes ranging from 512 bytes to several megabytes, according to the anticipated use. A RAID appears as a single hard disk to the OS.

Raster Graphics
A bitmap. Graphics represented in a fixed display space defined by x y coordinates. A raster image file defines the illumination of each pixel coordinate in monochrome or color values. Raster files can be enormous and are usually compressed, the method depending on the contents and intended use. BMP, JPG and GIF files all contain raster images. Whatever finally appears on a monitor screen has been rasterized, either at the file source (raster graphics) or by the video card at the moment of display (vector graphics).

Router
A hardware device that connects a local network (LAN or Intranet) to the Internet.

Scanner
Hardware device that can optically scan a photograph and convert the image into a raster graphic, enabling it to be processed in a graphics program and from there, uploaded to the Internet to embarass somebody. Also works with confidential office memos and most copyrighted material.

Script Kiddie
Pejorative term applied to (presumably) adolescent males who use prewritten software downloaded from the Internet to launch point-and-click DoS attacks and other malicious activities with little or no underlying understanding of the software or the damage they cause.

Search Engine
Site that catalogues and sometimes caches information about websites. May combine search indexes with a formal directory. Keywords entered by the user are replied to with a list of URLs which in principle are ranked according to their relevance. A meta search engine combines results from several search engines. Since search engines are useful and popular starting points for finding information on the Web, and their search results can have a significant impact on a website's traffic, problems have arisen. Some websites employ dishonest or questionable tactics to increase their ranking, or position, in the search results. These include multiple opening pages, hidden text, and the abuse of meta descriptions, keywords, and refreshes. In response, search engines use various strategies to defeat these tactics. Ironically, some search engines mislead their visitors by not disclosing that they directly include paid advertising in their results. They do this by giving an advertiser's URLs a higher relevance ranking than they would otherwise enjoy. Finally, search engines have an often degenrative tendancy to change how they acquire and present their data. Some search engines have developed successful strategies to deal with these problems. See Meta Tag and Portal.

Server
Any computer connected to a network for the purpose of supplying file data and other services to clients. There are millions of servers on the Internet and each has a unique IP address. An Internet server is sometimes called a host.

Server Farm
Usually three or more servers under common control at the same location.

Shareware
Often misused term for software that is distributed (usually via download from a website) on a "try before you buy" basis. Some shareware contains code that causes it to stop working after a certain period of time if it is not purchased and registered. In marketing terms, shareware is an alternate distribution method for commercial software. The quality of shareware can range from excellent to virusware. See nagware.

Shell Account
A usually inexpensive direct connection to an Internet provider's UNIX or LINUX server. Commands are typed through a "shell" directly to the server. A basic shell account is a text environment, typically with access to email, text-based web browsing, FTP, IRC and newsgroups.

Silicon
Also Si. Metalloid element with the atomic number of 14 and an atomic weight of 28.086. Sand and glass are comprised mostly of silicon. Probably first isolated in 1824 by Berzelius. Pure silicon superficially resembles aluminium and has about the same weight, but does not conduct electricity. Over 25% of the Earth's crust is composed of silicon, most of which is found in compounds combined with other elements. Silicon is important in electronics because it, along with germanium, is a semiconductor. Both are used in CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) technology, which is the basis of transistor manufacture.

Slashdot Effect
Surge in traffic to a website when it is cited by a major site in a news story or feature. If the server doesn't have sufficient capacity, the site may become inaccessible. Term originated from observations of the phenomenom after news stories about smaller sites were posted at http://slashdot.org.

SLIP
Serial Line Internet Protocol. Early protocol for connecting a computer directly to the Internet over a serial (or telephone) line. It was favoured by shell account users because it halved the time otherwise required for transfering binary files. PPP has SLIPped into prominance.

Spam
Unsolicited, mass email. The term probably originates from a Monty Python episode that featured countless references to the canned meat product. Its earliest use in an IT context was apparently in response to a posting on the USENET. The vast majority of spam contains fraudulent or illegal offers. Some spammers are motivated to distribute millions of emails (with more than half often bouncing back from inactive addresses) because, a) the delivery cost is stolen from the vast data distribution resources of the Internet and, b) human nature being what it is, if a million people receive an offer, no matter how ridiculous it may be, at least a few dozen and maybe a few hundred will send money in response. Most reputable ISPs will immediately close the account of a spam offender, partly because of the enormous drain on their own mail servers, partly because of the irate response of the recipients, and partly because if an ISP is perceived as slow to react, its mail server may be "blackholed" or banned from connection with many other mail servers on the Internet. The process of blackholing is itself controversial because thousands of innocent email users can be affected.

Spyware
A software technology used to gather information about computer or Internet use without the user's knowledge. Spyware typically enters a computer through the installation of a program (often adware MP3 players), or through a visit to an abusively designed website. The information acquired is often used by marketers to sell advertising services. Most PCs exposed to the Internet routinely pick up advertising spyware, which is usually designed to be difficult to detect and remove. Even more invasive (and controversial) forms of spyware exist, and are used on both the client and server sides by employers, government agencies and criminals to record most or all of a user's computer activity, sometimes to acquire passwords and other sensitive data. Spyware may be installed via an insecure Internet connection that is not protected by a properly designed and configured firewall. Cookies are not regarded as spyware because they can be easily refused or removed by a knowledgeable user.

SQL
Structured Query Language. A standard programming language used for requesting information from a database, originally developed by IBM and later marketed by Oracle.

SSL
Secured Sockets Layer. A secure, layered (or added) protocol that allows encrypted data such as credit card information to be transferred across a network, preserving its privacy.

Streaming
Process of serving primarily audio or video data in a manner that allows player software on the client (such as Real or Quicktime) to play or display the content immediately and continuously, rather than forcing a wait until the entire file has been downloaded. Bandwidth is the ultimate arbiter of fidelity for streamed content.

Surfing
The act of clicking on hypertext links in a nonlinear, unplanned or impulsive manner.

T1
See T-Carrier System.

T3
See T-Carrier system

Tag
Any coding statement. An HTML command.

Tar
Tape ARchive. UNIX shell command that places several files into one archive file, originally for the purpose of backing them up on tape. Sometimes used to distribute UNIX files, usually over high bandwidth networks. The archive file is sometimes called a tarball.

T-carrier System
Contraction of Telecommunications Carrier System. A digital transmission protocol used mainly in the United States, Canada, and Japan. Originally developed by AT&T during the 1960s. T-carrier lines are duplex (two-way) and utilize pulse code modulation (PCM) along with time-division multiplexing (TDM). Early T-carrier lines consisted of two sets of twisted pair copper wires, for a total of four. T-carrier signals are transmitted in many ways, including optical fibre, coaxial cable and high frequency RF (microwave). In the US, T-carrier line access is usually provided by major telephone companies. In Europe and many other areas, the corresponding transmission standard is called the E-carrier system.

T1 is the original system. 24 channels containing analog signals (such as voice) are sampled 8000 times each second and converted into 8-bit binary data. A T1 has a bandwidth of 1.544 Mbps. T1 is commonly used by ISPs and some large businesses in the United States for connectivity to the Internet.

T3 is another common T-carrier standard used by large ISPs and very large businesses, with a bandwidth of 44.736 Mbps.

TCP/IP
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. An Internet protocol that allows ordinarily incompatible machines on an unreliable network to reliably share identical services. It was first developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1973.

TDM
See Multiplexing

Telco
A Telephone company. A company that provides primary access to the telephone network.

Telnet
A TCP/IP protocol program that allows a user (with permission) to directly logon and gain access to another computer on the Internet, using text commands.

TLD
Top Level Domain. Also called an extension. This is the highest category of Internet names. The generic extensions .com, .net and .org are not affiliated with any country. TLDs like .info and .biz are called global Top Level Domains. The extensions .uk (United Kingdom), .fr (France), .de (Germany) and .ch (Switzerland) are examples of approximately 192 country code TLDs that are (often tightly) controlled by the authorities in their respective countries.

Traceroute
The process of determining and describing a momentary path between two computers on the Internet. One of the strengths of IP is that it can bypass busy or clogged transmission paths on the Internet by letting data packets wander through underused network pathways. This can result in a dozen or more hops around the globe as the data seeks its destination. Since it all happens at something close to the speed of light, the process seems more inevitable and deliberated than really it is. The results of a traceroute will typically display the IP addresses of all the computers the query passed through on its meandering way to the target computer, along with the time (in milliseconds) required for each hop.

Transistor
A semiconducting device that functions in analog applications as an amplifier, and in digital applications as a gate, regulating the flow of electricity. Invented at Bell Labs in 1947, largely replaced the vacuum tube within about twenty years. Transistors are usually constructed from components of silicon and germanium, which partially (semi) conduct electricity when doped (combined) with impurities. The resulting compounds carry either a negative (N) or positive (P) charge. As a result, transistors are capable of displaying an on (Y) or off (N) state while being supplied with extremely low levels of power, which makes them suitable as the fundamental unit of hardware in a binary computer.

Tunneling
See VPN

UNIX
Pun on Multics, an earlier multiuser OS developed at MIT. A stable, portable, flexible, modular multiuser operating system developed in a long process started by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at AT&T (Bell Labs) in 1969. It gradually emerged as a working OS during the early 70s and its development has steadily continued. Some of UNIX's most important improvements arose via the Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) and the work of Bill Joy. The Internet's protocols and applications were originally developed for UNIX. Most of the servers on the early Internet were VAX machines running UNIX, and UNIX is still the predominant OS of the Internet, large businesses and universities, and is a widely used platform in academic and industrial research. Unix has a relatively simple three layered structure. At the centre resides the kernel, which schedules tasks and manages storage. The shell interprets user commands and launches programs. The third layer consists of hundreds of modular utilities and programs called tools, including word processing, business, and programming applications. Hundreds more applications are available. UNIX users have had email for several decades. Apple Computer's Mac OS X (2001) is essentially a commercial implementation of UNIX with a GUI, and there are many others, including LINUX. UNIX is a registered trademark licensed to X/Open.

URL
Uniform Resource Locater. Identifies a specific location on the Internet, and the service requested. The basic syntax is:

service://host.tld/directory/filename.extension

Any directories, along with the filename and extension can be omitted if the target is the site's root. A basic URL for an actual webpage looks like this:

http://www.linux.org

USENET
A decentralized Internet application containing tens of thousands of distributed bulletin boards called newsgroups, originally established at Duke University circa 1980. Messages are read and sent by using a program called a newsreader. Beginning in the late 1990s the USENET was frequently overwhelmed by abusive crossposting, a form of spam involving identical posts to hundreds or thousands of unrelated groups. In addition, the USENET is constantly roamed by email harvester bots, which are programs used by spammers to gather the email addresses of individuals posting to newsgroups, who are then rewarded for their public self-expression by being inundated with spam for years afterward.

Utility
A small program that does supplementary and useful tasks.

UUCP
Unix to Unix Copy. A generally obsolete AT&T file transfer and command protocol used to connect Unix computers with serial lines or by modem over standard telephone lines. It persisted for a time as a very low cost mail system. Old UUCP mail addresses can be recognized by their use of exclamation points rather than periods between the parts (which are in reverse order), a format known as bang path addressing.

Vector Graphics
Images represented by geometric definitions of points connected by lines, creating shapes in two or three dimensional space. Because vector graphics are mathematical expressions and not bitmapped, they consume far less disk space. Line art and cartoons are perfectly suited to vector graphics. Adobe and TrueType fonts are also vector based. Vector graphics are scalable, which means their size can be changed with no loss of information (fidelity or quality).

Virus
A scrap of malicious software that can replicate and spread itself across a network. Some viruses can cause serious damage to a computer's data. Others do their damage by wasting system or network resources with meaningless activity. Worms and trojan horses are types of viruses. Many viruses spread through email, typically requiring a deliberate action by inexperienced or naive users in order to propogate.

Virusware
Any program so poorly, vaguely, arrogantly, or maliciously written that its behavior resembles that of a virus.

Vorbis
Also Ogg Vorbis. A patent-free professional audio encoding and streaming codec, targeted primarily as a replacement for MP3 (which it is superior to). Tuned for music encoded at bitrates of 16kbps to 128kbps per channel but can operate outside that range. The format offers multi-channel and unlimited tagging support, along with the benefits of open source. Vorbis is the audio codec of Ogg, a projected set of open multimedia codecs. Vorbis playback normally requires floating point hardware, which has delayed its introduction in some portable players but software players supporting it were widely available in 2003.

VPN
Virtual Private Network, a private computer network connected by a shared network such as an Internet connection. PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol), the most commonly used form of VPN, wraps the data packets in an encrypted shell, which permits them to tunnel through the network unnoticed. The encryption/decryption steps slow down the speed of transmission but the convenience may compensate for this in some circumstances. PPTP uses the Microsoft point to point encryption (MPPE) algorithm to generate a key from the users logon password. This is regarded as a security flaw. L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) is a Microsoft alternative that combines PPTP with Layer 2 Forwarding, a packet encapsulation method developed by Cisco. L2TP is typically combined with IPSec (Internet Protocol security), which uses deep encryption and positive identification of both client and server to provide an acceptable level of security for truly sensitive data.

Web
See WWW.

Webpage
Basic unit of content on a website. A single page or instance of information displayed by a browser, typically represented by HTML code in an ASCII file that resides on a server and has a unique URL. A website may contain from one to thousands of webpages.

Web Server
Software program that serves static content from a file system to a web browser. An Internet server runs web server software and other programs (such as CGI) in addition to an OS. Although the web server treats the data it serves as static, both the server and the client computer may use it dynamically.

Website
Also, Web Site. Any collection of related files located on an Internet server that can be displayed or otherwise utilized by browser software via the WWW. A website usually includes a starting or home page with links to other files (which may be located anywhere on the WWW). The starting page is located in the root directory of the website's address and is usually named index.html (other extensions such as .asp may occur). An Internet Server may host many websites. In the case of a large website, its content may be spread across dedicated servers around the world.

Windows™
A family of 32-bit multi-tasking, configurable, proprietary operating systems published by Microsoft. Hundreds of millions of licensed and unlicensed copies of Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS, its 16-bit commandline predecessor, are in use worldwide.

The history of the 20th century is replete with examples of markets dominated by inferior standards, including US NTSC television, VHS video tape, compact audio cassettes, 110 volt/60Hz electrical mains in the US, and the Wintel computer platform. In economics, market share doesn't correlate with superior quality, but to a functioning standard. A successful product satisfies an actual demand at a sustainable price. In practice, very high quality can work against a technology product, as in the examples of the encryption program PGP and the Sony Playsation. Both were the subjects of new regulations by governments concerned about the wide distribution of military grade technology. Humanity has a well-described capacity to implement technologies before she has acquired the intellectual skills to manage them.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen first developed their enthusiasm for computers and business as teenagers in Seattle, Washington during the late 1960s. In prep school their early projects included computerized payroll services and a business called Traf-O-Data, which counted cars for government agencies. In 1975, while Gates was attending pre-law at Harvard, Allen showed him a story in Popular Electronics magazine about the release of the MITS Altair 8800, an Intel 8080 based computer for hobbyists that was usually sold in kits. Aside from being difficult to build and practically useless, there was no software for the Altair. The pair, enthusiastic about the future of microcomputers, contacted MITS using Traf-O-Data stationary and proposed writing a BASIC interpreter for the machine. They recruited Monte Davidoff (who spent most of his later career working on UNIX) to do the math package, and coded the rest of it themselves over a period of six weeks using a Digital Equipment PDP 10 mainframe, running an Altair emulator program that Allen had written. At MITS, Allen fed a roll of paper tape into the Altair and it booted on the second try. Gates dropped out of Harvard not long after. In mid-1975 they established Micro-Soft as a simple partnerhsip in Albuquerque, New Mexico, moving there to write hobbyist software for MITS, which soon went out of business. They found other customers (including Apple Computer) and when they moved back to Seattle in 1979 they were an established language vendor for the microcomputer market, with more than a dozen employees, doing implementations of BASIC and other programming languages. In 1980, IBM was hastily designing a new line of personal computers based on the Intel 8086 and approached Microsoft, initially to negotiate a license for their microcomputer versions of BASIC and other languages. Microsoft, having signed IBM's non-disclosure agreement, was told that IBM was also seeking an operating system for the new product, and was considering CP/M (Control Program/Microcomputer), which was the standard for microcomputers. Gates recommended CP/M, but IBM had problems in negotiations with its author, Gary Kildall, who at the time called his company Intergalactic Digital Research. Another problem was that the CP/M-86 version for the Intel 8086 wasn't ready. Recognizing an opportunity, Microsoft contacted nearby harware vendor Seattle Computer, and purchased distribution rights to an OS called Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System, also 86-DOS), which had been cobbled together by Tim Paterson in 4,000 lines of code and modeled after an earlier version of Kildall's CP/M. Microsoft licensed Q-DOS to IBM, which renamed it PC-DOS. Microsoft ultimately bought Q-DOS outright for $50,000, retained the rights, and released their own version as MS-DOS. After licensing Q-DOS, IBM analyzed it, and found over 300 errors. With Paterson's help, both DOSs were rewritten. As a result of the routine non-disclosure agreement, even Paterson at first was unware of IBM's involvement.

IBM had marketed a personal computer in 1975, the failed 8-bit portable Model 5150. In order to attract retailers for the new attempt, IBM based its PCs on an open architecture, with off the shelf hardware. Other manufacturers, after devising an unpatented BIOS, unexpectedly entered the market with IBM-compatible (later called Wintel) clones. The combination of dropping prices and increased processor power, along with IBM's credibility and marketing presence caused the PC market to expanded rapidly. A number of operating systems were available for these machines, including UCSD Pascal for $450, and Kindall's CP/M-86, offered by IBM as an option at $175 (Kindall was also responsible for a later, independent alternative to MS-DOS, DR-DOS). The IBM PC-DOS option was $60. During the early 1980s it wasn't at all clear which OS would eventually dominate. Over time, people tended to buy machines preloaded with the cheapest OS, and in any case the cheapest for IBM PCs was the default, PC-DOS. Meanwhile, in this market, even the lowliest clone's description bore the venerable name of Old Blue: "IBM-compatible". Sales boomed. The clones all ran $40 copies of MS-DOS. Ultimately, most of the IBM branded PCs ran PC-DOS, along with a copy of Microsoft's version of BASIC encoded into its read only memory.

Windows 1.0 first appeared as a 16-bit MS-DOS user interface overlay in 1985. It was regarded as a limited imitation of the Apple Macintosh interface from the year before, and sales were weak. Windows got its name from the nature of the interface, which presented applications and data in windowed frames on the screen. The concept originated in the quasi-experimental Xerox Alto and Star personal computers of the 1970s and early 1980s. Employing aggresive marketing tactics for MS-DOS and supported by proceeds from a successful stock offering in 1986, along with the sales of millions of DOS licenses and a growing line of application software, Microsoft persisted with Windows. IBM, in an attempt to resolve the inherent architecture problems that had developed in the Wintel platform (and probably to differentiate its products) wandered off from the PC mainstream in 1987 with the release of the PS/2 line. Microsoft had become the most important developer of Apple Macintosh applications, gaining valuable experience with windowed programs. IBM, believing it still had market dominance, came into conflict with Microsoft over the development of OS/2, a more advanced operating system that the two companies were collaborating on. The limitations of an MS-DOS foundation were extensive and Microsoft added several clever patches to Windows before it finally gained market share with version 3.0 in 1990. Real acceptance came with version 3.1, still overlayed on an archaic MS-DOS, in 1992. During this time Microsoft had heavily promoted and supported the creation of new Windows programs. Simultaneously, game programmers were producing thousands of titles directly for MS-DOS: Its exposed kernel gave a program direct access to the entire computer, something unacceptable in a multitasking OS, but expedient for faster games in a profitable consumer market. By 1993, hardware prices and markets were aligned again. Millions of consumers were attracted down an inexpensive path leading to Apple-like word processors, spreadsheets, games, and a huge selection of other applications: A cloned IBM compatible 386 preloaded with Windows was available for about $1000. Apple's closed architecture products were superior at the time but not to the degree sometimes described in popular legend, and sold for twice the price. Moreover, purchasing an Apple system meant giving up access to a wide range of peripheral add-on equipment available from other companies, along with a smaller selection of software. Aggravating the situation, Apple's management was weak, and sales spiralled. Microsoft sold Windows 3.1 at a rate of a million a month in 1993, dominating the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) market with exclusive distribution agreements. Several software companies including Norton Utilities were active in the Windows market, selling software that addressed various problems and gaps in the overlayed operating system.

Microsoft's professional 32-bit OS, Windows NT (New Technology), had its origins in Microsoft's collaboration with IBM on OS/2 and was first released after five years of development (with 6 million lines of code) as version 3.1 in July 1993.

The first 32-bit consumer version of Windows appeared in 1995. Windows95's interface was based on NT's, and was not exactly an overlay, but unlike NT still ran on a foundation of obsolete MS-DOS code. This architecture was determined by the market. Faster hardware chips from Intel supported backward compatiility. Win95 wouldn't sell if it didn't run the now vast user base of Windows and MS-DOS titles, and most of those programs were written to such vague and loose interfaces that it was impossible to write a stable OS that would run them. Emulation was an option but sapped performance, and people wanted performance to play games (Sony PlayStation became successful partly because it correctly addressed the inherent architectural conflict between desktop multitasks and games). Windows95 was unstable, with finicky network support, bugs and security problems, but it was 32-bit and flexible, and most of the messy legacy software titles would run on it. Microsoft published huge lists of them. On the basis of these credentials, Windows95 sold 7,000,000 copies in the first six weeks (in 1996 it sold 50,000,000 copies). MS-DOS development was finally halted at version 6.22. Version 7.0 lived on quietly under the taskbar interface (ironically, the high performance of a batch file running in a virtual DOS window on a Pentium platform was considered one of Windows95's hidden strengths). In late 1995, Microsoft reluctantly shifted their focus to the Internet, which was experiencing brisk growth after having been opened to commercial activity in 1992. They licensed a browser from Spyglass to create Internet Explorer, and distributed it for free from their websites. They later licensed the high quality source code directly from NSCA. Windows' core Internet connectivity software was borrowed from UNIX. IE ultimately achieved dominance over a competing browser, Netscape Navigator (which was eventually purchased by a major online service and allowed to languish). As the 20th century ended, the vast majority of computers worldwide ran a Windows OS (3.1, 95, 98, 98se, Me or NT) and used a Windows browser. With market share in excess of 90%, longstanding controversies about the company's business practices ultimately culminated with their prosecution in the United States for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Gates and his wife Melinda French Gates were active in philanthropy, contributing billions of dollars to international projects relating to health and education.

Windows NT5/2000 has advanced security and technical features and is used by many businesses and on some Internet servers. Windows XP (2001), based on the NT kernel with a heavily loaded GUI, active network support, emulation for backward compatibility and many accessories, represented a strategy to consolidate Microsoft's consumer and business products and wash away the lingering stains of Quick and Dirty Operating System.

Winsock
Windows sockets interface. Program element that controls data flow between TCP/IP and an Internet program (such as a browser) in a Windows environment. Design is based on the Berkeley UNIX sockets interface (UNIX programs work directly with TCP/IP).

Wintel
Contraction of Windows/Intel. Generic term that identifies the platform of a computer system or PC based on Intel-compatible microchips (Pentium level or later) and running a Windows operating system. In general, 486-based and earlier systems were termed IBM-compatible.

WWW
World Wide Web. Also called the Web. Along with email, the Internet's most famous and heavily used application. Invented in 1989 by Tim Brenners-Lee at CERN in Switzerland for the purpose of exchanging large amounts of constantly changing research data, it is based on webpages coded in HTML that contain hypertext links. This page is presented via the Web.

WYSIWYG
What You See Is What You Get. Concept of displaying on a computer monitor an image that strongly ressembles how a page will appear when it's printed. First incorporated into the design of word processors based on research at Xerox PARC during the 1970s.

XML
eXtensible Markup Language. Provides many capabilities not found in HTML, especially relating to the potential uses of databases in webpage design and presentation. May never entirely supplant classic HTML.

Zombie
A computer that has been infected with software that allows it to be used remotely for illegal purposes, often in DoS attacks. Computers can be protected from zombie status through the use of firewalls and anti-virus software. In UNIX environments this term refers to a program process that has stopped but has not properly closed.


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