- acceptable use
policy - Rules enforced by many networks for the
use of their network. Strangely, the acronym for this is
AUP.
- access - Any normal
thesaurus will give you the meaning of this word as
'passage of entry' or something similar. This is exactly
what it means.
- ACK - When data is
transferred from one computer to another, the MODEM in
the receiving computer sends this signal (ACK is for
'ACKnowledgement') to the sending computer to indicate
that the data was received ok. In case, there was any
loss in data, the signal sent is , yeah, you guessed it
right, NAK (No AcKnowledgement)
- ActiveX - Basically,
this is Microsoft's answer to Netscape's plug-in
technology. ActiveX is several different technologies all
being marketed under the same name. This technology is to
extend the browser's capability to handle different media
types. ActiveX controls are designed to be run only on
Windows platforms and the only browser that understands
these controls is Microsoft Internet Explorer. ActiveX
controls are not specific to the web. These were formerly
known as OLE controls and come bundled with Microsoft
products like Visual Foxpro.
- ADC -
Analog-to-Digital-Converter. The conversion of analog
signals like on a phone line to a two-state on-off
digital signal understood by the computer.
- address - This can
be mentioned in terms of three contexts :
e-mail address, web address or IP address.
E-mail address identifies the location of a person's
mail-box where he receives / sends e-mail. This is
normally of the form miyer@worldnet.att.net
where 'miyer' is a unique user-id or nickname and
'worldnet.att.net' is the host-name or domain-name of the
e-mail server or service provider (by the way, the above
address is mine). The ubiquitous @ sign (pronounced 'at')
in the middle simply separates the two parts.
Web address is normally referred to as 'URL' (Uniform
Resource Locator) and is made up of four parts:
Protocol, Server name, Port, Directory path and file name
For more information see URL.
IP (Internet Protocol) address is a series of numbers to
indicate the location of the machine in Internet. This is
normally of the form 205.139.80.105 or some such numbers.
Every address (including web address) is ultimately
translated into this form before a resource is located.
- algorithm - A
mathematical analysis of a task to be carried out by
computer programming. The algorithm is not the entire
program but a method which will prove that the proposed
programming strategy will work as intended.
- alias - This refers
to a nickname used to shorten long addresses. For
example, an address of the form
so1me978bodyF@s4omeWH56ERE.COM can be aliased 'somebody'.
The e-mail manager interprets the alias and sends the
mail to the correct recipient.
- alphanumeric -
The set of characters which consists of alphabets,
numbers and punctuation symbols that you see on your key
board. Don't you now know what the two words 'alpha' and
'numeric' mean separately?
- alt - Type of
newsgroup / discussion group that discusses topics
ranging from Abortion to Zines. Some Internet providers
ask that their users sign an agreement stating they are
over 18 before providing access to the alt. newsgroups.
- aka - Also Known As.
This is one in many such abbreviations that you will
encounter in e-mail and chat forums. For a detailed list
of such abbreviations, see e-mail abbreviations.
- anchor - When you
write HTML, you use anchors to give links. Anchors are
normally a word, a phrase or an image. The anchored
objects are highlighted (or underlined) and they connect
to the linked page when clicked. (Remember the small
'finger-pointing' icon everytime you move the cursor over
a link? That means there is an anchor beneath).
- animated GIF -
See GIF. Animated GIF is nothing but a series of GIF
images displayed one after another or on top of each
other. Since its implementation in Netscape Navigator
2.0, GIF animation has replaced static images in millions
of web pages. Animated GIFs have been around since the
introduction of the GIF89a format in 1989. The reason
animated GIFs didn't appear on the Web at that time is
that Netscape Navigator or any other Web browsers around
at that time didn't support GIF89a's animation features.
- anonymous FTP -
An FTP service that serves any user, not just users
having accounts at the site. Anonymous FTP generally
allows downloading of all files but permits files to be
uploaded only into a directory called
"/incoming".
- ANSI - American
National Standards Institute - An organization of
American industry groups who work with other nations to
develop standards in facilitating telecommunications and
international trade. Developments include the ASCII,
SCSI, and the ANSI.SYS device driver.
- API - Application
Programming Interface. This is used in different
contexts. Normally, this refers to a set of tools to
develop GUI (Graphical User Interface - another TLA -
three-letter-acronym) based applications in Windows. API
also means a set of packages and classes included in Java
Development Kit that programmers use to create applets.
- applet - A Java
program that can be included in an HTML page and run from
the user PC (called the Client machine). When the browser
encounters an applet in a page (identified by APPLET tag)
the program is downloaded from the server and run
locally. Applets can only be run from a web page and
cannot be run independently. All java programs which can
be executed independently are called 'java applications'.
- application -
program or software - all three of which refer to a
computer program or set of programs that performs a
specific job. World Wide Web browsers, HTML editors, and
Netscape plugins are all examples of applications. This
contrasts with an Operating System, such as MacOS or
Windows, which manage how your computer performs tasks,
and "runs" these applications.
- archie - A keyword
search service that searches the directory and file
titles of all FTP sites that are indexed.
- archive - A single
file that contains more than one file which can be
extracted individually. This is normally done for
software distribution or for keeping backup of several
files more conveniently.
- ARPA - Advanced
Research Projects Agency, the agency of the Department of
Defense of U.S.A. that developed the Internet.
- array - In a
programming language, a set of strings that are
interrelated and may be addressed as a group or the
individual elements by their position. For example, the
name 'INTERNET' can be thought of as an array of
characters I, N, T, E, R, N, E and T. If this array is
given the name 'net' in the program, then net[0] will
refer to the character I, net [1] to 'N', net[2] to 'T'
and so on.
- ASCII - American
Standard Code for Information Interchange - An
agreed-upon coding of letters, numbers and symbols
developed for teletype data exchange. When you hear
someone say 'ASCII file' it means that the characters in
the file are from only the first 128 ASCII codes - these
are the printable characters plus some essential control
characters. But, ASCII character set is fast getting
replaced by a more elaborate Unicode character set which
uses 16-bits instead of 8-bits and hence can represent
more symbols and characters from other languages as well.
- ATM - Normally
automatic teller machine but in internet jargon, this
expands to Asynchronous Transfer Mode. Refers to a high
speed networking scheme and communication protocol.
- attribute -
Qualifying property of any data item or object.
- .au - "Sun"
audio format files. These are extremely popular file
format for audio files since these are portable across
different operating systems.If your browser is configured
to handle this file type, you can double click on .au
files in any web page to download and hear the audio.
- avatar - This is a
Hindi word but it has somehow entered the world of
computing jargon. The term is used to denote any
character (exact meaning as in Hindi) or form that you
assume in the virtual world. This term is also used to
refer to the superuser or root in a unix machine.
- AVI - A combined video
/ audio compressed file format. Popular format for
multi-media files.