| ISP Dictionary - ISP Glossary Definitions for 'a' |
| Abend - When Novell's NetWare network operating system crashes, it will usually toss up a message that starts with the term abend, which stands for Abnormal End.... |
| Accelerated Graphics Port - A dedicated expansion port that began to show up on motherboards in the second half of 1997. It bypasses the PCI bus and allows higher throughput from... |
| Access Speed - The average amount of time it takes for a floppy drive, hard drive, CD drive, or other drive to find any particular piece of data on a disk and send it... |
| Accuracy - Accuracy is how close to the actual value you are. For example, if the number you are representing is 4 and you say it's 3, you are inaccurate by 1. |
| Accuracy vs. Precision - If the actual value is 4.321 and you say that it is 4.30, then you are precise to the first decimal place but inaccurate by .021. If a value is represented... |
| Ack - A response from a server to a network request. Basically, the server is saying, "I'm here, and I saw your request!" This also refers to the 6th ASCII character.... |
| ACPI - This power management interface takes the power management out of the BIOS and gives control to the operating system (OS). Typically, a system's BIOS is... |
| Active Directory - A Microsoft technology based on LDAP that provides a unified view and way to manage all objects on a network. Microsoft created Active Directory as a response... |
| Active Matrix - LCD panels that are active matrix have a sharper, brighter image than those with passive matrix screens. They can also continue to be seen at much greater... |
| Active Movie - A Microsoft technology used for streaming video and audio over the Internet. It is an ActiveX control. |
| Active Server Pages - Microsoft created this technology and bundled it with its IIS webserver software. It is designed to allow easy combination of HTML, scripts (such as JavaScript... |
| Active Template Library - A group of routines provided by Microsoft that can be used to help more easily create ASP, ActiveX, and COM objects in C++. |
| ActiveX - A Microsoft technology that uses COM technology, and is designed to enable easier embedding of interactive objects, and often multimedia, on Web pages.... |
| Actuator - The part of a hard drive that the read/write arms attach to. It is controlled by an electrical signal sent to it that extends or retracts the arms so that... |
| ADC - An electronic device that converts analog signals into digital signals. For example, the input port of a sound card can accept analog input from a microphone,... |
| ADSL - A technology that is the phone company's answer to cable modems. It supports data speeds over 7Mbps downstream (to the user) and slower speeds upstream... |
| Advanced Configuration and Power Interface - This power management interface takes the power management out of the BIOS and gives control to the operating system (OS). Typically, a system's BIOS is... |
| Advanced Intelligent Tape - A tape format initially introduced in 1996. AIT promises low tape tension for longer tape life, very clean tape media, and high capacity and transfer rates.... |
| Advanced Research Projects Agency Network - A network of interconnected computers that formed the original Internet. The United States military funded the ARPANet, and construction was started in... |
| Advanced SCSI Programming Interface - This was developed by Adaptec so that different devices could be controlled by different SCSI cards, and therefore the SCSI card version would not matter.... |
| adware - Any software which serves banner ads or pop-up ads to you while in use. It is sometimes installed in freeware or shareware which you download from the... |
| AFAIK - Online speak for "As Far As I Know" |
| afk - Chat abbreviation for "away from keyboard". |
| AGP - A dedicated expansion port that began to show up on motherboards in the second half of 1997. It bypasses the PCI bus and allows higher throughput from... |
| AGP 1x - The original parallel AGP standard that operates on a 32-bit bus at 66MHz speed for a maximum data transfer rate of 256MB/second. |
| AGP 2x - This AGP standard features a parallel 32-bit bus running at 133MHz effectively (66MHz*2 literally) for a maximum data transfer rate of 512MB/second. AGP... |
| AGP 4x - This AGP standard features a parallel 32-bit bus running at 266MHz effectively (66MHz*4 literally) for a maximum data transfer rate of 1GB/second. AGP... |
| AGP 8x - This AGP standard features a parallel 32-bit bus running at 533MHz effectively (66MHz*8 literally) for a maximum data transfer rate of 2GB/second. This... |
| AGP Aperture - The amount of system memory that the AGP board can address and use as graphics memory. Often, the default setting is 64 MB. Increasing this value (assuming... |
| AGP Pro - This AGP standard allows the graphics card to draw more than four times the electrical power of the regular AGP 4x standard, i.e., 110 watts up from 25... |
| Air Cooling - Cooling that involves a heatsink and/or fan. Even though a metal heatsink may make contact with the microprocessor package (or whatever is being cooled),... |
| Air gap - A type of network security in which a network is secured, at least in part, by keeping it physically separate from other local networks and the Internet.... |
| AIT - A tape format initially introduced in 1996. AIT promises low tape tension for longer tape life, very clean tape media, and high capacity and transfer rates.... |
| AIX - An open IBM operating system based on UNIX. IBM produces a version of AIX for its RS/6000 mainframe hardware. |
| Algorithm - A step-by-step method of accomplishing a task. For instance, a sorting algorithm may be like this: 1) Progress down your list from the top; 2) When you... |
| Alpha - A term given to a very early version of a hardware or software product which is not yet stable and may lack features. After some testing and some revision,... |
| Alpha Blending - This allows two objects to be visually blended together. This is primarily used for 3D atmospheric and environmental effects. It allows such things as... |
| Alpha Test - A term given to a very early version of a hardware or software product which is not yet stable and may lack features. After some testing and some revision,... |
| Alt - 1. There is an Alt key found on a computer keyboard. The Alt key functions much like a third Ctrl/Shift key in that it alters the value of other characters... |
| Alternating Current - A type of electrical current that reverses its direction at a regular interval, and can be represented by a sine wave. Alternating current is the type... |
| ALU - The part of the CPU that actually does the work of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, including OR, AND, and NOT operations. The ALU is an... |
| Amdahl's Law - This states that even a small percentage of "serial" code (code which can't be parallelized) can cause the speed of a program not to increase a great deal... |
| American National Standards Institution - This organization represents the United States in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It works to develop coding and signaling standards.... |
| American Standard Code for Information Interchange - Pronounced "ass-kee." This is a standard means of representing characters, consisting of 256 characters. The first 128 characters are standardized, and... |
| Amp - The base unit of electrical current, which is the rate of flow of an electrical charge. |
| Ampere - The base unit of electrical current, which is the rate of flow of an electrical charge. |
| Amplitude Modulation - A means of transmitting and receiving radio waves that is based on variances in the amplitude of the radio waves. See also FM. |
| AMR - An Intel specification designed to move the analog I/O functions of sound cards and modems onto a riser card. It allows motherboards to have an I/O slot... |
| Analog - Analog refers to a representation of a quantity that varies over any continuous range of values. Analog signals can be thought of as pure in nature and... |
| Analog Control - An analog control changes value in non-discrete steps. You can tune an analog control to non-distinct values (selecting 107.41234723947392... as the radio... |
| Analog to Digital Convertor - An electronic device that converts analog signals into digital signals. For example, the input port of a sound card can accept analog input from a microphone,... |
| anonymizer - a privacy service that allows a user to visit Web sites without allowing anyone to gather information about them. |
| Anonymous FTP - FTP services requiring no specific authentication, using a login name of "anonymous" and your e- mail address as a password. |
| ANSI - This organization represents the United States in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It works to develop coding and signaling standards.... |
| anti-aliasing - Chat abbreviation for "away from keyboard". |
| Anycast - A method available in IPv6 of sending information over a network. It allows a device to send data to the nearest (fastest) of a group of receivers. |
| Apache - In early 1995, a group of webmasters decided to get together and expand on the original NCSA HTTP daemon (webserver software), and Apache was born. Today,... |
| Aperture Grill - This form of mask is similar to a shadow mask, but instead of a sheet of metal with holes poked into it it is a series of fine, vertically-aligned metal... |
| API - APIs allow you to program to a pre-constructed interface (the API) instead of programming a device or piece of software directly. This allows for faster... |
| Applet - A derivation of "application." You use the Applet tag in HTML code to define calls to Java-based applications within a browser. Thus, any Java program... |
| Application Programming Interface - APIs allow you to program to a pre-constructed interface (the API) instead of programming a device or piece of software directly. This allows for faster... |
| Application Service Provider - A company that provides remote access to applications, typically over the Internet. ASPs are used when an organization finds it more cost effective to... |
| Application-Specific Integrated Circuit - An ASIC is a circuit designed for a very specific purpose, such as the processors in PDAs or the chips on a motherboard chipset. ASICs contrast with more... |
| Apt-get - Part of "apt," a package retrieval tool that automatically connects to known Linux package repositories and checks for new packages. It also works out... |
| Archie - A service that indexes files found on FTP servers. It is not used much anymore, due to the popularity of the Web and large download sites that are already... |
| Archive - As a noun, this refers generally to any type of backed-up data. It can refer to tapes, disks, or just simply a group of data that is an old copy of current... |
| Areal Density - This typically refers to the amount of data that can be stored on a one-inch square of material. It's usually represented in billions of bits per square... |
| Argument - What you have with your girlfriend when she wants you to stop using your computer so much. Actually, argument refers to the value with which you call a... |
| Arithmetic Logic Unit - The part of the CPU that actually does the work of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, including OR, AND, and NOT operations. The ALU is an... |
| ARPANet - A network of interconnected computers that formed the original Internet. The United States military funded the ARPANet, and construction was started in... |
| Array - 1. This can be an abbreviation for a group of hard drives functioning as a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives). 2. This also describes a common... |
| Arrow keys - The four keys on a computer keyboard that are commonly used to move the cursor around in programs that support such movement. Some keyboards feature 8... |
| ASCII - Pronounced "ass-kee." This is a standard means of representing characters, consisting of 256 characters. The first 128 characters are standardized, and... |
| ASIC - An ASIC is a circuit designed for a very specific purpose, such as the processors in PDAs or the chips on a motherboard chipset. ASICs contrast with more... |
| ASP - see Active Server Pages, Application Service Provider, or Average Selling Price |
| Aspect Ratio - The ratio of the width by the height on a monitor or television screen. Most TVs and monitors have a 4x3 aspect ratio--the screens are 4 units wide and... |
| ASPI - This was developed by Adaptec so that different devices could be controlled by different SCSI cards, and therefore the SCSI card version would not matter.... |
| Assembly Language - A programming language specific to a microprocessor. It is a very low-level language, where you actually give the processor instructions like "MOV A,B",... |
| Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line - A technology that is the phone company's answer to cable modems. It supports data speeds over 7Mbps downstream (to the user) and slower speeds upstream... |
| Asynchronous Communication - This method of transferring data does so without a specific timing mechanism between the two communicating parties. The party receiving data isn't expecting... |
| Asynchronous Transfer Mode - A networking protocol initially designed to move multimedia data around with high reliability and speed. It uses small, fixed-size cells of data that can... |
| AT Attachment - A storage (hard drive, CD-ROM, etc.) interface more commonly known as IDE. The "AT" refers to the IBM-AT computer where this interface was first used.... |
| AT Attachment Packet Interface - This interface is part of EIDE, and it allows a PC to control CD-ROM drives and tape drives across the IDE interface. |
| AT Form Factor - A PC form factor that describes the way a motherboard fits into a case and works with a power supply. Thus, you match an AT power supply with an AT case... |
| ATA - A storage (hard drive, CD-ROM, etc.) interface more commonly known as IDE. The "AT" refers to the IBM-AT computer where this interface was first used.... |
| ATA/100 - Another extension to the ATA interface that adds a 50% increase in top speed over ATA/66, getting to 100MB/second, up from 66MB/second. This standard also... |
| ATA/133 - This refers to what is most probably the final extension to the parallel ATA connection standard. The proposal was created by Maxtor, and allows a top... |
| ATA/33 - An extension to the ATA interface (IDE) that effectively doubles the top data transfer speed of IDE from 16.6MBytes/second up to 33 MBytes/second. Also... |
| ATA/66 - An extension to the ATA interface (IDE) proposed by Quantum that effectively doubles the data transfer speed of the Ultra ATA/33 interface to 66MBps. To... |
| ATAPI - This interface is part of EIDE, and it allows a PC to control CD-ROM drives and tape drives across the IDE interface. |
| ATL - A group of routines provided by Microsoft that can be used to help more easily create ASP, ActiveX, and COM objects in C++. |
| ATM - A networking protocol initially designed to move multimedia data around with high reliability and speed. It uses small, fixed-size cells of data that can... |
| Attachment - A file embedded in an e-mail message. It is possible to have one or more attachments embedded in an e-mail message. If you are sending or receiving attachments,... |
| ATX - The ATX form factor specification takes the original Baby AT-sized motherboard, rotates it 90 degrees, and calls for a power supply with a side-mounted... |
| ATX Form Factor - The ATX form factor specification takes the original Baby AT-sized motherboard, rotates it 90 degrees, and calls for a power supply with a side-mounted... |
| ATX12V - A superset of the ATX form factor that is used for systems with the Pentium 4 processor. It features a power supply with an extra four-pin connector for... |
| Audio Modem Riser - An Intel specification designed to move the analog I/O functions of sound cards and modems onto a riser card. It allows motherboards to have an I/O slot... |
| Audio Video Interleave - A Microsoft-specified format for saving audio and/or video clips, referred to by Windows as "Video for Windows." You can play the files through the Media... |
| AUI - A synonym for the 10Base5 Thicknet Ethernet standard. |
| Authentication - A process of proving the identity of a computer or computer user. For users, it generally involves a user name and password. Computers usually pass a code... |
| Availability - A measure of how much time a network or a connection is running. Generally the equation is: Time Running / Time Measured (time running divided by time... |
| Average Selling Price - This term is used in the microchip manufacturing world. Companies like AMD and Intel strive for high ASPs. The ASP is an indication not only of direct... |
| AVI - A Microsoft-specified format for saving audio and/or video clips, referred to by Windows as "Video for Windows." You can play the files through the Media... |
