M

MAC Address –

Doesn’t have a thing to do with

any of the things that fell from

the Apple ® family tree. It is actually a

special serial number burned into your

Ethernet or Token Ring adapters and

it identifies your network card from all

others out there. See OUI  and MAC layer.

MAC Layer -

Media Access Control layer. Sound like

a double decker Apple ® pie?  No way

José.  It controls access to the physical transmission medium on your LAN. It’s

built into your network adapter and has a

unique serial number that identifies

each NIC

(Network Interface Card)

Macro –

a defined group of keystrokes that produce

a desired action, like hitting "Ctrl A"

highlights everything on the page just

 before you accidentally delete it.

Macro Recorder –

Linda, the Boss Lady gave me this one,

"Macro recorder is the gizmo used by

the Office programs that records the

 stuff you do while you are doing it, so

you can do it again with one click of a

button." Like a mini Big Brother Linda?

Male Chauvinist – 

   Cap’n Patt

Malware -

Mal-Ware is software of a dubious nature, designed only for the purpose of destroying

both your peace of mind and your computer.

Into those categories fall such things

as Worms, Trojans, Back doors,Virususseseses,

 or Virii if you prefer, and all manner

of tracking software (adware) that tracks

your keyboard meanderings and sends

them back to those pestiferous proprietors

of particularly persistent Pop-Ups.

Mapi –

“Messaging Application Programming Interface.”

There’s a mouthful for you. All that to

say it’s a Windows system which allows

Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora,

and all those others to distribute mail.

If an application is mapi-enabled it can

share e-mail messages with all the rest

of the mapi bunch out there.

Mapped drive -

a network drive that you assigned a

letter to so it shows up in My Computer

with your C: drive.  Just so C: doesn't

get lonely. 

Mapped  drive letter –

On a network, a mapped drive letter refers

to a remote drive, one on another

computer you can access from yours.

You can assign a drive letter of your

choice, kinda like an alias, to a mapped drive.  

Mapping -

A little like plotting a course at sea, on your network you choose a destination, a drive

on a remote net computer, or your own,

assign a new name (or letter) to it and a

specific directory on it and go for it.  Truth

is, it’s a little more complicated than that

but you knew it would be.

.mdb –

This is a file extension.  It tells us this is

a database created in a multidimensional

database, like Microsoft Access.

Megabyte -

One million bytes, or more precisely

1,048,576 bytes, even Bill Gates isn’t sure.

Memory Addresses –

Picture your memory as 128

(or whatever number you have)

storage boxes. Divide those boxes into

little sections the size of one byte, then

assign a starting and ending number

 to each of those bytes, numbers like,

01F0 – 01F7 and you’ve just assigned

a memory address. Programmers use

them to assign memory locations to

a particular part of a program.

Meta Tag – 

An HTML tag that carries the information pertaining to a web page. That’s what

the book said and I’ll darned well stick

with it. (Actually I’m stuck with it.)

Microsoft SQL Server –

Microsoft's high-end client/server database

and a key component in its BackOffice suite

of server products. SQL Server was

originally developed by Sybase and also

sold by Microsoft for OS/2 and NT.  Let’s

hear it for Uncle Bill.

MIME –

One definition, “A white faced character

who can say more with the wave of his

hand and the tilt of his head than either

of us can with a good dictionary.

”  From a purely technical standpoint,

without MIME you couldn’t send and

receive rich text mail. That’s the kind

of mail that you can format, use different

fonts in, and change colors. Anytime

you see, pictures and formatting in

your mail without opening an attachment,

old MIME is doing its silent thing in the background.

Module -

a collection of routines that perform a task.  Usually only heard in Programming

conversations, which can be pretty boring.

Mosaic –

While Billy G. was still trying to grow

whiskers back in the early nineties, an

outfit called NCSA

(National Center for Supercomputing Applications)

at Illinois University was busy developing

the first graphics-based Web browser.

Named  “Mosaic”, it loosed an internet

bombshell when they released it in 1993.

It was originally developed for the Unix OS

but like all good little pirates, Billy G. and

his bunch, and Apple soon jumped on it.

The rest is history. Bet you didn’t know

that Spyglass’s Netscape Navigator is just

a much enhanced version of Mosaic.

msconfig -

Windows utility most commonly used to

disable piggish programs that insist on

running constantly when not needed. 

It isn’t really a contraction of

“msconfigure,” It is the name of a funny

little file designed by the natives up in

Redmond, Washington, and it’s only

purpose is to remove from Windows

Start Up some of the extraneous stuff

that those same Redmondites get paid

so much money to put in Windows in

the first place.  It’s probably all done just

to confuse you and make you think

you’re guilty of accomplishing

something by stopping stuff which

should never have started. That’s life.  

Regardless, if you will click on the

“Start” button and then on “Run,”

type in the almost word “msconfig”

without the quotation marks, then

click on OK. A menu will pop up with

tabs along the top. The tab farthest

to the right says “Start Up.”  If you

click on that one a page will open

listing all the goodies(?) which start

along with Windows and by removing

the checkmarks beside them you can

turn them off.  Best you do this one at

a time. It’s a bunch of key punching and

mouse clicking but if you uncheck the

wrong one you could find yourself with

a sick computer.

msconfigure - 

Technically, this isn’t even a word. Only

necessity and popular usage by a bunch

 of nerds, geeks, and other normal

computer type haracters have given it a

frosting of social acceptance. That and

all of Uncle Bill’s Billions.

munge -

Wow! It's a derogatory term.  We don't

get many of those on here. When used

in that sense it implies that you have

provided information which you have

intentionally altered from the original.

Not Nice.  The fact is, the word is most

often tossed around by those in the

know concerning e-mail and a contingent

effort to get spammers off one's back.

Let's say that your e-mail address is

Venus @wayout.com and spammers

jumped on that address like a five year

old on a June bug. Worn out from hitting

that "delete" key, in desperation you resort

to that questionable practice known as

"Munging".  You alter your return address

to read Venus.nospam@wayout.com,

knowing deep in your heart that all your

true friends are going to take a quick

envious glance at your obvious alteration,

and remove the "nospam" when they reply.  Clever? You bet your bippy.  Meanwhile

those spammers out there are getting paid

for what they do, and although I hate to

admit it, they're good at it. They are

masters of the art of "demunging," the

removal of those sneaky little phrases

you stuck in there to deceive them. Some

of them even use special software to search

for those extra phrases, automatically

 remove them from your address and,

suddenly, you have been"demunged." It on

------------------------------

N

NCA –

Network Computing Architecture.

A system developed by Oracle

for creating applications within

a networked computing environment.

Managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager

software, it integrates clients with

processes running in application and

database servers. Did you really want

to know that?

NetBIOS -

Net Basic Input Output System. The protocol

used in Windows and DOS networking to

add special network functioning to your

normal BIOS. It is an Application

Programming Interface “API”

NIC -

Network Interface Card.  This is what

allows your computer to talk to other computers. 

NIMDA –

This is not an acronym, it’s the name of a

most insidious little worm. Think ADMIN.

Spelled backwards.  I would imagine that

there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that

 Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer,

and their web server ISS are both full of

security loopholes (read Worm Holes)

Well, there you have it.  Nimda is an extremely

ingenious little “denial of service” worm

which enjoys nothing quite so much as

those loopholes, crawling into them and

messing them up, but good. It steals disk

space from both the servers and the

clients and stuffs the local folders on their

drives full of useless files.  

Normal.dot -

this is Microsoft Word's Global Template. 

See the definition for that.

Normalized – 

To make normal or to conform to a standard.

Take it, it’s your baby, I could never

qualify.ly hurts when you hit, "Delete."

address of that domain to you.

-------------------------------------------

P

Parsing -

To parse a sentence is to break it down into

its functioning parts, Subject, object, nouns,

verbs, past participles, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Stuff they no longer teach in our school

systems which why the kids can neither read

nor pass their FSATS.

(I don't know what that means).  However, in

the world of computers, parsing is used to

analyze a sentence in a slightly different

manner. It breaks the parts of a sentence

into components, which can be converted

to machine language, which in turn can be

used by your computer. This all goes

to prove that your computer is smarter

than today's average high school graduate.

Partition -

see special backup definitions

Paste Special -

When you've copied something and want

some options for how you want to paste it,

go to the Edit menu and select this option.

PCI -

Another type of bus (see ISA).  This one

stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect. 

Sounds like a good one to

throw around at geek cocktail

 parties.

PCS Operators –  

Personal Communications Services.  The Government’s update on the Indian Treaties.

Only this time it refers to the “assignment of radio frequencies for experimental and amateur

radio use” which were to exclusively for the

use of HAMs in perpetuity.  Perpetuity ended

in 1994/95 when the government

auctioned some of those frequencies to the professional world as commercial licenses. 

It now applies to everything from toy

walkie talkies to cell phones.

PCS-2 –

Personal Conferencing Specification. A

videoconferencing technology that uses

Intel's Indeo compression method. It

is endorsed by the Intel-backed Personal

Conferencing Working Group (PCWG).

Peer To Peer File Sharing –  It can be on

the internet, a network, or two computers

 connected together with a cable. If they

can transfer files from one to the other it

is Peer to Peer file sharing. A prime

example of a peer to peer set-up gone

astray is NAPSTER.

PID –

Process Identifier.  A temporary number

assigned by the operating system to a

process or service.    OR  Proportional

 Integral Derivative - A controller used

to regulate a continuous process.  

Take your pick, it’s all Geek to me.

Ping – 

It’s a kind of internet pervert. PING is

an acronym for Packet InterNet Groper.

See, didn’t I tell you? It’s a groper used

to see if a particular IP address is online.

Works a little like a domain name server

too, if you PING a domain name with it,

it will return the IP

Plug In – 

Didja ever download file made to enhance

the properties of a program you already

had in your computer?  Kinda like MS

Patches? Anyone else calls them Plug Ins.

So much for snootY M$.

POP – 

(1) Short for Post Office Protocol, a gopher

used to retrieve email from a mail server.

Most email apps. (sometimes called clients)

use POP. Some can use the newer IMAP

(Internet Message Access Protocol). 

There are two versions of POP. POP2,

a mid-80’s and requires SMTP to send

messages. The newer POP3, can be

used with or without SMTP.

(2) How’s this for confusion? Yup, it does

have two meanings. One for you and one

for your  ISP (Internet Service Provider)

To him it means Point Of Presence which

is just a fancy name for a telephone number

that gives you access to the internet. Any

ISP worth his daily ration of grog will have

them  all over the place so you can make

a local call to access his service.

Pop Up –

pop-up (pŏp'ŭp)  adj.

1.     Emerging quickly from a recessed

 or concealed position when activated:

 pop-up gun emplacements.

2.     Rising to form a three-dimensional

 structure when a page is opened:

pop-up illustrations in a children's

 book.n.

However, generally in this world of advanced technology

(?) when the term is used it refers to those annoying adds that "POP-UP" (see) when you

are surfing for a special item on the internet.

They usually take the form of “Offers You

Can't Refuse” unless you are totally insane.

Yet for some reason you find them to be

the ultimate internet annoyance. Some even

have a tendency to spawn others of their

ilk when you attempt to delete them.