Computer words A to F

GeekSpeak A to F

Acronyms --

Find out what things like LOL, ROFL, AKAIK,

and TIA mean here.

http://sitebuilder.verizon.net/trellix/sitebuilder/f_edit_page.html

Active Hyperlink –

You know how when you click on a hyperlink at a

website and it changes colors? That's 'cause it's active.

It's the one you are on.

Active Window -

when you have two Windows open at the same time,

the active one is the one you have in front and are

currently working in.

Address Book -

An Address Book is a folder on your Hard Drive in

which you place all the addresses of those nice people

with whom you might care to correspond either through

E-Mail or the good old US Postal System.

Alt Tag –

Alt is an abbreviation for the word Alternate, It’s the

key on your keyboard right next to the space bar, and

musically it’s the first octave above the treble staff while

a Tag can be a key field in a record, the format code in a

document language like HTML, a name for a file, or a

piece of cardboard on a string. You can combine the

variations any way that suits you but some of the results

could be a little weird. An Alt Tag in a webpage is the

text you see when you hover your mouse over a

graphic or link that describes said object.

Ansi –

American National Standards Institute, A membership

organization founded in 1918 that coordinates the

development of U.S. voluntary national standards.

They have their fingers in more pies than you could

believe. This bunch of highly suspect individuals

control the technology standards for

programming languages,

EDI, (Electronic Data Interchange) the physical properties

of diskettes, cartridges, magnetic tapes and

telecommunications. If you’re really interested that is

just the tip of the iceberg.

ARPANET –

Believe it or not, they are the guys who started this

whole mess. Way back in 1969 the U.S. Advanced Research

Products Agency came up with enough cash to induce

Stanford University, the University of Utah, and

two campuses (or should that be campii) of the

University of California to use a bunch of

Honeywell 516 computers and form the Advanced

Research Projects Agency Network.

Thus, in one fell swoop, becoming the Adam and Eve

(parents that is) of this monstrosity we call the Internet.

Arrays -

click here for a FULL definition.

http://sitebuilder.verizon.net/trellix/sitebuilder/f_edit_page.html

Attributes –

In computers, file characteristics. Down on the

corner they are what gets wolf whistles.

Autocorrect –

Something that happens a lot when I’m typing in

Micro$oft Word. I type “hte” and the moment it hits

the screen it is magically converted (autocorrected) to

“the” or I type my dog’s name, “Nobe” which is

pronounced Noby and on the screen it appears as

Nobé. Gee, ain’t computers the nuts?

Automatic calculation -

(it's an Excel thing) – Spreadsheets keep records and

stuff in logical rows and columns. When you set up

a column into which you will be entering additional

numbers from time to time you can set up a formula

that will automatically add the value of the new numbers

and change the total whenever new additions are

made to the column. If that confuses the heck out

of you, ask Linda. She’s smart about these things.

Autosave -

“Ought-to-save” preventive addin for MS Excel,

and probably some other programs about which I

know nothing. Once you have configured it to

run at a prescribed interval it will automatically save

whatever you are working on whenever that time

that period has expired. In short, if you have it set

for a two minute interval and you’re on page 3,426

of your masterpiece and the power goes off you’ll

only lose what you typed in the last one minute and

59 seconds. (Unless lightning fried your hard drive.)

Autotext –

A. AutoText is a feature that keeps your fingers

from wearing down to the nub by allowing you to

store text or graphics you use frequently and recall

them for easy insertion into a new document.

You can store mailing addresses. standard contract

clauses, or long mailing lists for e-mails. Give each

one a unique name and the next time you need it,

BINGO, hit the button.

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

Backup –

data copies saved on a different media. Most of us

don’t learn to make them until we’ve lost about a weeks

work. If you don’t, you will. For more, see the

special backup issue.

Bandwidth –

Let’s cut to the meat of this thing. Bandwidth is the

transmission capacity of a computer bus, your

communications network, or a computer channel.

It is the measurement of the difference between the

highest and lowest frequencies a given connection

can handle.

Batch File –

Well, y’see, it’s kinda like this, You’d like to hit a

couple of keys and have the computer jump to your

favorite porn sight without letting your wifey in on how

you do it. Easy, write a batch file. Open your text editor

and type in each command you normally use to get to

that swingin party, each one followed by a carriage return,

and when you get to the end of it, save it as “Go.bat”

and if you didn’t mess it up the next time you feel like

partying mix a tall one and, from a DOS command or

the Run line in Windows, type the word Go and hit enter.

Hot damn, there you are. If you’re not, don’t blame me,

research.

Bcc -

Blind Carbon Copy. It’s that third field on the header of

an e-mail message. Unlike the Cc…. field which will display

the name of every one who’s name you stick in there, if you

put it in Bcc… the only name anyone will see is that of the

original recipient and their own. So don’t go thinking you

can send a note to the wife and a Bcc to the gal-friend

cause the little lady will only see her own name while the

lady friend will see both of them.

Beta -

Perhaps for the definition of this one, I should change

the name of my column to "Greek Speak" 'cause "Beta"

is the name of the second character in the Greek alphabet.

Which is why it figures prominently in a lot of Fraternity

and Sorority names like "Delta Beta Kappa" etc., which,

in the case of my old alma mater, sounds a lot more

sophisticated than "Drinka Lotta Beer." However, along

with its expertise in the alphabet game it can be an

adjective as in "Beta Test" or a noun, as in "Beta Tester"

which a lot of the characters on these panels are. But,

somewhere on this road to the technological revolution

it adopted the additional meaning of "an untested

prototype of software or in some cases, hardware"

whose testing will be done, by people like all of us who

don't work for the company, prior to its release to the

buying public. (Then they get stuck with all the bugs.)

One would think the company might give their beta testers

a free copy of the final release of the working software,

wouldn't one? Don't hold your breath.

Boolean -

This just means it pertains to logical values.

Logic is what computers are all about. Think Mr. Spock.

Boolean Search Parameters -

When search engines got so confusing

“Ole George Boole” figured out a system of using words

like AND, or, NOT, and XOR (whatever that means) to

classify, clarify, or eliminate various elements in searches,

thereby confusing the matter even more. To get even

they named it after him.

Browser -

Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, or whatever.

The choice is yours. It's one of them things geeks love

to argue about.....which one REALLY is better?

Byte –

is made up of 8 bits (in the old days, a dollar) One byte

holds the equivalent of one letter, a symbol $, or a

punctuation mark. 8 bits for a period isn’t much but

what’s a dollar worth today?

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

Cab Files -

If you “explore” the CD that Windows comes on you’ll

discover that the majority of the files on there look like

little file folders with stuff sticking out of them. They hold compressed files and you can’t just open them and look

at them, they have to be expanded to see what’s inside.

If you’re using Win98 and you want to see the contents

of Win98_04.cab you have to go to the command prompt

or a DOS prompt and enter the entire command line with

a “d” switch like so,

C:\ extract z:\win98\win98_04.cab /d,

or just download the latest version of WinZip.

It’ll open darned near anything including CAB files.

Cascading Style Sheet –

an HTML document format approved by the

World Wide Web Consortium (WWWC) Now aren’t

you glad you learned that.

Cc -

In the olden days BC (before computers) if you were

writing a letter to someone and wanted to send a copy to

a second person or keep one for yourself you had to

insert a sheet of carbon paper between two sheets of

paper, crank ‘em into the old Smith-Corona and type away.

This produced the original and a “carbon copy”

ergo: Cc… However in this modern age of technology

it might be more correct to call them “Courtesy Copies.”

CDO –

(Collaborative Data Objects) I’m going to admit that I

stole this definition right out of the textbooks. I did it for

the best reason in the world. THEY may know what the

heck they are talking about, I certainly don’t. I think this

one was written by a D.C. lawyer. “A programming

interface from Microsoft for accessing MAPI-based e-mail, calendaring and scheduling servers.

Originally called "OLE Messaging" and "Active Messaging,"

CDO wraps the Enhanced MAPI library into a

COM object that provides the ability to dynamically

create Web pages. CDO is server oriented whereas

MAPI has a client orientation.” You are welcome.
CDONTS –

Same durned thing as above only it is an SMTP version

instead of MAPI and it works with NT servers.

Chain letters –

If you have to ask, you deserve them. If you don’t

forward them to everyone you know within the next

ten minutes the sky will fall, Henny Penny will drown and

your hard drive will suffer a terminal melt down.

COA -

Y’know when you buy a piece of software from

Billionaire Billy there is always a little label which states

that you can tell it’s not pirated by checking the

various colors on the side of the box and the hologram

on the box and disk? Well there you have it, short and

sweet, COA is the acronym for “Certificate Of Authenticity”

Code –

Did you ever hear or see the term "ASCII" used?

It’s a code that computers use to represent characters

(don’t know what they have against characters)

Actually it doesn’t matter what code is used but programs

are written in code. Programmers write "source code"

after it’s compiled it becomes "object code" and when

it’s ready for you and me, it is called executable code.

COM –

a component in software that conforms to

MS’s Component Object Model, whatever that is.

Com Ports –

Communications Ports. They are what your modem

hooks up to to communicate with other computers, the

internet, and the blonde in the second cubicle down on

the other side.

Command Line -

Billy Boy isn’t about to tell you

(he made all those billions selling you a GUI) but,

Windows is a “Command Driven System” If you have

any doubts (Like you doubt the veracity of the old Skipper)

then all you have to do is hit <start> <run> and

type in something like “msconfig” or “sysedit” and

hit enter and watch what happens. GUI my aunt Fannies’

eyebrow, give it the right command and it will jump right

to it.

Compacting -

Just like with a trash compactor, when something gets

too big on your computer, compacting it can make it smaller. Things that can usually be compacted are email folders or

databases.

Configure -

applies to many things in life besides computers. It means

to mold, shape, or organize something in such a way that

it performs to your specifications. Believe me, my wife

has that one down Patt (little play on words there.)

(see msconfigure)

Copy -

see special backup definitions.

CSS –

well, it could be an acronym for Cascading Style Sheet

(see above) but it also means Content Scrambling System

which is a copy protection system for DVD discs.

Sometimes called "Hacker’s Challenge."

Crackers -

See Hackers, Crackers and Trolls

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

Database -

A huge collection of data, usually arranged in

fields, that you can draw lots of reports from based

on different criteria. Most of the ones you will

probably see are created in Microsoft Access.

Dbase -

dBASE was the first sophisticated database program

for personal computers. It has been widely used

since the early 1980s.

Debug –

"Boss Boss, debug, debug." NOT. It means getting

the kinks and errors out of a quirky program.

Deltree –

Hoo Boy, if you really want to have some fun, teach

the kids this one. Deltree is an old DOS command

which is still extremely handy if you happen to have

an old DOS laying around. At a DOS prompt, if you

type the “D” word followed by certain “switches”

which will remain unnamed, and you follow this

procedure by hitting the “Enter” key, you may, with

great alacrity, remove a Folder, all of the Sub-Folders

contained therein, and every file within every one

of those folders. Most kids can do this intuitively.

Dialog Box –

that box that pops up on your screen and gives

you all those choices you don't know how to answer.

They're all different and full of checkboxes,

dropdown lists and radio buttons and usually give

me a headache.

Diet Coke IV –

This was a new one on me until I read an e-mail

from one of the crew sent to our editor in chief the

other day. It would appear to be some type of

curious semi-orbit producing procedure best

achieved by the mainlining of the sugar-free,

caffeine-loaded version of a certain beverage

produced by a multi-national company noted for it’s advertising slogan, "The Pause that Refreshes."

Really?

Digispeak –

In this modern world of hyper-space,

hyper-speed, hyper-dynamics it can only make sense

to those of the Geek persuasion that ordinary,

every day, run of the mill words are simply not going

to cut it. SO? So we digitally abbreviate every

available expression in order to make it less

understandable to the proletariat.

(And to make it sound like we know something

they don’t.) It only follows, both logically and digitally,

that “by the way” becomes BTW,

“In My Humble Opinion” (or Honest Opinion) becomes

IMHO, and “I Wonder What The Devil Ever Made

Them Ask That” becomes IWWTDEMTAT.

It’s easy once you get the hang of it. IWWTDEMTAT?

DMI -

Is an acronym for Desktop Management Interface,

and the interface enables your software to collect

information about your particular computer set-up.

DMI is used to determine what software and

expansion boards are installed on your computer.

For those who are not familiar with the

"Tech Talk Term" Expansion Boards, they

include internal modems, video cards, sound cards,

in short, all those printed circuit boards which your motherboard never seems to have enough

PCI slots to accommodate.

DNS -

Domain Name System. A pretty straight definition

is, it is a software method of resolving your computer's location on your network or the internet.

The server (you’re a client) keeps a listing of

domain names and their corresponding IP addresses,

those numbers like 235.126.0.21, and when you

type in an address like

http://www.whoopeecushion.com

it runs a quick

check and takes you there.

Domain -

On the internet a domain is just a category for

registration. If you are out there in la-la land and

have all fourteen of your 2.5gig puters on a

LAN (look it up) it’s the group name all of those

computers call “Mommy” If she isn’t yours you

don’t get to play with the big boys.

DOS -

Disk Operating System. How does that grab you?

It was the first operating for the PC, and in spite of

what Wee Willie says, it is still the basis of the

Windows operating system. At the intro for

Windows XP I remarked to an MS Techie,

“I understand that DOS is now truly a thing of the

past.” He replied, “don’t you believe it, look deep

enough in XP, it’s still in there. It’s just harder to

find.” Nuff Said.

Drive Mapping –

Yeah Right. Look, y’all know how when you set up

a new puter and you stick in the new hard drive and

you divide it into 14 partitions and when you boot

up you discover that your system has named them

A&B for the floppies and C, D, E, F, G, etc., etc.,

ad infinitum? Well, Podner, in its purest form that

is “drive mapping.” The assigning of drive letters

to the drives. BUT, about 90% of the time when

you hear Geeks and other assorted Nerds

discussing drive mapping they are on a whole

nother tack. Chances are they are talking about

drives on computers on a network and their

conversation has to do with assigning a

different drive letter, like “Q” to their “C” drive

and the same letter (Q that is) to a different drive

on a different computer on the same darned network

so that each time you punch up “Q” on your

computer some sneaky stuff happens in the

background and what actually comes up on your

screen is the drive from the other machine.

Don’t ask me how it works, I’ve only tried it three

or four times and I still think the results were purely accidental.

DSL -

Digital Subscriber Line. Whether you realize it or

not, you’re only using half of that telephone line

that one of Ma Bell’s children charges you an arm

and a leg for. You are using two of the four wires

it contains. Now they have finally figured out how

to charge you through the nose for the other half

by hooking the other two up to a $200 modem

and your computer and calling it “Always On,

High Speed Access.” It does work.

Dword Value –

Computerlogically, I don’t know! In a Brooklynese

game of Anagrams it is what the total arithmetical

of any given word amounts to, as long as your

opponent didn’t get past the 4th grade at

Public School #29. Actually, it's a registry thing.

One of the registry things you shouldn't mess with if

you don't know what the words mean, I guess.

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

e-Book –

“Electronic Book” - Originally the e-Book was

a portable electronic device into which you

could download an entire book, or books, into,

depending upon the gadgets’ capacity, carry it

around with you and read its contents at

your leisure. Of course, it was about the

same size as a book, cost more than three or

four of the more costly late releases in the

hard back edition, and weighed just about the

same as a book. Far as I can see, the main

advantage, if any, was pushing a button

instead of turning a page. Hey, and it is

modern technology which sure beats the

heck out of impressing characters into a

clay tablet with a pointy stick.

e-Book Too (2) –

This, by any definition, is the true Electronic

Book. That other gadget is just a receptacle

for holding these. The electronic book is the

product of some individual’s mind. His intent

is to inform you. Admittedly, this desire might

indicate he thinks there’s something you

don’t know, would like to know, or need to

know. It’s probably none of his/her business

in the first place, although the fact remains it

is the recorded result of his/her research,

intelligence, and desire to impart knowledge.

Much time and effort is expended in writing

e-Books and, even though there is no

expenditure for agents, editors, publishers,

printers, or binderies, they do fall under the

heading of “The Printed Word.” To use

them one disposes of expendable funds.

That’s fancy literary talk for “pays good hard

earned cash for it.” In that spirit, they are

offered for sale. People buy them and

download them to their computers.

Most people save them to disk to ward off

dry rot and other computer maledictions

like a hard drive crash or accidentally

deleting the original download.

EDI-

(Electronic Data Interchange) The electronic communication of business transactions, such

as orders, confirmations and invoices, between organizations. Third parties provide

EDI services that enable organizations with

different equipment to connect. Although

interactive access may be a part of it, EDI implies

direct computer to computer transactions

into vendors' databases and ordering systems.

Embedded –

could be a piece of code or a macro embedded

in a document or a program embedded in ROM

or anything firmly implanted in something else.

Embedded System -

An "embedded system" is a specialized system that

is part of a larger system or computer. And, since that

doesn't really explain much, it is usually housed on a

single microprocessor board and the programs are

stored in ROM. Darned near anything you own that has

a digital interface, your watch, microwave, VCRs,

calculators, palms, even the tin lizzie

(car, for the youngsters) sitting in your driveway use

embedded systems. Some of them include an

operating system, but bunches are so specialized the

logic involved can be implemented as a single program.

In short, there's a system on a chip, you don't have to

know it's there, or how it works, in fact none of the

particulars involved. When it's working
right you push a button and it does its thing.

ESCD –

Short for Extended System Configuration Data,

a format for storing information about

Plug-and-Play (PnP) devices in the BIOS.

Windows and the BIOS access the ESCD

area each time you reboot your computer.

Note: I plagiarized this one directly from the

internet. The late Oscar LeVant, pianist and

humorist, once stated, “Plagiarism is the

most sincere form of theft.” So shoot me.

Export –

Colombia does a lot of it, exporting that is.

There is a basic similarity with computers but

it loses a lot in translation. Actually, it has to

do with saving a document or file from one

application into the format required by a different application. The U.S. Customs department has

nothing to do with it.

External Style Sheet –

External style sheets hold the settings for

margins, fonts, headers, tabs and stuff for

different documents. External obviously means

they are outside of something. I have no idea

how they got there.

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

Fdisk -

see special backup definitions

File extension –

those three characters following the "." at

the end of a file name. They can be .exe .jpg

.asv .mp3 darned near anything. Windows

knows what they mean, we don’t have to.

Firewall –

Much debated applications designed to

set up a “blockade” at the ports of your

computer. They keep out the bad guys.

That should be enough, but there’s more.

If you have a spy that managed to sneak

into your computer in the hopes that it might

send out all of your valuable information,

TS baby. A good firewall locks up the box

and neither the spy nor the info can get out.

Wanna be mean? Get Ad Aware and flush

that SOB.

Firmware –

It might sound like a conflict of interest here

but "Firmware" is "Software" that is written

into ROM, (Read Only Memory) and ROM

consists of the PROMS and EPROMS found

on the motherboard of your computer which

have programs and data recorded on their

chips. Those programs control the operation

of your computer. Actually I guess you could

say that "Firmware" is a combination of

hardware and software.

Folders –

on your hard disk they look like manila folders

except they are expandable and you store

stuff like files, applications, and those .jpgs

you don’t want the boss to see, in them.

Form –

Aw C’Mon. “Breathes there a man with soul

so dead who’s never turned his head and said,

“Man, look at the form on that.”” Now, if

your talking about computers, and we were

weren’t we, it is a page with lines, numbers,

check boxes, and all that kind of stuff that you

have to fill out or check True or False

Format -

see special backup definitions

Forum –

A group or gathering of individuals, geeks,

and other experts all with a single point of

interest. Did you know you became part of a

FORUM when you joined any of Yahoo’s

chat groups?

FQDN –

(Fully Qualified Domain Name) Without one of

which you ain’t never gonna see the light of day on

the internet. It’s really the whole domain name of a

computer on the internet. Actually the FDQN

consists of two elements, the host, that’s the

WWW. part and the "darnedifiknow.com", that’s

the domain name. Between the two of them they

supply enough info to provide an IP address.

That’s that 207.002.0.1 thingy that pops up every

now and then.
Frames -

Well, frames are a feature found in most

web browsers today although some of the

older browsers did not incorporate them.

The use of frames enables a web page to

be displayed in a separate scrollable window

on screen. Many web sites, like ours, offer

you the choice off using either frames or

a non-frames version of the site as an

accommodation to the user. If you'd like

to try them both go back to

http://personal-computer-tutor.com/ABC.htm

and in the left hand column. You will see the

option to use frames or no frames. Try both,

I did and I still don't know which I like best.

FTP –

File Transfer Protocol. FTP is a one way

communication with error correction. It sends

files faster but does not have all of the benefits

compared to lots of other protocols.