 A AFC: (Away from Computer) - A commonly used abbreviation on Usenet and in IRC. Signals that someone is not currently at the computer, but likely to return shortly (after paying for the pizza delivery)ADSL: (Asymmetric
Digital Subscriber Line) -- A method for moving data over regular
phone lines. An ADSL circuit is much faster than a regular phone
connection, and the wires coming into the subscriber's premises
are the same (copper) wires used for regular phone service. An
ADSL circuit must be configured to connect two specific locations,
similar to a leased line. Anonymous FTP: Using the FTP function of the Internet anonymously by not logging in with an actual, secret login ID and password. Often permitted by large, host computers who are willing to share openly some of the files on their system to outside users who otherwise would not be able to log in. Applet: A small Java
program that can be embedded, or placed in, an HTML page. Applets
differ from full-fledged Java applications in that they are not
allowed to access certain resources on the local computer, such as
files and serial devices (modems, printers, etc.), and are
prohibited from communicating with most other computers across a
network. The current rule is that an applet can only make an
Internet connection to the computer from which the applet was
sent. Archie: An ancient Internet search tool, not used much since way back in the good old days of 1994. It's an archive of filenames maintained at Internet FTP sites. Don't pine its passing, you didn't miss anything fun--the Web is much more fun. ARPANet: (Advanced
Research Projects Agency Network) -- The precursor to the
Internet. Developed in the late 60's and early 70's by the US
Department of Defense as an experiment in wide-area-networking
that would survive a nuclear war. ASCII: (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) -- This is the de facto world-wide standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the upper and lower-case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. There are 128 standard ASCII codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111. AU: (.au) - a common audio file format for UNIX systems. AVI: Audio/Video Interleaved - a common video file format (.avi). Video quality can be very good at smaller resolutions, but files tend to be rather large. B Backbone: A
high-speed line or series of connections that forms a major
pathway within a network. The term is relative as a backbone in a
small network will likely be much smaller than many non-backbone
lines in a large network. Bandwidth: The transmission capacity of the lines that carry the Internet's electronic traffic. Or how much data you can stuff through a connection. Think of a network as a water pipe - the higher the bandwidth (the larger the diameter of the pipe), the more data (water) can pass over the network (through the pipe). Historically, it's imposed severe limitations on the ability of the Internet to deliver all that we are demanding it deliver.See Also: 56k Line , Bps , Bit Baud: In common usage
the baud rate of a modem is how many bits it can send or receive
per second. Technically, baud is the number of times per second
that the carrier signal shifts value - for example a 1200
bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300 baud, but it moves 4
bits per baud (4 x 300 = 1200 bits per second). BBS: (Bulletin Board
System) -- A computerized meeting and announcement system that
allows people to carry on discussions, upload and download files,
and make announcements without the people being connected to the
computer at the same time. There are many thousands (millions?) of
BBS's around the world, most are very small, running on a single
IBM clone PC with 1 or 2 phone lines. Some are very large and the
line between a BBS and a system like CompuServe gets crossed at
some point, but it is not clearly drawn. Binhex: (BINary
HEXadecimal) -- A method for converting non-text files (non-ASCII)
into ASCII. This is needed because Internet email can only handle
ASCII. Bit: (Binary DigIT) --
A single digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 or a
zero. The smallest unit of computerized data. Bandwidth is usually
measured in bits-per-second. BITNET: (Because It's Time NETwork (or Because It's There NETwork)) -- A network of educational sites separate from the Internet, but email is freely exchanged between BITNET and the Internet. Listservs, the most popular form of email discussion groups, originated on BITNET. BITNET machines are usually mainframes running the VMS operating system, and the network is probably the only international network that is shrinking. Bps: (Bits-Per-Second)
-- A measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to
another. A 28.8 modem can move data at 28,800 bits per second. Bookmark: A pointer to a particular Web site. Within browsers, you can bookmark interesting pages so you can return to them easily. Browser: A Client
program (software) that is used to look at various kinds of
Internet resources on the WWW. BTW: (By The Way) -- A
shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum. Byte: A set of Bits
that represent a single character. Usually there are 8 Bits in a
Byte, sometimes more, depending on how the measurement is being
made. C Cache: A region of memory or the Hard Drive where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. Certificate Authority: An
issuer of Security Certificates used in SSL connections. Usually a CGI program is a small program that takes data from a web server and does something with it, like putting the content of a form into an email message, or turning the data into a database query. You can often see that a CGI program is being used by seeing "cgi-bin" in a URL, but not always. See Also: cgi-bin , Web The most common name of a directory on a web server in which CGI programs are stored. The "bin part of "cgi-bin" is a shorthand version of "binary" because once upon a time, most programs were referred to as "binaries" In real life, most programs found in cgi-bin directories are text files -- scripts that are executed by binaries located elsewhere on the same machine. See Also: CGI ClariNet: A commercial news service that provides tailored news reports via the Internet. You can access ClariNet news within Usenet newsgroups. There is a whole series of them, dedicated to a wide range of broad topics. In general, you can find them on news servers at clari.*. Client / Server: Computer
technology that separates computers and their users into two
categories: clients or servers. When you want information from a
computer on the Internet, you are a client. The computer that
delivers the information is the server. A server both stores
information and makes it available to any authorized client who
requests the information. You may hear this one frequently,
especially if someone says, "You can't contact us today
because our Web server is down." Depending on the type of Cookie used, and the Browser's settings, the Browser may accept or not accept the Cookie, and may save the Cookie for either a short time or a long time. Cookies might contain information such as login or registration information, online shopping cart information, user preferences, etc. When a Server receives a request from a Browser that includes a Cookie, the Server is able to use the information stored in the Cookie. For example, the Server might customize what is sent back to the user, or keep a log of particular user's requests. Cookies are usually set to expire after a predetermined amount of time and are usually saved in memory until the Browser software is closed down, at which time they may be saved to disk if their expire time has not been reached. Cookies do not read your hard drive and send your life story to the CIA, but they can be used to gather more information about a user than would be possible without them. See Also: Browser , Server Compressed: Data files available for download from the Internet are typically compacted in order to save server space and reduce transfer times. Typical file extensions for compressed files include zip (DOS/Windows) and tar (UNIX). CyberFrontier: Man's next frontier is Cyberspace (Trekkies will notice the punt). Also happens to be the name of a company with diverse products and services in the U.S., Australia, Southeast Asia - and beyond.See Also: Cyberspace Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk
was originally a cultural sub-genre of science fiction taking
place in a not-so-distant, dystopian, over-industrialized society.
The term grew out of the work of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
and has evolved into a cultural label encompassing many different
kinds of human, machine, and punk attitudes. It includes clothing
and lifestyle choices as well. Cyberspace: Term originated by author William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer the word Cyberspace is currently used to describe the whole range of information resources available through computer networks. Cybersex: As if you didn't knowSee Also: Immoral , Fun , 18+ D Dial In: An Internet account that can connect any stand-alone PC directly to the Internet [also called 'dial up']. The account is used by having a PC-based (most often, Windows-based) software application dial-in to an Internet service provider (ISP). The software connects with the ISP and establishes a TCP/IP link to the Internet that enables your software to access Internet information. The PC that accesses a dial-in connection needs either a modem to connect via a regular phone line or a terminal adapter (TA) to connect via an ISDN phone line.Discussion Group: A particular section within the USENET system typically, though not always, dedicated to a particular subject of interest. Also known as a newsgroup. Domain Name: The
unique name that identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always
have 2 or more parts, separated by dots. A Domain name is the
Internet's way of translating the IP address of a particular
computer into an easy to remember combination of words and
numbers. A given machine may have more than one Domain Name but a
given Domain Name points to only one machine. For example, the
domain names:
Download: The process of copying data file(s) from a remote computer to a local computer. When you copy a file from a computer on the Internet onto your computer, you are "downloading" that file. The opposite action is upload where a local file is copied to a server.
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