Terms
A
Abacus
an instrument for performing calculations by sliding counters along rods or in grooves.
Aberrant
a person whose behavior departs substantially from the standard.
B
Basic input/output system
a collection of programs that has the capabiltity of communicating with perifpheral devices such as keyboards, disk drives, printer, and other I/O devices. Most importantly, it performs the loading of the operating system into RAM and turns the control of the computer over to it.
C
Command Line Interface
communications are give to the computer by typing commands on the keyboard.
D
DSL
A method for digitally moving data over regular phone lines.
E
Ethernet
A very common method of networking computers in a LAN.
F
Fire Wall
A Combination of hardware and software that separates a Network into two or more parts for security purposes
.
G
Gigabyte
1000 or 1024 Megabytes, depepending on who is measuring
HTML
The coding language used to create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web. HTMl looks a lot like old-fashioned typesetting code, where ou surround a block of text with codes that indicate how it shoudl appear.
I
Information
material used to further explain somethingl
J
Java
Java is a netwrok-friendly programming language invented by Sum Mictrosystems.
Kilobyte A thousand bytes. Actually, usually 1024 (210) bytes.
L
LAN
(Local Area Network) A computer network limited to the immediate area, usually the same building or floor of a building.
M
Main Frame Computer
obsolete and deal with dumb terminals, all data and computing occurrring at central unit
N
Network
Any time you connect two or more computer together so that they can share resources, you have a computer network. Connect two or more networks together and you have an internet.
O
Open-Source Software
The program has copies of the original source code available so that changes can be made
P
Partitioning Process of separating the hard drive into independent parts, which individually act as separate hard drives.
R
Router
A special-purpose computer (or software package) that handles the connection between 2 or more Packet-Switched networkds. Routers spend al their time looking at the source and destination addresses of the packets passing throught them and deciding wich rout to send them on.
S
System
a group of different objects working together to achieve a common goal.
T
Technology
anything in life that is made to make a person's life easier
W
Warm boot
Booting up the computer when the power is originally turned on -a command is give to put a fresh copy of the operating system into RAM.
