|
A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M|N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z|#
Active matrix display :
Laptop display screen using TFT transistors to activate
individually each LCD pixel. By controlling the light passage
through each pixel, this display type offers a permanent, well
contrasted and fast display, contrarily to other LCD displays.
In fact the image is even better than with CRTs, because the
image is permanent instead of being refreshed continuously.
ADN :
(Advanced Digital Network) Usually refers to a 56Kbps
leased-line.
ADSL :
(Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) A DSL line where
the upload speed is different from the download speed. Usually
the download speed is much greater.
ANSI :
American National Standards Institute. In the United States,
ANSI serves as a quasi-national standards organization. It
provides "area charters" for groups to write and develop
standards in specific fields. These groups include the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and
Electronic Industries Association (EIA).
APM :
Automated Power Management. Series of techniques used to
reduce the power consumption, especially on portable
computers, in order to lengthen their autonomy.
Applet :
A small Java program that can be embedded 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 common rule is that
an applet can only make an Internet connection to the computer
from which the applet was sent.
API :
Application Programming Interface. The formally defined
programming language interface between a program provided by a
vendor and its user. APIs, not products, are strategic. They
are the important component of any software product. There are
no "strategic" software products, only strategic interfaces.
IBM's Systems Application Architecture, for example, is not a
product grouping, but a collection of APIs.
Application Server :
Server software that manages one or more other pieces
of software in a way that makes the managed software available
over a network, usually to a Web server. By having a
piece of software manage other software packages it is
possible to use resources like memory and database access more
efficiently than if each of the managed packages responded
directly to requests.
Architecture :
Structure of a part or the entire computer system. Combination
of hardware and software linking systems across a network.
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 to connect together computers that were
each running different system so that people at one location
could use computing resources from another location.
ASCII :
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard
table of seven-bit designations for digital representation of
upper-and lower-case Roman letters, numbers , and special
control characters in teletype, computer, and word processor
systems. ASCII is used for alphanumeric communication by
everyone except IBM, whose own similar code is called EBCDIC.
Since most computer systems use a full byte to send an ASCII
character, many hardware and software companies have made
their own non-standard and mutually incompatible extensions of
the official ASCII 128 character set to 256-character set.
Asynchronous :
Characterized by not having a constant time interval between
successive bits, characters or events. Transmission generally
uses one start and one stop bit for character element
synchronization (often called start-stop transmission).
ATM :
Asynchronous Transfer Mode. A wide-area network technology ; a
transfer mode for switching and transmission that efficiently
and flexibly organizes information into cells. It is
asynchronous in the sense that the recurrence of cells depends
on the required or instantaneous bit rate. Thus, empty cells
do not go unutilized when data is waiting. ATM's powerful
flexibility lies in its ability to provide a high-capacity,
low-latency switching fabric---for all types of information,
including data, video, image and voice --- that is protocol ,
speed and distance independent. Of the plethora of benefits
ATM will accrue to its users, probably the most significant is
that it represents an enduring, architectural approach due to
its inherent scalability. It scales well from small to large
systems, from very low to very high transmission speeds (more
than 100 Mbps), and from local-area, through
metropolitan-area, to wide-area networking environments. This
promising technology is not anticipated to be widely used
until 1998.
AT&T :
US telecom operator.
Authentication Service : A mechanism, analogous to the use of
passwords on time-sharing systems, for the secure
authentication of the identity of network by servers, and vice
versa, without presuming the operating system integrity of
either (e.g., Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Kerberos).
Atom :
An evolving protocol for syndication and sharing of content.
Atom is being developed as a successor to and improvement over
RSS and is more complex than RSS while offering support
for additional features such digital signatures, geographic
location of author, possibly security/encryption, licensing,
etc.
Like RSS, Atom is an XML-based specification.
AUI :
Interface type between a computer and the LAN.
AUTOEXEC.BAT :
-
In a
DOS system, set of commands executed at each system
initialization (either after power-on or after pressing
Control+Alt+Del). This file is restricted to the use of the
system administrator.
-
In a
PMF system, the AUTOUSER.BAT, executed immediately after the
AUTOEXEC.BAT, can be accessed and modified by the user.
AUTOUSER.BAT
: In a PMF system, set of commands accessible by the user in
lieu of AUTOEXEC.BAT.
AZERTY :
Same as QWERTY for a French-style keyboard. |
