Personals Logo
Meet your Match! CLICK HERE to go to
Damm Coyote's Mating Den
A Proud Member of the One & Only Associate Network

Damm Coyote's

Glossary Of Terms

Backbone
The Main interconnects linking the Internet together. Generally very high-speed, T3 telephone lines that connect remote ends of networks and networks to one another; only service providers are connected to the Internet this way.
2
The high speed central network that connects and delivers data traffic between regional networks. The backbone system for the U.S. portion of the Internet is NSFNET, which is run by the National Science Foundation.

Background
The colour of the border around filled shapes, and the background colour or your screen.Sample backgrounds.

Background application
An application that is running but is not active. The application cannot receive user input.

Bandwidth
A measure of how much stuff can be stuffed through a transmission medium such as a phone line or network cable. Bandwidth is measured in baud or bits per second.
2
The range of transmission frequencies that a network can use. The greater the bandwidth, the greater the amount of data that can travel on the network at one time.

Banner
Information given to you when you log into or access a system.

Barfmail
Undelivered e-mail that is returned, mostly due to server or gateway error.

BASIC
Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Insturctional Code. A computer language invented at Dartmouth University.More Info

Baud
This is a measure of how much bandwidth a transmission medium has. "Level transitions per second", very very few people know what that means. Most people use Bits Per Second.

Baud rate
The speed at which information can be transferred through a COM (serial) port.

BBS
Bulletin Board System. access by remote users via modems for discussion, file downloads, and other BBS services.BBS.

Beta
A version of an application that is made available prior to the official release for the purposes of testing. Beware of using these applications.

Binary
Literally, binary files are flies formatted as a collection of 0s and 1s. Typically, the term "binary file" means that the file is formatted so that it can be read only by certain applications and must be encoded to be transferred correctly.

Binary file
A file containing information that is in machine-readable form; it can be read only by an application. In terminal, these files are not converted or translated during the transfer process.

Binary transfer
A method of transferring binary files to a remote computer.

BIOS
Basic Input/Output system. The part of an operating system that handles the communications between the computer and its peripherals. Often burned into read-only memory (ROM) chips.

BenHex
Macintosh files include a database called a resource fork. BenHex is a standard way of converting any Macintosh file, including the resource fork, into a single stream of bytes so that it can be transferred over the Internet.

Bit
The fundamental unit of computer information. Computers do all their work by manipulating a series of high and low electrical currents. A high current is represented by the digit 1 and a low current by the digit 0. These 1's and 0's or bits are used to represent absolutely everything that goes on inside your computer.

Bitmap
A method of storing graphics information in memory in which a bit devoted to each pixel (picture element) on screen indicates whether that pixel is on or off. A bit map contains a bit for each point or dot on a video display screen and allows for fine resolution because any point or pixel on-screen can be addressed. A greater number of bits can be used to describe each pixel's colour, intensity, and other display characteristics.
2)
An image stored as a pattern of dots

. Bit-spit
Any form of digital correspondence.

Bits per second (bps)
Another, more common, measure of bandwidth. Since it takes eight bits to describe a single character, a transmission medium with a bandwidth of , say, 8 bps would send data at the pathetically slow rate of one character per second. Bandwidth is more normally measured in Kilobits per seconds (Kbps-thousands of bits per second).

Block
A string of records, words, or characters formatted for technical or logical reasons and to be treated as an entity.

Body
The section of a Web document where you enter your text and tags.

Bookmarks
In a web browser, a list of your favorite Web pages, which you can set to return to any time. Bookmark is another name for anchor.

Boolean operator
Also called a logical operator. Used in programming to identify AND, OR, NOR, XOR, and NOT operations.

Boot
To cold or warm start your computer. Cold start turn the power switch on. Warm start push the reset button or press the Ctrl, Alt, and the Delete keys simultaneously.

BPS
See bits per second

BRI
Basic Rate Interface. A consumer grade ISDN line consisting of 264k.

Broadband
A term used to describe analog transmission. requires modems for connecting terminals and computers to the network. Using frequency division multiplexing, many different signals or sets of data can be transmitted simultaneously. The alternate transmission scheme is baseband, or digital, transmission.

Browse
To look through files and directories. Some dialog boxes have a browse button, which opens another dialog box that lists files and directories so that you can easily select the file you want.

Browser
The software you use to display and interact with a web page. Bear in mind that there are two kinds of browser: those that display only text and those that support graphics and other fun elements.

Buffer
A temporary storage place for information.

Bug
A problem with software or hardware that cause your computer to lockup, malfunction, or just crash.

Bulletin Board System
See BBS

Byte
Eight bits, or a single character.

Byte-Bonding
When computer users discuss things that nearby noncomputer users don't understand.

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 Main