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LAST UPDATE: Wednesday, 06-Sep-2000 01:53:12 EDT
You may also want to check out
for more terms and definitions. Yet more can be found (along with
oodles of geek-culture in-jokes) in the
This is one of the goals of the structured programing
On the user-level, this refers to structuring a
program in such a way that the user is unaware (and,
more importantly, does not need to be aware)
of how things work underneath it all.
On the program-level, this refers to structuring
sections of code so that they are self-contained and
do not depend on other chunks. In this way, an
interface to your chunk can be specified for the use
of other programmers and they will never need to
worry about the actual implementation. As a matter
of fact, the implementation can change (to something
more efficient, say) while the interface remains
box (aka machine):
Colloquialism for a (desktop) computer. "I couldn't get Ghostview
to start on my machine, so they told me to go try one of the Linux
McGill's Computing Centre is responsible for much
of McGill's computing
and communications resources, including DAS.
McGill University Computing Centre
This term refers to the level "packaging" of code and is
all the rage thanks to the object-oriented paradigm. The
idea is to reduce coupling between unrelated chunks of
code to the point that unrelated chunks of code actually
become independent of each other.
An example of
badly-componentized code would be an application that
mixes its GUI interface code with its algorithmic code.
An example of well-componentized code would be an
application that separates all of its key functionality
into separate entities. X is an example of good
componentization as the actions of window management are
separate from the interface.
DAS (Dial-up Access Services) is McGill's own
ISP. It provides
special rates for students and staff; for details, contact
McGill University DAS (Dial-up Access Services
Email stands for "electronic mail" and is exactly that - a
message-exchanging mechanism operating over computer networks.
These days, email really refers to Internet-based
sent to local SOCS
users is no different from email sent to someone
halfway across the world.
It can be specified in URLs via the "mailto"
is a programming environment in addition to an operating
system and, like any other programming environment, it has variables.
Environment variables are those variables which, as the name implies,
have direct impact on your computing environment. For example, the
PATH environment variable tells your
where to look for executable
programs, and the EDITOR environment variable tells other programs which
editor you prefer to use.
Gopher was the most popular document retrieval
system around until the web came along. It
provides an interface to a menu of documents such as a
text file, image, or sound clip. Additionally, some
sites provide search capabilities.
To open a gopher location, you need a gopher client.
Luckily, most web browsers support the gopher protocol.
You can just enter the gopher:// location as you would any
Individual computers are often referred to as hosts
especially if the computer is on a network. This can be seen, for
example, in the hostname command and the .rhosts (remote
The HyperText Markup Language
is the language of webpages. It consists of a
format derived from SGML that
uses special embedded control "tags" to
control the display of its content.
URLs are embedded
via HTML, providing the resources that comprise a
The HyperText Transfer
Protocol is the transfer
used for the
transfer of webpages and their associated media over the
http resources can be specified in a
The act of reducing a window or other non-icon GUI object
into an icon (a small representational image) representing
IMAP is an improvement of
which lets the user manipulate mail on the
server so that
they don't need to download it (though that remains an
is moving to IMAP as the standard means of accessing
mail because it is generally more secure; others will gradually
be phased out.
Generically speaking, an "internet" is the term used to
describe any set of interconnected computer networks
(hence the term "internet"). Internets of all shapes and
sizes have been around for a long time.
The Internet is not the World Wide Web.
"The Internet" as simply the current largest example of an
Resources are specified via URLs.
ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. ISPs are companies that sell
Internet access, usually payable on a monthly or usage basis.
Linux is a free multi-user multi-tasking UNIX-like
operating system that was originally developed as a "UNIX
for PCs". It has since developed sufficiently into its
own identity as a unique flavour of Unix, and it
is available on more than just the Intel x86 platform.
The Linux Home Page at Linux Online
This term is applied to any application or environment in
which events or data originating in the network appear
to the user the same as those on the local machine.
In other words, this is a description of just how
well-abstracted things are from the user's point of
view, on the level of underlying networking and networking
PIN generically refers to a Personal Identification Number. You may
have many PINs that act as passcodes for different services; the only
SOCS-specific one of
note is for after hours access.
POP is a mechanism for allowing people to download mail from the
server to which it is delivered. It is convenient in that you can
read the mail at home without having to stay online, but this means
that either you have two sets of mail folders to try and maintain,
or you can only access your mail in one place.
This is a term used to describe the likelihood for code to
work on more than one platform. The code may or may not
require recompilation, depending on the context.
example, one might say that ANSI C code is highly portable,
meaning that it is easy to recompile a program written in
ANSI C for virtually any platform. On the other hand,
saying that a Java program is portable would probably mean
that it avoided proprietary method calls, libraries, and
native methods, since the language itself is
Generally speaking, a protocol consists of a set of rules
or a schema describing a method of data transmission.
Most of the time, it refers to data transmission over a
Under Unix, this is the account name of the
superuser that can do
anything, being able to override all file permissions. Generally,
system administrators are said to have "root access". This means that
they have access to the root account and can perform the tasks that
require the freedom that root provides.
root also refers to the the top-most directory (symbolically referred
to as '/') in a filesystem. It should be clear from the context which
meaning of root is intended.
"root"'s third meaning is relevant in the context of X-Windows, when it refers
to the background window (i.e.: the "desktop").
A computer which performs a particular role for other computers or
users. It may provide networked storage (file server), fast
processor(s) (compute server), or other more specialized services like
mail or web. Most servers actually have multiple roles and provide
several services to their networks.
The Standard Generalized Markup
Language formed the basis for
language of webpages.
As the name implies, it is many times more general than
HTML and is
consequently many times more powerful. A great advantage
of SGML's generality is that it can produce document in
multiple formats, all from the same source page.
The shell is a generic term for anything which passes commands to
something else. Typically, it refers to the command-line interpreter
which reads your keystrokes and interprets them as instructions for the
operating system. In
you are not forced to use a specific
command-line interpreter and are encouraged to find one that fits your
(McGill's) School of Computer Science.
Sun's name for recent versions of SunOS. Generally refers to
SunOS 5.0 and greater. Officially, Sun considers SunOS 4.x to be
Solaris 1.x, and SunOS 5.x (the current crop) to be Solaris 2.x.
So, SunOS 5.7 = Solaris 2.7, or (in a further thrilling plot twist)
simply Solaris 7. Most
SOCS compute servers
currently run recent versions of Solaris.
Unsolicited email or news messages; electronic junk mail.
necessarily commercial in nature, it's generally despised
in any form by
people that don't actually produce it themselves.
SOCS is working at
reducing the volume of local spamming.
One who sends spam.
The act of sending spam.
Sun Microsystems' name for their variant of the Unix operating
system. Has risen since its appearance in the early '80s to become
the world's most popular commercial flavour of Unix. Recent
releases go by the name Solaris, so SunOS has come to refer to
older versions (4.x and below).
The account which can "do anything"; generally reserved
for system adminstrators. Under
account is called root.
teaching & research:
Every machine on the
computer network can be classified as
belonging to one or the other of these two categories.
Undergraduates are generally confined to the teaching system, whereas
graduate students have access to one or the other or both, depending
on their needs.
A monitor and keyboard connected to a
which allows you to work
on it. Note that this is not a computer, but simply an interface to a
computer that's not usually visible (assuming it's even located in the
these are sometimes referred to as "3151"s because the
particular type of terminals available are
A program which emulates the protocol used by a dumb
connect to a server. Common
terminal emulators are vt100 and tn3270 terminal
This is an old protocol that is used to connect to remote
IBM mainframes. It is currently in use by InfoMcGill
(which is now also accessible via gopher) and the
now-defunct musica and musicb services.
You can use various terminal
emulators to connect to InfoMcGill via the tn3270
protocol, if you don't like gopher. You can
"HostExplorer" and other similar software from CC. Netscape's
"Professional" version of their Communicator suite also
features "Netscape IBM Host On-Demand", which has tn3270
emulation support. Under Unix, you can use
tn3270 or x3270.
By analogy with the famous story from the Iliad, a Trojan horse is a
program which appears innocuous but has a more sinister function. For
example, someone who had access to your account could change your
environment such that when you typed 'ls' to get a list of files, it
actually removed them, or copied them to a directory where that other
user could access them.
UNIX (note capitalization) is a trademarked term that refers to the
multi-user multi-tasking operating system developed in 1969 by Ken
Thompson and co-authored by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs.
We use the term "Unix" (plural: Unices) to mean "UNIX or UNIX-like
operating system" since there now exist many variations on the
original UNIX. At SOCS,
you may encounter these Unices: SunOS, Solaris, Linux,
Irix, AIX, and Mach. Even Windows NT has Unix at its core (supposedly
employing a Mach microkernel), but it is sufficiently removed from this
origin to not warrant inclusion on this list. The upcoming
Macintosh OS X uses a Mach kernel as well.
It is not feasible for system staff to maintain all the software that is
available. If you compile a program you downloaded off the net and it
doesn't work, they won't usually try and figure out why.
Some software that is installed on the computers is also designated
unsupported. This means that although it is available,
staff has decided not to provide any help with it.
The Uniform Resource Locator
describes a standard scheme for describing resources on
the Internet. Example resources are files, email
addresses, and newsgroups.
URLs are characterized by a short acronym
for the type of transfer protocol, followed by something
which uniquely identifies the resource. In the case of
webpages, for example, the transfer protocol is
a sample identification specification would be
"www.cs.mcgill.ca". Put together, this gives the URL
Standard supported schemes/protocols are
This refers to the component of
which controls the look and feel of
your windows' interface, as well as what kind of window
manipulations are possible. Besides being able to choose
from among many different window managers, most window
managers are themselves extremely configurable, yielding
even further flexibility. By analogy, a window manager
is to X
is to the command-line interface.
A fast computer which sits on someone's desk. A workstation is the
term most people use to distinguish between a Toy (something running
Windows or worse) and a Computer. Originally used only for high-end
machines, it is now being applied to PCs as well.
What You See Is What
You Get -- typically, when referring to an
editor, the text displayed is ready-formatted, rather than
in raw typesetting language.
The World-Wide Web (or simply Web or WWW) is not the Internet.
The Web employs the
http protocol is
nothing more than another distributed information
retrieval system. It has, however, become the most
popular such system in a relatively short time.
X, X11, or X11R6 is the short name for the the X Window
System. The numbers following the "X" refer to
release/version numbers. X is a windowing system for
portability, network-transparency, and componentization.