32 is 2⁵

A Unix tool used to work on file that are out of date.

Apache is the most well known Open Source Web Server.

In Web Technology, an Atom is a feed that is used to inform listeners of changes (new pages) from different websites.

Sound emitted by your computer is in general called "the audio."

BASIC is an accronym and stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. In other words, a language that anyone can easily learn. Of course, modern versions of BASIC (specifically VB, VBA, Visual BASIC) are quite advanced

Author of Fox Trot comic strips and books. His website

The person who created Microsoft with a few friends. Multi-billionaire, he lives in Richmont Washington and has been the CEO of Microsoft for a very long time. He's now just a Chairman.

Basic Input/Output System--the code in a microchip that resides in your computer and is used to start it (boot your hard drive, CD, Flash device, etc.)

Programming language based on the C language adding object features to the language.

The Unix C compiler. This is an old language that started the frenzy of advanced C, C++ and C# languages. Many other languages are also based on C such as PHP, Java and Javascript.

Common Gateway Interface--Really, just a way to run a program on a server to generate a dynamic page. It can be in any language.

Function used to change the display settings under MS-Windows.

cl is the C and C++ compiler of Microsoft. This is the default compiler used by Visual Studio when compiling C or C++ files.

Central Processing Unit--what actually enables a computer to do things. The most well known are the Intel and AMD processors, although there are thousands of them.

Unix daemon used to run background tasks at specified intervals. For instance, once a day, you can rename your log files with .1, .2, .3, etc. and compress them for archival.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. The sheets are used to describe the display of your HTML data. It is primarily used in Browsers, although some Graphical Interfaces are starting to make use of basic properties of the CSS. The basics are quite similar to the X11 resources.

A Linux distribution borned in Germany. Debian is well known for not accepting any software that have a "dodge" license. They will always make sure that the license is 100% like GPL, BSD, MIT, etc. an Open Source license.

When one of the early computers stopped working, it felt like the program was wrong. The fact was that a bug was crowling inside and generating electrical problems. Once the bug was removed and the computer fixed, the program worked again. Since then, a problem in a computer program is called a bug. The word de-bug means removing the bugs from the software program.

Most Database systems offer a number type called DECIMAL. In general, it represents a fixed integer number with a set number of digits on the left side of the decimal point and a set of digits after the decimal point. Some database system will use floating points instead. Commonly used synonyms are MONEY and CURRENCY.

Dynamic Link Library--the extension and name used for dynamically loaded libraries under MS-Windows.

Database driven CMS running using PHP.

This term is a test with the « and » quotes around a name.

The dump command, under a Unix system, is used to dump the entire file system to another device. By default, the dump output device is a tape device (/dev/tape). Now a day, however, it is often used with other devices such as another file system (from one hard drive to another.)

Other systems use that same keyword. It is particularly the case of database systems. For instance, the PostgreSQL database has a pg_dump command.

The opposite command is restore. That command is used to get the data from the output device and put it back on your hard drive.

Enhanced Dynamic Link Library--an enhanced dynamic linker that simulates the behavior of the Linux and other Unix linkers by offering a way for libraries to link back inside the main executable. See the EDLL website for more information.

Embedded software is a reference to software written to work in a piece of hardware equipment. At first, this was code written directly for a specialized processor such as an FPGA or a DSP. Today, regular computers will be used for applications such as a medical device or a kiosk and it is also called embedded software, even though these just are desktop applications...

The FAT (File Allocation Table) file system has its origins in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was the file system supported by the Microsoft MS-DOS operating system. It was originally developed as a simple file system suitable for floppy disk drives less than 500K in size. Over time it has been enhanced to support larger and larger media. Currently there are three FAT file system types: FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. The basic difference in these FAT sub types, and the reason for the names, is the size, in bits, of the entries in the actual FAT structure on the disk. There are 12 bits in a FAT12 FAT entry, 16 bits in a FAT16 FAT entry and 32 bits in a FAT32 FAT entry.

Favorite Icon was first created by Microsoft. Like many other website features, Internet Explorer expects their favicon.ico file in the root of your website. FireFox and other browsers properly support the link tag named shortcut icon.

Javascript based text editor offering features similar to MS-Word and other such text editors.

Linux system based on the now discontinued free RedHat distribution. Previously called FedoraCore.

Name of a Walt Disney character used for a version of Ubuntu.

First In, First Out--This is another way to speak of a pipe or ring buffer. On one side, there is a generator that pushes data in and on the other side you have another program that reads the data sent by the generator. The data comes out in the same order it was pushed in. Usually the data are bytes, but it should be a short, long or even a complete event or object.

float is a type in most software languages referencing an IEEE floating point number. These numbers are generally defined on 32 or 64 bits with three parts: a sign, an exponent and a mantissa. There is also a bias which is not saved in the number. The sign is 0 (positive) or 1 (negative). This means you have a representation of: +0.0 and -0.0. The exponent is about 1/6th the total size in bits. The bias is added/subtracted from the exponent. In the end, it is a signed power of 2 exponent (i.e. exercises a shift on the mantissa.) The mantissa forms the current number.

The bottom of a page, generally something that appears on all the pages such as the current page number, total number of pages, date when it was printed, and the name of the company.

A comic strip and books by Bill Armend. More info about Bill Armend.

A Unix operating system created by the University of Berkeley.

Giga bytes--these days, the common measure for memory and disk space. It changed in the last 20 years from Kb (Kilo bytes) to Mb (Mega bytes) and to Gb. With disks, we are close to Tb (Tera bytes) and some people talk about Pb (Peta bytes).

A Unix tool used to work on files that are out of date by the GNU Free Software Foundation.

GRand Unified Bootloader by GNU, used to boot Linux and other operating systems on any PC.

A GUID is a Globally Unique IDentifier. It is used by objects that need to run on any computer in the whole entire world. It is very likely that, once in a while, two people will generate the exact same GUID, although quite unlikely. Each computer has a network card now and that card serial number is often used as a starting point to define GUID on that computer. GUID were invented by Microsoft for their operating system.

A hard drive is a device that save a large quantity of data for later recollection.

Most hard drives today use a magnetic system to save the data. However, those do get really hot and tend to break easily because they use a mechanical head (after 4 to 5 years.) Yet, they have an incredible capacity with drives that can hold as much as 2Tb.

New modern drives use flash technology. This is like your USB thumb drive. It does not get hot, it is silent, it has much faster read access (no head to move.) It has two drawback: (1) it has a rather slow write and (2) the capacity is still quite small (at time of writing we are starting to get 128Gb drives...) The price is also much higher, but if you consider that these drives will probably last you twice as long as the magnetic drives and you won't need extraneous cooling systems, overall, it probably still worth it.

Name of a Walt Disney character used for a version of Ubuntu.

Inter-Network. The Internet was created at a University to attempt to connect computers between each others from "far away places" (i.e. two buildings in the same University). The main concept was to create a set of protocols to make the systems work. Namely, the SMTP, FTP and TELNET. Now we have many others such as the well known HTTP, which is based on the TELNET concept.

Internet Explorer is the browser offered by Microsoft to browse your file system and the Internet. It is based on the old free software called Mosaic. Now it is borrowing parts of other free software such as Konqueror. It first used Visual Basic as a language, now it supports Javascript very well too. It was a great browser in competition with Netscape 5.x from the start (trying to undermine the company named Netscape.)

An SQL keyword used right before the name of a table where data is to be inserted. It is used with the INSERT and the SELECT keywords.

Name of a Walt Disney character used for a version of Ubuntu.

The Visual Basic function to check whether a value is set to Null. The PHP equivalent is is_null().

In computing, a language is a lexicon and grammar enabling a programmer to write software. There are interpreted and compiled languages. When compiling the computer transform the instructions of a program into instructions that the processor can execute natively.

Linux is a free POSIX Unix operating system first created by Linus Torvalis. Now millions participate in improving Linux. And for those who are not sure how to pronounce Linux, there is a sound file from Linus.

The term logo usually references a small image or icon used to represent a business or product. In computing, there is also the LOGO language, a simplified version of the lisp language, if I may.

The new system for Macintosh computers. This is based on FreeBSD, a Unix platform.

Made to Order Software is my company. m2osw for short. We offer many different types of software including some for Drupal (the CMS used for this very site.)

In the computer world, menus are sets of items that generate an action when activated.

It is used in CUI, GUI and the Internet.

Microsoft Developer Network, a website, many documentations, all for developers on Microsoft Windows.

A special folder automatically defined on the Microsoft Operating System. It includes the current user documents. In principal, it makes sense: each user will get a different folder, of course, Unix has a better solution that does not require any special handling to access the user data. When the user logs in, he is in his document folder!

In computing, nested means an item defined inside another. It is most often used for loops, a loop can be declared inside another. The one inside is called the nested loop. In particular, two loops can be defined one after another or one inside the other. There is no other way to declare a loop.

In programming there are two not operators. One is the logical not that transforms TRUE into FALSE and vice versa. The other transforms bits from 0 to 1 and vice versa. not is also used in documentation with a very specific meaning. Often, the accompagnying verb defines the meaning with more details (i.e. MUST NOT and SHOULD NOT.)

Open DataBase Connectivity. A driver specification written so as to allow users to operate many different types of database backends (servers) without having to change their code. True in theory, but since many database backend understand a somewhat different SQL language, it does not really work that well. The QODBC specification was written by Microsoft.

List of the operating systems mentioned on our site.

Capital of France.

Sectors on a storage device. All storage devices are not partitions. For instance, a CD is written as one long strip. All others have a start and end sector that define the partition boundaries.

An online credit card processor that anyone, including individuals, can use to get paid. Often viewed as expensive though.

In networking, a proxy is an intermediate network connection used to hide a user or computer. Most large companies use multiple proxies to hide all of their different intranets. Technically, when using a proxy you actually send all your network data to that other computer and that computer is in charge of sending that data outside your organization. Very large companies generally have multiple levels of proxies.

Redundant Array of Independent Disks most often used to have your data duplicated between multiple disks for safety and fast access.

Random Access Memory. Everyone with a computer uses a lot of RAM to run their processes. This is true of any electronic device with some dynamic capabilities (like your cell phone, pocket calculator, watch with calculator, etc.)

RedHat is a Linux distribution. There was a free version before that has now be renamed Fedora (first FedoraCore). RedHat still offers Server Class Linux distributions. Note that Linus Torvalis is working for RedHat.

Secure Socket Layer, this is a protocol used to transmit secure data between two computers. Both computers will first agree on an encryption secret code, then all the data sent back and forth will be encoded using that code. In order to make it secure, you generate two set of numbers (called keys) one that is public and one that is private. The public key sole purpose is to encrypt the data. The private key sole purpose is to decrypt the data.

Unix command line function to switch to super user mode. This function works on most system as long as the super user has a password. Otherwise, see sudo instead.

A set of tools to check the internals of the Microsoft Windows system. Some of these tools peek and poke directly in totally undefined kernel objects. Microsoft aquired SysInternals in 2006 from Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell who are the original authors and started their work in 1996.

An Operating System that works. All the specifications are free and Linux, AIX, HP-UX, SunOS, Solaris, IRIX are examples of a Unix implementation.

Abbreviation of Visual BASIC. See also VBA.

A module Drupal that let people define lists of nodes, blocks, feeds, and whatever other data available in your Drupal installation.

Very Secure File Transfer Protocol Daemon, an FTP server that allows people to transfer data between computers. It is marked as very secure, at least it is as secure as an FTP server can be (although there has been several security advisories for this tool...)

Remember that an FTP transfer is rarely using an encrypted pipe (it is possible to use kerberos and SSL to really secure the data transmission) and also because it uses a data stream opened dynamically, it is possible for hackers to spoof a data connection.