Terms:
BBS:
An electronic message center. Most bulletin boards serve specific interest groups. They allow you to dial in with a modem, review messages left by others, and leave your own message if you want. Bulletin boards are a particularly good place to find free or inexpensive software products. In the United States alone, there are tens of thousands of BBSs.
Bookmark:
To mark a document or a specific place in a document for later retrieval. Nearly all Web browsers support a bookmarking feature that lets you save the address (URL) of a Web page so that you can easily re-visit the page at a later time.
Bot:
Short for robot, a computer program that runs automatically
Forum:
An online discussion group. Online services and bulletin board services (BBS's) provide a variety of forums, in which participants with common interests can exchange open messages. Forums are sometimes called newsgroups (in the Internet world) or conferences.
FTP:
Abbreviation of File Transfer Protocol, the protocol used on the Internet for sending files.
Hardware:
Refers to objects that you can actually touch, like disks, disk drives, display screens, keyboards, printers, boards, and chips. In contrast, software is untouchable. Software exists as ideas, concepts, and symbols, but it has no substance.
HTML:
Short for HyperText Markup Language, the authoring language used to create documents on the World Wide Web. HTML defines the structure and layout of a Web document by using a variety of tags and attributes.
HTTP:
Short for HyperText Transfer Protocol, the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. For example, when you enter a URL in your browser, this actually sends an HTTP command to the Web server directing it to fetch and transmit the requested Web page.
Listserv:
An automatic mailing list server developed by Eric Thomas for BITNET in 1986. When e-mail is addressed to a LISTSERV mailing list, it is automatically broadcast to everyone on the list. The result is similar to a newsgroup or forum, except that the messages are transmitted as e-mail and are therefore available only to individuals on the list.
Newbie:
Slang term for someone who is a new user on an online service, particularly the Internet.
Newsgroup:
Same as forum, an on-line discussion group. On the Internet, there are literally thousands of newsgroups covering every conceivable interest. To view and post messages to a newsgroup, you need a news reader, a program that runs on your computer and connects you to a news server on the Internet.
Software:
Computer instructions or data. Anything that can be stored electronically is software. The storage devices and display devices are hardware. The terms software and hardware are used as both nouns and adjectives. For example, you can say: "The problem lies in the software," meaning that there is a problem with the program or data, not with the computer itself. You can also say: "It's a software problem."
TCP/IP:
Abbreviation for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, the suite of communications protocols used to connect hosts on the Internet. TCP/IP uses several protocols, the two main ones being TCP and IP. TCP/IP is built into the UNIX operating system and is used by the Internet, making it the de facto standard for transmitting data over networks. Even network operating systems that have their own protocols, such as Netware, also support TCP/IP.
URL:
Abbreviation of Uniform Resource Locator, the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web. the first part of the address indicates what protocol to use, and the second part specifies the IP address or the domain name where the resource is located.
WWW:
A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a script called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots.
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