GeekSpeak M to R

| M | N | O | P | Q | R |

M

MAC Address – Doesn’t have a thing to do with any of the things that fell from the Apple ® family tree. It is actually a special serial number burned into your Ethernet or Token Ring adapters and it identifies your network card from all others out there. See OUI  and MAC layer.

MAC Layer - Media Access Control layer. Sound like a double decker Apple ® pie?  No way José.  It controls access to the physical transmission medium on your LAN. It’s built into your network adapter and has a unique serial number that identifies each NIC (Network Interface Card)

Macro – a defined group of keystrokes that produce a desired action, like hitting "Ctrl A" highlights everything on the page just before you accidentally delete it.

Macro Recorder – Linda, the Boss Lady gave me this one, "Macro recorder is the gizmo used by the Office programs that records the stuff you do while you are doing it, so you can do it again with one click of a button." Like a mini Big Brother Linda?

Male Chauvinist –  Cap’n Patt

Malware - Mal-Ware is software of a dubious nature, designed only for the purpose of destroying both your peace of mind and your computer. Into those categories fall such things as Worms, Trojans, Back doors, Virususseseses, or Virii if you prefer, and all manner of tracking software (adware) that tracks your keyboard meanderings and sends them back to those pestiferous proprietors of particularly persistent Pop-Ups.

Mapi – “Messaging Application Programming Interface.” There’s a mouthful for you. All that to say it’s a Windows system which allows Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, and all those others to distribute mail. If an application is mapi-enabled it can share e-mail messages with all the rest of the mapi bunch out there.

Mapped drive - a network drive that you assigned a letter to so it shows up in My Computer with your C: drive.  Just so C: doesn't get lonely. 

Mapped  drive letter – On a network, a mapped drive letter refers to a remote drive, one on another computer you can access from yours. You can assign a drive letter of your choice, kinda like an alias, to a mapped drive.  

Mapping - A little like plotting a course at sea, on your network you choose a destination, a drive on a remote net computer, or your own, assign a new name (or letter) to it and a specific directory on it and go for it.  Truth is, it’s a little more complicated than that but you knew it would be.

.mdb – This is a file extension.  It tells us this is a database created in a multidimensional database, like Microsoft Access.

Megabyte - One million bytes, or more precisely 1,048,576 bytes, even Bill Gates isn’t sure.

Memory Addresses – Picture your memory as 128 (or whatever number you have) storage boxes. Divide those boxes into little sections the size of one byte, then assign a starting and ending number to each of those bytes, numbers like, 01F0 – 01F7 and you’ve just assigned a memory address. Programmers use them to assign memory locations to a particular part of a program.

Meta Tag –  An HTML tag that carries the information pertaining to a web page. That’s what the book said and I’ll darned well stick with it. (Actually I’m stuck with it.)

Microsoft SQL Server – Microsoft's high-end client/server database and a key component in its BackOffice suite of server products. SQL Server was originally developed by Sybase and also sold by Microsoft for OS/2 and NT.  Let’s hear it for Uncle Bill.

MIME – One definition, “A white faced character who can say more with the wave of his hand and the tilt of his head than either of us can with a good dictionary.”  From a purely technical standpoint, without MIME you couldn’t send and receive rich text mail. That’s the kind of mail that you can format, use different fonts in, and change colors. Anytime you see, pictures and formatting in your mail without opening an attachment, old MIME is doing its silent thing in the background.

Module - a collection of routines that perform a task.  Usually only heard in Programming conversations, which can be pretty boring.

Mosaic – While Billy G. was still trying to grow whiskers back in the early nineties, an outfit called NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) at Illinois University was busy developing the first graphics-based Web browser. Named  “Mosaic”, it loosed an internet bombshell when they released it in 1993. It was originally developed for the Unix OS but like all good little pirates, Billy G. and his bunch, and Apple soon jumped on it. The rest is history. Bet you didn’t know that Spyglass’s Netscape Navigator is just a much enhanced version of Mosaic.

msconfig - Windows utility most commonly used to disable piggish programs that insist on running constantly when not needed.  It isn’t really a contraction of “msconfigure,” It is the name of a funny little file designed by the natives up in Redmond, Washington, and it’s only purpose is to remove from Windows Start Up some of the extraneous stuff that those same Redmondites get paid so much money to put in Windows in the first place.  It’s probably all done just to confuse you and make you think you’re guilty of accomplishing something by stopping stuff which should never have started. That’s life.  Regardless, if you will click on the “Start” button and then on “Run,” type in the almost word “msconfig” without the quotation marks, then click on OK. A menu will pop up with tabs along the top. The tab farthest to the right says “Start Up.”  If you click on that one a page will open listing all the goodies(?) which start along with Windows and by removing the checkmarks beside them you can turn them off.  Best you do this one at a time. It’s a bunch of key punching and mouse clicking but if you uncheck the wrong one you could find yourself with a sick computer.

msconfigure - Technically, this isn’t even a word. Only necessity and popular usage by a bunch of nerds, geeks, and other normal computer type characters have given it a frosting of social acceptance. That and all of Uncle Bill’s Billions.

munge - Wow! It's a derogatory term.  We don't get many of those on here. When used in that sense it implies that you have provided information which you have intentionally altered from the original. Not Nice.  The fact is, the word is most often tossed around by those in the know concerning e-mail and a contingent effort to get spammers off one's back. Let's say that your e-mail address is Venus@wayout.com and spammers jumped on that address like a five year old on a June bug. Worn out from hitting that "delete" key, in desperation you resort to that questionable practice known as "Munging".  You alter your return address to read Venus.nospam@wayout.com, knowing deep in your heart that all your true friends are going to take a quick envious glance at your obvious alteration, and remove the "nospam" when they reply.  Clever? You bet your bippy.  Meanwhile those spammers out there are getting paid for what they do, and although I hate to admit it, they're good at it. They are masters of the art of "demunging," the removal of those sneaky little phrases you stuck in there to deceive them. Some of them even use special software to search for those extra phrases, automatically remove them from your address and, suddenly, you have been "demunged."  It only hurts when you hit, "Delete."

N

NCA – Network Computing Architecture.  A system developed by Oracle for creating applications within a networked computing environment. Managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager software, it integrates clients with processes running in application and database servers. Did you really want to know that?

NetBIOS - Net Basic Input Output System.  The protocol used in Windows and DOS networking to add special network functioning to your normal BIOS. It is an Application Programming Interface “API”

NIC - Network Interface Card.  This is what allows your computer to talk to other computers. 

NIMDA – This is not an acronym, it’s the name of a most insidious little worm. Think ADMIN. Spelled backwards.  I would imagine that there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer, and their web server ISS are both full of security loopholes (read Worm Holes) Well, there you have it.  Nimda is an extremely ingenious little “denial of service” worm which enjoys nothing quite so much as those loopholes, crawling into them and messing them up, but good. It steals disk space from both the servers and the clients and stuffs the local folders on their drives full of useless files.  

Normal.dot - this is Microsoft Word's Global Template.  See the definition for that.

Normalized –  To make normal or to conform to a standard. Take it, it’s your baby, I could never qualify.

O

OCR – Optical Character Recognition. No, it does not refer to your ex-hippy friend the neighborhood optometrist. OCR is used by programs like Textbridge, in conjunction with scanners, to convert a typed document into an editable Word document which can be edited and saved as with and original that you wrote. 

OCX File - Microsoft’s Second Generation of control architecture intended to supplement and replace VBX, (Visual Basic), and now both of them are being overridden by Active X. Who knows what’s next? 

ODBC –  A little like an OBGYN with different letters. It really means Open DataBase Connectivity. It’s a database programming interface Microsoft dreamed up to confuse the general public.

OEM – Acronym for “Original Equipment Manufacturer. That just about says it all.

Oracle –  Either the world’s largest database developer and dealer or a little old Greek gentleman sitting high up on the side of a hill and spouting inane words of wisdom to an audience that went home an hour ago. Take your pick.  

OUI – Organizational Unique Identifier. That’s the part of the MAC address that identifies the vendor of the network adapter.  Where the heck do they get these names?

P

Parsing - To parse a sentence is to break it down into its functioning parts, Subject, object, nouns, verbs, past participles, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Stuff they no longer teach in our school systems which why the kids can neither read nor pass their FSATS. (I don't know what that means).  However, in the world of computers, parsing is used to analyze a sentence in a slightly different manner. It breaks the parts of a sentence into components, which can be converted to machine language, which in turn can be used by your computer. This all goes to prove that your computer is smarter than today's average high school graduate.

Partition - see special backup definitions

Paste Special - When you've copied something and want some options for how you want to paste it, go to the Edit menu and select this option.

PCI - Another type of bus (see ISA).  This one stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect.  Sounds like a good one to throw around at geek cocktail parties.

PCS Operators –  Personal Communications Services.  The Government’s update on the Indian Treaties. Only this time it refers to the “assignment of radio frequencies for experimental and amateur radio use” which were to exclusively for the use of HAMs in perpetuity.  Perpetuity ended in 1994/95 when the government auctioned some of those frequencies to the professional world as commercial licenses.  It now applies to everything from toy walkie talkies to cell phones.

PCS-2 – Personal Conferencing Specification. A videoconferencing technology that uses Intel's Indeo compression method. It is endorsed by the Intel-backed Personal Conferencing Working Group (PCWG).

Peer To Peer File Sharing –  It can be on the internet, a network, or two computers connected together with a cable. If they can transfer files from one to the other it is Peer to Peer file sharing. A prime example of a peer to peer set-up gone astray is NAPSTER.

PID – Process Identifier.  A temporary number assigned by the operating system to a process or service.    OR  Proportional Integral Derivative - A controller used to regulate a continuous process.  Take your pick, it’s all Geek to me.

Ping –  It’s a kind of internet pervert. PING is an acronym for Packet InterNet Groper. See, didn’t I tell you? It’s a groper used to see if a particular IP address is online. Works a little like a domain name server too, if you PING a domain name with it, it will return the IP address of that domain to you.

Plug In –  Didja ever download file made to enhance the properties of a program you already had in your computer?  Kinda like MS Patches? Anyone else calls them Plug Ins. So much for snootY M$.

POP – 

(1) Short for Post Office Protocol, a gopher used to retrieve email from a mail server. Most email apps. (sometimes called clients) use POP. Some can use the newer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol).  There are two versions of POP. POP2, a mid-80’s and requires SMTP to send messages. The newer POP3, can be used with or without SMTP.

(2) How’s this for confusion? Yup, it does have two meanings. One for you and one for your ISP (Internet Service Provider) To him it means Point Of Presence which is just a fancy name for a telephone number that gives you access to the internet. Any ISP worth his daily ration of grog will have them  all over the place so you can make a local call to access his service.

Pop Up – pop-up (pŏp'ŭp)  adj.

1. Emerging quickly from a recessed or concealed position when activated: pop-up gun emplacements.
2. Rising to form a three-dimensional structure when a page is opened: pop-up illustrations in a children's book.n.

However, generally in this world of advanced technology (?) when the term is used it refers to those annoying adds that "POP-UP" (see) when you are surfing for a special item on the internet. They usually take the form of “Offers You Can't Refuse” unless you are totally insane. Yet for some reason you find them to be the ultimate internet annoyance.  Some even have a tendency to spawn others of their ilk when you attempt to delete them.

PORTAL – It’s possible that you might be advanced in years enough to remember the wonderful era of the “BBS.” Nope, that is not an acronym for British Broadcasting System, (isn’t one enough?) They were the wonderful bulletin board services of the early days of computering. You could download all kinds of stuff, for free, and the average download would usually fit on a floppy.  I’m getting a little longwinded here, all in an attempt to say, BBSs were, in fact, the first PORTALS.  A PORTAL is a web page, or location, which offers access to a whole world of goodies, some still free, most of them not.  If you probe a little deeper you’ll find that the PRIME PORTAL of them all is a relatively well known, and in some cases despised, entity called “AOL.” When subscribers to AOL sign on to the service they enter a PORTAL to the internet, they’re just not quite there yet. To receive your e-mail, search for information, check their favorites, or use any of the facilities AOL may offer, you are using proprietary services controlled by that giant of the industry. Others members of the same brotherhood are CompuServe (spelled AOL), Prodigy, Earthlink (not as bad but trying harder with each upgrade), ATT (a little fly-by-night that seems to be forging ahead in reverse), etc., etc., etc.  Now see what you’ve done?  You’ve brought out the worst in me. I just don’t like PORTALS. I do not appreciate other people putting their software on my computer in order for me to utilize their services. Give me a good solid ISP any old time and if I want to go exploring I’ll use Internet Explorer, to find mountains of information I’ll punch up Google, and I want my e-mail on my computer, not hung up in their “Web Mail.”  Now for the minutiae. This entire tirade can be summed up in one line found in the middle of this definition.  I quote: “A PORTAL is a web page, or location, which offers access to a whole world of goodies, some still free, most of them not.”

Postgressql –  I’m not even sure this is spelled right but if I had to hazard a guess, and I really get off on hazarding things, I believe it is an open source database program for Linux etc.

PPTP - Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol. We all know what Point-to-point means, and what a tunnel is. Most of us even have a pretty good idea what a protocol is.  PPTP is one that lets you wrap up another protocol like a spider wraps a bug, and transmit it over an IP network. It is also used to create a virtual private network (VPN) within the Internet permitting individuals to access their corporate networks through any ISP which supports PPTP. What won’t they think of next?

Primary Key - a field in a database that is unique to each record.  Something that will never be the same in any two records.  Like a Social Security Number.

Proxy Server - An application which intercepts the flow of information between a sender and receiver.  It accepts the info, breaks the direct path between you and the sender, then sends it from a different port (not your address) and foils the evil plans of any hacker who might be lurking near anticipating the theft of you information and addresses. Proxy Servers wear white hats.

PXE – An almost acronym for “Preboot eXecution Environment” Now we both know what the true acronym would be but can’t you just see the uproar among the staff the first time a memorandum came around with that in it?  What is it and what does it do? It allows a PC to boot from a server, boot remotely to the operating system, remote boot a diagnostics program and the whole thing is BIOS supported.   Isn’t that a good thing to know?

Q

R

RAS - Remote Access Service.  Found in Windows NT Servers, RAS allows remote users to access their network from their Windows laptops or desktops using a modem.

Raster Graphics - A method of representing an image as a series of dots, similar to the image on a color TV screen and also known as “Bitmapped” graphics.  GIF, TIF, BMP, JPG and PCX are a few of the dozens of formats used. Irfanview will open darned near all of them.

Regions – To be real frank, a region can be so many things I don’t know what it is. Webster says it’s any space bounded by specific boundaries but what does he know about computers?

Registry – a database that holds configuration data about the hardware and environment that makes up your computer. It consists of two files SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT and believe me, you mess with these babies at your own peril.  A suggestion from the old skipper, before you make those changes, talk to Vic. While you’re at it, subscribe to our ABC ezine at freelists  and never worry again. Well, perhaps once in a while just to stay in practice.

Remote Access Software - Software like PC Anywhere or Laplink, there are dozens of others, which when installed on both of our computers permits either of us to access and control the other person’s computer through a modem or an extremely long cable.

Remote Assistance – PC Anywhere ®, Lap Link ®, and a whole slew of other applications, allow you permit a friend, technician, or whatever, under the guise of “fixing it” to take control of your computer and mess it up just about as good as you can. All is not lost though. You can control who accesses your PC and turn them off when you figure they’ve done enough damage for one session.

Remote Desktop – Remote desktop is a way to access and control your desktop from another PC, like Windows Terminal Services on Windows 2000 Server. (I stole this one right out of the book, never used Remote Desktop, in fact I’m not even sure I ever heard of it before.)

Remote Storage – an area outside of your computer where you can park your data.

Removable media –You know what removable means, and "media" is plural for medium. Therefore removable media is either a Zip drive, a Floppy disk, a CD ROM, or a couple of disposable psychics.

Restore - see special backup definitions

RunTime Error –  Is an error that occurs during the execution of a program, (means like it never totally loaded) so if you get one and you still want to run the program, reboot.