A computer enthusiast who enjoys learning everything about a computer system and, through clever programming, pushes the system to it's highest possible level of performance. Also known as crackers, these computer hobbyists are also skilled programmers with a mischevious bent who break into secured computer systems. In 1989, the New York Times published an article headlined "Invasion of the Data Snatchers" culminating in a ridiculous series of Secret Service raids in which federal agents confiscated the computer systems of these "dangerous" individuals.
A set of moral principles common to the first generation hacker community. According to hacker ethic, all technical information should, in principle, be freely available to all. However, destroying, altering, or moving data in a way that could cause injury or expense to others is always unethical.
Net lingo used expressively by hackers.
Have A Good One - - A shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum or e-mail that originates in New York City.
Remember CB radio? The name you go by in an on-line chat (IRC) is also called your handle. Sometimes referred to as a nickname.
Two modems trying to connect first do this to agree on how to transfer data.
When a modem fails to hang up.
A type of modem that uses the AT command set.
or helper app is a supplementary program that enables a web browser to handle multimedia files, such as animation, audio and video. Most helper apps are freeware or shareware but do not come with Web browsers, so users must hunt down the ones the want and go through the tedious task of installing them and configuring so the browser will launch the particular helper app when it encounters a multimedia file.
The RealAudio Player, Nettoob, and LViewPro are examples of helper applications. For more information on how to set up helper applications with Netscape Navigator, click on the more button below.
A unit of measurement of electrical vibrations; one Hz is equal to one cycle per second.
In USENET, a category of newsgroups or the way newsgroups are internally categorized.
A term used to describe the accessing of a World Wide Web page. When a user "points" a browser to a Web site URL, the moment that user requests the HTML document is called a "hit". Hits are used to determine how popular a Web site is and plays an important role in assessing how much it costs to advertise on a particular Web page. Some Web site authors and developers use counters on their page to let people know how many other users (hits) have accessed that particular page that they are on. There has been great debate as to the validity of the "number of hits" pages or sites are said to receive due in part to Web servers that record hits not only on accesses to HTML pages but also the graphics which are embedded in them.
Arguments that involve certain basic tenets of faith, about which one cannot disagree without setting one of these off. For example: IBM PCs are inherently superior to Macintosh's.
Sometimes written as two words (home page) - The first page on a WWW site that acts as the starting point for navigation. The primary web page for an individual, software application, or organization. Homepages link visitors to other pages related to the site. Sometimes an Internet service provider offers a certain amount of disk space on their server for a new account so that the individual will can put up their own homepage.
Any computer that can function as the beginning and end point of data transfers. An Internet host has a unique Internet address (IP address) and a unique domain name.
A search engine developed by HotWired and Inktomi, HotBot exploits NOW (Network of Workstations) parallel computing technology, to achieve scalable, supercomputer-class performance from clusters of reliable, commodity workstations and high-speed local-area networks (LANS).
This NOW technology enables a low-cost system, with unlimited scalability: we can increase the performance or database size simply by adding more commodity building blocks (machines, disks, or memory) to the collection. We are not constrained by server chassis or backplane limits, or forced to replace hardware with newer, higher-cost servers, to scale with the rapid growth of the Internet.
Search Tip - The best way to get the most out of a search engine is to understand its features. Always check the sites help page when you arrive to find out what it's features are. Be Specific: If you are looking for information about the 'Virginia state motto', enter all three of those words in your search. A search for just 'Virginia motto' will give you more than 600 pages that you don't want. Use phrases: You can narrow your search further by specifying that the phrase "state motto" must also appear. Do this by using the popup menus in the 'modify' options, or by enclosing the phrase in double quotes ("").
A list of frequently accessed World Wide Web sites. Usually the names of the sites are coded as hypertext making them hyperlinks and letting the user simply "click on" the name of the site in order to be taken there.
The ability to add and remove devices to a computer while the computer is running and have the operating system automatically recognize the change. Two new external bus standards-Universal Serial Bus (USB) and FireWire support hot plugging. This is also a feature of PCMCIA.
Hypertext Markup Language - The coding method used to format documents for the World Wide Web. Web pages are able to be seen due in part to HTML codes or tags as they are more commonly known, these tags are then interpreted by a Web browser (such as Netscape Navigator) which renders your Web page. When you start coding your own pages you should be aware of the fact that there are HTML 2.0 codes and then there are Netscape extensions to HTML. The Netscape extensions allow alot more flexibilty in how you layout your document. Features such as centering, colored text,backgrounds and tiles are just a couple of examples of Netscape extensions to HTML. Some other browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mosaic support a few of the Netscape extensions but not all of them however possess a few of their own. For some basic HTML Reference click on the more button below.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol - The protocol that tells the server what to send to the client, so the client can view Web pages, FTP sites, or other areas of the net.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure - A type of server software which provides the abilty for "secure" transactions to take place on the World Wide Web. If a Web site is running off a HTTPS server you can type in HTTPS instead of HTTP in the URL section of your browser to enter into the "secured mode". Windows NT HTTPS and Netscape Commerce server software support this protocol. SEE ALSO: proxy server, secure server and commerce server.
This piece of hardware is used to network computers together (usually over an ethernet connection). It serves as a common wiring point so that information can flow through one central location to any other computer on the network.
or link is text you find on a Web site which can be "clicked on" with a mouse which in turn will take you to another Web page or a different area of the same Web page. Hyperlinks are created or "coded" in HTML. They are also used to load multimedia files such as AVI movies and AU sound files. SEE ALSO: broken links.
The multimedia links on a Web page that lead to sound, graphics, video, or text resources.
A system of writing and displaying text that enables the text to be linked in multiple ways, to be available at several levels of detail, and to contain links to related documents. The term was coined by Ted Nelson to refer to a nonlinear system of information browsing and retrieval that contains associative links to other related documents. See Also: hypermedia and hyperlink. The World Wide Web uses hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to provide links to pages and multimedia files.
