PawPrint.net Glossary of Terms

A technology that allows content (digital media, music, video etc) owners to determine and control who and how users can view access and/or content such as media files.

A generic name for various kinds of dynamic random access memory: DRAM that are synchronized with the clock speed that the microprocessor is optimized for. This tends to increase the number of instructions that the processor can perform in a given time. The speed of SDRAM is rated in MHz rather than in nanoseconds (ns). This makes it easier to compare the bus speed and the RAM chip speed. You can convert the RAM clock speed to nanoseconds by dividing the chip speed into 1 billion ns (which is on...

A compressed graphic format suited for flat color images (illustrations) and drawings. It compresses images by referencing areas of the same colour thus it is less suitable then JPEG for photographic images (where there are colour gradients)

Originally created by CompuServ it was the subject of proposed law suits and patent discussions which have largely been dropped.

ls [options] [names]

List the contents of a directory or directories. This is similar to the dos command ´dir´ frequently abbreviated in many shells to ll for ls -l which lists files with long format. If no [names] then the contents of the current directory are listed.

Options
-1, --format=single-column
Print one entry per line of output.

-a
List all files, including the normally hidden files whose names begin with a period.

-b, --escape
Display nonprinting characters in octal an...

RAM is a type of computer storage whose contents can be accessed in any order. This is in contrast to sequential memory devices such as magnetic tapes, discs and drums, in which the mechanical movement of the storage medium forces the computer to access data in a fixed order. It is usually implied that RAM can be both written to and read from, in contrast to read-only memory or ROM.

Computers use RAM to hold the program code and data during execution. In the first electronic computers, RAM wa...

Short for Hyperlink - A reference to a URL on the Internet that when clicked on will access the document specified.