IT Terms

[David Marc Fischer]

For what it's worth, HP offers a list of "The most baffling IT terms
explained."

http://tinyurl.com/d2bat5

An excerpt is below.

Best,

David

*

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) analyzes and catalogues the latest
trends in language the world over, and each year the organization compiles
a list of the “Top Ten Most Confusing Yet Frequently Cited Tech Words”.
We’ve taken some of the terms from their list, added a few of our own, and
given them all plain definitions.

    * VoIP: A T-Mobile survey found that one in ten respondents thought
VoIP can improve visibility for the visually impaired! It actually
stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, and literally refers to the
ability to transmit the voice over the Internet.
    * Petaflop: This is a word you’ll probably see in conjunction with
discussions of supercomputing. A petaflop can be expressed as a
thousand trillion floating point operations per second; it is a
measure of performance for the fastest computers in the world.
    * ASP: This one is particularly tricky because it’s an acronym with
two meanings. An Active Server Page is an HTML page that includes one
or more scripts (small embedded programs) that are processed on a
Microsoft® Web server before the page is sent to the user. An
Application Service Provider is a business that provides
computer-based services to customers over a network.
    * Kernel: This is the central component of most computer operating
systems, responsible for managing the system's resources and the
communication between hardware and software components.
    * Megahertz (MHz): This is unit of measurement used when determining a
computer’s processing speed. It literally means one million cycles per
second. Accordingly, Gigahertz (GHz) and Terahertz (THz) equal one
billion and one trillion cycles respectively.
    * Deduplication: This is a method of reducing storage needs by
eliminating redundant data from a device. Deduplication is also
sometimes known as "intelligent compression" or "single-instance
storage".
    * Robust: This is probably one of the most commonly used, yet least
understood, terms in IT marketing materials. A “robust” product can be
one that doesn't break or fail easily; for example, an operating
system in which any individual application can fail without disturbing
the operating system or other applications can be said to be robust.
Robust is also sometimes used to mean a product or solutions designed
with a full range of capabilities.

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