Computerlexicon

Acquisition

is a Gnutella-based peer-to-peer and BitTorrent client for Mac OS X

Ars Electronica

1. an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival
2. became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986
3. 
   Winners of the Prix Ars Electronica 2008

Backup

1. copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event
2. 2 types of backups: full backup and incremental backup
3. frequent backups are usually done as incremental backups
4. incremental backups build on full backups
5. used to be stored on tape drives, nowadays either on optical media (CD, DVD) or hard drives

Batch file

1. a text file containing a series of commands intended to be executed
2. because of limited syntax and commands they are less suited for general-purpose programming
3. When a batch file is run, the shell program (usually COMMAND.COM or cmd.exe) reads the file and executes its commands
4. is analogous to a shell script in Unix-like operating systems

Binary search tree

a binary tree data structure sorted in a way so that the left subtree of each node only contains values smaller than the node, and the right one only greater values

EXE

1. the common filename extension for denoting an executable
2. 32-bit Portable Executable (introduced with Windows NT)
3. used in the OpenVMS, DOS, Microsoft Windows, ReactOS, and OS/2 operating systems
4. DOS executable (ASCII string "MZ" at the beginning of the file)
5. "MZ" (ASCII "MZ" identifies DOS executables) are the initials of Mark Zbikowski, one of the developers of MS-DOS
6. 16-bit New Executable (can only be executed by Windows and OS/2)
7. Mixed 16/32-bit Linear Executable (introduced in OS/2 2.0)
8. 32-bit Linear Executable (introduced by OS/2 2.0, can only be run there)
9. 64-bit Portable Executable (introduced with 64-bit versions of Windows)

FAT

1. a partially patented file system developed by Microsoft for MS-DOS
2. the LFN extension (Long FileNames) allows mixed case, 255 UTF-16 characters
3. File Allocation Table
4. is supported by virtually all existing operating systems for personal computers
5. an ideal format for floppy disks and solid-state memory cards
6. type FAT32 (max. 8TB disks, max. 268 million files)
7. type FAT16 (max. 2 GB disks, max. 65517 files)
8. type FAT12 (max. 32MB disks, max. 4077 files)
9. originally only 8.3 filenames possible (8 letter filename, 3 letter extension)

git

1. free distributed revision control software
2. initially created by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development
3. helps the developer to focus on asynchronous development

Hello world

1. a computer program that prints out "Hello world!" on a display device
2. used in many introductory tutorials for teaching a programming language
3. Such a program is typically one of the simplest programs possible in a computer language

Levenshtein distance

1. a metric for measuring the amount of difference between two sequences
2. can be considered a generalization of the Hamming distance, which is used for strings of the same length and only considers substitution edits
3. named after Vladimir Levenshtein, who considered this distance in 1965

MIDI

1. its specification was developed by, and is maintained by, the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA)
2. are typically created using computer-based sequencing software that organizes MIDI messages into one or more parallel "tracks" for independent recording and editing
3. consists of one header chunk and one or more track chunks

OEM

Bulk components are often mistakenly referred to as OEM products. However, these do not actually differ from retail versions, except in their packaging and/or the way they are procured

Paul Graham

1. a programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist, known for his work on Lisp
2. the author of On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004)

PEBKAC

an acronym which stands for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair"

RAM

Random Access Memory

Wired

1. monthly American magazine and on-line periodical
2. published in San Francisco, California since March 1993
3. from 1998 to 2006, Wired magazine and Wired News (which publishes at Wired.com) had separate owners
4. known for its strong libertarian principles, its enthusiastic embrace of techno-utopianism, and its sometimes experimental layout with its bold use of fluorescent and metallic inks