Web Glossary

Click on any letter below to search for a word starting with that letter in our Web Glossary

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0-9

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Machine language
Binary code. Machine language is the only language a CPU understands. High-level programming languages (C, Perl, Java etc) must be translated to machine language, before they can be executed.

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Mailing list
Email based discussion group. List servers maintain a list of email addresses of subscribers. When you send an email message to this group, your email is copied and sent to all subscribers.

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Mail server
Server that handles incoming and outgoing email.

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Mainframe
Large and very powerful computer used for intensive computational tasks.

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Mbps (Mega-bits per second)
Measure of data throughput in millions of bits per second.

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Megabit
About one million bits. Exactly 1,048,576 bits (2^20).

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Megabyte - Mb
About one million bytes. Exactly 1,048,576 bytes (2^20), or 1,024 Kb.

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MIDI
A format for computerized music. The format is used widely over the Internet, because it usually has a very small file size. It achieves this by sending, not recording of the music, with instructions for reproducing the music on whatever machine runs the MIDI file.

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MIPS - Million Instructions Per Second
Measure of processor speed.

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MIME - Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
MIME is a messaging standard that allows Internet users to exchange email messages enhanced with graphics, video and voice. MIME file types are also used in Mosaic.

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Mirror or mirror site
More or less an exact copy of another WWW or FTP site. Mirror sites are created when the traffic on the original site is too heavy. They are usually on servers which are located in different geographic areas.

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Modem
Contraction of MOdulator-DEModulator. A modem allows computers to transmit information to each other via ordinary telephone lines.

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Mosaic
The first Web browser (developed at the National center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA - in Urbana-Champaign, Ill. with the ability to display graphics. The Mosaic browser caused a major breakthrough in the way people could access the resources of the World Wide Web. The official, copyrighted name of the program is NCSA Mosaic(tm).

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MP3 or MPEG 3
Compression standard for music. Although the compression rate may be very high, you'll have almost no loss of quality. This makes it a very attractive method to copy CDs. It's no wonder that the music industry is not very happy about these MP3 files...

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MPEG - Moving Pictures Expert Group
MPEG is an international standard for Compression of video and and desktop movies in a format similar to JPEG.
A special viewing application is needed to run MPEG files on your computer.
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