 Miscellaneous Acronyms
etc.
With a tip of the soldering iron to the Jargon
File and Eric Raymond, the amazing Stan
Kelly Bootle, whoever....
ACM:
Interestingly, ACM Queue
magazine won’t admit what the letters stand for — but that’s
not going
to
stop me:
it’s the Association for Computing Machinery. ... I don’t know
what
they’re hiding; it’s not like the “A” stands for
something
filthy like
“America”. ... I suppose it’s the “Machinery”;
but I thought retro was good.
... Founded in 1947, for most of my life these folks would have nothing
to do with slugs like myself, mere practitioners with no engineering
degree, barely-frocked Computer Science toilers. ... But today, I have
the satisfaction of being the honored recipient of many many offers of
membership — for a price to be sure, still quite large and somewhat
indeterminate — and, as an important leader in the software industry,
free copies of the ACM
Queue
magazine. ... Which, I hasten to add, is quite an amusing magazine,
especially since Stan Kelly-Bootle’s column became a regular. ...
But
sadly, no longer with us, having graduated to the great magazine
subscription in the sky — i.e., the post-mortem on-line version.... AFN:
Ambiguous
File Name — a name like BINGO* or B?N?O, that is with asterisks or
question marks. ... Under various useful conditions, our hard-working
operating systems will often provide files with any characters
(asterisk) or any single character (question mark) in the specified
position. ... Of course if you use a GUI
this is all
intolerable gobbledygook....
AOL:
America On Line. The largest and, for many years, by far the most
annoying ISP. ... But now, in
these last days, you can
get a free
aol.com email address! Assembler:
See the
exciting discussion
of high-level languages. BBS:
Bulletin Board Service. What we dialed our 300 baud modems at. They had
the most amazing things, but it was a dark time before the world wide
web, and we were easily impressed. Nevertheless, a lot of software got
strewn-around that way. ... I
of course didn’t go for the dirty pictures.... BDE: Borland Database Engine. In the
olden days, Borland’s anti-ODBC, but now gone
and mostly forgotten.... BSD:
Berkeley Software Distribution. A FOSS
Unix-like system
that isn’t Linux. ... BSD
License: a FOSS license that’s not GNU
which
means, basically, that BSD-licensed software can be used any which way
you like without genuflecting to Richard Stallman. BUS: A
set of circuit wires connecting like-minded digital components
together. The 8-bit computers of my formative years, for instance,
would exchange data over an 8-wire “data bus”. ... Once upon
a time,
the concept of a “bus-oriented machine” confused things —
or me, at
least, when an acquaintance insisted his big iron didn’t need no
stinking bus. But of course he was a software guy. ... The confusion
was between systems that exposed a system bus including a complete set
of computer signals for the convenience of plug-in cards — like the
PCI
cards in today’s PCs — versus computers without such arrangements
which, nevertheless, used address and data buses just like all decent
digital devices....
CIS:
Compuserve Information Service. One of
the older ISPs. Absorbed by AOL some
time ago.
CLI:
1.
Command Line Interface. You can
still get one of these with a “DOS Box” (in
Windows) or
“shell” (Linux). It’s where you
laboriously type
commands to get things done: instead of accidentally erasing your
hard drive when you click the wrong button, you just type “xtr
del *”. 2.
A recent
“overlay” is Common
Language Infrastructure, invented so the vast hordes of Linux
“mono”
programmers won’t have to wash out their mouths after
saying CLR.
CLR:
Common Language Runtime. The
interpreted thing underneath all Microsoft’s  NET
languages, guaranteeing they all inter operate and don’t push
ahead of each other.
CP/M:
Control Program / Microprocessor. Yes
there was something before MSDOS:
this was
what our
microcomputers ran in a time so ancient cell phones
hadn’t
been invented! CPU:
Central Processing Unit. The electronic component that rules our
lives and world, and with which I have such an intimate
personal understanding.... CRT:
Cathode Ray Tube. This is the antideluvian device in our TVs and
monitors, until LCD sets were discovered. CRT sets are cheaper and have
better and more flexible video; LCD sets are more expensive, have
relatively inflexible video, and poorer performance. They do
weigh less, of course. ... See also HDMI.
Delphi:
The obsolete
Pascal-based programming environment with a GUIRAD.
... The easiest way to
program Windows, and therefore the loser to MFC
in the programming wars, now officially moot. 
Friday,
August 11, 2006 4:43 pm. Wait! Hold the phone! Delphi may not be down
for the count. ... Oops maybe better hang-up anyway; things
still aren’t looking good over there.
... Then there’s the Lazarus
work-alike open-source product which is still, sadly, not ready for
prime
time.... DHCP:
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, usually as in “DHCP Server”.
...
When your network doesn’t have one of these, you’re screwed.
... Unless
you’re a hopeless renegade and use numeric
addresses like me.... DMA:
Direct Memory Access. Sounds like a great idea, no? ... No, no,
it means Direct etc. by someone other
than the CPU,
who of course does that kind of thing constantly. ... The idea is that
the CPU, memory, and other components all sit on a common bus,
and it’s often a good plan to allow devices to talk directly
to memory instead of going thru the CPU middle-man. I believe the whole
idea is mostly old-hat these days.... DSLR:
Digital Single Lens Reflex — an expensive camera flavor. ... For
years
I thought this was pure B.S. but then I bothered Wikipediaing it —
and
apparently they actually sell
expensive cameras with an intricate tiny mirror mechanism through which
the pathetically-addled expensive camera fan (aka skilled photograph professional)
can see the picture; then,
when he presses the button, it flips out of the way and lets the
electronic sensor have its turn.
This was a wonderful thing with the chemical film of olden days, because
that way you got to see exactly
what the film would see. On the other hand, it’s extremely
stupid
with electronic cameras, because all you have to do to see what the
electronic sensor sees is to connect the electronic sensor to a viewing
mechanism, like the LCDs commonly used on digital cameras: a big
display on the back, and/or a viewfinder gadget so you can see the the
thing when it’s sunny. And the electronic display is undoubtedly
a
better indicator
than the stupid mirror, because you get to see what’ll be wrong!
...
Sadly, I’m pretty certain the DSLR was introduced so the
already-disappearing geriatric professional media camera throngs would
hear that reassuring “thunk” when they took a picture; and
so
they
would know they’re seeing
the “real thing”, not some of this suspicious new-fangled electronic
gimmickry. ... Indeed, the “thunk” is reproduced
by many point ’n’ shoot cameras these days, presumably to make
the rest
of us geezers feel good
about the things. ... And now, a magazine article celebrating
“Real-time photo data” in top-of-the-line DSLRs (page 38, British
PCPlus, 8/08)! ... I.e., the utterly standard “digital compact camera”
LCD is coming to super-expensive DSLR products! ... The advanced camera
professional — in software, I call this level of product “insane
millionaire” version — can now
take
advantage of
this astonishing years-old technology — with expensive trickery of
course, since that little mirror gadget is still in the way! ...
Wowsers! ... I do feel myself
reaching for ways to express the surpassing stupidity of this ... but I
fail.... EMI:
Electromagnetic Interference. We used to use this as an excuse for
everything, as in “oh that thing crashes all the time from EMI”.
...
Even today you can ask a technical specialist why your stupid piece of
mediocrity usux junk crashes constantly, and they’ll mumble about
EMI
and insist you need a separate power line to “get a good ground”.
...
Ah but you kids don’t know anything!
A place I worked at had really marvelous S100
computers that would reboot if you looked
at them; definitely EMI problems.... EPROM:
 Erasable Programmable Read Only
Memory. ... I just realized these are
antiques now, their time gone and forgotten! ... But back in the day,
this
was how I got software into my gadgets. The little window in the
illustration was how you’d erase the thing, with ultraviolet
light! ... Those were the days! ... Well actually I still
support
products that use these things....
FOSS: Free/Open
Source Software. Like Linux.
And I must admit for
years I had no idea
what they meant by “free as in beer” (i.e. as
opposed to “free
as in
freedom”) — until I realized these fellows mostly
come from
the
groves of academe where I would guess beer is often available without
cost! ... But not when I was a barefoot boy on Broadway!... FX: “Framework”? Especially
Microsoft? ... This one snuck up on me. Once everything was “NET 2.0” or
something, and then — voila! — it’s “NET FX 2.0”!
... Wikipedia claims “WinFX [is the] Codename of Microsoft .NET Framework
3.0” but does not use “FX” to mean framework generally
in
their NET article.
... So who knows? GC:
Garbage Collection. A software mechanism used in Java and NET
(most famously) and other languages instead of the old-fashioned and
extremely-error-prone manual memory allocation/deallocation of C
language and other primitive tongues. ... GC never
stops everything for a few seconds
to do its stuff — while, for instance, running the laser brain surgery
machine.... GNU:
“GNU’s Not Unix” — note incredibly cute recursive
definition there — and I don’t care, doo dah etc. ... Actually
GNU
and its
patron saint and originator Richard Stallman are responsible in so many
ways for
numerous projects including Linux,
but Stallman’s
insistence that it should’ve been called “GNU/Linux”
typifies
an
occasionally intransigent attitude — well, OK, Stalinist ... perhaps
“Stallmanist”?
GUI:
Graphical User Interface. The pathetic
unmanly thing you’re looking at. Back when men were men, we
used CLIs,
and the earth thundered when we roared. GUIRAD:
A term I made-up (“RADGUI”
was taken!) which I hereby decree should denote a two-way
GUI
RAD:
an IDE
that automates GUI composition, ameliorating the grinding obscenity of
“handmade” GUIs, where “two-way” means that the
mechanism
remains usable
after the first go-round. ... This sort of thing is/was a key feature
of various IDE offerings from Microsoft’s Visual Basic of yore to
the
latest Visual Studio, Borland’s Delphi, and numerous Java environments
back
when Java had applets. ... The Linuxoids
claim they
have GUI RADs, but what I’ve mostly encountered
are one-way
tools where you (1.) “draw” a GUI in a special
window, (2.)
translate
it to code, and then (3.) add your own code — after which
you
can’t go back to step #1; if you want to change anything in
the
GUI ever again, you have to do it by hand with no stinking automation.
... Unlike
the composition tools
of Microsoft, Java, and my beloved Borland, which allow endless
elaboration of the
GUI
no matter how much code you’ve written. ... Another way to put this:
one-way bad, two-way good.... GWBasic: “Gee
Whiz” Basic? A guy named “Greg Whitten” who is somehow
responsible
for the language isn’t sure, Wikipedia
says. ... Anyway, it’s what came with MSDOS
in
the olden days, and was pretty vile. ... Although a lot of people including
me wrote a lot of code in it or its dialects.... HDMI:
High Density Multimedia Interface. ... We peasants mostly see this as
an inevitable part of the LCD TVs at the big box store, denoted as
“HDMI TV”. ... “High Density” probably means increased
resolution as
compared to your old boring CRT TV or computer monitor; I believe
actual man-in-the-street tests have demonstrated hardly anyone can tell
the difference without special optical equipment. ... “Multimedia
Interface” means, as far as I can dope-out, “copy-protection”
— which,
as far as I can guess, probably doesn’t work. ... At least, it didn’t
work for some years, and it probably still doesn’t, although the
crack
technologists at large would-be monopolies are hot on the trail. The
idea is you try plugging your “HD” DVD player (which I think
means
“Blue Ray” these days but who can tell?) into your HDMI TV
set,
and it’s bound to work perfectly.
... See also my panegyric to LCD aspect ratios.... High-Level
Language:
Decent useful languages like Pascal or C, as opposed to the barbaric
chicken tracks of assembler. Although some sensitive folk sniff that C
is practically assembler. ... Assembler, on the other hand, is machine
language with symbols,
i.e., “ldx #bingo” would load the X register on a particular
processor
with whatever value is represented by “bingo”. A high-level
language
doesn’t know about processor registers, at least until you’re
through
with it, and you might go instead “Gwhat := BINGO;” (Pascal).
And actually, for most people all
computer languages look like chicken tracks. ... Note,
incidentally,
that both high-level compilers and
assemblers eventually output machine code; that is, they are both language translators
that take a hideous subset of English as input, and produce machine
code for a particular processor as output, and in a way are
indistinguishable except for what many normal human beings would
consider stylistic quibbles. However, an assembler is at least supposed
to be deterministic:
even if I
use assemblers from different companies, if they target the same
processor
I expect the same input to always
produce the same output. This is not
true of high-level language compilers; the designer of the compiler is
expected to exercise his guile producing clever code and, back when
there was competition between compilers, such optimizations
were considered important selling points. “I” as in iMac, iPod, ipw,
etc.: “internet”. I realized this in a vision last night, and
then found it confirmed at Wikipedia.
... And so my “ipw”
program name — which I chose just because of the Apple “i”
mania —
makes perfect sense!: “Internet PassWords” — which is
indeed
what it is! IANAL:
I Am Not A Lawyer. ... An indispensable phrase in our modern bustling software
world — so you don’t get sued when you voice any
opinion, however small or ignorant, about anything legal — or make
that, just anything. ... Of course,
IANAL, so I don’t know if it works! ICE:
In-Circuit Emulator. A fairly elaborate gadget we advanced
professionals plugged into our boards so that we could see what was
going-on
inside the microprocessor. These are mostly gone in modern times. ...
Also
see an even more antique
version.
 IDE:
1.
Integrated Development Environment.
A thing where programmers can
compile, run, and most importantly, debug. Borland really invented it
with Turbo Pascal for MSDOS
(and CP/M,
as the invaluable Wikipedia
entry confirms and I vaguely remember). ... For me and
probably others,
it
subsequently
acquired the connotation of being able to manipulate the program’s
GUI
(that is, idiosyncratically, it was a GUIRAD)
because
that’s what Microsoft
did with their Visual Basic, and of course Borland then copied with
their Delphi (Pascal) and C++ Builder. ... But now in these latter
days,
the GUI aspect is receding, as vendors strive to make programming
more laborious and error prone. 2.
Integrated Drive Electronics.
Forgot this one for a while! You usually see
“IDE/ATA”, or
just the shriveled “ATA”, which, weirdly, stands
for
“AT Attachment”, where the “AT”
probably stands
for “Advanced Technology” — which was the
acronym for
those wonderful 286 computers that succeeded the XT 8088
ones.... Googling “integrated drive
electronics” leads
to many informative pages.... ISO:
International
Organization for Standardization (i.e. in French or something),
but in my computerish world usually
refers to sizeable (~700 megabytes and up) “image” files with
an “.iso”
extension which, with the appropriate software, can be burned onto
CDRs. Linux distributions are often conveyed in this form.
ISP:
Internet Service Provider. Those guys
who we used to dial our telephone modems at. But even the shadowy
forces behind your big pipe connection constitute an ISP....
IT:
Information Technology. I.e.,
generally referring to the humble drones who serve the servers, or
perhaps anything in business involving computers.
LAN:
Local Area Network. For me, it began with Windows for Workgroups; well
actually a little afterwards with Windows 98; the general term for all
that wiring (usually ethernet) that hooks-up the average office
computers
together. LIFI:
LIterary FIction; the junk supposed
intellectuals supposedly read. As opposed, at least, to “SCIFI”,
SCIence FIction.
 LOL:
Light of Life, my esteemed co-conspirator.
MFC:
Microsoft
Foundation Classes. An obsolete easy-to-use Windows
programming tool with which numerous boring second-rate programs were
created. ... Actually, it’s extremely difficult to use; it has no
GUIRAD.
As opposed to the almost
perfect Delphi. Linux:
After Linus
Torvalds, the creator
of this
magical FOSS operating system —
but surely you
knew that already! ... I mean, google it.... LINQ: Language Integrated Query. The
astonishing ability to stuff SQL-like statements into
2008-or-so Microsoft
C# and VB NET script languages. PLINQ
is naturally “Parallel” etc. — and probably the
reason for it all.... MIDI:
Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Still alive and among us, it’s
the way your computer (usually) makes an attached electronic musical
instrument sing and play. Of course that’s pretty old hat now —
the
computers like to make the music all themselves in the CPU,
but I gather it’s still used for live performance a lot.... MSDOS:
MicroSoft Disk Operating System.
Not to be confused with a real operating system. What we ran our
pitiful PCs with, when the earth was still cooling.
NAS:
Network Attached Storage. These things
are getting cheap; it’s basically a box for a few $hundred
you
attach to your small business LAN
and then with a little
secret
sauce software — voila! you have 80 gig or who knows how much
everybody can use. ... I.e., so you don’t have to buy a Windows
server if all you really need is common file storage. ... Look around
the
web
for them; www.provantage.com
had some, although I have no idea which are good/bad. Although
I’m pretty sure many of them are Linux-based,
which is
probably good.
NET:
The Microsoft anti-Java. NFS:
Network File System. Sun Microsystems
created this thing in the age of the dinosaurs, and today it still
connects Linux/Unix computers
to each other now and
then. ... But, I suspect, it’s gradually being succeeded by Samba
— ’though the Linuxoids won’t admit it, because of the
evil Windows taint.... NIB:
The file extension for Next-step Interface Builder, in the
astonishing
Xcode environment.
NIC:
Network
Interface Card; the hardware that connects our PCs together in a
seamless
web in our LAN. Fixed Numeric TCP/IP Addresses:
like “10.1.1.8” instead of “myMachine”. ... These
are
used by
cogniscenti and lunatics like myself to connect our silly attic
networks together without using
DHCP. OC:
Xcode’s Objective C. PE: Microsoft’s “Preinstallation
Environment”. It used to be something like a pitifiul MSDOS
command-line interface, but I gather has blossomed into
a vast and wonderful thing, with numerous flavors and versions. ... It
is used by IT
staff to install Windows, see? ... This one is hard for me, because of
a strong overlay for “Physical Education”; with which I
was always tormented in my misspent youth.... ODBC:
Open DataBase Connectivity: Microsoft’s database domination attempt.
I’m pretty sure for at least a while Microsoft tried to divert us
to
better and more-wonderful object-oriented versions, but now Wikipedia
claims it’s open open open and Microsoft does seem to have lost interest....
PCL:
Printer Control Language, the stuff the HP LaserJets printed-with.
Those were the days; true HP fanatics could compose directly in the
stuff, which had a lot of ampersands as I recall.... PIP:
Peripheral Interchange Program. The appalling way you had to copy files
in CP/M.
... As I suspected, the name was stolen from, apparently, the PD6 or so
says Wikipedia....
RAD:
Rapid Application Development
environment. I used to think it meant an IDE
that
speeds-up program
development by doing something about the program’s GUI
code, but ... I have since
learned the proper definition is “any guru-linked
scheme that has something to do with software” (see Wikipedia).
... I must say, I am so
disappointed. ... But there you go; the comp biz may get around to
finding an acronym for the automation of GUI composition, but I’m
not waiting: see GUIRAD. RAM: Random
Access Memory. And on my equipment, it’s particularly random! ...
No
they really meant “arbitrary”: access to any location in RAM
is
supposed to take exactly the same amount of time which, hopefully, is
real fast, since this is where all the programs run from,
more-or-less.... RTOS:
Real Time Operating System. These are flogged relentlessly in the few
publications devoted to embedded systems and constitute a major
advertising source for such. The idea is you’re faced with some
challenging project with megabytes of contemplated code, so instead of
going amateur night and rolling your own, you’re supposed to buy
one
of
these — although there are open-source/free examples available
too. I am obviously not the only one who feels no particular attraction
to these systems, but then I suspect I’m already off their radar
since
most of my embedded work has been in assembler instead of decent high-level
C. SAAS:
Software As A Service: bringing the suppleness and agility of your web
experience to the desktop.
SAMBA:
It doesn’t mean anything, but
was chosen randomly to denote the Linux
software that
can communicate
with Windows’ SMB “Server Message Block”
protocol
— i.e. so Windows clients can see files on Linux computers (and vice
versa).
Invented by Andrew Tridgell. SCM:
Either “Source Control Management” — Linus Torvalds —
or “Software
Configuration Management” — almost everyone else. ... I presume
Torvalds has the original old definition, and the TLA degenerated into
the broader definition, which can basically mean anything.... SMP:
Symmetrical Multi Processing, the advanced new technology which will
support 2,000 users simultaneously on your PC. ... Sadly they
haven’t figured-out how to do much else; see my exciting revelations.
... The “Symmetrical” means we’re talking multiple more-or-less
identical hardware entities working together; your PC — heck, your
cellphone —
is already
a hotbed of parallel hardware, from the wretched thing in your keyboard
to graphics chips modems etc. ... But they all perform specific
different tasks — which is why, in general, they’re more useful
to you
than 2,048 cores in your SMP gadget....  SOA:
Service-Oriented
Architecture. Careful testing at the laboratories indicates that this
is total guru-driven BS. ... Instead of sensibly writing one giant
program in assembly language, the idea is you’ll have web servers
all
over the place offering services.
... Like Human Resources might provide an employee records service, or
manufacturing could have a widgits-made-today service. Then anyone in
the company can use these services to provide purpose-built software
for any old purpose you can just lash up in a moment....
SP:
Service Pack; an organized software upgrade. Notoriously, the mechanism
by which Microsoft makes its operating systems nominally less dangerous
than the initial release. SQL:
Standard Query Language. The venerable database query language which
has done so much for so many. ... Pronounced for some reason “SEKEL”
by
old hands; I have always shunned pretension and am content to pronounce
it ES-KEW-EL, i.e. like any normal TLA. The Standard
Query Language comes in about five million flavors, none of which are compatible
with each other....
STL: C++ Standard
Template Library,
a fiendishly-clever
assortment of macro-like code that supposedly provides programmers
easy-to-use
lists and collections. See my thoughtful
reflections. T-SQL:
Terminally-Stupid
Query Language. ... Well, no, that’s just my little witticism. ...
The
term showed-up suddenly in a few of the pitiful remaining computer
magazines @ 11/08 without the slightest excuse — i.e., “you
stupid fool
you didn’t go to our seminars or conferences or anything and you’re totally ignorant!”
... By context, T-SQL appeared to mean “SQL”, but supposedly
it really means, at least according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-SQL,
“Transact-SQL”. ... Which, as far as I can figure-out, means
“SQL”. ...
To be sure, with all the little syntax uniquities that make the
particular SQL dialect non-standard and non-portable but, I mean,
presumably these fancy SQL servers are already
transaction empowered....
TLA:
Three Letter Abbreviation. This is more
useful than you might think; of course there’s also FLA.
 UML:
1. Unified
Modeling Language. Incredibly
advanced comp-sci something.
Actually, a glorified flow chart. And, as has happened so many times
before, any day now you will be able to just cook up your UML stuff,
and the program writes itself! 2.
User Mode Linux is probably not
what you had in mind.
WordStar:
For the
children in the audience, WordStar was a neolithic word-processing /
text editor program that dominated the primitive computer world in a
long-ago
era. ... The WordStar “diamond” aka the cursor movement keys
control-E,
S, D, and X are still fondly remembered —
and used,
in my case — by hundreds. ... A story
in the British Linux Format recently
celebrated the talented WordStar-influenced Joe’s
Own Editor’s
help screens, available at the touch of a keystroke — but
apparently not realizing the feature was inherited from WordStar! ...
And were they a revelation in 1983, or whenever I first saw them!... UAC:
Vista’s User Account Control: the moronic Vista robot who dims the
screen and ostentatiously calls your attention to possible security
infractions. I think it’s somewhere in “Control Panel / User
Accounts” you can turn it off/on.... UPS:
Uninterruptible Power Supply — like a flashlight, often a container
for
dead batteries. When not occupied that way, they keep the computer on
when your power company decides to rearrange the extension cords. ...  Note
that the idea is not
to keep working; the
idea is for the UPS to provide enough power for an orderly shutdown,
and then go to the motel and await the power company’s mercies. ...
There are presumably UPSes designed to continue operation, but I think
expecting that from the things one finds in the computer stores is
unduly optimistic.... UNC:
Universal (or Uniform) Naming Convention: a file path
containing “\\” (in Windows) as a way of referring to something
on
the
network — not on your local
computer; “c:\elsecoms\bong.bat” is a batch file on this computer;
“\\xp300\c\elsecoms\bong.bat” is a batch file on the xp300
computer,
wherever that is. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(computing)
for endless elaboration.... USB:
Universal Serial Bus. ... Once, there was RS-232,
a designation which means nothing, and it connected our computers and printers
and modems together, and almost never
worked. ... Actually it still connects my printers
together and of course works flawlessly. ... So USB was born, which works
frequently — if
you devote adequate technical development attention to it, which can be
briefly summarized as “a lot”. ... Anyone else — i.e. the
kind of slugs
who used to connect their stuff with RS-232 — need not apply. ...
And
strangely, even ’though USB has conquered and triumphed for years,
and
the latest PCs don’t have
RS-232 ports, the old ways still live-on in my industrial world. ...
USB/RS-232 adapter gadgets are still sold for $30 or less, so that
RS-232-less computers can use the stuff. ... This peculiar persistence
might have something to do with that strange arcane technical parameter
known as “price”, i.e. RS-232 was
and is much
cheaper than USB
— at least to design into your gadget.... VB: Visual Basic of course. The original
Windows EZ-programming environment, perfected in my beloved Delphi
Pascal. ZIF:
Zero-Insertion Force, usually a socket,
i.e.
so one can put a chip in it
and take it out and put in another without overly stressing the chip or
the socket. They were used in the Golden Ages on EPROM
burners. ... But of course there are no more EPROMs, nor pins to
insert,
in our brave new world. ... But we can still burn old-fashioned flash
CPU
parts in them....
 |
I’ve
left my whining about Linux in these pages, since by now
that’s
the 
forms
and stuff; he actually advised a poster “just copy the code
and
paste it in [the 
Who
knew? For years both I and