Guide to abbreviations

Sometimes authors of text in a document in this wiki use an abbreviation without explaining what it means. The meaning of the abbreviation may be well-known to many readers yet unknown to some other readers.

The purpose of this page is to show the meanings of abbreviations which occur in pages of this wiki. Readers are asked not to include abbreviations which are not mentioned in at least one other page of the wiki. Readers are asked to maintain this as an alphabetically arranged list.

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BIOS

Basic Input/Output System, which is a software system that resides in EPROM or Flash memory in PCs. The BIOS configures the system to boot the operating system and provides interfaces to the hardware. OLPC uses Open Firmware, which strives to do the minimal amount of configuration necessary to boot Linux.

CD

Compact Disc

CMOS

Complementary Metal-Oxide-Silicon, which is an integrated circuit manufacturing technology used in most current digital chips. Also a common shortening of "CMOS RAM", which is a small, battery-powered RAM that stores information like the date and BIOS settings while a PC is powered off.

CPU

The central processing unit of a computer or microcomputer.

DNS

Domain Name System, which is how human readable names like "laptop.org" are translated into the IP addresses actually used by computers to talk to each other on the Internet.

DRM

Digital Rights Management, which is a term to describe methods by which owners of the digital rights, such as copyright, of a piece of work, such as software or sound recordings or videos, may try to ensure that unauthorized copies of the work are not made.

ECC

Error Correcting Code, which can be used as a mechanism to correct and detect errors in a storage medium. Relative to OLPC, ECC is required for operation of NAND flash. NAND flash has a high probability of single bits getting "stuck". With extra ECC information stored with each sector, a single-bit error can be corrected, and two-bit errors can be detected.

ESD

Electrostatic Discharge, which a person can generate when touching a metal object after, for example, walking on a carpet in a very dry environment. This little shock can be over 3000V and easily damage electronic circuits.

FOSS

Free and Open Source Software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS

Gecko

[1] is not an acronym. It is the HTML layout engine from Mozilla used in Browse and other Xulrunner-based activities.

GTK

[2] is a toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces.

GUI

Graphical User Interface

I18N

Internationalization (the abbreviation replaces 18 letters of the word Internationalization with the number 18). Why? To point out the difference between the American English (internationalization) and British English (internationalisation) spellings.

I/O

Input/Output

ISP

Information Service Provider, which is an organization which allows, often for a fee, individuals to connect to the internet.

JFFS2

Journaling Flash File System, Version 2

L10N

Localization (the abbreviation replaces 10 letters of the word Localization with the number 10). Do some people say "el-ten-en" in speech?

MAC

[3] Media Access Control (MAC) address is a unique identifier "burned" into the network circuitry.

Maemo

[4] is a development platform for the Nokia 770 Internet tablet. (There is the Sugar and Maemo page and the Sugar page.)

MOO

[5] "MUD object oriented" is a type of MUD.

MUD

[6] "Multi-User Dungeon" is a multi-player computer game that combines elements of role-playing and chat.

MUSE

Used in the Software Ideas - Education page.

NAND

A type of flash that has overtaken older NOR technology in low cost and density. This flash is commonly used in cellphones, PDAs, and USB keys. The NAND moniker for the flash comes from the arrangment of the memory cells resembling a NAND gate (inverting AND gate).

OLPC

One Laptop per Child

p2p

Peer to Peer, which is a network architecture in which all computers have the same functionality in contrast to a client/server system.

Pango

[7] a library for laying out and rendering of text (used by GTK).

PCI

Peripheral Component Interconnect, a computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a computer motherboard.

PyGTK

is a Python wrapper for the GTK package.

Python

[8] is an interpreted programming language.

Sugar

is the working name for the development platform being used on the laptop. (There is the Sugar and Maemo page and the Sugar page.)

uid

user id number. Each user in Unix-like operating systems is assigned a user id number, which is used by the system to determine which permissions a user has. A file is set-uid permission (mentioned on the Bitfrost page) on an executable causes the program to run as the user who owns the file.

USB

Universal Serial Bus

See Also

All Acronyms - large searchable collection of technical acronyms and abbreviations