Ultrabooks are high-end subnotebooks. Although the term has become synonymous with very lightweight yet full size laptop computers, it’s actually a trademark of computer company Intel and has specific criterion. The specifications cover battery life (5 hours or better), height (21 mm or thinner), time from hibernation resume (7 seconds or better) and, as you would expect, and Intel processor.
Netbooks are a class of subnotebooks. Introduced in late 2007, the tiny laptops are optimized for long battery life, low weight, and cost. Netbooks typically feature a screen ranging from 6-12″ in size, weigh around 2 pounds, and have 5-10 hour battery run times.
Subnotebooks are a class of portable computers designed to be smaller and lighter than a typical laptop computer, yet still run a full fledged operating system (such as Windows 8) and not a lightweight mobile-device operating system (such as Windows CE).
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems rely on direct system-to-system connections without a central infrastructure or server system facilitating the transmission of data or resources. P2P systems are utilized in situations where it is ideal to distribute loads across many users. In the case of BitTorrent (a type of distributed file sharing system), files are not stored on a central server, but instead are shared piece-by-piece in a distributed network composed of many users. This makes it easy to get popular files quickly and it protects the network from being shut down by outside authorities.
Radio buttons are a special type on-screen button found within application user interfaces. A radio button functions such that if you select one of the available options (say, printing in color instead of black and white), any other entry you made will be automatically deselected.
Color space is an abstract mathematical system used to describe colors using numerical values. While there are dozens of color space models, the two the average person comes in contact with on a day to day basis are RGB and CMYK. The RGB (Red Green Blue) color space is the color space used for computer monitors and all derivative screen types (tablets, smartphones, etc. all have RGB-based screens). CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK) color spaces are used for printing. Whether on a home printer or high end dye-sublimation printer, those four colors are combined to create millions of different shades.
Televisions, computer monitors, phone and tablet displays, and other display screens use RGB color (all the colors you see via that display are composed of tiny red, green, and blue pixels adjusted to varying degrees of intensity to create a wide range of potential colors). Another way of saying this is that computers and related equipment use an RGB color space.
Web Crawlers, also known as Web Spiders, are programs that search for information on the World Wide Web. Web Crawlers are most widely employed by search engine companies and are used to create ever-growing indexes of web pages and their content. At its most elementary, a Web Crawler visits a known web page and then explores all the links on that web page (discovering new web pages in the process and repeating the sequence on them). Content that is not accessible to Web Crawlers is known as the Deep Web.
The Deep Web is web-based content that is not found in search engine results. Unlike Darknets, wherein the content is explicitly encrypted and kept from public view, most of the Deep Web content is invisible to search engines and their users simply because there are no links pointing the content. For example, if you created a website and never published the individual URLs of the page or linked to them from a publicly accessible main page, the chances that a search engine would find and index those pages are next to zero.
A Darknet is a network within a network operated expressly to facilitate the distribution of files, information, and communications while concealing the identity of participants. The content of the Darknet is not accessible to those outside of the Darknet and/or not the specific intended recipient of the communication. Examples of modern Darknets include the TOR network and Freenet.
TOR, or The Onion Router, is the world’s largest implementation of onion routing communication techniques. The TOR system is composed of thousands of volunteers around the world who run TOR proxy servers. When someone connects to the TOR proxy network, their communications are encrypted and passed through a series of TOR proxies. Any TCP-based application that supports standard SOCKS proxy protocols can be connected to the TOR network.
Onion Routing is a method used for anonymous communication over wide area networks. Much like the heart of an onion is wrapped in many layers, messages sent through Onion Routing are wrapped in layer after layer of encryption. Each layer of encryption corresponds to a stop on the route and the layer is peeled away (decrypted) before being passed forward. The very last layer of encryption is removed by the recipient and the message is revealed.
A common feature of email discussion lists and newsgroup discussions, a digest is a daily or weekly summary distributed to the users. Digests make it easy to read over all the new developments of that day (or week) at once instead of slogging through multiple individual emails or postings.
Backlighting is the process by which displays are lit via light shined through them towards the user. Smartphone screens, computer monitors, television sets, and other common display interfaces are lit by LED or fluorescent lights in this fashion.
Produced by the ARM Ltd., based out of the UK, ARM chips are RISC-based microprocessors widely used in smartphones, ebook readers, game consoles, and a wide array of other consumer electronics where having a small chip with low power needs and passive cooling capabilities is a necessity.
Toshiba Link (TOSLINK) is an optical interface that links audio-capable devices using the S/PDIF standard over fiber optic cables. TOSLINK is capable of transfer rates of up to 1.2 Gbps. TOSLINK ports are found on a wide variety of consumer electronics including DVD players, cable boxes, amplifiers, and other home audio/video equipment.
Sony/Philips Digital InterFace (S/PDIF) is a serial interface for transferring digital audio from DVD, CD, and other disc-based players to stereo amplifiers, television sets, and other equipment.
A NIC, or Network Interface Card, is the piece of hardware that provides a connection between the computer and a computer network. Historically, a NIC was a discrete expansion card added into a computer to provide access to a hard wired network such as an Ethernet or Token Ring LAN.
In computing, a queue is a list of processes to be completed that obey a first-in-first-out rule. One of the most common queues around is the print queue; if ten users around the office all send a document to be printed, the documents will be temporarily stored in the printer’s queue in the order in which they were received. This queue will then be emptied using a first-in-first-out process with the last received document the last to be printed.
Inbox Zero is a phrase coined by blogger and productivity writer Merlin Mann in 2006 to refer to email management techniques and strategies designed to keep the user’s email inbox as empty as possible. Techniques that fall under the Inbox Zero umbrella include unsubscribing from unnecessary or unwanted mailing lists, setting up aggressive email filters, communicating directly with the high volume senders in your address book, and daily processing of the email inbox to ensure emails are properly dealt with, delegated, deleted, or otherwise removed from the inbox.
Email bankruptcy is a term used to describe a scorched earth approach to getting an overwhelming backlog of emails under control. The owner of the inbox deletes all unread emails (declaring “bankruptcy” on the account) and starts fresh with the new incoming emails. The term is typically attributed to author and Wired writer Lawrence Lessig. The process may or may not involve sending a blanket BCC’d email to the owners of the unreplied to emails explaining that email bankruptcy has been declared.
The Media Access Control address, or, MAC address, is a unique hardware identification number assigned to network interfaces. Common interfaces assigned MAC addresses include Ethernet cards, Wi-Fi cards, Bluetooth devices, and other wireless devices and accessories which require access to a data network.
Daemons are applications which run on modern multitasking computer operating systems as background processes rather than as foreground processes (visible to the user). These background processes sit idle waiting for input and then spring to life, performing their intended function.
User Account Control (UAC) is a Windows-based security infrastructure introduced with the release of Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008. The development of UAC was a move by Microsoft intended to introduce the concept of regular user/superuser security structures, common in Unix-like operating systems, to Windows.
Sudo is a program for Unix-like systems that allows users to run programs with the security privileges of another user–typically a user with a higher level of access such as the superuser/root account.
