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22-letter words containing a, g, i

  • bug-for-bug compatible — Same as bug-compatible, with the additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated.
  • c programmer's disease — (programming)   The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68 elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he or she can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the comfortable feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities to explore the marvellous consequences of fandango on core. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the user.
  • cadence design systems — (company)   A company that sells electronic design automation software and services. See also Verilog.
  • cargo cult programming — (programming, humour)   A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming). The term "cargo cult" is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults centre on building elaborate mockups of aeroplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like aeroplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterisation of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
  • cascading style sheets — (web)   (CSS) An extension to HTML to allow styles, e.g. colour, font, size to be specified for certain elements of a hypertext document. Style information can be included in-line in the HTML file or in a separate CSS file (which can then be easily shared by multiple HTML files). Multiple levels of CSS can be used to allow selective overriding of styles.
  • catch sight of someone — If you catch sight of someone, you suddenly see them, often briefly.
  • categorical imperative — (in the ethics of Kant) the unconditional moral principle that one's behaviour should accord with universalizable maxims which respect persons as ends in themselves; the obligation to do one's duty for its own sake and not in pursuit of further ends
  • centimeter-gram-second — designating or of a system of measurement in which the centimeter, gram, and second are the units of length, mass, and time, respectively
  • central locking device — a small device that controls the central locking on a motor vehicle
  • ceramic pin grid array — (hardware, processor)   (CPGA) A form of Pin Grid Array package used by Cyrix III processors. Compare PPGA and FC-PGA.
  • charity begins at home — If you say charity begins at home, you mean that people should deal with the needs of people close to them before they think about helping others.
  • chicago board of trade — a major exchange in the United States that deals in futures, notably of grains and metals. Abbreviation: CBT.
  • chorionic gonadotropin — Also called human chorionic gonadotropin. Biochemistry. a hormone, produced in the incipient placenta of pregnant women, that stimulates the production of estrogen and progesterone: its presence in blood or urine is an indication of pregnancy.
  • classical conditioning — the alteration in responding that occurs when two stimuli are regularly paired in close succession: the response originally given to the second stimulus comes to be given to the first
  • classified advertising — advertising compactly arranged, as in newspaper columns, according to subject, under such listings as help wanted and lost and found
  • cognitive architecture — (architecture)   A computer architecure involving non-deterministic, multiple inference processes, as found in neural networks. Cognitive architectures model the human brain and contrast with single processor computers. The term might also refer to software architectures, e.g. fuzzy logic.
  • colliding-beam machine — a particle accelerator in which positively and negatively charged particles circulate in opposite directions and collide head-on.
  • color graphics adapter — (hardware, graphics)   (CGA) One of IBM's earliest hardware video display standards for use in IBM PCs. CGA can display 80*25 or 40*25 text in 16 colors, 640*200 pixels of graphics in two colors or 320*200 in four colors (IBM PC video modes 0-6). It is now obsolete.
  • combinatorial topology — the branch of topology that deals with the properties of geometric figures by considering the figures as being composed of elementary geometric figures, as points or lines.
  • common snapping turtle — a large aggressive North American river turtle, Chelydra serpentina, having powerful hooked jaws and a rough shell
  • compactness preserving — (theory)   In domain theory, a function f is compactness preserving if f c is compact whenever c is.
  • comparative government — the study and comparison of different forms of government.
  • comparative musicology — ethnomusicology.
  • comparative psychology — the study of the similarities and differences in the behaviour of different species
  • computational geometry — (mathematics)   The study of algorithms for combinatorial, topological, and metric problems concerning sets of points, typically in Euclidean space. Representative areas of research include geometric search, convexity, proximity, intersection, and linear programming.
  • computational learning — grammatical inference
  • concentration gradient — the gradual difference in concentration of a dissolved substance in a solution between a region of high density and one of lower density.
  • congressional district — (in the US) an electoral division of a state, entitled to send one member to the US House of Representatives
  • conservation of charge — the principle that the total charge of any isolated system is constant and independent of changes that take place within the system
  • conservation of energy — the principle that the total energy of any isolated system is constant and independent of any changes occurring within the system
  • contextual advertising — a form of targeted advertising used on websites or other media, such as content displayed in mobile browsers
  • contingent beneficiary — a person who becomes the beneficiary if the primary beneficiary dies or is otherwise disqualified.
  • cosmological principle — the theory that the universe is uniform, homogenous, and isotropic, and therefore appears the same from any position
  • cotton-wool generation — the children and teenagers of the early 21st century, viewed as having been overprotected while growing up
  • crankshaft end bearing — The crankshaft end bearing is the bearing between the connecting rod and the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine.
  • crime against humanity — repeated actions undertaken by, or condoned by, a government, deemed to infringe human dignity and safety, such as rape, torture, murder, etc
  • criminal investigation — an investigation by the police into a crime
  • cross the great divide — to die
  • dadra and nagar haveli — a union territory of W India, on the Gulf of Cambay: until 1961 administratively part of Portuguese Damão. Capital: Silvassa. Pop: 220 451 (2001). Area: 489 sq km (191 sq miles)
  • dashing white sergeant — a lively Scottish dance for sets of six people
  • de broglie wave length — the postulate of wave mechanics that a particle of mass m moving at a velocity v will have the properties of a wave of wavelength h / mv (de Broglie wavelength) where h is Planck's constant.
  • debt collection agency — a company that collects debts on behalf of creditors
  • delaunay triangulation — (mathematics, graphics)   (After B. Delaunay) For a set S of points in the Euclidean plane, the unique triangulation DT(S) of S such that no point in S is inside the circumcircle of any triangle in DT(S). DT(S) is the dual of the voronoi diagram of S.
  • denominational college — a college associated with a particular religious denomination
  • denying the antecedent — the fallacy of inferring the falsehood of the consequent of a conditional statement, given the truth of the conditional and the falsehood of its antecedent, as if there are five of them, there are more than four: there are not five, so there are not more than four
  • descriptive cataloging — the aspect of cataloging concerned with the bibliographic and physical description of a book, recording, or other work, accounting for such items as author or performer, title, edition, and imprint as opposed to subject content.
  • design system language — J. Gaffney, Evans & Sutherland 1976. Interpretive FORTH-like language for 3d graphics databases. Earliest forerunner of both Interpress and PostScript. Mentioned in PostScript Language Reference Manual, Adobe Systems, A-W 1985.
  • devil's darning needle — dragonfly
  • diachronic linguistics — historical linguistics.
  • digital control system — (systems)   (DCS) A digital computer used for real-time control of a dynamic system, usually in an industrial environment, possibly as part of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. A DCS samples feedback from the system under control and modifies the control signals in an attempt to achieve some desired behaviour. Analysis of such digital-analogue feedback systems can involve mathematical methods such as difference equations, Laplace transforms, z transfer functions, state space models and state transition matrices.
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