19-letter words containing a, l, d, i, n
- design in real time — (programming) (Dirt) A user interface builder for the X Window System by R. Hesketh.
- detective constable — a police officer who investigates crime and who is of the lowest rank
- devils-on-horseback — a savoury of prunes wrapped in bacon slices and served on toast
- diamond-leaf laurel — a tree, Pittosporum rhombifolium, of Australia, having coarsely toothed, oval or diamond-shaped leaves and white flowers, widely planted as an ornamental in the southwestern U.S.
- dielectric constant — Electricity. the ratio of the flux density produced by an electric field in a given dielectric to the flux density produced by that field in a vacuum.
- diethylaminoethanol — a colorless, hygroscopic, water-soluble liquid, C 6 H 15 NO, used for the synthesis of local anesthetics, in antirust compounds, and in photographic emulsions.
- differential backup — (operating system) A kind of backup that copies all files that have changed since the last full backup. Each differential backup will include all files in previous differential backups since the full backup so to restore a version of a file, you only need to search the full backup and the relevant differential backup. Some systems support differential backup by associating an "Archive" flag with each file and setting this flag whenever the file is modified to indicate that it should be included in the next backup. A differential backup does not change this flag, whereas an incremental backup resets it.
- differential driver — (hardware) An electronic device (commonly an integrated circuit), containing two amplifiers, used to drive a differential line.
- digital electronics — (electronics) The implementation of two-valued logic using electronic logic gates such as and gates, or gates and flip-flops. In such circuits the logical values true and false are represented by two different voltages, e.g. 0V for false and +5V for true. Similarly, numbers are normally represented in binary using two different voltages to represented zero and one. Digital electronics contrasts with analogue electronics which represents continuously varying quantities like sound pressure using continuously varying voltages. Digital electronics is the foundation of modern computers and digital communications. Massively complex digital logic circuits with millions of gates can now be built onto a single integrated circuit such as a microprocessor and these circuits can perform millions of operations per second.
- digital linear tape — (storage) (DLT) A kind of magnetic tape drive originally developed by DEC and now marketed by Quantum. DLT drives implement the Digital Lempel Ziv 1 (DLZ1) compression algorithm in a combination of hardware and firmware. They use a popular chip by Stac (now hi/fn) to do the string searching. Counting, sorting and Huffman coding are done in firmware (with hardware support for the Huffman algorithm?). In April 1997 DLT drives can transfer 5 megabytes per second and can store 35 gigabytes on a single cartridge. Compression might roughly double these figures.
- dimethylnitrosamine — a yellow, water-soluble carcinogenic liquid, C 2 H 6 N 2 O, found in tobacco smoke and certain foods: known to be a potent carcinogen. Abbreviation: DMN, DMNA.
- diplomatic immunity — exemption from taxation, searches, arrest, etc., enjoyed by diplomatic officials and their dependent families under international law, and usually on a reciprocal basis.
- direct grant school — (in Britain, formerly) a school financed by endowment, fees, and a state grant conditional upon admittance of a percentage of nonpaying pupils nominated by the local education authority
- directional coupler — (communications) (tap) A passive device used in cable systems to divide and combine radio frequency signals. A directional coupler has at least three ports: line in, line out, and the tap. The signal passes between line in and line out ports with loss referred to as the insertion loss. A small portion of the signal power applied to the line in port passes to the tap port. A signal applied to the tap port is passed to the line in port less the tap attenuation value. The tap signals are isolated from the line out port to prevent reflections. A signal applied to the line out port passes to the line in port and is isolated from the tap port. Some devices provide more than one tap output line (multi-taps).
- disablement benefit — (in Britain) a noncontributory benefit payable to a person disabled through injury or disease caused by their work
- disciplinary action — punishment or caution
- dispersion relation — the relationship between the angular frequency (ω;) of a wave and the magnitude of its wave vector (k). Thus the wave's speed is ω/k
- displacement engine — any engine employing the rectilinear motion of one or more pistons in cylinders.
- display advertising — display ads taken collectively.
- distillation column — a type of still fitted with interior baffles, used for fractional distillation. Compare still2 (def 1).
- distinguishableness — The state or quality of being distinguishable.
- diversional therapy — the structured use of leisure time in recreation and play as a form of or supplement to conventional therapy
- dobsonian telescope — a relatively inexpensive Newtonian telescope, suitable for visual but not photographic use, in which the tube assembly slips freely in the lower base.
- dominant wavelength — the wavelength of monochromatic light that would give the same visual sensation if combined in a suitable proportion with an achromatic light
- draw the color line — to impose or accept the color line
- drill-down analysis — drill down
- drink the health of — to salute or celebrate with a toast
- duplicating machine — a duplicator, especially one for making identical copies of documents, letters, etc.
- dynamic translation — (architecture) A virtual machine implementation approach, used to speed up execution of byte-code programs. To execute a program unit such as a method or a function, the virtual machine compiles its bytecodes into (hardware) machine code. The translated code is also placed in a cache, so that next time that unit's machine code can be executed immediately, without repeating the translation. This technique was pioneered by the commercial Smalltalk implementation currently known as VisualWorks, in the early 1980s. Currently it is also used by some implementations of the Java Virtual Machine under the name JIT (Just In Time compilation).
- dynatron oscillator — type of oscillator
- educational adviser — a person who provides advice and training to teachers about teaching methods and educational policies
- eilean donan castle — a castle near the Kyle of Lochalsh in Highland, Scotland: built in the 13th century; famous for its picturesque setting
- elastic deformation — In elastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it but goes back to its original state when the stress is removed.
- electrode potential — the potential difference developed when an electrode of an element is placed in a solution containing ions of that element
- electrohydrodynamic — (physics) Of or pertaining to electrohydrodynamics.
- electronic keyboard — a typewriter keyboard used to operate an electronic device such as a computer, word processor, etc
- environmental audit — the systematic examination of an organization's interaction with the environment, to assess the success of its conservation or antipollution programme
- euclidean algorithm — Euclid's Algorithm
- extensible database — (database) A DBMS that allows access to data from remote sources as if the remote data were part of the database.
- fahd ibn abdul aziz — 1923–2005, king of Saudi Arabia (1982–2005)
- fallacy of division — the fallacy of inferring that a property of the whole is also a property of parts or members of the whole (opposed to fallacy of composition).
- fault-based testing — (testing) Software testing using test data designed to demonstrate the absence of a set of pre-specified faults; typically, frequently occurring faults. For example, to demonstrate that the software handles or avoids divide by zero correctly, the test data would include zero.
- financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
- first-sale doctrine — a legal principle allowing the purchaser of a lawfully made copy of a copyright-protected work to sell or give away that copy without permission but not to reproduce it.
- floating foundation — a foundation used in yielding soil, having for its footing a raft tending to displace a weight greater than that of the building.
- florida velvet bean — a tropical vine, Mucuna deeringiana, of the legume family, having showy, purple flowers in drooping clusters and black, hairy pods: grown as an ornamental.
- free alongside quay — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the quay without charge to the buyer
- free alongside ship — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the dock without charge to the buyer, but excluding the cost of loading onto the vessel
- frill-necked lizard — a large arboreal insectivorous Australian lizard, Chlamydosaurus kingi, having an erectile fold of skin around the neck: family Agamidae (agamas)
- functional database — (database, language) A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].