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31-letter words containing a, p, r, e, t

  • management selection procedures — steps in place to select candidates applying to or within an organization to become managers
  • microsoft disc operating system — (spelling)   Microsoft Disk Operating System
  • microsoft disk operating system — (operating system)   /M S doss/ (Or "MS-DOS", "PC-DOS", "MS-DOG", "mess-dos") Microsoft Corporation's clone of the CP/M disk operating system for the 8088 crufted together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson, who is said to have regretted it ever since. MS-DOS is a single user operating system that runs one program at a time and is limited to working with one megabyte of memory, 640 kilobytes of which is usable for the application program. Special add-on EMS memory boards allow EMS-compliant software to exceed the 1 MB limit. Add-ons to DOS, such as Microsoft Windows and DESQview, take advantage of EMS and allow the user to have multiple applications loaded at once and switch between them. Numerous features, including vaguely Unix-like but rather broken support for subdirectories, I/O redirection and pipelines, were hacked into MS-DOS 2.0 and subsequent versions; as a result, there are two or more incompatible versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers can never agree on basic things like what character to use as an option switch ("-" or "/"). The resulting mess became the highest-unit-volume operating system in history. It was used on many Intel 16 and 32 bit microprocessors and IBM PC compatibles. Many of the original DOS functions were calls to BASIC (in ROM on the original IBM PC), e.g. Format and Mode. People with non-IBM PCs had to buy MS-Basic (later called GWBasic). Most version of DOS came with some version of BASIC. Also know as PC-DOS or simply DOS, ignoring the fact that there were many other OSes with that name, starting in the mid-1960s with IBM's first disk operating system for the IBM 360.
  • nakhichevan autonomous republic — a region belonging to Azerbaijan, from which it is separated by part of Armenia; annexed by Russia in 1828; unilaterally declared secession from the Soviet Union in 1990. Capital: Nakhichevan. Pop: 363 000 (2000 est). Area: 5500 sq km (2120 sq miles)
  • netbios frames control protocol — (protocol)   (NBFCP, NBF protocol, originally "NetBEUI protocol")
  • niceno-constantinopolitan creed — a formal statement of the chief tenets of Christian belief, adopted by the first Nicene Council.
  • not all sth is cracked up to be — If you say that something is not all it's cracked up to be, you mean that it is not as good as other people have said it is.
  • operational test and evaluation — (testing)   (OT&E) Formal testing conducted prior to deployment to evaluate the operational effectiveness and suitability of the system with respect to its mission.
  • original equipment manufacturer — a firm that purchases complex equipment, as computers, from manufacturers and modifies or combines different components for resale.
  • parliamentary private secretary — (in Britain) a backbencher in Parliament who assists a minister, esp in liaison with backbenchers
  • pay the piper and call the tune — to bear the cost of an undertaking and control it
  • personal communication services — (communications)   (PCS) Telecommunications services that bundle voice communications, numeric and text messaging, voice-mail and various other features into one device, service contract and bill. PCS are carried over cellular links, most often digital.
  • place sth above/before/over sth — If you place one thing above, before, or over another, you think that the first thing is more important than the second and you show this in your behaviour.
  • preferred provider organization — a comprehensive health-care plan offered to corporate employees that allows them to choose their own physicians and hospitals within certain limits. Abbreviation: PPO.
  • preferred-provider organization — a comprehensive health-care plan offered to corporate employees that allows them to choose their own physicians and hospitals within certain limits. Abbreviation: PPO.
  • president of the board of trade — a title held by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, and Skills
  • progressive-resistance exercise — exercise or a program of exercises that builds physical strength, especially in a weak or injured bodily part, through the lifting of progressively heavier weight according to a formula based on the subject's maximum strength at the starting point.
  • property and casualty insurance — Property and casualty insurance is insurance on homes, cars, and businesses, rather than health or life insurance.
  • purification of the virgin mary — the presentation of Jesus in the Temple after the completion of Mary's purification (Luke 2:22)
  • put all your eggs in one basket — rely on a single plan
  • put someone in his or her place — to humble someone who is arrogant, conceited, forward, etc
  • quadrature amplitude modulation — (QAM) A method for encoding digital data in an analog signal in which each combination of phase and amplitude represents one of sixteen four bit patterns. This is required for fax transmission at 9600 bits per second.
  • radio free europe/radio liberty — a federally funded private organization that broadcasts news and entertainment to formerly Communist countries, especially the Russian Federation, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria: founded 1952.
  • reserve officers training corps — a body of students at some colleges and universities who are given training toward becoming officers in the armed forces. Abbreviation: ROTC, R.O.T.C.
  • scalable processor architecture — (computer)   (SPARC) An instruction set architecture designed by Sun Microsystems for their own use in 1985. Sun was a maker of 680x0-based Unix workstations. Research versions of RISC processors had promised a major step forward in speed but existing manufacturers were slow to introduce a RISC type processor, so Sun went ahead and developed its own, based on the University of California at Berkley's RISC I and RISC II 1980-2. In keeping with their open philosophy, they licenced it to other companies, rather than manufacture it themselves. The evolution and standardisation of SPARC is now directed by the non-profit consortium SPARC International, Inc. SPARC was not the first RISC processor. The AMD 29000 came before it, as did the MIPS R2000 (based on Stanford's design) and Hewlett-Packard Precision Architecture CPU, among others. The SPARC design was radical at the time, even omitting multiple cycle multiply and divide instructions (like a few others), while most RISC CPUs are more conventional. SPARC implementations usually contain 128 or 144 registers, (CISC designs typically had 16 or less). At each time 32 registers are available - 8 are global, the rest are allocated in a "window" from a stack of registers. The window is moved 16 registers down the stack during a function call, so that the upper and lower 8 registers are shared between functions, to pass and return values, and 8 are local. The window is moved up on return, so registers are loaded or saved only at the top or bottom of the register stack. This allows functions to be called in as little as 1 cycle. Like some other RISC processors, reading global register zero always returns zero and writing it has no effect. SPARC is pipelined for performance, and like previous processors, a dedicated condition code register holds comparison results. SPARC is "scalable" mainly because the register stack can be expanded (up to 512, or 32 windows), to reduce loads and saves between functions, or scaled down to reduce interrupt or context switch time, when the entire register set has to be saved. Function calls are usually much more frequent, so the large register set is usually a plus. SPARC is not a chip, but a specification, and so there are various implementations of it. It has undergone revisions, and now has multiply and divide instructions. Most versions are 32 bits, but there are designs for 64-bit and superscalar versions. SPARC was submitted to the IEEE society to be considered for the P1754 microprocessor standard. SPARC(R) is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
  • self-addressed stamped envelope — an envelope that is addressed and carries sufficient stamps for return to the sender
  • simple gateway control protocol — (communications, protocol)   (SGCP) An IETF work in progress, superseded by MGCP.
  • simple transcendental extension — a simple extension in which the specified element is not a root of any algebraic equation in the given field.
  • small computer system interface — (hardware, standard)   (SCSI) /skuh'zee/, /sek'si/ The most popular processor-independent standard, via a parallel bus, for system-level interfacing between a computer and intelligent devices including hard disks, floppy disks, CD-ROM, printers, scanners, and many more. SCSI can connect multiple devices to a single SCSI adaptor (or "host adaptor") on the computer's bus. SCSI transfers bits in parallel and can operate in either asynchronous or synchronous modes. The synchronous transfer rate is up to 5MB/s. There must be at least one target and one initiator on the SCSI bus. SCSI connections normally use "single ended" drivers as opposed to differential drivers. Single ended SCSI can suport up to six metres of cable. Differential ended SCSI can support up to 25 metres of cable. SCSI was developed by Shugart Associates, which later became Seagate. SCSI was originally called SASI for "Shugart Associates System Interface" before it became a standard. Due to SCSI's inherent protocol flexibility, large support infrastructure, continued speed increases and the acceptance of SCSI Expanders in applications it is expected to hold its market. The original standard is now called "SCSI-1" to distinguish it from SCSI-2 and SCSI-3 which include specifications of Wide SCSI (a 16-bit bus) and Fast SCSI (10 MB/s transfer). SCSI-1 has been standardised as ANSI X3.131-1986 and ISO/IEC 9316. A problem with SCSI is the large number of different connectors allowed. Nowadays the trend is toward a 68-pin miniature D-type or "high density" connector (HD68) for Wide SCSI and a 50-pin version of the same connector (HD50) for 8-bit SCSI (Type 1-4, pin pitch 1.27 mm x 2.45 mm). 50-pin ribbon cable connectors are also popular for internal wiring (Type 5, pin pitch 2.54 mm x 2.54 mm). Apple Computer used a 25-pin connector on the Macintosh computer but this connector causes problems with high-speed equipment. Original SCSI implementations were highly incompatible with each other.
  • software publishing certificate — (security)   (SPC) A public key certification standard (PKCS) #7 signed data object containing X.509 certificates. SPCs are used for digital signatures as applicable to computer software.
  • software publishing corporation — (company)   (SPC) The company that produces Harvard Graphics.
  • states' rights democratic party — a political party formed by dissident southern Democrats who opposed the candidacy of Harry Truman in 1948 and campaigned on a platform of states' rights.
  • supplementary ideographic plane — (text, standard)   (SIP) The third plane (plane 2) defined in Unicode/ISO 10646, designed to hold all the ideographs descended from Chinese writing (mainly found in Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Chinese) that aren't found in the Basic Multilingual Plane. The BMP was supposed to hold all ideographs in modern use; unfortunately, many Chinese dialects (like Cantonese and Hong Kong Chinese) were overlooked; to write these, characters from the SIP are necessary. This is one reason even non-academic software must support characters outside the BMP.
  • taxation without representation — a phrase, generally attributed to James Otis about 1761, that reflected the resentment of American colonists at being taxed by a British Parliament to which they elected no representatives and became an anti-British slogan before the American Revolution; in full, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”.
  • telocator alphanumeric protocol — (communications, protocol)   (TAP, or "IXO", "PET") A protocol for submitting requests to a pager service. IXO/TAP is an ASCII-based, half-duplex protocol that allows the submission of a numeric or alphanumeric message. See also RFC 1568.
  • terminal productivity executive — (operating system)   (TPX) A multiple session manager used to access mainframe applications. It was written by Morgan Stanley, acquired by Duquesne Systems and is now owned by Computer Associates. TPX allows you to work in multiple mainframe applications concurrently; lock and unlock your TPX screen; place your applications on hold; logon to TPX from a different terminal without losing your place; customize your TPX menu and send a screen image to another TPX user. TPX runs on MVS and VM. On VM, like VTAM, it uses the MVS-like facilities of GCS. It has a complete scripting facility and lets you see other user's sessions. The client-server version allows each managed session to open in its own window. Richard Kuebbing has built a complete e-mail system into it.
  • tied to someone's apron strings — dependent on or dominated by someone, esp a mother or wife
  • tiny basic interpreter language — (language)   (TBIL) The inner interpreter of Tom Pittman's set of Tiny Basics in Dr Dobb's Journal.
  • to be barking up the wrong tree — If you say that someone is barking up the wrong tree, you mean that they are following the wrong course of action because their beliefs or ideas about something are incorrect.
  • to be thrown in at the deep end — to be put into a situation without preparation or introduction
  • to have a soft spot for someone — If you have a soft spot for someone or something, you feel a great deal of affection for them or like them a lot.
  • to pour cold water on something — If you pour cold water on an idea or suggestion, you show that you have a low opinion of it.
  • to stop someone in their tracks — If someone or something stops you in your tracks, or if you stop dead in your tracks, you suddenly stop moving because you are very surprised, impressed, or frightened.
  • to throw a spanner in the works — If someone throws a spanner in the works, they prevent something happening smoothly in the way that it was planned, by causing a problem or difficulty.
  • training and enterprise council — one of the local bodies established in England and Wales in the early 1990s to administer publicly-funded training-for-work programmes, esp for school leavers
  • transaction processing facility — (operating system)   (TPF) A real-time mainframe operating system released by IBM around 1976. TPF is particularly suited to organisations dealing in very high I/O message switching and large global networks. Current users include British Airways (reservations), VISA International (authorisations), Holiday Inn, and Quantas. TPF was traditionally a 370/Assembler environment although the latest, release 4.1, contains C. Formerly known as ACP (Airline Control Program), it was renamed "TPF" to suggests its greater scope. It is common for TPF sites to use IBM's MVS and VM operating systems for off-line processing.
  • uzbek soviet socialist republic — a republic of the U.S.S.R.: now Uzbekistan
  • web-based enterprise management — (standard, system management)   (WBEM) A DMTF management standard using the Common Information Model to represent systems, applications, networks, devices and other managed components; developed to unify the management of distributed computing environments.
  • windows xp professional edition — (operating system)   ("Windows XP Pro", "XP Pro") The version of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system intended for businesses and advanced users. The alternative, Windows XP Home Edition, is a subset of Pro without Remote Desktop, Multi-processor support, Automated System Recovery, Dynamic Disk Support, Fax, Internet Information Services, Encrypting File System, File-level access control, Active Directory, Group Policy, IntelliMirror, Roaming profiles and other features.
  • workers' compensation insurance — insurance required by law from employers for the protection of employees while engaged in the employer's business.
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