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22-letter words containing c, i, v

  • digital versatile disc — (storage)   (DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared with the Compact Disc. DVD, like CD, was initally marketed for entertainment and later for computer users. [When was it first available?] A DVD can hold a full-length film with up to 133 minutes of high quality video, in MPEG-2 format, and audio. The first DVD drives for computers were read-only drives ("DVD-ROM"). These can store 4.7 GBytes - over seven times the storage capacity of CD-ROM. DVD-ROM drives read existing CD-ROMs and music CDs and are compatible with installed sound and video boards. Additionally, the DVD-ROM drive can read DVD films and modern computers can decode them in software in real-time. The DVD video standard was announced in November 1995. Matshusita did much of the early development but Philips made the first DVD player, which appeared in Japan in November 1996. In May 2004, Sony released the first dual-layer drive, which increased the disc capacity to 8.5 GB. Double-sided, dual-layer discs will eventually increase the capacity to 17 GB. Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives record a 3.9GB DVD-R disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive. Pioneer released the first DVD-R drive on 1997-09-29. By March 1997, Hitachi had released a rewritable DVD-RAM drive (by false analogy with random-access memory). DVD-RAM drives read and write to a 2.6 GB DVD-RAM disc, read and write-once to a 3.9GB DVD-R disc, and read a 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB DVD-ROM. Later, DVD-RAM discs could be read on DVD-R and DVD-ROM drives.
  • digital video recorder — See DVR.
  • directed-energy device — beam weapon.
  • directional derivative — the limit, as a function of several variables moving along a given line from one specified point to another on the line, of the difference in the functional values at the two points divided by the distance between the points.
  • distributive education — a special program of vocational education at the high-school level in which a student is employed part-time, receiving on-the-job training, and also attends classes, most of which pertain directly to the student's vocational field.
  • dominant seventh chord — a chord consisting of the dominant and the major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh above it. Its most natural resolution is to a chord on the tonic
  • educational television — television of informational or instructional content.
  • emergency road service — a form of motoring insurance that sends assistance to drivers when their vehicles break down on a journey; it is provided either by the national or regional automobile association or by a private insurance company
  • explosive cyclogenesis — a rapid drop in pressure at the centre of a storm system, causing it to become greatly intensified
  • flat-screen television — A flat-screen television is a television with a flat, narrow screen.
  • friar minor conventual — a friar belonging to a branch of the Franciscan order that separated from the Observants in the 15th century, and that observes a modification of the rule of St. Francis. Also called Conventual. Compare Friar Minor, capuchin (def 4).
  • galvanic skin response — a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin caused by an emotional reaction to a stimulus.
  • galvanomagnetic effect — any of several phenomena that occur when an electric current is passed through a conductor or semiconductor situated in a magnetic field, as the Hall effect.
  • give someone the flick — to dismiss someone from consideration
  • government corporation — a corporation set up by a national government to carry out business transactions on its behalf
  • gravitational collapse — the final stage of stellar evolution in which a star collapses to a final state, as a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, when the star's nuclear reactions no longer generate enough pressure to balance the attractive force of gravity.
  • gravitational constant — constant of gravitation. See under law of gravitation.
  • guest services manager — A guest services manager at a hotel is responsible for the services and facilities that the hotel provides for its guests.
  • halfwave rectification — a rectifier that changes only one half of a cycle of alternating current into a pulsating, direct current.
  • harvard classification — a classification of stars based on the characteristic spectral absorption lines and bands of the chemical elements present
  • human interface device — (hardware)   (HID) Any device to interact directly with humans (mostly input) like keyboard, mouse, joystick, or graphics tablet.
  • if push comes to shove — to press upon or against (a thing) with force in order to move it away.
  • indeterminate cleavage — the division of an egg into cells, each of which has the potential of developing into a complete organism
  • inland revenue service — In the United States, the Inland Revenue Service is the government authority which collects taxes. The abbreviation IRS is often used.
  • interactive courseware — (ICW) A training program controlled by a computer that relies on trainee input to determine the order and pace of instruction delivery. The trainee advances through the sequence of instructional events by making decisions and selections. The instruction branches according to the trainee's responses. ICW is a US military term which includes computer-aided instruction and computer-based training.
  • interactive television — techniques that enable viewers to interact with what they are watching
  • interactive whiteboard — a smooth, glossy sheet of white plastic that can be written on with a colored pen or marker in the manner of a blackboard.
  • interpretive semantics — a school of semantic theory based on the doctrine that the rules that relate sentences to their meanings form an autonomous system, separate from the rules that determine what is grammatical in a language
  • java community process — (project)   (JCP) An organization controlled by Sun Microsystems to further the growth of the Java language and runtime. The JCP produces standards called Java Standard Requests, which are "requests" in the same sense as RFCs.
  • john vincent atanasoff — (person)   John Vincent Atanasoff, 1903-10-04 - 1995-06-15. An American mathemetical physicist, and the inventor of the electronic digital computer. Between 1937 and 1942 he built the Atanasoff-Berry Computer with Clifford Berry, at the Iowa State University. Atanasoff was born on 1903-10-04 in Hamilton, New York. In 1925, he got a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida. In 1926 he received a Master's degree in Maths from Iowa State University. He received a PhD as a theoretical physicist from the University of Wisconsin in 1930. While an associate professor of mathematics and physics at Iowa State University, Atanasoff began to envision a digital computational device, believing analogue devices to be too restrictive. Whilst working on his electronic digital computer, Atanasoff was introduced to a graduate student named Clifford Berry, who helped him build the computer. The first prototype of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer was demonstrated in December 1939. Although no patent was awarded for the new computer, in 1973 US District Judge Earl R. Larson declared Atanasoff the inventor of the digital computer (declaring the ENIAC patent invalid). Atanasoff was awarded the National Medal of Technology by US President Bush on 1990-11-13. He died following a stroke on 1995-06-15.
  • lempel-ziv compression — Substitutional compression schemes proposed by Jakob Ziv and Abraham Lempel in 1977 and 1978. There are two main schemes, LZ77 and LZ78. Lempel-Ziv Welch compression is a variant of LZ78.
  • mechanical ventilation — life-support provided by respirator
  • metasyntactic variable — (grammar)   Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
  • microwave spectroscopy — the determination of those frequencies of the microwave spectrum that are selectively absorbed by certain materials, providing information about atomic, molecular, and crystalline structure.
  • million electron volts — a unit of energy equal to the energy acquired by an electron in falling through a potential of 10 6 volts. Abbreviation: MeV .
  • multiplicative inverse — reciprocal (def 9).
  • name service switching — Domain Name System
  • negative hallucination — an apparent abnormal inability to perceive an object
  • negative reinforcement — form of conditioning
  • non-constructive proof — (logic)   (Or "existence proof") A proof that something exists that does not provide an example of that thing or a method for finding an example. (A constructive proof does provide such an example or method). For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0 there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A non-constructive proof might proceed by observing that as k changes continuously from 0 to 1, f(k) changes continuously from n to p and, since they lie either side of zero, f(k) must pass through zero for some intermediate value of k. This proof does not tell us what that value of k is, only that it exists.
  • non-restrictive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
  • nondestructive testing — any of several methods of detecting flaws in metals without causing damage. The most common techniques involve the use of X-rays, gamma rays, and ultrasonic vibrations
  • open source initiative — (body)   (OSI) An organisation dedicated to managing and promoting the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
  • particular affirmative — a proposition of the form “Some S is P.” Symbol: I.
  • pavlovian conditioning — conditioning (def 2).
  • percussive maintenance — (jargon)   The fine art of whacking a device to get it working, possibly using a fine adjuster.
  • physiographic province — a geographic region in which climate and geology have given rise to an array of landforms different from those of surrounding regions.
  • pizza delivery service — a service whereby a pizza restaurant delivers pizzas to customers who order by telephone
  • positive reinforcement — encouragement
  • preventive maintenance — (PM) To bring down a machine for inspection or test purposes. See provocative maintenance, scratch monkey.
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