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20-letter words containing c, o, r, n, u, t

  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • retirement community — a group of houses in a suburban area or a town designed primarily for retired persons.
  • rocky mountain basic — (language)   The BASIC language used by Hewlett Packard on their 680x0-based computers. Rocky Mountain Basic is good for interfaces to IEEE 488 controls and contains many mathematical and matrix functions. It has about 600 commands. Typical applications include automatic test stations.
  • rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
  • ruby-crowned kinglet — an olive-gray, American kinglet, Regulus calendula, the male of which has an erectile, ruby crest.
  • santa cruz operation — (SCO) A supplier of Unix systems for Intel microprocessors. They supply Xenix and Open Desktop. Founded in 1979, SCO became a public company in May, 1993 and trades on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol SCOC. SCO maintains its world headquarters in Santa Cruz, California, USA; a European headquarters in Watford, England; a Government Systems Group in Reston, Virginia; and offices in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, and throughout Europe and the United States. In February 1993, SCO acquired IXI Limited of Cambridge, England, the leading supplier of Unix System windowing software.
  • scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
  • schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
  • secure accommodation — an institution where young offenders are kept in custody
  • security association — (networking)   The relationship between two or more entities (typically, a computer, but could be a user on a computer, or software component) which describes how the entities will use security services, such as encryption, to communicate. See RFC 1825.
  • sound motion picture — a motion picture with a soundtrack.
  • south american plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising the continent of South America and several ocean basins and bounded on the north by the Caribbean Plate, on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the west by a submarine trench that borders the western coast of the continent, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
  • southern oscillation — a low-latitude fluctuation of atmospheric pressure closely linked with El Niño events, specifically the periods of El Niño warming and La Niña cooling.
  • spontaneous recovery — the reappearance of a response after its extinction has been followed by a period of rest
  • square cross-section — If a kelly has a square cross-section, it has a surface area with four equal sides, when looked at as if has been sliced through.
  • strong nuclear force — an interaction between elementary particles responsible for the forces between nucleons in the nucleus. It operates at distances less than about 10–15 metres, and is about a hundred times more powerful than the electromagnetic interaction
  • subscription edition — an edition of one or more volumes for which a number of prospective purchasers place orders, usually in advance of publication.
  • subscription library — a commercial lending library
  • summary jurisdiction — the right a court has to adjudicate immediately upon some matter arising during its proceedings
  • superior conjunction — the alignment of an inferior planet and the sun in which the planet is at the far side of the sun from the earth.
  • supersonic transport — a commercial jet airplane that can fly faster than the speed of sound. Abbreviation: SST.
  • surveillance society — a society where surveillance technology is widely used to monitor people's everyday activities
  • synchronous rotation — rotation of a satellite in which the period of rotation is equal to the period of orbit around its primary, leaving the same face always pointing toward the primary: The moon is in synchronous rotation about the earth.
  • systemic circulation — the circulatory system in general.
  • telephone subscriber — a person who subscribes to a telephone service
  • the course of nature — the ordinary course of events
  • the gnomes of zurich — Swiss bankers and financiers
  • the internet account — An Internet provider in Sydney, Australia who provides SLIP, PPP and CLI accounts for the same rates. <[email protected]> handles Acorn software. E-mail: <[email protected]>. Telephone: +61 (2) 968 4333. Fax: +61 (2) 968 4334. Address: PO BOX 473, Crows Nest, NSE 2065, Australia.
  • therapeutic abortion — abortion performed when a woman's pregnancy endangers her health.
  • thermal conductivity — the amount of heat per unit time per unit area that can be conducted through a plate of unit thickness of a given material, the faces of the plate differing by one unit of temperature.
  • thomas of erceldoune — Thomas of, Thomas of Erceldoune.
  • thought transference — transference of thought by extrasensory means from the mind of one individual to another; telepathy.
  • to clean up your act — If someone who has been behaving badly cleans up their act, they start to behave in a more acceptable or responsible way.
  • to cross the rubicon — If you say that someone has crossed the Rubicon, you mean that they have reached a point where they cannot change a decision or course of action.
  • to get your own back — If you get your own back on someone, you have your revenge on them because of something bad that they have done to you.
  • to keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example, when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.
  • to line your pockets — If you say that someone is lining their own or someone else's pockets, you disapprove of them because they are making money dishonestly or unfairly.
  • to pull your punches — If you say that someone does not pull their punches when they are criticizing a person or thing, you mean that they say exactly what they think, even though this might upset or offend people.
  • too much information — I don't want to hear any more
  • transposed conjugate — adjoint (def 2).
  • triple witching hour — the last hour of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on the four Fridays each year when stock options, stock index futures, and options on such futures simultaneously expire: regarded as a time of extreme volatility in trading.
  • troilus and cressida — a satiric comedy (1598–1602?) by Shakespeare.
  • tropical disturbance — a very weak, or incipient, tropical cyclone.
  • try conclusions with — to engage in an argument or contest with
  • turn the other cheek — not retaliate
  • turnip-rooted celery — celeriac.
  • under the microscope — If you say that something is under the microscope, you mean that it is being studied very closely, usually because it is believed that something is wrong with it.
  • uniform crime report — an annual report issued by the FBI that presents data on selected categories of crimes reported to the police. Abbreviation: UCR.
  • university education — a course of study undertaken and completed at a university
  • until further notice — If a situation is said to exist until further notice, it will continue for an uncertain length of time until someone changes it.
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