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24-letter words containing d, u, s

  • free software foundation — (body)   (FSF) An organisation devoted to the creation and dissemination of free software, i.e. software that is free from licensing fees or restrictions on use. The Foundation's main work is supporting the GNU project, started by Richard Stallman (RMS), partly to proselytise for his position that information is community property and all software source should be shared. The GNU project has developed the GNU Emacs editor and a C compiler, gcc, replacements for many Unix utilities and many other tools. A complete Unix-like operating system (HURD) is in the works (April 1994). Software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, which also provides a good summary of the Foundation's goals and principles. The Free Software Foundation raises most of its funds from distributing its software, although it is a charity rather than a company. Although the software is freely available (e.g. by FTP - see below) users are encouraged to support the work of the FSF by paying for their distribution service or by making donations. One of the slogans of the FSF is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" This remains controversial because authors want to own, assign and sell the results of their labour. However, many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality software for free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's imprimatur. See copyleft, General Public Virus, GNU archive site. Unofficial WWW pages: PDX, DeLorie. E-mail: <[email protected]>. Address: Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Telephone: +1 (617) 876 3296.
  • get under someone's skin — to anger or irritate someone
  • go all out for/to do sth — If you go all out to do something or go all out for something, you make the greatest possible effort to do it or get it.
  • gottfried von strassburg — early 13th-century German poet; author of the incomplete epic Tristan and Isolde, the version of the legend that served as the basis of Wagner's opera
  • graduated pension scheme — (between 1961 and 1975) an earnings-related pension scheme which was based on the amount of an employee's National Insurance contributions
  • head and shoulders above — vastly superior to
  • hydrochlorofluorocarbons — Plural form of hydrochlorofluorocarbon.
  • i wouldn't doubt someone — I would expect nothing else from someone
  • ichthyophthirius-disease — ich.
  • industrial correspondent — a journalist who specializes in reporting the industrial news
  • internal auditory meatus — the canal extending through the petrous portion of the temporal bone, through which the glossopharyngeal nerve, the facial nerve, and the auditory nerve and artery pass.
  • iterated function system — (graphics)   (IFS) A class of fractals that yield natural-looking forms like ferns or snowflakes. Iterated Function Systems use a very easy transformation that is done recursively.
  • keyed sequenced data set — (database)   (KSDS) One of the access methods used by VSAM. KSDS has indexes and data split into CI (Control Interval) in CA (Control Area) and multi index levelled. Forward and backward compression is applied to key values.
  • lady washington geranium — show geranium.
  • land of the midnight sun — any of those countries containing land within the Arctic Circle where there is a midnight sun in midsummer, especially Norway, Sweden, or Finland.
  • law of supply and demand — the theory that prices are determined by the interaction of supply and demand: an increase in supply will lower prices if not accompanied by increased demand, and an increase in demand will raise prices unless accompanied by increased supply
  • leave much to be desired — be inadequate
  • leave no stone un turned — the hard substance, formed of mineral matter, of which rocks consist.
  • licensed practical nurse — a person who has graduated from an accredited school of nursing and has become licensed to provide basic nursing care under the supervision of a physician or registered nurse. Abbreviation: LPN.
  • liquid components of gas — Liquid components of gas are associated hydrocarbons in natural gas, which include ethane, propane, and butane.
  • look over one's shoulder — If you say that someone is looking over their shoulder, you mean that they feel anxious all the time about what someone may do to them.
  • lunar (excursion) module — the component of the Apollo spacecraft used to carry astronauts to the moon's surface and return them to the command and service modules in lunar orbit
  • make ducks and drakes of — to use recklessly; squander or waste
  • medium-scale integration — MSI.
  • network addressable unit — (networking)   (NAU) The SNA term for an addressable entity. Examples include PUs, LUs, and SSCPs.
  • open software foundation — (body)   (OSF) A foundation created by nine computer vendors, (Apollo, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Bull, Nixdorf, Philips, Siemens and Hitachi) to promote "Open Computing". It is planned that common operating systems and interfaces, based on developments of Unix and the X Window System will be forthcoming for a wide range of different hardware architectures. OSF announced the release of the industry's first open operating system - OSF/1 on 23 October 1990.
  • phosphorus sesquisulfide — (not in scientific use) a yellow, crystalline, flammable substance, P 4 S 3 , insoluble in cold water and decomposed by hot water: used chiefly in organic synthesis and in the manufacture of matches.
  • portable scheme debugger — (PSD) A package for source code debugging of R4RS-compliant Scheme under GNU Emacs by Kellom ?ki Pertti <[email protected]>. Version 1.1. Distributed under GNU GPL. It works with scm, Elk and Scheme->C.
  • probability distribution — a distribution of all possible values of a random variable together with an indication of their probabilities.
  • put one's house in order — a building in which people live; residence for human beings.
  • put the show on the road — to set things in operation; start an activity, venture, etc.
  • put their heads together — to consult together
  • pyrotraumatic dermatitis — hot spot.
  • recursive descent parser — (grammar)   A "top-down" parser built from a set of mutually-recursive procedures or a non-recursive equivalent where each such procedure usually implements one of the productions of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognises.
  • registered general nurse — (in Britain) a nurse who has completed a three-year training course in all aspects of nursing care to enable him or her to be registered with the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery, and Health Visiting
  • repondez s'il vous plait — Répondez s'il vous plait
  • robot exclusion standard — standard for robot exclusion
  • rose-coloured spectacles — If you look at a person or situation through rose-coloured glasses or rose-tinted glasses, you see only their good points and therefore your view of them is unrealistic. In British English, you can also say that someone is looking through rose-coloured spectacles.
  • san bernardino mountains — mountain range in S Calif., south of the Mojave Desert: highest peak, 11,502 ft (3,506 m)
  • scholastic aptitude test — a standard assessment test for entry into college in the United States
  • scottish country dancing — a type of Scottish folk dancing, including reels, jigs, and strathspeys, in which couples are arranged in sets and perform a series of movements, esp facing one another in a line
  • second earl of shelburne — William Petty Fitzmaurice, 2nd Earl of, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, William Petty Fizmaurice Lansdowne.
  • set one's house in order — to put one's affairs in order
  • sic transit gloria mundi — thus passes the glory of the world
  • skeleton in the cupboard — a scandalous fact or event in the past that is kept secret
  • sodium hexametaphosphate — See under Calgon.
  • solution based modelling — (SBM) A software development process described in the book "Developing Object-Oriented Software for the Macintosh" written by Neal Goldstein and Jeff Alger, published by Addison Wesley in 1992.
  • st.-bruno-de-montarville — a town in S Quebec, in E Canada, near Montreal.
  • standard housing benefit — a rebate of a proportion of a person's eligible housing costs paid by a local authority and calculated on the basis of level of income and family size
  • steak and kidney pudding — beefsteak and kidney in a suet pastry crust, steamed in a basin.
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