0%

25-letter words containing f, a, n, i, o

  • memorandum of association — a document giving details such as the company's name, the purpose of the company, and the address of its registered office that is legally required when incorporating a company in certain countries such as the UK
  • metal-free phthalocyanine — phthalocyanine (def 1).
  • minimal brain dysfunction — (no longer in technical use) attention deficit disorder.
  • mpc level 1 specification — (multimedia)   The original Multimedia Personal Computer specification. Minimum requirements are a 16 MHz 386SX with 2 megabytes of RAM, a 30 MB hard disk drive, and a CD-ROM drive with a sustained data transfer rate of 150 KB/s at no more than 40% of CPU bandwidth and reading at least 16 KB blocks. The maximum average seek time is 1 second and the Mean Time Between Failure 10000 hours. Capability Mode 1. The computer must have 8-bit digital sound and an 8-note synthesizer with MIDI playback. Sample rates of 22.05 and 11.025 kHz must be supported by no more than 10% of CPU bandwidth, preferably 44.1 kHz at no more than 15% of CPU bandwidth. The synthesizer must support multi-voice, multi-timbral generation of six simultaneous melody notes and two simultaneous percussive notes with internal mixing capabilities to combine input from three sources and present the output as a stereo, line-level audio signal at the back panel. The video display must have a resolution of at least 640 x 480 in 16 colours. MIDI, I/O, and joystick ports must be previded. Compare MPC Level 2 Specification.
  • mpc level 2 specification — (multimedia)   An improved version of the MPC Level 1 Specification for Multimedia Personal Computers. Minimum requirements are a 25 Mhz 486SX with 4 MB of RAM and a 160 MB hard disk drive. The CD-ROM drive must support a sustained data transfer rate of 300 KB/s using at most 60% of CPU bandwidth on 16 KB minimum block read size. Its average seek time must be 400 milliseconds maximum. Capability Mode 1, Mode 2 form 1, Mode 2 form 2, Multisession. It must be CD-ROM XA-ready. The computer must have 16-bit digital sound, an 8-note synthesizer, and MIDI playback. A sample rate of 44.1 kHz must be available on stereo channels with more than 15% of CPU bandwidth. A video display with a resolution of 640 x 480 in 65,536 colours, and MIDI, I/O, and joystick ports must be provided.
  • my favourite toy language — (jargon, language)   (MFTL) Describes a talk on a programming language design that is heavy on syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g. type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see content-free). More broadly applied to talks - even when the topic is not a programming language --- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL talk". 2. A language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL." The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?". On the other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. See break-even point, toolsmith.
  • nail in the coffin of sth — If you say that one thing is a nail in the coffin of another thing, you mean that it will help bring about its end or failure.
  • national liberation front — the name taken by nationalist insurgent groups in various countries.
  • non-uniform memory access — (architecture)   (NUMA) A memory architecture, used in multiprocessors, where the access time depends on the memory location. A processor can access its own local memory faster than non-local memory (memory which is local to another processor or shared between processors).
  • northern corn-leaf blight — northern leaf blight.
  • not for the faint-hearted — If you say that something is not for the faint-hearted, you mean that it is an extreme or very unusual example of its kind, and is not suitable for people who like only safe and familiar things.
  • nuffield teaching project — (in Britain) a complete school programme in mathematics, science, languages, etc, with suggested complementary theory and practical work
  • of someone's acquaintance — A person of your acquaintance is someone who you have met and know.
  • office of war information — OWI.
  • on the horns of a dilemma — one of the bony, permanent, hollow paired growths, often curved and pointed, that project from the upper part of the head of certain ungulate mammals, as cattle, sheep, goats, or antelopes.
  • on the side of the angels — If you say that someone is on the side of the angels, you believe very strongly that what they are doing is right.
  • pci configuration utility — (tool)   (PCU) A piece of software for configuring a specific PCI hardware device.
  • personal flotation device — a life preserver, life jacket, or other device for keeping a person afloat in the water. Abbreviation: PFD.
  • point-and-drool interface — (abuse)   (Or "point-and-grunt interface") A parody of "point-and-shoot interface", describing a windows, icons, and mouse-based (WIMP) graphical user interface. The implication, of course, is that such an interface is only suitable for idiots. See for the rest of us, WIMP, drool-proof paper.
  • point-and-grunt interface — point-and-drool interface
  • preferred ordinary shares — shares issued by a company that rank between preference shares and ordinary shares in the payment of dividends
  • principal nursing officer — a grade of nurse concerned with administration in the British National Health Service
  • principle of least action — the principle that motion between any two points in a conservative dynamical system is such that the action has a minimum value with respect to all paths between the points that correspond to the same energy
  • principle of virtual work — the principle that the total work done by all forces on a system in static equilibrium is zero for a set of infinitesimally small displacements.
  • profit and loss statement — A profit and loss statement is a statement that is compiled at the end of a financial year showing that year's revenue and expense items and indicating gross and net profit or loss.
  • qualified majority voting — a voting system, used by the EU Council of Ministers, enabling certain resolutions to be passed without unanimity
  • run-time type information — (compiler)   (RTTI) Facilities included in C++ compilers to allow the type of an object to be determined at run time. This facility, found in good C++ compilers and some other high level languages, adds type information to memory resident objects (i.e. type name or unique type-id). This allows the run-time system to determine if an object is of a specific type, for example, to ensure that a cast of an object is valid.
  • saint joseph of arimathea — a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, who obtained the body of Jesus after the Crucifixion and laid it in his own tomb (Matthew 27:57–60). Feast day: Mar 17 or July 31
  • similarity transformation — Also called homothetic transformation. a mapping of a set by which each element in the set is mapped into a positive constant multiple of itself, the same constant being used for all elements.
  • single document interface — (programming)   (SDI) A limitation applying to an application program that only shows a single windows giving a view of one document at a time. The opposite is Multiple Document Interface (MDI).
  • single wingback formation — an offensive formation in which the wingback lines up outside of and about one yard behind an end, the quarterback lines up lateral to the wingback but about midway between the same end and the center, the fullback is three or four yards behind the middle of the line, and the tailback lines up one yard behind the fullback on the other side of the line from the wingback and quarterback.
  • slip/fall through the net — You use slip through the net or fall through the net to describe a situation where people are not properly cared for by the system that is intended to help them.
  • take the sting out of sth — If something takes the sting out of a situation, it makes it less unpleasant.
  • the knives are out for sb — If a lot of people want something unpleasant to happen to someone, for example if they want them to lose their job, you can say that the knives are out for that person.
  • the leaning tower of pisa — the bell tower of Pisa Cathedral
  • the mother of parliaments — the British Parliament: the model and creator of many other Parliaments
  • the scholastic profession — the profession of teaching
  • there are no flies on him — he is no fool
  • time domain reflectometer — (hardware, networking)   (TDR) An electronic device for detecting and locating short- or open-circuits in an Ethernet cable. TDRs can also measure how the characteristic impedance of a line varies along its length.
  • to be living proof that … — to show that
  • to be on first-name terms — (of two people) knowing each other well enough to call each other by their first names, rather than having to use a more formal title.
  • to catch sight of someone — If you catch sight of someone, you suddenly see them, often briefly.
  • to have irons in the fire — If someone has a lot of irons in the fire, they are involved in several different activities or have several different plans.
  • to someone's satisfaction — If you do something to someone's satisfaction, they are happy with the way that you have done it.
  • total internal reflection — the effect that occurs when light meets the interface between the medium in which it is traveling and a medium of smaller refractive index at an angle of incidence greater than the critical angle, all light being reflected back to the first medium.
  • trading standards officer — a person who works for a trading standards office
  • transport layer interface — (networking, programming)   (TLI, or "Transport Level Interface") A protocol-independent interface for accessing network facilities, modelled after the ISO transport layer (level 4), that first appeared in Unix SVR3. TLI is defined by SVID as transport mechanism for networking interfaces, in preference to sockets, which are biased toward IP and friends. A disavantage is that a process cannot use read/write directly, but has to use backends using stdin and stdout to communicate with the network connection. TLI is implemented in SVR4 using the STREAMS interface. It adds no new system calls, just a library, libnsl_s.a. The major functions are t_open, t_bind, t_connect, t_listen, t_accept, t_snd, t_rcv, read, write. According to the Solaris t_open man page, XTI (X/OPEN Transport Interface) evolved from TLI, and supports the TLI API for compatibility, with some variations on semantics.
  • transport level interface — Transport Layer Interface
  • ucs transformation format — (standard, character)   (UTF) A set of standard character encodings in accordance with ISO 10646. One of a set of standard character encodings, the most widely used of which are UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. The code tables in ISO 10646 and in the Unicode standard are identical, although the Unicode standard includes additional material. UTF-8 is the most widely used encoding, at least on Unix systems. Since it does not include any bytes like '\0' or '/' which have a special meaning in filenames and other C library function parameters, and 7-bit ASCII characters have the same encoding under both ASCII and UTF-8, the required changes to existing software are minimised. Other UTFs: UTF-1 and UTF-7 are not widely used.
  • under the aegis of sb/sth — Something that is done under the aegis of a person or organization is done with their official support and backing.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?