15-letter words containing i, t, s
- compotationship — the state of being a compotator or drinking companion
- compressibility — the ability to be compressed
- comptrollership — controller (def 1).
- computer ethics — (philosophy) Ethics is the field of study that is concerned with questions of value, that is, judgments about what human behaviour is "good" or "bad". Ethical judgments are no different in the area of computing from those in any other area. Computers raise problems of privacy, ownership, theft, and power, to name but a few. Computer ethics can be grounded in one of four basic world-views: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, or Existentialism. Idealists believe that reality is basically ideas and that ethics therefore involves conforming to ideals. Realists believe that reality is basically nature and that ethics therefore involves acting according to what is natural. Pragmatists believe that reality is not fixed but is in process and that ethics therefore is practical (that is, concerned with what will produce socially-desired results). Existentialists believe reality is self-defined and that ethics therefore is individual (that is, concerned only with one's own conscience). Idealism and Realism can be considered ABSOLUTIST worldviews because they are based on something fixed (that is, ideas or nature, respectively). Pragmatism and Existentialism can be considered RELATIVIST worldviews because they are based or something relational (that is, society or the individual, respectively). Thus ethical judgments will vary, depending on the judge's world-view. Some examples: First consider theft. Suppose a university's computer is used for sending an e-mail message to a friend or for conducting a full-blown private business (billing, payroll, inventory, etc.). The absolutist would say that both activities are unethical (while recognising a difference in the amount of wrong being done). A relativist might say that the latter activities were wrong because they tied up too much memory and slowed down the machine, but the e-mail message wasn't wrong because it had no significant effect on operations. Next consider privacy. An instructor uses her account to acquire the cumulative grade point average of a student who is in a class which she instructs. She obtained the password for this restricted information from someone in the Records Office who erroneously thought that she was the student's advisor. The absolutist would probably say that the instructor acted wrongly, since the only person who is entitled to this information is the student and his or her advisor. The relativist would probably ask why the instructor wanted the information. If she replied that she wanted it to be sure that her grading of the student was consistent with the student's overall academic performance record, the relativist might agree that such use was acceptable. Finally, consider power. At a particular university, if a professor wants a computer account, all she or he need do is request one but a student must obtain faculty sponsorship in order to receive an account. An absolutist (because of a proclivity for hierarchical thinking) might not have a problem with this divergence in procedure. A relativist, on the other hand, might question what makes the two situations essentially different (e.g. are faculty assumed to have more need for computers than students? Are students more likely to cause problems than faculty? Is this a hold-over from the days of "in loco parentis"?).
- computer vision — a robot analogue of human vision in which information about the environment is received by one or more video cameras and processed by computer: used in navigation by robots, in the control of automated production lines, etc.
- computerisation — (chiefly, British) alternative spelling of computerization.
- conceptualising — Present participle of conceptualise.
- conceptualistic — Of or pertaining to conceptualism.
- concert pianist — a person who earns a living from giving solo performances on the piano in front of audiences
- concertmistress — the first violinist in an orchestra
- concurrent lisp — (language) A concurrent version of Lisp. Sugimoto et al implemented an interpreter on a "large scale computer" and were planning to implement it on multiple microprocessors.
- condition codes — a set of single bits that indicate specific conditions within a computer. The values of the condition codes are often determined by the outcome of a prior software operation and their principal use is to govern choices between alternative instruction sequences
- confectionaries — a candy; sweetmeat.
- confectioneries — Plural form of confectionery.
- confessionalist — an advocate of confessionalism
- confidence test — (testing) Tests to confirm that the results of a program lie within certain ranges according to the expected probability distribution.
- confraternities — Plural form of confraternity.
- conglomerations — Plural form of conglomeration.
- congratulations — You say 'Congratulations' to someone in order to congratulate them on something nice that has happened to them or something good that they have done.
- conjoined twins — twin babies born joined together at some point, such as at the hips. Some have lived for many years without being surgically separated
- conjunctiveness — the quality of being conjunctive
- conscientiously — governed by conscience; controlled by or done according to one's inner sense of what is right; principled: She's a conscientious judge, who does not let personal prejudices influence her decisions.
- conscriptionist — a person who is in favour of conscription
- consecutiveness — The state or quality of being consecutive.
- consequentially — following as an effect, result, or outcome; resultant; consequent.
- conservationism — A movement that supports conservation, especially that of natural resources.
- conservationist — A conservationist is someone who cares greatly about the conservation of the environment and who works to protect it.
- conservatorship — the legal status of a person appointed by a court to protect the interests of someone, such as a child, who is unable to manage his or her own affairs
- considerateness — showing kindly awareness or regard for another's feelings, circumstances, etc.: a very considerate critic.
- consideratively — in a considerative manner
- consonant shift — a change, or a set of connected changes, in the articulation of consonants in any language or family of languages
- constantine vii — known as Porphyrogenitus. 905–59 ad, Byzantine emperor (913–59) and scholar: his writings are an important source for Byzantine history
- constitutionals — Plural form of constitutional.
- constitutionist — a constitutionalist
- constructionism — an educational theory holding that children learn most effectively when actively doing, or constructing, things, rather than being taught information in a traditional schooling method
- constructionist — a person who interprets constitutional law in a certain way, esp strictly
- constructivists — Plural form of constructivist.
- consubstantiate — (of the Eucharistic bread and wine and Christ's body and blood) to undergo consubstantiation
- consulting room — A doctor's or therapist's consulting room is the room in which they see their patients.
- consumer credit — Consumer credit is money that is lent to people by organizations such as banks, building societies, and shops so that they can buy things.
- consumer strike — a boycott of a product by consumers, often in protest over a raise in its price.
- consumption tax — a tax, as a sales tax, levied on consumer goods or services at the time of sale.
- contact details — the information required to contact someone, such as an address or telephone number
- container class — (programming) A class whose instances are collections of other objects. Examples include arrays, lists, queues and stacks. A container class typically provides methods such as count, insert, delete and search.
- contention slot — (networking) In a communication system where only one node at a time may transmit successfully on a shared channel, the contention slot or contention period is the time a node must wait before it can be sure that no other node's transmission has collided with its transmission. If node A starts to transmit at time t0 and then another node starts to transmit just before it recieves A's transmission at time t0 + T, then the transmissions will collide but node A will not detect the collision until time t0 + 2T. The contention slot, 2T, for nodes seperated by the maximum propagation delay thus determines how much data the node must be prepared to re-transmit in the event of a collision.
- contentiousness — The state of being contentious.
- contextualising — to put (a linguistic element, an action, etc.) in a context, especially one that is characteristic or appropriate, as for purposes of study.
- continuous wave — an electromagnetic wave, esp. a radio wave, with a constant amplitude and frequency
- continuous-form — of or relating to paper, blank forms, checks, etc., supplied in a folded stack or roll to a device, as a computer printer, generally with perforations between sheets for later separation and often with detachable punched edges used to advance the sheets through the device.
- contraclockwise — Counterclockwise.