28-letter words containing l, s, e, r
- to ruffle someone's feathers — To ruffle someone's feathers means to cause them to become very angry, nervous, or upset.
- to slip through your fingers — If someone or something slips through your fingers, you just fail to catch them, get them, or keep them.
- to throw the rule book at sb — to inflict the most severe punishment on someone
- tree transformation language — (functional programming) (TXL) A hybrid functional language and rule-based language developed by J.R. Cordy <[email protected]> et al of Queen's University, Canada in 1988. TXL is suitable for performing source to source analysis and transformation and for rapid prototyping of new languages and language processors. It uses structural transformation based on term rewriting. TXL has been particularly successful in software engineering tasks such as design recovery, refactoring, and reengineering. Most recently it has been applied to artificial intelligence tasks such as recognition of hand-written mathematics, and to transformation of structured documents in XML. TXL takes as input an arbitrary context-free grammar in extended BNF-like notation, and a set of show-by-example transformation rules to be applied to inputs parsed using the grammar. TXL supports the notion of agile parsing, the ability to tailor the grammar to each particular task using "grammar overrides".
- uninterruptible power supply — (hardware) (UPS) A battery powered power supply unit that is guaranteed to provide power to a computer in the event of interruptions in the incoming mains electrical power. Different rating UPSs will provide power for different lengths of time. Modern UPSs connect to the computer's serial port and provide information such as battery time remaining, allowing the computer to shut down gracefully before complete loss of power.
- united states postal service — an independent federal agency created in 1971 to replace the Post Office Department as the division of the federal government responsible for postal services. Abbreviation: USPS.
- variable-density wind tunnel — a closed-circuit wind tunnel entirely contained in a casing in which the pressure and therefore the density of the working fluid can be maintained at a preselected value
- very large scale integration — VLSI.
- very large-scale integration — the process of fabricating a few thousand logic gates or more in a single integrated circuit
- very small aperture terminal — (communications) (VSAT) A kind of ground station used to contact a communications satellite such as INMARSAT.
- walden, or life in the woods — a book of philosophical observations (1854) by Thoreau.
- waterton lakes national park — a national park in W Canada, in S Alberta. 220 sq. mi. (570 sq. km).
- wireless encryption protocol — Wired Equivalent Privacy
- xerox data systems model 530 — (computer) (XDS 530) A computer from the Scientific Data Systems range, announced sometime after 1968 when Xerox bought out SDS. The XDS 530 was probably under development at SDS before the buy-out but only announced afterwards.
- xerox data systems model 940 — (computer) (SDS 940, XDS 940) A time-sharing system, announced in February 1966, developed by Scientific Data Systems with help from The University of California at Berkeley and Tymshare. SDS 940 was backward compatible with SDS's previous systems (except the 12-bit SDS 92). It had monitor and user modes, dynamic program relocation, automatic memory fragmentation, and system protection. After 1968 Xerox bought out SDS and renamed the SDS machines "Xerox Data Systems" (XDS). Xerox then produced the XDS 530.
- zeroth law of thermodynamics — the principle that any two systems in thermal equilibrium with a third system are in thermal equilibrium with each other. Compare law of thermodynamics (def 2).