22-letter words containing m, u, d, s
- nominal semidestructor — (abuse) Slang for "National Semiconductor", found among other places in the 4.3BSD networking sources. During the late 1970s to mid-1980s this company marketed a series of microprocessors including the National Semiconductor 16000 and National Semiconductor 32000. At one point early in the great microprocessor race, the specs on these chips made them look like serious competition for the rising Intel 80x86 and Motorola 680x0 series. Unfortunately, the actual parts were notoriously flaky and never implemented the full instruction set promised in their literature, apparently because the company couldn't get any of the mask steppings to work as designed. They eventually sank without trace, joining the Zilog Z8000 and a few even more obscure also-rans in the graveyard of forgotten microprocessors.
- of the first magnitude — of the greatest importance
- ousterhout's dichotomy — (language) John Ousterhout's division of high-level languages into "system programming languages" and "scripting languages". This distinction underlies the design of his language Tcl. System programming languages (or "applications languages") are strongly typed, allow arbitrarily complex data structures, and programs in them are compiled, and are meant to operate largely independently of other programs. Prototypical system programming languages are C and Modula-2. By contrast, scripting languages (or "glue languages") are weakly typed or untyped, have little or no provision for complex data structures, and programs in them ("scripts") are interpreted. Scripts need to interact either with other programs (often as glue) or with a set of functions provided by the interpreter, as with the file system functions provided in a UNIX shell and with Tcl's GUI functions. Prototypical scripting languages are AppleScript, C Shell, MS-DOS batch files and Tcl. Many believe that this is a highly arbitrary dichotomy, and refer to it as "Ousterhout's fallacy" or "Ousterhout's false dichotomy". While strong-versus-weak typing, data structure complexity, and independent versus stand-alone might be said to be unrelated features, the usual critique of Ousterhout's dichotomy is of its distinction of compilation versus interpretation, since neither semantics nor syntax depend significantly on whether code is compiled into machine-language, interpreted, tokenized, or byte-compiled at the start of each run, or any mixture of these. Many languages fall between being interpreted or compiled (e.g. Lisp, Forth, UCSD Pascal, Perl, and Java). This makes compilation versus interpretation a dubious parameter in a taxonomy of programming languages.
- potassium ferricyanide — a bright-red, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous solid, K 3 Fe(CN) 6 , used chiefly in the manufacture of pigments, as Prussian blue, and of paper, especially blueprint paper.
- potassium ferrocyanide — a lemon-yellow, crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 4 Fe(CN) 6 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in casehardening alloys having an iron base and in dyeing wool and silk.
- potassium-argon dating — a method for estimating the age of a mineral or rock, based on measurement of the rate of decay of radioactive potassium into argon.
- programmed instruction — a progressively monitored, step-by-step teaching method, employing small units of information or learning material and frequent testing, whereby the student must complete or pass one stage before moving on to the next.
- public domain software — public domain
- quantum chromodynamics — a quantum field theory that describes quarks and gluons and their interactions, with the color of the quarks playing a role analogous to that of electric charge. Abbreviation: QCD. Also called chromodynamics. Compare color (def 18).
- read someone a lecture — to scold or reprimand someone
- rheumatoid spondylitis — ankylosing spondylitis.
- sick building syndrome — an illness caused by exposure to pollutants or germs inside an airtight building.
- simultaneous broadcast — a programme, etc, broadcast simultaneously on radio and television
- small business edition — Microsoft Office Small Business Edition
- solid dose formulation — A solid dose formation is a hard tablet made by compressing medicine in a powder form.
- st-pierre and miquelon — group of islands in the Atlantic, south of Newfoundland, constituting a political unit of France: includes the islands of St-Pierre (c. 10 sq mi, 26 sq km) & Miquelon & several islets: 93 sq mi (241 sq km); pop. 6,000
- structured programming — the design and coding of programs by a methodology (top-down) that successively breaks problems into smaller, nested subunits.
- student volunteer army — a students' voluntary organization that aims to undertake useful work in communities, founded in 2010 to help clear up after a damaging earthquake in Christchurch
- subliminal advertising — a form of advertising on film or television that employs subliminal images to influence the viewer unconsciously
- supreme judicial court — (often initial capital letters) the highest court in some states, as Massachusetts and Maine.
- the muslim brotherhood — a transnational Islamic religious and political organization dedicated to the establishment of a nation based on Islamic principles, founded in Egypt in 1928
- to be mixed up with sb — if you are mixed up with someone, usually someone that other people disapprove of, you are emotionally or sexually involved with them
- to cast your mind back — If you cast your mind back to a time in the past, you think about what happened then.
- to twiddle your thumbs — If you say that someone is twiddling their thumbs, you mean that they do not have anything to do and are waiting for something to happen.
- unconditioned stimulus — any stimulus evoking an unlearnt response, esp in the context of classical conditioning, in which the conditioned stimulus is followed by the unconditioned one
- under no circumstances — not for any reason
- underground combustion — Underground combustion is the process of heating oil to allow it to flow more easily and make it easier to recover.
- unilateral disarmament — disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament, carried out by one state on its own
- united empire loyalist — any of the American colonists who settled in Canada during or after the War of American Independence because of loyalty to the British Crown
- user datagram protocol — (protocol) (UDP) Internet standard network layer, transport layer and session layer protocols which provide simple but unreliable datagram services. UDP is defined in STD 6, RFC 768. It adds a checksum and additional process-to-process addressing information [to what?]. UDP is a connectionless protocol which, like TCP, is layered on top of IP. UDP neither guarantees delivery nor does it require a connection. As a result it is lightweight and efficient, but all error processing and retransmission must be taken care of by the application program.
- volume of distribution — A volume of distribution is the hypothetical volume of body fluid that would be required to dissolve the amount of drug needed to achieve the same concentration in the blood.
- world communion sunday — the first Sunday in October, during which members of ecumenical churches throughout the world celebrate Holy Communion, especially to affirm their unity in Christ.