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20-letter words containing n, a, g, m

  • initial program load — (operating system)   (IPL) The procedure used to (re-)start a computer system by copying the operating system kernel into main memory and running it. Part of the boot sequence.
  • innerspring mattress — a mattress with built-in coil springs
  • intelligent terminal — (hardware)   (or "smart terminal", "programmable terminal") A terminal that often contains not only a keyboard and screen, but also comes with a disk drive and printer, so it can perform limited processing tasks when not communicating directly with the central computer. Some can be programmed by the user to perform many basic tasks, including both arithmetic and logic operations. In some cases, when the user enters data, the data will be checked for errors and some type of report will be produced. In addition, the valid data that is entered may be stored on the disk, it will be transmitted over communication lines to the central computer. An intelligent terminal may have enough computing capability to draw graphics or to offload some kind of front-end processing from the computer it talks to. The development of workstations and personal computers has made this term and the product it describes semi-obsolescent, but one may still hear variants of the phrase "act like a smart terminal" used to describe the behaviour of workstations or PCs with respect to programs that execute almost entirely out of a remote server's storage, using said devices as displays. The term once meant any terminal with an addressable cursor; the opposite of a glass tty. Today, a terminal with merely an addressable cursor, but with none of the more-powerful features mentioned above, is called a dumb terminal. There is a classic quote from Rob Pike (inventor of the blit terminal): "A smart terminal is not a smart*ass* terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate". This illustrates a common design problem: The attempt to make peripherals (or anything else) intelligent sometimes results in finicky, rigid "special features" that become just so much dead weight if you try to use the device in any way the designer didn't anticipate. Flexibility and programmability, on the other hand, are *really* smart. Compare hook.
  • kingston upon thames — a borough of Greater London, England.
  • knowledge management — data technology
  • language development — the development verbal communication skills in children
  • law of large numbers — the theorem in probability theory that the number of successes increases as the number of experiments increases and approximates the probability times the number of experiments for a large number of experiments.
  • linage advertisement — advertisements which are costed and paid for according to the number of lines in them
  • literate programming — (programming, text)   Combining the use of a text formatting language such as TeX and a conventional programming language so as to maintain documentation and source code together. Literate programming may use the inverse comment convention.
  • logarithmic function — a function defined by y = log bx, especially when the base, b, is equal to e, the base of natural logarithms.
  • long topgallant mast — a single spar fitted above a topmast to carry topgallants, a royal, and all sails above.
  • longitudinal framing — a system for framing steel vessels in which light, closely spaced, longitudinal frames are connected by heavy, widely spaced transverse frames with deep webs.
  • look homeward, angel — a novel (1929) by Thomas Wolfe.
  • lymphogranulomatosis — widespread infectious granuloma of the lymphatic system.
  • macias nguema biyogo — a former name of Bioko.
  • macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
  • magnetic card reader — a device that scans and interprets information from a card with a magnetic stripe
  • magnetic coefficient — any of various factors affecting the sensitivity of a ship's magnetic compass as a result of its construction or environment.
  • magnetic declination — variation (def 8).
  • magnetic inclination — to plunge (something, as a cloth or sponge) temporarily into a liquid, so as to moisten it, dye it, or cause it to take up some of the liquid: He dipped the brush into the paint bucket.
  • magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage)   (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
  • magnetoencephalogram — a record of the magnetic field of the brain. Abbreviation: MEG.
  • magnetohydrodynamics — the branch of physics that deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids, especially plasmas, in magnetic fields. Abbreviation: MHD.
  • magnification factor — the size of a magnified image of an object divided by the size of the object itself
  • mail exchange record — (messaging)   (MX Record) A DNS resource record type that says which SMTP server handles electronic mail for a particular domain. E.g. the MX record foo.co.uk. 1054 IN MX 10 mail.foo.co.uk. means that mail for an address like "[email protected]" should be sent to "mail.foo.co.uk". There can be several servers for a domain. The "10" is a priority - the server with the lowest number will be tried first.
  • mail transport agent — Message Transfer Agent
  • malpighian corpuscle — Also called kidney corpuscle, Malpighian body. the structure at the beginning of a vertebrate nephron, consisting of a glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule.
  • management committee — a committee of managers or senior members of an organization who are in charge of directing that organization
  • manufacturer's agent — an agent representing one or more manufacturers in selling related but noncompeting goods, usually on a commission basis and in a particular territory.
  • margaret of scotland — Saint. 1045–93, queen consort of Malcolm III of Scotland. Her piety and benefactions to the church led to her canonization (1250). Feast days: June 10, Nov 16
  • marginal probability — (in a multivariate distribution) the probability of one variable taking a specific value irrespective of the values of the others
  • marketing department — the department of a commercial organization that deals with the marketing of products
  • mass-energy equation — the equation, E=mc2, formulated by Albert Einstein, expressing the equivalence between mass and energy, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the velocity of light.
  • matched-pairs design — (of an experiment) concerned with measuring the values of the dependent variables for pairs of subjects that have been matched to eliminate individual differences and that are respectively subjected to the control and the experimental condition
  • maximum segment size — (networking)   (MSS) The maximum amount of TCP data that a node can send in one segment. This should be the size of the receiver's reassembly buffer to try to avoid fragmentation. The equivalent at the physical layer is "Maximum Transmission Unit".
  • mean something to sb — If a name, word, or phrase means something to you, you have heard it before and you know what it refers to.
  • measure one's length — to fall, lie, or be thrown down at full length
  • mechanical advantage — the ratio of output force to the input force applied to a mechanism.
  • medical underwriting — Medical underwriting is the use of medical or health status information in the evaluation of an applicant for life or health insurance.
  • megabytes per second — (unit)   (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576).
  • mexican jumping bean — jumping bean.
  • microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
  • military engineering — the design, construction, etc, of military fortifications and communications
  • minimum lending rate — the official interest rate charged by the Bank of England and below which it will refrain from lending money.
  • molecular gastronomy — an approach to cooking in which a chef’s knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology allows him or her to experiment with unusual flavour combinations and cooking techniques
  • molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
  • monosodium glutamate — a white, crystalline, water-soluble powder, C 5 H 8 NNaO 4 ⋅H 2 O, used to intensify the flavor of foods.
  • mopping-up operation — an operation after a battle or campaign to root out remaining enemy forces or installations
  • morning glory family — the plant family Convulvulaceae, characterized by twining herbaceous vines, shrubs, and trees having alternate, simple, or compound leaves, funnel-shaped, often showy flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including bindweed, dodder, moonflower, morning glory, and sweet potato.
  • most general unifier — (logic)   If U is the most general unifier of a set of expressions then any other unifier, V, can be expressed as V = UW, where W is another substitution. See also unification.
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