22-letter words containing o, s, m, u
- 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.
- philip the magnanimous — 1504–67, German prince; landgrave of Hesse (1509–67). He helped to crush (1525) the Peasants' Revolt and formed (1531) the League of Schmalkaden, an alliance of German Protestant rulers
- pneumocystis pneumonia — a pulmonary infection caused by the protozoan Pneumocystis carinii, occurring as an opportunistic disease in persons with impaired immune systems, as AIDS victims. Abbreviation: PCP.
- 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 permanganate — a very dark purple, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KMnO 4 , used chiefly as an oxidizing agent, disinfectant, laboratory reagent, and in medicine as an astringent and antiseptic.
- 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
- pulmonary tuberculosis — tuberculosis of the lungs.
- 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
- recruitment consultant — A recruitment consultant is a person or service that helps professional people to find work by introducing them to potential employers.
- revolutions per minute — (unit) (rpm, rarely: rotations per minute) A unit of angular velocity equal to 1/60 of a revolution per second.
- rheumatoid spondylitis — ankylosing spondylitis.
- rocky mountain oysters — mountain oyster.
- sales force automation — (business) (Sales Automation, SFA, SFFA, Sales & Field Force Automation) Software to support sales reps. The software gives sales representitives access to contacts, appointments and e-mail. It is likely to be integrated with Customer Relationship Management systems and Opportunity Management Systems.
- sarcoplasmic reticulum — a system of membrane-bound tubules that surrounds muscle fibrils, releasing calcium ions during contraction and absorbing them during relaxation.
- 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
- simultaneous equations — a set of two or more equations, each containing two or more variables whose values can simultaneously satisfy both or all the equations in the set, the number of variables being equal to or less than the number of equations in the set.
- small business edition — Microsoft Office Small Business Edition
- social security number — A Social Security number is a nine digit number that is given to U.S. citizens and to people living in the U.S. You need it to get a job, collect Social Security benefits and receive some government services.
- solid dose formulation — A solid dose formation is a hard tablet made by compressing medicine in a powder form.
- somatic nervous system — the section of the nervous system responsible for sensation and control of the skeletal muscles
- someone's number is up — someone's time to die or suffer punishment has arrived
- spontaneous combustion — the ignition of a substance or body from the rapid oxidation of its own constituents without heat from any external source.
- 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
- statute of limitations — a statute defining the period within which legal action may be taken.
- statute of westminster — the act of Parliament (1931) that formally recognized the independence of the dominions within the Empire
- 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
- sun microsystems, inc. — (company) One of the first, and now biggest, US computer manufacturers. They also manufacture in Europe. The Sun-2 and 3 series of workstations and servers were based on the Motorola 680x0 family of microprocessors and the Sun-4 series on the SPARC. Sun also produce their own version of Unix, originally called SunOS and now Solaris. Their Network File System has become the de facto standard for sharing files between Unix systems. Sun own MySQL AB. Sun was bought by Oracle Corporation on 2009-04-20. Quarterly sales $1403M, profits $78M (Aug 1994). Address: 2550 Garcia Ave., Mt. View, CA 94043 -1100 USA.
- supplementary question — a question asked in Parliament by an MP during Questions to the Prime Minister
- supreme judicial court — (often initial capital letters) the highest court in some states, as Massachusetts and Maine.
- system account manager — (cryptography, operating system, security) (SAM) A password database stored as a registry file in Windows NT and Windows 2000. The System Account Manager (SAM) database stores users' passwords in a hashed format. Since a hash function is one-way, this provides some measure of security for the storage of the passwords. In an attempt to enhance the security of the SAM database against offline cracking, Microsoft introduced the SYSKEY utility in Windows NT 4.0.
- take someone's measure — a unit or standard of measurement: weights and measures.
- tell someone's fortune — position in life as determined by wealth: to make one's fortune.
- 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
- the ouachita mountains — a mountain range in the United States, located in W Arkansas, S E Oklahoma, and N E Texas
- through someone's eyes — If someone sees or considers something through your eyes, they consider it in the way that you do, from your point of view.
- through-the-lens meter — a light meter employing a sensor cell located behind the taking lens.
- time complex simulator — (simulation) (Tcsim) Complex arithmetic version of Tsim. Contact: ZOLA Technologies.
- 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 hate someone's guts — If you hate someone's guts, you dislike them very much indeed.
- 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.
- transformational rules — rules that specify in purely syntactic terms a method by which theorems may be derived from the axioms of a formal system
- transition temperature — Physics. a temperature at which a substance undergoes some abrupt change in its properties, as when it passes from the normal to the superconducting state.
- transposing instrument — a musical instrument played at a pitch different from that indicated in the score.