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20-letter words containing o, t, r

  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • request for proposal — (programming)   (RFP) The publication by a prospective software purchaser of details of the required system in order to attract offers by software developers to supply it. Software development under contract starts with the selection of the software developer by the customer. A request for proposal (also called in Britain an "invitation to tender") is the beginning of the selection process.
  • reservations manager — A reservations manager at a hotel is responsible for the reservations at the hotel.
  • respecter of persons — one whose behavior toward people is influenced by their social status, prestige, etc.
  • respiratory quotient — the ratio of the amount of carbon dioxide released by the lungs to the amount of oxygen taken in during a given period.
  • restriction fragment — a length of DNA cut from the strand by a restriction enzyme.
  • restrictive covenant — a covenant with a clause that restricts the action of any party to it, especially an agreement among property owners not to sell to members of particular minority groups.
  • retinitis pigmentosa — degeneration of the retina manifested by night blindness and gradual loss of peripheral vision, eventually resulting in tunnel vision or total blindness.
  • retirement community — a group of houses in a suburban area or a town designed primarily for retired persons.
  • return from the dead — (jargon)   To regain access to the net after a long absence. Compare person of no account.
  • return of the native — a novel (1878) by Thomas Hardy.
  • return on investment — the amount of profit, before tax and after depreciation, from an investment made, usually expressed as a percentage of the original total cost invested. Abbreviation: ROI.
  • return on net assets — the amount of profit computed by dividing net income before interest and taxes by the cost of net assets, usually expressed as a percentage. Abbreviation: RONA.
  • reversionary annuity — an annuity payable to a beneficiary during the period of time he or she survives the insured.
  • rheumatoid arthritis — a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by inflammation of the joints, frequently accompanied by marked deformities, and ordinarily associated with manifestations of a general, or systemic, affliction.
  • ring of the nibelung — Richard Wagner's tetralogy of music dramas: Das Rheingold (completed 1869), Die Walküre (completed 1870), Siegfried (completed 1876), and Götterdämmerung (completed 1876): the cycle was first performed at Bayreuth, 1876.
  • ring wall foundation — A ring wall foundation is a base made of concrete, used to put large tanks on.
  • ringing off the hook — If your phone is ringing off the hook, so many people are trying to telephone you that it is ringing constantly.
  • rise to the occasion — to have the courage, wit, etc, to meet the special demands of a situation
  • rocky mountain basic — (language)   The BASIC language used by Hewlett Packard on their 680x0-based computers. Rocky Mountain Basic is good for interfaces to IEEE 488 controls and contains many mathematical and matrix functions. It has about 600 commands. Typical applications include automatic test stations.
  • rocky mountain sheep — bighorn.
  • roller-blind shutter — curtain shutter.
  • romantic involvement — the condition of being in a romantic or sexual relationship
  • root canal treatment — dental treatment
  • rotary-wing aircraft — an aircraft, esp a helicopter, that is lifted or propelled by rotating airfoils
  • rotations per minute — revolutions per minute
  • royal air force list — an official list of all serving commissioned officers of the RAF and reserve officers liable for recall
  • royal british legion — an organization founded in 1921 to provide services and assistance for former members of the armed forces
  • royal leamington spa — a city in Warwickshire, central England: health resort.
  • rub sb's nose in sth — To rub someone's nose in something that they do not want to think about, such as a failing or a mistake they have made, means to remind them repeatedly about it.
  • rub up the wrong way — to arouse anger (in); annoy
  • ruby-crowned kinglet — an olive-gray, American kinglet, Regulus calendula, the male of which has an erectile, ruby crest.
  • run off at the mouth — Anatomy, Zoology. the opening through which an animal or human takes in food. the cavity containing the structures used in mastication. the structures enclosing or being within this cavity, considered as a whole.
  • run-time environment — (operating system)   A collection of subroutines and environment variables that provide commonly used functions and data for a program while it is running. Compare run-time support.
  • sailor's breastplate — a knot consisting of three overlapping loops formed by a single rope passed alternately over and under itself at crossings.
  • saint andrew's cross — a low evergreen shrub, Ascyrum hypericoides, native to temperate and subtropical America, having flowers in clusters of three: often cultivated.
  • saint anthony's fire — any of certain skin conditions that are of an inflammatory or gangrenous nature, as erysipelas, hospital gangrene, or ergotism.
  • saint george's cross — the Greek cross as used in the flag of Great Britain.
  • santa cruz operation — (SCO) A supplier of Unix systems for Intel microprocessors. They supply Xenix and Open Desktop. Founded in 1979, SCO became a public company in May, 1993 and trades on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol SCOC. SCO maintains its world headquarters in Santa Cruz, California, USA; a European headquarters in Watford, England; a Government Systems Group in Reston, Virginia; and offices in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, and throughout Europe and the United States. In February 1993, SCO acquired IXI Limited of Cambridge, England, the leading supplier of Unix System windowing software.
  • satellite chromosome — a type of densely staining chromosome of uncertain biological function, found in many plant and animal species.
  • satellite photograph — a photograph taken by an artificial satellite from space
  • scatter site housing — public housing, especially for low-income families, built throughout an urban area rather than being concentrated in a single neighborhood.
  • schizoid personality — sb with identity disorder
  • schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
  • season ticket holder — a person who has a season ticket
  • second international — an international association formed in 1889 in Paris, uniting socialistic groups or parties of various countries and holding international congresses from time to time: in 1923 it joined with the Vienna International to form the Labor and Socialist International. Compare international (def 6).
  • secure accommodation — an institution where young offenders are kept in custody
  • secure sockets layer — (networking, security)   (SSL) A protocol designed by Netscape Communications Corporation to provide secure communications over the Internet using asymmetric key encryption. SSL is layered beneath application protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, Telnet, FTP, Gopher and NNTP and is layered above the connection protocol TCP/IP. It is used by the HTTPS access method.
  • security association — (networking)   The relationship between two or more entities (typically, a computer, but could be a user on a computer, or software component) which describes how the entities will use security services, such as encryption, to communicate. See RFC 1825.
  • semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
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