24-letter words containing p, l, a, s
- functional specification — (programming, project) A description of what a system (e.g. a piece of software) does or should do (but not how it should do it). The functional specification is one of the inputs to the design process. See IEEE/ANSI Std. 610.12-1990.
- general purpose language — (GPL) An ALGOL 60 variant with user-definable types and operators.
- geographical determinism — the theory that human activity is determined by geographical conditions
- glasgow haskell compiler — (language) (GHC) A Haskell 1.2 compiler written in Haskell by the AQUA project at Glasgow University, headed by Simon Peyton Jones <[email protected]> throughout the 1990's [started?]. GHC can generate either C or native code for SPARC, DEC Alpha and other platforms. It can take advantage of features of gcc such as global register variables and has an extensive set of optimisations. GHC features an extensible I/O system based on a "monad", in-line C code, fully fledged unboxed data types, incrementally-updatable arrays, mutable reference types, generational garbage collector, concurrent threads. Time and space profiling is also supported. It requires GNU gcc 2.1+ and Perl. GHC runs on Sun-4, DEC Alpha, Sun-3, NeXT, DECstation, HP-PA and SGI. E-mail: <[email protected]>.
- graphical user interface — a software interface designed to standardize and simplify the use of computer programs, as by using a mouse to manipulate text and images on a display screen featuring icons, windows, and menus.
- have sth up one's sleeve — If you have something up your sleeve, you have an idea or plan which you have not told anyone about. You can also say that someone has an ace, card, or trick up their sleeve.
- hexaethyl tetraphosphate — a yellow, very poisonous liquid, (C 2 H 5 O) 6 P 4 O 7 , soluble in water, used as an insecticide.
- incomplete metamorphosis — insect development, as in the grasshopper and cricket, in which the change is gradual and characterized by the absence of a pupal stage. Compare complete metamorphosis.
- industrial correspondent — a journalist who specializes in reporting the industrial news
- knowledge representation — The subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with designing and using systems for storing knowledge - facts and rules about some subject. A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualisation - an abstract view of the world that we wish to represent. In order to manipulate this knowledge we must specify how the abstract conceptualisation is represented as a concrete data structure. An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualisation.
- komi autonomous republic — an autonomous republic in the NW Russian Federation in Europe. 145,221 sq. mi. (376,122 sq. km). Capital: Syktyvkar.
- lab for computer science — MIT. http://lcs.mit.edu/.
- laugh in a person's face — to show open contempt or defiance towards a person
- law of supply and demand — the theory that prices are determined by the interaction of supply and demand: an increase in supply will lower prices if not accompanied by increased demand, and an increase in demand will raise prices unless accompanied by increased supply
- le chatelier's principle — the principle that if a system in chemical equilibrium is subjected to a disturbance it tends to change in a way that opposes this disturbance
- lease with option to buy — A lease with option to buy is a lease that states that the person leasing the property has the right to purchase it at the end of the lease period.
- legal expenses insurance — Legal expenses insurance is insurance coverage against expenses incurred when you need to seek legal advice or pay for a lawsuit.
- licensed practical nurse — a person who has graduated from an accredited school of nursing and has become licensed to provide basic nursing care under the supervision of a physician or registered nurse. Abbreviation: LPN.
- liquid components of gas — Liquid components of gas are associated hydrocarbons in natural gas, which include ethane, propane, and butane.
- local loopback addresses — The special Internet address, 127.0.0.1, defined by the Internet Protocol. A host can use local the loopback address to send messages to itself.
- long-spined sea scorpion — Cottus bubalis or Taurulus bubalis
- machine independent sail — (MAINSAIL) From XIDAK, Palo Alto CA, +1 (415) 855 9271.
- make one's presence felt — If you make your presence felt, you do something which makes people notice you or pay attention to you.
- mandy rice-davis applies — (chat) (MRDA) An acronym used to imply that someone is lying to protect their own interests. During the trial of Stephen Ward (who was charged with living off the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Rice-Davies), the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied any involvement with her and Rice-Davies replied, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"
- manic-depressive illness — bipolar disorder.
- mari autonomous republic — autonomous republic in the Russian Federation in Europe. 8994 sq. mi. (23,294 sq. km). Capital: Ioshkar-Ola.
- mass psychogenic illness — a condition in which a large group of people report similar physical symptoms that are traceable to psychological factors rather than environmental or physiological factors.
- master-slave manipulator — any of various devices, guided by the hand of the operator, for imitating the motions and tactile sensitivity of the human hand to a greater or lesser extent: used in situations in which direct handling of the objects or materials involved would be dangerous or impossible.
- michael viii palaeologus — 1234–1282, Byzantine ruler 1259–82, first of the Palaeologus emperors.
- minister plenipotentiary — plenipotentiary.
- multiple virtual storage — (operating system) (MVS) Release 2 of OS/VS2, called MVS because it had multiple 16 MB virtual address spaces, in contrast to SVS. MVS ran on the IBM 390 series mainframes. It became MVS/SP, then MVS/XA (with 31-bit addressing) and then MVS/ESA. MVS/Open Edition (MVS/OE), aimed at the growing open systems market, added TCP/IP and Unix support in an MVS address space, allowing users to run IBM, CICS-type applications, batch applications and Unix. MVS/ESA was repackaged as OS/390 as a marketing exercise but it's basically the same thing. Version: 5.1.
- mutual insurance company — an insurance company owned by the policyholders and not by shareholders
- narcissistic personality — a personality disorder characterized by extreme self-centeredness and self-absorption, fantasies involving unrealistic goals, an excessive need for attention and admiration, and disturbed interpersonal relationships.
- neutrosophic probability — (logic) An extended form of probability based on Neutrosophy, in which a statement is held to be t true, i indeterminate, and f false, where t, i, f are real values from the ranges T, I, F, with no restriction on T, I, F or the sum n=t+i+f.
- not sb's place to do sth — If you say that it is not your place to do something, you mean that it is not right or appropriate for you to do it, or that it is not your responsibility to do it.
- operational requirements — (programming) Qualitative and quantitative parameters that specify the desired capabilities of a system and serve as a basis for determining the operational effectiveness and suitability of a system prior to deployment.
- optical signal processor — optical computing
- parallel cousin marriage — marriage between the children of two brothers or two sisters.
- passive balance of trade — a negative balance of trade
- people's liberation army — See under Huk (def 1).
- photomechanical transfer — a method of producing photographic prints or offset printing plates from paper negatives by a chemical transfer process rather than by exposure to light
- physiological atmosphere — ecosphere.
- physiological psychology — the branch of psychology concerned with the relationship between the physical functioning of an organism and its behavior.
- plantation walking horse — one of a breed of saddle horses developed largely from Standardbred and Morgan stock.
- pluck sth out of the air — If you say that someone plucks a figure, name, or date out of the air, you mean that they say it without thinking much about it before they speak.
- polymer matrix composite — A polymer matrix composite is a material consisting of a composite made stronger by adding fibers or particles to it.
- port address translation — (networking) (PAT) A function provided by some routers which allows hosts on a LAN to communicate with the rest of a network (such as the Internet) without revealing their own private IP address. All outbound packets have their IP address translated to the routers external IP address. Replies come back to the router which then translates them back into the private IP address of the original host for final delivery. Compare SOCKS.
- portable scheme debugger — (PSD) A package for source code debugging of R4RS-compliant Scheme under GNU Emacs by Kellom ?ki Pertti <[email protected]>. Version 1.1. Distributed under GNU GPL. It works with scm, Elk and Scheme->C.
- potassium cobaltinitrite — a yellow, crystalline, slightly water-soluble powder, K 3 Co(NO 2) 6 , used as a pigment in oil and watercolor paints, and for coloring surfaces of glass, porcelain, etc.
- pre-emptive multitasking — (operating system, parallel) A type of multitasking where the scheduler can interrupt and suspend ("swap out") the currently running task in order to start or continue running ("swap in") another task. The tasks under pre-emptive multitasking can be written as though they were the only task and the scheduler decides when to swap them. The scheduler must ensure that when swapping tasks, sufficient state is saved and restored that tasks do not interfere. The length of time for which a process runs is known as its "time slice" and may depend on the task's priority or its use of resources such as memory and I/O. This contrasts with cooperative multitasking where each task must include calls to allow it to be descheduled periodically.