0%

24-letter words containing s, p, a, t

  • 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.
  • network operating system — (operating system)   (NOS) The operating system on Control Data Corporation's Cyber Computer.
  • 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.
  • newton-raphson iteration — (algorithm)   An iterative algorithm for solving equations. Given an equation, f x = 0 and an initial approximation, x(0), a better approximation is given by: x(i+1) = x(i) - f(x(i)) / f'(x(i)) where f'(x) is the first derivative of f, df/dx. Newton-Raphson iteration is an example of an anytime algorithm in that each approximation is no worse than the previous one.
  • nonparametric statistics — the branch of statistics that studies data measurable on an ordinal or nominal scale, to which arithmetic operations cannot be applied
  • 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.
  • officers' training corps — part of the British Army which provides military leadership training to students at UK universities
  • open shortest-path first — Open Shortest-Path First Interior Gateway Protocol
  • open software foundation — (body)   (OSF) A foundation created by nine computer vendors, (Apollo, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Bull, Nixdorf, Philips, Siemens and Hitachi) to promote "Open Computing". It is planned that common operating systems and interfaces, based on developments of Unix and the X Window System will be forthcoming for a wide range of different hardware architectures. OSF announced the release of the industry's first open operating system - OSF/1 on 23 October 1990.
  • open system architecture — (operating system)   (OSA) A competitor to IBM's SNA.
  • 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
  • passbook savings account — a type of savings account in which transactions are entered into a passbook in the possession of the account holder.
  • 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
  • phrase-structure grammar — a grammar that consists of phrase-structure rules.
  • physiological atmosphere — ecosphere.
  • 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.
  • prairie button snakeroot — a stout composite plant, Liatris pycnostachya, of prairies in the central U.S., having showy, rose-purple flower heads in dense spikes.
  • 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.
  • preparatory to doing sth — If one action is done preparatory to another, it is done before the other action, usually as preparation for it.
  • present company excepted — If you are making a general, unfavourable comment about a particular type of person, and you are with people of that type, you can say 'present company excepted' as a way of making your comment sound more polite.
  • pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications)   (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
  • private health insurance — insurance against the need for medical treatment as a private patient
  • probability distribution — a distribution of all possible values of a random variable together with an indication of their probabilities.
  • professional association — a body of persons engaged in the same profession, formed usually to control entry into the profession, maintain standards, and represent the profession in discussions with other bodies
  • professional corporation — a corporation formed by one or more licensed practitioners, especially medical or legal, to operate their practices on a corporate plan. Abbreviation: PC, P.C.
  • progressive assimilation — assimilation in which a preceding sound has an effect on a following one, as in shortening captain to cap'm rather than cap'n.
  • progressive conservative — a member of the Progressive Conservative party of Canada.
  • psychopathic personality — an antisocial personality characterized by the failure to develop any sense of moral responsibility and the capability of performing violent or antisocial acts
  • public access television — television in which local producers or individuals can participate
  • public relations officer — a person who is responsible for communications with the public
  • public-access television — a noncommercial system of broadcasting on television channels made available to independent or community groups for programs of general interest to the community.
  • punch above one's weight — to do something that is considered to be beyond one's ability
  • put the show on the road — to set things in operation; start an activity, venture, etc.
  • put their heads together — to consult together
  • pyrotraumatic dermatitis — hot spot.
  • rapid eye movement sleep — REM sleep.
  • reciprocal translocation — an exchange of segments between two nonhomologous chromosomes.
  • recursive descent parser — (grammar)   A "top-down" parser built from a set of mutually-recursive procedures or a non-recursive equivalent where each such procedure usually implements one of the productions of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognises.
  • referential transparency — (programming)   An expression E is referentially transparent if any subexpression and its value (the result of evaluating it) can be interchanged without changing the value of E. This is not the case if the value of an expression depends on global state which can change value. The most common example of changing global state is assignment to a global variable. For example, if y is a global variable in: f(x) { return x+y; } g(z) { a = f(1); y = y + z; return a + f(1); } function g has the "side-effect" that it alters the value of y. Since f's result depends on y, the two calls to f(1) will return different results even though the argument is the same. Thus f is not referentially transparent. Changing the order of evaluation of the statements in g will change its result. We could make f above referentially transparent by passing in y as an argument: f(x, y) = x+y Similarly, g would need to take y as an argument and return its new value as part of the result: g(z, y) { a = f(1, y); y' = y+z; return (a + f(1, y'), y'); } Referentially transparent programs are more amenable to formal methods and easier to reason about because the meaning of an expression depends only on the meaning of its subexpressions and not on the order of evaluation or side-effects of other expressions. We can stretch the concept of referential transparency to include input and output if we consider the whole program to be a function from its input to its output. The program as a whole is referentially transparent because it will always produce the same output when given the same input. This is stretching the concept because the program's input may include what the user types, the content of certain files or even the time of day. If we do not consider global state like the contents of files as input, then writing to a file and reading what was written behaves just like assignment to a global variable. However, if we must consider the state of the universe as an input rather than global state then any deterministic system would be referentially transparent! See also extensional equality, observational equivalence.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?