23-letter words containing t, o
- experimental psychology — the scientific study of the individual behaviour of man and other animals, esp of perception, learning, memory, motor skills, and thinking
- expert judgement models — (programming) A method of software estimation that is based on consultation with one or more experts that have experience with similar projects. An expert-consensus mechanism such as the Delphi Technique may be used to produce the estimate.
- extended memory manager — (software, storage) (XMM) The memory manager software implementing Extended Memory Specification, such as HIMEM or QEMM386. XMM's can usually also act as A20 handlers.
- extracorporeal dialysis — the filtering of circulating blood through a semipermeable membrane in an apparatus
- extraordinary rendition — the process by which a country seizes a person assumed to be involved in terrorist activity and then transports him or her for interrogation to a country where due process of law is unlikely to be respected
- extrasensory perception — Extrasensory perception means knowing without using your ordinary senses such as sight and hearing. Some people believe this is possible. The abbreviation ESP is also used.
- extremely low frequency — a radio frequency or radio-frequency band below 3 kilohertz
- extrinsic semiconductor — a semiconductor into which a doping agent has been introduced, giving it different electrical properties than the intrinsic semiconductor
- fall between two stools — If someone has fallen between two stools, they are unable to decide which of two courses of action to take and as a result they have not done either of them successfully.
- fall flat on one's face — to fail, esp in a ridiculous or humiliating manner
- fall through the cracks — to break without complete separation of parts; become fissured: The plate cracked when I dropped it, but it was still usable.
- fear-driven development — (jargon, humour) When project management adds more pressure (fires someone or something). A play on test-driven development.
- fendalton shopping cart — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
- ferric ammonium oxalate — a green, crystalline, water-soluble, synthetically produced powder, (NH 4) 3 Fe(C 2 O 4) 3 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in the manufacture of blueprint paper.
- field effect transistor — a transistor in which the output current is varied by varying the value of an electric field within a region of the device. Abbreviation: FET.
- field-effect transistor — a transistor in which the output current is varied by varying the value of an electric field within a region of the device. Abbreviation: FET.
- fifth marquis lansdowne — Henry Charles Keith, 5th Marquis of Lansdowne, Lansdowne, 5th Marquis of.
- finite impulse response — (electronics, DSP) (FIR) A type of digital signal filter, in which every sample of output is the weighted sum of past and current samples of input, using only some finite number of past samples.
- first come first served — You say 'first come first served' to indicate that a group of people or things will be dealt with or given something in the order in which they arrive.
- first earl of leicester — Robert, 1st Earl of Leicester, 1532?–88, British statesman and favorite of Queen Elizabeth.
- first earl of strafford — Thomas, 1st Earl of Strafford, Strafford, 1st Earl of.
- fischer-tropsch process — a catalytic hydrogenation method to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels from carbon monoxide.
- fish in troubled waters — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
- five-and-ten-cent store — a store that sells a wide variety of inexpensive merchandise, orig. with many articles priced at five or ten cents
- floating-point specrate — SPECrate_fp92
- flow-matic or flowmatic — (Originally B-0) Possibly the first English-like DP language. Developed at Remington Rand in 1958 for the UNIVAC I.
- for better or for worse — whatever the consequences
- for it's/their own sake — If you do something for its own sake, you do it because you want to, or because you enjoy it, and not for any other reason. You can also talk about, for example, art for art's sake or sport for sport's sake.
- for whom the bell tolls — a novel (1940) by Ernest Hemingway.
- foreign exchange market — the market for the international buying, selling and trading of currencies
- forest tent caterpillar — any of the larvae of several moths of the genus Malacosoma, which feed on the leaves of orchard and shade trees and live colonially in a tentlike silken web.
- forward exchange market — a market for contracts that specify the exchange rate of a currency to be delivered at a later date
- four colour map theorem — (mathematics, application) (Or "four colour theorem") The theorem stating that if the plane is divided into connected regions which are to be coloured so that no two adjacent regions have the same colour (as when colouring countries on a map of the world), it is never necessary to use more than four colours. The proof, due to Appel and Haken, attained notoriety by using a computer to check tens of thousands of cases and is thus not humanly checkable, even in principle. Some thought that this brought the philosophical status of the proof into doubt. There are now rumours of a simpler proof, not requiring the use of a computer. See also chromatic number
- fractional distillation — the separation of volatile components of different boiling points in a mixture by the gradual increase of temperature and the separate collection of each component.
- fraunhofer gesellschaft — (company) (FhG, FhG IIS, Institut für Integrierte Schaltungen) A german company, named after the physicist. IIS is Integrated Circuit Institute. FhG are known for their research on audio compression, especially MPEG-1 Layer-3 (MP3).
- free on-line dictionary — Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
- free-enterprise economy — an economy characterized by free enterprise
- friction reducing agent — A friction reducing agent is an additive used to reduce friction exerted downhole on tools and pipes.
- frictional unemployment — those people who are in the process of moving from one job to another and who therefore appear in the unemployment statistics collected at any given time
- friedel-crafts reaction — a reaction for the synthesis of hydrocarbons and ketones by the alkylation or acylation of an aromatic compound in the presence of a catalyst, typically anhydrous aluminum chloride.
- front-end hydrogenation — Front-end hydrogenation is a catalytic process in the early stages of refining which involves the reaction of the carbon-carbon double bond in alkenes with hydrogen.
- frozen food compartment — a compartment of a refrigerator or fridge-freezer for the storage of frozen food
- fully associative cache — (memory management) A type of cache in which data from any address can be stored in any cache location. The whole address must be used as the tag (the value that identifies a block of data in the cache). All tags must be compared simultaneously (associatively) with the requested address and if one matches then its associated data is accessed. This requires an associative memory to hold the tags which makes this form of cache more expensive. It does however solve the problem of contention for cache locations (cache conflict) since a block need only be flushed when the whole cache is full and then the block to flush can be selected in a more efficient way. The alternatives are direct mapped cache or set associative cache.
- function graph language — (language) (FGL) The machine language for the AMPS (Applicative Multi-Processing System) proposed by Robert Keller, Gary Lindstrom and Suhas Patil at the University of Utah.
- function point analysis — (programming) (FPA) A standard metric for the relative size and complexity of a software system, originally developed by Alan Albrecht of IBM in the late 1970s. Functon points (FPs) can be used to estimate the relative size and complexity of software in the early stages of development - analysis and design. The size is determined by identifying the components of the system as seen by the end-user: the inputs, outputs, inquiries, interfaces to other systems, and logical internal files. The components are classified as simple, average, or complex. All of these values are then scored and the total is expressed in Unadjusted FPs (UFPs). Complexity factors described by 14 general systems characteristics, such as reusability, performance, and complexity of processing can be used to weight the UFP. Factors are also weighted on a scale of 0 - not present, 1 - minor influence, to 5 - strong influence. The result of these computations is a number that correlates to system size. Although the FP metric doesn't correspond to any actual physical attribute of a software system (such as lines of code or the number of subroutines) it is useful as a relative measure for comparing projects, measuring productivity, and estimating the amount a development effort and time needed for a project. See also International Function Point Users Group.
- functional requirements — (specification) What a system should be able to do, the functions it should perform. This term is used at both the user requirements analysis and software requirements specifications phases in the software life-cycle. An example of a non-functional requirement is an initialisation sequence incorporated into the software that is specific to a given customer.
- fundamental interaction — any of the four basic interactions that occur in nature: the gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions
- galilean transformation — the equations in classical mechanics that relate position and time in two frames of reference that are moving uniformly with respect to each other. Compare inertial system, relativity (def 2).
- gamma-aminobutyric acid — GABA.
- garbage in, garbage out — (humour) (GIGO) /gi:'goh/ Wilf Hey's maxim expressing the fact that computers, unlike humans, will unquestioningly process nonsensical input data and produce nonsensical output. Of course a properly written program will reject input data that is obviously erroneous but such checking is not always easy to specify and is tedious to write. GIGO is usually said in response to lusers who complain that a program didn't "do the right thing" when given imperfect input or otherwise mistreated in some way. Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. The expansion "Garbage In, Gospel Out" is an ironic comment on the tendency to put excessive trust in "computerised" data.