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24-letter words containing t, r, a, p, i, n

  • open data-link interface — (networking, standard)   (ODI) A Novell-developed network card API that provides media and protocol independence. It allows the sharing of a single card by multiple transport layer protocols and resolves conflicts.
  • 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
  • orographic precipitation — precipitation caused by the lifting of moist air over a mountain barrier.
  • out of all proportion to — If you say that something is out of all proportion to something else, you think that it is far greater or more serious than it should be.
  • parallel virtual machine — (parallel, networking, tool)   (PVM) 1. A software system designed to allow a network of heterogeneous machines to be used as a single distributed parallel processor. PVM was developed by the University of Tennessee, The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Emory University. 2. The intermediate language used by the Gambit compiler for Scheme.
  • parliamentary government — government by a body of cabinet ministers who are chosen from and responsible to the legislature and act as advisers to a nominal chief of state.
  • particulate fluidization — Particulate fluidization is a condition when particles in a fluidized bed are individually suspended.
  • passive balance of trade — a negative balance of trade
  • people's liberation army — See under Huk (def 1).
  • permeability coefficient — the volume of an incompressible fluid that will flow in unit time through a unit cube of a porous substance across which a unit pressure difference is maintained
  • 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
  • plantation walking horse — one of a breed of saddle horses developed largely from Standardbred and Morgan stock.
  • polychlorinated biphenyl — PCB.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • potentiometric titration — titration in which the end point is determined by measuring the voltage of an electric current of given amperage passed through the solution.
  • 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.
  • pretty amazing new stuff — (humour, communications)   (PANS) What PSTN is evolving into.
  • principal quantum number — the nonnegative, integral quantum number that defines the stationary orbits in the Bohr model of the atom.
  • private health insurance — insurance against the need for medical treatment as a private patient
  • privileged communication — a communication that one cannot legally be compelled to divulge, as that to a lawyer from a client
  • 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.
  • program information file — (file format)   Under Windows, a file providing information on how a non-Windows application program should be run, including how much memory should be allocated to it and what graphics interface it requires.
  • 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 international law — Also called public law. the law governing the legal relations between independent states or nations and, increasingly, between these and individuals.
  • public relations officer — a person who is responsible for communications with the public
  • pure functional language — purely functional language
  • put the fear of god into — a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. Synonyms: foreboding, apprehension, consternation, dismay, dread, terror, fright, panic, horror, trepidation, qualm. Antonyms: courage, security, calm, intrepidity.
  • rapid eye movement sleep — REM sleep.
  • rational-emotive therapy — a form of therapy in which a patient is asked to reject irrational attitudes and assumptions in order to deal effectively with stressful situations.
  • reciprocal translocation — an exchange of segments between two nonhomologous chromosomes.
  • recommended retail price — the selling price of a product officially suggested by a manufacturer to a retailer
  • 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.
  • repetitive strain injury — overuse strain injury
  • repondez s'il vous plait — Répondez s'il vous plait
  • representative democracy — a person or thing that represents another or others.
  • reproductive imagination — the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
  • resale price maintenance — the practice by which a manufacturer establishes a fixed or minimum price for the resale of a brand product by retailers or other distributors
  • responsibility allowance — payment made to somebody who has special responsibilities
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