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23-letter words containing t, u

  • digital subscriber line — (communications, protocol)   (DSL, or Digital Subscriber Loop, xDSL - see below) A family of digital telecommunications protocols designed to allow high speed data communication over the existing copper telephone lines between end-users and telephone companies. When two conventional modems are connected through the telephone system (PSTN), it treats the communication the same as voice conversations. This has the advantage that there is no investment required from the telephone company (telco) but the disadvantage is that the bandwidth available for the communication is the same as that available for voice conversations, usually 64 kb/s (DS0) at most. The twisted-pair copper cables into individual homes or offices can usually carry significantly more than 64 kb/s but the telco needs to handle the signal as digital rather than analog. There are many implementation of the basic scheme, differing in the communication protocol used and providing varying service levels. The throughput of the communication can be anything from about 128 kb/s to over 8 Mb/s, the communication can be either symmetric or asymmetric (i.e. the available bandwidth may or may not be the same upstream and downstream). Equipment prices and service fees also vary considerably. The first technology based on DSL was ISDN, although ISDN is not often recognised as such nowadays. Since then a large number of other protocols have been developed, collectively referred to as xDSL, including HDSL, SDSL, ADSL, and VDSL. As yet none of these have reached very wide deployment but wider deployment is expected for 1998-1999.
  • digital subscriber loop — Digital Subscriber Line
  • discontinuous variation — variation in phenotypic traits in which types are grouped into discrete categories with few or no intermediate phenotypes. Compare continuous variation.
  • disjunctive normal form — (DNF) A logical formula consisting of a disjunction of conjunctions where no conjunction contains a disjunction. E.g. the DNF of (A or B) and C is (A and C) or (B and C).
  • distributive bargaining — a negotiation process aimed at reaching a compromise agreement over how resources may be allocated between the parties
  • dressed up to the nines — If you say that someone is dressed up to the nines or dressed to the nines, you mean that they are wearing very smart or elegant clothes.
  • drive sb round the bend — If you say that someone or something drives you round the bend, you mean that you dislike them and they annoy or upset you very much.
  • drummond of hawthornden — William. 1585–1649, Scottish poet, historian, and royalist pamphleteer
  • dual sensory impairment — the condition of being affected by sight and hearing loss
  • duplication of the cube — the insoluble problem of constructing a cube having twice the volume of a given cube, using only a ruler and compass.
  • earthquake-proof design — Earthquake-proof design is design which will not be badly damaged by earthquakes or tsunamis.
  • eastern orthodox church — Orthodox Church (def 1).
  • eating your own dogfood — eating one's own dogfood
  • education correspondent — a journalist who reports news in the field of education or teaching
  • electronic surveillance — use of electronic devices to spy, observe
  • ellipsoid of revolution — a geometric surface produced by rotating an ellipse about one of its two axes and having circular plane surfaces perpendicular to the axis of revolution
  • encapsulated postscript — (EPS) An extension of the PostScript graphics file format developed by Adobe Systems. EPS is used for PostScript graphics files that are to be incorporated into other documents. An EPS file includes pragmas (special PostScript comments) giving information such as the bounding box, page number and fonts used. On some computers, EPS files include a low resolution version of the PostScript image. On the Macintosh this is in PICT format, while on the IBM PC it is in TIFF or Microsoft Windows metafile format.
  • entrance qualifications — academic requirements
  • equivalent focal length — the ratio of the size of an image of a small distant object near the optical axis to the angular distance of the object in radians
  • european monetary union — the agreement between members of the European Union to establish a common currency. The current participating members are Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain
  • eurovision song contest — an annual singing competition broadcast on live television and participated in by European countries who are members of the European Broadcasting Union. Each country submits one song and the other countries cast votes on the song to determine the winner.
  • execute channel program — (operating system)   (EXCP) An IBM system for low-level file access, where the programmer is completely responsible for providing a list of device-specific "channel comands" to be executed by I/O channels, control units and/or devices. The operating system will simply check the "CCW" chains for security purposes (access invalid memory or outside of file extents) and then schedule them for execution.
  • 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.
  • extravehicular activity — the act or an instance of floating and manoeuvring in space, outside but attached by a lifeline to a spacecraft
  • 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 through the cracks — to break without complete separation of parts; become fissured: The plate cracked when I dropped it, but it was still usable.
  • 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.
  • fetal tissue transplant — a surgical procedure in which tissue from an aborted fetus is grafted into a patient to replace or improve defective tissue, especially to treat Parkinson's disease or other neurological disorders.
  • 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.
  • fish in troubled waters — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
  • 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
  • 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).
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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.
  • gastroesophageal reflux — a chronic condition in which acid from the stomach flows back into the lower esophagus, causing pain or tissue damage.
  • geiger-muller threshold — the minimum voltage applied to an ionization chamber, as in a Geiger counter, at which the charge collected per count is independent of the nature of the ionizing event producing the count.
  • german southwest africa — a former name of Namibia.
  • get/build your hopes up — If you tell someone not to get their hopes up, or not to build their hopes up, you are warning them that they should not become too confident of progress or success.
  • give (or get) a tumble — to give (or get) some favorable or affectionate notice, attention, etc.
  • give something a rub-up — to smooth or polish something
  • grand duchess charlotte — Grand Duchess (Charlotte Aldegonde Elise Marie Wilhelmine) 1896–1985, sovereign of Luxembourg 1919–64.
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