Description:
Computer lingo seems to be expanding about as fast as the Internet itself. The authors of this book provide an aid for those at risk of getting lost in the language. That includes everybody with a nontechnical background who suddenly has to do more than simply log on and check e-mail. Those who find they must deal with their company's Internet sites or in-house intranets will find this work invaluable in communicating with technical people, whether on their own staff or from vendors. This is quite helpful when it's important to know that the techie talking about ATM isn't discussing getting money from the automated teller machine but making data move across the network in Asynchronous Transfer Mode. But Freedman and the Glossbrenners do more than provide definitions of the terms an Internet user or administrator is likely to fall across. They explain the backgrounds of terms and phrases, making the work almost like a mini-encyclopedia. For example, they not only define the term "bus" ("a common pathway, or channel, between multiple devices"), but they also provide an illustration of the concept, clearly describe types of buses, and even explain why it's called a "bus" in the first place. They also conveniently divide the entries into alphabetic and numeric, eliminating any confusion as to where to find, for example, 32-bit processing (which is not a reference to a processor worth $4) or 6x86MX. --Elizabeth Lewis
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