WhatIs

/kwän-tə-fī(-ə)rz/

In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in the SI (Système international) conventions for scientific measurement have dual uses. With units of time or things that come in powers of 10, such as money, they retain their usual meanings of multiplication by powers of 1000 = 103. But when used with bytes or other things that naturally come in powers of 2, they usually denote multiplication by powers of 1024 = 210. 

/kwä-drü-pəl bəkē/

n., obs. 1. On an MIT space-cadet keyboard, use of all four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key.

/kwäd/

n. 1. Two bits; syn. for quarter, crumb, tayste.

2. A four-pack of anything (compare hex, sense 2).

3. The rectangle or box glyph used in the APL language for various arcane purposes mostly related to I/O. Former Ivy-Leaguers and Oxbridge types are said to associate it with nostalgic memories of dear old University.

/piː ˈdʌbljuː/

History of PW: Evolution of Digital Security

In the world of computer terms, "PW" stands for "Password," a fundamental aspect of digital security. The concept of passwords dates back to the early days of computing when users needed a secure way to protect access to their systems and data. Over time, password-based authentication became a cornerstone of digital security, evolving in response to emerging threats and technological advancements.

/pu̇sh/

[from the operation that puts the current information on a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on a stack]

Also PUSH /push/ or PUSHJ /push'J/ (the latter based on the PDP-10 procedure call instruction).

/pər-pəl bu̇k/

n. The System V Interface Definition. The covers of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of off-lavender.

See also book titles.

/pənt/

[from the punch line of an old joke referring to American football:

"Drop back 15 yards and punt!"]

v. 1. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying.

"Let's punt the movie tonight."

"I was going to hack all night to get this feature in, but I decided to punt"

may mean that you've decided not to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever even going to put in the feature.

/pənch'd kärd/

alt. 'punch card' [techspeak] n.obs. The signature medium of computing's Stone Age, now obsolescent outside of some IBM shops. The punched card actually predated computers considerably, originating in 1801 as a control device for mechanical looms. The version patented by Hollerith and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S. Census was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm, designed to fit exactly in the currency trays used for that era's larger dollar bills.

/pəf/

vt. To decompress data that has been crunched by Huffman coding. At least one widely distributed Huffman decoder program was actually *named* 'PUFF', but these days it is usually packaged with the encoder.

Oppose huff.

/pyü-bik də-rek-t(ə-)rē/

[NYU]

(also 'pube directory' /pyoob' d*-rek't*-ree/) n. The 'pub' (public) directory on a machine that allows FTP access. So called because it is the default location for SEX (sense 1).

"I'll have the source in the pube directory by Friday."