Applies to memories and networks to indicate the maximum amount of information simultaneously that can transfer over a channel in each unit of time. It is generally measured in bits per second (bps) or in hertz (Hz) which defines the frequency range that can encompass without degrading the signal.

Is the amount of data that can be transmitted per unit of time. HE can be used to talk about the capacity of a line telephone, capacity of a bus, etc... bandwidth, higher transmission speed. It is measured in kilo, mega or gigabytes per second..

File that contains information stored using the signs 0 and 1. It may contain graphics, text, sound, programs.

A file that contains a sequence, or batch, of commands. Batch files are useful for storing sets of commands that are always executed together because the user can simply enter the name of the batch file instead of entering each command individually.

Business Blog. A blog used by a company to promote itself.

The part of the network that carries the heaviest traffic: connecting LANS, whether within a building or across a city or region.

Backup or Security Copy. Action of copying files or data so that they are available in case a failure causes the loss of the originals. This simple action avoids numerous, and sometimes irreparable, problems if it is performed regularly and regularly.

Character that causes the cursor to move back one space, deleting the character immediately following it. The backs pace character has an ASCII value of 8. Virtually all keyboards have a Backs pace key that invokes this character.

Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. A programming language created in 1963, simple and widely used.

Image, graphic or text for advertising purposes that usually links to the advertiser's website.

Distinctive extension of batch files.

Batch file. It is a file that chains certain commands that are executed by the PC when it is executed. Always with a .bat extension, the most well-known is AUTOEXEC.BAT.

Type of measurement used to measure the speed of the modem. A baud is a symbol and that symbol is made up of a group of bits.

Unit of measurement of the modulation speed of a modem. It measures the number of changes that take place on the telephone line (or carrier in general) every second.

Hexadecimal Binary. Method used to convert non-ASCII or binary files to the 7-bit ASCII format. This method is used primarily by Macintosh computers and is necessary because Internet mail can only use ASCII files.

Bulletin Board System. Electronic bulletin board: A computer, or computer network, through which one can access discussion groups, games, and mail software and services.

Standard work that can be performed by different computers to pass through different speed banks.

Basic Input Output System. This is the lowest layer of a computer's software, providing an interface between the computer's hardware and operating system. They are a set of basic procedures for the operation of the computer. They are stored in the ROM memory, so their content cannot be modified.

Basic computer code that reduces all types of information to strings of 0s and 1s.

Non-final versions of the programs that companies distribute to specialists.

As computer performance increases, traditional measures are losing relevance. MIPS (Millions of Instructions per Second) has been replaced by BIPS (Billion Instructions per Second), which is an approximate measure of a system's processing capacity.

Refers to hardware and software that represents graphic images as bitmaps. The other method of representing images is known as vector graphics

BInary digiT or Binary Digit. The bit is the smallest unit of storage in a binary system within a computer. Equivalent to a binary “yes” (0) or “no” (1). The union of 8 bits gives rise to a byte.

Web log. A blog is a Web page that serves as a public personal diary for an individual. They are typically updated daily and reflect the personality of the author.

Wireless data transmission standard via short-range radio frequency (about 10 meters). Among many other applications, it allows communication between video cameras, cell phones and computers that have this protocol, for the exchange of digitalized data (video, audio, text).

Online service that provides free hosting for blogs. Address: www.blogger. com

Bitmap. Standard Windows graphic file format. JPG, PNG or GIF are preferred over BMP, since bitmap files are usually much larger in size (bytes) than the other formats mentioned.

The sum of all blogs and blog-related websites forms the blogosphere.

Bridge. A mechanism that connects separate local networks and allows data to be transferred between them.

Load the operating system of a computer.

Program that allows you to read documents on the Web and follow hypertext links in documents. It allows you to view the various network files hosted on servers in multimedia format.

A program or script that performs functions that would otherwise have to be done manually. It comes from the word “Robot,” and the best example is the GoogleBot, which visits millions of internet pages daily to check if they have been updated, in order to automatically index them in the search engine database.

Basic Support for Collaborative Work. Online work environment that facilitates collaborative work. Users can share documentation, forums..., There is also a common space for each group (http:// bscw.gmd.de)

Bits per Second. The speed at which bits are transmitted in a communication medium through a modem.

Sequence of instructions in a program that will be executed until a certain condition is met.

Temporary storage space where certain data is stored before being transmitted. It constitutes an intermediate memory that is used in different peripherals (keyboard, printers, etc.) to increase their speed and performance, compensating for the speeds between data reception (slower) and its rapid processing.

Operating system configuration that allows the user to boot the system with one or two different operating systems, both installed on the same disk drive. The operating system chosen will then have control of the system, assigned to it by a boot management program that ignores the original MBR and is loaded instead of the operating system.

Error or defect in a program or computer.

Set of 8 bits that is treated as a unit and that constitutes the minimum memory element of a computer.

Information presented in a series of printed lines of variable width, which can be read by “bar code readers.”

System that ensures that noise on telephone lines does not introduce errors during data transmission.

Representation of information (texts, sounds, images) through a series of ones and zeros (bits) that are expressed in the computer by the presence or absence of an electrical signal.

It refers to the first address in a series of memory addresses with a certain functionality: I/O devices, etc.

Disk that contains the information necessary for the operating system to start the computer.

Bitmap.

It is a type of inkjet printer developed by Canon. The main difference between bubblejets and inkjets is that the former use special elements to heat the ink, while the latter use piezoelectric crystals.

Set of programming modules that are used to develop and design applications.

A graphic in which each point of an image is represented with one or more bytes (carriers of its color). These images can be manipulated by most design programs.

Browser. A program that is used to access and view information contained on the World Wide Web. The most widely used are: Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Explore the Internet in search of information.

Browse web pages on the Internet using a browser.

Logical operators that allow you to perform complex searches. Each search tool has different operators, although there are a few that try to be universal, such as: AND, OR, and NOT.

A network bridge is a device for interconnecting computer networks that operates at layer 2 (data link layer) of the OSI model. ... In short, a bridge connects network segments forming a single subnet (it allows connection between computers without the need for routers).

A version of a program that is still in the development phase and has not yet been marketed. They are often distributed free of charge over the Internet to help users detect operating problems.

Connection between web pages. Link. Hypertext pointers that serve to jump from one piece of information to another, or from one web server to another, when browsing the Internet.

A set of information stored on a computer medium. It may contain information of different types: textual, graphic, video, ... It is named using a system that includes two parts: a name and a three-letter extension. Both parts are separated by a period. The extension indicates the type of information it contains. For example: document.txt image.jpg

Language that covers three programming paradigms: structured programming, generic programming and object-oriented programming. C++ is considered by many to be the most powerful language, because it allows working at both high and low levels.

Cable widely used in local LAN networks and in the transmission of radio frequency signals (TV antenna...). It has a conductive copper wire inside, surrounded by a plastic insulator covered with a copper mesh and an outer insulator.

Modem that connects a computer to high-speed Internet, through a cable TV line.

The backbone of a network that uses a physical medium of cable, almost always of the local area network (LAN) type, so that information is transmitted from one node to another. The recent appearance of wireless networks has broken the traditional pattern by not using any type of cabling.

Computer Aided Desig. Acronym for computer-assisted design. They are programs that facilitate the creation of graphic designs.

Computer Aided Education. Educational program.

Small portion of RAM that stores recently read data, thereby speeding up future access to it.

Save copies of frequently accessed documents on your computer's hard drive, so that they can be retrieved more quickly in the future.

Completely Automated Public Turing. Turing Completely Automated Public Turing. It is a small test that helps determine whether a user is a computer or a human. Today it is used a lot in web forms, where an image is placed that the user must read and rewrite in the field provided. At the moment, computers do not recognize letters well within a graphic, especially if they have a background and the letters have a certain slant. It is only a matter of time before computers can understand texts within images.

Computer-aided manufacturing.

An area of ​​an IRC network that chat users must join before they can chat. Some channels are dedicated to specific topics.

Number, letter or symbol in the computer, made up of one byte.

‘The symbol (^) used in older technical documents to indicate the Control key. For example, “^C” represents pressing the “C” key while holding down the Control key. In modern documents, such a sequence is represented as “Ctrl + C.” The “hat” symbol is also known as “sombrero.”

It is the science that studies the automatic processing of data or information through computers.

Carrier. In its meaning, carrier is a signal or pulse transmitted through a telecommunication line. A carrier is also a company that operates in the telecommunications sector offering telephone services.

A ROM cartridge that contains one or more fonts. When the cartridge is inserted into a laser printer, it is given the ability to print with different fonts.

The amount of bandwidth occupied. For example, on a 1 Mbps line there may be a flow of 256 Kbps, so the remaining 768 Kbps of bandwidth remain unoccupied.

Constant Bitrate. Constant Bitrate. Basically, it is a term that describes how audio and video are encoded, where the bitrate does not vary throughout the audio or video clip.

Charge Coupled Device. A device that captures color and light in digital cameras and videos and converts them into the electronic image.

International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee. Committee setting standards for the communications industry: modems.

Compact Disc. Compact disk. Optical disk of 12 cm diameter for binary storage. Its capacity is approximately 750 Mb and can be used to store any type of data, from music, videos, divx, mp3, files in general, etc.

CD-R is a CD that allows writing, has the capacity to record approximately 750 MB and the recorded data cannot be erased.

Rewritable Compact Disc. A CD that offers the possibility of recording and erasing information up to 1,000 times.

Microprocessor from the Intel family, less expensive than the Pentium II, although based on the same architecture. They were introduced to the market in June 1998 and run somewhat slower than a Pentium II (from 266 to 300 MHz), in addition to not being as expandable as their aforementioned relatives.

European Council for Nuclear Research. European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Genoa, Switzerland. It was where the world wide web was born in 1991, based on the proposal of Tim Berners Lee. http:// www. cern.ch

Color Graphics Adapter. One of the first graphics cards for IBM and compatible computers. It allowed resolutions of 320x200 dots with 4 colors and 640x200 dots in 2 colors. They are no longer used today.

Compact Disk - Read Only Memory. Compact disk read only. Compact disks read only with a capacity of 600 Mbyte.

Common Gateway Interface. Programs (written in languages ​​such as C or Perl) that run on Internet server computers (located in the cgibin directory) and process information they receive from clients (for example, through forms, search engines, etc.)

This is any email sent to one or more people asking them to forward the message to one or more people, with the promise of a reward for forwarding it or punishment for not doing so. For example, good luck if it is sent and bad luck if it is not. These chain emails cost network resources, money and time. Break the chain - if you receive an email like this, do not forward it.

Abbreviation for “microchip.” A very small circuit, made up of thousands to millions of transistors printed on a silicon wafer. A typical chip measures just a few square millimeters.

Electronic conversation in real time and within the Internet with other Internet users from any point on the planet.

Chipset. Electronic elements of the motherboard that, working as a whole, allow communication between the microprocessor and the rest of the system, coordinating the operation of all its elements.

Prefix used widely in the Internet community to name concepts related to networks (cyberculture, cyberspace, cybernaut, etc.)

Any type of information stored or distributed on the Internet that is manifestly annoying or dangerous to the mental health of Internet users. This is also said of those who throw garbage on the Internet.

The name given to the virtual (non-physical) space where people meet on the Internet. It also refers to the culture, customs and habits of the electronic community. Term invented by the science fiction writer William Gibson, in his work Neuromancer, from 1984.

Games that can be accessed via the Internet or other similar communications network and that can be shared by Internet users.

Cybersquatter. A person who reserves domain names with the intention of selling them later to companies interested in them, since domain names are a highly sought-after commodity. Until not long ago, anyone could register domain names corresponding to well-known companies, brands and products.

Marketing through the network.

Police officer specialized in the Internet or in using the network for his investigations.

Internet user or surfer who travels through cyberspace. Virtual traveler who accesses any type of information available on the Internet. Person who surfs the Internet.

Science that studies the design of automatic machines or robots, with the aim of providing them with human behavior and intelligence.

Content Management System. Websites that have management systems that allow easy creation and editing of content, such as new pages, news, etc.

Gross unit of measurement of the effectiveness of an advertising banner, which is obtained by calculating all the accesses to a website as a result of clicking on said banner. The ‘clickthru ratio’ is the net unit of measurement of the effectiveness of a banner obtained by dividing the impressions obtained by the “clickthru” produced by said banner.

Clipboard. Space in memory in a program or operating system where ONE piece of data can be saved for immediate use in the same or another program. On a Macintosh computer there are two types of clipboards. One is known as a Clipboard, proper, which can hold only one item at a time and is emptied when the computer is turned off (just like on a regular PC); and another called a Scrapbook, which can hold several items at once and retains its contents over several sessions of use.

A concept used in network computing whereby computers are divided into two categories: clients and servers. Clients request information from servers. Servers store information and deliver it to any authorized client that requests it.

A computer that is part of a network and that receives information and software from another main computer called a server.

An encryption device that the U.S. government unsuccessfully attempted to make mandatory by law in 1995 in order to control the flow of cryptographic transmissions over digital telecommunications networks.

A technique used by many Web sites to submit one page to a search engine for indexing, while serving an entirely different page to their visitors. This practice is often considered unethical because search engines will place the site in the wrong category based on data they collect from the meta tags. Some search engines, such as Lycos, Hotbot, and Excite, will reject sites that use this method so that their listings will not be tainted with incorrect information.

Common Language Runtime. An environment that manages the execution of .NET program code and provides services such as memory management, debugging, profiling, and security. The CLR is a core component of the .NET framework. The CLR is also known as the Virtual Execution System (VES).

The act of masking the name and address of the sender in emails sent to a distribution list, so that the recipient cannot know who sent the email.

A group of sectors on a disk that is treated as an entity by the operating system. A storage unit on a hard disk. A file can be stored in one or more clusters, which can be located in various places on the disk.

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. The four basic colors of printing inks: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. One of several systems used by printers to combine primary colors to produce a full-color image.

Encoder/decoder. Short for compress/decompress, a codec is any technology for compressing and decompressing data. Codecs can be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination of both. Some codecs for MPEG video can be Indeo and Cinepak. In order to view videos in the various existing formats, it is necessary to have the appropriate codecs installed on the computer, e.g. Xvid and Divx among others. To download the latest CODECS to your computer, for free, www.free-codecs. com, or to download a set of codecs and have them all in one, download the K Lite Codec Pack. In telecommunications, an Encoder, Decoder, an electronic device that converts an analog signal, such as voice or video, into a digital stream, which compresses it and sends it to a digital network line.

Command. Instruction that a user gives to the computer's operating system to perform a certain task. Each order given to the computer to execute a program or perform a specific function.

Companies leading among PC manufacturers. Based in Houston, Texas, Compaq Computer Corporation was founded in 1982 by Rod Canion, Bill Murto and Jim Harris. Their first product, released in 1983, was a laptop computer. The following year they developed a desktop PC. Over time, Compaq built a reputation as a manufacturer of high-quality PCs. In 1991, they shook up the world market by lowering their prices, a move that made them number one in the field. Traditionally, COMPAQ machines were obtained through resellers. But in 1997, COMPAQ launched an aggressive strategy to produce “custom” computers. This program allowed companies to specify the configurations they wanted and buy the machines directly from COMPAQ. This put it in direct competition with similar vendors such as Gateway 2000 and Dell Computer. In 2002, COMPAQ merged with Hewlett Packard.

Operation that consists of translating the source code of a program into the binary code specific to computers. It is performed using a compiler program.

A compiler that runs on one computer, but produces object code for other types of computers. These compilers are used to generate software that can run on computers with a new architecture or on special-purpose devices that cannot store their own compilers.

Transforming a program written in a high-level programming language from source code to object code. The source code must go through a series of steps before it becomes an executable program. The first step is to run the source code through a compiler, which translates the high-level language instructions into object code. The final step is to run the object code through a linker, which combines the modules and assigns real-world values ​​to all the symbolic addresses, producing machine code.

COM is a software architecture developed by Microsoft to build component-based applications. COM objects are discrete components, each with a unique identity and interfaces that allow them to be used from other applications or components. They are more versatile than Windows DLLs because they are completely language-independent, have interprocess communication capabilities, and fit easily into an object-oriented design. COM was introduced in 1993 along with OLE2 to replace the DDE interprocess communication mechanism used by the initial version of OLE. ActiveX is also based on COM.

It is a part of a device. It refers to the tangible physical parts of a computer system; its electrical, electronic, electromechanical and mechanical components.

It is a small program or binary object that performs a specific function and is designed so that it can easily interoperate with other components and applications. Another term sometimes used is “applet.”

Reduce the size of a file to save space or to transfer it in less time. One of the most popular compression programs for Windows is WinZip (.zip format), or WinRAR (.rar format).

One of the first and largest online services, CompuServe provides a large number of forums and e-mail services. In 1997, the content portion of CompuServe was acquired by America Online, while the network services portion went to WorldCom.

Founded in 1978, Acorn Computers Company developed its own operating system for its Acorn computer, called RISC OS. Unable to keep pace with the Wintel movement, in September 1998 Acorn Company announced the cessation of all work. Acorn Company was then purchased by Pace Micro Technology plc.

Electronic device capable of processing information and executing program instructions. A computer is capable of interpreting and executing programmed commands for input, output, computation, and logical operations.

Situation that occurs when existing traffic exceeds the capacity of a data communication route.

Change data from one format to another.

Driver. Device or program that manages the information that circulates between the central unit of a computer and its peripherals.

Person or company that buys domains from famous brands, companies, etc. and then offers them to the same (or the highest bidder) at double or triple their price.

Small segment of data delivered by the HTTP server to the user's WWW browser when connecting to a certain page, so that the latter can save it. Normally, this is information about the page that has been visited on the server, which can thus know what the user did on the last visit.

Copyright. The right that an author, including the author and a computer program, has over each and each of his works and that allows him to decide under what conditions these are to be reproduced and distributed. Although this right is legally inalienable, it can be exercised in a way as restrictive or as generous as the author decides. The symbol for this right is ©.

Central processor unit. Central Processing Unit. Box containing the basic components of the PC, the motherboard with the microprocessor, the memory, the disk drives, the circuits, the power supply. It is the real computer.

Computer scientist whose objective is to break through the security barriers of the Internet and access information to cause damage. Unlike hackers, these individuals attempt to break the security of commercial programs. A hacker with destructive and/or criminal intentions. A person who tries to enter a system without authorization and with the intention of causing some type of damage or obtaining a benefit.

The act of copying and/or using commercial software illegally, breaking the various protection or registration techniques that they use.

It is a serious failure in the computer. This means that the computer stops working or a program has unexpectedly aborted. It may be caused by a hardware failure or a software bug.

Any procedure is said to be cryptographic if it allows a sender to hide the content of a message so that only people in possession of a certain key can read it after having deciphered it.

Visual signal that indicates where the data entry is located. It is usually represented with an arrow or a narrow line.

Folder on a computer's hard drive where the elements (graphics, text, sounds, etc.) of web pages opened by a browser are stored. Thus, when the same page is visited again, the browser can retrieve the information more quickly from the disk instead of having to "download" it from the Internet.

Set of technical knowledge that deals with the automatic processing of information by means of computers.

Standard interface for connecting printers and other parallel devices. Although Centronics Corporation designed the original standard, the Centronics interface used by modern computers was designed by Epson Corporation. For PCs, almost all parallel ports use the Centronics standard. Two new standards for parallel ports that are compatible with Centronics, but offer higher speeds, are ECP (Extend Capabilities Port) and EPP (Enhanced Parallel Port).

It is a public place where customers are offered Internet access.

Also known as IE, it is Microsoft's web browser, created in 1995 for Windows and much later for Mac. It was not the first on the market and Netscape was ahead of it by many years, but Windows' penetration in the market is very strong. Microsoft began to distribute Windows together with IE. Little by little, people simply preferred to use what came on the computer rather than having to download a large application like Netscape. Today, browsers like Firefox are gaining ground.

A small amount of high-speed memory that increases computer performance by temporarily storing data.

Minimum RAM memory typical of computers that occupies the first 640 Kbyte of memory. Above conventional memory, there may be higher memory and extended memory.

A system that relies on terminals (clients) connected to a computer that provides them with a resource (server). In this way, the clients are the elements that need services from the resource and the server is the entity that owns it. The clients, however, do not depend totally on the server because they can perform processing to display the information (for example in graphical form). The server only provides them with the information without taking charge of other processes so that the traffic on the network is lightened and the communications between the computers are carried out faster.

In Latin America it is commonly known as a computer, but in Spain they call them a computer.

A concentric ring on a disk where data can be written. A typical floppy disk has 80 tracks (double density) or 160 tracks (high density). In hard disks, each platter is divided into concentric tracks, and each track on either side of the platter is called a cylinder. Hard disks have thousands of cylinders. Each track is further divided into a number of sectors. The operating system and disk drive remember where information was stored by noting the numbers of sectors and tracks. The density of the tracks (how close they are to each other) is measured in tracks per inch (TPI).

Software that requires the services of a server with which it exchanges data. All client programs are designed to work with certain types of servers. For example, CuteFTP is a client program that connects to FTP servers.

Signal that carries certain information by modulating its amplitude, frequency or phase.

It is an electronic board that is normally connected to the motherboard and is used to perform certain functions.

CPU is the hardware inside a computer or other programmable devices that interprets the instructions of a computer program by performing basic operations.

Controls the execution of programs and the general operation of the entire system. Supervises the execution of programs. Coordinates and controls the computer system, i.e., coordinates I/O activities. Determines which instruction must be executed and makes available the data requested by the instruction. Determines where the data is stored and transfers it from the locations where it is stored. Once the instruction is executed, the Control Unit must determine where it will put the result for output or for later use.