A data or program file that has been accidentally altered by a hardware or software failure, causing bits to be rearranged and making it appear unreadable.

Support for data transport used in high-speed communications. On the Internet, it offers speeds similar to ADSL, but can reach 10 Mbps. Companies that offer Internet access services via cable also optionally include telephone and television services.

Name given to the divisions, sections (non-physical) through which the information stored on a disk is structured and organized. They may contain files and other directories (subdirectories or subfolders).

Firewall. These are programs that protect a network from another network. The firewall allows a computer on a local network to access the Internet, but the network cannot see beyond the firewall.

It is one of the first virtual social networking websites; in a nutshell, people who register on the site can have “friends” and see any information that other users have posted and allowed to be seen, search for other people with whom contact has been lost over time, etc. Facebook has been valued at millions of dollars due to its rapid growth in users, although it is one of the few that have achieved this rapid growth in recent years, due to high competition and the increasingly difficult thing to surprise the general public with new technologies.

Frequently Asked Questions. Preguntas más comunes. Document that contains the most common questions and answers on a specific topic.

File Allocation Table. This is a table used by Microsoft operating systems to locate files on a disk. Due to fragmentation, a file can be divided into many sections that are spread across the disk. Therefore, FAT allows all these pieces to be kept track of. In DOS systems, FATs are stored after the boot sector. The FAT system for older versions of Windows 95 is called FAT16, and the FAT system for newer versions of Windows 95 and Windows 98 is called FAT32.

Favorite Icon. Favorite icon. It is a mini graphic that can be a brand or logo. When a website uses it, it appears to users in the browser's address bar. In Internet Explorer, it appears when the web page with the Favicon is saved as a Favorite (Bookmark). In Firefox, it always appears even even if it is not a website marked as a favorite.

Bookmarking a website. Some browsers say ‘favorite’, others use the term ‘bookmark’. Most browsers have a “Favorites” list, where you can save the addresses of your favorite websites.

Utility used to partition a hard disk.

A set of information (programs or data) that the computer stores on a disk or tape in a differentiated manner. All files are identified, and thus differentiated from each other, by a name and, optionally, an extension.

A filter is a device that retains certain elements and lets others pass through. The concept usually refers to the porous material that allows the passage of a liquid but blocks the particles that the fluid carries in suspension.

Mozilla Firefox (originally known as Phoenix and Mozilla Firebird) is a free, open-source graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and thousands of contributors around the world. Version 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. It can be installed on Windows, Linux i686 and Mac OS X operating systems.

A very fast external bus that supports data transfers of up to 400Mbps. Firewire was developed by Apple and falls under the IEEE 1394 standard. Other companies follow IEEE 1394 but with names like Lynx and Sony's I-link.

Specific programs stored in a chip that some devices carry to manage their operation.

Created by Macromedia, this technology allows the creation of animations, among other things, using less bandwidth than other formats, such as AVI or MPEG.

File.

Font. This is the name given to the various typographic models available in an operating system.

The action of formatting a disk or diskette. It consists of recording some tracks and sectors on its surface that act as coordinates to facilitate the storage and subsequent recovery of information on the disks.

Each type of file, for example: graphics files can be .jpg, .gif, .bmp, etc.

Online discussion group. Online services and bulletin board services (BBS) provide a good variety of forums in which participants with common interests can exchange opinions and messages. Forums are sometimes called newsgroups or conferences.

Online space where a specific topic is discussed. Visitors can read messages that others have already written and leave their own.

Fully Qualified Domain Name. The full name of a system and not just the system name. For example, “panamacom” is a system name and “panamacom.com” is a FQDN.

A condition of a disk where files are divided into small pieces across its surface. This occurs naturally when a disk is used very frequently, creating, deleting, and modifying files. At some point, the operating system needs to store parts of a file in noncontiguous clusters. This process is entirely invisible to users, but can significantly slow down the rate at which data is accessed.

Condition in which RAM has small, unused gaps throughout the memory. This is called external fragmentation. Modern operating systems use a paging scheme, where a more common type of RAM fragmentation, internal, occurs. This occurs when memory is allocated in pages and the size of one of those pages is larger than the amount of memory requested.

Structure. In Internet browsers, this refers to a structure of some HTM documents that contain several independent windows. Option offered by the HTML language to divide a web page into several areas. Each of these can have content independent of the others, so that each area is also a frame.

A widely used permanent virtual circuit link protocol to provide direct connection to the Internet. A frame relay can be recreated using tunneling.

Free software that allows you to publish and obtain information on the Internet without censorship. To achieve this, the Freenet network is completely decentralized and all users and writers are anonymous. http://freenetproject. org/

Software that can be used free of charge, although the owner retains the copyright. It is usually distributed over the Internet, through the CDs of some magazines. Public Domain Programs.

Free Software Foundation. Entity that seeks to eliminate restrictions on the use, copying, modification and distribution of software. It supports the development of operating systems (Linux), the GNU C compiler (GCC), PERL, etc. It promotes and develops the use of free software in all areas of computing.

File Transfer Protocol. Protocol used for the transmission of files over the Internet in a TCP/IP network. There are programs specialized in doing this job.

For your information. Generally used by email or chat (although it goes beyond the Internet), to speed up the conversation.

A computer on a network that keeps files in folders shared by users on a local network.

It refers to the set of software (computer program) that, by the express choice of its author, can be copied, studied, modified, used freely for any purpose and redistributed with or without changes or improvements.

Copying a file from one computer to another over a computer network.

A character that represents a shape. By combining graphic characters, character-based programs can display rudimentary graphics, known as block graphics. Many of the characters in the ASCII character set are graphic characters.

Not UNIX. UNIX-compatible software system developed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The philosophy behind GNU is to produce non-proprietary software. Anyone can download, modify, and redistribute GNU programs. The only restriction is that you cannot be restricted from redistributing them.

A gateway is a network point that acts as an entrance to another network. On the Internet, a node or "stop" can be either a "gateway node" or a "host node." Both the user computers and the computers that serve pages to users are "host nodes." Computers that control data traffic within a local network or at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level are "gateway nodes." Gateways are usually associated with routers and switches.

Graphic format that allows files to be compressed with little loss of quality. GIF images use a maximum of 256 colors (8 bits) and allow the background of the images to be set to transparent. There are also animated GIF images

Prefix indicating a multiple of 1,000 million, or 109. When the binary system is used, as in computing, it means a multiple of 230, or 1,073,741,824.

Unit of measurement of information volume equivalent to 1,024 Mbyte.

A gigabit is equal to 10^9 (1,000,000,000) bits, which is equal to 125 decimal megabytes.

Free email service from Google. It started by offering 2 gigabytes of space to each user for their emails, thus revolutionizing the market for free emails, which at that time offered much less space (such as Hotmail and Yahoo for example). Today Gmail is offering 3 gigabytes and growing literally, every day. http://www.gmail. com

System through which users can exchange files over the Internet directly and without having to go through a website, using a technique called peer-to-peer (P2P).

The largest search engine on the Internet. www. google.com

Old telematic system (previous to WWW) based on menus that allows browsing the Internet and retrieving files from certain servers, the Gopher servers.

General Public License. General Public License. This license regulates the copyright of free software programs promoted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) within the framework of the GNU initiative. It allows the distribution of copies of programs (and even charging for it), as well as modifying the source code of the programs or using it in other programs.

General Packet Radio Services. Mobile telephony bridge generation (between GSM and UMTS) that provides much greater speed in communications with Internet (up to 115 Kbits/sec), and also allows charging based on byte traffic (not based on connection time as is currently the case with WAP technology). It allows being permanently connected to the Network.

Global Positioning System. Satellite-based geographic location system capable of providing the location of a person or object equipped with a GPS transmitter-receiver with a minimum accuracy of 10 meters.

Global System for Mobile Communications. Second generation of mobile phones that facilitates WAP access to certain Internet web page formats. Internet access speed is very low (about 10 Kbits/sec).

Interface that uses menus and icons to manage the environment of a program with the help of the mouse.

Graphical User Interface

Graphic User Interface (GUI). Component of a computer application that the user views and through which he or she operates it. It consists of windows, buttons, menus and icons, among other elements. Example, Windows and X window.

Mechanism that links telematic networks and translates data between different types of networks.

A network consists of a set of computers connected to each other through various methods to share information and services