Definitions of words commonly heard on the Internet

Internet -

The entire set of networks.

cruft -

Binary or ASCII data that is not needed or wanted. " I removed the cruft that had filled the /tmp directory."

flame -

An angry and often witty response to someone s post (sometimes personal); Any type of junk mail you send companies because they posted on a newsgroup. "Perhaps if you had a brain you would know that..."

flamebait -

An article that someone post to draw flames. While often brutal, flames are sometimes amusing. Or, any type of advertisement posted to a newsgroup.

flavor -

different version of software/hardware. "BSD and system V are two flavors of UNIX."

foo, bar, baz -

Often used to help detail a situation while keeping the discussion abstract. "O.K. Lets say you have a file called foo. You have another file called bar. The way you merge the two together into a third , lets call it bar, is by using the ..."

homepage -

a collection of interlinked web pages that topically relate to a particular organization or domain

net potato -

Similar to a couch potato. Someone who spends a great deal of time surfing the net. You might even know one.

newbie -

A new participant of a particular newsgroup or the internet as a whole. "listen you newbie, read the FAQ before you post..."

sneakernet -

Data transfer method using hallways, humans and shoes. Derived from sneaker (another name for a tennis shoe) and network. "The network is down, I will just put the file on a floppy and bring it to you via sneakernet." One can tell the sneakernet is busy when many squeaky sounds emminate from the hallway.

spam, SPAM -

Unsolicited advertisements sent to a user or newsgroup. The common response is to reply with a "no thanks" letter. " If I wanted your products I could search on the Web and find them. No more spam thanks, I am full . SPAM - "Stupid Persons' AdvertiseMent

snail mail -

Reference to the relative speed of postal mail .

surfing the net -

The action of traveling the World Wide Web for ones own self interest.

techie -

Some one who knows about and is interested in the technical aspect of the Internet.

vanilla -

something is vanilla when it is plain.

website -

an entity that provides hypertext pages to other entities (note how this does not imply remote machines - we shall consider a CD with HTML pages on it and a local client attaching to it a "website")