Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Lurking - Being a member of a forum or mailing list to observe but without
contributing to the discussion. Lurkers may often just do so until they become
comfortable with contributing and then become active participants.
Mailman-Acommonlyusedopensourcemailinglistserverapplication.(See
also, Open Source.)
MAPI - Messing Application Programming Interface. A messaging architec-
ture which is used by some Microsoft applications to communicate with the
Microsoft Exchange server.
MIME - Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. A standard way to encode
non-text files such as images, audio files and executable files before transmis-
sion over protocols that only allow transmission of text data. It is used by mail
servers and web servers.
MMORPG - Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game. An on-line
role-playing game environment with a large number of participants. These
environments are usually hosted at a commercial site and require client soft-
ware to connect and participate. (See also, RPG. Client.)
MOO - MUD Object Oriented. An enhancement of the MUD comcept that
allows users to program their environment, possibly changing the behavior of
the environment. (See also, MUD.)
MUD-Multi-userDungeon(orDomain).Amulti-playeron-linerole-playing
game with the features of a chat room. Players interact with each other using
text commands. (See also, MOO, RPG.)
ODF - Open Document Format. A file format used by OpenOffice, IBM and
others to store data from office productivity applications. (See also, OOXML,
PDF.)
OOXML-OfficeOpenXML.AfileformatusedbyMicrosofttostorethedata
from Office applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint, starting with the
2007 version. (See also, ODF, PDF.)
Open Source - a programming philosophy and also a licensing mode that
requires distributed software to be made available in its source form so that
usersmayexaminethecode,andundersomerestrictions,alsomodifyit.Most,
but not all, of the GNU/Linux operating system is open source.
PDF - Portable Document Format. A file format used originally by Adobe to
createvisuallyaccuratedocumentfiles.PDFfilesareusuallythebestwaytodis-
tribute files where the appearance needs to be closely controlled. There are
manyapplicationsthatcandisplayPDFfiles,butfewapplicationsthatcanmod-
ifyPDFfilesoncecreated,sotheyareusuallyconsideredread-onlydocuments.
Perl-Ascriptinglanguagewithpowerfulfeaturesfortexthandling,oftenused
inassociationwithwebserverCGIprograms.Perlisaveryterselanguageand
