System Unit

Expansion Card
An expansion card is an electronic board or card added in a desktop computer or other non-portable computer to give that computer a new ability, such as the ability to connect to another computer using a network cable.

Network Interface Card

A network interface card (NIC) is a computer circuit board or card that is installed in a computer so that it can be connected to a network. Personal computers and workstations on a local area network (LAN) typically contain a network interface card specifically designed for the LAN transmission technology, such as Ethernet or Token Ring. Network interface cards provide a dedicated, full-time connection to a network.

Cache Memory
Cache memory is random access memory (RAM) that a computer microprocessor can access more quickly than it can access regular RAM. As the microprocessor processes data, it looks first in the cache memory and if it finds the data there (from a previous reading of data), it does not have to do the more time-consuming reading of data from larger memory.

Plug & Play
Plug and play is a term used to describe the characteristic of a computer bus, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration, or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts.

Sockets
A socket is an endpoint for communication between two machines.
The actual work of the socket is performed by an instance of the SocketImpl class. An application, by changing the socket factory that creates the socket implementation, can configure itself to create sockets appropriate to the local firewall.

Chips (Computer-chips)
A small piece of semiconducting material (usually silicon) on which an integrated circuit is embedded. A typical chip is less than ¼-square inches and can contain millions of electronic components (transistors). Computers consist of many chips placed on electronic boards called printed circuit boards.
Example of chips: CPU chips(microprocessors) contain an entire processing unit, whereas memory chips contain blank memory.

Slots
Slots comprises the operation issue and data paths machinery surrounding a collection of one or more functional units (FUs) which share these resources. The term slot is common for this purpose in the VLIW world where the relationship between operation in an instruction and pipeline to execute it is explicit. In dynamically scheduled machines the concept is more commonly called an execute pipeline.

Bus lines
The bus lines are the communicating electronic lines that connect different parts of the CPU to various other parts. In addition, the bus lines also link the CPU to different parts on the system board of your computer. The data flows in the form of bits along the bus lines. The bus lines are like multilane pathway which means that the more bus lines are on the system the greater is the rate of transfer of data along the bus, which means that the computer can run efficiently and will perform the operations at a faster rate.

Serial Port

Serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time (contrast parallel port).[1] Throughout most of the history of personal computers, data transfer through serial ports connected the computer to devices such as terminals and various peripherals.

Parallel Port

A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting various peripherals. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port. The IEEE 1284 standard defines the bi-directional version of the port.


Universal Serial Bus
USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a way of setting up communication between a computer and peripheral devices. USB is intended to replace many varieties of serial and parallel ports. USB can connect computer peripherals.For many of those devices, USB has become the standard connection method. USB was designed for personal computers, but it has become commonplace on other devices such as PDAs and video game consoles, and as a power cord between a device and an AC adapter plugged into a wall plug for charging.

Firewire Port
FireWire is Apple Computer's version of a standard, IEEE 1394, High Performance Serial Bus, for connecting devices to your personal computer. FireWire provides a single plug-and-socket connection on which up to 63 devices can be attached with data transfer speeds up to 400 Mbps (megabits per second). The standard describes a serial bus or pathway between one or more peripheral devices and your computer's microprocessor.

The internet,the web and Electronic Commerce

HTML
HTML is a language, which makes it possible to present information (e.g. scientific research) on the Internet.
The purpose was to make it easier for scientists at different universities to gain access to each other's research documents.
What you see when you view a page on the Internet is your browser's interpretation of HTML. To see the HTML code of a page on the Internet, simply click "View" in the top menu of your browser and choose "Source".

Javascript
JavaScript is a scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within other applications.
It is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript for the development of dynamic websites.

Applets
An applet is a program written in the Java programming language that can be included in an HTML page, much in the same way an image is included in a page. When you use a Java technology-enabled browser to view a page that contains an applet, the applet's code is transferred to your system and executed by the browser's Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Business-to-Consumer E-Commerce

(B2C, sometimes also called Business-to-Customer) describes activities of businesses serving end consumers with products and/or services.

Example: A person buying a pair of shoes from a retailer. The transactions that led to the shoes being available for purchase, that is the purchase of the leather, laces, rubber, etc. as well as the sale of the shoe from the shoemaker to the retailer would be considered (B2B) transactions.

Consumer-to-Consumer E-Commerce
(C2C) (or citizen-to-citizen) electronic commerce involves the electronically-facilitated transactions between consumers through some third party.
Example: online auction, which a consumer posts an item for sale and other consumers bid to purchase it; the third party generally charges a flat fee or commission. The sites are only intermediaries, just there to match consumers. They do not have to check quality of the products being offered.


File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
A standard network protocol used to exchange and manipulate files over a TCP/IP based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server applications.

Filters

A program that accepts certain type of data as input, transforms it in some manner and then outputs the transformed data.

For example, a program that sorts names is filter because it accepts the names in unsorted order, sort them, and outputs the sorted names.

Careers in IT

Webmaster
* The role of the person is responsible for the development and maintenance of the web servers and web pages at a website.The term does not imply any particular level of skill or mastery.

Computer Support Specialist
*A person who assists users who are having problems with software, computers or peripherals such as printers or scanners.
Some of them assist companies' customers, while other provide support in house to corporate or institutional staff.
Those who provide help over the phone, via online chat or email, are called help desk technicians.

Technical Writer
* The person responsible for writing hardware and software documentation, online help, technical definitions and technical product descriptions on Web sites.
Quite often,they are given the task of documenting an application at the last minute,given a little of time for a through understanding of all the options only and let alone time for others to read and edit the material before it is published.

 Software Engineer
* A person who designs and programs system-level software, such as operating systems, database management systems (DBMSs) and embedded systems.

The title is often used for programmers in the software industry who create commercial software packages, whether they be system level or application level.

Network Administrator
* A person who manages a communications network within an organisation. Responsibilities include network security, installing new applications, distributing software upgrades, monitoring daily activity, enforcing licensing agreements, developing a storage management program and providing for routine backups.

 Database Administrator
* A person responsible for the design and management of one or more databases and for the evaluation, selection and implementation of database management systems.

In smaller organisations, the data administrator and database administrator are often one in the same; however, when they are different, the database administrator's function is more technical. The database administrator would implement the database software that meets the requirements outlined by the organisation's data administrator and systems analysts.

System Analyst
* Interdisciplinary branch of science, dealing with analysis of systems, often prior to their automation as computer systems, and the interactions within those systems.

This field is closely related to operations research.

 Programmer
* A person who designs the logic for and writes the lines of codes of a computer program.

Programming is the heart and soul of developing computer applications, and programmers are the most misunderstood people in the business.

They are constantly being criticized for taking longer to write a program than they initially estimated.