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WHATIS.COM | Update
March 27, 2002
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IN THIS ISSUE | This Week's Highlights
1. WHAT'S NEW AT WHATIS.COM
- Are we "authoritative"? Can you trust us?
- A mnemonic for OSI
- New terms that we're working on
2. NEWS FROM OUR TECHTARGET COMMUNITY OF SITES
- Site of the week: SearchWebManagement.com
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WHAT'S NEW AT WHATIS.COM
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Are we "authoritative"? Can you trust us?
Readers will hope and many will believe that the answer to these two
closely-related questions is "Yes." Everyone assumes that anyone
putting together a dictionary or encyclopedia aims for each entry,
topic, or definition to be accurate (and up-to-date, which is a
special form of accuracy). The editors and writers at whatis.com
certainly try to be. However, our definitions are not
"authoritative" in the same sense that those in a glossary written by
a standards organization would be. And, unlike scholarly papers, our
definitions are not tested by a formal peer review although this is
an approach we've considered. On the other hand, we don't see our
role as being promulgators of truth so much as simply being sharers
of what we are constantly learning.
We started whatis.com as a tool for ourselves and a few others like
us who were having a hard time keeping track of it all. In a way,
that's what it still is. Although the topics we're keeping track of
are approaching the 4,000 mark, we - with some occasional help from
readers - still try to keep them accurate and up-to-date. (To the
best of our knowledge, every definition written in our first year has
been revised since, often more than once.)
No, we're not really authoritative - although we know many readers
will treat any useful source that way. Yes, we do believe you can
trust us, but only as much as you can trust any five-year old Web
site that tries to keep up with many always rapidly-changing
technologies. When we occasionally fall short, we hope that you, our
readers, will continue to let us know.
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A mnemonic for OSI
Last week, we asked you to let us know what kind of information
technology things you memorize - and several readers responded. A
number of readers rattled off very practical things they HAD to
memorize just to survive: passwords, lock combinations, commonly-used
command words, and clues or blackboard codes for where to look things
up if you happen to forget. One reader sent in 10 rules to guide
your IT work life by (which he apparently had memorized) and we
especially liked...
"Rule #3: Don't over-analyze anything. Not systems, not software,
not process, not others and certainly not yourself. Life isn't all
that complicated, nor are computing systems. You take stuff in, you
put stuff out. Eventually you go to the scrap yard. Simple."
Another reader had memorized many of the decimal forms of binary
numbers up to 2 gigabytes (the largest 32-bit number) or
2,147,483,647.
The best contribution in our opinion was a one-sentence mnemonic for
the seven layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)
communication model: All People Seem To Need Data Processing. As a
way to remember: Application, Presentation, Session, Transport,
Networking, Data-Link, and Physical layers.
By the way, our definition of "mnemonic" is at...
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci212582,00.html
And "OSI" is at...
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci212725,00.html
Thanks to those who contributed!
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New terms that we're working on
We add about 50 new terms each month and here are some we're working
on right now:
Media Gateway Control Protocol
timestamp
Recording Industry of America
intelligent device
product (as used in mathematics)
virtual keyboard
LotusScript
spam trap
T-SQL
war driving
picoradio
Some of these will be pretty interesting, we hope. Don't forget to
let us know what else we should be working by dropping us a note at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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:::::::::: NEWS FROM OUR TECHTARGET COMMUNITY OF SITES :::::::::
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Site-of-the-Week: SearchWebManagement
It's got a long name but a meaningful name. Believe it or not, this
site is devoted to just "managing your Web site," a subject that has
grown increasingly complex and challenging. Of course, the site has
the usual latest news, discussion forums, experts, Best Web Links,
tips, and heaven knows what else. This week, Editor Karen Guglielmo
is featuring stories and links to information about "Open source and
security." (Can you trust PHP and Linux, for example?) You'll find
this right on the home page at...
http://www.searchwebmanagement.com
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:::::::::::::: THANK YOU FROM WHATIS.COM :::::::::::::::::::::
Please forward this email to colleagues who can also benefit from
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of services available to you as a member of whatis.com.
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Profile" link at the top of whatis.com and update as you like.
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::::::::::::::::::: WHATIS.COM CONTACTS :::::::::::::::::::
LOWELL THING, Site Editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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MARGARET ROUSE, Assistant Editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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:::::::::::::::::::: ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER :::::::::::::::::::::
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