Anyone who hasn’t made a career with the inner workings of computer technology can sometimes get a little confused and annoyed by some of the jargon they use. The thing is, most of the time they don’t need fancy words, they just make up some because they want to. Here are some fancy computer words that have really simple meanings.
1) Dongle: It’s a fun-sounding word. The dongle was originally a very short cable that plugged into a USB port and had a card reader on the other end. Now it means anything that plugs into a USB port. A dongle is a flash drive.
2) Bootstrapping – You’ve heard of the phrase “stand up for the media” or Bootstrap Bill from Pirates of the Caribbean. In computer terms, it means a system that is self-sufficient, but a fully self-sufficient computer is a paradox. A human must initiate the process before a computer can take over. Bootstrapping is really just the catch 22 of a computer.
3) Hot-Swappable: This term refers specifically to servers. It means the ability of a server to physically change hard drives without powering it down first. Believe it or not, most servers cannot do this, only certain types of blade servers.
4) Java: Most people know that Java is a programming language. The confusion here comes from the name itself. Most people assume that Java is an acronym. But the people who created it simply chose a name from a random list. They later assigned the letters to an acronym, just to please (and possibly annoy) the public: Just Another Vague Acronym.
5) Liveware – If you have an IT guy go over your system and he or she says something about a liveware issue, you are being mocked. Most computer problems are software or hardware problems. Liveware refers to a computer problem that is neither hardware nor software, but user error.
6) Nerd: Okay, this one is not confusing. It just has a very interesting story. The original spelling of this word was “knurd” and it referred to college kids who never partyed and always studied, as opposed to the kids they called “drunks.” In case you haven’t noticed yet, spell “drunk” backwards.
7) Wiki: We all know this word in context; Wikipedia or Wiki leaks. But what does the word itself mean? Wiki is based on a Hawaiian term meaning very fast and is named after the Wiki Wiki buses at the Honolulu airport. The name refers to the speed of information available in the groupware.
8) Chassis – This is a super fancy word with a not so fancy meaning. It’s literally just the shell, the framework for the innards of the computer. The word is thrown around a lot when talking about servers. But it’s actually something like the HP blade server cabinet. The skin around the head.