Newsgroups - The name for discussion groups (forums) on USENET. A newsgroup is a discussion about a particular subject consisting of messages submitted by many users. Newsgroups may be "moderated" by a designated person who decides which postings to allow or delete, but most newsgroups are unmoderated. OCx - Optical Carrier levels - Used to specify the speed of fiber optic networks. The base rate (OC-1) is 51.84 Mbps. OC-2 runs at twice the base rate, OC-3 at three times the base rate (155.52 Mbps), etc. Planned rates are: OC-1, OC-3, OC-12 (622.08 Mpbs), OC-24 (1.244 Gbps), and OC-48 (2.488 Gbps).
OC-3 - A network line which transmits 155.52 Mbps. This is the size of the largest Internet backbone providers networks. See OCx - Optical Carrier levels.
Perl - A server-side scripting language which is commonly used to write CGI programs. Perl programs, or "scripts", are text files which are parsed (run through and executed) by a program called an "interpreter" on the server.
PHP - A server-side scripting language. The PHP commands, which are embedded in the web page's HTML, are executed on the web server to generate dynamic HTML pages. See php.net.
Python - An interpreted, object-oriented programming language. Python is copyrighted, but the source code is freely available and open for modification and reuse.
RealAudio / RealVideo - A client-server software system and file format by Real Networks that allows Internet users to play audio and/or video-based multimedia content in real-time as they are being downloaded (called "streaming media"), instead of the user having to download the complete file before being able to play it.
RealMedia - RealAudio and RealVideo formats are collectively called RealMedia.
SMTP - Abbreviation for Simple Mail Transport Protocol. SMTP is the main Internet protocol used to send email.
Spam - An inappropriate attempt to use email, USENET, or another networked communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium (which it isn't) by sending the same message to numerous people who didn't ask for it. Many email services have "SPAM filters" to help reduce the amount of spam emails. For more information on fighting SPAM, click here.
