Acronyms and abreviations: (Print this out maybe?) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (A * means that it is used very often on the internet!) jm Copyright (C) Patrick Amato 1997. All rights reserved. Non-Technical: AAMOI - As A Matter Of Interest. AFAIK - As Far As I Know. AFAUI - As Far As I Understand It. AIUI - As I Understand It. CFD - Call For Discussion - Setting up new newsgroups. FAQ - Frequently Asked Question. * FOAF - Friend of a friend - Grin GMT - Greenwich Mean Time. (Great Britain) GTBOS - Glad To Be Of Service. IMHO - In My Humble Opinion.* IMO - In My Opinion. (variant of IMHO)* IYSWIM - If You See What I Mean. - Just kidding JVNP - Just Venting, Nothing Personal. LDR - Long Distance Relationship.* LTR - Long Term Relationship.* OTOH - On The Other Hand.* RFC - Request For Comments. RTFM - Read the F*@%ing Manual. SIG - Special Interest Group or .signature file.* SNAFU - Situation Normal; All Fouled Up TTFN - Ta-Ta For Now. WRT - With Respect To. WYSIWYG - What You See is What You Get. Compiled by Ian. & jm YWIA - Your welcome in advance. YMMV - Your mileage may vary (You may not have the same luck I did)* AKA - "Also Known As" ASAP - "As Soon As Possible" BTW - "By The Way" * BRB - "Be Right Back" FYI - "For Your Information" FWIW - "For What It's Worth" FUBAR - "F'd Up Beyond All Recognition/Repair" GD&R - "Grinning, Ducking and Running (After snide remark)" IANAL - "I Am Not A Lawyer (But...)" IDK - "I don't know" IYKWIM - "If You Know What I Mean" IYKWIMAITYD - "If You Know What I Mean And I Think You Do" LOL - "Laughing Out Loud" * OK - abbreviation of "oll korrect", alteration of "all correct"* PITA - "Pain In The Ass" PMFJI - "Pardon Me For Jumping In (another polite way to get into a running discussion" PMJI - "Pardon My Jumping In (another polite way to get into a running discussion" PS - "Post Script" * TIA - "Thanks In Advance" TPTB - "The Powers That Be" ROTFL - "Rolling On The Floor Laughing" * SOHF - "Sense Of Humor Failure" SWALK - "Sealed With A Loving Kiss" (From WWII envelopes). AFAIC As Far As I'm Concerned AFAICT As Far As I Can Tell AFGO Another F***ing (or Fabulous) Growth Opportunity AFK Away From Keyboard AIUI As I Understand It ARP Address Resolution Protocol B/C Because BFD Big F***ing Deal BFN Bye, For Now BFO Blinding Flash of the Obvious BO Buffer (Brain) Overload BOFH Bastard Operator From Hell BOKYAG Bend Over and Kiss Your A** Goodbye BRB Be Right Back BSD Berkeley Software Distribution (UNIX) BTSOOM Beats The S*** Out Of Me BYKT But You Know That CU See You CUL8R See You Later CYA Cover Your A** EFLA Extended Four Letter Acronym! FAQ Frequently Asked Question FC Fingers Crossed FEAR F*** Everything And Run FEAR False Evidence Appearing Real FIIOH Forget It, I'm Outta Here FOAD F*** Off And Die G,D&R Grinning, Ducking, And Running GFY Go F*** Yourself GR&D Grinning, Running, & Ducking HAND Have A Nice Day HGAC Hasn't Got A Clue HGAFC Hasn't Got A F***ing Clue HTH Happy To Help HTH Hope This Helps IAE In Any Event IANAL I Am Not A Lawyer IBK Idiot Behind Keyboard IITYWTMWYBMAD If I Tell You What This Means Will You Buy Me A Drink? IINM If I'm Not Mistaken IIRC If I Recall Correctly ILF I'll Look Forward IMCO In My Considered Opinion IMNSHO In My Not So Humble Opinion IOW In Other Words IRL In Real Life ISTR I Seem To Recall IYSWIM If You See What I Mean L8R Later LART Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool LDR Long Distance Relationship LMKOAP Let Me Know Of Any Problems LOL Laughed Out Loud MDA Mail Delivery Agent MLM Multi-Level Marketing MMF Make Money Fast MOSFET Metal Oxide Field Effect Transistor NIC Network Information Center NIFOK Naked In Front of the Keyboard NRN No Reply Necessary OIC Oh, I See! ONAW Oh No! Another Wedgie OOTB Out Of The Box OTP Off-Topic Posts PIMP Peeing In My Pants POV Point Of View ROFLWMP Rolling on the Floor Wetting My Pants ROTFLMAO Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off RSN Real Soon Now (which may be a long time!) SEP Someone Else's Problem SITD Still In The Dark SLAP Sounds Like A Plan SOB Son Of a B**** SOL S*** Outta Luck TANSTAAFL There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch TIC Tongue In Cheek TINC There Is No Cabal TFB Too F***ing Bad TLA Three-Letter Acronyms TTBOMK To The Best Of My Knowledge UBE Unsolicited Bulk Email UCE Unsolicited Commercial Email UDP Usenet Death Penalty VBG Very Big Grin WIMP Washed-up Information Media Phobe WABOS What A Bunch of S*** WAFWOT What A F***ing Waste Of Time? WOB Waste of Bandwidth WTFIGO What The F*** Is Going On? WTF What The F***? WTHAYTA What The Hell Are You Talking About Y2K Year 2000 YAISB Yet Another Information Supercliche Book YAM Yet Another Meeting YCHT You Can Have Them YHBF You Have Been Fooled YHBT You Have Been Trolled YHL You Have Lost YKFIYF Your Kill File Is Your Friend YM You Mean RPC Remote Procedure Call Compiled by Patrick Amato & Jon Melusky & Matt Cary Definitions of words commonly heard on the Internet Internet - The entire set of networks. Developed by the US military. cruft - Binary or ascii data that is not needed or wanted. " I removed the cruft that had filled the /tmp directory and the cache also." flame - A angry and often witty response to someone's post (hot talk); Any type of junk mail you send companies because they posted on a newsgroup. "Perhaps if you had a brain you would know that..." flamebait - An article that someone posts to draw flames. Sometimes brutal, sometimes amusing. Or, any type of advertisement posted stupidly. flavor - Different version of software/hardware. " BSD and system V are two flavors of UNIX." foo, bar, baz - Used to help detail a situation while keeping the discussion abstract. "O.K. Lets say you have a file called foo. You have another file called bar. The way you merge the two together into a third , lets call it bar, is by using blah blah blah..." net potato - Similar to a couch potato. Someone who spends a great deal of time surfing the net. You might even know one. newbie - A new participant of a particular newsgroup or the internet as a whole. "listen you newbie, read the FAQ before you post..." spam - Unsolicited advertisments sent to a user or newsgroup. The common response is to delete it. snail mail - Reference to the relative speed of postal mail . surfing the net - The action of traveling the World Wide Web for ones own self interest. Kind of like Television. techie - Someone who knows about & is interested in the technical aspect of the net. troll - A message posted to a newsgroup that is a lie meant to rile people up. ie: "All cats should die!!" Posted in a cat group. vanilla - Something is vanilla when it is plain. warez - I believe it means "softwares". It is a hacker or cracker term for software that does something sneaky, illegal, or hacker like. Cracker means computer trespass with destruction caused. Hacker means trespass without destruction. Sometimes a note is left by a hacker telling the company or government of their security hole. Sometimes the note includes the hackers resume and application for employment in the company or government security department. Classy and non-classy trespass. Abbreviations: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bcc: - "Blind Carbon Copy" Cc: - "Carbon Copy" Elm - "Electronic Mail for UNIX" Fcc: - "File Carbon Copy" .(sp?) - abbreviation of "spelling?" . Often placed after a word the author is unsure of the spelling and dosent want to run a spell checker. Example: I went to thier (sp?) house for dinner. P.S. - "Post Script" Pine - "Pine Is Not Elm" PovRay - "Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer" Re: - "Regarding". Often used in email software. Req: - "Request". No Copyright wanted for Jon Melusky. Copyright (C) Patrick Amato 1995. All rights reserved. Technical: ANSI - "American National Standards Institute: A group that defines U.S. standards for the information processing industry. ANSI participates in defining network protocol standards." ARCHIE - "A system for locating files that are publicly available by anonymous FTP." ARP - "Address Resolution Protocol" ARQ - "Automatic Repeat Request" ASCII - "American Standard Code for Information Interchange." BOFH - "Bastard Operator From Hell. [YIKES] A system administrator with absolutely no tolerance for newbies." BBS - "Bulletin Board Software" or "Bulletin Board System" BSD - "Berkeley Software Distribution" CGI - "Common Gateway Interface" DES - "Data Encryption Standard" DNS - "Domain Name Service" UDP - "User Datagram Protocol" FAQ - "Frequently asked questions" FTP - "File Transfer Protocol" (often seen in lower case "ftp") Gateway - "A special-purpose dedicated computer that attaches to two or more networks and routes packets from one network to the other. In particular, an Internet gateway routes IP datagrams among the networks it connects. Gateways route packets to other gateways until they can be delivered to the final destination directly across one physical network." GNU - "GNU is Not Unix (recursive)" GUI - "Graphical Users Interface" HTML - "HyperText Markup Language" HTTP - "HyperText Transfer Protocol" IRC - "Internet Relay Chat" ISP - "Internet Service Provider" IO - "Input Output" As in file IO. LAN - "Local Area Network" NTP - "Network Time Protocol" NNTP - "Network News Transfer Protocol" MDA - "Mail Delivery Agent" MIME - "Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions" MOSFET - "Metal Oxide Field Effect Transistor" MUD - "Multiple User Dungeon" (an interactive multiuser game.) OSF - "Open Software Foundation" OSI - "Open Systems Interconnection: A set of protocols designed to be an international standard method for connecting unlike computers and networks. Europe has done most of the work developing OSI." PERL - "Pratical Extraction and Reporting Language" or "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister"" PPP - "Point-to-Point Protocol" PINE - "Pine Is Not Elm" RARP - "Reverse Address Resolution Protocol" RFC - "Request For Comments" RTF - "Rich Text Format" TCP/IP - "Transmissions Control Protocol/Internet Protocol" TIA - "The Internet Adaptor" TTY - "Tele-TYpe" Server - "A computer that shares its resources, such as printers and files, with other computers on the network. An example of this is a Network Files System (NFS) Server which shares its disk space with a workstation that does not have a disk drive of its own." SLIP - "Serial Line Internet Protocol" SMTP - "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol" SGML - "Standard Generalized Markup Language" SWISH - "Simple Web Indexing System for Humans" T-1 - "A term for a digital carrier facility used to transmit a DS-1 formatted digital signal at 1.544 megabits per second." T3 - "A term for a digital carrier facility used to transmit a DS-3 formatted digital signal at 44.746 megabits per second." TELNET - "The Internet standard protocol for remote terminal connection service. Telnet allows a user at one site to interact with a remote timesharing system at another site as if the user's terminal was connected directly to the remote computer." WAN - "Wide Area Networks " WAIS - "Wide Area Information Server " WWW or 3W - "World Wide Web" UNIX - "An operating system developed by Bell Laboratories that supports multiuser and multitasking operations." URL - "Uniform Resource Locator" WHOIS - "An Internet program which allows users to query a database of people and other Internet entities, such as domains, networks and hosts kept at the NIC. The information for people shows a person's company name, address, phone number and e-mail address." (Sililar to FINGER.) No Copyright wanted for Jon Melusky. Copyright (C) Patrick Amato 1995. All rights reserved. Print this list out now before your harddrive crashes or your back up files get smashed or your computer gets filled with oatmeal from a small child. Just kidding. Jon Latin Abreviations bis.- (As in V34.bis) It is Latin for "second." cf.- latin:"confer" which means (compare). et al.- latin:"et alii" or latin:"et aliae" which means (and others). Sic- latin:"sic" which means (thus). "stated in context" ca.- latin:"circa" which means (about). e.g.- latin:"exempli gratia" which means (for the sake of example). etc.- latin:"et cetera" which means (and so on). i.e.- latin:"id est" which means (that is). N.B.- latin:"nota bene" which means (note well). viz.- latin:"videlicet" from "videre licet" which means (it is permitted to see). Copyright (C) Patrick Amato 1995. All rights reserved. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As "user@somehere.it" means the user is located in Italy. Special thanks to John Hawk and Tommy Ljungberg Last updated Fri Jan 19 19:50:32 EST 1996 Domain Country ----------------- AD Andorra AE United Arab Emirates AF Afghanistan AG Antigua & Barbuda AI Anguilla AL Albania AM Armenia AN Neterland Antilles AO Angola AQ Antarctica AR Argentina AS American Samoa AT Austria AU Australia AW Aruba AZ Azerbaijan BA Bosnia-Herzegovina BB Barbados BD Bangladesh BE Belgium BF Burkina Faso BG Bulgaria BH Bahrain BI Burundi BJ Benin BM Bermuda BN Brunei Darussalam BO Bolivia BR Brasil BS Bahamas BT Bhutan BV Bouvet Island BW Botswana BY Belarus BZ Belize CA Canada CC Cocos (Keeling) Islands CF Central African Republic CG Congo CH Switzerland CI Ivory Coast CK Cook Islands CL Chile CM Cameroon CN China CO Colombia CR Costa Rica CS Czechoslovakia CU Cuba CV Cape Verde CX Christmas Island CY Cyprus CZ Czech Republic DE Germany DJ Djibouti DK Denmark DM Dominica DO Dominican Republic DZ Algeria EC Ecuador EE Estonia EG Egypt EH Western Sahara ER Eritrea ES Spain ET Ethiopia FI Finland FJ Fiji FK Falkland Islands (Malvibas) FM Micronesia FO Faroe Islands FR France FX France (European Territory) GA Gabon GB Great Britain GD Grenada GE Georgia GF Guyana (French) GH Ghana GI Gibralta GL Greenland GM Gambia GN Guinea GP Guadeloupe (French) GQ Equatorial Guinea GR Greece GS S. Georgia & S. Sandwich Islands GT Guatemala GU Guam (US) GW Guinea Bissau GY Guyana HK Hong Kong HM Heard & McDonald Islands HN Honduras HR Croatia HT Haiti HU Hungary ID Indonesia IE Ireland IL Israel IN India IO British Indian Ocean Territories IQ Iraq IR Iran IS Iceland IT Italy JM Jamaica JO Jordan JP Japan KE Kenya KG Kyrgyz Republic KH Cambodia KI Kiribati KM Comoros KN Saint Kitts Nevis Anguilla KP Korea (North) KR Korea (South) KW Kuwait KY Cayman Islands KZ Kazachstan LA Laos LB Lebanon LC Saint Lucia LI Liechtenstein LK Sri Lanka LR Liberia LS Lesotho LT Lithuania LU Luxembourg LV Latvia LY Libya MA Morocco MC Monaco MD Moldova MG Madagascar MH Marshall Islands MK Macedonia ML Mali MM Myanmar MN Mongolia MO Macau MP Northern Mariana Islands MQ Martinique (French) MR Mauretania MS Montserrat MT Malta MU Mauritius MV Maldives MW Malawi MX Mexico MY Malaysia MZ Mozambique NA Namibia NC New Caledonia (French) NE Niger NF Norfolk Island NG Nigeria NI Nicaragua NL Netherlands NO Norway NP Nepal NR Nauru NT Saudiarab. Irak) NU Niue NZ New Zealand OM Oman PA Panama PE Peru PF Polynesia (French) PG Papua New Guinea PH Philippines PK Pakistan PL Poland PM Saint Pierre & Miquelon PN Pitcairn PR Puerto Rico (US) PT Portugal PW Palau PY Paraguay QA Qatar RE Reunion (French) RO Romania RU Russian Fedreation RW Rwanda SA Saudi Arabia SB Salomon Islands SC Seychelles SD Sudan SE Sweden SG Singapore SH Saint Helena SI Slovenia SJ Svalbard & Jan Mayen SK Slovakia SL Sierra Leone SM San Marino SN Senegal SO Somalia SR Suriname ST Sao Tome & Principe SU Soviet Union SV El Salvador SY Syria SZ Swaziland TC Turks & Caicos Islands TD Chad TF French Southern Territories TG Togo TH Thailand TJ Tadjikistan TK Tokelau TM Turkmenistan TN Tunisia TO Tonga TP East Timor TR Turkey TT Trinidad & Tobago TV Tuvalu TW Taiwan TZ Tanzania UA Ukraine UG Uganda UK United Kingdom UM US Minor(outlying Isles) US United States UY Uruguay UZ Uzbekistan VA Vatican City State VC St Vincent & Grenadines VE Venezuela VG Virgin Islands (British) VI Virgin Islands (US) VN Vietnam VU Vanuatu WF Wallis & Futuna Islands WS Samoa YE Yemen YT Mayotte YU Yugoslavia ZA South Africa ZM Zambia ZR Zaire ZW Zimbabwe OTHER INFO: So you want to start your own newsgroup? Just join: alt.config biz.config us.config And vote for groups, learn what is said, and think about a name that hasn't been used before. (^:= The entire list of current Usenet groups is at: http://tile.net/news/ or http://www.dejanews.com/ Usenet Heirarchy abreviations: alt a hierarchy for alternative or unique groups bionet research biologists bit BITNET groups distributed on USENET chinese Chinese newsgroups clari ClariNet - AP and Reuters wire service stories comp computers newsgroups de German newsgroups fj Japanese newsgroups fr French newsgroups K12 Kindegarten through high school groups misc groups not easily fit into other categories yet news groups devoted to news about Usenet rec Recreation, hobbies, the arts, sports, etc... sci Science oriented groups (Very serious.) soc discussion of cultures or social groups gay-net gay-net (Gay issues) geometry geometry gnu Free Software Foundation GNU project hepnet High Energy & nuclear Physics info A collection of mailing lists talk Talk: discussions of various topics etc... * Complete list of above are at these 5 places: http://tile.net/news/ http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/home.html ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/active-newsgroups ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/alt-hierarchies ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/config/newsgroups.Z ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/config/newsgroups.gz http://cs1.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/ * Usenet Email Address Endings Abreviations: .com = company .edu = education or college .org = nonprofit organization .gov = government .net = network .mil = military * Please, remember to always use the appropriate newsgroup: - "news.newusers.questions" for technical QUESTIONS about the Usenet News system, - "misc.test" or local test groups for TEST postings, - "soc.penpals" for personal MAIL contacts, and so on. Good Luck. Jon