Business to Business [95]

Business to Customer [95]

Binary 8 Zero Suppression [encoding] (ISDN, T1) [95]

An icon editor in Perl-Tk Babygimp is an icon editor in Perl-Tk. It can edit and save files in .xpm format. [3]

A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. [32]

n. [common] A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn. trap door; may also be called a 'wormhole'. See also iron box, cracker, worm, logic bomb. Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the 'login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him. Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled 'login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources. The talk that suggested this truly moby hack was published as "Reflections on Trusting Trust", "Communications of the ACM 27", 8 (August 1984), pp. 761-763 (text available at http://www.acm.org/classics). Ken Thompson has since confirmed that this hack was implemented and that the Trojan Horse code did appear in the login binary of a Unix Support group machine. Ken says the crocked compiler was never distributed. Your editor has heard two separate reports that suggest that the crocked login did make it out of Bell Labs, notably to BBN, and that it enabled at least one late-night login across the network by someone using the login name 'kt'. [7]

to make a copy of important data onto a different storage medium. Backing up to tape is essential system maintenance. [32]

A high-speed line or series of connections that forms a major pathway within a network. The term is relative as a backbone in a small network will likely be much smaller than many non-backbone lines in a large network. [5]

In computers that can do more than one task at a time, the environment in which tasks (such as printing a document or downloading a file) are carried out while the user works with an applicatino in the foreground. In computers that lack multitasking capabilites, background tasks are carried out during brief pauses in the execution of the system's primary (foreground) tasks. [39]

n.,adj.,vt. [common] To do a task 'in background' is to do it whenever foreground matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and 'to background' something means to relegate it to a lower priority. "For now, we'll just print a list of nodes and links; I'm working on the graph-printing problem in background." Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream 'back burner' (which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity). Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they have queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare amp off, slopsucker. Technically, a task running in background is detached from the terminal where it was started (and often running at a lower priority); oppose foreground. Nowadays this term is primarily associated with Unix, but it appears to have been first used in this sense on OS/360. [7]

Processing that a system performs without requiring interaction with the user. In Linux, append an ampersand (&) to the command line to request background processing. [32]

A process that runs without interacting with a terminal. Because each user in a Linux system is allowed to have a number of background processes running simultaneously, Linux is called a multitasking system. [32]

A program that is running without user input. A number of background processes can be running on a multitasking operating system, such as UNIX/Linux, while the user is interacting with the foreground process (for example, data entry). Some background processes daemons, for example never require user input. Others are merely in the background temporarily while the user is busy with the program presently running in the foreground. [8]

n. 1. In a regular expression or pattern match, the text which was matched within grouping parentheses 2. The part of the pattern which refers back to the matched text. 3. By extension, anything which refers back to something which has been seen or discussed before. "When you said 'she' just now, who were you backreferencing?" [7]

A character (\) that is used in shell statements to quote another character (that is, to remove its special meaning to the shell). For example, if you want to use a dollar sign as a dollar sign, rather than as a symbol for end of line, enter \$. [32]

A copy of a file (or a group of files) that is stored off-line in the event that a computer system fails, losing or damaging the original file or files. [32]

To periodically archive data on a system to mitigate risk of permanent data loss in the event of system or component malfunction or destruction. [94]

/bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ n. [CMU, Tektronix: from 'backward compatibility'] A property of hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, layouts, etc. are irrevocably discarded in favor of 'new and improved' protocols, formats, and layouts, leaving the previous ones not merely deprecated but actively defeated. (Too often, the old and new versions cannot definitively be distinguished, such that lingering instances of the previous ones yield crashes or other infelicitous effects, as opposed to a simple "version mismatch" message.) A backwards compatible change, on the other hand, allows old versions to coexist without crashes or error messages, but too many major changes incorporating elaborate backwards compatibility processing can lead to extreme software bloat. See also flag day. [7]

The quality of software to be able to work properly with older versions of the software that may be installed on a machine or communicating with another machine with a lower version of the software. [94]

Bandwidth Allocation Control Protocol (BAP, RFC 2125) [95]

Broken As Designed (slang) [95]

An Italian distribution, currently at version 0.99.5. [33]

search a device for bad blocks [34]

Bayerische Akademie Der Wissenschaften (org.) [95]

Bay Area GNU Enthusiasts League (GNU, org., user group) [95]

Basic Access Interface (ISDN) [95]

GNOME email client Balsa is a e-mail reader. This client is part of the GNOME desktop environment. It supports local mailboxes, POP3 and IMAP. [3]

BALanced-UNbalanced [adapter] (cable), "Balun" [95]

Bidirectional Associative Memory (neural nets) [95]

Block-Availability-Map [95]

Bundesanstalt fuer Materialpruefung (org., Berlin, Germany) [95]

A Red Hat based wireless distribution. A 'wireless' distribution. [33]

How much stuff you can send through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 57,000 bits in one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second, depending on compression. [5]

1. n. Common spoken name for ! (ASCII 0100001), especially when used in pronouncing a bang path in spoken hackish. In elder days this was considered a CMUish usage, with MIT and Stanford hackers preferring excl or shriek; but the spread of Unix has carried 'bang' with it (esp. via the term bang path) and it is now certainly the most common spoken name for !. Note that it is used exclusively for non-emphatic written !; one would not say "Congratulations bang" (except possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted to specify the exact characters 'foo!' one would speak "Eff oh oh bang". See shriek, ASCII. 2. interj. An exclamation signifying roughly "I have achieved enlightenment!", or "The dynamite has cleared out my brain!" Often used to acknowledge that one has perpetrated a thinko immediately after one has been called on it. [7]

Denoted by the ! character. The C shell command !!, which repeats the last command, for example, is pronounced "Bang!Bang!". [32]

A series of names that specifies a path between two nodes. It is sometimes used for email or BITNET as well as in the Linux uucp program. The path consists of machine or domain names separated by ! (bang). [32]

n. [now historical] An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so called because each hop is signified by a bang sign. Thus, for example, the path ...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me directs people to route their mail to machine bigsite (presumably a well-known location accessible to everybody) and from there through the machine foovax to the account of user me on barbox. In the bad old days of not so long ago, before autorouting mailers became commonplace, people often published compound bang addresses using the { } convention (see glob) to give paths from several big machines, in the hopes that one's correspondent might be able to get mail to one of them reliably (example: ...!{seismo, ut-sally, ihnp4}!rice!beta!gamma!me). Bang paths of 8 to 10 hops were not uncommon in 1981. Late-night dial-up UUCP links would cause week-long transmission times. Bang paths were often selected by both transmission time and reliability, as messages would often get lost. See Internet address, the network, and sitename. [7]

Many text-based protocols will issue text banners when you connect to the service. These can usually be used to fingerprint the os or service. Key point: Many banners reveal the exact version of the product. Over time, exploits are found for specific versions of products. Therefore, the intruder can simply lookup the version numbers in a list to find which exploit will work on the system. In the examples below, the version numbers that reveal the service has known exploitable weaknesses are highlighted. Example: The example below is a RedHat Linux box with most the default service enabled. The examples below show only the text-based services that show banners upon connection (in some cases, a little bit of input was provided in order to trigger the banners). Note that this is an older version of Linux; exploits exist for most these services that would allow a hacker to break into this box (most are buffer-overflow exploits). Best practices: It is often recommend (and required in some government areas) to display a banner warning off unauthorized users. It makes the legal case stronger if you can show that the attacker saw a banner that indicated that they were unauthorized. Best practices: All version information should be supressed in the banners. See the product documentation for more information on this. An example on Solaris is to edit the configuration file /etc/default/telnetd and added the line: BANNER="" This will remove the Solaris login banner, making it more difficult for an intruder to determine the type of operating system. [96]

A way to separate printing jobs which often indicates the owner of the file that has been printed. [32]

BanShee Linux/R is a two-floppy rescue system using uClibc and Busybox to make sure that the system is as small as possible. Initial version 0.5 was released September 18, 2002. Version 0.61 was released October 27, 2002. A floppy-based distribution. [33]

[PPP] Bandwidth Allocation Protocol (PPP, RFC 2125, BACP) [95]

[PPP] Bandwidth Allocation Control Protocol (PPP, BAP, RFC 2125) [95]

Business Application Performance COrporation (org., Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM, MS, Lotus, Intel, ...), "BAPCo" [95]

Business Application Programmer's Interface (SAP, R/3, API) [95]

BundesAmt fuer Post und Telefon (org.) [95]

/bar/ n. 1. [very common] The second metasyntactic variable, after foo and before baz. "Suppose we have two functions: FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR...." 2. Often appended to foo to produce foobar. [7]

Base Address Register (IC) [95]

Creates barcodes in .ps format GNU barcode can create printouts for the conventional product packaging standards: UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-13, EAN-8, ISBN, code 39 code 128 (b and c), and interleaved 2 of 5 . Ouput is generated as either Postscript or Encapsulated Postscript. [3]

Deletes messages on the spool dir depending on their age. Barrendero is intended to limit the disk space wasted at the spool directory. It deletes mail messages depending on their age, and has the ability to send warnings and reports to the users, to make full and partial backups, and to have different allowed ages on a per-user basis. Warning and report messages are cusomizable and can be translated easely in order to make this package useful in any environment. This way of handling mail as an advantage over the traditional 'quota' system: quotas make the end user loose NEW mail, barrendero deletes OLD mail, so the new mail is always available. [3]

Bay Area Regional Research NETwork (network), "BARRNet" [95]

Basic Application RunTime (OS/2, IBM) [95]

Bay Area Research Wireless Access Network (network, USA) [95]

Basic Activity Subset [95]

Parse pathname components [34]

strip directory and suffix from filenames [34]

the name of a file minus any extension that may be included in the full name. For example, if the full name of the source file for a C program is combine.c, its basename is combine. [32]

Bash is a GNU project sh-compatible shell or command language interpreter. Bash (Bourne Again shell) incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and the C shell (csh). Most sh scripts can be run by bash without modification. Bash offers several improvements over sh, including command line editing, unlimited size command history, job control, shell functions and aliases, indexed arrays of unlimited size and integer arithmetic in any base from two to 64. Bash is ultimately intended to conform to the IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.2 Shell andTools standard.Bash is the default shell for Mandrake Linux. You should installbash because of its popularity and power. You'll probably end up using it. [4]

Bourne-Again SHell (Unix, Shell) [95]

Descended from the Bourne Shell, Bash is a GNU product, the "Bourne Again SHell." It's the standard command line interface on most Linux machines. [32]

The Bourne Again Shell and is based on the Bourne shell, sh, the original command interpreter.

The default command interpreter, or shell, for Red Hat Linux. bash features several enhancements to sh, such as built-in file management commands and support for completion of commands and paths using the the [Tab] key. [94]

The GNU Bourne Again SHell Bash is an sh-compatible command language interpreter that executes commands read from the standard input or from a file. Bash also incorporates useful features from the Korn and C shells (ksh and csh). Bash is ultimately intended to be a conformant implementation of the IEEE POSIX Shell and Tools specification (IEEE Working Group 1003.2). [3]

An enhanced version of the Bourne Shell. (Also, see Korn Shell.) [8]

report a bug in bash [34]

/bay'-sic/ n. A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards. [1995: Some languages called 'BASIC' aren't quite this nasty any more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures and shed their line numbers. --ESR] Note: the name is commonly parsed as Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, but this is a backronym. BASIC was originally named Basic, simply because it was a simple and basic programming language. Because most programming language names were in fact acronyms, BASIC was often capitalized just out of habit or to be silly. No acronym for BASIC originally existed or was intended (as one can verify by reading texts through the early 1970s). Later, around the mid-1970s, people began to make up backronyms for BASIC because they weren't sure. Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code is the one that caught on. [7]

Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code [95]

Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code: a non-structured language that is often considered the easiest to start programming. It was developed as an interactive, mainframe timesharing language that received fame with home computers in the 1980s. [32]

A set of instructions stored on a ROM CHIP that handles input-output functions and system component management (such as power configuration and interrupt request settings). [94]

BasicLinux is a mini-version of Linux that boots from hard drive, floppy, or CDROM, and runs in a 4meg ramdisk. It's based on Slackware 3.5 and contains a fully-featured shell, an easy-to-use editor, and a variety of useful utilities. It can dial an ISP, browse the web, send/receive mail, or act as a router/firewall. Version 1.7 was released May 12, 2002. Version 2.0 was released February 22, 2003, now based on Slackware 7.1. A small disk distribution. [33]

A PHP (both PHP3 and PHP4) and IMAP based webmail application powered with MySQL database server. It has a nice user-friendly interface and its HTML files are easy to be changed/edited. 0.7.6 includes WAP-Support. [3]

Bundesweites Alternatives Studentisches InformationsNetzwerk (WWW, org.) [95]

Security hardening tool Bastille Linux is a security hardening program for several Linux distributions. If run in the preferred Interactive mode, it can teach you a good deal about Security while personalizing your system security state. If run in the quicker Automated mode, it can quickly tighten your machine, once a default profile is selected. [3]

Baby Advanced Technology [board] (AT) [95]

adj. 1. Non-interactive. Hackers use this somewhat more loosely than the traditional technical definitions justify; in particular, switches on a normally interactive program that prepare it to receive non-interactive command input are often referred to as 'batch mode' switches. A 'batch file' is a series of instructions written to be handed to an interactive program running in batch mode. 2. Performance of dreary tasks all at one sitting. "I finally sat down in batch mode and wrote out checks for all those bills; I guess they'll turn the electricity back on next week..." 3. 'batching up': Accumulation of a number of small tasks that can be lumped together for greater efficiency. "I'm batching up those letters to send sometime" "I'm batching up bottles to take to the recycling center." [7]

queue, examine or delete jobs for later execution [34]

a soccer game played with tanks or helicopters BattleBall is essentially the game of soccer, played with military vehicles rather than with people. Each player drives a tank or flies a helicopter, and tries to move the ball down the playfield to the other team's goal. Relatively unlimited number of human or computer players can compete in teams or head-to-head. [3]

Battery status applet for GNOME Battstat is a battery status applet that monitors the battery charge level on a laptop. It displays different icons depending on the state of the power subsystem, and will warn if the power drops below a user configurable level. It uses the standard GNOME event system to play user configurable samples at certain events. [3]

In common usage the baud rate of a modem is how many bitsit can send or receive per second. Technically, baud is the number of times per second that the carrier signal shifts value - for example a 1200 bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300 baud, but it moves 4 bits per baud (4 x 300= 1200 bits per second). [5]

measures of the rate at which signals are transmitted over a telecommunications link. It is equivalent to the number of elements or pulses transmitted in one second. [32]

BAY networks' Switched Internetworking Services, "BaySIS" [95]

An ASCII-art demo BB is a high quality audio-visual demonstration for your text terminal. [3]

BridgeBoard (Amiga, Commodore) [95]

Broadband Bearer Capability (B-ISDN) [95]

Date tool for the blackbox window manager bbdate is a simple blackbox tool for displaying the date in your blackbox slit. [3]

The Insidious Big Brother Database (email rolodex) for Emacs BBDB is a rolodex-like database program for GNU Emacs. BBDB stands for Insidious Big Brother Database, and is not, repeat, *not* an obscure reference to the Buck Rogers TV series. [3]

[I'll] Be Back In A Bit (DFUe, Usenet, IRC) [95]

BBIagent provides a suite of applications to create the software for booting a computer as a broadband router and firewall. Based on the hardware configurations and connection type, you are able to download your own boot file which is written into a single 1.44MB diskette to be a boot diskette for the router. This is a Linux based system which uses Java tools to create a bootable floppy with router software. The software utilites provided by BBIagent.Net are free to use. Version 1.5.0 was released July 11, 2002. Version 1.8.1 was released May 16, 2003. A floppy-based distribution. [33]

Be Back In A Minute (slang, Usenet, IRC) [95]

application to handle key bindings in Blackbox In the Blackbox window manager version 0.60 and higher, a separate application is needed to handle key bindings. This is such a program. [3]

Be Back Later (slang, Usenet, IRC) [95]

launch windows with manipulated attribs under blackbox A program which allows the user to control the launching of applications under the Blackbox window manager. The user can launch applications with or without decorations, shaded, on a specific workspace or maximized horizontally or vertically. Requires that you be running the Blackbox window manager or a derivative. [3]

BBLCD is the acronym for Bernhard's Bootable Linux CD or Build your own Bootable Linux CD. BBLCD is a toolkit for building your own bootable Linux CD from your favorite (and possibly customized) distribution. It uses, more or less, an intelligent cp -a / /dev/cdrom to create a CDROM from an existing system. Version 0.7.7 was released April 9, 2003. A CD-based distribution. [33]

Mail Utility for X This is a small mail utility for use with the Blackbox window manager. [3]

Bolt, Beranek and Newman (manufacturer) [95]

BroadBand Network Services [95]

Pager for the Blackbox window manager A pager tool for the Blackbox window manager. [3]

displays an image, and changes it every few seconds (from the README) If you've ever used the GNOME applet "fish," or Wanda, then this is an app very similar. In fact, that's where I got the idea for bbpal (since you need GNOME to use Wanda). When you run bbpal, is displays an image, and changes it every few seconds. Exciting, eh? It's fond of using up CPU cycles, and making your friends wonder what the heck it's used for. [3]

PPP tool for the blackbox window manager bbppp is a blackbox tool to control and manage your PPP link. It can start up /shut down your ppp connection (by running pon/poff), and displays rx and tx via a modem-lights style PPP load, and also the PPP link uptime. Note that you don't actually need blackbox for this program to work, but it won't look as good in any other window manager. [3]

Back Bone Ring [95]

Bulletin Board System (DFUe) [95]

A forum for users to browse and exchange information. Computer BBSs are accessible by telephone via a personal computer and a modem. Many BBSs are small operations run by a single person that allow only several users to log on at the same time. Some are much larger and allow hundreds of users to login simultaneously to use the system. Huge, commercial examples are America Online, CompuServe, and Prodigy. For example, please visit http://www.tcworld.com/wwwboard/wwwboard.html [44]

A computerized meeting and announcement system that allows people to carry on discussions, upload and download files, and make announcements without the people being connected to the computer at the same time. In the early 1990's there were many thousands (millions?) of BBS?s around the world, most are very small, running on a single IBM clone PC with 1 or 2 phone lines. Some are very large and the line between a BBS and a system like AOL gets crossed at some point, but it is not clearly drawn. [5]

Electronic BBSs formed much of the the core "cyberspace" in the 1980s. Telecommunication costs were high, so rather than interconnected via "always-on" connections, such systems transfered files and messages as irregular intervals over dial-up lines. Mail was transported through BBS via protocols like FidoNet and UUCP. Files would move themselves from system to system as users would download from one BBS and upload to others. Many of today's older hackers were active in the BBS community of the 1980s. [96]

System load tool for the blackbox window manager bbsload is a blackbox tool to display your system load. It can show simple system bar graphs, including load averages for 1, 5 and 15 minute periods, memory usage, swap usage, total system usage, as well as CPU loads for user, nice and system processes and idle time. Note that you don't actually need blackbox for this program to work, but it won't look as good in any other window manager. [3]

Time tool for the blackbox window manager bbtime is a blackbox tool to display the system time in your blackbox slit. It can also display other times as an offset of your local time in a menu. Note that you don't actually need blackbox for this program to work, but it won't look as good in any other window manager. [3]

The GNU bc arbitrary precision calculator language GNU bc is an interactive algebraic language with arbitrary precision which follows the POSIX 1003.2 draft standard, with several extensions including multi-character variable names, an 'else' statement and full Boolean expressions. GNU bc does not require the separate GNU dc program. [3]

Basic Communication Access Method [95]

Broadband Connectionless Data Bearer Service (B-ISDN) [95]

16-bit C compiler This is a C-compiler for 8086 CPUs which is important for the development of boot loaders or BIOS related 8086 code. It is possible to run 8086 code under i386 Linux using an emulator, 'elksemu', also included in this package. [3]

Base Communications-computer Center (mil., USA) [95]

Blind Carbon Copy (DFUe) [95]

Block Check Character [95]

Broadcast Control CHannel (GSM, mobile-systems) [95]

Binary Coded Decimal [95]

Broadband Connectionless Data Bearer Service (ATM) [95]

Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code [95]

Broadband Code Division Multiple Access (Interdigital, SNI, Samsung), "B-CDMA" [95]

Base station Control Function (BS, BTS, GSM, mobile-systems) [95]

A CD image format converter from bin/cue to iso/cdr/wav The bchunk package contains a UNIX/C rewrite of the BinChunker program. BinChunker converts a CD image in a .bin/.cue format (sometimes .raw/.cue) into a set of .iso and .cdr/.wav tracks. The .bin/.cue format is used by some non-UNIX CD-writing software, but is not supported on most other CD-writing programs. [3]

Batibus Club International (org.) [95]

Brain Computer Interface [95]

Bezier Clock Bezier Clock, looking somewhat different than usual clocks. This very funny clock uses a Bezier curve to draw the hands of the clock. [3]

Basic Control Monitor (OS, Xerox, Xerox 530) [95]

Backbone Concentrator Node (Wellfleet) [95]

Broadband Class of Bearer (B-ISDN) [95]

Basic Call Process (IN) [95]

Binary Communications Protocol [95]

Binary Control Protocol (Adobe, PS) [95]

[Internet] Best Current Practice (Internet, RFC) [95]

[PPP] Bridging Control Protocol (PPP, RFC 1638) [95]

// n. [abbreviation, 'Basic Combined Programming Language') A programming language developed by Martin Richards in Cambridge in 1967. It is remarkable for its rich syntax, small size of compiler (it can be run in 16k) and extreme portability. It reached break-even point at a very early stage, and was the language in which the original hello world program was written. It has been ported to so many different systems that its creator confesses to having lost count. It has only one data type (a machine word) which can be used as an integer, a character, a floating point number, a pointer, or almost anything else, depending on context. BCPL was a precursor of C, which inherited some of its features. [7]

Basic / BBN Combined Programming Language (BBN) [95]

Bell System Reference Frequency Standard [95]

Banking Communication Standard (banking) [95]

Basic Combined Subset [95]

Basic Control System (OS, HP, HP 2100) [95]

Binary Compatibility Standard (Motorola) [95]

Block Check Sequenz (GPRS, GSM, mobile-systems) [95]

British Computer Society (org., UK) [95]

Basic Call State Model (IN) [95]

Bus Controller Unit [95]

BIOS Data Area (BIOS) [95]

Borland DAtabase (Borland, DB) [95]

BundesDatenAutobahn [e.v] (org., ISP) [95]

Basic Direct Access Method (DAM) [95]

Backup DOMAIN Controller (MS, Windows NT, PDC) [95]

BetriebsDatenErfassung [95]

Borland Database Engine (Borland, Delphi, DB) [95]

Bitmap Description / Display Format (Adobe, Fonts) [95]

A variety of bitmapped fonts for the X Window System. (Also, see PostScript Fonts and TrueType Fonts.) [8]

The bdflush process starts the kernel daemon which flushes dirty buffers back to disk (i.e., writes all unwritten data to disk). This helps to prevent the buffers from growing too stale.Bdflush is a basic system process that must run for your system to operate properly. [4]

Resize BDF Format Font Bdfresize is a command to magnify or reduce fonts which are described with the standard BDF format. [3]

convert X font from Bitmap Distribution Format to Portable Compiled Format [34]

generate truncated BDF font from ISO 10646-1-encoded BDF font [34]

[java]Beans Development Kit (Java) [95]

Basic Disk Operating System (CP/M) [95]

Bus Device Request (SCSI) [95]

BundesDatenSchutzGesetz Germany [95]

A stock portfolio performance monitoring tool This package provides beancounter, a tool to quantify gains and losses in stock portfolios, as well as the BeanCounter Perl module that underlies it. Beancounter queries stock prices from Yahoo! Finance server(s) around the globe and stores them in a relational database (using PostgreSQL) so that the data can be used for further analysis. Canned performance reports are available. [3]

Components for the JavaBeans architecture. [8]

BearOps Linux, formerly MaxOS, provides the BearOps Linux Server. [33]

GTK+ Graphical network system to generate sound BEAST/BSE is a plugin-based system where you can link objects to each other and generate sound. This is still an ALPHA version of the upstream. [3]

Best Enhanced Advanced Technology (Trident, AT) [95]

Binary Editor And Viewer (beav) beav is an editor for binary files containing arbitrary data. Text file editors, on the other hand, expect the files they edit to contain textual data, and/or to be formatted in a certain way (e.g. lines of printable characters delimited by newline characters). With beav, you can edit a file in HEX, ASCII, EBCDIC, OCTAL, DECIMAL, and BINARY. You can display but not edit data in FLOAT mode. You can search or search and replace in any of these modes. Data can be displayed in BYTE, WORD, or DOUBLE WORD formats. While displaying WORDS or DOUBLE WORDS the data can be displayed in INTEL's or MOTOROLA's byte ordering. Data of any length can be inserted at any point in the file. The source of this data can be the keyboard, another buffer, or a file. Any data that is being displayed can be sent to a printer in the displayed format. Files that are bigger than memory can be handled. [3]

An Early AdVanced EditoR Beaver is a text editor that is lightweight but full of features for programming from web authoring to C programming. It is based on the GTK+ toolkit, supports tons of languages through config files (compatible with UltraEdit 'wordfile.txt') and offers functions such as automatic indentation, correction and completion, or syntax highlighting. [3]

Binary Exponential Backoff (CSMA/CD, LIB) [95]

Back-End-Chip (DVR) [95]

BErlin Continuing Engineering Education Program, "BeCEEP" [95]

a staff scientist with the Center for Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS). Donald has been extremely influential in the development of low-cost, high-performance parallel computing as the chief investigator of the Beowulf Project. Becker has written enhancements to the kernel network subsystem to support faster I/O on high-speed networks, device drivers for countless Ethernet cards, and a distributed shared-memory package. [32]

Backward Explicit Congestion Notification (ATM) [95]

Bookmark Exploring Dabbler (VRML) [95]

Burst EDO [DRAM] (EDO, RAM, DRAM, IC, Micron) [95]

Burst Extended Data Out DRAM (RAM, DRAM, IC), "BEDO-DRAM" [95]

An open source C library of cryptographic algorithms. BeeCrypt is an open source cryptography library that contains highly optimized C and assembler implementations of many well-known algorithms including Blowfish, SHA-1, Diffie-Hellman, and ElGamal. Unlike some other crypto libraries, BeeCrypt is not designed to solve one specific problem, like file encryption, but to be a general purpose toolkit which can be used in a variety of applications. There are also no patent or royalty issues associated with BeeCrypt, and it is released under the GNU LGPL license, which means it can be used for free in both open source and closed source commercial projects. [3]

Beehive Linux is a distribution made by system administrators, for system administrors. It's intent is to provide fast and clean setup of workhorse servers and workstations. Version 0.5.0 was released April 16, 2002. Version 0.6.0 was released September 15, 2002. [33]

Advanced pc-speaker beeper beep does what you'd expect: it beeps. But unlike printf "\a" beep allows you to control pitch, duration, and repetitions. Its job is to live inside shell/perl scripts and allow more granularity than one has otherwise. It is controlled completely through command line options. It's not supposed to be complex, and it isn't - but it makes system monitoring (or whatever else it gets hacked into) much more informative. [3]

Bundesverband der Elektronik- und ElektroschrottVerwerter (org.) [95]

Brightness Enhancement Foile (LCD) [95]

screen saver [34]

although the Apache web server is largely a community effort, Behlendorf is probably one of its most important developers. [32]

An academic model for enforcing access control for government and military. The model is based around the idea of mandator access control. The formal definition from TCSEC is: ...a means of restricting access to objects based on the sensitivity (as represented by a label) of the information contained in the objects and the formal authorization (e.g., clearance) of subjects to access information of such sensitivity In this definition, a "subject" is somebody (user) who wants access to an "object" (information, data file, system). The subject and object have different security levels. Objects (information, data, systems) are assigned security classification levels. A typical example would be: unclassified < confidential < secret < top-secret Subjects are assigned similar clearance levels that allow access to objects of similar level or below. For example, if you are a government employee with "secret" clearance level, you can access everything but "top-secret" information. A classification level such as "top-secret" will also include categories. For example, you may have a "secret" clearance for NATO information, and "top-secret" clearance for all matters pertaining to nuclear weapons. The system follows the principle of least privilege. Therefore, you would not be cleared to access top-secret NATO nuclear plans because your NATO clearance isn't high enough. [96]

BELL COmmunications REsearch (org., USA), "Bellcore" [95]

Be Operating System (OS), "BeOS" [95]

a multi computer architecture which can be used for parallel computations. It is a system which usually consists of one server node, and one or more client nodes connected together via Ethernet or some other network. It is a system built using commodity hardware components, like any PC capable of running Linux, standard Ethernet adapters, and switches. [32]

A network of relatively inexpensive computers (including PCs), potentially using different processors and hardware architectures, united by Linux and special system-level software into a massively parallel computing system. The end result is a system capable of supercomputer computation at a much lower price. This sort of system is ideal for compute-intensive tasks such as weather modeling, because the calculations can be divided among dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of separate processors all running simultaneously. Sometimes referred to a "Beowulf-class supercomputer", or a super-cluster or hyper-cluster. For more on Beowulf technology, read the following articles: www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-04/lw-04-parallel.html, and www.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/Searchvw/3f4e88b102477aa5852568460067a52a. [8]

Famed was this Beowulf: far flew the boast of him, son of Scyld, in the Scandian lands. So becomes it a youth to quit him well with his father's friends, by fee and gift, that to aid him, aged, in after days, come warriors willing, should war draw nigh, liegemen loyal: by lauded deeds shall an earl have honor in every clan. Beowulf is the earliest surviving epic poem written in English. It is a story about a hero of great strength and courage who defeted a monster called Grendel. See History to find out more about the Beowulf hero. There are probably as many Beowulf definitions as there are people who build or use Beowulf Supercomputer facilities. Some claim that one can call their system Beowulf only if it is built in the same way as the NASA's original machine. Others go to the other extreme and call Beowulf any system of workstations running parallel code. My definition of Beowulf fits somewhere between the two views described above, and is based on many postings to the Beowulf mailing list: Beowulf is a multi computer architecture which can be used for parallel computations. It is a system which usually consists of one server node, and one or more client nodes connected together via Ethernet or some other network. It is a system built using commodity hardware components, like any PC capable of running Linux, standard Ethernet adapters, and switches. It does not contain any custom hardware components and is trivially reproducible. Beowulf also uses commodity software like the Linux operating system, Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) and Message Passing Interface (MPI). The server node controls the whole cluster and serves files to the client nodes. It is also the cluster's console and gateway to the outside world. Large Beowulf machines might have more than one server node, and possibly other nodes dedicated to particular tasks, for example consoles or monitoring stations. In most cases client nodes in a Beowulf system are dumb, the dumber the better. Nodes are configured and controlled by the server node, and do only what they are told to do. In a disk-less client configuration, client nodes don't even know their IP address or name until the server tells them what it is. One of the main differences between Beowulf and a Cluster of Workstations (COW) is the fact that Beowulf behaves more like a single machine rather than many workstations. In most cases client nodes do not have keyboards or monitors, and are accessed only via remote login or possibly serial terminal. Beowulf nodes can be thought of as a CPU + memory package which can be plugged in to the cluster, just like a CPU or memory module can be plugged into a motherboard. Beowulf is not a special software package, new network topology or the latest kernel hack. Beowulf is a technology of clustering Linux computers to form a parallel, virtual supercomputer. Although there are many software packages such as kernel modifications, PVM and MPI libraries, and configuration tools which make the Beowulf architecture faster, easier to configure, and much more usable, one can build a Beowulf class machine using standard Linux distribution without any additional software. If you have two networked Linux computers which share at least the /home file system via NFS, and trust each other to execute remote shells (rsh), then it could be argued that you have a simple, two node Beowulf machine. [30]

Basic Encoding Rules [for ASN.1] (ASN.1, OSI, ISO, IS 8825) [95]

Bit Error Rate [95]

A domain name service implementation developed by the University of California at Berkeley. BIND is distributed with the named daemon, which actively listens for requests and queries root name servers to translate IP addresses to corresponding domain names and vice versa. [94]

BERliner KOMmunikationssystem (network) [95]

Bit Error Rate Test [95]

Block Ended by Symbol (IBM, assembler) [95]

Bursty Errored Seconds (DS1/E1) [95]

Borland Enhanced Support and Training (Borland) [95]

Business Executive System for Timesharing (OS, Qantel) [95]

/bay't*/, /be't*/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't*/ n. 1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with 'in': 'in beta'. In the Real World, systems (hardware or software) software often go through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky (or unlucky) trusted customers. 2. Anything that is new and experimental. "His girlfriend is in beta" means that he is still testing for compatibility and reserving judgment. 3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously buggy). Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software by making it available to selected (or self-selected) customers and users. This term derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry. 'Alpha Test' was the unit, module, or component test phase; 'Beta Test' was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production design, and the D test was the C test repeated after the model had been in production a while. [7]

Development copies that are released prior to the full version. They are released to aid debugging of the software and to obtain real world reports of its operation. An expiry date is often built into the software. See alpha software. [32]

Bundesvereinigung mittelstaendischer Elektro- und elektronikgeraete entsorgungs- und VerwertungsUnternehmen Org., Germany [95]

Business Engineering Workbench (R/3, SAP) [95]

Bus Fraction [pin] (Intel, Pentium, CPU) [95]

Brute Force Binary Tester BFBTester is great for doing quick, proactive, security checks of binary programs. BFBTester will perform checks of single and multiple argument command line overflows as well as environment variable overflows. BFBTester can also watch for tempfile creation activity to alert the user of any programs using unsafe tempfile names. While BFBTester can not test all overflows in software, it is useful for detecting initial mistakes that can red flag dangerous software. [3]

Binary File Descriptor (Unix) [95]

Bye For Now (slang, IRC, Usenet) [95]

Bayonet Fiber Optic Connector [95]

nonblocking 8-bit-clean pipe buffer bfr's purpose is to buffer data. It buffers from its standard input and/or a list of files of your choosing, and allows this data to flow to its standard output at whatever rate that end can handle. It's useful for any situation in which its beneficial to have I/O occur in a detached yet smooth fashion. Also contained is bfp, a buffering /dev/dsp writer. Pipe your raw PCM data to it, for skip-free bliss. [3]

Binary File Transfer (DFUe) [95]

Big-5 wide-characters rectifier Bg5cc converts '\' in Big-5 wide-characters that appear in source programs to '\\'. This ensures programs that contain Big-5 characters can be compiled correctly. Bg5cc should have little use to end-users. [3]

A utility to print Chinese Big5/GB documents using TrueType fonts Bg5ps is a utility to output a Postscript file from a Chinese Big5 or GB2312 encoded document by using TrueType fonts. Postscript files produced by Netscape and mpage that contain Big5 or GB2312 characters can be filtered by bg5ps so that the Chinese characters within can be printed correctly. If you want to use the configuration tool 'bg5psconf', make sure you have the package python-gtk installed. [3]

Ball Grid Array (CPU, IC) [95]

Borland Graphics Interface (Borland) [95]

Border Gateway Protocol (RFC 1267/1771, IP) [95]

On the Internet, BGP is used between ISPs in order to communicate routers. For example, imagine that the ALICE ISP needs to reach the BOB ISP. However, ALICE is not directly connected to BOB. ALICE therefore must figure out which ISP should be used to send traffic to BOB. It is through the use of BGP that such information is discovered. The name "border" comes from the fact that ISPs use BGP only on their borders (in contrast, they would use some other protocol (like OSPF) inside their networks). Key point: BGP can be subverted in many ways. BGP is generally unauthenticated, and rogue ISPs can play havoc. [96]

Broadcast and Group Translators [95]

Busy Hour Call Attempts [95]

Broadband High Layer Information, "B-HLI" [95]

Bayerisches Hochschulnetz (network) [95]

Branch History Table (CPU) [95]

Breidbart-Index (Usenet, ECP, EMP) [95]

Back In A Bit (DFUe, Usenet, IRC) [95]

Bus Interface Board [95]

Fast lookup in BibTeX bibliography data bases bibindex converts a .bib file to a .bix file, which is a compact binary representation of the .bib file containing hash tables for fast lookup, as well as byte offset positions into the corresponding .bib file. biblook provides an interactive lookup facility using the .bix and .bib files. It verifies that the file version number and bibindex version number match its own values, and also compares the file time stamps so that it can detect whether the .bix file is out-of-date with respect to the .bib file. In either case, execution terminates. This Debian package features a command line history mechanism through the GNU readline library. [3]

A bible study tool for KDE BibleTime 1.1 is a free and easy to use bible study tool for UNIX systems. It requires a working KDE2 environment and SWORD 1.5.3 or later. BibleTime provides easy handling of digitized texts (Bibles, commentaries and lexicons) and powerful features to work with these texts (search in texts, write own notes, save, print etc.). [3]

make a bibliography for (La)TeX [34]

BibTeX to HTML translator and BibTeX filter tool Collection of tools for filtering BibTeX data bases and for producing HTML documents from BibTeX data bases: - aux2bib extracts a BibTeX database consisting of only the entries that are refereed by an aux file. - bib2bib is a filter tool that reads one or several bibliography files, filters the entries with respect to a given criterion, and outputs the list of selected keys together with a new bibliography file containing only the selected entries; - bibtex2html is a translator that reads a bibliography file and outputs two HTML documents that are respectively the cited bibliography in a nice presentation, and the original BibTeX file augmented with several transparent HTML links to allow easy navigation. See the bibtex2html homepage http://www.lri.fr/~filliatr/bibtex2html/index.en.html. [3]

A tool for manipulating BibTeX data bases. BibTeX provides an easy to use means to integrate citations and bibliographies into LaTeX documents. But the user is left alone with the management of the BibTeX files. The program BibTool is intended to fill this gap. BibTool allows the manipulation of BibTeX files which goes beyond the possibilities -- and intentions -- of BibTeX. [3]

X11 Bibliography database tool bibview is a tool to let you set up and maintain BibTeX bibliography databases. LaTeX can then use these automatically in citations and bibliographies in your documents. From its README: It [bibview] supports the user in making new entries, searching for entries and moving entries from one BiB to another. It is possible to work with more than one BiB simultaneously. bibview is implemented with Xt and Athena Widgets. There are six types of windows in bibview: The main window contains menus for customizing bibview and for working with BiBs on the file level. The bibliography window (one for every open BiB) contains commands for manipulating the BiB. The list window (at most one for every open BiB) shows a list of entries. It displays the fields author, title, type and year. The card window (at most one for every entry) helps editing an entry. It contains boxes for each field of the entry (according to the type). The fields can be edited by putting the mouse cursor into the field. Macros in fields and the symbol for concatenation ('#') are marked with a preceding '@'. [3]

Bit Independence Criterion (cryptography) [95]

Bus Interface Chip (DVR) [95]

Broadband InterCarrier Interface (B-ISDN), "B-ICI" [95]

Bisqwit's identd Bisqwit's identd is an Identification Protocol (RFC 1413) daemon. It works like an ident daemon is supposed to work. Masquerading is supported, and works recursively. Works only under Linux, due to the use of /proc filesystem. A typical case for using Bisqwit's identd: - Alpha has the internet connection. It has an ip in internet. - Beta is masqueraded by Alpha. - Gamma is masqueraded by Beta. - Somebody in Gamma starts irc, and the irc server (in internet) gets the username of the user in Gamma, correctly. All of these computers would be running bidentd (from inetd), although Gamma could have any ident daemon, as it does not masquerade further. [3]

BIDirectional [95]

Borland International Data Structures (Borland) [95]

Tool for watching and bidding on eBay auctions Bidwatcher is a tool for eBay users (eBay is a giant internet auction site). It is a stand alone application that can track auctions and perform automated bids. [3]

console hex viewer/editor with disassembler BIEW (Binary vIEW) is a free, portable, advanced file viewer with built-in editor for binary, hexadecimal and disassembler modes. It contains a highlight PentiumIII/K7 Athlon/Cyrix-M2 disassembler, full preview of MZ, NE, PE, LE, LX, DOS.SYS, NLM, ELF, a.out, arch, coff32, PharLap, rdoff executable formats, a code guider, and lot of other features, making it invaluable for examining binary code. DOS, Win32, OS/2, Linux, BeOS, Unix versions are available. [3]

Benchmark Interchange Format (PLB) [95]

Built In Function (REXX) [95]

a mail notification tool biff is a small little program that tells you when you get mail. Most standard .bashrc files include 'biff y' at the start to enable notification. The included biff server is notified whenever new mail arrives. [3]

To notify someone of incoming mail. From the BSD utility biff(1), which was in turn named after a friendly dog who used to chase frisbees in the halls at UCB while 4.2BSD was in development. There was a legend that it had a habit of barking whenever the mailman came, but the author of biff says this is not true. No relation to B1FF. [7]

The Bifrost Network Project aims to find stability, performance, filter capabilities, administration, computer security, scalability and development possibilities of a Linux based streamlined router/firewall system. The hardware is basically a standard PC with two (or more) network interfaces (using preferably the Intel Tulip chip or an e1000 Gigabit card) and a 45 or 48 MB flash disk. The operating system is a modified, minimal and optimized Linux distribution, with the kernel configured for firewalling and routing. The filter which controls the firewall security policy, is part of the kernel code and can be configured via ipfwadm, ipchains or iptables. [33]

Bionet Intelligent Gateway (BioData) [95]

It describes the order in which bytes of a word are processed. Many RISC computers and 68000 processors use big-endian representations where the high-order byte is stored at the lower address. [32]

Breitbandiges Integriertes Glasfaser-Fernmelde-OrtsNetz [95]

A practical Scheme compiler Bigloo is a Scheme system which includes a compiler generating C code and an interpreter. Bigloo is conformant to IEEE Scheme and is mostly conformant to Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme with many extensions: - Rgc, a lex facility. - Match, a pattern-matching compiler. - Foreign languages interface. - Module language. - Extension package system. - An LALR facility. - An Object system. - DSSSL support. - Unicode characters and strings. - Process, Pipe and Socket support. [3]