Select the first letter of the word from the list above to jump to appropriate section of the glossary or type the term on which you want to search.

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fair use

under US copyright law, the limited reproduction of copyrighted material. For example, quoting several passages from a book for use in a review or to emphasize a point in an article would probably be considered fair use by most publishers.

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FAQ

(Frequently Asked Questions) a list of common questions on a Website, bulletin board, or other public forum or service, compiled for the convenience of both the information provider and the user. Offering FAQ pages has become one of the standards of quality in providing online customer service.

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Fast Ethernet

(100Base-T) it is a 100 Mbps version of Ethernet (IEEE 802.3u standard). 100Base-T transmits at 100 Mbps rather than 10 Mbps. Like regular Ethernet, Fast Ethernet is a shared media LAN. All nodes share the 100 Mbps bandwidth.

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fatal error

an occurrence that takes place for any number of reasons while operating a computer that often causes the system to crash, resulting in the loss of any unsaved work.

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fax

(abbreviation for facsimile) the transmission of a copy of a paper document over telephone lines using a fax machine or a computer equipped with a fax modem. The term may be used as either a noun or a verb. As a noun one might say, “I received a fax from the office today.” As a verb, “I’ll fax this contract to the office in the morning.”

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fax modem

a computer device that allows for the transmission and receiving of documents as faxes. As a rule, the quality of a fax received via a computer will be consistent with the quality of the printer ultimately printing the document. A fax modem may be installed inside the computer or present as an external modem. Some fax modems also function as regular modems.

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Fetch

a Macintosh program that transfers files using file transfer protocol (FTP) from a computer to a server or from a server to a computer. This is one of the ways that Web pages are loaded from a Web designer to the server that offers them to users via the World Wide Web.

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fiber optics

the use of glass or plastic fibers for the electronic transmission of data. The technology has several advantages over traditional wire cables in that transmission speed is greatly increased; fiber optics allow for greater bandwidth with no electromagnetic noise; fiber optic cables can carry more data; they transmit the data digitally; and they are lighter and thinner than wire cables.

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Fibre Channel

a high-speed transport technology used to build storage area networks (SANs). Although Fibre Channel can be used as a general-purpose network carrying ATM, IP and other protocols, it has been primarily used for transporting SCSI traffic from servers to disk arrays. The Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) serializes SCSI commands into Fibre Channel frames. IP, however, is used for in-band SNMP network management. Fibre Channel not only supports singlemode and multimode fiber connections, but coaxial cable and twisted pair as well.

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file

a compilation of data stored on a computer disk, identified by a name called the file name. Almost all data is stored in some type of file. A file has a first and last name and may contain an entire program or a single document.