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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pin

1. a small wire shaft in a dot-matrix printer that strikes an inked ribbon producing the dots that make up characters and images. The resolution of a dot-matrix printer depends on the number of pins present on the printer head - the more pins, the better the resolution.
2. an individual wire component found in a cable connector such as a 29 pin connector.

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PING

(Packed INternet Groper) a timed interval echo-like message sent by a computer over a network to another computer to determine if the receiver is available for communication.

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Ping of Death

a ping request that crashes the target computer. It is caused by an invalid packet size value in the packet header. There are patches for most operating systems to prevent it.

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pipe

a connection between two software programs that acts as a shortcut in accessing data.

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pipelining

an advanced function of a microprocessor that enables a computer to call up and read data before it has finished executing previous commands, thus allowing for faster operation.

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piracy

the unauthorized duplication and/or use and distribution of a software program. Buying a program usually allows the user a limited license for its use on a single computer. In the past, software manufacturers tried to discourage piracy by copy-protecting their products. However, because US copyright laws allow a legitimate holder of a program to make a backup disk, measures such as owner registration have been used to discourage unauthorized use. Aside from being illegal, there are several other reasons for not using pirated software. Among them, the user gets no operating manual, no technical support, and runs the risk of introducing viruses into a computer by installing a bootlegged program.

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pitch

1. the number of characters of a particular font that will fit into a measured space.
2. the amount of space dividing pixels on a display monitor.

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pixel

one of many tiny points that make up an image or character on a display screen or printed page. A pixel is the smallest component of an image on a screen or in printed material. For example, the quality of a display screen image depends on how many pixels the monitor can accommodate. There are a wide variety of monitors available with varying resolution qualities ranging from 300,000 to more than 16 million pixels per screen.

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PKZIP

a popular free file compression program developed in the 1980s by Phillip Katz. Once a file is compressed it is said to be zipped. When decompressed, unzipped.

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plasma display

a flat display monitor that uses ionized gas compressed between panels to produce images.