Wait State
*Grumble* "Come on, any day now, come on, let's go, come on, hurry up, come on..." Today's is a combination WORD and TIP, all rolled into one package. The word is "wait state." The tip? Computers don't understand you when you tell them to hurry up. Wouldn't it be nice if they did, though? "Computer, work faster!" "Sir, yes, sir!" "Good, now hack into the IRS website and tell them I've shuffled off my mortal coil." No, we must all remain patient. Well, that lull while your processor waits for an operation to complete so it can start working on another operation is called a "wait state." As you've probably already guessed, some systems have a longer "wait state" than others. It all depends on the speed of your processor, the amount of cache it has, what kind of memory it employs, etc. The more MHz behind it, the shorter the wait (theoretically). It's so hard to lose wait these days.
Wake on Lan (WOL)
It's scary how kids today will never know the horrors of having a television without a remote control. I mean, we used to sit through an entire show (sometimes more than one) without ever changing the channel. Well, when it comes to computers, controlling things remotely is a viable option. Enter "Wake on LAN", which Furo has mentioned it in the Tech Specialist recently. It's basically a way for someone on an Ethernet network to power on computers hooked to the network without having to visit each one physically. In other words, it's a great time saver. This functionality requires WOL-capable network cards and a utility to send the Magic Packet that initiates the wake up. On second thought, my family did have a remote control, though they referred to it as "children". "Chris, go change the channel." *Grumble* Man, I hated "Mama's Family."
WDM
I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat. Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. "WDM" is actually an acronym that stands for "Wavelength Division Multiplexing." We'll, of course it does, but what does it mean? Well, what this does is modulate different data streams onto separate wavelengths of a lightstream. All this data is sent through an optical fiber, you see, and data that travels at different rates can be transmitted simultaneously because they occupy different wavelengths so as not to interfere with one another. This can also be refered to as "dense wavelength division multiplexing," or DWDM.
Webring
If you want to get married over the World Wide Web, you'll have to get your fiancé a webring. That's pronounced "Web ring," not "we bring" (just so you know). I don't think you can get married over the Internet just yet, but I'm sure that technology will be comin' 'round the mountain soon enough. We'll probably have online weddings before we get a keyboard that can survive a coffee bath; I'd buy one of those beauties. How about we define "webring" already? Okay, a webring is a bunch of sites that have something in common and are all connected through a circular series of links. If you keep going, you eventually end up back where you started (in theory). You can view these sites in pretty much any order you see fit, too. There are webrings covering just about every subject imaginable. Sometimes the circle gets broken; gravesites are everywhere. With this ring, I thee click.
Whistler
This one's real simple. You know that Microsoft is going to be releasing a new operating system this fall, right? Well, that's the plan. And if you didn't know before, you know now. It'll be called Windows XP. In beta, WXP has been referred to as "Whistler." There you go; just another piece of technojargon to impress people around the water cooler. Of course, you don't have to upgrade your OS just because a new one is released. Microsoft is also working on something called Blackcomb. Allegedly, it will be a complete departure from the "9x" Windows GUI. Okay, now here's something I bet you did NOT know about these two project names: they're mountains located in British Columbia. Skiers have known about them for years.
Wide Area Network
We talked about LAN before, but what about WAN? You know, that's what they'd call you if your name was "John" and you lived in Mexico. It's also the loneliest number. And it beats losing. Well, it also stands for "Wide Area Network," and, much like it's little brother, "Local Area Network," this is a network that's only accessible by certain individuals. The difference? WAN is spread out over a larger geographical area, where as LANs tend to stay in a teeny little place (locally). You knew where this was going the whole time. Some of these definitions are pretty self-explanatory, which makes them easy to explanator. While a WAN may be privately owned, they often include public networks. Hey, you may never use this term in regular conversation, but wouldn't it be nice to understand what those company geeks are babbling about at the water cooler?
