Online Computer Terms Dictionary - S

short card

<hardware> A half-length IBM PC expansion card or adaptor that will fit in one of the two short slots located toward the right rear of a standard chassis (tucked behind the floppy disk drives).

See also: tall card.

[What bus?]

[Jargon File]

(1998-07-08)

Short Code

<language> (SHORTCODE) A pseudocode interpreter for mathematics problems, designed by John Mauchly in 1949 to execute on Eckert and Mauchly's BINAC and later on UNIVAC I and II. Short Code was possibly the first attempt at a high level language.

[Sammet 1969, p. 129].

(1996-11-01)

shortcut

<file system> Microsoft Corporation's term for a symbolic link, stored as a file with extension ".lnk". Shortcuts first appeared in 1996 in the Windows 95 operating system. Windows shortcuts can link to any file or directory ("folder"), including those on remote computers, using UNC paths. Each shortcut can also have its own icon. A shortcut that links to an executable file can pass arguments and specify the directory in which the command should run. Unlike a Unix symbolic link, a shortcut does not always behave exactly like the target file or directory.

Compare pif.

(2001-12-18)

Shorten

<audio, compression> A form of lossless audio compression.

[Details?]

(2001-12-17)

shortest job first

<algorithm> A scheduling algorithm used in multitasking operating systems that favours processes with the shortest estimated running time.

(1998-04-25)

Short Message Service

<messaging> (SMS) A message service offered by the GSM digital cellular telephone system.

Using SMS, a short alphanumeric message (160 alphanumeric characters) can be sent to a mobile phone to be displayed there, much like in an alphanumeric pager system. The message is buffered by the GSM network until the phone becomes active.

(1996-02-18)