Internet Terms & Definitions

 

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S

spam
Traditionally, spam is flooding message boards, newsgroups, mailing lists, or your mailbox with unwanted, unsolicited off-topic messages--usually ads or promotions or deliberate disruptions. It is a major violation of netiquette, and it violates member agreements in most places and can lead to account cancellation. While spam is usually viewed as large numbers of messages, to the individual, one unwanted message is spam. The term was inspired by an old Monty Python sketch about a repetitive menu with spam, spam, eggs, and spam.

spider
A software robot that serves a search engine by exploring the net, collecting web page addresses and page contents, and following links from them to other addresses to collect still more web information. Also known as a worm or crawler. See search engine.

spyware
Software planted on your system to capture and reveal information to someone outside your system. It can do such things as capture your keystrokes while typing passwords, read and track your e-mail, record what sites you visit, pass along credit card numbers and so on. It can be planted by Trojan horses or viruses, installed as part of freeware or shareware programs you download and run, installed by an employer to track your computer usage, or even planted by advertising agencies to assist in feeding you targeted ads.

SSL
Secure Sockets Layer. A security protocol developed by Netscape for commercial transactions on the Internet. Using public-key cryptography, it provides server authentication, data encryption, and data integrity. You can recognize its use with URLs beginning https instead of http.

star
A network configuration (topology) in which all computers and devices are connected by direct cables to a central hub.

stopword
Stopwords are very commonly used words that are normally excluded from automated searches. Examples: a, an, the, for, to, in, on, and, etc.

streaming audio, streaming video
Technologies which permit listening and watching continuously as the signal is transferred to your system from a remote web site. It requires a high degree of compression to transfer audio or video (or both) at 28.8 Kbps or 14.4 Kbps speeds and still retain quality music and non-jerky video. If stereo sound is desired, there is a trade-off in the sound quality. These technologies are continually improving and the sound and video sampling and compression techniques are getting better. Faster connection speeds are needed to improve quality substantially, and the speed must be maintained over the entire path between the transmitting and receiving systems. The systems generally use a few seconds buffering, but signal slowdowns or interruptions longer than that break the flow.

surf
To explore the nets without any more specific a purpose than to see what is out there.

SVG
Scalable Vector Graphics. A proposed format by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for web page graphics based on vectors, rather than bitmap formats. These files will normally be smaller than bitmap files and will scale to different size screens. See the W3C Scalable Vector Graphics page.