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Shaking Your Family Tree

June 18, 1998
	TRANSLATING THE TECH JARGON by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G.
So you're out there on the World Wide Web searching for your roots, but you get confused by all those acronyms and jargon. Here's a waggish quiz to help you sort out some of the strange terms you may encounter. 1. Someone tells you he has a URL. Don't be shocked. What he means is he has a: (a) user registered license for his dog; (b) universal resource locator (address for his home page); (c) universal receiver logic. 2. If you download a file that is in ZIP format, what do you do with it? (a) decompress it with PKUNZIP or WINZIP95 applications; (b) don't open it -- it's a joke; (c) forward it to your friends -- let them figure it out. 3. Your cousin sends you a file he says contains information about your mutual line of Johnsons. The file is called Johnson.ged and it looks like gibberish in your word processor. What should you do? (a) import it into your desktop publisher; (b) import it into your genealogy application; (c) toss it into your virtual trash can. 4. A friend sends an attached file via e-mail and tells you to listen to it. It is called ``frogs.wav'' -- what does the ``wav'' stand for? (a) women's audio vector; (b) warm audio volume; (c) wavetable synthesis -- sound files that work with Media Player and Sound Recorder. 5. A browser is an application that allows you to download World Wide Web pages onto your computer. Graphical browsers, used by most of us, display pictures and text and allow us to navigate from one page to the next with the click of a mouse. Name two of the most popular browsers: (a) Moonscape; (b) Explorer; (c) Netscape; (d) Adventurer. 6. According to geeks and other informed sources, a byte equals seven or eight bits (depending upon whether it requires an extra bit for error correction, called a parity bit), but how big is a byte in layperson's terms? (a) bigger than a bread box; (b) a full page of text; (c) sufficient for storing a single character (such as letter A or number 2) of information, when encoded in a format such as ASCII. 7. ASCII (pronounced ask-key) is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, but what it really means to you is: (a) you can share data with cousins using different word processors because it contains no formatting; (b) you can take advantage of asymmetrical transmission on your new 56-baud modem; (c) you can't communicate with your Swedish relatives. 8. You'll find thousands of GIFs and JPEGs on Web pages. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format and JPEG (pronounced JAY-peg) stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. But what kind of formats are these? (a) graphics compression; (b) font enhancers; (c) photolithography. 9. While trying to locate someone's URL you get a message advising there is no such DNS. What does DNS stand for? (a) Do Nothing Server; (b) Domain Name Server; (c) Document Not Selected. 10. What should you do? (a) slap your mouse; (b) double-check your typing and try again; (c) nothing. 11. An icon (small graphical image used to represent a function or a program), graphic (digital version of an image, photograph or picture displayed on a monitor screen) or word is a file that when clicked with the mouse automatically opens another file for viewing, and on the Web will display other pages. These things are called: (a) hotkeys; (b) hyperlinks; (c) holograms. ANSWERS: 1. (b) 2. (a) 3. (b) 4. (c) 5. (b) and (c) 6. (c) 7. (a) 8. (a) 9. (b) 10. (b) 11. (b). (c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate Myra Vanderpool Gormley and Julie Case are co-editors of Missing Links, a free weekly genealogy e-zine. To subscribe, send your request to: Missing Links Newsletter Return to Myra Vanderpool Gormley Main Page Return to Columns Main Page
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