E

e
In mathematics, a very important number who value is appoximatley 2.71828.

e-
Prefix meaning electronic, especially when applied to terms in context of the Internet or World Wide Web.

ear
The small stroke on the right side of the letter g.

Easter Egg
A hidden part of a computer program.

eavesdropping
Watching data or information as it travels through the Internet.

eBay
An online auction house established in 1995 and headquartered in San Jose, CA.

EBCDIC
(Pronounced ebb-see-dik, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Information Code) The numeric representation of characters on IBM mainframe computers.

e-book
A book distributed electronically rather than by paper.

EC
Abbreviation for electronic commerce.

ECC RAM
Random access memory (RAM) that uses an error correcting code to recover automatically from single errors in data storage, and to detect and report more serious errors.

echo
To send information back to where it came from.

Eclipse
A free, open-source interactive development environment for Java and other programming languages. See Click here for more information.

ECPA (Electronic Commerce Privacy Act)
The main U.S. law against wiretapping and other inteception of private electronic communications, whether they are transmitted by wire, radio, or other means.

edge detect
A photopaint filter or image processing technique that outlines the edges of objects.

edit
To examine a file and make changes in it, usually with the aid of an editor.

editor
A computer program that enables the user to create, view, and modify text files.

EDO (extended data out)
A type of dynamic random-access memory that holds its output on the BUS until the beginning of the next bus cycle.

.edu
A suffix indicating that a web or email address to belongs to a university-level educational institution.

EEPROM (Electically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory)
A type of memory chip whose contents can be both recorded and erased by electrical signals, but do not go blank when power is removed.

effective megapixels
The number of megapixels actually used for the image in a digital camera.

effector key
A key that changes the meaning of other keys. The most often used effector keys are the shift, ctrl, and alt keys.

efficiency
The conservation of scare resources, such as: computer execution time, computer memory capacity, auxillary storage capacity, and programmer time.

egosurfing
The practice of entering one's own name into a search engine to see how many times it turns up.

EIA Electronics Industries Alliance
An American organization that promotes industrial standards.

EIA-232D
The new official designation for the RS-232 standard for data communication.

EIDE (Extended Integrated Device Electronics)
A newer type of IDE disk drive and controller that allows a larger number of sectors per track and therefore overcomes the original limit of 528 megabytes per drive.

EISA (Enhanced Industry-Standard Architecture)
A standard 32-bit bus for IBM PC-compatible computers using the 386, 486, or Pentium microprocessor.

eject
To remove a diskette or similar storage device from a computer.

Elcomsoft Co. Ltd
A company that develops the Password Recovery Software, which permits users to continue using important data even when the passwords are lost by accident or intent.
Headqurtered in Russia, the country was started in 1990. One of its employees, Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested in July of 2001 for creating a software program which was legal in Russia. The program allowed the conversion of e-books in a copy-protected Adobe software format (which was supposed to be secure) to common PDF files. He was aquitted of all charges. Click here for details.

Elder Days
The time period from 1970 to 1979 when the cyber frontier blew wide open with hackers investigating the wired world.

electromagnetic signals
Signal emmitted by an electronic device.

electronic circuit diagram symbols
Graphical sysmbols used in schematic diagrams of electronic circuits.

Electronic Civil Disobedience
An online political performance-art group that used Floodnet in 1999 for its symbolic denial of service (Dos)attack on the Pentagon.

Electronic Code Book
An operation mode in cryptography for a block cipher such that each possible block of plaintext has a particular ciphertext value, as well as the reverse.

electronic commerce
The carrying out of business transactions by computers.

Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA)
Act meant to protect communications from government surveillance.

electronic data exchange (EDI)
The transfer of information between organizations in machine-readable form in order to carry out business transactions.

electronic document
A document intended to be read as it is displayed on a monitor.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
An organization which works on civil liberties issues relevant to emerging technologies.

electronic mail (email)
The transmission of messages by computer from one person to another.

electronic publishing
The creation, manufacturing, and distribution of paperless documents.

electrostatic printer
A printer that operates by using an electric charge to deposit toner on paper.

element
One of the items in an array or list.

elephant's ear
The symbol @.

ELGamal Public-Key Encryption
An asymmetric key encryption algorithm that uses a pair of different cryptographic keys to encrypt and decrypt.

Elite Hacker
Members of the gifted segment of the Computer Underground seen by their cyber colleagues to have special hacking talent.

ELIZA
A computer program developed by Joseph Weizenbaum of M.I.T. in 1966 to demonstrate that it is easy to make computers seem intelligent.

ellipsis
Typographic convention of using three dots (...) to indicate the trailing off of a thought.

EMACS
A text editor that originated as a set of macros written for another text editor in the 1970s by Richard Stallings. email address
A combination of a unique user name and a sender domain.

email bombs
Specially developed files meant to be decompressed into much larger files with fake content.

email broadcasting
The sending of the same email message sent to many people from one source.

email harvesting
An automated process whereby a robot program searches web pages or Internet destinations for email addresses and collects the addresses into a database.

emanations security
Physical constraints used to prevent information from being compromised through signals emanated by a system, particularly electromagnetic radiation>

embedded font
A font that is included within a file to ensure faithful reproduction of the formatted document.

embedded object
An object included in your file that was created in another software package and that still maintains a link to the other software.

embedded system
A computer that forms part of a larger machine of some other kind.

EMC (electromagnetic compatibility)
The protection of equipment from electromagnetic interference.

em dash
A long dash.

emitter
One of the three layers of a bipolar transistor.

emoticon
A typewritten symbol for a facial expression, often used in electronic mail. For example, :), denotes a grin (look at it sideways).

emulation
The process of achieving the same results as if you had a different machine than the one you are actually using.

emulsion
The coated surface of photographic film.