T

Adam Ankiewicz of the Desert Rose Adult High School contributed to the coding of this page, March, 2007.

T1 line
A special type of telephone line for digital communication only, with a maximum data rate of 1.544 million bits per second. Many Internet sites are connected to eachother through T1 lines.

T3 Line
A high-speed digital telephone line with a maximum data rate of 45 million bits per second, 28 times that of a T1 line. Larger Internet sites use T3 lines to link to each other.

tab
A visual indication of multiple pages in a dialog box. Click on the appropriately labeled tab to get to the desired page.

Tab key
The key on a computer keyboard that is marked with forward and backward arrows. (From Tabulator, a mechanical device for lining up columns on a typewriter. The Tab key advances the cursor to a preset spot; Shift-Tab goes back to the previous tab stop. Most word processors and page layout programs let you set the Tab stops where you want and otherwise provide a reasonable set of defaults, usually every half inch or so. Always use the Tab key instead of the space bar to align type. When setting proportional type, it is impossible to get columns to line up by adding space characters; you must set the tabs.

tabbed browsing
The ability to open more than one page simultaneously in a web browser, with each page appearing as a tab on the screen, allowing the user to quickly switch between them.

tab-delimited
Separated by the Tab character. A tab-delimited file is a text file in which data items are separated by Tab characters, which will usually cause the items to line up in columns when viewed in an editor, although different editors place the columns differently.

table
An arrangement of data in a database where each row defines a relationship between the items in that row.

table, HTML
A set of tabular information displayed with special HTML tags.

tab stops
Adjustable markers that indicate the next horizontal position of the cursor when the Tab key is pressed.

tag
A code inserted into a file or data structure indicating how something is to be interpreted.

tailgating
Compromise physical security by following somebody through a door meant to keep out intruders.

talent
Hired human actors or voice actors.

tall
Paper orientation that is taller than it is wide.

tan
The trigonometric tangent function.

tape
A thin flexible plastic material with a magnetic coating tape drive
A device that enables a computer to read and write magnetic tape.

tar file
In Unix, a collection of files made into one file with the tar (tape archive) program. To extract the contents of a tar file use the commmand:
% tar -xvf filename.tar

target
The place to which information is copied.

task
a process.

task bar
The area at the bottom of the screen in Windows, containing the start button and a button for every program that is currently running.

Task Manager
A Windows utility that shows a list of running programs and operating system tasks and allows you to terminate them.

TCL/TK (Tool Command Language and (graphical) Tool Kit)
A programming language developed by John Ousterhout in the tradition of Perl and Awk. As it's name suggests, TCL/TK is for building customized tools. It links together pre-existing software and system facilities, including networking communication, along with new code, to generate easy-to-use programs with a graphical user interface.
It is one of the easiest to do GUI programming under UNIX, and implementations for Microsoft Windows exist. TCL/TK is an open source project and most implementations of it are distributed free of charge. For more information, click here.

TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
The complete cost of owning and using a machine during its useful life, including not only the cost of the machine itself, but also maintenance, repairs, and consumable supplies such as ink and paper.

TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
A standard format for transmitting data in packets from one computer to another.

TCP Sequence Number Prediction
During a connection via TCP/IP to a host, the host produces an initial TCP Sequence Number, known as an ISN. This sequence number is then used in the conversation occuring between itself and the host to assist in keeping track of each data packet.

TCP Wrappers
Permits a system administrator to control access by hosts to service daemons initiated by inetd, in.rexecd, in.rlogind, in.telnetd, and in.tftpd.

TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
A standard format for transmitting data in packets from one computer to another. TCP deals with the construction of data packets, and IP deals with the routing of these packets from machine to machine.

teh
A common typing error for the that has been adopted as a deliberately comical spelling.

telecommute
To work at a job from a home office with the aid of a computer, modem, telephone, fax, and other specilized equipment.

telecompute
To use the computer facilities at another location by using a wide-area network or a modern link.

Telnet
A protocol for using one computer as a terminal on another.

template
A particular pattern for a spreadsheet program, a database.

ter
Latin "for a third time," used to denote revised CCITT and ITU-T standards.

tera-
Metric prefix meaning 10(to the 12th) or 1024 (to the fourth).

Terabyte
Two to the 40th power. This is approximatelyone trillion bytes.

Teragrid
A grid computing system organized by the National Science Foundation for solving computationally complicated scientific problems.