Source Jockey

I use a lot of geek-speak.  It’s often that I’ll get into a [one-sided] conversation with someone, and realize that their eyes have glazed over–I’ve geeked them out.  So here’s a little primer on some of the more basic geek:

dSLR – A digital camera that is a lot bigger than your point and shoot; it has swappable lenses.  It’s great for all kinds of photography, but fails the pocket test.

RAID – A bunch of hard drives put together to act as one.

GSM/CDMA – AT&T/T-Mobile and Verizon/Sprint’s network types, respectively.  They don’t work together.

Kernel Panic – You know it as a blue screen of death.  It’s what happens when your computer sees something bad going down, and decides to pull the emergency brake to make sure something else bad doesn’t happen.  It DOES happen on Macs–but it’s a pretty gray screen.

Memory vs. storage – When you ask someone “how much memory” a computer has, you’re really asking how much RAM (random access memory) it has.  Storage is how big the hard drive is.  Here’s an analogy: You, a human, have a brain.  You can remember most of what you need to remember almost instantly.  That means your brain is a lot like RAM.  But you have a finite amount of storage space in your head.  So when you need to look up information, you go to a library–that would be your hard drive.  You can “temporarily” store the info in your head until you’re done with it–then you probably forget it.  That’s how memory (RAM) works.  The more memory your computer has, the less often it needs to look at the hard drive (the books in a library) to get information.

BKAC Error – You should be offended if someone says this…  This means the error is Between the Keyboard And Chair. You.

Web Design vs. Coding – This one hits close to home.  Web designers are the visual architects of the web.  They make web sites LOOK a certain way.  If a page looks ugly, you can blame them.  Web Coders (or developers) make web sites WORK a certain way.  If it’s hard to get a credit card payment done, or the sign-up process for a web site is a pain in the butt, it’s their fault.  Web designers often cannot code, and web coders often cannot design.  If you see a gorgeous web site that doesn’t have any functionality, or a butt-ugly web site that works great, you know why.  Most firms have both.

Need a word/phrase defined?  Let me know.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 1:21 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.