Monday, February 19, 2001		Bits & Bytes

Bounce: What your e-mail does when it cannot get to its recipient — it bounces back to you — unless it goes off into the ether, never to be found again.

Command line: On Unix host systems, this is where you tell the machine what you want it to do, by entering commands.

Communications software: A program that tells a modem how it works.

Dial-up Access: The process of dialling into the server gateway to the Internet through your telephone

Domain: The last part of an Internet address, such as "news.com"

DoT: Department of Telecommunication, the national carriers for VSNL

Dot file: A file on a Unix public-access system that alters the way you or your messages interact with that system. For example, your. login file contains various parameters for such things as the text editor you get when you send a message. When you do an ls command, these files do not appear in the directory listing; do ls – a to list them.

Down: When a public-access site runs into technical trouble, and you can no longer gain access to it, it’s down.

Flame: Online yelling and/or ranting directed at somebody else. Often results in flame wars, which occasionally turn into holy wars.