Monday, April 16, 2001		Bits & Bytes

Bluetooth: Bluetooth refers to a short-range radio technology aimed at simplifying communications among Net devices and between devices and the Internet. It also aims to simplify data synchronisation between the Net devices and other computers. Products with Bluetooth technology must be qualified and pass interoperability testing by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group prior to release.

Dongle: A device that attaches to a computer to control access to a particular application. Dongles provide the most effective means of copy protection. Typically, the dongle attaches to a PC’s parallel port. On Macintoshes, the dongle sometimes attaches to the ADB port. The dongle passes through all data coming through the port so it does not prevent the port from being used for other purposes. In fact, it’s possible to attach several dongles to the same port.

Format: To prepare a storage medium, usually a disk, for reading and writing. When you format a disk, the operating system erases all bookkeeping information on the disk, tests the disk to make sure all sectors are reliable, marks bad sectors (that is, those that are scratched), and creates internal address tables that it later uses to locate information. You must format a disk before you can use it.

GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out is a famous computer axiom meaning that if invalid data is entered into a system, the resulting output will also be invalid. Although originally applied to computer software, the axiom holds true for all systems, including, for example, decision-making systems.