John Cletheroe's
PC And Internet Hints

PC And Internet Glossary - Including File Extensions - G

GA

General Availability. A term used by Microsoft, in particular when referring to some version of MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components). I think it may mean that a version was available for downloading from Microsoft's web site, rather than being included with a specific program.

Gamma Correction

In simple terms, an adjustment of the brightness of a graphic image, monitor, etc. The full technical details of gamma correction are rather more complex, however.

Garbage Collection

The retrieving of areas of storage no longer in use, and making them available for re-use. This process can apply to any form of storage, including ram and hard disk space. Most modern programming languages need to perform garbage collections to recover ram used by previous copies of strings. Nowadays this happens automatically and is rarely perceptible to the user. Java virtual machines perform garbage collections on the areas of ram that they use and I think the process happens automatically, or perhaps initiated by program commands. Some ancient mainframe operating systems had to have areas of their disks occupied by deleted files or old versions of files retrieved by means of special garbage collection programs. Mini-computer and personal computer operating systems have always performed this disk space recovery process completely automatically, as far as I know, even as far back as the days of floppy disk drives on the Commodore PET and Commodore 64. Garbage collection is not the same as defragmentation. Defragmentation will not recover additional free disk space (unless a filing system corruption is discovered and rectified).

GART

Graphics Address Remapping Table. Associated with the DIME (Direct Memory Execute) feature of AGP graphics boards.

Gates

  1. Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft.

  2. Logic gates, the fundamental building blocks of computers: OR gates, AND gates, NOT gates, NOR gates, NAND gates, etc.

GB

Gigabit. See Giga.

GDI

  1. Graphic Display Interface. A standard set of programming functions provided by Microsoft for the generation of graphical displays in Windows. The functions are device-independent, so programs can use them with any graphics card provided Windows is installed.

  2. Generic Data Interface. Allows TCAP to run over TCP. This allows TCAP applications to communicate using an IP network. The GDI interface is defined by Bellcore as "ISCP Generic Data Interface for TCP/IP".

GENA

General Event Notification Architecture. Used by universal plug and play for network device discovery. See also SSDP.

General Protection Fault (GPF)

One of the most common errors which occurs in Microsoft Windows. Poorly written programs cause the error and the operating system fails to handle the situation properly. This and similar error messages are displayed on a blue screen, known as the Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD).

GID

A file associated with a Windows Help HLP file, created for indexing purposes I believe.

GIF

"giff". File extension. Graphics Interchange Format. A compressed graphic image file format extremely widely used on the Internet. Ideal for graphics having large areas with identical colours, such as text, cartoons, logos, etc. JPG is a much better choice for photographs, however. GIF files can be transparent so as to blend in against a background. GIF files can be animated with a set of frames. The form of compression used in GIF files is non-lossy.

Giga

1,073,741,824 (1024 x 1024 x 1024, 2 to the thirtieth power).

GMAX

File extension. See this entry on my Trainz Wordz page.

GMW

File extension. See this entry on my Trainz Wordz page.

GND

File extension. See this entry on my Trainz Wordz page.

Gopher

A method of searching the Internet used prior to the introduction of search engines. Most Internet users nowadays will have no use for Gopher.

gov

The Internet top-level domain for US Government departments.

GPF

General Protection Fault - see that entry.

GPG

GNU Privacy Guard. An open source free replacement for the commercial PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption program. Mainly intended for use with Linux.

GPMC

Group Policy Management Console. A feature (probably optional) in Windows XP.

GPRS

General Packet Radio Service. The system used with 2.5G mobile phone technology. An upgraded variant of GSM.

GPS

Global Positioning System. A satellite-based navigation system, used in car dashboard displays to distract the driver's attention, so increasing the number of accidents and therefore the amount of trade for the motor industry.

Great Plains

A Microsoft product. Not, as you might expect, a game or simulation set in the eponymous region, but in fact an enterprise resource planning (ERP) program.

Greater than

> (see that entry).

Green Book

See Book.

GS

File extension. See this entry on my Trainz Wordz page.

GSE

File extension. See this entry on my Trainz Wordz page.

GSL

File extension. See this entry on my Trainz Wordz page.

GSM

Global System for Mobile Communications. The system used with 2G mobile phone technology.

GST

File extension. See this entry on my Trainz Wordz page.

GUE

Great Underground Empire, the setting for almost all the games in the Zork series of adventure games.

GUI

"goo - eee". Graphical user interface (such as that used by Windows and the Apple Macintosh).

GUID

Globally Unique Identifier. A 16 byte number written as 32 hexadecimal digits (0-9 plus A-F). Normally written as eight hex digits, a dash, four hex digits, a dash, four hex digits, a dash, four hex digits, a dash, and finally twelve hex digits. Used by Microsoft for product codes. Also used in some filenames and Registry keys, and associated with object oriented programming (classes and type libraries). In theory GUID's are supposed to be unique but I do not know how this uniqueness is meant to be achieved. Microsoft KnowledgeBase articles 230848 and 302663 have more information. See also UUID.

Guidance

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 824684 includes the following definition of this term as used by Microsoft: "Guidance includes scripts, sample code, and technical documentation that is designed to help deploy and use a product or a technology."

GZ

File extension. GNU zip, a variant on the zip compression archive fle concept.
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Most recently modified 21-Jan-09