John Cletheroe's
PC And Internet Hints


PC And Internet Glossary - Including File Extensions - P

P-Code

Pseudo-code. A halfway house between a high level language and machine code. P-code requires an interpreter in order to run, making it slower than compiled machine code.

P2P

Peer to Peer. See that entry.

P3P

Platform for Privacy Preferences. "The P3P specification, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), enables you to express your privacy preferences while assisting web sites in clearly describing, in a computer-readable format, how they will use your data." Internet Explorer 6 includes a cookie management system which uses P3P. More information about P3P is available at http://www.w3.org/P3P

Packet Size

Information on the Internet is sent in packets. Each packet has a header which amongst other things specifies the packet's destination. Packet size is the same as MTU, Maximum Transmission Unit.

Some people claim that the Windows default MTU value is not the same as the standard Internet packet size and that this causes inefficiencies and delays in the transmission and reception of information. Several programs are available which claim to tweak Windows' MTU value (held in the Registry) to an optimum value.

Opinion: I'm not convinced that the MTU value has any significant effect; other Internet delays probably have far more effect.

PAG

File extension. Visual BASIC V6 Property Page file. I do not know whether PAG files can contain viruses or not.

Page Fault

This term is most misleading, since it doesn't refer to a fault at all. In an operating system which uses virtual memory, a page fault occurs when the required piece of data is not cached in ram and has to be read from disk. Since this happens frequently, a large number of page faults is no cause for alarm.

Page Impression

Whereas a web page with numerous graphics images would record numerous hits when visited, it should (in theory) only record one page impression.

Paging File

Another name for the swap file. Also called virtual memory.

Palette Title

In the list of items in Control Panel > Display > Properties > Appearance, the term "Palette Title" refers to an obscure and little-used feature of Windows. Palette titles are used in the Visual BASIC V6 development environment, where they form the title bars of the various panels. I have not yet found any other examples of their use. According to one source they are also used in the ICQ and Paint Shop Pro programs. They may be associated with toolbars in some programs.

Palladium

See TCPA.

PARC (also often called Xerox PARC)

The Palo Alto Research Centre, established by Xerox in the town of that same in California, south of San Francisco. PARC invented the graphical user interface used by Apple computers and later by Microsoft Windows. In Oct-00 Xerox were contemplating selling PARC.

Parentheses

Round brackets, ( and ).

Parity

An error detection system. An extra bit is added to each byte. This bit is set to 0 or 1 so as to make the number of 0's (or 1's) in the entire 9-bit byte odd (or even). System vary in whether the number of 0's or 1's is counted and whether the number of them should be odd or even. A parity system will only detect that a transmission or storage error has occurred. Unlike an ECC system, it cannot correct the error.

PAT

File extension. Corel Draw data file.

Path

  1. The location of a file within a computer. One or more directory/folder names, separated by single backslashes (for example \data\word\letters\) in a filespec or by forward slashes in a URL.

  2. A list of paths (in the first sense) which the operating system will automatically search when looking for files, particularly program files and their associated components such as DLL's.

PBBG

Persistent Browser-Based Game. A game which requires no download or installation, and remembers your game-state between sessions. The definition usually only applies to multiple-player games. Travian is a well-known example of a PBBG.

PC Numbers

A means of specifying memory (ram).

NameTypeFrequency Data BusBandwidth
PC66SDRAM66MHz64 Bit0.5 GB/s
PC100SDRAM100MHz64 Bit0.8 GB/s
PC133SDRAM133MHz64 Bit1.06 GB/s
PC1600DDR200100MHz64 Bit1.6 GB/s
PC1600Dual-DDR200100MHz2 x 64 Bit3.2 GB/s
PC2100DDR266133MHz64 Bit2.1 GB/s
PC2100Dual-DDR266133MHz2 x 64 Bit4.2 GB/s
PC2700DDR333166MHz64 Bit2.7 GB/s
PC2700Dual-DDR333166MHz2 x 64 Bit5.4 GB/s
PC3200DDR400200MHz64 Bit3.2 GB/s
PC3200Dual-DDR400200MHz2x 64 Bit6.4 GB/s
PC4200DDR533266MHz64 Bit4.2 GB/s
PC4200Dual-DDR533266MHz2 x 64 Bit8.4 GB/s
PC800RDRAM Dual400MHz2 x 16 Bit3.2 GB/s
PC1066RDRAM Dual533MHz2 x 16 Bit4.2 GB/s
PC1200RDRAM Dual600MHz2 x 16 Bit4.8 GB/s
PC800RDRAM Dual400MHz2 x 32 Bit6.4 GB/s
PC1066RDRAM Dual533MHz2 x 32 Bit8.4 GB/s

PC numbers are often written with a dash: PC-1600, PC-2100, PC-2700, PC-3200, etc.

Some manufacturers and retailers quote double the above frequencies for DDR memory, which is misleading.

See also "CL Numbers" and "DDR Numbers".

PCB

Printed Circuit Board. A board on which electronic components are mounted.

PCD

  1. File extension. Photo CD image.

  2. Microsoft Visual compiled script. PCD files can contain instructions which could perform undesirable operations on a computer.

PCI

Peripheral Component Interconnect. A type of expansion socket fitted to most modern PC's, capable of handling both 32-bit and 64-bit data. PCI boards also use bus mastering. Most PC's also have some ISA sockets. See also ISA and AGP.

PCI Express

A type of video board bus and associated system board socket. Very modern computers might have a PCI Express video board socket instead of an AGP one, in which case an appropriate type of video board must be used with it. Opinions seem to vary on whether the PCI Express graphics bus system has any advantages over AGP in practice.

PCI graphics cards are much slower than AGP graphics cards. PCI Express graphics cards could in theory one day be faster than AGP graphics cards, but at present they operate at much the same speed.

PCMCIA

Officially, Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (and unofficially People Can't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms, or Politically Correct Members of the CIA). An interface standard for portable computers. I think there were various versions of PCMCIA, making for much confusion. I think PCMCIA was in practice only used for modems, although it may also have been used for flash memory cards. I don't think modern portables have PCMCIA sockets.

PCT

Private Communications Technology. A rarely used Microsoft security protocol, which is only supported by Internet Explorer.

PCX

File extension. PC Paintbrush data file. A graphics file format.

PDA

Personal Digital Assistant. A very small hand-held computer such as the Psion and the Apple Newton. Small screens, tiny keyboards and limited functionality make these devices very much a niche market.

PDC

Primary Domain Controller.

PDF

  1. File extension. Portable Document Format. The file format used by the Adobe Acrobat program. This is by far the most common meaning for this acronym. According to some source PDF files can contain viruses.

  2. File extension. Package Definition File. A file used by Microsoft Systems Management Server for automatic installation of client software. The PDF can also be used for automatic uninstallation of client software for 32-bit Windows-based clients. I do not know whether this type of PDF file can contain viruses or not.

PDK

Platform Development Kit. On the MSDN CD, the articles in the PDK section include information on graphics (including DirectX) and multimedia (i.e. sound).

PDM

Process Debug Manager. See Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 227152.

PDW

Package And Deployment Wizard. A utility supplied as part of the Visual BASIC programming language, and perhaps other similar languages. I think it creates programs which install programs written in the language. Unfortunately, for simple programs the resulting installation program is usually many times larger in size than the target program.

PEAP

Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol, which appears to be an alternative name for the 802.1x wireless protocol.

Peer To Peer (P2P)

Any file transfer protocol in which similar computers operate at the same level, instead of the old client-server relationship. Peer to peer systems are used by file-sharing systems such as Morpheus and Napster.

PER

Packing Encoding Rules. Associated with ASN.1 (see that entry).

Period

Full stop. See ".".

PERL

"pearl". Practical Extraction and Reporting Language. A programming language for programs running on web servers which interact with web pages held on the server by means of CGI. Such programs perform operations such as handling forms and supplying data from files.

Percent

%

Peta

1,125,899,906,842,624 (1024 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024, 2 to the fiftieth power).

PFX

File extension. Used by Microsoft Outlook to hold Digital ID's (also called digital certificates, or private keys).

PGP

  1. Pretty Good Privacy. An email message encryption program. Uses the public key encryption system.

  2. File extension. Pretty Good Privacy key file. According to one source the pubring.pgp file contains other peoples' public keys and secring.pgp is a password protected file which contains your private key.

PGX

File extension. Visual BASIC V6 Binary property page file. I do not know whether PGX files can contain viruses or not.

Phishing

Pronounced "fishing". The act of sending unsolicited malicious email messages pretending to be from an organisation in the hope that gullible recipients will reply and divulge private information. Such messages usually pretend to be from financial organisation such as banks and building societies, from online retailers or other similar online organisations such as the eBay auction system or the PayPal payment system, or from Internet Service Providers. Sometimes the messages can be immediately detected as fakes due to incorrect URL's, poor spelling or grammar, or pretending to be from an organisation with which the recipient has never done business. However, many messages are now quite sophisticated. URL's in phishing attack messages are often spoofed, usually using the @ sign trick (for which Microsoft has now issued a patch) or the %01 trick (for which at Feb-04 Microsoft had still not issued a patch). Variants are messages inviting the recipient to install a patch (which turns out to be a virus, adware, spyware or some other malicious software), or to check and update their information. Users should regard all email messages of these types as being likely to be fakes.

PHP

File extension. A type of web page, created by means of a server-side program, in a manner similar to ASP and CGI, and like them often used in combination with a database. According to one source, the acronym is short for Hypertext Preprocessor (I know, that's only two words - don't ask me why). I think that PHP files can contain scripts, and therefore could contain viruses.

PhysX

See "AGEIA PhysX".

PIC

File extension. A graphics file format. Now rarely used.

PIF

"Piff". File extension. Program Information File, i.e. a shortcut to a DOS program. In Windows 95 PIF's, as well as normal shortcuts to Windows programs, are also called shortcuts. Instead of Windows 3.1's PIF editor, RIGHT-CLICK > PROPERTIES is used. PIF files can contain instructions which could perform undesirable operations on a computer.

PING

"Ping". Packet Internet Groper. To send a very short test message to another server to check that it exists. Also the name of a program which does this. In Windows 95 the PING command must be run in an MS-DOS prompt session. You can enter an IP address as a parameter to the PING command. Alternatively, if you enter a domain name (host name) as a parameter then PING will display the server's IP address. For example ping www.tacobell.com reports that server's IP address as being 205.180.64.20 (as at Feb-00). However, this information is usually of no interest whatsoever except as a curiosity.

PIO

Programmed Input Output. A method of data transfer within a computer which does not use DMA (Direct Memory Access). See DMA.

Pipelining

  1. A technique used in some processors where the processor begins executing a second instruction before the first instruction has been completed. That is, several instructions are in the pipeline simultaneously, each at a different processing stage. The pipeline is divided into segments and each segment can execute its operation concurrently with the other segments. When a segment completes an operation, it passes the result to the next segment in the pipeline and fetches the next operation from the preceding segment. The final results of each instruction emerge at the end of the pipeline in rapid succession. The Pentium processor uses pipelining to execute as many as six instructions simultaneously. Pipelining is also called pipeline processing.

  2. A similar technique used in DRAM (Dynamic RAM), in which the memory loads the requested memory contents into a small cache composed of SRAM (Static RAM) and then immediately begins fetching the next memory contents. This creates a two-stage pipeline, where data is read from or written to SRAM in one stage, and data is read from or written to memory in the other stage. DRAM pipelining is usually combined with another performance technique called burst mode. The two techniques together are called a pipeline burst cache.

PKI

Public Key Infrastructure.

PKZIP

See ZIP.

PL

File extension. A PERL language source code file.

Platform

A type of processor, computer or operating system, or combination of these.

Platform Preview

A beta version of a program, i.e. a pre-release version distributed to a small number of users for testing purposes.

Platform SDK

Platform Software Development Kit. A Microsoft phrase whose meaning I do not know.

Playlist

A file containing a list of sound files. Programs designed to play sound files can often load playlists and play the sound files listed within them in sequential or random order. Such programs usually also provide means of creating and editing playlists.

PLC

Programmable Logic Controller. A computer used to control equipment in a factory, and perhaps also to log manufacturing data. PLC's tend to be featureless black boxes, to which devices such as sensors, switches, control panels and displays are attached. A separate conventional computer is often used to create programs for PLC's or for recording data from them. PLC's may be programmed in a "ladder logic" language, which mimics the relay logic system used for controlling factory equipment traditionally and which therefore engineers are likely to be familiar with.

PLS

File extension. Playlist file (maybe?).

Plug and Play

Often abbreviated PnP. A system which allows expansion boards such as video boards and sound boards to fitted to a PC without having to worry about setting the IRQ and DMA channels and I/O addresses so as to avoid conflicts with other devices, usually by means of tiny connectors or switches. Before Plug and Play this was a nightmare. I haven't enough experience of Plug and Play to know if it really works. Some sources describe it as "Plug and Pray", implying that it is not always perfect. I believe that both the PC and expansion boards have to be Plug and Play in order for the system to work.

Plug-in

An optional program which can be used in conjunction with a web browser (or other program) to enable the browser (or other program) to handle additional types of files, or perform additional operations, etc.

Plus Sign

+ (see that entry).

PM

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

PNG

File extension. Portable Network Graphics. An obscure graphics file format. PNG files can be easily converted to GIF (etc) format by programs such as Microsoft PhotoEditor. According to a news story in Dec-02, PNG files can contain malicious code.

PnP

Plug and Play - see that entry.

POLICY:

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article title prefix for articles containing guidelines for Microsoft Technical Support (MTS) engineers.

Polymorphism

A term used in object oriented programming. I have yet to find a definition I can understand.

POP

"Pee - oh - pee" or "pop".
  1. Point of Presence. A term used in dial-up connections; I think it refers to the phone number used to connect to an ISP.

  2. Post Office Protocol. A protocol used for email. POP-3 is one type of POP.

Port

  1. A physical data cable connection on a computer, for example an RS-232 serial port, a parallel printer port, a USB port, etc.

  2. A logical point of connection on a networked device. Internet software on PC's normally creates a large number of logical ports of different types. Each port number is normally reserved for a specific function, such as a port for receiving email, a port for sending email, etc. However, I believe it is possible to assign non-standard port numbers. The port number system is the Internet equivalent of the Secondary Address mechanism in the IEEE488 system used to connect Commodore PET and Commodore 64 computers and peripherals, where (for example) one SA is used for data and another SA for commands.

  3. As a verb, to convert a program so as to run on a different computer or a different operating system. As a noun, the result of having done so. For example "It was originally written for the Mac but we've now created a port for Windows", meaning that a Windows version has now been created.

Portal

A web site which provides a combination of features such as news, search engine, etc, in the hope that users will frequently use it as a starting point when exploring the Internet Many search engine sites now attempt to be portals, as do some ISP's sites.

Opinion: The portal concept seems very suspect to me, since all but the most gullible and naive of Internet users will quickly learn that they can move so rapidly from one web site to another all over the world, and are unlikely to develop any loyalty to a particular "portal", except perhaps a favourite search engine.

POSIX

Portable Operating System Interface. An alternative command line interface for use with the NTFS file system. There is contradictory information regarding whether or not POSIX is included in Windows XP.

Post

To submit a message to a news group. Messages posted to news grouping are called postings.

POST

Power On Self Tests. The series of tests which almost all PC's perform when they are switched on. Frequently the tests include a display of the amount of ram in the computer, counting up as each bank of ram is tested.

PostNuke

A CMS (Content Management System).

POTS

Plain Old Telephone System. An informal name for the conventional telephone system. Also called PSTN.

POV

Point Of View. A term often used in 3D graphics, referring to the image as seen from a particular camera position, which the camera pointing in a particular direction.

PPM

Pages per minute. A measure of the speed of a printer. Since the speed depends on a number of factors, including whether it is in black and white or colour, the quality setting and the text density, it only makes sense to compare figures from the same manufacturer for a similar printers in a range.

PPP

Point-to-Point Protocol. A method of connecting to the Internet via a phone line. See also SLIP, but PPP is the more common option.

PPPoE

Point-to-Point Protocol Over Ethernet.

PPS

File extension. PowerPoint Show.

PPT:

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article title prefix for articles relating to Microsoft PowerPoint, the overhead projector slide editor program.

PPTP

Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol. A variant of PPP for virtual private networks (VPN's), using a mechanism called tunnelling.

PRB:

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article title prefix for articles relating to problems which have not yet been resolved.

PRG

File extension. Visual FoxPro Program.

Primary Cache

See "Cache".

Print Screen Key

Sometimes marked Prt Scr, etc. In DOS, pressing the Print Screen key rapidly prints the current contents of the screen in high quality text. However, in Windows pressing the Print Screen key does not print the screen - a design feature which must have done more than almost any other to make ordinary computer users hate Microsoft. In Windows, pressing the Print Screen key copies an image of the current screen contents to the clipboard (the cut and paste buffer). You must then open a program capable of handling images, paste the image into it, then perform a normal print. The results take a long time to print and are usually of such low quality as to be unreadable.

Private Circuit

Same as Leased Line.

PRJ:

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article title prefix for articles relating to Microsoft Project, a project administration system.

Pro

As a suffix after the model number of an ATI video board, this indicates a board more powerful than the normal board. The full range of suffixes is SE (much less powerful than standard), LE (much less powerful than standard), no suffix (standard), Pro (more powerful than standard), XT (much more powerful than standard) and XT PE (very much more powerful than standard).

Procedural

The traditional style of programming and programming language in which the program controlled the sequence of operations (although with menu options for the user to choose what they wanted to do, of course). Procedural is the opposite of event driven.

Program

  1. In email spam messages, a "program" is a pyramid selling swindle. Also called MLM, Multi-Level Marketing.

  2. Microsoft use a variety of euphemisms instead of the word "program", their marketing department being terrified that many users will be frightened away should they see the dreaded word. Examples of such euphemisms include applet, application, binary, client, code, executable, macro, module, project, script, solution and task.

Project

In some modern programming languages, a name given to a program and all the source code files associated with it, or to a connected set of programs.

Property

In modern programming languages, a property is an attribute of an object, for example the colour of a button.

Proportional Font

A font in which each character has a different width, for example a small "i" is much narrower than a capital "M". You can't align text in a proportional font by using multiple spaces (which is an awful method of aligning text anyway, except in email messages). Most fonts in Windows are proportional and except for email messages they are normally the best choice.

Proprietary

A product or system etc devised by a specific company or small group of companies and which can only be purchased from them, thus forces customers to remain with them. The opposite of open (see that entry).

Examples of proprietary systems include IBM's MCA bus, the Microsoft Windows operating system and the X2 and K56Flex high speed modem protocols.

Opinion: While a proprietary system may make its owners huge profits for a time, history shows that most proprietary computer products eventually either have to become open or succumb to competition from similar open products which are less expensive, more reliable and more compatible with other products.

Protracker

See MOD.

"Provided By..."

Internet Explorer V4 and V5 can display the wording "Provided by..." in their title bars. This is an indication of the name of the ISP or other company which supplied that copy of Internet Explorer, for example if you installed the program from an ISP's CD-ROM. However, that is not necessarily the same ISP as you are currently connected with. It is entirely possible to have one ISP's name displayed in the title bar "Provided by..." and be connected to the Internet via a different ISP. The name in "Provided by..." is fixed and absolutely unrelated to the name of any web site you may happen to be visiting.

Proxy

An intermediate server used to buffer, control and filter Internet communications. A firewall normally appears as a proxy to LAN users accessing the Internet.

PS

File extension. PostScript file(?) PostScript files can only be copied to a PostScript compatible printer, a facility offered by some laser printers.

PS/2

  1. A long-since defunct range of computers manufactured by IBM. The PS/2 was an attempt to reduce the sales of less expensive clones of the original IBM PC by introducing a new non-compatible design, using MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) expansion boards. Instead, most people continued to purchase clones and ignored the PS/2, effectively ending IBM's hold on the PC market. IBM's misguided attempt to hold on to PC their monopoly provides an excellent history lesson for other companies.

  2. Play Station 2. A games console, similar to those made by Nintendo and Sega, manufactured by Sony.

PS/2 Mouse

A mouse which connects to the PC via a small DIN-like plug. Since these plugs and sockets were first used on IBM's now long since defunct PS/2 range of PC's the name has stuck. Many keyboards connect via a similar plug but with a different pin layout; some keyboards use the old full-size DIN plug that was featured on the original IBM PC.

PSD

File extension. PhotoShop image.

PSS

Product Support Services. A division of Microsoft.

PST

File extension. Personal Store. Microsoft Outlook data file. Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 171582 has more information on Outlook 97 PST files.

PSTN

Public Switched Telephone Network. The conventional telephone system. Also informally called POTS (Plain Old Telephone System).

PSU

Power Supply Unit.

PUB:

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article title prefix for articles relating to Microsoft Publisher, which I think is a desktop publisher program (although how it differs from Word I do not know).

Public Access Location

See "Hot Spot".

Public Domain

  1. Not secret, common knowledge.

  2. Free; not subject to copyright.

Public Key Encryption

A system whereby anyone can encode a message but only the intended recipient can decode it. Despite the apparent paradox, such a system is actually both possible and practical.

Public key encryption is widely used for the transmission of secure information such as credit card details over the Internet for the purchasing of goods and services.

The same concept can be used in reverse in order to prove one's identity, since only the registered user of a private key can have encoded a message, yet anyone can decode it. This is called a digital signature.

The most commonly used public key encryption system is the RSA algorithm, named after the initials of its inventors' surnames.

Public key encryption relies upon using an algorithm which is computationally much easier in one direction than the other. As a simple example, to a person working only with pencil and paper, calculating the square of a ten digit number is much easier than calculating the square root of the result. A more advanced example, and one actually in common use, is that multiplying two large prime numbers is very considerably easier than determining the factors of the resulting product.

Publish

To upload web site files to a server, in order to make them publicly available on the Internet.

Push Technology

A system which broadcasts web pages to users. Also called "channels" although that word can also have another meaning (see that entry). Often likened to "Teletext in vision" but slower and less interesting. Widely hyped a few years ago; now discredited and largely forgotten. Particularly irrelevant unless you have a very high speed connection to the Internet which doesn't involve any time-dependant phone or ISP charges.

PuTTY

A freeware SSH client program. See SSH for details. PuTTY is obtainable from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty (external link verified Jan-08).

PvE

Player versus Environment. A mode of gameplay in which one real human player competes against the computer program.

PvP

Player versus Player. A mode of gameplay in which two or more real human players compete against each other.

PVR

Personal Video Recorder. A device which uses a hard disk to store television programmes, enabling simultaneous recording and playback and therefore the facility to watch a programme delayed by a period of time, before it has finished. Also called a TiVo, after the name of the first such device.

PWS

Personal Web Server. You don't need a personal web server to view web pages that you create on your computer. Just open their HTM files in any web browser.
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