A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

UG

"User Group", suffix of organisations where lots of people who have got nothing better to do with their third Wednesday evening of every month than talk about the latest in interface cards to similarly minded people.

Also occasionally heard when computer users return to their caveman roots when the technology gets the better of them.

UNDELETE

The old DOS command that you can never remember how to use when you need to use it, ie when you've just deleted that novel/thesis/theory about the space/time continuum you've been writing for the last five years. And even if you can remember how to use it, it's not in your version of DOS.

But of course - you had a back-up, didn't you.

See also: back-up DOS

UNIX

An operating system, which provides proof that the more powerful any piece of equipment is, the more difficult and cryptic the commands used to drive it. I still haven't worked out why the command to show file details is "ls".

See also: file

UPS

Uninterruptible Power Supply, a device that can fail all the time without anyone noticing, until it happens to fail during an electricity outage.

USERNAME

One of the two essential pieces of information needed to logon to a multiuser computer system. (The other one is the password). Usernames (or Logon IDs) come in four varieties:

• The one you can pick yourself, completely free of restrictions, therefore varying from the ridiculous (eg mongoose) to the sublime (eg daniel)
• The one that is chosen for you, based on a fairly reasonable derivation of your name, say the first letter of your first name, and your surname (eg dbowen). If you're unlucky, a length limit applies and your surname gets mercilessly shortened. If you're doubly unlucky, your first name gets an X instead of the actual letter, because someone else already has that username
• The one that is chosen for you, based on a really dumb derivation of your name, like the first four letters of your surname, plus the first letter of your first name (eg bowed)
• The one that is chosen for you, and derived from what can only be described as Satan's License-Plate Username Chaos Algorithm Of Confusion. Any resemblance between the username and your name, initials, or anything remotely familiar to you is pure coincidence (eg edc942dbp2). And it changes twice a year.

Computing

Copyright © 1995-1999 Daniel Bowen.