Technical Corner > The PC Glossary - Definitions of Computer and Internet Terms

Computer Terms Beginning with "S"

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MysteRy:
Source : PC.net


Safe Mode

Safe Mode is a way for the Windows operating system to run with the minimum system files necessary. It uses a generic VGA display driver instead of the vendor-specific driver, which means you will likely be working with only 16 colors in a resolution of 640x480. Safe Mode also turns off all third-party drivers for other peripherals such as mice, keyboards, printers, and scanners. In basic Safe Mode, networking files and settings are not loaded, meaning you won't be able to connect to the Internet or other computers on a network.

So why would I ever want to boot in Safe Mode? Well, that's a good question. Sometimes, Windows may not fully load after an unexpected crash and the only way to get the computer to boot is to use Safe Mode. Once you have successfully booted the computer in Safe Mode, you can run a disk utility program to repair corrupted files or directories on the hard drive. You can also reboot into Safe Mode to see your display when you get a "Sync Out of Range" message on your screen.

There may also be times when your computer is performing sluggishly and becomes annoyingly slow. Booting into Safe Mode will allow you to diagnose the problem and determine which files are slowing down the computer. When calling technical support, the support person may ask you to boot into Safe Mode to begin the troubleshooting. To boot your Windows computer into Safe Mode, hold down the F8 key while the computer is starting up. Then select Safe Mode from the list of boot options.

MysteRy:
Samba

Most people know of samba as a type of rhythmic dance music from Brazil that uses a 2/4 time signature. In the computer world, samba has a different meaning but is no less exciting (if you are a computer nerd).

Samba is an open-source software implementation of the SMB networking protocol used by Windows computers. (If you look closely, you can see the correlation between the two names.) Samba allows other computer platforms, such as Mac OS X, Unix, Linux, IBM System 390, and OpenVMS to interact with Windows computers on the same network. This includes sharing files and using shared devices such as printers connected to other computers within the local network.

Because SMB was developed only for Windows, without Samba, other computer platforms would be isolated from Windows machines, even if they were part of the same network. Fortunately, Samba helps different types of computers work together as if they were all based on the same platform. This gives network administrators the freedom to choose multiple types of computers systems when setting up a network. Now that's a reason to dance!

MysteRy:
Sample

A sample is a digital representation of an analog signal. Both digital video and digital audio files are created using samples. The quality of the sample is determined by the sampling rate, or the bit rate the signal is sampled at.

What we see and hear in the real world is in analog format (our bodies process analog information). Computers, on the other hand, can only understand digital information. Therefore, audio and video signals must be converted to a digital format in order to be stored on a computer or saved to a CD or DVD. The converted data is called a sample.

The term "sample" is often used to refer to short audio clips used for playing back sounds. For example, a violin sound or a bird chirp may be sampled and then played back from a digital keyboard (or synthesizer). However, samples can refer to entire songs or movies, since the information is technically one long sample. To learn more about how samples are created, view the definition of sampling, which is the process of recording and creating digital samples.

MysteRy:
Sampling

Before digital recording took over the audio and video industries, everything was recorded in analog. Audio was recorded to devices like cassette tapes and records. Video was recorded to Beta and VHS tapes. The media was even edited in analog format, using multichannel audio tapes (such as 8-tracks) for music, and film reels for video recordings. This method involved a lot of rewinding and fast-forwarding, which resulted in a time-consuming process.

Fortunately, digital recording has now almost completely replaced analog recording. Digital editing can be done much more efficiently than analog editing and the media does not lose any quality in the process. However, since what humans see and hear is in analog format (linear waves of light and sound), saving audio and video in a digital format requires converting the signal from analog to digital. This process is called sampling.

Sampling involves taking snapshots of an audio or video signal at very fast intervals ? usually tens of thousands of times per second. The quality of the digital signal is determined largely by the sampling rate, or the bit rate the signal is sampled at. The higher the bit rate, the more samples are created per second, and the more realistic the resulting audio or video file will be. For example, CD-quality audio is sampled at 44.1 kHz, or 44,100 samples per second. The difference between a 44.1 kHz digital recording and the original audio signal is imperceptible to most people. However, if the audio was recorded at 22 kHz (half the CD-quality rate), most people would notice the drop in quality right away.

Samples can be created by sampling live audio and video or by sampling previously recorded analog media. Since samples estimate the analog signal, the digital representation is never as accurate as the analog data. However, if a high enough sampling rate is used, the difference is not noticeable to the human senses. Because digital information can be edited and saved using a computer and will not deteriorate like analog media, the quality/convenience tradeoff involved in sampling is well worthwhile.

MysteRy:
SAN

Stands for "Storage Area Network." A SAN is a network of storage devices that can be accessed by multiple computers. Each computer on the network can access hard drives in the SAN as if they were local disks connected directly to the computer. This allows individual hard drives to be used by multiple computers, making it easy to share information between different machines.

While a single server can provide a shared hard drive to multiple machines, large networks may require more storage than a single server can offer. For example, a large business may have several terabytes of data that needs to be accessible by multiple machines on a local area network (LAN). In this situation, a SAN could be setup instead of adding additional servers. Since only hard drives need to be added instead of complete computer systems, SANs are an efficient way to increase network storage.

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