Glossary Terms - M

mail bombing

The act of sending hundreds or thousands of messages to someone you think deserves the punishment for transgressions against the Internet. Highly discouraged as it chews up bandwidth unnecessarily.

 

mailing list

A list of people who all receive postings sent to the group. Mailing lists exist on all sorts of topics.

 

mailserver

A program that provides access to files via email. See also fileserver.

 

mail transfer agent

A program, typically running on a Unix server, that delivers mail to another machine on an IP network.

 

man pages

The Unix manual pages. You must go to the man pages to find out more about a Unix command. Accessed through use of the man command followed by the command whose description you want to view.

 

MCI

A large telecommunications company that provides an email system called MCI Mail.

 

Microsoft

That programming machine out in Redmond, Washington that continues to define trends in personal computers. Their applications division includes some of the most popular software to date, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Works. Their systems division, of course, is responsible for bringing Windows, Windows for Workgroups, and Windows NT to the world.

 

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. An Internet standard for transferring nontextual data, such as audio messages or pictures, via email.

 

mirror site

An FTP site that contains exactly the same contents as another site. Mirror sites help distribute the load from a single popular site.

 

modem

Stands for modulator-demodulator, because that's what it does, technically. In reality, a modem allows your computer to talk to another computer via the phone lines.

 

 

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moderator

An overworked volunteer who reads all of the submissions to a mailing list or newsgroup, to make sure they are appropriate, before posting them.

 

monospaced font

A font whose characters are all the same width. Courier New is the most common monospaced font in Windows, but you can find others like Letter Gothic, Courier, and Orator. You generally want to use a monospaced font when reading text on the Internet.

MPEG

Motion Picture Experts Group. More commonly, a compression format for video. Files compressed with MPEG generally have the extension .mpg, although it may be .mpeg on some sites.

 

MTU

Maximum Transmission Unit. A number that your system administrator must give you so that you can configure SLIP.

 

MUD

Multi-User Dungeon, or sometimes Multi-User Dimension. A text-based alternate reality where you can progress to a level at which you can modify the environment. Mostly used for games, and extremely addictive.

 

MX record

Mail Exchange record. An entry in a domain name server database that tells mail transfer agents where they should route mail.

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