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  • Page
    The basic unit of Web delivery. See Web page, home page.
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  • Parallel port
    The 25-pin RS-232C connector found on the back of any PC. Parallel ports are also called printer ports, since that's what you usually find attached to them.
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  • Parity
    An obsolete method of detecting communication errors. Now, communication ports are almost always set to No Parity, and the modem's internal error detection and correction are used to provide reliable communication.
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  • Password
    A secret data value, usually a character string, that is presented as part of an authentication process to verify an identity. Passwords are the most common type of computer system authentication mechanism used today, but they are a weak mechanism compared to a cryptographically-based mechanism such as a digital certificate.
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  • Path
    The directory-like third component of a standard Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
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  • Pay-for-quality
    An emerging movement in health insurance, in which providers are rewarded for the quality of the services they provide.
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  • Payment card
    A payment card supports cashless payment for goods and services. Examples are: credit cards, debit cards, charge cards, and smart cards.
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  • PCT (Private Communication Technology)
    Microsoft's proprietary alternative to SSL. Enables a client browser to communicate privately with a Web server over an encrypted channel. Like SSL, the protocol is intended to prevent eavesdropping on communications in client/server applications, with servers always being authenticated and clients being authenticated at the server's option.
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  • PERL (Practical Extraction and Report Language)
    An interpreted language, often used for scanning text and formatting reports. It has become a popular language to use for writing CGI scripts, as well as for creating statistical reports from Web server log files.
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  • Personal Computer (PC)
    A microcomputer with its own processor and hard drive. Although technically this refers to all such computers, including Macs, the term PC is nearly synonymous with only the IBM-compatible microcomputers.
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  • Personalization
    Tailoring a Web site's content, including advertising, to a specific individual, usually based on demographic information that they have supplied to the site.
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  • PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
    An implementation of public key encryption often used for e-mail.
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  • Pharmacovigilance
    The monitoring and assessing of responses to pharmaceuticals to detect and prevent adverse effects.
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  • Physical Goods
    Products that need to be shipped to a customer via traditional means, such as UPS or Federal Express. Contrast with digital goods.
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  • Pincushioning
    On computer screens, lines that should be straight don't always appear that way. Lines that look bowed or curved are evidence of a pincushion error. Better monitors include controls to help compensate for this error.
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  • PING
    Packet Internet Gopher. A TCP/IP application that sends a message to another computer, waits for a reply, and displays the time the transmission took. This identifies what computers are available on the Internet and how long wait-times are.
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  • PKI Public Key Infrastructure
    See public key cryptography.
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  • Plaintext
    Text without extraneous codes that designate font size, font style, et cetera. Unencrypted or clear text.Contrast with ciphertext.See ASCII.
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  • Plug-in
    A small piece of software that adds features to already existing, usually large, programs.
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  • Plug and Play
    Plug and Play standards were developed to simplify the process of adding hardware to PCs. The standard's intention is to conceal unpleasant details, such as IRQ and DMA channels, from people who just want to add a new board, drive, or other chunk of hardware to their system.
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  • Podcast
    According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, a podcast is "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player," but the generally accepted definition has expanded to include video as well as audio. Originally derived from a combination of "broadcasting" and "iPod ™," the word was declared "word of the year" when it was added to the dictionary at the end of 2005.
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  • Point of Sale (POS)
    The location in a merchant establishment at which a sale is made.
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  • Port
    A logical channel in a communications system. Each server program, for example, has a unique port number associated with it, defined in the Network Information Service "services" database. HTTP defaults to port 80. HTTPS defaults to port 443. FTP defaults to port 21.
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  • PoP
    Point of Presence. that your Internet access provider can offer a local dial-up number to give you access to the Net, it either maintains or leases PoPs throughout the areas it serves.
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  • POS terminal
    An electronic device used at the point of sale (POS) to process transactions and communicate transaction information to a remote computer either directly or through a network.
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  • Post-market surveillance
    The pro-active collection of information on the quality, safety, and performance of medical devices and pharmaceuticals after they have been placed in the market.
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  • Private key
    The secret half of a public key pair. See public key cryptography.
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  • Private peering
    An arrangement between two Internet backbone providers to exchange traffic between their two networks. By setting up such an arrangement, it facilitates a faster, higher quality exchange of traffic that avoids the congestion found at public peering points.
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  • Private workspace
    Access-controlled workspace that a small number of users can use to communicate or store information that should be kept secret from others.
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  • Protocol
    A set of formal rules that define how to process data for transmission especially across a network. Low level protocols define the electrical and physical standards to be observed, bit- and byte-ordering and the transmission and error detection and correction of the bit stream. High level protocols deal with the data formatting, including the syntax of messages, the terminal to computer dialogue, character sets, sequencing of messages, etc. HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP are high-level Internet protocols.
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  • Procedural security
    Administrative and management constraints to prevent unauthorized access to a system. A firewall can be only as effective as its administration. I f not maintained properly, a firewall may become insecure and may permit break-ins while providing the illusion that the site is still secure.
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  • Proxy gateway
    An intermediary server between browsers and content servers. A proxy server usually hides the identity of the client. A proxy gateway may be part of a firewall.
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  • Proxy Server
    A system that caches items from other servers to speed up access. On the Web, a proxy first attempts to find data locally, and if it's not there, fetches it from the remote server where the data resides permanently.
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  • Public Domain
    Of all the kinds of software or information you can download, public domain has the fewest strings attached. With public domain downloads, there are no copyright restrictions.
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  • Public key
    The public half of a public key pair. See public key cryptography.
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  • Public key crytography
    A modern branch of cryptography in which the algorithms employ a key pair - a "public" key and a "private" key - and use a different key of the pair for different steps of the algorithm. The public key can be publicized, but the private key must be kept secret. A sender uses the recipient's public key to encrypt a message. The recipient uses his or her own private key to decrypt it.
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  • Public peering
    Arrangements between a large number of Internet Backbone and Web hosting providers to exchange traffic between the various networks. Public peering points include the MAEs and the NAPs. Congestion has become a serious problem at the public peering points, as an increasing number of providers dump traffic into them, overloading the routers at the core of the peering points.
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  • Pulldown menu
    A list of options that "pulls down" when a user selects a menu at the top of a window. For example, the File menu in most programs is a pulldown menu that reveals commands such as open, new, and save.
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  • Push
    The delivery of information on the Web that appears to be initiated by the information server rather than by the information user or client, as it usually is. However, the information pushed from a server to a user actually comes as the result of a programmed request from the client.
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