smoothing
A technique used by some printers to make curves look smoother. Most printers that support smoothing implement it by reducing the dot size of the dots that make up a curved line. In addition, some printers can alter the horizontal alignment of dots to minimize jaggies.
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- Snailmail
Normal postal mail, where an actual physical letter or package is delivered. The term didn’t exist until electronic mail (e-mail)became so prevalent that there was a requirement to differentiate the two. Obviously, the term was invented by e-mail aficionados as a small barb directed at the relative slowness of physical transportation. Snailmail is sometimes spelled […]
- snake oil
Refers to a cryptography or security product that makes exaggerated claims of what the product is capable of, giving the user a false sense of security. The term snake oil, which is credited to Matt Curtin for using in reference to computer security products, comes from the 19th-century American practice of selling cure-all elixirs in […]
- snapshot backup
A virtual copy of a device or filesystem. Snapshots imitate the way a file or device looked at the precise time the snapshot was taken. It is not a copy of the data, only a picture in time of how the data was organized. Snapshots can be taken according to a scheduled time and provide […]
- snapshot printer
A color printer designed to print photographic-quality snapshots. Most snapshot printers require special paper and use dye sublimation, thermal transfer technologies to produce vivid 24-bit color. The devices, however, are limited to prints no larger than about 4 by 6 inches.
- semaphore
A hardware or software flag. In multitasking systems, a semaphore is a variable with a value that indicates the status of a common resource. It’s used to lock the resource that is being used. A process needing the resource checks the semaphore to determine the resource’s status and then decides how to proceed.