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Active-Matrix - This technology is used in high-quality flat-panel displays, such as laptop screens and thin computer monitors. The images on active matrix screens are created by laying diodes, or small semiconductors, over a grid of ultra-small wires. When a current passes through the diodes, they light up in different colors, depending on the strength of the current. Thousands of these diodes next to each other form an image on the screen. To keep the diodes in an on or off state, active-matrix displays use transistors, which are not found in the lower-quality passive-matrix displays. The transistors help make the active-matrix displays brighter and give them more contrast than passive-matrix displays.

ActiveX - This Microsoft-based technology was built to link desktop applications to the World Wide Web. Using ActiveX development tools, software developers can create interactive Web content for their applications. For example, Word and Excel documents can be viewed directly in Web browsers that supports ActiveX. While ActiveX is a useful technology, the downside is that you need to have a up-to-date version ActiveX installed on your machine in order to use ActiveX-enabled content.

Address - Unique identifier for a specific location on a network. There are three types of addresses in common use within the Internet: e-mail addresses; IP or Internet address; and hardware or MAC addresses.

AGP - Stands for "Accelerated Graphics Port." This is a graphics card expansion port designed by Intel that resides on the motherboard of a computer. PCI graphics ports typically run at 33 MHz and have a maximum transfer rate of 132 MB/sec. AGP ports, on the other hand, run at 66 MHz and can transfer data up to 528 MB/sec. This allows games and applications to store and retrieve larger, more realistic 3D shapes and textures without slowing down the animation on the screen. Additionally, AGP cards can store graphics in system memory rather than video memory, which also helps improve performance. Becuase of these advantages, AGP cards will typically have better performance per MB of VRAM than PCI graphics cards.

ANSI - Stands for "American National Standards Institute." ANSI's primary goal is to enhance the global competitiveness of U.S. businesses and to improve the American quality of life by promoting and facilitating voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems. "Voluntary" standards are driven by marketplace needs rather than regulated by the government. "Conformity assessment systems" test the compliance of a product or service to a standard. ANSI does not itself develop standards or conduct tests, rather it facilitates this work by "accrediting" (i.e., recognizing) qualified groups with appropriate expertise. The Institute is the official U.S. representative to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). ANSI is a private, nonprofit membership organization with offices in Washington, DC and New York City.

ASCII - Stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange." ASCII is the universal standard for the numerical codes computers use to represent all upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and puctuation. Without ASCII, each type of computer would use a different way of representing letters and numbers, causing major chaos for computer programmers (allowing them even less sleep than they already get).

Assembly - The most low-level programming language.

Assembly (.Net) - An assembly is a unit of deployment in an application based on the .NET framework.

Atomic Transaction - An atomic transaction is an operation in which either all steps in the operation succeed, or they all fail. Atomic transactions are commonly used to perform data modifications in a data store, where either all the data relating to the operation is successfully modified, or none of it is modified and the data remains as it was before the operation started.


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