Ubiquitous Computing (Nanotechnology) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm
Also see Fullerenes
Ultimedia Video = Is IBM Corporation's OS/2 equivalent of Video for Windows. Ultimedia Video
IN/2 is priced at under $200 and supports video
capture and editing in IBM Ultimation and Indeo
compression formats. It can deliver up to 30 fps
at 320 by 240 window size if the user's hardware
can handle the upper-end capabilities. (See also
OS/2 and Video for
Windows)
UML = Uniform Modeling Language
"UML
Hits the Street," by Jack Vaughan, Application
Development Trends, September 2001, pp. 18-23 ---
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id
=4805
When people
initially get down to work
with the Unified Modeling Language (UML), it is
typically the first time they take up the practice
of use cases. These are an important element of
UML, intended to help gather functional requirements,
as well as to provide a means of communication among
development team members.
But use
cases are not without controversy. And for long-time
industry observers, the controversy may be somewhat
familiar.
Many of
the brickbats loosed years ago upon Case tools and
structural analysis are now aimed at UML and use
cases. Use cases lead to "analysis paralysis."
Use cases are "shelfware." These are just
some of the criticisms unloaded by influential software
consultants and authors, many of whom are counted
among the ranks of eXtreme Programming (XP) advocates.
At times,
the XP squad, although it includes a number of individuals
who see some merit in use cases, seems to echo the
arguments of Rapid Application Development (RAD)
advocates of the client/server era. These earlier
RAD advocates challenged development orthodoxy of
the day, which centered on "waterfall"
processes. The RAD folk also took some arrows for
creating a few allegedly non-scalable and non-repeatable
systems.
On one level,
the battleand "battle" is probably too
powerful a wordbetween UML and XP is new evidence
of the timeless divide between designers who want
just a little more time to do a little more analysis
of system needs, and developers who just want to
start coding.
This situation
is natural. UML had something of a honeymoon. It
arose in the late 1990s out of the combined efforts
of notable software methodologists Grady Booch,
James Rumbaugh and Ivar Jacobson, who came to work
at Rational Software Corp. and who came to be known
in a series of road shows as "The Three Amigos."
The battle of the object methodologies was effectively
ended as UML standardization responsibility was
eventually ceded to the Object Management Group
(OMG). Now, as UML is increasingly used, developers
have had some mixed experiences, so there is a higher
likelihood that UML will take a few shots.
While the
recent UML World 2001 conference held in New York City featured sessions that considered new UML extensions
and studied best practices in UML use case gathering,
the conference was just as notable for a use case
panel at which UML and XP proponents traded verbal
barbs.
In technology,
such battles are common. But if you are getting
ready to sit down to a slug fest between UML and
XP, I'm sorrythis is not that article. Rather than
focus on the guerre du jour, this effort will instead
uncover some user experiences with use cases. This
will hopefully provide a useful backdrop for development
managers trying to visualize their next steps in
design and development.
Unencod/undecode = (See Internet
Messaging).
Uniform Resource Identifier
(URI) = (See RDF.)
Uninterruptible power supply = A device that keeps computers running after a power failure, providing power
from batteries for a short period of time.
Unix = An operating system developed by Bell Laboratories for
use on large workstations. Latest information on
Copeland and other operating systems can be obtained
at <http://techweb.cmp.com/iw/center/default.html>.
Details are provided in Information Week, April
29, 1996, p. 15. Unix became
one of the main operating systems for networked
computers. It is especially suited for networks
and is commonly used for Internet networks. The
Unix System V Release 4 based operating system is
called Sun's Solaris that runs off Sun Workstations
and the PowerPC. IBM's Unix-based operating system
is called the AIX, and the Hewlett-Packard version
is called HP/UX. A discussion of whether Unix should become more of a part of operating systems in accounting
practices is provided by Courtney
and Hunton (1993). Since the advent of Windows
2000, much of this argument becomes muted. (See
also AU, SCO Open Desktop,
Networks,
and Operating
system)
News from Microsoft ---
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/migrate/unix/default.asp
As the Windows
platform continues to evolve to address changing
business computing needs, many organizations currently
on UNIX platforms are turning to Windows to run
their new client and server business applications.
They're discovering that moving to the Windows platform
does not require abandoning existing investments
in UNIX applications and infrastructure.
This section
explains why customers should consider migrating
to Windows from UNIX. It also provides detailed
information for IT professionals and developers
on how to move from UNIX systems to Windows XP,
Windows 2000, and the upcoming Windows .NET Server
and Microsoft .NET Web services platforms.
Upgrade = (See Multimedia
upgrade)
Urban Legend =
Urban legends are
lies about what somebody said or wrote and are circulated
wildly across the Web or some other network, including
mouth-to-mouth dissemination. . The
best way that I found to check on something before
I forward it is to select an identifying phrase
such as part of the title of a story. Then
I go to https://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl
=en
I enter the selected phrase into the "exact
phrase" box and then in the "all of the
words" box above I enter the word "urban"
and the word "legend" without quote marks.
Then I hit the Google Search button.
There are hundreds of
sites that explain and/or archive supposed urban
legends, some of which are as follows:
We should always check
to see if something is an urban legend before we
pass it along. However, once something is
claimed to be an urban legend, there is a tendency to immediately conclude the claim that it
is urban legend is a true claim.
What about claims that
may be false? Is there any site devoted to
setting the record straight about urban legends
that are not urban legends?
Proving a legend to be
true is often a scholarship question, such as when
a writer claims that "X did not say yyyy."
A scholar may then search among the archives of
the world for proof that X really did say "yyyy."
What is more difficult, however, is when claims
cannot be researched in any archives. For
example, one might claim that President Lincoln
had an affair during his presidency. To my
knowledge, there is no archived record of such a
claim. And people who might know first hand
are no longer living. All we can do is criticize
all unsupported claims for not being supported by
any credible evidence.
After my Google search
finds a site that boldly asserts that something
is an urban legend, like most people I immediately
concluded that it is an urban legend. Proving
it to be otherwise may be impossible or impractical
relative to the time and money available to prove
it otherwise.
What about claims that
may be false? Is there any site devoted to
setting the record straight about urban legends
that are not urban legends?
Urban legends have urban
legends about urban legends that claim not to be
urban legends but really are urban legends that
may in fact not be urban legends and so on infinitum. Some are blatantly false from the beginning;
others are embellished over time. One
definition is as follows from http://support.airmail.net/faq/glossary_mz.php
Urban legend
- A story, which may have started with a grain of
truth, that has been embroidered and retold until it has passed
into the realm of myth. Some legends that periodically
make their rounds include "The Infamous Modem
Tax," "Craig Shergold/Brain Tumor/Get
Well Cards," and "The $250 Cookie Recipe."
One thing not to be believed
is the typical claim that "This is not an urban
legend." That's generally a signal that
what follows is all or mostly bull.
One thing I do know!
When one urban legend site claims something is an
urban legend, the other urban legend sites follow
the leader blindly like lemmings. Is there
any site devoted to false claims about urban legends?
Bob Jensen
February 27, 2004 reply
from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Bob, one
of the modules in my AIS class is devoted to what
I call "identification of trustworthy sources".
While not
a foolproof methodology, it is better than the "no
methodology at all" approach used by the general
population.
In a nutshell:
use your own experience (supplemented by the experience
of actual acquaintances whom you trust based on
your own experience with them) to accumulate a repertoire
(or harem, or collection, or &) of websites run
by organizations which you trust to tell you the
truth. Examples from my own collection include snopes,
Symantec, McAfee, DataFellows, etc. I then rely
on these "trustworthy" sites to tell me what is
"the truth" vs. what is fiction.
Google searches
return everything, and it is very easy to Spoof
a legitimate site, even to Google. My experience
has been thus: when someone tells me of a strange
story, I check it out with one of my "trustworthy"
sites, and 999 times out of 1000, I am surprised
to learn that the trustworthy site not only tells
me the story is a hoax, but that the hoax has been
around since 1998, where it originated, why it is
still circulating (e.g., the grains of truth which
tend to bring the story to present consciousness,
etc.), and other information which I didn't know.
Further, these sites often are "up to the minute"
on new stuff, too.
There is
no substitute for determining "who ya gonna call?"
I really
like that quote, although I don't know who to attribute
it to: "The trouble with keeping an open mind is
that people are always dropping their garbage in
it." Perhaps this was Pogo, too?
David R. Fordham
PBGH Faculty
Fellow
James Madison
University
URL = This is the abbreviation
for Uniform Resource Locator,
the addressing system used in the World Wide Web
and other Internet resources. The URL contains information
about the method of access, the server to be accessed
and the path of any file to be accessed.
USB = (See Bus.)
USENet or Usenet = USEr's Network
of machines that exchange information tagged with
labels called "newsgroups" which are transmitted
between individuals at universities, secondary schools,
government agencies, home computers, etc. Databases
are available on many topics, from foreign hotels
to kite flying. USENet traffic can be carried on
the Internet, but is not restricted to the Internet.
Internet users can exchange papers and lengthy data
files. Anyone putting up a USENet newsgroup
will discover that it is somewhat tedious.
Probably the least understood
and least used resources on the Internet is Usenet (as opposed to the popular www). A nice article appears
in "A Network for the World" by Richard
Koreto in the Journal of Accountancy, August 1998,
33-35.
There are a variety of
search engines that specialize in newsgroup searching,
but few offer original content - most pull information
from the DejaNews index. Tile.net at http://www.tile.net
, however, provides special functions you won't
find in standard search engines and that can prove
very useful in resear ching newsgroup information.
Tile.net is a Web site designed to make USENET newsgroups
easy to find. Tile.net's advantage over other newsgroup
indexes is that it helps you search for newsgroups
rather than individual messages. Tile.net also provides
statistics and other information about newsgroups
and provides a link directly to each newsgroup,
which will launch your Web browser newsreaders.
Newsgroups in Tile.net are organized by index, description,
and newsgroup hierarchy. Tile.net also provides
information about listservs, FTP sites, and computer
product vendors.
One of the more frequently
posted questions is "How can I create a new
newsgroup?" Briefly, creating a new newsgroup
in the comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, sci, soc or talk hierarchies involves first
proposing the newsgroup in news.announce.newgroups,
then conducting a "vote" among those Usenet
readers who have an opinion on the proposed group.
The entire process can take up to three months.
For additional details see http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/8211/newgroup.html
See
Chat Lines
and IRC.
User = Under NetWare,
the definition of a set of access rights for an
individual.
User app = (See Plug-in)
UUCP = Unix-to-Unix
Copy Protocol that can be used for
transferring files between Unix
computers on network. (See also FTP)