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In computing and electronic systems, binary-coded decimal (BCD) is a class of binary encodings of decimal numbers where each digit is represented by a fixed number of bits, usually four or eight. Sometimes, special bit patterns are used for a sign or other indications (e.g. error or overflow).

In byte-oriented systems (i.e. most modern computers), the term unpacked BCD usually implies a full byte for each digit (often including a sign), whereas packed BCD typically encodes two digits within a single byte by taking advantage of the fact that four bits are enough to represent the range 0 to 9. The precise 4-bit encoding, however, may vary for technical reasons (e.g. Excess-3).

The ten states representing a BCD digit are sometimes called tetrades (for the nibble typically needed to hold them is also known as a tetrade) while the unused, don't care-states are named pseudo-tetrad(e)s, pseudo-decimals or pseudo-decimal digits.

BCD's main virtue, in comparison to binary positional systems, is its more accurate representation and rounding of decimal quantities, as well as its ease of conversion into conventional human-readable representations. Its principal drawbacks are a slight increase in the complexity of the circuits needed to implement basic arithmetic as well as slightly less dense storage.

BCD was used in many early decimal computers, and is implemented in the instruction set of machines such as the IBM System/360 series and its descendants, Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX, the Burroughs B1700, and the Motorola 68000-series processors. BCD per se is not as widely used as in the past and it is no longer implemented in newer computers' instruction sets (e.g. ARM); x86 does not support its BCD instructions in long mode any more. However, decimal fixed-point and floating-point formats are still important and continue to be used in financial, commercial, and industrial computing, where the subtle conversion and fractional rounding errors that are inherent in floating point binary representations cannot be tolerated.

INFO: Full form for AE is Adaptive Equalizer in Information Technology category
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The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances research, science and engineering based in the United States. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and provides high-performance computing resources to researchers across the country. Support for NCSA comes from the National Science Foundation, the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, business and industry partners, and other federal agencies.

NCSA provides leading-edge computing, data storage, and visualization resources. NCSA computational and data environment implements a multi-architecture hardware strategy, deploying both clusters and shared memory systems to support high-end users and communities on the architectures best-suited to their requirements. Nearly 1,360 scientists, engineers and students used the computing and data systems at NCSA to support research in more than 830 projects.

NCSA is led by Bill Gropp.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine. The existence of the NSA was not revealed until 1975.

Originating as a unit to decipher coded communications in World War II, it was officially formed as the NSA by President Harry S. Truman in 1952. Between then and the end of the Cold War, it became the largest of the U.S. intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget, but information available as of 2013 indicates that the CIA pulled ahead in this regard, with a budget of $14.7 billion. The NSA currently conducts worldwide mass data collection and has been known to physically bug electronic systems as one method to this end. The NSA is also alleged to have been behind such attack software as Stuxnet, which severely damaged Iran's nuclear program. The NSA, alongside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), maintains a physical presence in many countries across the globe; the CIA/NSA joint Special Collection Service (a highly classified intelligence team) inserts eavesdropping devices in high value targets (such as presidential palaces or embassies). SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass "close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, [and] breaking and entering".

Unlike the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), both of which specialize primarily in foreign human espionage, the NSA does not publicly conduct human-source intelligence gathering. The NSA is entrusted with providing assistance to, and the coordination of, SIGINT elements for other government organizations – which are prevented by law from engaging in such activities on their own. As part of these responsibilities, the agency has a co-located organization called the Central Security Service (CSS), which facilitates cooperation between the NSA and other U.S. defense cryptanalysis components. To further ensure streamlined communication between the signals intelligence community divisions, the NSA Director simultaneously serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and as Chief of the Central Security Service.

The NSA's actions have been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, including its spying on anti–Vietnam War leaders and the agency's participation in economic espionage. In 2013, the NSA had many of its secret surveillance programs revealed to the public by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts and stores the communications of over a billion people worldwide, including United States citizens. The documents also revealed the NSA tracks hundreds of millions of people's movements using cellphones' metadata. Internationally, research has pointed to the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries through "boomerang routing".

INFO: Full form for NP is Nondeterministic Polynomial time in Information Technology category
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Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the so-called first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than 1 percent in 2006. Netscape created the JavaScript programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages. The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over.

Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when the company was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US$10 billion. In February 1998, approximately one year prior to its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate future development of its product. The Mozilla Organization rewrote the entire browser's source code based on the Gecko rendering engine, and all future Netscape releases were based on this rewritten code. When AOL scaled back its involvement with Mozilla Organization in the early 2000s, the Organization proceeded to establish the Mozilla Foundation in July 2003 to ensure its continued independence with financial and other assistance from AOL. The Gecko engine is used to power the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser.

Netscape's browser development continued until December 2007, when AOL announced that the company would stop supporting it by early 2008. As of 2011, AOL continued to use the Netscape brand to market a discount Internet service provider.

AOL renamed the Netscape Communications Corporation to New Aurora Corporation, and transferred the Netscape brand to themselves.. The former Netscape company is currently a non-operating subsidiary of Facebook, still known as New Aurora Corporation.Today, Netscape is a brand name owned by Yahoo, Inc.

Microsoft Certified Professional was a certification program from Microsoft.

A message delivery agent (MDA), or mail delivery agent, is a computer software component that is responsible for the delivery of e-mail messages to a local recipient's mailbox. It is also called a local delivery agent (LDA).

Within the Internet mail architecture, local message delivery is achieved through a process of handling messages from the message transfer agent, and storing mail into the recipient's environment (typically a mailbox).

Model Driven Architecture® (MDA®) is a software design approach for the development of software systems. It provides a set of guidelines for the structuring of specifications, which are expressed as models. Model Driven Architecture is a kind of domain engineering, and supports model-driven engineering of software systems. It was launched by the Object Management Group (OMG) in 2001.

The Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA, also MDA card, Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter, MDPA) is IBM's standard video display card and computer display standard for the PC introduced in 1981. The MDA does not have any pixel-addressable graphics modes, only a single monochrome text mode which can display 80 columns by 25 lines of high resolution text characters or symbols useful for drawing forms.

Within communication protocols, TLV (type-length-value or tag-length-value) is an encoding scheme used for optional information element in a certain protocol. TLV-encoded data stream contain code of the record type, followed by record value length, and finally the value itself.

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In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, while the machine simultaneously feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls, and process controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to, or involve such disciplines as, ergonomics and psychology.

Generally, the goal of user interface design is to produce a user interface which makes it easy, efficient, and enjoyable (user-friendly) to operate a machine in the way which produces the desired result (i.e. maximum usability). This generally means that the operator needs to provide minimal input to achieve the desired output, and also that the machine minimizes undesired outputs to the user.

User interfaces are composed of one or more layers, including a human-machine interface (HMI) that interfaces machines with physical input hardware such as keyboards, mice, or game pads, and output hardware such as computer monitors, speakers, and printers. A device that implements an HMI is called a human interface device (HID). Other terms for human-machine interfaces are man-machine interface (MMI) and, when the machine in question is a computer, human–computer interface. Additional UI layers may interact with one or more human senses, including: tactile UI (touch), visual UI (sight), auditory UI (sound), olfactory UI (smell), equilibrial UI (balance), and gustatory UI (taste).

Composite user interfaces (CUIs) are UIs that interact with two or more senses. The most common CUI is a graphical user interface (GUI), which is composed of a tactile UI and a visual UI capable of displaying graphics. When sound is added to a GUI, it becomes a multimedia user interface (MUI). There are three broad categories of CUI: standard, virtual and augmented. Standard CUI use standard human interface devices like keyboards, mice, and computer monitors. When the CUI blocks out the real world to create a virtual reality, the CUI is virtual and uses a virtual reality interface. When the CUI does not block out the real world and creates augmented reality, the CUI is augmented and uses an augmented reality interface. When a UI interacts with all human senses, it is called a qualia interface, named after the theory of qualia. CUI may also be classified by how many senses they interact with as either an X-sense virtual reality interface or X-sense augmented reality interface, where X is the number of senses interfaced with. For example, a Smell-O-Vision is a 3-sense (3S) Standard CUI with visual display, sound and smells; when virtual reality interfaces interface with smells and touch it is said to be a 4-sense (4S) virtual reality interface; and when augmented reality interfaces interface with smells and touch it is said to be a 4-sense (4S) augmented reality interface.

Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: