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Unicode, formally the Unicode Standard, is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, which is maintained by the Unicode Consortium, defines 144,697 characters covering 159 modern and historic scripts, as well as symbols, emoji, and non-visual control and formatting codes.

The Unicode character repertoire is synchronized with ISO/IEC 10646, each being code-for-code identical with the other. The Unicode Standard, however, includes more than just the base code. Alongside the character encodings, the Consortium's official publication includes a wide variety of details about the scripts and how to display them: normalization rules, decomposition, collation, rendering, and bidirectional text display order for multilingual texts, and so on. The Standard also includes reference data files and visual charts to help developers and designers correctly implement the repertoire.

Unicode's success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread and predominant use in the internationalization and localization of computer software. The standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java (and other programming languages), and the .NET Framework.

Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings. The Unicode standard defines Unicode Transformation Formats (UTF): UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, and several other encodings. The most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16, and the obsolete UCS-2 (a precursor of UTF-16 without full support for Unicode); GB18030, while not an official Unicode standard, is standardized in China and implements Unicode fully.

UTF-8, the dominant encoding on the World Wide Web (used in over 95% of websites as of 2020, and up to 100% for some languages) and on most Unix-like operating systems, uses one byte (8 bits) for the first 128 code points, and up to 4 bytes for other characters. The first 128 Unicode code points represent the ASCII characters, which means that any ASCII text is also a UTF-8 text.

UCS-2 uses two bytes (16 bits) for each character but can only encode the first 65,536 code points, the so-called Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). With 1,112,064 possible Unicode code points corresponding to characters (see below) on 17 planes, and with over 144,000 code points defined as of version 14.0, UCS-2 is only able to represent less than half of all encoded Unicode characters. Therefore, UCS-2 is obsolete, though still used in software. UTF-16 extends UCS-2, by using the same 16-bit encoding as UCS-2 for the Basic Multilingual Plane, and a 4-byte encoding for the other planes. As long as it contains no code points in the reserved range U+D800–U+DFFF, a UCS-2 text is valid UTF-16 text.

UTF-32 (also referred to as UCS-4) uses four bytes to encode any given code point, but not necessarily any given user-perceived character (loosely speaking, a grapheme), since a user-perceived character may be represented by a grapheme cluster (a sequence of multiple code points). Like UCS-2, the number of bytes per code point is fixed, facilitating code point indexing; but unlike UCS-2, UTF-32 is able to encode all Unicode code points. However, because each code point uses four bytes, UTF-32 takes significantly more space than other encodings, and is not widely used. Although UTF-32 has a fixed size for each code point, it is also variable-length with respect to user-perceived characters. Examples include: the Devanagari kshi, which is encoded by 4 code points, and national flag emojis, which are composed of two code points. All combining character sequences are graphemes, but there are other sequences of code points that are as well, for example \r\n.

PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. PowerPC, as an evolving instruction set, has since 2006 been named Power ISA, while the old name lives on as a trademark for some implementations of Power Architecture–based processors.

PowerPC was the cornerstone of AIM's PReP and Common Hardware Reference Platform initiatives in the 1990s. Originally intended for personal computers, the architecture is well known for being used by Apple's Power Macintosh, PowerBook, iMac, iBook, and Xserve lines from 1994 until 2006, when Apple migrated to Intel's x86. It has since become a niche in personal computers, but remains popular for embedded and high-performance processors. Its use in 7th generation of video game consoles and embedded applications provided an array of uses, including satellites, and the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars. In addition, PowerPC CPUs are still used in AmigaOne and third party AmigaOS 4 personal computers.

PowerPC is largely based on IBM's earlier POWER instruction set architecture, and retains a high level of compatibility with it; the architectures have remained close enough that the same programs and operating systems will run on both if some care is taken in preparation; newer chips in the POWER series use the Power ISA.

The Apache Portable Runtime (APR) is a supporting library for the Apache web server. It provides a set of APIs that map to the underlying operating system (OS). Where the OS does not support a particular function, APR will provide an emulation. Thus programmers can use the APR to make a program truly portable across platforms.

APR originally formed a part of Apache HTTP Server, but the Apache Software Foundation spun it off into a separate project. Other applications can use it to achieve platform independence.

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until forced to resign in 1992, after the company had gone into precipitous decline.

Although the company produced many different product lines over their history, they are best known for their work in the minicomputer market starting in the mid-1960s. The company produced a series of machines known as the PDP line, with the PDP-8 and PDP-11 being among the most successful minis of all time. Their success was only surpassed by another DEC product, the late-1970s VAX "supermini" systems that were designed to replace the PDP-11. Although a number of competitors had successfully competed with Digital through the 1970s, the VAX cemented the company's place as a leading vendor in the computer space.

As microcomputers improved in the late 1980s, especially with the introduction of RISC-based workstation machines, the performance niche of the minicomputer was rapidly eroded. By the early 1990s, the company was in turmoil as their mini sales collapsed and their attempts to address this by entering the high-end market with machines like the VAX 9000 were market failures. After several attempts to enter the workstation and file server market, the DEC Alpha product line began to make successful inroads in the mid-1990s, but was too late to save the company.

DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq in what was at that time the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. During the purchase, some parts of DEC were sold to other companies; the compiler business and the Hudson, Massachusetts facility, were sold to Intel. At the time, Compaq was focused on the enterprise market and had recently purchased several other large vendors. DEC was a major player overseas where Compaq had less presence. However, Compaq had little idea what to do with its acquisitions, and soon found itself in financial difficulty of its own. The company subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard (HP) in May 2002.

As of 2012, decades-old hardware (including PDP-11, VAX, and AlphaServer) is being emulated to allow legacy software to run on modern hardware; funding for this is planned to last at least until 2030.

In computing, internationalization and localization (American) or internationalisation and localisation (BrE), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities and technical requirements of a target locale. Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by translating text and adding locale-specific components. Localization (which is potentially performed multiple times, for different locales) uses the infrastructure or flexibility provided by internationalization (which is ideally performed only once before localization, or as an integral part of ongoing development).

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Printer Command Language, more commonly referred to as PCL, is a page description language (PDL) developed by Hewlett-Packard as a printer protocol and has become a de facto industry standard. Originally developed for early inkjet printers in 1984, PCL has been released in varying levels for thermal, matrix, and page printers. HP-GL/2 and PJL are supported by later versions of PCL.

PCL is occasionally and incorrectly said to be an abbreviation for Printer Control Language which actually is another term for page description language.

A Linux User Group or Linux Users' Group (LUG) or GNU/Linux User Group (GLUG) is a private, generally non-profit or not-for-profit organization that provides support and/or education for Linux users, particularly for inexperienced users. The term commonly refers to local groups that meet in person, but is also used to refer to online support groups that may have members spread over a very wide area and that do not organize, or are not dependent on, physical meetings. Many LUGs encompass FreeBSD and other free-software / open source Unix-based operating systems.

In computer storage, logical volume management or LVM provides a method of allocating space on mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional partitioning schemes to store volumes. In particular, a volume manager can concatenate, stripe together or otherwise combine partitions (or block devices in general) into larger virtual partitions that administrators can re-size or move, potentially without interrupting system use.

Volume management represents just one of many forms of storage virtualization; its implementation takes place in a layer in the device-driver stack of an operating system (OS) (as opposed to within storage devices or in a network).

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Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a type of a Linux installation and the name of a book written by Gerard Beekmans, and as of May 2021, mainly maintained by Bruce Dubbs. The book gives readers instructions on how to build a Linux system from source. The book is available freely from the Linux From Scratch site.

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code: data in the form of fields (often known as attributes or properties), and code, in the form of procedures (often known as methods).

A feature of objects is that an object's own procedures can access and often modify the data fields of itself (objects have a notion of this or self). In OOP, computer programs are designed by making them out of objects that interact with one another. OOP languages are diverse, but the most popular ones are class-based, meaning that objects are instances of classes, which also determine their types.

Many of the most widely used programming languages (such as C++, Java, Python, etc.) are multi-paradigm and they support object-oriented programming to a greater or lesser degree, typically in combination with imperative, procedural programming. Significant object-oriented languages include:Java,C++,C#,Python,R,PHP,Visual Basic.NET,JavaScript,Ruby,Perl,SIMSCRIPT,Object Pascal,Objective-C,Dart,Swift,Scala,Kotlin,Common Lisp,MATLAB,andSmalltalk.

Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) is a C++ object-oriented library for developing desktop applications for Windows.

MFC was introduced by Microsoft in 1992 and quickly gained widespread use. While Microsoft has introduced alternative application frameworks since then, MFC remains widely used.

The Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, originally launched by Sony in late 1998. In addition to the original Memory Stick, this family includes the Memory Stick PRO, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity and faster file transfer speeds; Memory Stick Duo, a small-form-factor version of the Memory Stick (including the PRO Duo); the even smaller Memory Stick Micro (M2), and the Memory Stick PRO-HG, a high speed variant of the PRO to be used in high-definition video and still cameras.

As a proprietary format, Sony exclusively used Memory Stick on its products in the 2000s such as Cyber-shot digital cameras, Handycam digital camcorders, WEGA and Bravia TV sets, VAIO PCs, early Walkman digital audio players, and the PlayStation Portable handheld game console, with the format being licensed to a few other companies early in its lifetime. With increasing popularity of SD card, in 2010 Sony started to support the SD card format, which was seen as a Sony loss in the memory-card format war. Despite this, Sony continued to support Memory Stick on certain devices.

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation which produces computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 21 in the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; it was the world's largest software maker by revenue as of 2016. It is considered one of the Big Five companies in the U.S. information technology industry, along with Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

Microsoft (the word being a portmanteau of "microcomputer software") was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016, followed by their acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.

As of 2015, Microsoft is market-dominant in the IBM PC compatible operating system market and the office software suite market, although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android. The company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software for desktops, laptops, tabs, gadgets, and servers, including Internet search (with Bing), the digital services market (through MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing (Azure), and software development (Visual Studio).

Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000, and later envisioned a "devices and services" strategy. This unfolded with Microsoft acquiring Danger Inc. in 2008, entering the personal computer production market for the first time in June 2012 with the launch of the Microsoft Surface line of tablet computers, and later forming Microsoft Mobile through the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has scaled back on hardware and has instead focused on cloud computing, a move that helped the company's shares reach its highest value since December 1999.

Earlier dethroned by Apple in 2010, in 2018 Microsoft reclaimed its position as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. In April 2019, Microsoft reached the trillion-dollar market cap, becoming the third U.S. public company to be valued at over $1 trillion after Apple and Amazon respectively. As of 2020, Microsoft has the third-highest global brand valuation.

Medium frequency (MF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies (RF) in the range of 300 kilohertz (kHz) to 3 megahertz (MHz). Part of this band is the medium wave (MW) AM broadcast band. The MF band is also known as the hectometer band as the wavelengths range from ten to one hectometer (1000 to 100 m). Frequencies immediately below MF are denoted low frequency (LF), while the first band of higher frequencies is known as high frequency (HF). MF is mostly used for AM radio broadcasting, navigational radio beacons, maritime ship-to-shore communication, and transoceanic air traffic control.