| LAN | Local Area Network - A Network of computers that are in the same vicinity, such as a school, an office block or a university campus. A LAN can stand alone, or it can be connected to other LANs to form a "Wide Area Network" (WAN). |
| LGfL | Lancashire Grid for Learning - Lancashire County Council's initiative aimed at improving the provision and use of ICT in its educational establishments. See www.lancsngfl.ac.uk for more information. |
| Link | The "Web" in WWW and the "HyperText" in HTML. Links are what the Web is all about. A link is a word or picture on a Web Page that will take you to a different page if you click on it with your mouse. The linked page can be another part of the same Site, or a completely different site. The conventional appearance of a text link in a graphical (i.e. normal) Browser is blue text, underlined. These days however, links come in all shapes, sizes and colours, although the convention of underlining links is still prevalent (and useful, designers please note). Most browsers change the shape of the mouse pointer to a "pointing finger" instead of an arrowhead when the mouse is over a link. Often, this is the only clue that the word or picture is actually a link that can be clicked, which is not clever design. Most text links change colour after they have been "visited". Some browsers such as Opera and Mozilla (but not Internet Explorer) can be switched quickly into a view that strips away the messy, confusing kaleidoscope of colours and fonts that adorn most websites, so that all the text and all the links are shown in a clear, standardised format. This can make browsing very much quicker if you are more interested in finding information than admiring the decor. Feel free to link to any page on www.rs-infotech.com (see our Site Policies). Links can be internal or external, meaning to a page or Anchor on the same site or on a different site. |
| Linux | Where to start ? See Unix first. The word Linux (pronounced "lee-nooks", according to its Finnish creator Linus Torvalds, although lie-nucks is an acceptable anglicisation) is a contraction of Linus and Unix. Linux is a Unix-like Operating System, originally developed in the early 90's to run on lowly PCs (i386s in fact). The key thing about Linux was, and still is, that it is Open Source and to all intents and purposes, free. This made it very popular with computer programmers, and spawned an active community of dedicated non-commercial developers, including the GNU project. The result of all this collaboration is that GNU/Linux is "well-written" (as in "virtually Bugfree") rather than "cheaply-written", and a large proportion of the Internet depends on it. This Web Site, like most others, is running on a GNU/Linux Web Server. Linux now has the support of some big names including the mighty IBM, which is not unrelated to the fact that IBM and Microsoft have fallen out with each other. Some people (including IBM, allegedly) hope that Linux will be the key to undermining and destabilising Microsoft's various monopolies. |
| Log | A chronological list of events, usually recorded automatically by a Server and stored for a predetermined period of time. For example a Proxy Server will usually keep a log of all the Web Pages it has requested, and which Clients or users requested them. Invaluable to Big Brother, as well as technicians. |
| Login | The process or effect of gaining authorised access to a computer system. Most logins require the user to enter a Username and a Password, and allow access to a specific set of computer resources. Logging in is a concept that continually confuses people, usually because they do not understand that a specific Username/Password combination is the "key" to a specific set of resources, and the user needs to know which key is for which resources. See also Authenticate. |
| Logon | Generally synonymous with Login, especially as a verb. |
| LOL | Lots Of Laughter, or Laughing Out Loud - Shorthand often used by people who regularly contribute to Internet discussions such as Instant Messaging or Newsgroups. |