| EA |
Ethernet Address - See Ethernet Address. |
| eBay |
The most well-known Internet auction Site. Sellers, who can be bona fide dealers, honest individuals or scam merchants, offer their wares and set a time limit for bids. Punters search for items of interest and place bids. When the time is up, the highest bid wins. As with all aspects of E-commerce, "caveat emptor": the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center reports that auction fraud has been the top complaint every year since 2000, and cases tripled in 2002 to nearly 50,000. Fraudulent practices include sellers bidding on their own items ("shilling"), offering fake "branded" merchandise and failing to deliver goods after payment. Newcomers should take note that Software is readily available that will place bids automatically in the last minutes or seconds. On the plus side, there are bargains to be had and it is clearly possible to make a living from selling almost anything on eBay, large or small, as several TV documentaries, articles in women's magazines and other sources will testify. |
| ECMAScript |
Synonymous with JavaScript for most purposes. ECMAScript is an ISO standard, whereas JavaScript is the original, proprietary, de facto standard. Don't worry about it - your Browser almost certainly supports both, and more. |
| E-commerce |
Or "ecommerce". Buying and selling on the Internet, including banking, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer. Almost any type of goods or service can now be found for sale on the Internet. Because of the anarchic nature of the Internet, the usual maxim of "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware) is doubled in spades, because there are many potential problems. For example, do you know who the other party bank/trader is, and do you believe that the other party really is who they say they are ? What country are they actually in and what laws (if any) will govern the transaction ? Does the other party take security seriously, and can they back up their promises that 'of course' they do ? Many high profile organisations, including UK banks, have had their ~Online~ computers broken into by thieves looking for credit card details. All of which makes e-commerce a matter of trust, as much as technology. See also *eBay*, *Free Lunch*, *Phishing*, *SSL*. |
| E-mail |
Or "email". A boon or a bain, depending on whether you want to keep in touch with all your relatives in Australia or have to wade through 99 corporate circulars every day. E-mail is one of the great features of the Internet that is genuinely useful across the board. The principle of e-mail is that anyone with an Internet e-mail account can send a written message to anyone else anywhere in the world who also has an e-mail account. Unlike faxing, the recipient's machine does not need to be switched on at the time that the message is sent, so e-mail transcends time-zone difficulties. Sending an e-mail is extremely cheap (until you include typing time), and it is the same price to e-mail to Timbuktu as to Bob down the road. One of the double-edged swords of e-mail is that the same message can be sent to any number of people (well, up to 100, but this can vary), simultaneously, at no extra charge. This has led to several problems: overuse in large organisations because it is so easy to copy in everyone and their dog, and large-scale abuse, known as "Spamming". E-mailing is also the number one propagation method of Viruses. See also E-mail Address, E-mail Attachment, E-mail Client, Inbox, Mailbox, Web Bug. |
| E-mail Address |
In order to send an E-mail to someone, you must have their e-mail address, in the same way that you need their postal address to send them a post card. E-mail addresses look similar to Web Site addresses, but e-mail addresses ALWAYS have an @ (an "at" sign) in the middle. Just one. A couple of other rules: e-mail addresses NEVER have spaces or commas in them, and always have at least one Dot somewhere after (but not next to) the @ sign. E-mail addresses are not ~Case Sensitive~. Examples: mE@Mail.COM is valid, but me.mail@com is not. Don't ever enter your real e-mail address just because a Web site asks you to. Unless you know how to contact the owners and you trust that they will do what you ask, the chances are that you will simply be bombarded with Junk Mail. |
| E-mail Attachment |
A file (of any sort, including malicious Viruses) sent as part of an E-mail. Attachments generally appear as file name(s) in a separate section at the end of an e-mail message. Commonly used for sending photographs of babies to the extended family, but has other uses. A less cuddly use of attachments is for the speedy proliferation of Viruses, which has become an epidemic costing the world economy large sums. The golden rule is "Don't Open an Attachment UNLESS you KNOW What It Is" - never mind whether you know the sender (viruses usually trawl your address book and send themselves to everyone in it, so they often come from someone you know); if you are not expecting an attachment and the e-mail it is attached to is not 100% plausible, don't open it (e-mail/phone the sender and check if you're unsure). If everybody in the world followed this rule, the devastating "Melissa" and "I Love You" worldwide virus attacks would never have happened. Successful virus writers prey on human stupidity and ignorance. One IT support technician from a big company said "users in this organisation would double-click on a land mine just to see what happens..." - don't let that be you! |
| E-mail Client |
A computer application that allows you to handle the composing, sending, receiving, reading and storing of E-mail. The most common example is Microsoft's Outlook Express, which is included with most versions of Windows. E-mail clients are generally much more sophisticated than WebMail for handling e-mails. E-mail clients allow you to compose and read e-mails without being connected to the Internet, which is good if you pay per minute for access. A significant disadvantage is that each client needs to be setup to access specific e-mail accounts, which can be a problem if you want to be able to use several different computers or if lots of people use the same computer. E-mail clients are available for all kinds of computerised devices, including: mobile phones, palm-top computers, cable TV, game consoles, desk telephones and no doubt the next generation of miniature watch/camera/telephone/organiser/dictaphone/translator/music player. Several Browsers have a reasonable e-mail client built-in, including Opera and Netscape. |
| Emoticon |
Another word for "Smiley" :-o (the smiley for "oh"). |
| Encryption |
Because criminals, weirdos and the CIA all have unfettered access to the Internet, you never know who is going to intercept your E-mailsE-mails or other communications on the Internet. Because of this, some people and many organisations use cryptology, or "scrambling" techniques, to protect their privacy. The process of turning a readable message into a scrambled message is called encryption. The opposite is decryption. See also GPG, PGP, PKI, Private Key, Public Key. |
| Ethernet |
The most commonly used type of networking. Other types, such as Token Ring, are becoming obsolete. There are several flavours of Ethernet. The most common at present is "Fast Ethernet". This will eventually be replaced by "Gigabit Ethernet", which is 10 times faster. Two flavours that have already become obsolete are "Thin Ethernet" and the similar "Thick Ethernet", because they are only a tenth the speed of Fast Ethernet and are less reliable, and they no longer have a cost advantage. |
| Ethernet Address |
Every single Ethernet network adapter (see NIC) has a fixed, unique Hardware identity number called either a MAC or an Ethernet Address (EA). Not to be confused with an IP Address which is a software address. MACs/EAs are always expressed as a string of 12 hexadecimal characters (0-9, A-F). The first 6 identify the manufacturer, the other 6 are allocated by the manufacturer. See also MAC Cloning. |
| exe |
Executable - Usually the last part of the filename of a computer program, indicating that the file contains program instructions that can be executed, or "run". If you receive an E-mail Attachment that ends in "exe", on no account open it or run it unless you were expecting it and you know the sender and you know exactly what the attachment is. See also Virus. |
