Internet glossary

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Fair use - Fair use is the concept in copyright law that some limited copying of copyrighted material is permissible in certain circumstances. A complete work may never be copied. The broadest permissions are for educational purposes, such as copying an article from a magazine or a chapter from a book for a class to use. Other more restrictive permitted uses are short excerpts for purposes of news reporting, criticism, and parody.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) - FAQs are documents that list and answerthe most common questions on a particular subject. There are hundreds of FAQs on subjects as diverse as Pet Grooming and Cryptography. FAQs are usually written by people who have tired of answering the same question over and over.

FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) - A standard for transmitting data on optical fiber cables at a rate of around 100,000,000 bits-per-second (10 times as fast as 10-BaseTEthernet, about twice as fast as T-3).

Finger - An Internet software tool for locating people on other Internet sites. Finger is also sometimes used to give access to non-personal information, but the most common use is to see if a person has an account at a particular Internet site. Many sites do not allow incoming Finger requests, but many do. Internet glossary.

Fire Wall - A combination of hardware and software that separates a Network into two or more parts for security purposes.

Flame - Originally, "flame" meant to carry forth in a passionate manner in the spirit of honorable debate. Flames most often involved the use of flowery language and flaming well was an art form. More recently flame has come to refer to any kind of derogatory comment no matter how witless or crude.

Flame War - When an online discussion degenerates into a series of personal attacks against the debators, rather than discussion of their positions. A heated exchange.

Frames - A technique used in web pages to divide the page into multiple windows, where each window is called a frame and can contain its own separate page. The advantage of frames is that one window can be scrolled or changed while other windows remain fixed for such purposes as keeping a menu in view all the time. The disadvantage is that not all browsers support them. Internet glossary.

Freeware - A software that is offered for free download.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - A very common method of moving files between two Internet sites. FTP is a way to login to another Internet site for the purposes of retrieving and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have established publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained using FTP, by logging in using the account name "anonymous", thus these sites are called "anonymous ftp servers". FTP was invented and in wide use long before the advent of the World Wide Web and originally was always used from a text-only interface.