Letter B


B2B              Business to Business trade or transactions especially over web.


Backup           Refers to a copy of a disk or group(s) for files for safe keeping.
                 Regular backups help prevent loss of data due to unexpected
                 circumstances.


Base Memory      Refers to the first 640Kb of RAM used by DOS program (also
                 called Conventional RAM).

								 
Basic            Beginners All purpose Symbolic  Instruction Code. Programming
                 language using easy to remember commands such as LET, INPUT,
                 PRINT, IF, GOTO etc. See Pure Basic.

Bash             Bourne Again Shell. A shell or command line used on Unix and Linux Systems.

BBS              Bulletin Board System. A computer which hosts files and message
                 areas for people to log into and download via modem. Very popular
                 before the Internet became available.


BeOS             An old alternative multimedia operating system by Be Inc for PCs. See Haiku.


Beta             Software that is in final stages of development but may have
                 a few features left out or bugs to remove.

                 
Binary           Numbering system using two digits (0,1). Commonly used on 
                 computer systems.


BIOS             Basic Input Output System. A ROM chip that occurs in most 
                 PCs providing basic keyboard access and text based graphics
                 for DOS.

								 
Bit              Binary digit. Represents 0 or 1. Lowest form of computer memory.


Blitter          High speed data transfer chip to move blocks of memory.


Blog             A weblog or diary of events for people, events or life experience.


Bluetooth        Wireless communciation protocol between computers. Commonly used
                 to communicate with other small devices such as PDAs, Phones etc.
                 See Bluetooth web site.


Blu-ray          High definition DVD Disc format (alternative is HD-DVD) which can
                 hold 25 or 50GB of data. More info here.


BMP              Bitmap format for picture files.


Boot             Usually refers to starting up a computer from power on. a Reboot
                 usually means to restart the computer from scratch usually to
                 clear memory or after a crash.

BootManager      Programs to manage and load an operating system e.g. MS DOS' MSDOS.SYS,
                 NTLoader for Windows NT, BCD for Windows 8, 10 and Grub for Linux or Unix.

BOOTP            Bootstrap Protocol. Used to resolve IP addresses with Ethernet
                 hardware addresses. Replaced by DHCP.

Bootstrap        A framework of HTML, CSS and javascript for developing mobile-first 
                 web sites.

Bridge           Links two networks together of different topologies to allow data 
                 flow between them.  Needs two network cards/connections to work.

                 
Broadband        A network that can send/receive data at high speed and more data
                 at once such as ADSL, ISDN and LANs.

Broadcom         Common supplier of computer hardware incl. network devices.
                                 
Bug              A mistake or fault in a computer program or hardware design.


Burn Proof       A feature of some CD-R/RW drives that pauses the write process
                 to allow data buffers to be filled to prevent Buffer underruns
                 which causes production of incomplete CDs.

                 
Bus              A series of electrical tracks, usually in groups of eight, that
                 transmit data from one part  of the computer to another.

								 
Bus Master       A high speed device that doesn`t require use of CPU for data
                 transfer. See DMA.

BYOD			  Bring your own device e.g. mobile phone, laptop device etc.
								 
Byte             Basic memory size. One byte has 8 bits, so, can contain the decimal
                 equivalent of 0 to 255 (or -128 to 127).