电信英语词典翻译，请指正。...

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$100 billion：What cell phone operators worldwide spent in the late 1990s to buy third generation (3G) licenses from their various governments. By the time I wrote this entry in mid-2003, most of the operators had written off most of the money, since few could see any future for 3G cell phone service. See also 3G.

全世界蜂窝电话运营商在90年代后期从各自政府那里购买第三代（3G）准许证所花费的费用。到2003年年中，我编写这个词条为止，大多数运营商已经勾销了其中大部分钱，因为很少有人看到了3G蜂窝业务的未来。参见3G。

&：The "and" sign. Its real name is an "ampersand."

“与”符号，真正的名字为“ampersand”。

*：Asterisk. Also known as a "splat," "Nathan Hale," or the "star" sign. The term "splat" comes from the poor quality of some early printers, since "*" often looked like a splat of ink. "Nathan Hale" refers to the misquote "I have only one life to give (i.e., ass to risk) for my country." On IVR systems it typically means "No." In computer languages, it often means a multiplication sign. It's also used to represent a wild card or a joker. For example, the DOS command ERASE JOHN.* will erase all the files in that directory beginning with JOHN, e.g. JOHN.TXT, JOHN.NEW, JOHN.OLD, JOHN.BAK, etc. The asterisk was also called amplicon by the old Bell Telephone system, but I don't know why.

星号。也称为“splat”, “Nathan Hale” 或者是“星”号。“splat”一词来自某些早期打印机低劣的质量，因为“*”通常看上去像墨水的溅出的斑点。“Nathan Hale”是指一句错误的引用“我仅有一次生命献给我的祖国”（即愚蠢的冒险）。在IVR（interactive voice response 交互式话音响应系统）系统中，“*”通常指“否”。在计算机语言中，多指乘法符号。该符号也常代表通配符或百搭。例如，DOS命令ERASE JOHN.*删除该目录中以JOHN开始的所有文件如JOHN.TXT,JOHN.NEW,HOHN.OLD,HOHN.BAK等等。在老一代贝尔电话系统中，星号也称为“amplicon”。我不知道为什么。

[此贴子已经被作者于2004-8-29 10:07:16编辑过]