thegreatbeyond

what does RSVP stand for?

when you are 'online' or 'offline', which line are they referring to? Is it an antiquated term at present when said to in comparison to DSL and Cable?

RSVP is an acronym for "répondez s'il vous plaît", which is French for "please respond". Source: http://entertaining.about.com/cs/etique ... 122500.htm

The term online used to refer to a dial-up connection, but it still has meaning today. When you were connected via dial-up, you were using the phone line, or "on line". When you finished using the connection, you stopped using the phone line, or "off line". In the present, they simply mean whether or not you are connected to the internet in some way.

For what reason(s) was Holden Caulfield (Catcher In The Rye) so psychotic?

'Cuz it was a good book!

It's never clearly explained in the book, but the editors over at Wikipedia hypothesize that it is due to his younger brother, Allie Caulfield, who is dead by the time the book begins. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catcher_in_the_Rye

when you do the disk cleanup thing, what does the "compress old files" option do exactly?
It doesn't some to affect anything except the file size
does it make accessing copressed files slower?

The "Compress old files" option finds files on your computer that haven't been accessed in a whlie and compresses them. This means they take up less disk space, but it takes more time to read and write them because the file must first be decompressed to read it and compressed again to write to it. This makes sense since the program would only compress files that you never use. On modern computers, where space is abundant, however, this option makes less and less sense to use.

what's the ethernet?

Ethernet is the protocol by which most computers send and receive frames on a LAN. Ethernet belongs in the data link layer of the OSI model, which means that it concerns itself with putting frames on the physical layer and taking them off, as well as handling multiple computers on the same line. (For those who don't know, a frame is just a block of data plus a header telling where the frame should go. It's similar to a packet, but much lower in the stack than TCP or UDP.) Source: the networking class I just took.

what do the Latin phrases (summa/magna) cum laude translate to?

cum laude = with honor
magna cum laude = with great honor
summa cum laude = with greatest honor
These phrases are commonly used to indicate the performance of one who earns a degree at a college or university. Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/latin-honors

Is it possible that us humans are actually alien?

Deep! Not the hardest question to answer, since it's an "it is possible" question, but still pretty deep!

What is the highest flying bird?

what is the lowest flying plane?

The origin of humanity is still shrouded in secrecy, though we are making many advances into that area. Fossilized remains of pre-humans show that we've either been around a long time or someone/something made up an elaborate hoax. Assuming the fossils are real, for humanity to have been alien to Earth, we'd have needed to show up quite a long time ago, before most civilizations emerged, to make these fossils. Since we don't have a recorded history (or even much evidence) from that point in time, an alien humanity can't be ruled out. There is much evidence to the contrary, however, like our similarity to many other species on the planet (99 percent DNA similarity with some species). In short, it's possible, but unlikely.

The highest flying bird is the Ruppell's Vulture, one of which hit a plane at 37,000 feet. Source: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/con ... rdid=51479

This question is more confusing than you think. According to Dictionary.com, an airplane is "[a]ny of various winged vehicles capable of flight, generally heavier than air and driven by jet engines or propellers." This definition includes remote control planes that can fly just a few feet off the ground. I believe you only wanted to know the lowest flying plane among those that people can at least sit in. It doesn't get less complicated since most single-person planes can get as low to the ground as you want, as long as you can keep the speed up to maintain lift. Therefore, the "lowest-flying" airplane would be many different ones, like the Cessna propeller driven planes.