Information
In`for`ma´tion
| n. | 1. | The act of informing, or communicating knowledge or intelligence. |
| 2. | Any fact or set of facts, knowledge, news, or advice, whether communicated by others or obtained by personal study and investigation; any datum that reduces uncertainty about the state of any part of the world; intelligence; knowledge derived from reading, observation, or instruction. |
| 3. | (Law) A proceeding in the nature of a prosecution for some offense against the government, instituted and prosecuted, really or nominally, by some authorized public officer on behalf of the government. It differs from an indictment in criminal cases chiefly in not being based on the finding of a grand jury. See Indictment. |
| 4. | (Information Theory) A measure of the number of possible choices of messages contained in a symbol, signal, transmitted message, or other information-bearing object; it is usually quantified as the negative logarithm of the number of allowed symbols that could be contained in the message; for logarithms to the base 2, the measure corresponds to the unit of information, the hartley, which is log210, or 3.323 bits; called also information content. The smallest unit of information that can be contained or transmitted is the bit, corresponding to a yes-or-no decision. |
| 5. | (Computers) Useful facts, as contrasted with raw data; as, among all this data, there must be some interesting information. |
INFORMATION. An accusation or complaint made in writing to a court of
competent jurisdiction, charging some person with a specific violation of
some public law. It differs in nothing from an indictment in its form and
substance, except that it is filed at the discretion of the proper law
officer of the government, ex officio, without the intervention or approval
of a grand jury. 4 Bl. Com. 308, 9.
2. In the French law, the term information is used to signify the act
or instrument which contains the depositions of witnesses against the
accused. Poth. Proc. Cr. sect. 2, art. 5.
3. Informations have for their object either to punish a crime or
misdemeanor, and these have,.perhaps, never been resorted to in the United
States or to recover penalties or forfeitures, which are quite common. For
the form and requisites of an information for a penalty, see 2 Chit. Pr. 155
to 171. Vide Blake's Ch. 49; 14 Vin. Ab. 407; 3 Story, Constitution, Sec.
1780 3 Bl. Com. 261.
4. In summary proceedings before justices of the peace, the complaint
or accusation, at least when the proceedings relate to a penalty, is called
an information, and it is then taken down in writing and sworn to. As the
object is to limit the informer to a certain charge, in order that the
defendant may know what he has to defend, and the justice may limit the
evidence and his subsequent adjudication to the allegations in the
information, it follows that the substance of the particular complaint must
be stated and it must be sufficiently formal to contain all material
averments. 8 T. R. 286; 5 Barn. & Cres. 251; 11 E. C. L. R. 217; 2 Chit. Pr.
156. See 1 Wheat. R. 9.
ALGOL,
COBOL,
ESP,
FORTRAN,
accusal,
accusation,
accusing,
acquaintance,
advice,
allegation,
allegement,
alphabetic data,
alphanumeric code,
angular data,
answer,
arraignment,
assembler,
bail,
bill of particulars,
binary digit,
binary scale,
binary system,
bit,
blame,
brass tacks,
bringing of charges,
bringing to book,
broadcast journalism,
bug,
byte,
catechization,
charge,
coaching,
command pulses,
commands,
commerce,
communication,
communion,
compiler,
complaint,
computer code,
computer language,
computer program,
congress,
connection,
contact,
control signals,
controlled quantity,
conversation,
converse,
corpus,
correcting signals,
correspondence,
count,
datum,
dealing,
dealings,
delation,
denouncement,
denunciation,
didactics,
direction,
dirt,
dope,
edification,
education,
enlightenment,
error,
error signals,
essential facts,
essentials,
exchange,
experience,
expertise,
facts,
factual base,
familiarity,
feedback pulses,
feedback signals,
film data,
gen,
guidance,
hexadecimal system,
illumination,
impeachment,
implication,
imputation,
indictment,
info,
innuendo,
input data,
input quantity,
insinuation,
instruction,
instructions,
interaction,
interchange,
intercommunication,
intercommunion,
intercourse,
interplay,
intimacy,
journalism,
ken,
know-how,
knowing,
lawsuit,
laying of charges,
linguistic intercourse,
lore,
low-down,
machine language,
message,
multiple messages,
news,
news agency,
news medium,
news service,
newsiness,
newsletter,
newsmagazine,
newspaper,
newsworthiness,
noise,
numeric data,
octal system,
oscillograph data,
output data,
output quantity,
pedagogics,
pedagogy,
plaint,
play,
polar data,
poop,
practical knowledge,
presentment,
press association,
private knowledge,
private teaching,
privity,
programmed instruction,
prosecution,
punch-card data,
radio,
random data,
ratio cognoscendi,
rectangular data,
reeducation,
reference quantity,
reply,
report,
reportage,
reproach,
response,
ruly English,
schooling,
science,
self-instruction,
self-knowledge,
self-teaching,
signals,
single messages,
social intercourse,
speaking,
speech,
speech circuit,
speech situation,
spoon-feeding,
suit,
talking,
taxing,
teaching,
technic,
technics,
technique,
telegraph agency,
telepathy,
television,
the data,
the details,
the dope,
the facts,
the fourth estate,
the information,
the particulars,
the picture,
the press,
the scoop,
the score,
the specifics,
the whole story,
tidings,
touch,
traffic,
truck,
true bill,
tuition,
tutelage,
tutorage,
tutoring,
tutorship,
two-way communication,
unorganized data,
unspoken accusation,
veiled accusation,
visible-speech data,
wire service,
wisdom,
word