stake

n 1: a right or legal share of something; a financial involvement

with something; "they have interests all over the

world"; "a stake in the company's future" [syn: {interest}]

2: a pole or stake set up to mark something (as the start of a

race track) [syn: {post}]

3: a vertical post that a victim is tied to for execution by

burning

4: the money risked on a gamble [syn: {stakes}, {bet}, {wager}]

v 1: put at risk; "I will stake my good reputation for this"

[syn: {venture}, {hazard}, {adventure}, {jeopardize}]

2: place a bet on; "Which horse are you backing?" "I'm betting

on the new horse" [syn: {bet on}, {back}, {gage}, {game},

{punt}]

3: mark with a stake; "stake out the path" [syn: {post}]

4: tie or fasten to a stake; "stake your goat"

5: kill by piercing with a spear or sharp pole; "the enemies

were impaled and left to die" [syn: {impale}]

state

How something is; its

configuration, attributes, condition, or information content.

The state of a system is usually temporary (i.e. it changes

with time) and volatile (i.e. it will be lost or reset to some

initial state if the system is switched off).

A state may be considered to be a point in some {space} of all

possible states. A simple example is a light, which is either

on or off. A complex example is the electrical activation in

a human brain while solving a problem.

In computing and related fields, states, as in the light

example, are often modelled as being {discrete} (rather than

continuous) and the transition from one state to another is

considered to be instantaneous. Another (related) property of

a system is the number of possible states it may exhibit.

This may be finite or infinite. A common model for a system

with a finite number of discrete state is a {finite state

machine}.

[{Jargon File}]

(1996-10-13)