disks, the boot sector also contains a program that loads the
operating system.
Boot virus A virus that infects the boot sector of a fixed or floppy disk.
An attempt to boot from a diskette infected with a boot sector
virus will cause the virus to become active in memory. Every
time you boot your system from that point on, you will have
the virus active in memory.
Browser Short for Web browser, a software application used to locate
and display Web pages. The two most popular browsers are
Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Both of
these aregraphical browsers, whichmeans that theycan display
graphics as well as text. In addition, most modern browsers
can presentmultimedia information,including sound andvideo,
though they require plug-ins for some formats.
Command line In a command line interface, the user types commands in the
space provideddirectly on thescreen usingcommand language.
Cookie Within the Internet industry, cookies are described as small
files containing information about individual computers that
can be analyzed and used by advertisers to track your online
interests and tastes. In this realm, cookie technology is still
being developed and the intention is to target ads directly to
what you've said your interests are. It's a double-edge sword
for manypeople because onone hand, it'sefficient andpertinent
as you only see ads about what you're interested in. On the
other hand, it involves actually "tracking" and "following"
where you go and what you click. Understandably so, there is
a debate over privacy and many people feel offended by the
notion that they are viewed as a "SKU number" (you know,
the bar code on the back of packages that gets scanned at the
grocery check-outline). Whilethis viewpointmay be extreme,
in some cases it is accurate.
Disk drive It's a machine that reads data from and writes data onto a disk.
A hard disk drive reads and writes hard disks.
A floppy drive accesses floppy disks.
Disk drives can be either internal (housed within a computer)
or external (housed in a separate box that connects to the
computer).
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Glossary
