Chapter 8

Queue

A ____ is a data structure that stores incoming elements such that the first one removed is the first one to arrive (think of a line at a fast-food restraunt). It is used to regulate the usage of various hardware resources in the computer

Page

A ____ is the name given to the fundamental measurement of how much memory has been swapped to the hard disk when using virtual memory. That is, the operating system swaps memory to and from the hard disk in whole ____. The exact size of a page may vary from OS to OS.

Device Driver

A _____ is a small program that interfaces with an operating system in order to tell it how to use a particular piece of hardware. When you purchase a new expansion card or peripheral for the computer it will often come with a disk that has the drivers for that device.

Diagnostic Utility

A ______ scans your computer and compiles a report indicating your hardware configuration and all system settings. This report is very helpful to computer technicians who are trying to find and solve problems with your computer. Some ______ can even automatically report and fix common problems

Plug and Play

A _______ device is one that an operating system automatically recognizes and installs the correct driver for.

Stand-alone OS

A _______ has been designed so that it can function on its own without connecting to a network. Examples of modern _______ include: Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 Mac OSX Linux

File Manager

A _______ is a utility program that comes with most OSes that allows one to browse, copy, paste, move, delete, and work with files. Some file managers provide different views and can even show thumbnails of image files.

Network OS

A ________ is designed to be used within a network and much of its functionality is focused on being online. Most network OSes are designed to provide services and to manage over a network. Examples include: Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 Linux Solaris

Virus

A harmful computer program.

Embedded OS

An ______ is designed to work on limited hardware such as that found on cell phones and PDAs. Examples include: Windows CE Windows Mobile Palm OS Symbian

Operating System (OS)

An ________ is the interface between the hardware, user, and application programs. It is responsible for coordinating most of the activities of a computer and for managing shared resources such as memory, hard disks, CD ROM drives, and printers.

Virtual Memory

Often the amount of physical RAM memory that one has within a computer is not enough to store the data needed for all of the programs that are running. In order to deal with this, the operating system takes some of the less used elements in memory and sends them to a file, the swap file, located on the hard disk. When the swapped out data is needed, the OS reads it back into memory and swaps out something else. Because this has the appearance of making it seem that the RAM memory is bigger that it actually is, this process is know as _________.

Anti-Spyware Software

Spyware is the name given to annoying programs that stay on your computer and keep track of your computer use. They may watch where you go on the web or what types of applications you use. Frequently, they will share the information they collect with advertisers. One way to help prevent this is to make use of _______ on the computer.

Platform

The term _____ is commonly used to indicate a combination of hardware along with the operating system that supports it. For example, most personal computers have fallen into either the Mac or Windows/PC platforms. However, now that Apple has adopted the same hardware as most PCs, the term ____ is becoming more of a synonym for OS.

Swap File

This is the location on the hard disk used to store elements that have been swapped out of RAM memory by an OS that supports virtual memory (see below).

Stand-alone Utility program

This term is used to indicate any utility program that comes separate from the operating system. For example, most anti-virus and anti-spyware programs much be purchased separately from the OS.

POST

___ is short for power-on self-test and is a collection of tests that are run by the BIOS at boot time in order to determine what resources the computer has available and which are working correctly.

BIOS

____ is short for basic input output system. It is the firmware located on the motherboard that instructs the processor how to power up the computer and locate the operating system.

Booting

____ is the process of starting up a computer.

UNIX

_____ is a computer operating system developed in 1969 at Bell Labs. It was very popular in colleges and was one of the earliest multi-tasking OSes. It has given rise to many modern systems such as Linux, OS X, and Solaris.

Anti-Virus Software

______ attempts to keep a system free of computer viruses and malware. It can do this by scanning the system for files that match the signature of a known virus or it can watch for suspicious behavior common to viruses. In many cases, a good ______ will utilize both approaches.

Encryption

______ is the process of converting data into and incomprehensible format that can only be decoded by those that know the correct key.

Spooling

______ is the process of queuing up jobs to be output on a printer.

Thrashing Occurs

_________ when the OS spends much of its time paging (virtual memory) instead of executing applications.