Privacy Rights

Privacy is a valuable thing that is diminishing as technology becomes more developed. More peoples information is stored and kept in databases, and unfortunately, it is difficult to stay out of every single database. I feel that it is wrong for information about you to be stored, information including presonal conversations via e-mail, phone conversations, instant messaging, etc. Somewhere in the world, there is at least one piece of information about every single person in the world. As technology develops, the world becomes more like the world is in the novel "Feed" by M. Anderson.

October Vocabulary

Software (application): The programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of the hardware and direct its operation.


Shareware: Copyrighted software that is available free of charge on a trial basis, usually with the condition that users pay a fee for continued use and support.


Public domain: A domain not protected under patent or copyright.


Freeware: Software that is available for free, usually over the Internet.


Commercial software: Software that is designed and developed for sale to the general public.


Integrated Software: A collection of computer programs designed to work together to handle an application, either by passing data from one to another or as components of a single system.


User Manual: a technical communication document intended to give assistance to people using a particular system.


Registration card: A card issued for means of registering.


Serial Number: A number that is one of a series and is used for identification, as of a machine, weapon, or motor vehicle.


Warranty: A guarantee given to the purchaser by a company stating that a product is reliable and free from known defects and that the seller will, without charge, repair or replace defective parts within a given time limit and under certain conditions.


Copyright: The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work.


Multi-user license: A software license that allows more than one person to use the software.


Single user license: A software license that allows one person to use the software.


Site license: A license to use software within a facility.


Compression: The process by which data is compressed into a form that minimizes the space required to store or transmit it.


Decompression: The act of reversing data compression.

Back-up: To duplicate a file or program so that the original is not lost.

Back door (trapdoor): A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers.

Upload: To transfer (data or programs), usually from a peripheral computer or device to a central, often remote computer.

Download: To transfer (data or programs) from a server or host computer to one's own computer or device.

Wizard: Instructional help in an application or system development environment that guides the user through a series of multiple choice questions to accomplish a task.

Template: A document or file having a preset format, used as a starting point for a particular application so that the format does not have to be recreated each time it is used.

GUI: An interface for issuing commands to a computer utilizing a pointing device, such as a mouse, that manipulates and activates graphical images on a monitor.

Command-line Interface: On a display screen, the space following a prompt (such as $) where a text instruction to a computer or device is typed.

Voice recognition: The conversion of spoken words into computer text. Speech is first digitized and then matched against a dictionary of coded waveforms.

Field: An element of a database record in which one piece of information is stored.

Key field: A field in a segment or record that holds the value of a key to that record.

Record: A collection of related, often adjacent items of data, treated as a unit.

Search: To look for specific data in a file or an occurrence of text in a file.

Query: To interrogate a collection of data such as records in a database.

Sort: A group of data of the same general character.

Database Management System: A special data processing system, or part of a data processing system, which aids in the storage, manipulation, reporting, management, and control of data.

Mail Merge: The process of combining a form letter with a list of names and addresses to produce individualized letters.

Flat-file database: A database system in which each database contains only one file, which is not linked to any other file.

Relational database: A database system in which any database file can be a component of more than one of the database's tables.

Data redundancy: The occurrence of values for data elements more than once within a file or database.

Data integrity: the condition in which data is identically maintained during any operation such as transfer, storage or retrieval.