Technology Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Select designates where the next action will occur.

Selecting a file, a cell or a stretch of text marks it as the target of whatever command follows. This select-then-act sequence is the basic grammar of the graphical interface.

Answer: B

The three Boolean operators are AND, OR and NOT.

AND narrows a search to results containing both terms, OR widens it to either, and NOT excludes. George Boole set out the algebra in 1854, and it underlies both search and digital logic.

Answer: A

WWW stands for the World Wide Web.

Tim Berners-Lee proposed it at CERN in 1989 and built the first server and browser in 1990. It is the system of linked hypertext documents that runs over the internet, not the internet itself.

Answer: D

AOL stands for America Online.

It was the dominant consumer internet service of the 1990s in the United States, its CDs mailed to millions of households. Its merger with Time Warner in 2000 is often cited as the worst in corporate history.

Answer: C

A computer that has gradually slowed is most likely infected with adware or spyware.

Such software runs continuously in the background, consuming processor time, memory and network bandwidth. A processor does not wear out and produce slower results; it either works or it does not.

Answer: A

ENIAC was an early mainframe computer.

Built at the University of Pennsylvania and unveiled in 1946, it had 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighed 30 tonnes and was programmed by rewiring. It was the first general-purpose electronic computer.

Answer: A

The difference is that one is public and the other private.

An intranet uses the same protocols as the internet but is restricted to one organisation, behind a firewall. The internet is open to everyone.

Answer: A

RAM stands for random access memory.

Any location can be read or written in the same time, regardless of position - unlike tape, which must be wound through. It is volatile: its contents vanish when power is removed.

Answer: A

OS/2 was produced by IBM.

It was developed with Microsoft from 1985 as the successor to DOS, but Microsoft turned to Windows and IBM continued alone. OS/2 was technically strong but never won the market.

Answer: A

The first IBM Personal Computer was launched on 12 August 1981.

The IBM 5150 had a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 and 16 KB of memory. Because IBM used off-the-shelf parts and published the specifications, other makers could build compatible machines, which is how the PC became a standard.