Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 3.8
An expansion card TV tuner
Source: Wikipedia, © Darkone
Although you may be able to capture TV shows with your TV tuner to watch
later, you must be aware of the legal implications of doing so in the country
where you're capturing the TV signal. Some countries place legal limitations
on doing this, and in many nations, sharing such recordings may be illegal.
Networking
A
network
is a group of two or more computers that are connected in order to share data
and resources. Networks can connect computers that are physically near to each other (a
local area network, or LAN
), or computers that are halfway around the world from one
another (a
wide area network, or WAN
). The Internet is the biggest WAN of them all,
connecting millions of LANs and individual PCs.
The most common resource shared on a network is hard-disk space. One PC can access a
hard disk on another PC through the network. The Internet's main functionality also involves
fi le sharing; whenever you access a website, you're reading a fi le from the remote server's
hard drive. Another commonly shared network resource is printer access. One user can send
