Arachnids On The Web

A.E. Siegman

Computers have always been susceptible to various kinds of insects and parasites. Computer programs contain bugs, or programming errors, which are bad. They can also house worms, which are unpleasant, or even computer viruses, which can be very damaging. Now the Internet itself has become infested with "web crawlers," spider-like programs that creep around the World Wide Web gathering and digesting electronic information — but these new computer arachnids can be very good for you and your research.

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