In the easiest possible way of saying it:
A dual core process is a processor that has 2 processors in it.
A Triple core processor is a processor that has 3 processors in it.
and you guessed it a quad core processor is a processor that has 4 processors in it.
All its basically means in term of a human analergy (sorry my spelling is bad) is that the cores are the brains of the processors doing all the thinking and caluclating, so the more "brains" a CPU has the more it can do at once or if programed right the faster it can process data. Although there are some issues with software not being writen to take advantage of the multiple core but this will not be an issue as the standard is now a dual core CPU and software writers will catch up.
In regards to what exactly is an Intel Core 2 Duo it is intels next generation processor that was developed by the laptop processor team. It is a new way of processor thinking and it basically is faster and consums alot less power than the lod net burst P4 processors.
