Day 9- Operating Systems

1 and 3. When Steve Jobs quoted Picasso, he meant that anybody can just sort of copy and immitate something, but if you can manage to steal it so that what you have IS the "original", then you've done something more successful. He meant that Apple STOLE the GUI from Xerox which made Apple better than Microsoft- Microsoft only managed to half-heartedly COPY the idea from Apple. In a way, Jobs was right since Apple is credited with creating GUI by most people. However, the courts didn't agree with Jobs- courts ruled that both Apple and Microsoft had copied and therefore neither were very great... : (

2. Basically, Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infrigement when Microsoft copied their main chance at staying in the computer "race", GUI. What the courts found, however, was that Apple couldn't sue since they had actually taken the idea of Xerox. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation)

4. Windows currently dominates the market with 93%, and Mac is lagging behind with about 6% according to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8 in August of 2009.

This is the very fuzzy version of the pie chart on the website.

Day 7: Decoding Binary

01000010011001010010000001110011011101010111001001100101001000000
11101000110111100100000011001000111001001101001011011100110101100
10000001111001011011110111010101110010001000000100111101110110011
00001011011000111010001101001011011100110010100101110

This says "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"

To decode this you would have to figure out that each segment of 8 numbers (one byte) represents a letter. Then, you'd have to find out that each byte is actually a binary representation of a decimal number. And, these decimal numbers have sequential correlations with letters. So, A is 65, B is 66, and the pattern continues.

If B is 66, its binary equivalent is 01000010, the first letter in this segment.
Once the capital alphabet has been complete, there are 7 characters and then the lower case alphabet follows. That is why the second letter in this string of code, e, i s 01100101 which equals 101 in decimal numbers.

Below is a link to a website that has a chart explaining the decimal equivalents for each coded letter, word, or symbol. When these decimal numbers are converted to binary, it is called ASCII

http://www.asciitable.com/

Day 7: Improved punch card

To improve the punch card, we decided to divide the punch card in half length ways. Since we only need to store letters A-Z and some punctuation, we figured that would total about 36 characters (including space). So, we could store all 36 characters with different combinations of six. Basically, we're using an idea more similar to bytes, but with 6 instead of 8. What were originally called rows 12-3 and rows 4-9 will each now be rows 1-6. This way, our punch card would store twice as much data on the same space. So, for example we'll use 0 and 1 as not punched and punched.

000000= SPACE
000001= A
000010= B
000100= C
etc
000011= G
000110= H
etc
Finally, the last 9 combinations would be used for basic punctuation
. , ( ) - ? ! / *

For example:
111100= !
011111= /
111110= ?
111111= *

So, if the first and second columns read like this vertically:
001000000001 001000000000 it would say DAD

Day 6- Punch cards

So, these crazy little punch card guys- not that complicated IF you have a chart to decode them with. So, basically the card has columns of the digits 0-9. And there are also two places to punch above those two that count as "11" and "12". Eleven is the lower one, and twelve is the top-most punch area.

So, here is sot of the basic code for how to form letters and numbers on the punch card:

To type the number 0, punch out 0

To type the number 1, punch out 1

etc.

0-9 stand only for numbers.

If 11 is punched, it is -

If 12 is punched, it is *

If 0, 11 or 12 are punched in combination with one of the other digits, it is a letter.

For example, the letter A is formed by punching out 12 and 1 in the same column

B is formed by 12 and 2

C= 12 and 3

D= 12 and 4

etc

I= 12 and 9

J= 11 and 1

K=11 and 2

etc

R= 11 and 9

Here's a wierd one- 0 and 1 punched together means /

Then, S= 0 and 2

all the way to the end, Z= 0 and 9

Some other special characters are formed by combining punches. For example, when 12, 3, and 8 are all punched on the same column, that is a period. When 11, 4, and 8 are all punched on the same column that means *.

This is a good picture of a punch card where the answer to the punches is written at the top, so you can see if you got it right once you decode it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Punch-card-5081.jpg

If you want to read a really confusing explanation go here! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_card#IBM_80_column_punch_card_format

Day 5- Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering is a process to copy something without actually copying it, therefore avoiding the legal implications and copyright laws. What Compaq did when they reverse engineered Rom-Bios is, they had somebody (or a team of people?) figure out exactly what it was the Rom-Bios did and write that all down. Then, a team of people who knew nothing about Rom-Bios came in, were given a computer without Rom-Bios and a list of all the things that needed to happen once they had developed their own Rom-Bios. So, basically reverse engineering is taking a finished product and back-tracking- figuring out how it was made- then making your own. Since there is only knowledge of the end result, and not of the making process, the new engineers couldn't "copy" Rom-Bios they could technically only create a new one that worked exactly the same way. In many ways, reverse engineering could just lead to a new way of making the same old thing- perhaps cheaper or faster or more environmentally friendly etc. But, is reverse engineering legal???

Yes, reverse engineering is technically legal since it doesn't break copyright laws. However, it does break patent laws, frequently. So, reverse engineering is legal... IF you can argue against the patent protection. For example, NCSU says you can do one of three things 1.) negotiate a license to use the idea 2.) Claim that the idea is not novel and is an obvious step for anyone experienced in the particular field or 3.) Make a subtle change and claim that the changed product is not protected by patent.


http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/intellectual/reverse/study.php

Day 4- Answering questions

Here is my explanation of the difference between an external and a "regular" hard drive:

http://compscience111.blogspot.com/2009/09/day-two-hardware.html?showComment=1252953582750#c5904329947667210305

Day 2- Hardware

The main question I have about hardware is how do USB drives work? I know that a floppy or a CD are physically altered to store the information and they wear out because of it. Do USB drives have that same problem? Also, why is it that certain USB drives can hold so much more information than others while remaining about the same size?

Stereotypes of Computer "Nerds"

The movie depicted computer enthusiasts as Caucasian (or Asian) men with glasses who had a sort of obsession with electronics. They showed young kids alluding to the idea that these men had always been this way and were sort of born with an obsession to tinker with electronics and try to figure these things out. They are shown as not really having friends (or at least friends that aren't just like they are) or girlfriends. They seem to value the computers more than social lives, eating, sleeping, grooming, even going to school. In terms of eating they ate basically when they had to, or when they remembered, they ate junk food like pizza and thrived off of caffeine and soda. The movie explains them as using computers to escape the confusing world of women and personality etc. They appreciated electronics because of the simplistic idea of math and programs that led to the same results if done properly every time.
I think that quite a few of these stereotypes are still true. I know that the electronics nerds do tend to be so wrapped up in what they're doing that they forget to eat or they eat what is convenient and keeps them going. But they are not all men anymore. Neither are they single. Though I think often the electronic obsessed males frequently are attracted to girls with the same obsession. I think the lifestyle is kind of stayed pretty similar but what has changed the most is the demographic. Anybody can become one of the "obsessive nerds" and in fact magazines frequently write about how parents can keep their children from becoming obsessed with electronics (including watching TV, or playing video games, but also programming or writing games or tinkering with programs).

Introduction

Hi! My name is Laura Anderson. I'm a sophomore human services major. To be honest, I am in this class because it fulfills the science requirement and then I don't have to take something like biology or calculus. But I use computers everyday so I suppose it will be beneficial to actually understand why they work.

Hmm... Interesting things about me? I turned 19 yesterday. I have a basset hound puppy named Beau (he's not potty trained... its messy).

That's all I can think of for now.