day 9- Triumph of the Nerds part 3

1. Steve Jobs was refering to how Microsoft stole apple's GUI. This quote is actually a stab at microsoft. He means you need some skill to steal and make something sucessful rather than just copy it. some innovation is needed to be agreat artist, but either way, there is a negative connotation and you can tell Jobs was really mad that his idea was ripped off.

2. The lawsuit was filed by Apple against Microsoft and basically said Microsoft had taken Apple's GUI elements and tried to pass them off as their own. Apple did not win the lawsuit, but it was a major controversy.

3. I think Jobs was definitely talking about his situation with microsoft, and that the great artist was Microsoft. I think he meant they got away with stealing his ideas and were able to profit from them, making tehm a great artist rather than a copy-cat that was not successful.

4. Mac's market share has continued to rise. Here is a link to a picture I found:
http://k-line.org/9/images/March09LinuxMarketShare.jpg
You can see Windows owns the majority, but is very closely followed by Mac. This picture is from April 2009.

Day 7 Labs

Lab 1: We looked at new ways to store information on a punch card, rather than the system that is already being used. The new way looks at each column as a separate character and uses a letter's binary code to determine what letter gets punched. For example, to make an A you would punch the number 9 because A's binary code is 00000001. A is the first letter in the alphabet, and therefore it is assigned number 1. Each letter in the alphabet has a number according to when it comes in the alphabet. You find what this number is, then figure out how you would make it in binary, then punch the appropriate numbers in each column. When starting the word Lorem, you would punch 6 and 7 in the first column to make the letter L, since in binary 12 is 00001100. This may seem confusing to decribe in words, but this way of storing data is a good alternative to the one already established.

Lab 2: This string translated to "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine". I admit I put the string into a conversion calculator, but what the computer is doing to decode it is somewhat simple to do. Each letter or symbold is a different binary code. So, each 8 numbers in the string represents a letter of text. Each capital, lowercase, and symbol has a different binary code. For example, the first 8 numbers of the string are 01000010, which makes a capitol B in ASCII code. Using a conversion chart, you can decyfer each byte and find its meaning in text. The link to the converter I used is : http://www.livephysics.com/ptools/binary-text.php

Day 6- How to Read a Punch Card

Reading a punch card is not as difficult as you may think once you have the steps down. First, you will need to have a format key to know what punches make what letter. You will be comparing the key to the punch card you are trying to read. The picture I used was: http://www.diycalculator.com/imgs/paper-05.gif

Basically, every column that has a punch or punches is a single letter, number, or symbol. For example, if I saw that the top row and the 4 were punched out in one column, I would use my key to see that this is the letter D. Go from left to right, decifering each column one by one. This is basically a matching game- comparing the key with your card to match up the punches and see what the card reads. There are different forms of punch cards, though, so you must make sure your key and punch card are the same format and have the same number of columns. A good site to read more about this is:http://www.scribd.com/doc/6915598/IBM-Punch-Cards . This site also has a good key to compare your card to.
Reading a punch card may take some time, but it is not as hard as you may think it is at first glance. Just look at each column that has a punch separately, and use a key to see what those punches mean.

Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering is the concept of seeing how something works after it has already been created by someone else. You are basically copying something that you already know. For example, if you take apart an electronic device such as a CD player, then constructing a smiliar one from the same components, this is reverse engineering. In the case of the movie, Compaq took apart IBM's computer to see how it worked, then created a replica of their own.

Legally, some forms of reverse engineering are ok. However, reverse engineering often violates copyright laws. Some software specifically makes reverse engineering illegaly in their liscensed use laws. However, in many cases, reverse engineering is legal and seen as a way of discovery and inspration of ideas. In is seen as a way to advance technology, rather than just steal and duplicate. For instance, congress has protected reverse engineering in some cases when inventing chips- by re-making and figuring out how old chips work, people can invent new ones that are even better. The line is a bit different with software and hardware, but there is not a clear answer to the legality of reverse engineering.


http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci507015,00.html
http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi#QID195

Day 4

I answered Dawn's question about what people are buying to increase their gaming experience.
The link to this post: http://csc111dawn.blogspot.com/2009/09/day-two-hardware.html?showComment=1252953970199#c1928733645396921269

What I hope to find out in this class

I cannot think of one burning question I have for this class, but a couple areas I would lik to know more about include the actual monitor and how video is shown, and how the computer is able to store so much memory. I've wondered how graphics can be presented so well on the computer, especially when watching a movie or playing a game. It also surprises me that computers are able to store so much information, while their actual insides are extremely small. I'd like to know more about both these concepts.

Triumph of Nerds

The first stereotype I noticed was that most "nerds" are male, not female. Another stereotype was that they all wear glasses (huge glasses at that). A third stereotype was that they start to learn about computers when they are young, even little kids.

I think most of these stereotypes have faded. Most people still think more boys are good with computers rather than girls, but this is rapidly changing if not existent at all. The stereotypes about glasses and starting to become obsessed as a child are not still relevant. If I was to make a movie, I don't think I would add any stereotypes. Any type of person in today's society can be skilled with computers, boy or girl. Stereotypes still do exst, but they are not as much of a reality.

My First Post

My name is Emily Allen. I am a sophmore from a small town in Connecticut. I have two older siblings, both of whom are in college as well. I am still undecided abuot my major, but am hoping to declare by the end of this semester. This summer I had an internship with a small company, during which I used excel and other computer programs daily. I am definitely looking forward to this class and this semester as a whole.