Chapter 1: Our Digital Planet

Objectives
- Describe several ways computers play a critical role in modern life

- Discuss the circumstances and ideas that led to the development of the modern computer

- Describe several trends in the evolution of modern computers

- Explain the relationship between hardware and software

- Outline the five major types of computers and describe their principal uses

- Describe how the explosive growth of the Internet is changing the way people use computers and information in technology

- Explain how today's information age differs from other times in history and prehistory

- Discuss the social and ethical impact of information technology on our society

Creating Communities on the Living Web

- Myspace creates an online community experience for young people

- Flickr creates a community for people to share their pictures

Living in a Non-Digital World

- Computers are no longer a luxury but rather a commodity

- Computers and their applications are used in all aspects

Computers in Perspective

- Every computer is use today follows the basic plan laid out by Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace

- The computer is a very versatile tool

>It can compute taxes or deploy a missile

- All computers take in information called input and give out information called output

- Versatility is built upon its hardware and software

- 1939: Konrad Zuse completed the first programmable computer

- 1949: Alan Turing and others completed Colossus, the first electronic digital computer

- 1944: One million dollar grant from IBM grants Harvard professor Howard Aiken the Mark 1

- John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert helped the U.S effot in World War II by constructing a machine to calculate trajectory tables for new guns

- After the war, Mauchly and Eckert started a private company called Sperry and created UNIVAC I, the first general-purpose commercial computer

>Vaccum tubes were used in early computers

>Transistors replaced vaccum tubes starting in 1956

>By the mid-1960s transistors were replaced by integrated circuits

Chapter 4:Processing With Programs Part 2

Web Applications

- Web applications fall into several categories
>Some simple Web applications perform simple data-processing tasks that could be performed by traditional programs running on stand-alone PCs
>Most Web applications take advantage of the Web's connectivity
>Many Web applications leverage the Web's strength as a huge repository of information
>Some Web applications support online business transactions
>News-oriented Web applications provide up-tp-the-minute reports on a myriad of subjects
>Other Web applications support a more traditional form of information broadcasting

Integrated Applications and Suites: Software Bundles

- Vertical-Market and Custom Software
>Tends to cost far more than mass-market applications
>Job specific software: Medical billings, library cataloging, legal reference software, restaurant management, single-client software needs
- System software
>A class of software that includes the operating system and utility programs, handles these details, and hundrers of other tasks behind the scenes


*What the operating system do?*
1) To interact with your hardware including processor, hard disk, DVD drive, sound & multimedia.
2) OS create an environment with various layers to handle hardware, programs, data & user's actions.
3) To create a "User Interface' so human can interact with this system.
I think thats all.


*What is the difference betweem authentication and authorization?*
Authentication is the process of obtaining identification credentials such as name and password from a user and validating those credentials against some authority. If the credentials are valid, the entity that submitted the credentials is considered an authenticated identity. Once an identity has been authenticated, the authorization process determines whether that identity has access to a given resource.

The purpose of authorization is to determine whether an identity should be granted the requested type of access to a given resource

*What is the difference between utility programs and device drivers?*

Utility programs serve as tools for doing system maintenance and repairs that aren't
automatically handled by the operating system

Device drivers are small programs that enable input/output devices such as keyboards, mouses, printers, etc

The Hardware Software Connection
- Where the operating systems live
>Some computers store their operating system in ROM
>Others include only part of it in ROM .. The remainder of the operating system is loaded into memory in a process called booting, which occurs when you turn on the computer
>Most of the time the operating system works behind the scenes
>Interacting with the operating system, like interacting with an application, can be intuitive or challenging and it depends on something called the user-interface

- User-Interface
>The interface defines the look and feel of the computing experience from a human point of view
>Desktop operating systems
- MS-DOS is a disk operating system in which the user interacts using characters: letters, numbers, symbols
>Features include: command-line interface (commands that are typed), menu-driven interface (commands are chosen from on-screen lists)
- Graphical User Interfaces (GUI)
>Mac OS was developed by Macintosh in 1984 using GUI
>Microsoft Windows is now the most popular operating system

- Multiple User Operating Systerms: UNIX and Linux
>UNIX was developed at Bell labs before personal computers were available
>Linux was created by Linus Torvalds and continues to be a work-in-progress
- UNIX allows a timesharing computer to communicate with several other computers or terminals at once

The User Interface: The Human-Machine Connection
- Future user interfaces will be built around emerging development
>The end of applications
>Natural-language interfaces
>Agents
>Virtual realities

File Management: Where's My Stuff?
- Files can be scattered all over the system, which often makes data management difficult
>One solution to this problem is to organize data files logically
>Both Windows and the Mac support the notion of common system folders with self-explanatory names:
* My Documents (Documents)
* My Pictures (Pictures)
* My Music (Music)

- Files Management Utilities
>View, rename, copy, move, and delete files and folders
>Hierarchies help with organization
>Help with locating a file
>Get size, file type, and last modification date
- Managing Files from Applications
>Operations: Open, Save As, Save, and Close
- Defragmentation