Where we were 10 years ago

Computers

10 years ago the y2k scare prompted microsoft to make a operating system that was 5 years ahead of any of the previous operating systems at the time. To most people this would sound like good news BUT, to anyone who purchase windows ME it was a different story. The system was plauged with bad coding and cumbersome user input.

Today we have windows 7. An incredibly odd name but non the less an achivemnt in its own right. It is microsofts first major step forward to creating an operating system that apple cannot compete with.

Cell Phones Then – Now

Then : Large, cumbersome, bad batterylife, stupid looking, and above all incredibly expenive when compared to the amount of content that you can get from a cell phone today

Now : We have phones that can fix virtually anywhere and are able to access the internet, email, and text. Games and useful aplications are becomeing more and more common to mobile devices. In short the thing that we call a cell phone is not all that different from the computer that many people have in there homes.

Video Games Then – Now

Then : Video games were something tobe enjoyed. There were no casual games built for a horrible casual audience. The games took skill and required you to take time and enjoy the expirience. I can’y really say that there are no good games today but i find it odd that the game industry is the only industry that people look at and say “wow did you play mario?” even though mario is over 20 years old. You don’t hear people talking about 20 year old food or cloths. This fact is a statement that begs the question “what happened?”. I’ll tell you what happened! Nintendo changed its user base, thats what happened. they started catering to a group of people who in my opinion do not deserve to play games because they were unwilling to play the games that are considered great. Ever since then there have been nothing but horrible casual games.

Now : We have horrible casual games.

Digital Cameras Then – Now

The cameras 10 years ago weren’t really worth useing but because they were veiwed as a luxury item they sold rather well. They are a testament to the way our society thinks. They will buy anything as long as they have no idea how to use it and it cost enough to make them look rich. In the end this is the only catagory that i think had to change in order for the actual product to become wide spread.

Now : The cameras now are slim and take incredibly good pictures. Really its hard to imagine how any one could take pictures with film now that you can take a picture, see what its going to look like and even edit it right on the camera. The ability to delete any picture you take is almost indespensable. But all this is irrelavent to the fact that it is possible to hold hundreds, if not, thousands of pictures on the camera.

Windows 7 / Android

Windows 7 was released on october the 22nd. It is alot faster on most computers duw to the fact that it dosn’t require as much proccessing power to operate. It is direct x 10 compatible and is much more user friendly then windows vista. It has a live action task bar that allows you to see what the application is doing or looks like with out haveing to open it. applications and windows “snap”  together which alows for more organised placement of windows on the desktop.

Google Android

      Google Android is the operationf system made by the google corperation. It was writen in Java and uses google developed Java libraries. Along with java the OS was writen useing a majority of open source programming languages such as OpenGL. It relies heavily on the google apps and is concidered a “lighter” operatiing system then Windows.

Top 5 digg rechnology stories

top. . . http://www.flickr.com/photos/32895514@N02/3472074417/sizes/l/

Second. . . someone at microsft is takeing LSD http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/04/windows7100.jpg

I think that people liked this because for some reason people are just infatuated with drugs and the meer mention of them seems to be enough for someone to be interested.

Third. . . http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/22/time-warner-and-embarq-cant-compete-with-city-owned-isp-trying/

Windows 7 Release Candidate 1′s Best Surprise New Features 

Forth. . . http://i.gizmodo.com/5226696/windows-7-release-candidate-1s-best-surprise-new-features

This was just really interesting because it shows people what they want. Before they can get it. So it feeds of peoples greed.

Fifth. . . http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/ubuntu-904-officially-released-available-for-free-download-20090423/

Pictures of OS’

Windows XP

Windows Vista

Ubuntu Linux

BeOS

MAC OS X

Operating systems

Windows XP:

Windows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, and media centers. The name “XP” is short for “experience”.^[3] Windows XP is the successor to both Windows 2000 Professional and Windows Me, and is the first consumer-oriented operating system produced by Microsoft to be built on the Windows NT kernel and architecture. Windows XP was first released on 25 October 2001, and over 400 million copies were in use in January 2006, according to an estimate in that month by an IDC analyst.^[4] It is succeeded by Windows Vista, which was released to volume license customers on 8 November 2006, and worldwide to the general public on 30 January 2007. Direct OEM and retail sales of Windows XP ceased on 30 June 2008, although it is still possible to obtain Windows XP from System Builders^[5] (smaller OEMs who sell assembled computers) until 31 July 2009 or by purchasing Windows Vista Ultimate or Business and then downgrading to Windows XP.^[6][7]

The most common editions of the operating system are Windows XP Home Edition, which is targeted at home users, and Windows XP Professional, which offers additional features such as support for Windows Server domains and two physical processors, and is targeted at power users, business and enterprise clients. Windows XP Media Center Edition has additional multimedia features enhancing the ability to record and watch TV shows, view DVD movies, and listen to music. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is designed to run ink-aware applications built using the Tablet PC platform. Two separate 64-bit versions of Windows XP were also released, Windows XP 64-bit Edition for IA-64 (Itanium) processors and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition for x86-64. There is also Windows XP Embedded, a componentized version of the Windows XP Professional, and editions for specific markets such as Windows XP Starter Edition.

Windows XP is known for its improved stability and efficiency over the 9x versions of Microsoft Windows.^[8][9] It presents a significantly redesigned graphical user interface, a change Microsoft promoted as more user-friendly than previous versions of Windows. A new software management facility called Side-by-Side Assembly was introduced to avoid the “DLL hell” that plagued older consumer-oriented 9x versions of Windows.^[10][11] It is also the first version of Windows to use product activation to combat illegal copying, a restriction that did not sit well with some users and privacy advocates. Windows XP has also been criticized by some users for security vulnerabilities, tight integration of applications such as Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Media Player, and for aspects of its default user interface. Later versions with Service Pack 2, and Internet Explorer 7 addressed some of these concerns.

During development, the project was codenamed “Whistler“, after Whistler, British Columbia, as many Microsoft employees skied at the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort.^[12]

As of the end of November 2008, Windows XP is the most widely used operating system in the world with a 66.31% market share, having peaked at 85% in December 2006.^[13]

 

Linux

Linux(commonly pronounced IPA: /ˈlɪnəks/ in English; variants exist^[1]) is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL^[2] and other free licenses.

Linux is predominantly known for its use in servers, although it is installed on a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from embedded devices and mobile phones to supercomputers.^[3] The popularity of Linux distributions as desktop and laptop operating system has been growing lately due to the rise of netbooks and the Ubuntu distribution of the operating system.^[4][5]

The name “Linux” comes from the Linux kernel, originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. The rest of the system, including utilities and libraries, usually comes from the GNU operating system announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. The GNU contribution is the basis for the alternative name GNU/Linux.^[6]

 

 

Windows Vista is one member in a family of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs. Prior to its announcement on July 22, 2005, Windows Vista was known by its codename “Longhorn.”^[4] Development was completed on November 8, 2006; over the following three months it was released in stages to computer hardware and software manufacturers, business customers, and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it was released worldwide,^[5] and was made available for purchase and download from Microsoft’s website.^[6] The release of Windows Vista came more than five years after the introduction of its predecessor, Windows XP, the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft Windows desktop operating systems.

windows vista

Windows Vista contains many changes and new features, including an updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Windows Aero, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker, and redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Vista also aims to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network, using peer-to-peer technology to simplify sharing files and digital media between computers and devices. Windows Vista includes version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, which aims to make it significantly easier for software developers to write applications than with the traditional Windows API.

Microsoft’s primary stated objective with Windows Vista, however, has been to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system.^[7] One common criticism of Windows XP and its predecessors has been their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses and buffer overflows. In light of this, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in early 2002 a company-wide “Trustworthy Computing initiative” which aims to incorporate security work into every aspect of software development at the company. Microsoft stated that it prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, thus delaying its completion.^[8]

While these new features and security improvements have garnered positive reviews, Vista has also been the target of much criticism and negative press. Criticism of Windows Vista has targeted its high system requirements, its more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new digital rights management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital media, lack of compatibility with some pre-Vista hardware and software, and the number of authorization prompts for User Account Control. As a result of these and other issues, Windows Vista had seen initial adoption and satisfaction rates lower than Windows XP.^[9] However, as of January 2009, it has been announced that Vista usage had surpassed Microsoft’s pre-launch two-year-out expectations of achieving 200 million users by an estimated 150 million.

 

BeOS

BeOS was an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing modular I/O bandwidth, pervasive multithreading, preemptive multitasking and a custom 64-bit journaling file system known as BFS. The BeOS GUI was developed on the principles of clarity and a clean, uncluttered design. The API was written in C++ for ease of programming. It has POSIX compatibility and access to a command line interface through Bash, although internally it is not a Unix-derived operating system.

BeOS was positioned as a platform which could be used by a substantial population of desktop users and a competitor to Microsoft Windows and Linux. However, it was ultimately unable to achieve a significant market share and proved commercially unviable for Be Inc. The company was acquired by Palm Inc. and today BeOS is mainly used and developed by a small population of enthusiasts.

Be Inc. sued ^[1] Microsoft claiming that Hitachi had been pressured to dissuade them from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq had been pressured not to market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. BeOS also claimed that Microsoft acted to artificially depress Be Inc’s IPO. The case was eventually settled out of court^[2] with no admission of liability on Microsoft’s part.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X (pronounced /mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn/)^[3] is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems. Mac OS X is the successor to the original or “classic” Mac OS, which had been Apple’s primary operating system since 1984. Unlike its predecessors, Mac OS X is a Unix-based operating system,^[4] built on technologies developed at NeXT between the second half of the 1980s and Apple’s purchase of the company in early 1996. Version 10.5, while running on Intel processors, is certified UNIX 03.

The first version released was Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999, and a desktop-oriented version, Mac OS X version 10.0 followed in March 2001. As of 2009, five more distinct “end-user” and “server” versions have been released, the latest being Mac OS X v10.5 in October 2007. Releases of Mac OS X are named after big cats; for example, Mac OS X v10.5 is usually referred to by Apple and users as “Leopard” (10.4 was referred to as Tiger, 10.3 as Panther, etc). The server edition, Mac OS X Server, is architecturally very similar to its desktop counterpart. However, it also includes several additional administration software tools to facilitate workgroup management or provide simplified access to common network services. These tools include a mail transfer agent, a Samba server, an LDAP server, a domain name server, and others. It is pre-loaded on Apple’s Xserve server hardware, but can be run on most of Apple’s computer models.

Apple also produces specialized versions of Mac OS X for use on three of its consumer devices; the iPhone OS for the iPhone, and the iPod Touch,^[5] and an unnamed version for the Apple TV.^[6

Google Latitude

Google has many problems with privacy. The first being that most people do not want their personal information shared with people that they do not know. This kind of information could be used by stalkers and other evil people to do things that are bad. I personally do not want someone to know where I am at all times. I realise that i would be giving the information freely, but i think that some kind or privacy is needed.

Facebook is only a problem if the person is stupid and dosn’t block people that they do not know from looking at their profile. their information is completely safe if they simply do not let anyone but their friends look at it. This also applies for pictures. If you block people that you don’t want to see your stuff then they will not see it.

I belive that this is a good way to find potenitial people because there are going to be alot more people to hire online. They can ask for a  meeting with the person so that they can see if they are actually the person that they say that they are.

Webbrowers faq thingy

Whenever your click on a link or type an address into your web browser you’re making a “request” for that particular page. That request is handled by what is known as the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The request gets routed over the internet to the appropriate server and if everything goes according to plan, that server will send the page requested back to your browser.

HTTP is an integral part of the Internet Protocol (IP) suite. It’s used by browser software to connect to the server that holds the website you want to see. The server watched for these requests by monitoring what is called a TCP port (port 80 in most cases).

Transmission Control Protocl (TCP) is the protocol that creates connections between two computer over the internet, allowing them to pass data back and forth. TCP is made to allow the transmitted data to be reassembled into the proper form when it reached its destination.

There are a number of TCP ports that monitor specific protocols. For example, TCP port 21 is normally used for FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and port 80 is normally used for HTTP (web browsing).

If a web server gets a request on port 80 in the form of GET / HTTP/1.1 it sends a response code that tells the requesting computer whether the page is available or not. A typical request will look like this:

GET /faq.html HTTP/1.1 Host: http://www.mywebsite.com

This request is for a web page at http://www.mywebsite.com/faq.html. The “host” is specified to identify a particular website on that server (in the case of shared hosting, there can be many sites on one server).

If the faq.html page is available, the response will be:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 15 November 2005 13:22:54 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) Last-Modified: Wed, 23 Aug 2005 08:23:33 GMT

…after which the contents of the actual web page will follow.

Let’s break that response down…

HTTP/1.1 200 OK means that particular web page is available. Other codes may be returned. For example, the code 404 means the requested page cannot be found. You’ve probably seen 404 errors when you’ve clicked a link to a non-existent page or misspelled a web site when you entered in in your browser.

The date is self explanatory and the server is information about the software running on the server that is hosting the web page.

When the web page is being sent to your browser, it gets sent in “packets” of information. The header also contains information that specifies its order in the stream. These packets can be sent through various routes to get to your computer, so they all get reassembled by your browser when they arrive.

This normally all takes place in seconds, so you see the web page as it was meant to be seen even though all the various packets may have taken completely different paths from the server to your computer.

the new and old

2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_big_planet

Little big planet was a very influential game that was released for the PlayStation 3. It allowed you to make your own content. the in game editor gives the player the instruments and tools to create any in game object that they want. These levels and objects can then be shared on the Internet. Then other people all over the world can play the levels and use the objects in their own levels. So far people have created  a lot of levels and objects and the community is still growing. It is also one of the very few good games for the ps3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_IV_(Nintendo_DS)

The remake of final fantasy 4 was a Revelation to most people because the latest generation of gamers, my self included never really got what was so great about the old 8 and 16 bit rpgs. This remake brings the out dated but still expressive graphics and gives them a complete 3d over haul. The new features and high difficulty level clearly show that old games are still a viable market and that they still make for incredibly entertaining buys.

At this point you probably thought that I would finally stop talking about games. . . .well you are out of luck cause I have been looking at the upcoming Relic’s title dawn of war 2. This is the second game in the dawn of wars series that i set in the war hammer 40k universe. Normally i would have no interest at all in something like this but after seeing that amazing visuals and revolutionary take on strategy gaming i was instantly drawn to it and can’t wait for it’s release latter this year. The graphics rival most modern first person shooter games. The game will feature 4 factions to play with, the human space marines, the orcs, the psychic eldar and lastly the tyranids.  The game play is unlike anything that has been seen in the genre thus far and will really change the way that developers look at strategy games.  The first major change was the decision to almost completely get rid of base building and force you to keep your attention on your units. The units realistically run for cover and take damage accordingly. if cause in the open they will be torn apart but if you can manage them and keep them behind sufficient cover they will maximize their potential and usefulness. this coupled with a unique hero/commander system will allow for incredibly intense and entertaining fire fights and games.

Hexidecimal to base 10

The hexadecimal numeric system works the same way that base 10 does. the only thing that makes it more confusing is the fact that most people are not used to counting in a different.

All that you have to rememberis that all number system work in the same way. you just have to find place values. this may sound like something that your grade 3 teacher told you and this is because it is. this is the same tedious process that you used all those years ago and probably forgot. if this is the case then I am here to help you remember.

all you have to do is look at a number such as 243 and see that it is just made up of 3 separate components or pieces. It can also be written as 200+43+3 so as you can see there is a 2 in the 3rd column. This value is 100 x 2. There is a 4 in the 2nd collum which in turn stands for 10 x 3. Finally the 1st collum stands for 1 x 3.

So if you were to apply this to the hexadecimal system you just have to remember that it works on a differnet value system. The valuses go like this

1 = 1
2 = 2
3 = 3
4 = 4
5 = 5
6 = 6
7 = 7
8 = 8
9 = 9
A = 10
B = 11
c = 12
D = 13
E = 14
F = 15

This could be continues to show that 10 = 16 and 11 = 17 . . . .ect. But that is unneccisary. This also means that each collum is equal to a different power of 16. the powers progress in normal base 10 fasion 1,2,3,4,5. . . .

But what does any of this have to do with the place values. Well if i take the hexadecimal number AF1 andbreak it down so that i can findthe base 10 value of it i would first have to find the individual values of each of the digits. I would take the 1st column and multiply it by 1 like i did be for and i will get 1 x 1. This means that the first digit is equal to a base 1o value of 1. the next column is again the same. It is the next columnthat is a little bit harder. The second column is equal to 16 to the power of 1. So this means that you take the base 10 value of F and times it by 16 . This translate into 16 x 15 giving you a base 10 value of 240. The last column is equal to a value of 16 squared. This becomes a base 10 value of 256. This becomes 256 x A or 256 x 10. This equals 2560. so now that we have all the separate values that are needed to find the total base 10 value of AF1 all you have to do is add them together and the end result is 2801.

calculating binary numbers

I will now attempt to understand something that is a lot simpler than it originally seems.

Binary is the way that a computer gets and processes its commands. It is incredibly simple. It is a base 2 numeric system. This means that there are only 2 digits to give values for what ever it is being used for.

First  you have to understand that binary is written in 1s and 0s

The system works like this. Each space that is added to the string of 1s and 0s represents a power of  2. For example the first digit or in our system the ones column is representative of 2 to the power of 0. The second digit or the tens column is 2 to the power of 1 and so on and so forth. By putting a 1 or a 0 you are stating that the number as a whole has that value added to the total. So 1000 is equal to 8 but 1001 is equal to 9 because it is as if you are taking the original 1000 or 8 and adding it to the 0001 or 1 and getting 9.

 Decimal         Binary
          0                0
          1                1
          2               10
          3               11
          4              100
          5              101
          6              110
          7              111
          8             1000
          9             100

This continues on forever like any counting would.

You can convert binary from its base 2 form into our normal numeric system that is base 10 by first doing a number of  things that i mentioned earlier. you must first rememberthat each  of the digits stands for 2 to the power of something and that the powers are counted much like our own numeric system except that they start at 0 instead of 1. the you find the individual values of each of the separate digits. so if you are given 001100 you only have t0 find the values of the ones because they are the only things that are actually given values that we can use. The 0s are there as place holders. You figure out what the values of the 1s are and then you add them together. this is 4 + 8 = 12 so the binary number is 12.