Quiz 6

1. Define system software and identify the two types of system software.

• System software is computer software designed to operate the computer hardware and to provide a platform for running application software. The types of system software are: The computer BIOS and device firmware, which provide basic functionality to operate and control the hardware connected to or built into the computer. The operating system (prominent examples being Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux), which allows the parts of a computer to work together by performing tasks like transferring data between memory and disks or rendering output onto a display device. It also provides a platform to run high-level system software and application software. Utility software, which helps to analyze, configure, optimize and maintain the computer.

2. Briefly describe various server operating systems: Windows Server, UNIX,Linux, Solaris, and NetWare.

• Windows Server is a brand name for a group of server operating systems released by Microsoft Corporation.
• UNIX operating systems are widely used in servers, workstations, and mobile devices. The UNIX environment and the client–server program model were essential elements in the development of the Internet and the reshaping of computing as centered in networks rather than in individual computers.
• Linux refers to the family of Unix-like computer operating systems using the Linux kernel. Linux can be installed on a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from mobile phones, tablet computers, routers and video game consoles, to desktop computers, mainframes and supercomputers. Linux is a leading server operating system, and runs the 10 fastest supercomputers in the world.
• Solaris is a UNIX operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Solaris has a reputation for being well-suited to symmetric multiprocessing, supporting a large number of CPUs. Solaris supports SPARC-based and x86-based workstations and servers from Sun and other vendors, with efforts underway to port to additional platforms. Solaris is registered as compliant with the Single UNIX Specification.
• NetWare is a network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, with network protocols based on the archetypal Xerox Network Systems stack.

Quiz 5

1. Differentiate between storage devices and storage media.

• Storage device refers to the apparatus for recording computer data. Examples are the RAM, floppy drives, ZIP drives, and other disks drives.
• While, storage media are the materials on which data are written and stored. Examples are the floppy disks, optical discs, hard disks, etc.

2. Identify the uses of tape, magnetic stripe cards, smart cards, microfilm and microfiche, and enterprise storage.

• Tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. It is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and long archival stability. A tape drive provides sequential access storage, unlike a disk drive, which provides random access storage. The magnetic stripe is read by physical contact and swiping past a magnetic reading head.Smart cards can provide identification, authentication, data storage and application processing. A microfilm and microfiche allow us to keep newspapers and other bulky publications in a compact, stable form.

3. Describe the various types of flash memory storage: solid state drives, memory cards, USB flash drives, and Express Card modules.

• A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data with the intention of providing access in the same manner of a traditional block i/o hard disk drive. SSDs are distinguished from traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), which are electromechanical devices containing spinning disks and movable read/write heads.A memory card or flash card is an electronic flash memory data storage device used for storing digital information. They are commonly used in many electronic devices, including digital cameras, mobile phones, laptop computers, MP3 players, and video game consoles. They are small, re-recordable, and able to retain data without power.A USB flash drive consists of a flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk Express Card is an interface to allow peripheral devices to be connected to a computer, usually a laptop computer. Formerly called NEWCARD, the Express Card standard specifies the design of slots built into the computer and of cards which can be inserted into Express Card slots. The cards contain electronic circuitry and connectors to which external devices can be connected. The Express Card standard replaces the PC Card (also known as PCMCIA) standards.

4. Differentiate among various types of optical discs: CDs, archive discs and Picture CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs.

• The Compact Disc (also known as a CD) is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage (CD-ROM), write-once audio and data storage (CD-R), rewritable media (CD-RW), Video Compact Discs (VCD), Super Video Compact Discs (SVCD), Photo CD, Picture CD, CD-i, and Enhanced CD. Audio CDs and audio CD players have been commercially available since October 1982.Picture CD is a product by Kodak, following on from the earlier Photo CD product. It holds photos from a single roll of color film, stored at 1024×1536 resolution using JPEG compression. The product is aimed at consumers. Software to view and perform simple edits to images is included on the CD.DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions. Blu-ray Disc (official abbreviation BD) is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The disc diameter is 120 mm and disc thickness 1.2 mm plastic optical disc, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB (23.31 GiB) per layer, with dual layer discs (50 GB), the norm for feature-length video discs. Triple layer discs (100 GB) and quadruple layers (128 GB) are available for BD-XL Blu-ray re-writer drives. Currently movie production companies have not utilized the triple or quadruple layer discs, most consumers owned Blu-ray players will not be able to read the additional layers, while newer Blu-ray players may require a firmware update to play the triple and quadruple sized discs.

5. Summarize the characteristics of ink-jet printers, photo printers, laser printers, multifunction peripherals, thermal printers, mobile printers, label and postage printers, and plotters and large-format printers.

• An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines that can cost up to thousands of dollars.A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers (MFPs), laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor.An MFP (Multi Function Product/ Printer/ Peripheral), multifunctional, all-in-one (AIO), or Multifunction Device (MFD), is an office machine which incorporates the functionality of multiple devices in one, so as to have a smaller footprint in a home or small business setting (the SOHO market segment), or to provide centralized document management/distribution/production in a large-office setting.A thermal printer (or direct thermal printer) produces a printed image by selectively heating coated thermochromic paper, or thermal paper as it is commonly known, when the paper passes over the thermal print head. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, producing an image. Two-color direct thermal printers can print both black and an additional color (often red) by applying heat at two different temperatures.

Quiz3 "7-10"

7. Identify the key features of widely used business programs.

The Key Features in Business programs in terms of software is editing and typing and other stuff knowing what letters to use like formatting.

 

8.What are the advantages of using application software on the Web.

•  No special configuration or changes are need on user's PCs
• Lower costs.
• Centralized data is secure and easy to backup
• Updates can be made quickly and easily
• Information is accessible to a wide audience anywhere in the world
• Everybody has a browser - familiar interface encourages use
• Online training can be completed at user's own time and pace.
• Always up-to-date

9. History of the Internet.

 

The history of the Internet starts in the 1950s and 1960s with the development of computers. This began with point-to-point communication between mainframe computers and terminals, expanded to point-to-point connections between computers and then early research into packet switching. Packet switched networks such as ARPANET, Mark I at NPL in the UK, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the development of protocols for internetworking, where multiple separate networks could be joined together into a network of networks.
In 1982 the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized and the concept of a world-wide network of fully interconnected TCP/IP networks called the Internet was introduced. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) developed the Computer Science Network (CSNET) and again in 1986 when NSFNET provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States from research and education organizations. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Commercial internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the late 1980s and 1990s and the Internet was commercialized in 1995 when NSFNET was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.
Since the mid-1990s the Internet has had a drastic impact on culture and commerce, including the rise of near instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) "phone calls", two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking, and online shopping sites. The research and education community continues to use advanced networks such as NSF's very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) and Internet2. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s, or more. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment and social networking.

10.What are different storage devices.

• Hard drive(Internal)
• External Hard Drive
• Network attached Storage
• Optical Media Storage
• Flash Drives

Quiz 3

Questions:

1. Describe the four categories of output.

•    Text consists of characters (letters, numbers, punctuation marks, or any other symbol requiring one byte of computer storage space) that are used to create words, sentences, and paragraphs. 
•    Graphics are digital representations of nontext information such as drawings, charts, photographs, and animation (a series of still images in rapid sequence that gives the illusion of motion). 
• Audio is music, speech, or any other sound. 
• Video consists of images played back at speeds to provide the appearance of full motion.
• An output device is any computer component capable of conveying information to a user.

2. The characteristic of LCD monitors, LCD sreens, plasma monitors and HDTVs.

     3.What are the components inside the system units?

     
         4. The components of a processor and how they complete a machine cycle.

• A machine cycle consists of a sequence of three steps that is performed continuously and at a rate of millions per second while a computer is in operation. They are fetch,decode and execute. There also is a fourth step, store, in which input and output from the other three phases is stored in memory for later use; however, no actual processing is performed during this step.

The control unit is a part of the CPU that also decodes the instruction in the instruction register. A register is a very small amount of very fast memory that is built into the CPU in order to speed up its operations by providing quick access to commonly used values; instruction registers are registers that hold the instruction being executed by the CPU. Decoding the instructions in the instruction register involves breaking the operand field into its components based on the instructions opcode.

Opcode (an abbreviation of operation code) is the portion of a machine language instruction that specifies what operation is to be performed by the CPU. Machine language, also called machine code, refers to instructions coded in patterns of bits (i.e., zeros and ones) that are directly readable and executable by a CPU.

A program counter, also called the instruction pointer in some computers, is a register that indicates where the computer is in its instruction sequence. It holds either the address of the instruction currently being executed or the address of the next instruction to be executed, depending on the details of the particular computer. The program counter is automatically incremented for each machine cycle so that instructions are normally retrieved sequentially from memory.

The control unit places these instructions into its instruction register and then increments the program counter so that it contains the address of the next instruction stored in memory. It then executes the instruction by activating the appropriate circuitry to perform the requested task. As soon as the instruction has been executed, it restarts the machine cycle, beginning with the fetch step.

5. Define a bit and describe how a series of bits represents data.

• A bit (a contraction of binary digit) is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states. These may be the two stable states of a flip-flop, two positions of an electrical switch, two distinct voltage or current levels allowed by a circuit, two distinct levels of light intensity, two directions of magnetization or polarization, etc.

In computing, a bit can also be defined as a variable or computed quantity that can have only two possible values. These two values are often interpreted as binary digits and are usually denoted by the Arabic numerical digits 0 and 1. Indeed, the term "bit" is a contraction of binary digit. The two values can also be interpreted as logical values(true/false, yes/no), algebraic signs (+/−), activation states (on/off), or any other two-valued attribute. The correspondence between these values and the physical states of the underlying storage or device is a matter of convention, and different assignments may be used even within the same device or program. The length of a binary number may be referred to as its "bit-length." 

6. Identify the categories of application software.

1. Personal productivity applications

2. Multimedia and Graphics applications

3. Communications applications

4. Home and educational

Quiz 2

Questions:

1.      Describe various types of pen input, and identify other types of input for smart phones.

·         Light Pen - Light pen is actually one more pointing input gadget. This will pick up on existence of light. It's a hand held pen fashioned gadget having a photocell installed in it's front-end. Once the front-end on the pen is actually touched on the display screen, the actual photocell registers a position associated with display.

·         Digitizer - A Digitizer is also called a graphic tablet and uses a pen input device. It's a flat, rectangle-shaped digital plastic material pad. Every position to the digitizer points to matching video display. It's primarily useful for producing road maps and also engineering blueprints. The actual input gadgets stylus pen and also cursor can be used to trace sketches and also drawings to the digitizer.

·         Stylus and Cursor - Stylus pen is actually like a ballpoint pen. It's utilized to compose textual content or make lines (or generate drawings and also pictures) on the exclusively developed graphics display or digitizer. Pen input devices found in several sophisticated graphic devices is called Digital Pen. Generally electronic digital pen supplies much more performance compared to stylus pen.

o   A “flexible iPhone” prototype does everything a smartphone does, such as store books, play music or make phone calls.

o   Blind Type develops an interface for typing on virtual QWERTY keyboards, which claims to allow for super sloppy typing, or typing without looking at the screen.

2.      The purpose of various game controllers: gamepads, joysticks and wheels, light guns, dance pads,and motion-sensing game controllers.

·         Gamepad a type of game controller held in the hand, where the digits are used to provide input. Gamepads generally feature a set of action buttons handled with the right thumb and a direction controller handled with the left. The direction controller has traditionally been a four-way digital cross but most modern controllers additionally feature an analog stick.

·    Joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer.The joystick has been the principal flight control in the cockpit of many aircraft, particularly military fast jets, either as a center stick or side-stick.

·         Joysticks and Wheels are going through a rough patch. There are a number of reasons for this. Games that require this kind of device are not what the fashion victims want at the moment. They want First Person Shooter (FPS), action and adventure, strategy and RPG (role-playing) games - the sort of games you play with a mouse and keyboard.

·         Light gun is a pointing device for computers and a control device for arcade and video games. The light gun and its ancestor, the light pen, are now rarely used as pointing devices due largely to the popularity of the mouse and changes in monitor display technology—conventional light guns only work with CRT monitors.

·         Dance pad or dance mat, dance platform, or jitter deck is a flat electronic game controller used for input in dance games. Most dance pads are divided into a 3×3 matrix of square panels for the player to stand on, with some or all of the panels corresponding to directions or actions within the game. Some dance pads also have extra buttons outside of the main stepping area, such as "Start" and "Select". Pairs of dance pads are often joined side-by-side for certain gameplay modes.

·         The Motion-Controller Technology takes Motion-sensing to the next level. It provides 5 Degrees of Freedom and all the sub system integration and signal processing required to guarantee “perfect motion control”, making it ideal for remote controls, game controllers, mice and other digital media input devices. The key component, the MotionSense Control Chip, allows customers to dynamically adjust key parameters at a system level.

3.      Explain how resolution affects the quality of a picture captured on a digital camera.

·         Resolution is the sharpness and clarity of image. The higher the resolution, the better the image quality. Thus, a picture captured on a digital camera with a low resolution has a poor quality.

4.  Describe the uses of voice recognition, web cams, and video conferencing.

·    Voice recognition is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software.

·  Web cams is a video camera which feeds its images in real time to a computer or computer network, often via USB, Ethernet or Wi-Fi.

·  Video conferencing, two or more geographically separated people who use network or Internet to transmit audio and video data.

5.  Discuss how various scanners and reading devices work: optical scanners, optical readers, bar code readers, RFID readers, magnetic stripe card readers, MICR readers, and data collection devices.

·         Optical scanner is any scanning technology that converts a physical image, text, or object into a digitized form that can be stored as a 2D image file on a computer.

·         Optical reader is a device that uses light source to read characters, marks, and codes and then converts them into digital data.

·         Bar code reader uses laser beams to read bar codes.

·         RFID reader reads information on the tag via radio waves.

·         Magnetic stripe card reader reads the magnetic stripe on the back of a credit card.

·         MICR readers can read text printed with magnetized ink.

·           Data collection devices obtain data directly at location where transaction or event takes place. They transmit data over network or Internet.

6. Summarize the various biometric devices: fingerprint reader, face recognition system, hand geometry system, voice verification system, signature verification system, and iris recognition system.

·         Fingerprint scanner captures curves and indentations of fingerprint.

·         Face recognition system is a computer application for automatically identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame from a video source. One of the ways to do this is by comparing selected facial features from the image and a facial database.

·         Hand geometry system measures shape and size of person’s hand.

·         Voice recognition system compares live speech with stored voice pattern.

·         Signature verification system recognizes shape of signature.

·         Iris recognition system reads patterns in blood vessels in back of eye.