Day 9: Revenge of the Nerds Finale...

(1) What did Steve Jobs mean when he quoted Picasso?
When Steve Jobs quoted Picasso in the film he referred to the idea that good artists copy, great artists steal. He talks about how you have to take note of the great things that humans have done and then use them yourself, just improve them. He also discusses how Mac has always been shameless about stealing ideas. See question 3 for more information since they merge together.

(2) In one or two sentences, summarize the Apple-Microsoft "look and feel" lawsuit (taken from notes during movie)
The Apple-Microsoft 'look and feel' lawsuit prolonged for 6 years over whether or not Microsoft was stealing the ideas of the GUI from Apple. Microsoft claimed that they would take the lawsuit to the supreme court and in the end Apple lost and Microsoft came out as champions and won the "GUI' war.

(3) Who is the "good artist" and who is the "great artist" in this scenario? Or is it irrelevant, and Jobs was talking about something else?
In this scenario, the good artist is Microsoft and the great artist is Apple. This is because Steve Jobs discusses how they have so many unique individuals working for their company and then apply their abilities to the field of computer science. For example, Apple hires musicians, poets, zoologists, historians. These skills of theirs were used and they, as Jobs says, "just so happened to be the greatest computer scientists in the world." This is actually very relevant, in my opinion, because without having such a unique staff it would be difficult to create a unique product. Having many different techniques and talents ultimately provide for something amazing - a popular word of Jobs'.

(4) Just for fun, find out what is the current share of the market for each small computer (PC) operating system? Group Windows variants together, Mac variants together, and all unix variants together. Provide a link to show where you got your information, or put a picture here that shows your information as a pie chart. What is the date for these numbers?

Microsoft: 93.06%
Macintosh: 4.87%
Linux: .94%
Iphone: .33%
java.me: .31%
Symbian: .14%
Other: .23%

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8
for an image see the link above but you may also use wikipedia for more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

And that's about it!!!

Day 7: Creating our own punch card... uh oh!

Our group attempted to create a new punch card which would use a different format to fit 80 characters (letters or symbols) to form words. After much struggle, we finally came up with a plan which has a worst and best case scenario. The plan is to have the alphabet go across each row, followed by punctuation, followed by capitals. For example: every 30 punch holes there would be 26 letters, a period, a comma, semi colon, and colon (each 30 punches are a set). The Set of 30 continues every time (subtracting the last two columns from the entirity which are reserved for capitalized letters). This would repeat, for examples:

- a-z plus 4 puncutations would occur 2 times in the first row of 0 (ending at the 60th zero) then the alphabet would continue once again, ending at the 78th row and restarting with the remaining parts of the alphabet (the last 2 columns are used for capitalized) so they are completely discluded from the sets of 30.

This method could have a worst and best case scenario:

At the best case, there could be up to 800 possible punches. However, it is very unlikely that said method would actually formulate comprehendable words, unless someone was actually punching out the whole alphabet and punctuations.

Worst case scenario, would be if only one letter from each alphabet set could be used and none of the capitals and punctuation in which case only 26 characters would be used in which case our method would not actually work.

It is a very different method and does require some memorization of the actual system.

You would read (and use) the punch card like a book, reading it from left to right then going onto the next row. This continues until the person runs all the way to the last punch on the card- which in the ideal case would be before the card ends!
In reality, if the punch card could not have numbers but rather letters, it would be incredibly easy to read since the letters that are missing would be the ones that need to be read outloud.

And there is our pitch!

TRANSLATING BINARY!!!!!

010000100110010100100000011100
1101110101011100100110010100100
000011101000110111100100000011
0010001110010011010010110111001
1010110010000001111001011011110
1110101011100100010000001001111
0111011001100001011011000111010
001101001011011100110010100101110

This code means: "Be sure to drink your ovaltine!"

Now how did we figure this out (apart from the online binary translator...)

Each letter is represented by one byte, and each letter has a corresponding number to it which you find by adding up the numbers within a byte. Example the number for B is 98 which means that the numbers within the followin byte sequence: 128-64-32-16-8-4-2-1

Thus the CAPITAL B would be 2 +64= 66!!!!
The alphabet in binary code is.....
http://www.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/~adenton/ExpandingHorizons/EH2005/ascii-binary-chart.gif

the link... http://home2.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/ feel free to do it! to translate

By going to that above link, type in a ny letter in the top left hand box and you will see what the 8 digit binary code is for it. For example the binary code for B is: 01000010
if you are doing the letter e (lowercase) the code is going to be 01100101. It is very complicated to understand at first because it takes a lot of memorization, but once it is learned it is understandable, one just needs to understand what the number equivalency is to the letter.

A Very Confusing Language... Day 6

Reading a punch card proves to be incredibly difficult once you actually begin looking at it. First, when reading a punch card, be sure it is actually facing the right way and not upside down - if it is you will soon come to find out that the language is impossible to understand. The notch in the card should be at the top left hand corner.

Once you have completed this trying task...

Read the card in the following manner- vertically (up and down not side to side - down 80 columns)
1) If the card has only one punch, in a certain number, that represents the actual number which is being represented. So, if you have the number 4, that would be punched out of the card going down vertically. If the number was 18, row 1 would have 1 punched out of it and row 2 would have 8 punched out of it.
2) Then, it comes time to read a punch card with actual words and symbols. The symbols were represented with multiple digits, for example, the group which I worked with discovered that a comma was represented by the 0, 3, and 8 being punched out and the period was indicated by a punched out the top above the 0, 3 and 8. Symbols always have 3 punches and letters are represented by 2. This make it easy to distinguish if you are reading a number, letter, or symbol.
3) When reading the letters, it can be difficult to tell which is which. We found that the letters in the first part of the alphabet (A-N) were represented within the top half of columns 1-80 whilst the remaining 13 letters of the alphabet (M-Z) were shown in the bottom half of columns 1-80.
4) The punch card is set up so that the order goes from 12-9. (12, 11, 0, 1, ....9) where the top two rows (12 and 11) are zone rows and the remaining are the numeric rows. This makes up the alphabet. For example if 12 and 1 are punched out the letter A is represented.
5) The punch card is able to have 64 separate punches each representing a different symbol number or letter. This allows many combination's with the alphabet only being 26 letters.
6) The below website (2nd one) demonstrates the alphabet for the punch card and what the symbols are. It shows that B = 12 and 2, C= 12 and 3, and that D= 12 and 4 (etc). Once you have reached the limit for the combination's which can be made with 12 (which would be 12 and 9 letter I) the use of number 11 would start i.e. 11 and 1 would be J and so on...

It is fairly simple once it is understood! Use the websites below to help, mainly the second one. The second website provides excellent information on how to read a punch card.




References...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#Card_formats
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/codes.html

Day 5- Reverse Engineering

I, personally, define reverse engineering as when a product (or recipe, or other item which is 'created') is taken apart, in an orderly manner, in order to discover what it is actually 'made up of'. The process of reverse engineering allows someone to see how they can replicate a thing or how they may be able to improve said item by seeing what is not necessary and what can be consolidated to make something more efficient.

However, when the issue of whether or not reverse engineering is legal today is a tricky one. For me, I find reverse engineering to be legal on certain things- but not others. For example, reverse engineering seems to be perfectly acceptable, and could also be viewed as a compliment to someone when it involves a recipe. Trying to discover what actually goes into a certain food for example.

Then there is the issue with reverse engineering on electronic products and whether or not that is considered 'legal.' There have been court cases held, even brought to the Supreme Court, on issues regarding reverse engineering. The Supreme Court has also stated that reverse engineering promotes and encourages the innovation of the market place. Congress has passed certain laws saying that certain products are able to be reversed engineered whilst others are not. Another site which I visited stated that copyrighting does not protect ideas just the way those are expressed. For example, the Zune could be viewed as a copy of the I-pod, however, it is a reversely engineered product. The I-pod was examined, and then it was further developed and challenged the I-pod market. This is not taking the ideas, it is changing the ways in which they are 'expressed.' All in all, though, all markets and industries must be sure to verify the copyright infringement regulations on any given product which they are hoping to alter or 'change the expression of.'
I am in support of reverse engineering, however, not directly copying and slapping a different logo on it. Reverse engineering must show some changes or alterations, making each company's product, truly 'its own.'


http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi#QID195
http://www.jenkins.eu/articles/reverse-engineering.asp#a8

DAY 4 My Comment to Someones 'Burning Question'

http://andrewscsc111ablog.blogspot.com/2009/09/one-burning-question.html?showComment=1252953683628#c795005068264681158

Questions for the Course

I have always been curious about where information 'goes' once it is deleted. Obviously, as I am sure the class is aware, it goes to the Recycle Bin. However, after it has been placed in there, where does it go so that we can bring the information back to our computer if we have not yet emptied the bin yet.

Stereotypes of Nerds- and more

Stereotypes:

1) Do not have a social life of any sort
2) All are mainly young, many did not go to college
3) All are men

Many of these sterotypes still exist today, however times have changed. These days 'nerds' are not only caucasian and many are of different ethnicities. Also, nerds today, many of them to go to college and have a large focus on getting good grades. Nerds are often seen today as those who spend their nights in front of books. Some nerds today are seen as 'cool' but it all depends on what they are 'nerdy' at.

Nerds today are not all men, however, this sterotype still does exist. When a girl is referred to as a nerd it is often because she studies a lot and is into school. Guys are still nerds, but in the computer sense. Nerds today are still young, often starting at an even younger age due to the ease and accessibility of computers in today's society.

If I were to make a movie about sterotypes of nerds today, I would point out that they focus largely on taking apart and rebuilding items. It is not as popular amongst nerds in high school these days for them to focus on programming and creating new things- but rather using what is already there.

An Introduction to Brooke...

Hi! My name is Brooke Kassner. I am from Switzerland and am currently majoring in Political Science and History. I have lived overseas my whole life - ranging from Kazakhstan to Indonesia -and currently am residing in Angola, which is in the western part of Africa. I am currently a sophmore here at Elon and absolutely adore it. I have a strong passion for international affairs and am a huge advocate for human rights. I also love working with various UN programs and other items of importance in the global community.