Ten Week Tasks: Resource Summaries For Computing Architecture And Development

The text discusses the elements of modern computing architecture however is largely silent on the individuals who played a role in its development.  Find and summarise a resource that describes ONE such individual.  The individual should have had a significant influence on the development of computers and/or components of modern computing architecture.

Title: Time sharing operating systems

Summary:

John McCarthy (MIT, US) in 1957 started proposing time-sharing operating systems, where more than one user have the access to share a single computer believing that the control of the entire computer is in their hand multiple. John McCarthy wrote a memo to Professor Philip Morse  on first January 19589 in which he proposed that this could be implemented into the future technologies or machines, which increased the excitement in the computing field and attracted many researchers towards the same topic. Christopher Strachey of National Research Development Corporation, UK, wrote an article on the same topic, “time-sharing in” in which he proposed that the notion that ‘programs share the computer’ and cannot introduced that users can also share the same computer in 1959, which made the article worth nothing. At that same time programs were already sharing the computers in the SAGE project.  Since 1961 Fernando Corbató, who was from same MIT, invented a four-terminal system that was working on the mainframe of IBM 709. After so many researches, experiments and proposed theories, these inventions became challenge for the researchers and the first effective running time-sharing system was proposed namely, “Compatible Time Sharing System (CTSS)” which was a completely working system. These mechanisms are still the critical support for the computer security of some of the computers of this time too, either are able to share the different users mechanism or not.

Week 2

The text discusses the components and activities of operating systems however is largely silent on the individuals who played a role in their development.  Find and summarise a resource that describes ONEsuch individual.  The individual should have had a significant influence on the writing or development of operating systems.

Title: Bill gates influencing windows operating system

Summary:

Bill Gates

Bill Gates was appending too much time with computers after when he was graduating from the high school and enrolling to the Harvard College in 1973. By 1975 he wanted to start his own computer software company and was successful in owning his own software company with his friend Paul Allen after reaching an agreement with MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) in manner to develop a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 computer. After a year they register their company under named ‘Micro-Soft’ in 1976 after ending his studies at Harvard.

IBM in 1980 offered him if he would write BASIC interpreter for their soon-to-be release IBM personal Computer, which resulted in breakout for him that took him to a great success. Same time IBM mentioned that they were also need an operating system for their computers. Few offers had been made by him and for various reasons they did not work out this resulted him an offer to produce one for them. After that he proposed Seattle Computer Products with an offer of with exclusive agreement and ultimately ownership for the developed computers in exchange of the operating systems that they owned already namely ’86-DOS’. The agreement was made successfully and the market was boomed with a new technology with very big profit with the leading player in the computer industry for Microsoft. After agreeing the contract with the IBM Microsoft launched Windows in 1985 and asked IBM to supply operating system OS/2. And after that everyone is still well introduced with the Microsoft and using it in their personal computers.

Week 3

The Internet didn’t just appear – it was an evolution from earlier networks. Find and summarise a resource that describes ONEof the networks that led to the development of the modern Internet.  

Title: A Brief History of the Internet & Related Networks

 Summary:

A research program initiated by U.S. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) (DARPA), which was started to investigate the technologies and techniques for interlinking the different types of packet networks in 1973. The main purpose behind the research was to develop communication protocols that would be able to make networked computers in order to communicate transparently across the various linked packet networks. The project was named ‘Internetting project’. This led to the birth of the ‘Internet’ and produced an asset for this new age where every individual is well informed and using in their daily life. Throughout the whole process a system of protocol was developed, which became to be known as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP). Nowadays the major backbone of the internet communication service has been because of the development of NSFNET by the NSF (National Science Foundation) in 1986. Between the networks NSFNET links per month recorded is to be order of 12 billion packets with its 45 megabit per second facilities. The U.S. department of Energy and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has been contributing to this technology and providing additional facilities in the form of ESNET and ESNET respectively. Hundred thousands of the computers are being connected to the networks by the connectivity facilities provided by the major international backbones like NORDUNET in Europe and helping them to connect with their loved ones and through the whole world. After that evolution or invention only we are able to get the internet and connecting to each corner without any obstacles and collection necessary information.

Week 4

Ethernet is an example of a Layer Two (L2) data link protocol that is discussed in the text.  Find and summarise a resource that describes the features and uses of ONE other L2 protocol that is not discussed in the text (i.e. NOT Ethernet).

Summary:

ARCNET is another example of the Layer-two protocol that is enabling and enhancing towards better experience of the networking for the individuals that are connected via networking. ARCNET (Attached Resource Computer Network) uses a token-bus scheme that can be applied in order to manage line sharing among the devices connected on the LAN and among workstations and is a widely-installed LAN (Local Area Network).In other words it can be said that it is a communication protocol for the LANs. It became popular in 1980s for automating the tasks related to work, and was the first widely available networking system for the microcomputers of that age. Technically, empty message frames continuously being circulated on a bus by the LAN server. A “token” is being inserted when a device tries to send the message in an empty frame and on that it also inserts the message. After the message is read by the other device it again resets the token at 0 so that it can be used again by other devices. Since all the devices are afforded the similar opportunities in order to use the network features that have been shared, it results in better efficiency whenever the traffic increases. When the destination device or LAN server reads the message, it resets the token to 0 so that the frame can be reused by any other device.  There are various applications of ARCNET, which can be listed as: Motor Drives, HVAC, Data control and acquisition, office automation, power generation shipboard automation and many more that are helping in enhancing the experience of the network of each individual.

Week 5

The text mentions the role of hackers in attacks on networked infrastructure.  Find and summarise a resource that describes ONE famous or well-known hacker.

Title: Top 10 most famous hackers

summary:

Kevin Poulson

The first intrusion made by Kevin Poulson was a radio station, which was offering Porsche to the 102nd caller. He had hacked phone lines of the radio station named KIIS-FM in manner to ensure that he is the 102nd customer and win the prize. He had reactivated old Yellow Page escort service under his mentor Dark Dante for an acquaintance who was running a virtual escort agency and was manipulating the police and other government officials. He was taken with more consideration, when he hacked the federal investigation and get unauthorized access to the information that was being saved into its database. Before that everyone was ignoring him because of his immature activities and ignoring him. But after this breach he was at the front of the federal department and gained popularity. After the breach all the 1-800 phone lines were mysteriously closed when he had appeared at the US television Unsolved Mysteries as a fugitive. But even that he got caught by the police and was sentenced to be jail for few years which he took as a criminal and spend a hard and humble life in the jai. He was also sentenced to not use any computer or stay away from any networking technology that can be used to manipulate the networks so, after the release from the jail he had started living a normal and non-hacking life and incorporated himself with a TV news channel and transformed himself as a journalist. After that he was spending his life normally and neither did any intrusion nor breached any database.

Week 6

Society is increasingly reliant on networks and network technologies but they are evolving at a rapid pace.  Find and summarise a resource that describes ONE example of a future networking technology or trend that will impact society.

Title:Quantum networking system

 Summary:

In order to change the face of application of technologies with new and innovative inventions the above article was found to be the best example. This article put emphasis on the phenomenon ‘prospective of the quantum network computing’ and its applications in the future by implementing into the real world application. This will be the technology that will widely spread in the future and will be the most dominant factor for the network system. In future networking system will be directly dependent on the implementation of the quantum technology. There are many advantages of this technology among which following are some of the advantages: Firstly, it will help in improving the security of the networks and will ultimately provide a secure network connection to share information. Qubits is the main concept for the implementation of quantum technique, which can be used as a means to detect the eavesdropping. This implementation will make the system more advanced after developing the system that is well isochronized with the technology of quantum. Another advantage is that it can be helpful in creating a distributed data system, which will alternatively led the possibilities of making the numerical quantum computation successful that will enhance the rate of responses in the networking system. Teleportation of information will be enhanced and advanced that will be revolutionary moment for each individual of the future and will be occupying a dominant place in the networking system technology in the future.

Week 7

The text mentions social business and the impact of the use of social networking platforms.  Find and summarise a resource that describes the history of the development of ONE such social media platform.

Social Media Monitoring Tools to Simplify Your Marketing

Summary:

Spredfast—Social Media Management

There is no-doubt in stating that the social media is enhancing the business technique and helps in improving the relation between the customer and the organization. Spredfast is one of the social media management systems for various types of organization that is playing an important role in determining all the relative aspects of the organization related to its business and market including customer responses. Various organization haven making official pages for them at Twitter and Facebook, where an individual can be made aware with the products and services that the organization is offering to them. This management tool collect information that has been posted at this social media pages and compare them with other organization, also compares the rating provided to the products and the services and present a complete chart to describe the position of the organization relating to several others. The platforms that are being covered by this tool are Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Slideshare and blogs and posts.It offers the organizations to manage the content that were stated online, which includes an online text library, which is accessible to many teams and predict based on maximum accuracy and efficiency. Melisa Barker manager of the Jive community during a digital marketing webinar recommended this app as the best tool for comparing the platforms and predicting results with extreme accuracy. Her statement can put emphasis about this tool, which was “I have used a number of social media publishing, monitoring and measurement tools. None of them have the scalability of Spredfast. When you have more than a team of one managing your social media, you need an efficient way to manage workflow and measure the impact of your effort. Spredfast does just that.”

Week 8

With the advent of mass data collection and storage has come data mining. Find and summarise a resource that describes ONE example where data mining has been used successfully by a business.  You should not use any examples covered in the textbook.

Title: Real world examples of Data Mining

Summary: 

A mail-order business ‘Merck-Medco Managed Care is which primary business is to sell drugs to one of the largest health care provider namely large HMOs, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, U.S. corporations, state organizations, state governments and many more. There has been mining of one terabyte of the Merck-Medco in order to point out the hidden points or links between the illness and its spot trends including the known drug treatments that can be helpful in pinpointing that which of the drugs will be more effective to the different kind of patients and budgeting those costs with sorting them according to the price. This results in better and effective treatment at low cost. Data mining implementation of Merck-Medco’s has been helping the customers and the patients to save an average amount of 10-15% on the projected costs and improving the business by attracting more customers, which is helping the organization in gaining competitive advantages as it has providing ability to the organization to accurately gauge responses of the customers to changes in business rules. It has become a new bank that is providing best drugs for the patients at the lowest price and after the implementation of data mining into the system the market of Merck-Medco can be seen to be gradually increasing and spreading into the whole market of drugs. On the other hand customers are also getting benefits of this implementation and raising their interest in the drugs that are being offered by this organization.

Week 9

One of the greatest success stories in application development in recent times has been the popularity of mobile apps.  Find and summarise a resource that describes the story of ONE successful mobile app developer.

Title: Young App Developers Who Became Millionaires

Summary:

Brian Wong

A Canadian internet entrepreneur named Brian Wong who was Born in 1991 founded a mobile application ‘Kiip’ along with his colleagues namely Amadeus Demarzi and Courtney Guertin in 2010. This is an application that provides a reward platform in which the brands and companies are there to provide real-worlds rewards for the in-game achievements. The application Kiip is being activated on 75 million devices and more than 1,100 applications. The main function of the application was to send 500 million moments rewards, which was based on the 500 million per month through its network. More than $50 million of venture capital had been grown by the Kiip from the companies like Relay Ventures, Hummer Winbald, True Ventures, Verizon Ventures, CrossLink Capital, and several other organizations. Strategic partners have been increasing for this application that includes American Apparel, 1-800-Flowers, Amazon.com, Best Buy, Carl’s Jr., Victoria’s Secret, Disney, Playboy, Vitamin Waters, and  Pepsi. Even the Kiip is being evolving and being expand to platforms other than gaming into the fitness applications like MapMyRun, Nexercise, Lolo Fit, Gym-Pact and many others. After that in August 2014 an announcement was made about the partnership of Kiip with the RunKeeper in order to reward the workouts of the users with songs downloads and also with fitness-based healthy rewards as well. This young application developer became very popular after the discovery of this application and listed his name with the top application developers and shakes his hands with top mobile application programming companies, which led him to make good money.

 2010 saw Brian as the second youngest company leader to receive a funding from a venture capital firm, the first spot taken by Nick D’Aloisio. He has spoken at various popular conferences like TEDx, and SXSW.

Week 10

While information systems and technology deliver many benefits to society, they can also result in (sometimes inadvertent) negative effects and outcomes.  Find and summarise a resource that describes ONE example of where the use of an information system or technology has led to negative consequences for humans.

Title: What is WannaCry and how does ransomware work?

 Summary:

Information technology is increasing in rapid manner, which led the technicians to put more emphasis related to the information security, which is also speeding up as the technologies are. WannaCry ransomware cyber-attack is a very recent example of information security failures. This cyber-attack causes serious loss to several organizations and it was a very mass destruction attack in which hundred millions of computers were affected globally. This breach was possible because of two reasons; first failure of U.S. agencies in keeping their ‘EternetBlue’ software and other fault was the users less precautions over the information security. These both reasons cause loss to common people as well. No one is taking any type of precaution while feeding and saving their data into the database, whether they are saving it online or using any offline means. This virus spread all over the internet and coding was so special and unique that several IT researchers were not able to decode it. Many of the organization had to pay the ransom in exchange of the anti-virus and face a serious loss. The hackers had targeted several big organizations and hospitals and made good money from them. Maximum damage was made to the systems that were using pirated or old version of operating system. Although the damage was big and after that everyone is taking precaution but this could not change what had happened. Every individual and organizations should learn from this incident and focus on information security before implementing information technologies into the system.