Week 5 - Topics and Readings

This week we continue the individual project presentations and we start focusing on Computing. I like to discuss the history, evolution and improvements in the computing industry. We'll cover a number of simple computing terms and definitions by taking a look inside the computer. Glenn Santa (Computing Specialist) will help us discuss the "guts" and "uses" of computing parts. After the basics we'll dive a little deeper into processing power, Moore's Law and miniturization. The main ideas here are today computers and components are generally smaller, faster, and more powerful/capable.

I am also pleased to have Ryan Elstad (System Admin) and Peter Pizzimenti (System Admin) as guest speakers this week. Ryan and Pete are bright lights in the world of computing and IT infrastructure here on campus. I've asked them to discuss servers (file vs media), storage, backups, green computing, data centers and virtualization. And of course they will discuss costs and companies involved. This will be a great session. I learn something new every time I talk to them.

Download Reading Assignments Here

*Your paper is due 2/12.

My First Computer from 1982!

As we move into the Computing Section of this course I started thinking about my first computer it was the Commodore 64. What a purchase by my dad. At the time the C64's graphics and sound capabilities were rivaled only by the Atari (hopefully you know what Atari is). Also it was the best selling computer of all time (at the time). At the time I was five and playing some really lame games: Super Bowl Sunday, Frogger and Q-Bert.

What are the biggest differences between your first computer and your present computer?

These screenshots are pathetic and real. I remember these games, the lame controller and the 5in floppy disks. Oh yeah did I mention there was no internet. That explains my 15 year obsession with John Madden Football and the Internet.

As you can see, when you are an old timer a lot has changed. The biggest difference my my C64 and my MacBookPro is speed, size, power, storage, networking and graphics capabilities:

64KB of RAM (C64) vs. 2GB of RAM (my MacBookPro)
1.02 MHz CPU (C64) vs. 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo (my MacBookPro)
16 Colors (Monitor) vs. Millions of Colors (Monitor)
Commodore BASIC 2.0 OS (C64) vs. Mac OS X Leopard (my MacBookPro)
$595 COST (C64) vs. over $2,000 (my MacBookPro)