Quiz 3

1. Describe the four categories of output.

2. The characteristics of LCD monitors, LCD screens, plasma monitors, and HDTVs.

3. What are the components inside the systems units.

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

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

6. Identify the categories of application software.

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

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

9. History of the Internet.

10. What are different storage devices.

ANSWERS:

1. The four categories of output are: text, graphics, audio and video.

2.Characteristics of:

• LCD Monitor- ultra-slim, stylish,full color display devices for the PC that fit in any part of the home or office.
• LCD Screens- lightweight, aesthetically appealing, energy efficient and long-term cost effective. 
• Plasma Monitors- produce rich colors along with very deep blacks,wide viewing angles allow more people to be able to watch TV comfortably, pixels of Plasma TV’s are lit individually so the pixels can be completely turned off to display truck black colors. 
• HDTVs- black level, brightness, contrast, color saturation, image processing, screen composition, tuners and cable card. 

 3. The Basic Components are:

• Processor
• memory
• adapter cards
• ports
• drive bays
• power supply
• motherboard
• chip
• Central Processing Unit
• Machine Cycle      

4.Components of a processor:

• Control Unit
• Arithmetic/ Logic Unit (ALU)
• Register

 The machine cycle is the name of the four operations of the CPU. The first step is to 'fetch' the program instuction/data from the memory. The second step is to 'decode', which means translate the instruction into instructions. Step three is to 'execute', carry out the instruction. Finally step four is to 'store', write the result back to memory.

5. Short for binary digit, the smallest unit of information on a machine.

When the user press any letter using the keyboard the electronic signal from that letter is sent to the system unit then the system unit convert it to its binary code and stored in memory for processing. After processing the binary code for that particular letter is converted to an image and displayed on the output device.

6.Categories of Application Software:

• Personal productivity Applications
• Multimedia and Graphics applications
• Communications applications 
• Home and Educational

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

8.Using web authoring software can help build web pages faster, an advantage if you are facing a deadline or a large project. There are several different types of web authoring software you can use to make great web pages without having to know all of the ins and outs of web page creation.

9. The USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In response, the United States forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military.

RAND Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation (a government agency), was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a study on how it could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack. This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike, decentralized so that if any locations (cities) in the U.S. were attacked, the military could still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack.

Baran's finished document described several ways to accomplish this. His final proposal was a packet switched network.

"Packet switching is the breaking down of data into datagrams or packets that are labeled to indicate the origin and the destination of the information and the forwarding of these packets from one computer to another computer until the information arrives at its final destination computer. This was crucial to the realization of a computer network. If packets are lost at any given point, the message can be resent by the originator."
ARPA awarded the ARPANET contract to BBN. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits. The first e-mail program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was renamed The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA)

ARPANET was currently using the Network Control Protocol or NCP to transfer data. This allowed communications between hosts running on the same network. Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other.

10. Different storage devices:

• Hard drive
• External Hard Drives
• network Attached Storage
• Optical Media Storage
• Flash Drives