Week 2 Readings

Computer Hardware

This article was a good read and I appreciate it because, while I use a computer for 90% of my job and a lot outside of work (sports forums, torrents, setting my home wireless network, etc) I never really learned the "nuts and bolts". The easy to understand definitions of RAM, etc. were useful. However, there were too many abbreviations that weren't spelled out in the article - PCI, PCI-E, AGP. I know these have something to do with slots on the motherboard but if someone could elaborate on this, I'd appreciate it! :)

Moore's Law

In all honesty, a lot of this article went over my head so I do not have a whole lot to say about it. The discussion of the future and how Moore's Law applies was interesting. Thankfully the video did a good job in explaining Moore's Law without a lot of technical speak. The discussion of the difference hardware and software improvement was interesting. It is understandable why software lags as far as programming goes but will this always be the case?

www.computerhistory.org

I learned so much reading this site. Most interesting was the Internet history and finding out the origin of things like ASCII, routers, networks, etc. The multitude of high quality images on the site are great, especially the one of the high speed printer from 1975! Browsing some of the articles in Core was interesting, including 'Rescued Treasures'. Reading about all of the exhibits at the museum and then sitting back and thinking about it, it's quite amazing how much has happened with computer technology in the past 50 years.