1.
Apple Inc.
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Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apples consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the media player, the Safari web browser. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in March 2015. In November 2014, Apple became the first U. S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company employs 115,000 full-time employees as of July 2015 and it operates the online Apple Store and iTunes Store, the latter of which is the worlds largest music retailer. Consumers use more than one billion Apple products worldwide as of March 2016, Apples worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015. This revenue accounts for approximately 1. 25% of the total United States GDP.1 billion, the corporation receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. Apple was founded on April 1,1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which was less than what is now considered a personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66, Apple was incorporated January 3,1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple, during the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, the Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16,1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the platform for the first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc. VisiCalc created a market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore, by the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line
2.
Operating system
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An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing
3.
Newton OS
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Newton OS is the discontinued operating system for the Apple Newton PDAs produced by Apple from 1993–1997. Newton OS was written entirely in C++ and trimmed to be low power consuming, many applications were pre-installed in the ROM of the Newton and to save on RAM and flash memory storage for user applications. Its use of ParaGraphs handwriting recognition engine has been noted as a pioneering implementation, Newton OS featured many interface elements that even Mac OS didnt have at the time, such as drawers and the poof animation. An animation similar to this is found in Mac OS X, sound responsive — Clicking menus and icons makes a sound, this feature was later introduced in Mac OS8. Icons - Similar to the Macintosh Desktop metaphor, Newton OS uses icons to open applications, tabbed documents — Similar to tabbed browsing in todays browsers and Apples AtEase interface, documents titles appear in a small tab at the top right hand of the screen. Screen rotation — In Newton 2.0, the screen could be rotated to be used for drawing or word processing, file documents — Notes and Drawings can be categorized. Print documents — Documents on the Newton can be printed, send documents — Documents can be sent to another Newton via Infrared technology or sent using the Internet by E-Mail, or faxed. Menus — Similar to menus seen in Mac OS, but menu titles are presented at the bottom of the screen in small rectangles. Many features of the Newton are best appreciated in the context of the history of Pen computing. Shortly after the Newton PDAs release in 1993, developers were not paying attention to the new Newton OS API and were still more interested in developing for the Macintosh. It was not until two years later that saw a potential market available to them in creating software for Newton OS. Several programs were made by third-party developers, including software to enhance the disappointing hand writing recognition technology of Newton OS1. x, Notes — Used for checklists, as well as both drawing and writing in the same program either with a newton keyboard or a stylus pen. Dates — Calendar program where you can schedule appointments and other special events, names — Program for storing extensive contacts information in a flexible format. Formulas — Program that offers metric conversions, currency conversions, loan and mortgage calculators, calculator — A basic calculator with square root, percentage, MR, M+ and M- functions additional to the basic functions found on a calculator. Clock — A small floating window type application, known as a desktop accessory on the Macintosh, the Newton clock also included features for an alarm, minute timer and the date. Book Reader — Support for displaying electronic books was built in, Newtons handwriting recognition, particularly the print recognizer, has been considered by many reviewers, testers, and users to be the best in the industry, even 10 years after it was introduced. It was developed by Apples Advanced Technology Group, and was described in 2012 as the worlds first genuinely usable handwriting recognition system. The Newton could recognize hand-printed text, cursive, or a mix of the two, and could also accept free-hand Sketches, Shapes, and ink text, text could also be entered by tapping with the stylus on a small on-screen pop-up QWERTY keyboard
4.
Central processing unit
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The computer industry has used the term central processing unit at least since the early 1960s. The form, design and implementation of CPUs have changed over the course of their history, most modern CPUs are microprocessors, meaning they are contained on a single integrated circuit chip. An IC that contains a CPU may also contain memory, peripheral interfaces, some computers employ a multi-core processor, which is a single chip containing two or more CPUs called cores, in that context, one can speak of such single chips as sockets. Array processors or vector processors have multiple processors that operate in parallel, there also exists the concept of virtual CPUs which are an abstraction of dynamical aggregated computational resources. Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be rewired to perform different tasks. Since the term CPU is generally defined as a device for software execution, the idea of a stored-program computer was already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchlys ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that it could be finished sooner. On June 30,1945, before ENIAC was made, mathematician John von Neumann distributed the paper entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and it was the outline of a stored-program computer that would eventually be completed in August 1949. EDVAC was designed to perform a number of instructions of various types. Significantly, the programs written for EDVAC were to be stored in high-speed computer memory rather than specified by the wiring of the computer. This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC, which was the considerable time, with von Neumanns design, the program that EDVAC ran could be changed simply by changing the contents of the memory. Early CPUs were custom designs used as part of a larger, however, this method of designing custom CPUs for a particular application has largely given way to the development of multi-purpose processors produced in large quantities. This standardization began in the era of discrete transistor mainframes and minicomputers and has accelerated with the popularization of the integrated circuit. The IC has allowed increasingly complex CPUs to be designed and manufactured to tolerances on the order of nanometers, both the miniaturization and standardization of CPUs have increased the presence of digital devices in modern life far beyond the limited application of dedicated computing machines. Modern microprocessors appear in electronic devices ranging from automobiles to cellphones, the so-called Harvard architecture of the Harvard Mark I, which was completed before EDVAC, also utilized a stored-program design using punched paper tape rather than electronic memory. Relays and vacuum tubes were used as switching elements, a useful computer requires thousands or tens of thousands of switching devices. The overall speed of a system is dependent on the speed of the switches, tube computers like EDVAC tended to average eight hours between failures, whereas relay computers like the Harvard Mark I failed very rarely. In the end, tube-based CPUs became dominant because the significant speed advantages afforded generally outweighed the reliability problems, most of these early synchronous CPUs ran at low clock rates compared to modern microelectronic designs. Clock signal frequencies ranging from 100 kHz to 4 MHz were very common at this time, the design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies facilitated building smaller and more reliable electronic devices
5.
ARM architecture
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ARM, originally Acorn RISC Machine, later Advanced RISC Machine, is a family of reduced instruction set computing architectures for computer processors, configured for various environments. It also designs cores that implement this instruction set and licenses these designs to a number of companies that incorporate those core designs into their own products, a RISC-based computer design approach means processors require fewer transistors than typical complex instruction set computing x86 processors in most personal computers. This approach reduces costs, heat and power use and these characteristics are desirable for light, portable, battery-powered devices—including smartphones, laptops and tablet computers, and other embedded systems. For supercomputers, which large amounts of electricity, ARM could also be a power-efficient solution. ARM Holdings periodically releases updates to architectures and core designs, some older cores can also provide hardware execution of Java bytecodes. The ARMv8-A architecture, announced in October 2011, adds support for a 64-bit address space, with over 100 billion ARM processors produced as of 2017, ARM is the most widely used instruction set architecture in terms of quantity produced. Currently, the widely used Cortex cores, older classic cores, the British computer manufacturer Acorn Computers first developed the Acorn RISC Machine architecture in the 1980s to use in its personal computers. Its first ARM-based products were coprocessor modules for the BBC Micro series of computers, according to Sophie Wilson, all the tested processors at that time performed about the same, with about a 4 Mbit/second bandwidth. After testing all available processors and finding them lacking, Acorn decided it needed a new architecture, inspired by white papers on the Berkeley RISC project, Acorn considered designing its own processor. Wilson developed the set, writing a simulation of the processor in BBC BASIC that ran on a BBC Micro with a 6502 second processor. This convinced Acorn engineers they were on the right track, Wilson approached Acorns CEO, Hermann Hauser, and requested more resources. Hauser gave his approval and assembled a team to implement Wilsons model in hardware. The official Acorn RISC Machine project started in October 1983 and they chose VLSI Technology as the silicon partner, as they were a source of ROMs and custom chips for Acorn. Wilson and Furber led the design and they implemented it with a similar efficiency ethos as the 6502. A key design goal was achieving low-latency input/output handling like the 6502, the 6502s memory access architecture had let developers produce fast machines without costly direct memory access hardware. The first samples of ARM silicon worked properly when first received and tested on 26 April 1985, Wilson subsequently rewrote BBC BASIC in ARM assembly language. The in-depth knowledge gained from designing the instruction set enabled the code to be very dense, the original aim of a principally ARM-based computer was achieved in 1987 with the release of the Acorn Archimedes. In 1992, Acorn once more won the Queens Award for Technology for the ARM, the ARM2 featured a 32-bit data bus, 26-bit address space and 27 32-bit registers
6.
IPad (1st generation)
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The first-generation iPad is a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple Inc. as the first in the iPad line. The device features an Apple A4 processor, a 9.7 touchscreen display, and, on certain variants, using the iOS operating system, the iPad can play music, send and receive email and browse the web. Other functions, which include the ability to play games and access references, GPS navigation software, the device was announced and unveiled on January 27,2010 at a media conference. On April 3,2010, the Wi-Fi variant of the device was released in the United States, on May 28, it was released in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The device received primarily positive reviews from various blogs and publications. Reviewers praised the device for its range of capabilities and labelled it as a competitor to laptops. Some aspects were criticized, including the nature of the operating system. During the first 80 days, three million iPads were sold, by the launch of the iPad 2, Apple sold more than 15 million iPads. On March 2,2011, Apple announced the iPad 2, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs stated in a 1983 speech that his company’s “Strategy is really simple. What we want to do at Apple, is we want to put a great computer in a book that you can carry around with you. And we really want to do it with a link in it so you don’t have to hook up to anything and you’re in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers. ”Apple’s first tablet computer was the Newton MessagePad 100, introduced in 1993. Apple also developed a prototype PowerBook Duo-based tablet, the PenLite, Apple released several more Newton-based PDAs, the final one, the MessagePad 2100, was discontinued in 1998. Apple reentered the market in 2007 with the iPhone. Smaller than the iPad and featuring a camera and mobile phone, by late 2009, the iPads release had been rumored for several years. Such speculation mostly talked about “Apple’s tablet”, specific names included iTablet, the actual name is reportedly an homage to the Star Trek PADD, a fictional device very similar in appearance to the iPad. The iPad was announced on January 27,2010, by Jobs at an Apple press conference at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Jobs later said that Apple began developing the iPad before the iPhone, the iPad’s internal codename was K48, which was revealed in the court case surrounding leaking of iPad information before launch. Apple began taking pre-orders for the iPad from US customers on March 12,2010, the only major change to the device between its announcement and being available to pre-order was the change of the behavior of the side switch from sound muting to that of a screen rotation lock
7.
Personal digital assistant
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A personal digital assistant, also known as a handheld PC, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. PDAs were largely discontinued in the early 2010s after the adoption of highly capable smartphones, in particular those based on iOS. Nearly all PDAs have the ability to connect to the Internet, a PDA has an electronic visual display, letting it include a web browser. All models also have audio capabilities, allowing usage as a media player. Most PDAs can access the Internet, intranets or extranets via Wi-Fi or Wireless Wide Area Networks, the first PDA was released in 1984 by Psion, the Organizer, followed by Psions Series 3, in 1991. The latter began to resemble the more familiar PDA style, including a full keyboard, the term PDA was first used on January 7,1992 by Apple Computer CEO John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton. In 1994, IBM introduced the first PDA with full mobile phone functionality, the IBM Simon, then in 1996, Nokia introduced a PDA with full mobile phone functionality, the 9000 Communicator, which became the worlds best-selling PDA. The Communicator spawned a new category of PDAs, the PDA phone, another early entrant in this market was Palm, with a line of PDA products which began in March 1996. A typical PDA has a touchscreen for entering data, a card slot for data storage. PDAs with wireless data connections also typically include an email client, many of the original PDAs, such as the Apple Newton and Palm Pilot, featured a touchscreen for user interaction, having only a few buttons—usually reserved for shortcuts to often-used programs. Some touchscreen PDAs, including Windows Mobile devices, had a stylus to facilitate making selections. The user interacts with the device by tapping the screen to select buttons or issue commands, typical methods of entering text on touchscreen PDAs include, A virtual keyboard, where a keyboard is shown on the touchscreen. Text is entered by tapping the on-screen keyboard with a finger or stylus, an external keyboard connected via USB, Infrared port, or Bluetooth. Some users may choose a chorded keyboard for one-handed use, handwriting recognition, where letters or words are written on the touchscreen, often with a stylus, and the PDA converts the input to text. Recognition and computation of handwritten horizontal and vertical formulas, such as 1 +2 =, stroke recognition allows the user to make a predefined set of strokes on the touchscreen, sometimes in a special input area, representing the various characters to be input. The strokes are often simplified character shapes, making them easier for the device to recognize, one widely known stroke recognition system is Palms Graffiti. Despite research and development projects, end-users experience mixed results with handwriting recognition systems, some find it frustrating and inaccurate, while others are satisfied with the quality of the recognition. Touchscreen PDAs intended for use, such as the BlackBerry and Palm Treo, usually also offer full keyboards and scroll wheels or thumbwheels to facilitate data entry
8.
Apple Newton
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The Newton is a series of personal digital assistants developed and marketed by Apple Inc. An early device in the PDA category – the Newton originated the term personal digital assistant – it was the first to feature handwriting recognition, Apple started developing the platform in 1987 and shipped the first devices in 1993. Production officially ended on February 27,1998, Newton devices run on a proprietary operating system, Newton OS, examples include Apples MessagePad series and the eMate 300, and other companies also released devices running on Newton OS. Most Newton devices were based on the ARM610 RISC processor, the Newton was considered technologically innovative at its debut, but its high price and early problems with its handwriting recognition feature limited its sales. Apple cancelled the platform at the direction of Steve Jobs in 1998, the Newton project was a personal digital assistant platform. Larry Tesler determined that a powerful, low-power processor was needed for sophisticated graphics manipulation and he found Hermann Hauser, with the Acorn RISC Machine processor, and put together Advanced RISC Machines. Newton was intended to be a reinvention of personal computing. For most of its design lifecycle Newton had a screen, more internal memory. There is, however, an history of pen computing that predates the Newton. Dylan never lived up to its developers performance expectations, when the move was made to a smaller design, Dylan was relegated to experimental status in the Bauhaus Project and eventually canceled outright. Its replacement, NewtonScript, had garbage collection and tight integration with the storage and user-interface toolkit. It was mostly developed by Walter Smith from 1992 to 1993, the project missed its original goals to reinvent personal computing, and then to rewrite contemporary application programming. The Newton project fell victim to project slippage, scope creep, and it was reinvented as a PDA platform which would be a complementary Macintosh peripheral instead of a stand-alone computer which might compete with the Macintosh. According to former Apple CEO John Sculley, the corporation invested approximately US$100M to develop Newton, the Newton was considered innovative at its debut, but it suffered from its high price and problems with the handwriting recognition element, its most anticipated feature. The handwriting software was ready by 1993 and its tendency to misread characters was widely derided in the media. In one panel, Michael Doonesburys Newton misreads the words Catching on, as Egg Freckles, a phrase that became widely repeated as an emblem of the Newtons problems. Although the software improved substantially in Newton OS2.0, the Newton became popular in some industries, notably the medical field. However, the debut of the competing Palm Pilot substantially reduced its market share, Apple struggled to find a new direction for the Newton, and when Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997, he killed the project
9.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
10.
Sharp Corporation
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Sharp Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products, headquartered in Sakai-ku, Sakai. Since 2016 it has been a part of Taiwan-based Foxconn Group. Sharp employs more than 50,000 people worldwide, the company was founded in September 1912 in Tokyo and takes its name from one of its founder’s first inventions, the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil, which was invented by Tokuji Hayakawa in 1915. As of 2013, Sharp Corporation is the tenth-largest, by market share, in Japan it has been a long-time leader. Sharp has at times also been the most popular mobile phone brand in the Japanese market, in 1912, Tokuji Hayakawa founded a metal workshop in Tokyo. The first of his inventions was a snap buckle named ‘Tokubijo’. Another of his inventions was the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil in 1915, after the pencil business was destroyed by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, the company relocated to Osaka and began designing the first generation of Japanese radio sets. These went on sale in 1925, in 1953, Sharp started producing TV sets. In 1964, Sharp developed the world’s first transistor calculator, which was priced at JP¥535,000 and it took Sharp several years to develop the product as they had no experience in making computing devices at the time. Two years later, in 1966, Sharp introduced its first IC calculator using 145 Mitsubishi-made bipolar ICs and its first LSI calculator was introduced in 1969. This was the first pocketable calculator priced at less than JP¥100,000, the company produced the first LCD calculator in 1973. All of these units are considered collectors items on the secondary market, one of the company’s main inventors of LCD calculators was Tadashi Sasaki. The company ventured into the high end stereo market in 1976 with the introduction of high end receivers, amplifiers, speakers, turntables and cassette players. The Optonica line as it was called, consisted of quality and technically advanced components. The line was changed, in 1981, and moved mainly into digital high end. Sharp’s Mobile Communications Division created the world’s first commercial camera phone, since 2000, Sharp has heavily invested in LCD panel manufacturing plants, Kameyama in 2004, Sakai in 2009. The Sakai plant is still the only 10th generation LCD manufacturing plant on the globe, however, the 2008 financial crisis and strong Yen significantly lowered world demand for Japanese LCD panels. Furthermore, the switch to digital TV broadcasting was completed in Japan by the middle of 2011
11.
Reduced instruction set computer
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A computer based on this strategy is a reduced instruction set computer, also called RISC. The opposing architecture is called complex instruction set computing, although a number of systems from the 1960s and 70s have been identified as being forerunners of RISC, the modern version of the design dates to the 1980s. In particular, two projects at Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley are most associated with the popularization of this concept. Stanfords design would go on to be commercialized as the successful MIPS architecture, while Berkeleys RISC gave its name to the entire concept, another success from this era were IBMs efforts that eventually led to the Power Architecture. RISC families include DEC Alpha, AMD Am29000, ARC, ARM, Atmel AVR, Blackfin, Intel i860 and i960, MIPS, Motorola 88000, PA-RISC, Power, RISC-V, SuperH, and SPARC. In the 21st century, the use of ARM architecture processors in smart phones and tablet computers such as the iPad, a number of systems, going back to the 1960s, have been credited as the first RISC architecture, partly based on their use of load/store approach. The term RISC was coined by David Patterson of the Berkeley RISC project, michael J. Flynn views the first RISC system as the IBM801 design which began in 1975 by John Cocke, and completed in 1980. The 801 was eventually produced in a form as the ROMP in 1981. As the name implies, this CPU was designed for tasks, and was also used in the IBM RT-PC in 1986. But the 801 inspired several research projects, including new ones at IBM that would lead to the IBM POWER instruction set architecture. The most public RISC designs, however, were the results of university research programs run with funding from the DARPA VLSI Program, the VLSI Program, practically unknown today, led to a huge number of advances in chip design, fabrication, and even computer graphics. The Berkeley RISC project started in 1980 under the direction of David Patterson, Berkeley RISC was based on gaining performance through the use of pipelining and an aggressive use of a technique known as register windowing. In a traditional CPU, one has a number of registers. In a CPU with register windows, there are a number of registers, e. g.128. The Berkeley RISC project delivered the RISC-I processor in 1982, consisting of only 44,420 transistors RISC-I had only 32 instructions, and yet completely outperformed any other single-chip design. They followed this up with the 40,760 transistor,39 instruction RISC-II in 1983, which ran over three times as fast as RISC-I. The MIPS architecture grew out of a course by John L. Hennessy at Stanford University in 1981, resulted in a functioning system in 1983. The MIPS approach emphasized an aggressive clock cycle and the use of the pipeline, the MIPS system was followed by the MIPS-X and in 1984 Hennessy and his colleagues formed MIPS Computer Systems
12.
Handwriting recognition
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Handwriting recognition is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image of the text may be sensed off line from a piece of paper by optical scanning or intelligent word recognition. Alternatively, the movements of the pen tip may be sensed on line, for example by a computer screen surface. Handwriting recognition principally entails optical character recognition, however, a complete handwriting recognition system also handles formatting, performs correct segmentation into characters and finds the most plausible words. Off-line handwriting recognition involves the conversion of text in an image into letter codes which are usable within computer. The data obtained by this form is regarded as a representation of handwriting. Off-line handwriting recognition is difficult, as different people have different handwriting styles. And, as of today, OCR engines are primarily focused on machine printed text, narrowing the problem domain often helps increase the accuracy of handwriting recognition systems. ZIP code, for example, would contain only the characters 0-9 and this fact would reduce the number of possible identifications. Primary techniques, Specifying specific character ranges Utilization of specialized forms Off-line character recognition often involves scanning a form or document written sometime in the past and this means the individual characters contained in the scanned image will need to be extracted. Tools exist that are capable of performing this step, however, there are several common imperfections in this step. The most common is when characters that are connected are returned as a single containing both characters. This causes a problem in the recognition stage. Yet many algorithms are available that reduce the risk of connected characters, after the extraction of individual characters occurs, a recognition engine is used to identify the corresponding computer character. Several different recognition techniques are currently available, neural network recognizers learn from an initial image training set. The trained network then makes the character identifications, each neural network uniquely learns the properties that differentiate training images. It then looks for similar properties in the image to be identified. Neural networks are quick to set up, however, they can be if they learn properties that are not important in the target data
13.
EMate 300
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The eMate 300 is a personal digital assistant designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer to the education market as a low-cost laptop running the Newton operating system. It was the only Newton Device with a built-in keyboard, the eMate was introduced March 7,1997 for US$799 and was discontinued along with the Apple Newton product line and its operating system on February 27,1998. The eMate 300 featured a 6.8 480x320 resolution 16-shade grayscale display with a backlight, stylus pen, keyboard, infrared port, the keyboard was roughly 85% the size of a standard full size keyboard. Power came from built-in rechargeable batteries, which lasted up to 28 hours on full charge, in order to achieve its low price, the eMate 300 did not have all the features of the contemporary Newton equivalent, the MessagePad 2000. The eMate used a 25 MHz ARM 710a RISC processor and had less memory than the MessagePad 2000 which used a StrongARM110 RISC processor and was more expandable, unlike the MessagePad line, the eMate 300 features an internal memory expansion slot. It is located in the hatch under the door, next to the ROM card. Both cards fit into slots, but the ROM card is larger. The expansion card is on the left, companies like Newertech produced cards for the eMate. Most cards expanded the bus from 16 bits to 32 bits, as well as providing additional DRAM. When one of these cards is installed, the internal DRAM is disabled, but the internal flash RAM is combined with the flash on the card. For example, If a memory card were to have 4 MB of DRAM and 2 MB of flash, the Newton would report having 4 MB of flash, in addition to the expansion slot, the eMate also features a single non-CardBus PCMCIA slot. It can be used for a number of different cards, including modems, ethernet cards, wireless cards, bluetooth cards, the eMate 300 featured a green-colored translucent durable case designed for intense use in classrooms. The eMate 300 featured a dark green-colored keyboard similar to that of PowerBooks of the same era, purple, clear, red, and orange colored eMate prototypes were produced for show only and were never put into mass production. Apple Newton AlphaSmart Dana Personal digital assistant iPad Linzmayer, Owen W. Apple Confidential 2.0, The Definitive History of the Worlds Most Colorful Company
14.
Cursive
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Cursive, is any style of penmanship in which some characters are written joined together in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster. Formal cursive is generally joined, but casual cursive is a combination of joins, the writing style can be further divided as looped, italic, or connected. The cursive method is used with a number of alphabets due to its improved writing speed, in some alphabets, many or all letters in a word are connected sometimes making a word two single complex strokes. Cursive is any style of penmanship in which the symbols of the language are written in a conjoined and/or flowing manner and this writing style is distinct from printscript using block letters, in which the letters of a word are unconnected and in Roman/Gothic letterform rather than joined-up script. Not all cursive copybooks join all letters, formal cursive is generally joined, in the Arabic, Syriac, Latin, and Cyrillic alphabets, many or all letters in a word are connected, sometimes making a word one single complex stroke. In Hebrew cursive and Roman cursive, the letters are not connected, in Maharashtra there is a version of Cursive called Modi In looped cursive penmanship, some ascenders and descenders have loops which provide for joins. Cursive italic penmanship—derived from chancery cursive—uses non-looped joins or no joins, in italic cursive, there are no joins from g, j, q or y, and a few other joins are discouraged. Italic penmanship became popular in the 15th-century Italian Renaissance, the term italic as it relates to handwriting is not to be confused with italic typed letters that slant forward. Many, but not all, letters in the handwriting of the Renaissance were joined, the origins of the cursive method is associated with practical advantages of writing speed and infrequent pen lifting to accommodate the limitations of the quill. Quills are fragile, easily broken, and will spatter unless used properly, steel dip pens followed quills, they were sturdier, but still had some limitations. The individuality of the provenance of a document was a factor also, the term cursive derives from the 18th century Italian corsivo from Medieval Latin cursivus, which literally means running. This term in turn derives from Latin currere, Modi is a script used to write the Marathi language, which is the primary language spoken in the state of Maharashtra, India. There are at least two different theories concerning its origin, modI was an official script used to write Marathi until the 20th century when the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script was promoted as the standard writing system for Marathi. Although Modi was primarily used to write Marathi, other such as Urdu, Kannada, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Hindi. In Bengali cursive script the letters are more likely to be more curvy in appearance than in standard Bengali handwriting, also, the horizontal supporting bar on each letter runs continuously through the entire word, unlike in standard handwriting. Roman cursive is a form of handwriting used in ancient Rome and it is customarily divided into old cursive, and new cursive. New Roman cursive, also called minuscule cursive or later Roman cursive, the Greek alphabet has had several cursive forms in the course of its development. In antiquity, a form of handwriting was used in writing on papyrus
15.
PalmPilot
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The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc. These devices were launched on March 10,1997, Palm also sold the 10201U modem at 14.4 kbit/s, introduced at a price of $129. An upgrade kit was available, which allowed users of the earlier Pilot 1000/5000 devices to upgrade the OS, ROM. Initially suggested retail prices upon launch were $399 for the PalmPilot Professional, $299 for the PalmPilot Personal, Upgrade kits were also available to existing registered Pilot users for $99 for a limited time after the launch. These kits included IR capability, a new plastic memory door to accommodate the IR diodes, a card with 1 MB, the new ROM for Palm OS2.0. U. S. Robotics Announces Two New Models of the Best Selling Pilot Connected Organizer - Press Release, Palm support Palm OS2.05 Update
16.
Palm, Inc.
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Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants and other electronics. It was the designer of the Palm Pilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 600, Palm developed several versions of Palm OS for PDAs and smartphones. The company was responsible for the first versions of webOS, the first multitasking operating system for smartphones, and enyo. js. WebOS has been supported by HP, LG and the open source community, LG uses it for Smart TVs and smartwatches, Enyo is used by LG, Openbravo and many others to design iOS, Android, Windows 8, and webOS apps. In October 2014, HP sold the Palm trademark to a shelf corporation tied to the Chinese electronics firm TCL Corporation, shortly afterward, TCL confirmed its plans to revive the Palm brand on future, crowdsourced smartphones. Palm, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, was responsible for products including the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo. Previous product lines include the Pilot 1000, PalmPilot Pro, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire, while their older devices run Palm OS Garnet, four editions of the Treo run Windows Mobile. Palm Computing, Inc. was founded in 1992 by Jeff Hawkins, the company was originally started to write software for the Zoomer, a consumer PDA manufactured by Casio for Tandy. The Zoomer devices were distributed by Casio and GRiD, while Palm provided the PIM software. The PEN/GEOS operating system was provided by Geoworks, the company was acquired by U. S. Robotics Corp. in 1995. In June 1997, U. S. Robotics was acquired by 3Com, in June 1998, the founders became unhappy with the direction in which 3Com was taking the company, and left to found Handspring. 3Com made the Palm subsidiary an independent, publicly traded company on March 1,2000, Palm Inc had its IPO during the dot-com bubble and in its first day of trading the shares of the new company hit an all-time high of US$95.06. But competition and the end of the bubble caused Palms shares to lose 90% of their value in just over a year. By June 2001 the companys shares were trading at US$6.50, in January 2002, Palm set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS, which was named PalmSource in February. PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company, in October 2003, the hardware division of the company merged with Handspring, was renamed to palmOne, Inc. and traded under the ticker symbol PLMO. The Palm trademark was held by a jointly owned holding company, in May 2005, palmOne purchased PalmSources share in the Palm trademark for US$30 million. In July 2005, palmOne launched its new name and brand, reverting to Palm, Inc. in late 2005, ACCESS, which specializes in mobile and embedded web browser technologies, acquired PalmSource for US$324 million. On January 4,2006, Palm released the Palm Treo 700w, Palm CEO Ed Colligan acknowledged that We were approached by larger parties over the last six months, and the reality is that we thought this was the best outcome for our business and our investors
17.
Mode (computer interface)
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An interface that uses no modes is known as a modeless interface. Modeless interfaces avoid mode errors by making it impossible for the user to commit them, in Raskins sense and according to his definition, an interface is not modal as long as the user is fully aware of its current state. Raskin refers to this as locus of attention, if the users locus of attention changes to a different area, the state of the interface may then represent a mode since the user is no longer aware of it. Vi – has one mode for inserting text, and a mode for entering commands. There is also an ex mode for issuing more complex commands, under normal circumstances, the editor automatically returns to the previous mode after a command has been issued, however, it is possible to permanently move into this mode using Shift-Q. Emacs – has the concept of keys, which trigger a modal state by pressing the control key plus a letter key. Emacs then waits for additional keypresses that complete a keybinding and this differs from vi in that the mode always ends as soon as the command is called. Emacs also has major and minor modes that change the available commands. Modes are written in Emacs Lisp, and all modes may not be included with all versions, cisco IOS – certain commands are executed in a command mode. Tools chosen from a palette in photo-editing and drawing applications are examples of a modal interface, some advanced image editors have a feature where the same tools can be accessed nonmodally by a keypress, and remain active as long as the key is held down. Releasing the key returns the interface to the modal tool activated by the palette, video games can use game modes as a mechanic to enhance gameplay. Modal windows block all workflow in the program until the modal window is closed. A mode error can be startling and disorienting as the user copes with the sudden violation of his or her user expectations. Problems occur if a change in the system state happens unnoticed, another typical problem is a sudden change of state that interrupts a users activity, such as focus stealing. In such a situation it can happen that the user does some operations with the old state in mind. A very frustrating type of modality is created by a mode where the user does not find a way out, in other words, the most common source of mode errors may be the Caps Lock key. Other common modes available in PC keyboards are Insert and the other keys, Num lock. Dead keys for diacritics also create a mode, at least if they dont provide visual feedback that the next typed character will be modified
18.
In situ
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In situ is a Latin phrase that translates literally to on site or in position. It means locally, on site, on the premises or in place to describe an event where it takes place, in the aerospace industry, equipment on-board aircraft must be tested in situ, or in place, to confirm everything functions properly as a system. Individually, each piece may work but interference from nearby equipment may create unanticipated problems, special test equipment is available for this in situ testing. In archaeology, in situ refers to an artifact that has not been moved from its place of deposition. In other words, it is stationary, meaning still, an artifact being in situ is critical to the interpretation of that artifact and, consequently, of the culture which formed it. Once an artifacts find-site has been recorded, the artifact can then be moved for conservation, further interpretation, an artifact that is not discovered in situ is considered out of context and as not providing an accurate picture of the associated culture. However, the out of context artifact can provide scientists with an example of types, when excavating a burial site or surface deposit in situ refers to cataloging, recording, mapping, photographing human remains in the position they are discovered. The label in situ indicates only that the object has not been newly moved. Thus, an archaeological in situ find may be an object that was looted from another place, an item of booty of a past war. Consequently, the in situ find site may not reveal its provenance. It is also possible for archaeological layers to be reworked on purpose or by accident, for example, in a Tell mound, where layers are not typically uniform or horizontal, or in land cleared or tilled for farming. The term in situ is used to describe ancient sculpture that was carved in place such as the Sphinx or Petra. This distinguishes it from statues that were carved and moved like the Colossi of Memnon, which was moved in ancient times. In art, in situ refers to a work of art made specifically for a host site, for a more detailed account see, Site-specific art. The term can refer to a work of art created at the site where it is to be displayed, rather than one created in the artists studio. In architectural sculpture the term is employed to describe sculpture that is carved on a building, frequently from scaffolds. A fraction of the star clusters in our galaxy, as well as those in other massive galaxies. The rest might have been accreted from now defunct dwarf galaxies, in biology and biomedical engineering, in situ means to examine the phenomenon exactly in place where it occurs
19.
QWERTY
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QWERTY is a keyboard layout for Latin script. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard, the QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in 1873. It became popular with the success of the Remington No, the QWERTY layout was devised and created in the early 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his writing machine he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden. Firstly, characters were mounted on arms or typebars, which would clash. Secondly, its point was located beneath the paper carriage, invisible to the operator. Consequently, jams were especially serious, because the typist could only discover the mishap by raising the carriage to inspect what had been typed, the solution was to place commonly used letter-pairs so that their typebars were not neighboring, avoiding jams. Sholes struggled for the five years to perfect his invention. The study of bigram frequency by educator Amos Densmore, brother of the financial backer James Densmore, is believed to have influenced the arrangement of letters, others suggest instead that the letter arrangement evolved from telegraph operators feedback. In November 1868 he changed the arrangement of the half of the alphabet, O to Z. These adjustments included placing the R key in the previously allotted to the period key. Apocryphal claims that change was made to let salesmen impress customers by pecking out the brand name TYPE WRITER QUOTE from one keyboard row are not formally substantiated. Vestiges of the original layout remained in the home row sequence DFGHJKL. The modern layout is, The QWERTY layout became popular with the success of the Remington No.2 of 1878, the first typewriter to include both upper and lower case letters, using a shift key. 0 and 1 were omitted to simplify the design and reduce the manufacturing and maintenance costs, they were chosen specifically because they were redundant and could be recreated using other keys. Typists who learned on these machines learned the habit of using the uppercase letter I for the one. In early designs, some characters were produced by printing two symbols with the carriage in the same position. For instance, the point, which shares a key with the numeral 1 on modern keyboards, could be reproduced by using a three-stroke combination of an apostrophe, a backspace
20.
Virtual keyboard
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A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows a user to enter characters. A virtual keyboard can usually be operated with multiple devices, which may include a touchscreen, an actual computer keyboard. Text is commonly inputted either by tapping a virtual keyboard or finger-tracing, virtual keyboards are also used as features of emulation software for systems that have fewer buttons than a computer keyboard would have. Online virtual keyboards for multiple languages that dont require OS settings change An optical virtual keyboard was invented and patented by IBM engineers in 2008. It optically detects and analyses human hand and finger motions and interprets them as operations on a physically non-existent input device like a surface having painted keys, in that way it allows to emulate unlimited types of manually operated input devices such as a mouse or keyboard. On the Internet, various JavaScript virtual keyboards have been created, allowing users to type their own languages on foreign keyboards, multitouch screens allow the possibility to create virtual chorded keyboards for tablet computers, touchscreens, touchpads and wired gloves. Virtual keyboards may be used in cases to reduce the risk of keystroke logging. For example, Westpac’s online banking service uses a keyboard for the password entry. It is more difficult for malware to monitor the display and mouse to obtain the data entered via the virtual keyboard, however it is possible, for example by recording screenshots at regular intervals or upon each mouse click. Some implementations of the keyboard may give visual feedback of the key clicked. This makes it easier for an observer to read the data from the screen. A user may not be able to point and click as fast as they could type on a keyboard, thus making it easier for the observer
21.
Graphics tablet
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These tablets may also be used to capture data or handwritten signatures. It can also be used to trace an image from a piece of paper which is taped or otherwise secured to the tablet surface, capturing data in this way, by tracing or entering the corners of linear poly-lines or shapes, is called digitizing. The device consists of a surface upon which the user may draw or trace an image using the attached stylus. The image is displayed on the monitor, though some graphic tablets now also incorporate an LCD screen for a more realistic or natural experience. Some tablets are intended as a replacement for the mouse as the primary pointing. The first electronic handwriting device was the Telautograph, patented by Elisha Gray in 1888, Elisha Gray is best known as a contemporaneous inventor of the telephone to Alexander Graham Bell. The first graphic tablet resembling contemporary tablets and used for handwriting recognition by a computer was the Stylator in 1957, better known is the RAND Tablet also known as the Grafacon, introduced in 1964. The RAND Tablet employed a grid of wires under the surface of the pad that encoded horizontal and vertical coordinates in a magnetic signal. The stylus would receive the signal, which could then be decoded back as coordinate information. The acoustic tablet, or spark tablet, used a stylus that generated clicks with a spark plug, the clicks were then triangulated by a series of microphones to locate the pen in space. The system was complex and expensive, and the sensors were susceptible to interference by external noise. Digitizers were popularized in the mid-1970s and early 1980s by the success of the ID. These digitizers were used as the device for many high-end CAD systems as well as bundled with PCs. Summagraphics also made an OEM version of its BitPad which was sold by Apple Computer as the Apple Graphic Tablet accessory to their Apple II and this technology also allowed Proximity or Z axis measurement. The first home computer graphic tablet was the KoalaPad, competing tablets were eventually produced, the tablets produced by Atari were generally considered to be of high quality. In 1981, musician Todd Rundgren created the first color graphic tablet software for personal computers, in the 1980s, several vendors of graphic tablets began to include additional functions, such as handwriting recognition and on-tablet menus. The tablet generates a signal, which is received by the LC circuit in the stylus. The wires in the tablet then change to a receiving mode, modern arrangements also provide pressure sensitivity and one or more buttons, with the electronics for this information present in the stylus
22.
Polygon
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In elementary geometry, a polygon /ˈpɒlɪɡɒn/ is a plane figure that is bounded by a finite chain of straight line segments closing in a loop to form a closed polygonal chain or circuit. These segments are called its edges or sides, and the points where two edges meet are the vertices or corners. The interior of the polygon is called its body. An n-gon is a polygon with n sides, for example, a polygon is a 2-dimensional example of the more general polytope in any number of dimensions. The basic geometrical notion of a polygon has been adapted in various ways to suit particular purposes, mathematicians are often concerned only with the bounding closed polygonal chain and with simple polygons which do not self-intersect, and they often define a polygon accordingly. A polygonal boundary may be allowed to intersect itself, creating star polygons and these and other generalizations of polygons are described below. The word polygon derives from the Greek adjective πολύς much, many and it has been suggested that γόνυ knee may be the origin of “gon”. Polygons are primarily classified by the number of sides, Polygons may be characterized by their convexity or type of non-convexity, Convex, any line drawn through the polygon meets its boundary exactly twice. As a consequence, all its interior angles are less than 180°, equivalently, any line segment with endpoints on the boundary passes through only interior points between its endpoints. Non-convex, a line may be found which meets its boundary more than twice, equivalently, there exists a line segment between two boundary points that passes outside the polygon. Simple, the boundary of the polygon does not cross itself, there is at least one interior angle greater than 180°. Star-shaped, the interior is visible from at least one point. The polygon must be simple, and may be convex or concave, self-intersecting, the boundary of the polygon crosses itself. Branko Grünbaum calls these coptic, though this term does not seem to be widely used, star polygon, a polygon which self-intersects in a regular way. A polygon cannot be both a star and star-shaped, equiangular, all corner angles are equal. Cyclic, all lie on a single circle, called the circumcircle. Isogonal or vertex-transitive, all lie within the same symmetry orbit. The polygon is cyclic and equiangular
23.
Vector graphics
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Vector graphics is the use of polygons to represent images in computer graphics. Vector graphics are based on vectors, which lead through locations called control points or nodes, one of the first uses of vector graphic displays was the US SAGE air defense system. Vector graphics systems were retired from U. S. en route air traffic control in 1999. Vector graphics were used on the TX-2 at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory by computer graphics pioneer Ivan Sutherland to run his program Sketchpad in 1963. Subsequent vector graphics systems, most of which iterated through dynamically modifiable stored lists of drawing instructions, include the IBM2250, Imlac PDS-1, storage scope displays, such as the Tektronix 4014, could display vector images but not modify them without first erasing the display. In computer typography, modern outline fonts describe printable characters by cubic or quadratic mathematical curves with control points, nevertheless, bitmap fonts are still in use. Processing outline character data in sophisticated fashion to create satisfactory bitmaps for rendering is called hinting, although the term implies suggestion, the process is deterministic, and done by executable code, essentially a special-purpose computer language. While automatic hinting is possible, results can be inferior to that done by experts, although a typical plot might easily require a few thousand paper motions, back and forth, the paper doesnt slip. In a tiny roll-fed plotter made by Alps in Japan, teeth on thin sprockets indented the paper near its edges on the first pass, some Hewlett-Packard pen plotters had two-axis pen carriers and stationery paper. However, the moving-paper H-P plotters had grit wheels which, on the first pass, indented the paper surface, present-day vector graphic files such as engineering drawings are typically printed as bitmaps, after vector-to-raster conversion. The term vector graphics is used today in the context of two-dimensional computer graphics. It is one of several modes an artist can use to create an image on a raster display, Vector graphics can be uploaded to online databases for other designers to download and manipulate, speeding up the creative process. Other modes include text, multimedia, and 3D rendering, virtually all modern 3D rendering is done using extensions of 2D vector graphics techniques. Plotters used in technical drawing still draw vectors directly to paper, the World Wide Web Consortium standard for vector graphics is Scalable Vector Graphics. The standard is complex and has been slow to be established at least in part owing to commercial interests. Many web browsers now have support for rendering SVG data. In recent years, SVG has become a significant format that is independent of the resolution of the rendering device. SVG files are essentially printable text that describes both straight and curved paths, as well as other attributes, wikipedia prefers SVG for images such as simple maps, line illustrations, coats of arms, and flags, which generally are not like photographs or other continuous-tone images
24.
Image scaling
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In computer graphics and digital imaging, image scaling refers to the resizing of a digital image. In video technology, the magnification of digital material is known as upscaling or resolution enhancement, when scaling a vector graphic image, the graphic primitives that make up the image can be scaled using geometric transformations, with no loss of image quality. When scaling a raster image, a new image with a higher or lower number of pixels must be generated. In the case of decreasing the pixel number this usually results in a quality loss. Image scaling can be interpreted as a form of image resampling FIX or image reconstruction from the view of the Nyquist sampling theorem, the image is reduced to the information that can be carried by the smaller image. In the case of up sampling, a reconstruction filter takes the place of the anti-aliasing filter. A more sophisticated approach to up scaling treats the problem as a problem, solving the question of generating a plausible image which. A variety of techniques have been applied for this, including optimization techniques with regularization terms, an image size can be changed in several ways. Diagonal lines, for example, show a stairway shape, although this is desirable for continuous-tone images, this algorithm reduces contrast in a way that may be undesirable for line art. Bicubic interpolation yields substantially better results, with only an increase in computational complexity. Sinc and Lanczos resampling Sinc resampling in theory provides the best possible reconstruction for a perfectly bandlimited signal, in practice, the assumptions behind sinc resampling are not completely met by real-world digital images. Lanczos resampling, an approximation to the method, yields better results. Bicubic interpolation can be regarded as an efficient approximation to Lanczos resampling. Box sampling One weakness of bilinear, bicubic and related algorithms is that sample a specific number of pixels. The trivial solution to this issue is box sampling, which is to consider the target pixel a box on the original image and this ensures that all input pixels contribute to the output. The major weakness of this algorithm is that it is hard to optimize, mipmap Another solution to the downscale problem of bi-sampling scaling are mipmaps. A mipmap is a set of downscale copies. When downscaling the nearest larger mipmap is used as the origin and this is algorithm is fast, and easy to optimize
25.
Serial port
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In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time. Throughout most of the history of computers, data was transferred through serial ports to devices such as modems, terminals. Modern computers without serial ports may require serial-to-USB converters to allow compatibility with RS-232 serial devices, serial ports are still used in applications such as industrial automation systems, scientific instruments, point of sale systems and some industrial and consumer products. Server computers may use a port as a control console for diagnostics. Network equipment often use serial console for configuration, serial ports are still used in these areas as they are simple, cheap and their console functions are highly standardized and widespread. A serial port requires very little supporting software from the host system, some computers, such as the IBM PC, use an integrated circuit called a UART. This IC converts characters to and from asynchronous serial form, implementing the timing and framing of data in hardware, very low-cost systems, such as some early home computers, would instead use the CPU to send the data through an output pin, using the bit-banging technique. Early home computers often had proprietary serial ports with pinouts and voltage levels incompatible with RS-232, low-cost processors now allow higher-speed, but more complex, serial communication standards such as USB and FireWire to replace RS-232. These make it possible to connect devices that would not have operated feasibly over slower serial connections, such as storage, sound. Many personal computer motherboards still have at least one serial port, small-form-factor systems and laptops may omit RS-232 connector ports to conserve space, but the electronics are still there. RS-232 has been standard for so long that the circuits needed to control a serial port became very cheap and often exist on a single chip, sometimes also with circuitry for a parallel port. The individual signals on a serial port are unidirectional and when connecting two devices the outputs of one device must be connected to the inputs of the other, devices are divided into two categories data terminal equipment and data circuit-terminating equipment. A line that is an output on a DTE device is an input on a DCE device and vice versa so a DCE device can be connected to a DTE device with a straight wired cable, conventionally, computers and terminals are DTE while modems and peripherals are DCE. If it is necessary to connect two DTE devices a cross-over null modem, in the form of either an adapter or a cable, generally, serial port connectors are gendered, only allowing connectors to mate with a connector of the opposite gender. With D-subminiature connectors, the male connectors have protruding pins, either type of connector can be mounted on equipment or a panel, or terminate a cable. Connectors mounted on DTE are likely to be male, and those mounted on DCE are likely to be female, however, this is far from universal, for instance, most serial printers have a female DB25 connector, but they are DTEs. The desire to supply serial interface cards with two ports required that IBM reduce the size of the connector to fit onto a single card back panel, a DE-9 connector also fits onto a card with a second DB-25 connector. Starting around the time of the introduction of the IBM PC-AT, serial ports were built with a 9-pin connector to save cost
26.
Mini-DIN connector
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The mini-DIN connectors are a family of multi-pin electrical connectors used in a variety of applications. Mini-DIN is similar to the larger, older DIN connector, both are standards of the Deutsches Institut für Normung, the German standards body. Mini-DIN connectors are 9.5 mm in diameter and come in seven patterns, each pattern is keyed in such a way that a plug with one pattern cannot be mated with any socket of another pattern. The pin numbering for the plugs shown above is done left to right, pin 1 will be on the lower left, and the highest pin number will be on the upper right. Some notable examples of standard mini-DIN connectors include, Mini-DIN-3 connectors were used in implementations of Apple LocalTalk. Mini-DIN-4 connectors are used for S-video, and were used for Apple Desktop Bus, mini-DIN-6 connectors were used for IBM PC compatible PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports and for Acorn Archimedes keyboards. Mini-DIN-8 connectors were used for Sun Microsystems keyboard and mouse ports, as well as for serial printer, modem, Mini-DIN-9 connectors were used for Acorn Archimedes Quadrature Mice and Microsoft InPort Bus Mice. Mini-DIN-7 and Mini-DIN-9 connectors have used for a variety of audio. Also, iRobot Roomba Vacuum cleaning robots use a Mini-DIN-7 to expose an interface for custom sensing, mini-DIN-6 and Mini-DIN-8 connectors are frequently used in ham radio applications to interface with computers for data packet communications and radio programming. Several non-standard sockets are designed to mate with standard mini-DIN plugs and these connectors provide extra conductors, and are used to save space by combining functions in one connector that would otherwise require two standard connectors. Other non-standard connectors mate only with their matching connectors, and are mini-DIN connectors only in the sense of sharing the 9.5 mm plug body. These mini-DIN style plugs are not approved by the Deutsches Institut für Normung, the German standards body, and many applications could be considered proprietary
27.
Steve Jobs
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Steven Paul Steve Jobs was an American entrepreneur, businessman, inventor, and industrial designer. He was the co-founder, chairman, and chief officer of Apple Inc. CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar, a member of The Walt Disney Companys board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar, and founder, chairman, Jobs and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak are widely recognized as pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Jobs was born in San Francisco and adopted at birth, he was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s, Jobs briefly attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out. He then decided to travel through India in 1974 seeking enlightenment, Jobss declassified FBI report stated that an acquaintance knew that Jobs had used the illegal drugs marijuana and LSD while he was in college. Jobs once told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he did in his life, Jobs and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniaks Apple I personal computer. The visionaries gained fame and wealth a year later for the Apple II, in 1979, after a tour of PARC, Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface. This led to development of the unsuccessful Apple Lisa in 1983, following a long power struggle, Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985. In addition, Jobs helped to initiate the development of the effects industry when he funded the spinout of the computer graphics division of George Lucass Lucasfilm in 1986. The new company, Pixar, would produce the first fully computer-animated film. In 1997, Apple merged with NeXT, within a few months of the merger, Jobs became CEO of his former company, reviving Apple at the verge of bankruptcy. Mac OS was also revamped into OS X, based on NeXTs NeXTSTEP platform, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2003 and died on October 5,2011 of respiratory arrest related to the tumor. Steve Jobss biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, was born into a Muslim household and grew up in Homs, Jandali is the son of a self-made millionaire who did not go to college and a mother who was a traditional housewife. While an undergraduate at the American University of Beirut, he was a student activist, although Jandali initially wanted to study law, he eventually decided to study economics and political science. He pursued a PhD in the subject at the University of Wisconsin, where he met Joanne Carole Schieble, a Catholic of Swiss and German descent. As a doctoral candidate, Jandali was an assistant for a course Schieble was taking. Mona Simpson, notes that her grandparents were not happy that their daughter was dating Jandali. But there are a lot of Arabs in Michigan and Wisconsin, Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobss official biographer, additionally states that Schiebles father threatened to cut Joanne off completely if she continued the relationship
28.
Infrared
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It extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers, to 1000000 nm. Most of the radiation emitted by objects near room temperature is infrared. Like all EMR, IR carries radiant energy, and behaves both like a wave and like its quantum particle, the photon, slightly more than half of the total energy from the Sun was eventually found to arrive on Earth in the form of infrared. The balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has an effect on Earths climate. Infrared radiation is emitted or absorbed by molecules when they change their rotational-vibrational movements and it excites vibrational modes in a molecule through a change in the dipole moment, making it a useful frequency range for study of these energy states for molecules of the proper symmetry. Infrared spectroscopy examines absorption and transmission of photons in the infrared range, Infrared radiation is used in industrial, scientific, and medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected, Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, and to detect overheating of electrical apparatuses. Thermal-infrared imaging is used extensively for military and civilian purposes, military applications include target acquisition, surveillance, night vision, homing, and tracking. Humans at normal body temperature radiate chiefly at wavelengths around 10 μm, Infrared radiation extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers to 1 mm. This range of wavelengths corresponds to a range of approximately 430 THz down to 300 GHz. Below infrared is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sunlight, at a temperature of 5,780 kelvins, is composed of near thermal-spectrum radiation that is slightly more than half infrared. At zenith, sunlight provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level, of this energy,527 watts is infrared radiation,445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation. Nearly all the radiation in sunlight is near infrared, shorter than 4 micrometers. On the surface of Earth, at far lower temperatures than the surface of the Sun, almost all thermal radiation consists of infrared in mid-infrared region, much longer than in sunlight. Of these natural thermal radiation processes only lightning and natural fires are hot enough to produce much visible energy, thermal infrared radiation also has a maximum emission wavelength, which is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of object, in accordance with Wiens displacement law. Therefore, the band is often subdivided into smaller sections. Due to the nature of the blackbody radiation curves, typical hot objects, such as exhaust pipes, the three regions are used for observation of different temperature ranges, and hence different environments in space
29.
Amplitude-shift keying
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Amplitude-shift keying is a form of amplitude modulation that represents digital data as variations in the amplitude of a carrier wave. In an ASK system, the binary symbol 1 is represented by transmitting a carrier wave. If the signal value is 1 then the signal will be transmitted, otherwise. Any digital modulation scheme uses a number of distinct signals to represent digital data. ASK uses a number of amplitudes, each assigned a unique pattern of binary digits. Usually, each amplitude encodes a number of bits. Each pattern of bits forms the symbol that is represented by the particular amplitude, frequency and phase of the carrier are kept constant. Like AM, an ASK is also linear and sensitive to noise, distortions, propagation conditions on different routes in PSTN. Both ASK modulation and demodulation processes are relatively inexpensive, the ASK technique is also commonly used to transmit digital data over optical fiber. For LED transmitters, binary 1 is represented by a pulse of light. Laser transmitters normally have a bias current that causes the device to emit a low light level. This low level represents binary 0, while a higher-amplitude lightwave represents binary 1, the simplest and most common form of ASK operates as a switch, using the presence of a carrier wave to indicate a binary one and its absence to indicate a binary zero. For instance, an encoding scheme can represent two bits with each shift in amplitude, an eight-level scheme can represent three bits, and so on. These forms of amplitude-shift keying require a high ratio for their recovery. ASK system can be divided into three blocks, the first one represents the transmitter, the second one is a linear model of the effects of the channel, the third one shows the structure of the receiver. These impulses are sent to the filter ht to be sent through the channel, in other words, for each symbol a different carrier wave is sent with the relative amplitude. After the A/D conversion the signal z can be expressed in the form, z = n r + v g + ∑ n ≠ k v g In this relationship, the second term represents the symbol to be extracted. The others are unwanted, the first one is the effect of noise and it is shown in cyan for just one of them
30.
IrDA
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The Infrared Data Association is an industry-driven interest group that was founded in 1993 by around 50 companies. IrDA provides specifications for a set of protocols for wireless infrared communications. The main reason for using IrDA had been wireless data transfer over the “last one meter” using point-and-shoot principles, thus, it has been implemented in portable devices such as mobile telephones, laptops, cameras, printers, and medical devices. Main characteristics of this kind of optical communication is physically secure data transfer, line-of-sight. The mandatory IrPHY is the layer of the IrDA specifications. It comprises optical link definitions, modulation, coding, cyclic redundancy check and the framer. Different data rates use different modulation/coding schemes, SIR,9. 6–115.2 kbit/s, asynchronous, RZI, UART-like, 3/16 pulse MIR,0. 576–1.2 m, the 10 GigaIR also define new usage models that supports higher link distances up to several meters. Additionally, bigger blocks of data can be transferred by sending multiple frames consecutively and this can be adjusted with a parameter called window size. Finally, data blocks up to 8 MB can be sent at once, combined with a low bit error rate of generally <10−9, that communication could be very efficient compared to other wireless solutions. IrDA transceivers communicate with infrared pulses in a cone that extends at least 15 degrees half angle off center, in practice, there are some devices on the market that do not reach one meter, while other devices may reach up to several meters. There are also devices that do not tolerate extreme closeness, the typical sweet spot for IrDA communications is from 5 to 60 cm away from a transceiver, in the center of the cone. The two devices that communicate simulate full-duplex communication by quickly turning the link around, the primary device controls the timing of the link, but both sides are bound to certain hard constraints and are encouraged to turn the link around as fast as possible. The mandatory IrLAP is the layer of the IrDA specifications. It lies on top of the IrPHY layer and below the IrLMP layer and it represents the data link layer of the OSI model. The primary device controls the secondary devices, only if the primary device requests a secondary device to send, is it allowed to do so. The mandatory IrLMP is the layer of the IrDA specifications. It can be broken down into two parts, first, the LM-MUX, which lies on top of the IrLAP layer. The optional Tiny TP lies on top of the IrLMP layer and it provides, Transportation of large messages by SAR Flow control by giving credits to every logical channel The optional IrCOMM lets the infrared device act like either a serial or parallel port
31.
PC Card
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In computing, PC Card is a configuration for computer parallel communication peripheral interface, designed for laptop computers. Originally introduced as PCMCIA, the PC Card standard as well as its successors like CardBus were defined and developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association and it was originally designed as a standard for memory-expansion cards for computer storage. The existence of a general standard for notebook peripherals led to many kinds of devices being made available based on its configurability, including network cards, modems. The PCMCIA1.0 card standard was published by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association in November 1990 and was adopted by more than eighty vendors. It corresponds with the Japanese JEIDA memory card 4.0 standard, sanDisk launched its PCMCIA card in October 1992. The company was the first to introduce a writeable Flash RAM card for the HP 95LX and these cards conformed to a supplemental PCMCIA-ATA standard that allowed them to appear as more conventional IDE hard drives to the 95LX or a PC. This had the advantage of raising the limit on capacity to the full 32M available under DOS3.22 on the 95LX. It soon became clear that the PCMCIA card standard needed expansion to support smart I/O cards to address the emerging need for fax, modem, LAN, harddisk and it also needed interrupt facilities and hot plugging, which required the definition of new BIOS and operating system interfaces. This led to the introduction of release 2.0 of the PCMCIA standard and JEIDA4.1 in September 1991, many notebooks in the 1990s had two adjacent type-II slots, which allowed installation of two type-II cards or one, double-thickness, type-III card. The cards were used in early digital SLR cameras, such as the Kodak DCS300 series. However, their use as storage expansion is no longer common. The PC Card port has been superseded by the ExpressCard interface since 2003, some Japanese brand consumer entertainment devices such as TV sets include a PC Card slot for playback of media. PC Card = PCMCIA Card, 16-bit or 32-bit PC Card 32-bit version = Cardbus 16-bit vs. 32-bit,32 bit includes DMA or bus mastering, 16-bit does not Types I–III, Type I, configuration thickness 3.3 mm Type II, 16-bit or 32-bit. Configuration thickness 5.0 mm Type III, 16-bit or 32-bit, configuration thickness 10.5 mm PC Card was superseded by ExpressCard in 2003. PCMCIA stands for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, the group of companies that defined the standard and this acronym was difficult to say and remember, and was sometimes jokingly referred to as People Cant Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms. To recognize increased scope beyond memory, and to aid in marketing and this was the name of the standard from version 2 of the specification onwards. These cards were used for wireless networks, modems, and other functions in notebook PCs, all PC Card devices use a similar sized package which is 85.6 millimetres long and 54.0 millimetres wide, the same size as a credit card. The shape is used by the Common Interface form of conditional-access modules for DVB broadcasts
32.
Ethernet
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Ethernet /ˈiːθərnɛt/ is a family of computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks, metropolitan area networks and wide area networks. It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE802.3, over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as token ring, FDDI and ARCNET. The original 10BASE5 Ethernet uses coaxial cable as a medium, while the newer Ethernet variants use twisted pair. Over the course of its history, Ethernet data transfer rates have increased from the original 2.94 megabits per second to the latest 100 gigabits per second. The Ethernet standards comprise several wiring and signaling variants of the OSI physical layer in use with Ethernet, systems communicating over Ethernet divide a stream of data into shorter pieces called frames. As per the OSI model, Ethernet provides services up to, since its commercial release, Ethernet has retained a good degree of backward compatibility. Features such as the 48-bit MAC address and Ethernet frame format have influenced other networking protocols, the primary alternative for some uses of contemporary LANs is Wi-Fi, a wireless protocol standardized as IEEE802.11. Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974 and it was inspired by ALOHAnet, which Robert Metcalfe had studied as part of his PhD dissertation. In 1975, Xerox filed a patent application listing Metcalfe, David Boggs, Chuck Thacker, in 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs published a seminal paper. Metcalfe left Xerox in June 1979 to form 3Com and he convinced Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel, and Xerox to work together to promote Ethernet as a standard. The so-called DIX standard, for Digital/Intel/Xerox, specified 10 Mbit/s Ethernet, with 48-bit destination and source addresses and it was published on September 30,1980 as The Ethernet, A Local Area Network. Data Link Layer and Physical Layer Specifications, version 2 was published in November,1982 and defines what has become known as Ethernet II. Formal standardization efforts proceeded at the time and resulted in the publication of IEEE802.3 on June 23,1983. Ethernet initially competed with two largely proprietary systems, Token Ring and Token Bus, in the process, 3Com became a major company. 3Com shipped its first 10 Mbit/s Ethernet 3C100 NIC in March 1981, an Ethernet adapter card for the IBM PC was released in 1982, and, by 1985, 3Com had sold 100,000. Parallel port based Ethernet adapters were produced for a time, with drivers for DOS, by the early 1990s, Ethernet became so prevalent that it was a must-have feature for modern computers, and Ethernet ports began to appear on some PCs and most workstations. This process was sped up with the introduction of 10BASE-T and its relatively small modular connector. Since then, Ethernet technology has evolved to meet new bandwidth, in addition to computers, Ethernet is now used to interconnect appliances and other personal devices
33.
Device driver
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In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. A driver communicates with the device through the bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device, once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware dependent and operating-system-specific and they usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface. The main purpose of device drivers is to provide abstraction by acting as a translator between a device and the applications or operating systems that use it. Programmers can write the higher-level application code independently of specific hardware the end-user is using. For example, an application for interacting with a serial port may simply have two functions for send data and receive data. At a lower level, a device driver implementing these functions would communicate to the serial port controller installed on a users computer. Writing a device driver requires an understanding of how the hardware. In contrast, most user-level software on modern operating systems can be stopped without greatly affecting the rest of the system, even drivers executing in user mode can crash a system if the device is erroneously programmed. These factors make it difficult and dangerous to diagnose problems. The task of writing drivers thus usually falls to software engineers or computer engineers who work for hardware-development companies and this is because they have better information than most outsiders about the design of their hardware. Moreover, it was considered in the hardware manufacturers interest to guarantee that their clients can use their hardware in an optimum way. Typically, the Logical Device Driver is written by the operating system vendor, but in recent years non-vendors have written numerous device drivers, mainly for use with free and open source operating systems. In such cases, it is important that the manufacturer provides information on how the device communicates. Although this information can instead be learned by reverse engineering, this is more difficult with hardware than it is with software. Microsoft has attempted to reduce system instability due to poorly written device drivers by creating a new framework for driver development, if such drivers malfunction, they do not cause system instability. Apple has a framework for developing drivers on Mac OS X called the I/O Kit
34.
802.11b
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IEEE802. 11b-1999 or 802. 11b, is an amendment to the IEEE802.11 wireless networking specification that extends throughput up to 11 Mbit/s using the same 2. 4GHz band. A related amendment was incorporated into the IEEE802. 11-2007 standard,802.11 is a set of IEEE standards that govern wireless networking transmission methods. They are commonly used today in their 802. 11a,802. 11b,802. 11g,802. 11n and 802. 11ac versions to provide connectivity in the home, office. 802. 11b has a raw data rate of 11 Mbit/s. Due to the CSMA/CA protocol overhead, in practice the maximum 802. 11b throughput that an application can achieve is about 5.9 Mbit/s using TCP and 7.1 Mbit/s using UDP. 802. 11b products appeared on the market in mid-1999, since 802. 11b is a extension of the DSSS modulation technique defined in the original standard. The Apple iBook was the first mainstream computer sold with optional 802. 11b networking, technically, the 802. 11b standard uses Complementary code keying as its modulation technique. The dramatic increase in throughput of 802. 11b along with simultaneous substantial price reductions led to the acceptance of 802. 11b as the definitive wireless LAN technology. 802. 11b devices suffer interference from other products operating in the 2.4 GHz band, devices operating in the 2.4 GHz range include, microwave ovens, Bluetooth devices, baby monitors and cordless telephones. Interference issues and user density problems within the 2.4 GHz band have become a major concern,802. 11b is used in a point-to-multipoint configuration, wherein an access point communicates via an omnidirectional antenna with mobile clients within the range of the access point. Typical range depends on the radio environment, output power. Allowable bandwidth is shared across clients in discrete channels, a directional antenna focuses output power into a smaller field which increases point-to-point range. Designers of such installations who wish to remain within the law must however be careful about legal limitations on effective radiated power. Some 802. 11b cards operate at 11 Mbit/s, but scale back to 5.5, then to 2, note, Channel 14 is only allowed in Japan, Channels 12 &13 are allowed in most parts of the world. More information can be found in the List of WLAN channels, IEEE802.11 IEEE802. 11g-2003 Wi-Fi List of WLAN channels
35.
Flash memory
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Flash memory is electronic non-volatile computer storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. Toshiba developed flash memory from EEPROM in the early 1980s and introduced it to the market in 1984, the two main types of flash memory are named after the NAND and NOR logic gates. The individual flash memory cells exhibit internal characteristics similar to those of the corresponding gates, where EPROMs had to be completely erased before being rewritten, NAND-type flash memory may be written and read in blocks which are generally much smaller than the entire device. NOR-type flash allows a machine word to be written—to an erased location—or read independently. The NAND type operates primarily in memory cards, USB flash drives, solid-state drives, NAND or NOR flash memory is also often used to store configuration data in numerous digital products, a task previously made possible by EEPROM or battery-powered static RAM. One key disadvantage of flash memory is that it can endure a relatively small number of write cycles in a specific block. In addition to being non-volatile, flash memory offers fast read access times, although flash memory is technically a type of EEPROM, the term EEPROM is generally used to refer specifically to non-flash EEPROM which is erasable in small blocks, typically bytes. Because erase cycles are slow, the block sizes used in flash memory erasing give it a significant speed advantage over non-flash EEPROM when writing large amounts of data. As of 2013, flash memory costs much less than byte-programmable EEPROM and had become the dominant memory type wherever a system required a significant amount of non-volatile solid-state storage, Flash memory was invented by Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba circa 1980. According to Toshiba, the flash was suggested by Masuokas colleague, Shōji Ariizumi. Masuoka and colleagues presented the invention at the IEEE1984 International Electron Devices Meeting held in San Francisco, Intel Corporation saw the massive potential of the invention and introduced the first commercial NOR type flash chip in 1988. NOR-based flash has long erase and write times, but provides full address and data buses, allowing random access to any memory location. This makes it a replacement for older read-only memory chips. Its endurance may be from as little as 100 erase cycles for a flash memory, to a more typical 10,000 or 100,000 erase cycles. NOR-based flash was the basis of early flash-based removable media, CompactFlash was originally based on it, however, the I/O interface of NAND flash does not provide a random-access external address bus. Rather, data must be read on a basis, with typical block sizes of hundreds to thousands of bits. This makes NAND flash unsuitable as a replacement for program ROM. In this regard, NAND flash is similar to other data storage devices, such as hard disks and optical media
36.
CompactFlash
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CompactFlash is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994, CompactFlash became the most successful of the early memory card formats, surpassing Miniature Card and SmartMedia. Subsequent formats, such as MMC/SD, various Memory Stick formats, most of these cards are smaller than CompactFlash while offering comparable capacity and speed. Proprietary memory card formats for use in audio and video, such as P2 and SxS, are faster. CompactFlash remains popular and is supported by many devices and high-end consumer devices. As of 2017, both Canon and Nikon use CompactFlash for their digital still cameras. Canon also chose CompactFlash as the medium for its professional high-definition tapeless video cameras. Ikegami professional video cameras can record video onto CompactFlash cards through an adaptor. Traditional CompactFlash cards use the Parallel ATA interface, but in 2008, CFast is based on the Serial ATA interface. In November 2010, SanDisk, Sony and Nikon presented a next generation card format to the CompactFlash Association, the new format has a similar form factor to CF/CFast but is based on the PCI Express interface instead of Parallel ATA or Serial ATA. The XQD card format was announced by the CompactFlash Association in December 2011. There are two subdivisions of CF cards,3.3 mm-thick type I and 5 mm-thick type II. The type II slot is used by miniature hard drives and some other devices, there are four main card speeds, original CF, CF High Speed, faster CF3.0 standard and the faster CF4.0 standard adopted as of 2007. CompactFlash was originally built around Intels NOR-based flash memory, but has switched to NAND technology, CF is among the oldest and most successful formats, and has held a niche in the professional camera market especially well. It has benefited from both a better cost to memory-size ratio and, for much of the life, generally greater available capacity than other formats. As some newer types are smaller, they can be used directly in a CF card slot with an adapter. Formats that can be used this way include SD/MMC, Memory Stick Duo, xD-Picture Card in a Type I slot and SmartMedia in a Type II slot, some multi-card readers use CF for I/O as well. The CompactFlash interface is a 50-pin subset of the 68-pin PCMCIA connector and it can be easily slipped into a passive 68-pin PCMCIA Type II to CF Type I adapter that fully meets PCMCIA electrical and mechanical interface specifications, according to compactflash. org
37.
Bluetooth
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Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, and building personal area networks. Invented by telecom vendor Ericsson in 1994, it was conceived as a wireless alternative to RS-232 data cables. It can connect up to seven devices, overcoming problems that older technologies had when attempting to connect to each other. Bluetooth is managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, which has more than 30,000 member companies in the areas of telecommunication, computing, networking, the IEEE standardized Bluetooth as IEEE802.15.1, but no longer maintains the standard. The Bluetooth SIG oversees development of the specification, manages the qualification program, a manufacturer must meet Bluetooth SIG standards to market it as a Bluetooth device. A network of patents apply to the technology, which are licensed to individual qualifying devices, the development of the short-link radio technology, later named Bluetooth, was initiated in 1989 by Nils Rydbeck, CTO at Ericsson Mobile in Lund, Sweden, and by Johan Ullman. The purpose was to develop wireless headsets, according to two inventions by Johan Ullman, SE 8902098-6, issued 1989-06-12 and SE9202239, issued 1992-07-24, Nils Rydbeck tasked Tord Wingren with specifying and Jaap Haartsen and Sven Mattisson with developing. Both were working for Ericsson in Lund, the specification is based on frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology. The idea of this name was proposed in 1997 by Jim Kardach who developed a system that would allow mobile phones to communicate with computers, at the time of this proposal he was reading Frans G. Bengtssons historical novel The Long Ships about Vikings and King Harald Bluetooth. The implication is that Bluetooth does the same with communications protocols, the Bluetooth logo is a bind rune merging the Younger Futhark runes and, Haralds initials. Bluetooth operates at frequencies between 2402 and 2480 MHz, or 2400 and 2483.5 MHz including guard bands 2 MHz wide at the end and 3.5 MHz wide at the top. This is in the globally unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical 2.4 GHz short-range radio frequency band, Bluetooth uses a radio technology called frequency-hopping spread spectrum. Bluetooth divides transmitted data into packets, and transmits each packet on one of 79 designated Bluetooth channels, each channel has a bandwidth of 1 MHz. It usually performs 800 hops per second, with Adaptive Frequency-Hopping enabled, Bluetooth low energy uses 2 MHz spacing, which accommodates 40 channels. Originally, Gaussian frequency-shift keying modulation was the modulation scheme available. Since the introduction of Bluetooth 2. 0+EDR, π/4-DQPSK and 8DPSK modulation may also be used between compatible devices, devices functioning with GFSK are said to be operating in basic rate mode where an instantaneous data rate of 1 Mbit/s is possible. The term Enhanced Data Rate is used to describe π/4-DPSK and 8DPSK schemes, the combination of these modes in Bluetooth radio technology is classified as a BR/EDR radio. Bluetooth is a protocol with a master-slave structure
38.
AAA battery
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An AAA or triple-A battery is a standard size of dry cell battery commonly used in low-drain portable electronic devices. A triple-A battery is a cell and measures 10.5 mm in diameter and 44.5 mm in length, including the positive terminal button. The positive terminal has a diameter of 3.8 mm. Alkaline AAA batteries weigh around 11.5 grams, while primary lithium AAA batteries weigh about 7.6 g, rechargeable nickel–metal hydride AAA batteries typically weigh 14–15 g. AAA batteries are most often used in electronic devices, such as TV remote controls, MP3 players. Devices that require the same voltage, but have a current draw, are often designed to use larger batteries such as the AA battery type. AA batteries have about three times the capacity of AAA batteries, with the increasing efficiency and miniaturization of modern electronics, many devices which previously were designed for AA batteries are being replaced by models that accept AAA Battery cells. As of 2007, AAA batteries accounted for 24% of alkaline battery sales in the United States. In Japan as of 2011, 28% of alkaline batteries sold were AAA. In Switzerland as of 2008, AAA batteries totaled 30% of primary battery sales and 32% of secondary battery sales
39.
AA battery
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The AA battery—also called a double A or Mignon battery—is a standard size single cell cylindrical dry battery. The IEC60086 system calls it size R6, and ANSIC18 calls it size 15, historically, it is known as HP7 in official documentation the United Kingdom, though it is colloquially known as a double A battery. AA batteries are common in electronic devices. An AA battery is composed of an electrochemical cell that may be either a primary battery or a rechargeable battery. The exact terminal voltage and capacity of an AA size battery depends on cell chemistry, however, ANSI and IEC Battery nomenclature gives several designations for cells in this size, depending on cell features and chemistry. An AA cell measures 49. 2–50.5 mm in length, alkaline AA cells have a weight of roughly 23 g, lithium AA cells have a mass around 15 g, and rechargeable Ni-MH cells around 31 g. Primary zinc–carbon AA batteries have around 400–900 milliamp-hours capacity, with measured capacity highly dependent on test conditions, duty cycle, zinc–carbon batteries are usually marketed as general purpose batteries. Zinc-chloride batteries store around 1000 to 1500 mAh are often sold as heavy duty or super heavy duty, alkaline batteries from 1700 mAh to 3000 mAh cost more than zinc-chloride batteries, but last proportionally longer. Lithium iron disulfide batteries are intended for use in equipment compatible with alkaline zinc batteries, a fresh alkaline zinc battery can have an open-circuit voltage of 1.6 volts, but an iron-disulfide battery with an open-circuit voltage below 1.7 volts is entirely discharged. Lithium ion chemistry has a voltage of 3. 6-3.7 volts. Nickel-zinc cell AAs are also available, but not widely used, in 2011, AA cells accounted for approximately 60% of alkaline battery sales in the United States. In Japan, 58% of alkaline batteries sold were AA, known in country as tansan. In Switzerland, AA batteries totaled 55% in both primary and secondary battery sales, list of battery sizes Battery nomenclature Datasheet for Energizer alkaline AA battery Datasheet for Energizer lithium AA battery Datasheet for Duracell alkaline AA battery
40.
Linear Flash
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Linear Flash is a PC card flash memory format. Like an SRAM, Linear Flash supports execute in place applications in mobile PC, combined with file management software, such as Flash Translation Layer or M-Systems TrueFFS Flash File System, the Linear Flash cards provide removable disk emulation. As PC Cards, Linear Flash cards should have a Card Information Structure, however, many memory cards do not have a CIS. Linear Flash cards begin to develop bad blocks after about 100,000 erase/write cycles, major makers of Linear Flash cards is MagicRAM. Intel, which championed the adoption of the Linear Flash format, Flash file system M-Systems DiskOnChip Miniature Card Intel Application Note AP-684 Understanding the Flash Translation Layer Specification
41.
StrongARM
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The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later sold to Intel in 1997, who continued to manufacture it before replacing it with the XScale in the early 2000s, the StrongARM was a collaborative project between DEC and Advanced RISC Machines to create a faster ARM microprocessor. The StrongARM was designed to address the upper-end of the embedded market. Targets were devices such as personal digital assistants and set-top boxes. Traditionally, the division of DEC was located in Massachusetts. In order to access to the design talent in Silicon Valley, DEC opened a design center in Palo Alto. This design center was led by Dan Dobberpuhl and was the main site for the StrongARM project. Another design site which worked on the project was in Austin, Texas that was created by some ex-DEC designers returning from Apple Computer, the project was set up in 1995, and quickly delivered their first design, the SA-110. DEC agreed to sell StrongARM to Intel as part of a settlement in 1997. Intel used the StrongARM to replace their ailing line of RISC processors, the Austin design group spun off to become Alchemy Semiconductor, another start-up company designing MIPS SoCs for the hand-held market. A new StrongARM core was developed by Intel and introduced in 2000 as the XScale, the SA-110 was the first microprocessor in the StrongARM family. The first versions, operating at 100,160, and 200 MHz, were announced on 5 February 1996, when announced, samples of these versions were available, with volume production slated for mid-1996. Faster 166 and 233 MHz versions were announced on 12 September 1996, samples of these versions were available at announcement, with volume production slated for December 1996. Throughout 1996, the SA-110 was the highest performing microprocessor for portable devices, towards the end of 1996 it was a leading CPU for internet/intranet appliances and thin client systems. The SA-110s first design win was the Apple MessagePad 2000 and it was also used in a number of products including the Acorn Computers Risc PC and Eidos Optima video editing system. The SA-110s lead designers were Daniel W. Dobberpuhl, Gregory W. Hoeppner, Liam Madden, the SA-110 had a simple microarchitecture. It was a design that executed instructions in-order with a five-stage classic RISC pipeline. The microprocessor was partitioned into several blocks, the IBOX, EBOX, IMMU, DMMU, BIU, WB, the IBOX contained hardware that operated in the first two stages of the pipeline such as the program counter
42.
Macworld/iWorld
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Produced by Boston-based IDG World Expo, Macworld/iWorld is a trade show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It is held annually in the United States during January, originally Macworld Expo and then Macworld Conference & Exposition, the gathering dates back to 1985. Macworld is the most widely read Macintosh magazine in North America and a trademark of Mac Publishing, IDG World Expo is also a subsidiary. The conference tracks are taught by leaders in their fields and require large admission fees and they last for a few more days than the Expo, which runs generally three or four days. Attendees can visit the exhibits, set up by hardware manufacturers, on December 18,2008, Apple announced that the 2009 Macworld Conference & Expo would be the last in which the company participates. The first Macworld Expo occurred in 1985 in San Francisco, the conference itself was created by Peggy Kilburn, who helped to increase the size and profit of the event during her tenure. Among the speakers recruited by Kilburn were David Pogue, Steve Case, Bob LeVitus, as well as representatives from BMUG, LaserBoard, the San Francisco event has always been held at the Moscone Center. The Expo was also held in Brooks Hall near the San Francisco Civic Center from 1985 until 1993, until 2005, the U. S. shows were held semiannually, with a January show in San Francisco and an additional summer show held in the Eastern US. The later event was initially in Boston at the Bayside Expo & Executive Conference Center, later expanding with a dual presence at the World Trade Center Boston. From 1998 to 2003 it took place in New York Citys Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, the 2004 and 2005 summer shows, retitled Macworld Conference & Expo took place in Boston, although without Apples participation. Other companies followed Apples lead, canceling or reducing the size of their own exhibits, on 16 September 2005, IDG announced that no further summertime shows would be held in NYC or in Boston. The show has taken place in other cities, A Tokyo show, produced by IDG World Expo Japan, was held at Makuhari Messe. Macworld Expo Summit, a version of the show targeted at U. S. government customers, was held at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D. C. as late as 1994. In 2004, Macworld UK, part of the IDG UK division of IDG, since 1997, the show has been known for its keynote presentations by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. In Boston, Steve Jobs gave a report on Apple Inc. Steve was the Chairman and CEO of Pixar, Steve addressed some of the comments that had been made about Apple, Apple has become irrelevant, Apple cant execute anything, and Apples culture is anarchy, you cant manage it. Apples sales were $11.1 billion in 1995, $9.5 billion in 1996, Steve stated the falling sales were the fundamental problem. The beginning steps that Apple was going to take were, Board of Directors, Focus on Relevance, Invest in Core Assets, Meaningful Partnerships, Apple was the dominant market leader for creative professionals
43.
The Simpsons
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The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a depiction of working-class life epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa. The show is set in the town of Springfield and parodies American culture, society, television. The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with producer James L. Brooks, Groening created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after members of his own family, substituting Bart for his own name. The shorts became a part of The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19,1987. After a three-season run, the sketch was developed into a prime time show and became an early hit for Fox. Since its debut on December 17,1989,615 episodes of The Simpsons have been broadcast and its 28th season began on September 25,2016. It is the longest-running American sitcom and the longest-running American animated program, the Simpsons Movie, a feature-length film, was released in theaters worldwide on July 27,2007, and grossed over $527 million. On May 4,2015, the series was renewed for seasons 27 and 28, on November 4,2016, the series was renewed for seasons 29 and 30, consisting of 22 episodes each. The Simpsons received widespread critical acclaim throughout its first nine or ten seasons, Time named it the 20th centurys best television series, and Erik Adams of The A. V. Club named it televisions crowning achievement regardless of format, on January 14,2000, the Simpson family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 31 Primetime Emmy Awards,30 Annie Awards, Homers exclamatory catchphrase Doh. has been adopted into the English language, while The Simpsons has influenced many adult-oriented animated sitcoms. Despite this, the show has also criticized for what many perceive as a decline in quality over the years. The Simpsons are a family who live in a fictional Middle American town of Springfield, Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality. He is married to Marge Simpson, a stereotypical American housewife, although the family is dysfunctional, many episodes examine their relationships and bonds with each other and they are often shown to care about one another. The family owns a dog, Santas Little Helper, and a cat, Snowball V, renamed Snowball II in I, both pets have had starring roles in several episodes. The show includes an array of supporting characters, co-workers, teachers, family friends, extended relatives, townspeople. The creators originally intended many of these characters as jokes or for fulfilling needed functions in the town
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Lisa on Ice
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Lisa on Ice is the eighth episode of The Simpsons sixth season. It was first broadcast on the Fox network in the United States on November 13,1994, in the episode, Lisa discovers that she possesses a skill for ice hockey, and a rivalry between Lisa and Bart ensues. The episode was written by Mike Scully and directed by Bob Anderson and it features cultural references to films such as Rollerball and The Pope of Greenwich Village. The episode was received by critics, and acquired a Nielsen rating of 11.6. Principal Skinner calls all the Springfield Elementary School students down for an assembly to tell them which subjects they are failing, Lisa is surprisingly called up, and discovers to her horror that she is failing gym class. When she appeals to her teacher, they reach a compromise and she immediately attempts to join several, but fails, and her self-esteem is devastated. Later, the family goes to see Bart play hockey for his team, as it turns out, she is remarkably talented, and leads her team to their best season ever. Due to Homers increasing pressure, a rivalry develops between Bart and Lisa, and it peaks when the town learns that the Gougers will face the Mighty Pigs in their next match. The game proves to be a one, but very close. With four seconds left, Bart is tripped by Jimbo, giving him a penalty shot against Lisa that will decide the game, however, as they face each other, Bart and Lisa remember the good times they have had together as children before they began fighting. They each throw aside their equipment and hug, and the ends in a tie. Unsatisfied with the outcome, the residents of Springfield begin rioting, the idea for the episode came from The Simpsons writer Mike Scully, who wanted to do an episode involving ice hockey because of his passion for the sport. Bob Anderson, who also had an interest in hockey, directed the episode, the episode starts out with Lisa tricking Bart into believing it is a snow day by throwing a snowball at him which she made out of the ice in the fridge. The scene was inspired by Scully, who as a child loved to sit, Scully thought, because of his experience as a child, that there was nothing more disappointing than to wake up expecting a snow day, only to find out there was no snow. The academic alerts the Springfield Elementary School students receive were based on those Scully received in junior high. When Moe visits Bart and Lisa at the Simpson house to see if they have any injuries that may affect the odds of the game, Marge sends him away as he pleads. This is a reference to Eric Roberts line, Charlie, they took my thumb, the episode features several references to the 1975 film Rollerball. At the academic alerts assembly, bully Kearney has Dolph take a memo on an Apple Newton, in its original broadcast, Lisa on Ice finished 34th in the ratings for the week of November 7 to November 13,1994, with a Nielsen rating of 11.6
