Advancements In Computers In The Last Ten Years Essays -

Advancements In Computers In The Last Ten Years Advancements in Computers in the Last Ten Years English 11 Hour 6 Mrs.Winn March 21, 2001 Lipske 2 Computers date back all the way to 300B.C. with the invention of the abacus. This was a calculating devise to do math and it made the people of that time lives a lot easier. That is what the computers of today do but so much more. I will start at the basics of computers while trying not to boar you. The first real computer that actually made calculations was the ENIAC that was made by the government in 1943. It costed $500,000, weighed over 30 tons, had 19,000 vacuum tubes, and consumed almost 200 kilowatts of electricity (computer chronicles 8). Now we have advanced to laptops that are one inch thick and 15 inches wide and can do a lot more than the ENIAC could. There have been thousands of advancements and new technology in computers in the last ten years but I am only going to skim the tip of the iceberg. In 1990, there were tons of new computers and new software but the big issues were the new processors that were super fast for their time. They could go at speeds up to 33mhz, which is how fast your computer brings things up on the screen. In 1991 Microsoft come out with a version 5.0 MS-DOS mode which gave computers more space to run their programs. Lipske 3 Also in 1991, Intel introduced a 50mhz microprocessor, which kill its other 33mhz processor of last year. Then a few months later MIPS Technologies come out with a 100mhz processor which started to make the processor group of the computer a very competitive area to come up with new technology for. In addition Hewlett-Packard Co. made the very first color scanner that could scan whatever you wanted and put it into your hard drive. 1991 was a big year for new technology in computers but thats not all. Pixar began to work with Walt Disney Company to make a film that was completely computer animated and eventually come up with the movie toy story. In 1992 there were three major changes in computers and the technology. First Microsoft stock reached a record high for a computer stock ever and peaked at $113 a share that year. Next Microsoft shipped its 3.1 version of window and it is a big hit and was the most abundant program on the earth. Next there was a big separation of powers that was IBM, Microsoft signed a divorce, and IBM became its own company. Lipske 4 1992 the divorce between Microsoft and IBM was the big factor of the year and you will see why in 1993. In early January of 1993, IBM reports a huge loss of $4.96 billion, which almost put the company down and out but not yet. Then in March of that year Intel came out with their fastest processor which was called the Pentium processor which ran at 200mhz. In 1993 you could see what a huge loss IBM took after getting away from the powerhouse called Microsoft. 1994 was a very slow year for all companies and technology for them. The only major thing that happened was Novell bought the Word Perfect Corporation for U.S. at $850 million. Also that the faster processor race was still on. 1995 was another big year especially for Microsoft. Microsoft releases Windows 95, which is the Windows that I am typing this on and in 95 was a break threw because of its graphics and easy use. Next Sony electronics releases PlayStation, which was built with a small computer in it for video games. Lipske 5 In addition, Apple computers released the first laser printer which was faster than the DeskJet printers and a was a better quality of clearness printed. 1995 became a really big year for the faster processor! 1996 was another slow year but the race for the faster processor was still on. However, there was one big push ahead with Microsoft making the Internet Explorer 3.0. Which mad the Internet at your own house organized and made a search engine. 1997 Microsoft bought WebTV for $425 million which made the Internet easy to use

Why plagiarism doesnt pay - Emphasis

Why plagiarism doesnt pay Why plagiarism doesnt pay Here are the plagiarists of Internet Town With Ctrl+C and clattering keys They prowl and creep when you’re asleep   And take whatever they please. Sounds good, right? They aren’t my words though: we lifted them from Allan Ahlberg’s Cops and Robbers, then made a couple of tweaks. These days, pinching stuff from the internet is all the rage, simply because it’s (a) incredibly easy and (b) a short-cut to mountains of free web content. Obviously, plagiarism is unethical. We all know that text or images taken from another source should be properly attributed, in a footnote or through ‘quote marks’. But ethics aside, plagiarism is simply bad business. Ello ello, whats going on here? Let’s say that you copy and paste a chunk of text from a website into your own report, press release or company brochure. It may look good. It may read well. But the basic fact is, people will notice. Stolen goods – in writing just as at a car-boot sale – stand out. If they find your content via a search engine, they’ll immediately see that yours is not the only site to carry the text in question. If they’re editors and run plagiarism software (such as Turnitin or iThenticate), they’ll quickly see through your sleight-of-mouse. Most importantly, copied text stands out to anyone who pays enough attention to your writing (and if people aren’t paying enough attention to your writing, you’ve got a whole other problem). Changes in tone, style, vocabulary and voice register with readers, even if they don’t realise it. It makes for a bumpy ride. It makes the reader less comfortable with your content. And it makes them less likely either to sympathise with you or believe you (or ‘you’). OK, so you think again, and go to what we might call ‘level 2’ plagiarism. You rip off, but you re-write. You change maybe one word in ten, alter ‘cannot’ to ‘can’t’, cut out a handful of adverbs. Presto! ‘New’ content. There are two problems here. Which of the two you encounter depends on how good a writer you are. Problem one: the hybrid In the first case, you wade in, thesaurus in hand, and make a terrible hash of the job. You lack the technical knowledge to amend the text appropriately (which is probably why you stole it in the first place). A synonym in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing – and the results are likely to both point up your obvious attempt to plagiarise and cause the reader great amusement/frustration. I’ve encountered these weird hybrids in the wild many times. Let’s create one at random. Here’s the original text: The potential loss on a short sale is theoretically unlimited in the event of an unlimited rise in the price of the instrument; however, in practice, the short seller will be required to post margin or collateral to cover losses, and any inability to do so on a timely basis would cause its broker or counterparty to liquidate the position. That’s from Wikipedia’s page on ‘short-selling’, a financial concept chosen at random from the almost infinite number of topics about which I know nothing. We want to use this content in our report, but we don’t want anyone to know that we purloined it. Right – where’s that thesaurus? The would-be slaughter on a dumpy auction is tentatively on tap in the event of an infinite augment in the consequences of the utensil Hmm. Perhaps this isn’t the best approach after all. This example may seem far-fetched (it was done using MS Word’s ‘thesaurus’ tool, by the way), but I have come across real-life examples that are just as bizarre. It’s what comes of failing to show sufficient respect for the process of writing – of imagining that one word is just as good as another, that writing skills can be bluffed and technical know-how mimicked without consequence. The consequence is, of course, that the shortcomings you hoped to conceal by appropriating another’s work are laid bare. In the end, it undermines your reputation, rather than enhancing it. In this case, shortcuts just won’t cut it. Expertise is what you need, and if you don’t have it yourself, you’re better off buying it in than trying to rip it off. Problem two: the long shortcut And this is where the second problem comes in. Perhaps you do have the knowledge to make the necessary amendments without turning the content into a laughing stock. Perhaps you know that ‘short-selling’ might be better replaced with ‘going short’ or ‘shorting’ than with ‘dumpy auction’. Clever you! But then in that case, why are you copying content in the first place? More often than not you’ll find that, by the time you’ve re-worked a sentence to eliminate every trace of the original, you’ve used just as much time and effort as if you’d bitten the bullet and written it yourself. It reminds me of the story of the boy who tried to cheat in his exams by writing the answers on his shirt cuff. By the time he’d done that, he’d memorised them all anyway. This is a confidence issue. You have to remember that, very often, if you’re good enough to fake it, you’re good enough to do it for real. Ultimately, even if you’re prepared to ruthlessly jettison what they taught you at school about stealing being wrong, it’s still seldom a good idea. If you do it badly, you’ll get caught – and if you do it well enough not to get caught, it probably wasn’t worth doing it in the first place.