Email and Forum Profiles in IT: Admiral Grace Murray Hopper New Internet Connection Installed for Tech Talk Cable versus Telcos NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Website of the Week: NoradSanta.org Google versus Microsoft -- The Cloud versus the Desktop
Email from Pat: Dear Dr. Shurtz, How can I print on my wireless network? Pat
Tech Talk Answers: There are two ways to share a printer.
You can install a print server and make it a network resource. This means you can print from any computer, any time. This is the fastest and most convenient. You can get a wireless hub with built-in print server, which is what I have at home (using a USB). You can also get a printer with an internal print server and an Ethernet input.
You can connect the printer to one of the computers on the network. Then share this printer. This is slower to print and the computer connected to the printer must always be on.
Email from John: Dear Tech Talk, I need pictures for my website and don’t want to steal them. What do you recommend? Love the show. John
Tech Talk Answers: John, I use iStockPhotos (http://www.istockphoto.com). You can get pictures of various resolutions. The lowest resolution is good enough the web and cost about $1. The highest resolution is needed for print and costs about $15. This site has great search tools and a broad selection of photos.
Profiles in IT: Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
"Amazing Grace" Hopper was Born December 9, 1906 to Walter and Mary Murray in New York City .
BA, Mathematics and Physics, Vassar College , 1928; MA, Mathematics, Yale University , 1930; Ph.D., Mathematics, Yale University , 1934
Admiral Grace Hopper was a computer programmer and "mother" of COBOL programming language.
As a child, Hopper loved gadgets. She loved to take things apart.
In high school, she played basketball, field hockey and water polo.
When working towards her Ph.D., she was one of four women in a doctoral program of ten students. She is one of few women admirals in the history of the United States Navy. First female PhD in Mathematics from Yale.
In 1930 at the age of 23 she married Vincent Foster Hopper. They divorced in 1945
She was Associate Professor at Vassar College from 1931 to 1943
After Pearl Harbor , Hopper decided to serve her country during World War II.
She was commissioned a Lieutenant (JG) and was ordered to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University inn 1944
She became the first programmer on the Navy’s Mark I computer.
Hopper loved this 8 foot high, 8 foot wide gadget filled with relays, switches and vacuum tubes.
She traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug.
In 1946, when Hopper was released from active duty, she joined the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory where she continued her work on the Mark II and Mark III.
In 1949 she joined the Eckert-Machly Computer Corporation (later called Sperry Rand) where she helped design the commercial computer called the UNIVAC
The UNIVAC operated a thousand times faster than the Mark I.
Perhaps her best-known contribution to computing was the invention of the compiler (1952), the intermediate program that translates English language instructions into the language of the target computer.
It was used by Flow-Matic the only existing business language
She then participated in the work to produce specifications for a common business language which would be called Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL). The specification was published in 1959.
COBOL was the first language that allowed a programmer to speak to the computer with words rather than numbers.
She was also famous for presenting a nanosecond. She would have a piece of wire, about a foot long, and explain that it represented a nanosecond, since it was the maximum distance electricity could travel in wire in one billionth of a second.
Admiral Hopper was also famous for a remark she made on television in 1983. She said " It is much easier to apologize that to get permission".
She received the first computer sciences "man-of-the-year" award from the Data Processing Management Association in 1969
First woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society
New Internet Connection Installed for Tech Talk
Verizon FIOS
Bundle (Phone, TV, Internet)
Includes wireless access point
Smooth installation, everything worked, happy so far
Universal remote needs programmed
Cable versus Telcos
UnFair Competitive Mix
Telcos were forced to share copper for "the last mile" to other providers
Telcos were charged telecom taxes (local, state, Federal)
Cable companies did not have to share cable for "the last mile"
Cable companies did not have to pay telecom taxes for IP phone services
Telco Response
Telcos have fought back with Fiber to the Home (does not have to be shared)
Telcos have added TV to Internet and Phone to compete with Cable
NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) is part of the US Air Force
Google versus Microsoft — The Cloud versus the Desktop
Google CEO is Eric E. Schmidt, former SUN Chief Technology Officer
Google has begun offering online products that strike at the core of Microsoft’s financial might: popular computing tools like word processing applications and spreadsheets.
The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle.
It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives.
Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices ? a setup known as cloud computing.
Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software.
Earlier this year, Google introduced a package of online software offerings, called Google Apps, that includes e-mail, instant messaging, calendars, word processing and spreadsheets.
The fundamental Google model is to try to change all the rules of the software world.
If Google succeeds a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.
Traditional software installed on personal computers is where Microsoft makes its living, and its executives see the prospect of 90 percent of computing tasks migrating to the Web-based cloud as a fantasy.
The Google challenge is not so much a head-to-head confrontation with Microsoft in its desktop stronghold as it is a long-term shift toward Web software.
And the technology of the Google cloud opens doors.
Its vast data centers are designed by Google engineers for efficiency, speed and low cost.
Once you have those data centers, you want to go out and develop complementary products and services.
They can be offered free or at minimal cost to users because they bring more traffic to Google, generating more search and ad revenue.
Google’s push into the business market began in earnest only this year. About 2,000 companies are signing up for Google Apps every working day.
Google and Microsoft each offer free Web-based e-mail to universities.
Microsoft is also investing heavily in huge data centers and Web software.
Inside Microsoft, there are engineers and managers who sound a lot like Googlers.