machine that changed the world
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Sketch Up Assignment
For my sketch up assignment I created an urban, city street kind of environment. My scene consists of buildings going along a street at an intersection. This scene could help play a role in the development of a videogame or a virtual reality experience. I was not able to fully furnish my environment to look how it might if it was featured in one of these video games or 3d movies because my scene is all just boxes and rectangles.
If my scene was to be used in the development of a movie or videogame, then i would probably go further and put images and textures on the boxes so that they would resemble buildings in a city environment. I tried to draw rectangles as the streets and then lower them a small bit so that there would be sidewalks on the side of the streets and they would be raised slightly from the height of the street. My sketch up image would help in the development of a videogame because it could be the foundation of what a certain environment in a videogame might be developed to look like.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Machine the changed the world
The Machine That Changed The World
Charles Babbage's analytical engine was different from his difference engine because his difference engine could only do simple calculations. His analytical engine was designed to be able to be programmable to do many different functions.
2) What role did Ada Lovelace play in the development of the Analytical Engine?
She helped to make programs for the machine, which made her the first programmer.
3) How was the ENIAC computer reprogrammed?
It was reprogrammed by rewiring a bunch of different plugs in the computer manually.
4) Name an innovation that helped make programming faster post ENIAC (see ep. 2)
a read-only stored programming mechanism that used function tables as program memory.
5) What is it about binary counting that makes it so well suited to computers?
Because binary only uses two different factors, 1 and 0.
6) In what ways did UNIVAC influence the portrayal of computers in popular culture in the 1950s? Give an example. (see ep. 2)
UNIVAC was portrayed in an episode of Looney Tunes.
7) Codebreaking required the automatic manipulation of symbols to unscramble messages during WWII. What was the name of the rudimentary computer at Bletchley Park in England that unscrambled Nazi codes.
The Colossus Computer, which was created by Alan Turing.
8) Alan Turing who understood the implications of such machines later went on to describe them as __________ machines.
intelligent machines.
9) Describe when you first used computers and what types of tasks you performed on them.
I first used computers when I was very young. My mom had an old Macintosh computer and I played childrens games on there and stuff like mathblaster and programs learning how to type. I played games like coloring games, and other simple games. I also played games like math blaster and programs that would teach you how to type. I remember I even played a game that was in black and white.
When i first starting using computers, I didnt know how to type, or I would take a very long time typing out a sentence or two. I didn't really use the internet for anything when I first started using computers because I was young and I didn't really have a use for anything on the internet. A little later on I'd be using computers to do schoolwork and write papers and essays.
10) How restricted do you think computers are in terms of what they can do compared to how they are most often used?
I don't think computers are very restricted these days in terms of what they can do. Computers are so advanced these days that they can do many things that we would never be able to do anymore. For example, in these days, computers do most of our computations and math for us to the point where we probably couldn't do most of it on our own anymore. Computers can do things like videochatting, where one person can talk to another person face to face through a webcam attached to their computer. Computers can also look at super enhanced pictures taken from a satellite and see their own car parked in their front yard on google earth.
I think that computers are not very restricted at all these days in terms of what they can do, but im sure that most people often do not make use of all the different things that a computer is capable of. Most people probably only need computers for a few basic tasks: writing and processing documents, email, social networking, downloading videos and music, and entertainment. For some other people, they may use computers to help with their work like using music or video production or editing programs, or programs like photoshop for artists. There are many programs for computers and these days computers can do pretty much anything.
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