Friday, March 23, 2007

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Friday, February 23, 2007

Numbers Systems - Positional and Non-Positional

A positional notation numeral system in which each position is related to the next by a constant multiplier of that numeral system. For each position that the number is in, in that system has a relative symbol or meaning, and in a way relates to the number directly next to it. The total value of a positional number is the total of the resultant values of all positions.

In a non-positional number system, each number in each position does not have to be positional itself. Every system varies by country and it depends on symbols and values set by the people of that country. For example, the Egyptians use Hieroglyphics, and the Greeks use a numeral system.

The binary conversion of the number 529 is 1000010001. This is done by using the power of 2. By taking each number up until the number 10, which is 1024 if 2^10=1024. Then, by using the power of two, and only the numbers 1 and 0 in the binary system, you can convert the number 529. It is difficult to describe the actual number conversion, however by using the power of two and dividing each number into consecutive numbers up to 10, you can convert it very easily.

Also, for the binary number 110010101, it equals orrepresents:
256 + 128 + 16 + 4 + 1
Consequently, the corresponding answer is 405, when using the rules described above.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Chapter 6 - Global Swarming

The world wide web has come a long way since its introduction in the late 80's and early 90's. There are now websites for anything, many with extremely similar names. Our world has become so wrapped up in the world wide web that people rely solely on the internet as a means of communication and information. However, the internet can be misleading because of its popularity and accessibility. Search engines have no come to dominate the information world with billions of web pages that are accessible free of charge. Search engines although as great as they are, still don't provide everything we need. The internet isn't as free as some people think, and with this global swarming, it is only a matter of time before the internet becomes and overpopulated search engine.

Friday, February 9, 2007

Unix Commands

Today we learned many unix commands, all of which are important and all of which do different things. The combination of some commands yeilds different outcomes as compared to being used individually. Some commands that are used most frequently are whoami, which will return the user name of the person logged into Steel. Also, you can find out information from another person by inputting their username after the word finger. Finger will look up the other person's information and display it on the screen.

The command mkdir is used to make a directory, such as an informatics directory. To delete a directory, the command to use is rmdir.

Another helpful command is date, which will return the current date and time according to the computers internal clock.

The final command that I found helpful was the cal command which returns the calendar for that year. For instance, if I entered cal 4 2007, it will yield the month of April for the year 2007.