1. Information for study

Taking computer for granted

If it keeps up, man atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

F.L. Wright

Sales clerk: This little computer will do half your job for you.

Buyer (studying the machine): Fine, I’ll take two.

How easy is to get cynical about computers. Almost every day comes news of an office network that fails and paralyzes the company, of software that is years late, millions over budget and still doesn't work, of a spell-checker program that «corrects» a right word into a wrong one.

At times we feel at the machines' mercy, propelled in directions we would rather not go. The technology keeps growing more complex, more demanding, more intimidating.

But every now and then it's worthwhile to think positive, to take stock of the computers that work, that we use daily without thinking, that have made a difference. And that would have most of us screaming if taken away.

Herewith is an unscientifically compiled list of areas that the machines have forever changed.

Banking. Have you ever been to a country where banking still runs on paper? You wait in line, deal with a teller, than take a number and sit down. If you're lucky, the clerk takes only 30 minutes to go to a back room and rummage through giant ledgers to see if you have money.

Remember how ominous the term «banking hours» used to be? We had to build a trip to the bank into our weekly schedules. The price of missing that trip was cashless weekends or embarrassment of mooching from friends. Now we expect 24-hours access to our money at machines.

Time keeping. When I was a boy you had to spend hundreds of dollars to get truly accurate time on your wrist. It was common for watches (even those allegedly packed with tiny jewels) to lose or gain 10 minutes a day and break after a few months. You can still spend as much as you want on a watch, but $10 or $15 will buy you one that is off only by seconds a month and lasts for years. There's more: it will wake you with an alarm. Squeeze a button and it will turn into a stopwatch and tell you precisely how many seconds it takes from door to bus stop. As a boy I always wanted a stopwatch, but never had the money for one.

Telephone service. We used to think nothing of waiting hours for an overseas call to go through. We would tell an operator the number and hope for the best. Now we dial the digits and, in a few seconds, a telephone is ringing a continent away. Computers make that happen.

Calculating. People under 30 won't believe it, but there was a time when we balanced our check-books by hand. Or didn't balance them at all. Of course, there are plenty of people who still pursue that route. But the point is that if you want mathematical accuracy, you can get something that does the numbers as accurately as any child prodigy.

Medical research. The huge human genome project, which proposes to unlock the basic genetic code from which we are constructed and possibly tame AIDS, cancer and a host of other incurables, depends very heavily on computer-generated analyses of genetic structure.

Air traffic control. With computers' help, controllers can place many more planes close in the sky than they could using ghostly blips on a radar screen. When the computers fail, the controllers shift back to the blips and have to space planes farther apart. That means you sit fuming on a runway waiting for takeoff clearance.

Ticketing. Large electronic data-bases allow companies to instantly check ticket availability. That's why you can buy a ticket to a Rolling Stones concert in Washington from anywhere in the country. Or how the airline reservation agent knows whether there's space on the flight from Denver to Los Angeles.

Gasoline. You do not need to stand in line inside the service station to pay. You slip your card into a pump. A networked computer inside it validates the card in a few seconds. You pump your gas and hit the road. And cars go further these days because of «electronic engine management», a collection of chips in your car that control such crucial as spark plug timing and air flow.

Of course, each of these successes carries a potential cost. If kids can punch buttons to get a sum, they may not learn basic arithmetic. We may lose something in a world in which a watch is a throwaway commodity, not a possession to be saved for, lovingly chosen, than cared for through the years.

But it seems that most of these things, and plenty of others, have been for the better. We can never go back and, in most cases, wouldn't want to. Imagine the protests if somebody proposed removing computers from medical research labs, or that banks go back to paper ledgers.

One thing that stands out about the positives – they tend to be technologies that began 15, 20 or even 30 years ago. There's been plenty of time to rethink and refine, and turn them into things that really work.

Computer speech

When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.

Computer professional vocabulary is very developed and enormously rich. It concerns not only definitions, but also a great amount of different abbreviations.

Just an average user does not need to know all the computer terms since many of them are too specific and used only by specialists. But it’s absolutely necessary to know an everyday computer language that is widely spread and common for, so to say, a «computer man in the street». Pay attention to it and try to remember if you are willing to communicate with your colleagues.

ISP means an Internet Service Provider, a company that provides internet support for other entities.

WWW the World Wide Web refers to all the publically accessible documents on the Internet.

A Network (as applied to computers) means a group of computers working together. It can also refer to the physical wire etc. connecting the computers.

NC is abbreviation for network computers. It refers to any computer system that is designed to work as part of a network, rather than a stand-alone machine.

Platform represents a computer’s family. It is defined by both the processor type on the hardware side and the OS type on the software side.

File is a collection of related data identified by a certain name. E.G. a document created and stored is referred to as a file. A file is also called a document. A blank document (new) may be named «Document 1» until you rename it.

Directory is a part of a structure for organizing different files on a disc. Besides files a directory can contain other directories, which are called subdirectories.

Multimedia originally indicated a capability to work with and integrate various types of things including audio, graphics, and especially video. Now it’s more of marketing term and has little real meaning.

2. Exercises