Computers In Construction

Programming Language ... The earliest programming languages predate the invention of the computer, and were used to direct the behavior of machines such as Jacquard looms and player pianos. Thousands of different programming languages have been created, mainly in the computer field, with many more being created every year...

Personal Digital Assistant ... The first PDA was released in 1986 by Psion, the Organizer II. Followed by Psion's Series 3, in 1991, which began to resemble the more familiar PDA style...

Computer Network ... Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics such as the medium used to transport the data, communications protocol used, scale, topology, and organizational scope. Communications protocols define the rules and data formats for exchanging information in a computer network, and provide the basis for network programming...

History Of Supercomputing ... In the 1970s, Cray formed his own company and using new approaches to machine architecture produced supercomputers which dominated the field until the end of the 1980s. While the supercomputers of the 1980s used only a few processors, in the 1990s, machines with thousands of processors began to appear both in the United States and in Japan, setting new computational performance records...

Unconventional Computing ... Some mechanical computers have a theoretical or didactic relevance, such as billiard-ball computers or hydraulic ones,... Light (optical computing) Computers can manipulate information as light (rather than electricity or billiard balls)...

Subnotebook ... These computers are often confused with the "ultra-mobile PC" category, which is the name of a platform of small form-factor tablet PCs...

System Software ... The server performs some computational task on behalf of clients which may run on either the same computer or on other computers connected through a network...

Desktop Replacement Computer ... Desktop replacement computers are also often used with a port replicator, to fully enjoy the desktop comfort... Design features Modern desktop replacements generally perform better than traditional laptop-style computers as their size allows the inclusion of more powerful components... However, these advantages generally come at a price premium, with many computers in this class costing as much as two desktop computers with similar specifications...

Laptop ... As portable computers became smaller, lighter, cheaper, more powerful and as screens became larger and of better quality, laptops became very widely used for all sorts of purposes, by all sorts of people...

Computer ... Conventionally a computer consists of some form of memory, at least one element that carries out arithmetic and logic operations, and a sequencing and control unit that can change the order of operations based on the information that is stored. Peripheral devices allow information to be entered from an external source, and allow the results of operations to be sent out...

English In Computing ... The wide adoption of Unicode, and UTF-8 on the web, resolved most of these historical limitations. ASCII remains the de-facto standard for command interpreters, programming languages and text-based communication protocols...

History Of The World Wide Web ... The hypertext portion of the Web in particular has an intricate intellectual history; notable influences and precursors include Vannevar Bush's Memex, IBM's Generalized Markup Language, and Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu. The concept of a home-based global information system goes at least as far back as "A Logic Named Joe", a 1946 short story by Murray Leinster, in which computer terminals, called "logics," were in every home...

High-level Programming Language ... The first high-level programming language designed for computers was Plankalkül, created by Konrad Zuse...

Software Bug ... Bugs trigger errors that can in turn have a wide variety of ripple effects, with varying levels of inconvenience to the user of the program. Some bugs have only a subtle effect on the program's functionality, and may thus lie undetected for a long time...

Computer Multitasking ... The expression 'time sharing' was usually used to designate computers shared by interactive users at terminals, such as IBM's TSO, and VM/CMS In real-time systems, some waiting tasks are guaranteed to be given the CPU when an external event occurs... The term time-sharing is no longer commonly used, having been replaced by simply multitasking, and by the advent of personal computers and workstations rather than shared interactive systems...

Computer Data Storage ... In contemporary usage, 'memory' usually refers to semiconductor storage read-write random-access memory, typically DRAM (Dynamic-RAM). Memory can refer to other forms of fast but temporary storage...

TOP500 ... The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Project history In the early 1990s, a new definition of supercomputer was needed to produce meaningful statistics...