Monday 15 October 2012

How did gaming change the world?


When Pong was released in the 1970's it proved that video games could really be successful. Since then, video games, and the people who play them, have slowly shaped our society
in old times people played Duck Hunt and Mario on the Nintendo and Super Nintendo.
When Nintendo launched its console, it advertised is as a toy for children in an attempt to distance itself from the failure of Atari. The company also enjoyed a near monopoly with the placement of a chip in both the console and each video game cartridge. This allowed Nintendo to only release kid friendly games.
Then Sega Genesis was released in North America and Nintendo had a fierce competitor. Sega advertised itself as the cooler console and developed its mascot Sonic as a edgier rival to Mario.
Other companies soon joined in with the launch of Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox. More adult themed title's like Grand Theft Auto, Modern Warfare and Halo soon attracted all ages to play.
According to a recent study the average gamer age was in the mid to late 20's with 60% men playing and 40% women. The increasing number of women gamers, as well as the age level of gamers in general, no doubt plays a large role in what developers place on the market. Games feature more strong, independent heroines and more games are made specifically for adults.

How the Army uses video games to train.

The U.S military has recently started using video games to recruit and train. Recruitment centers have been opened up that lets potential recruits hang out on couches and play wargame simulators. Officers in the U.S. army have invested about $50 million to develop video games and a game system for the purpose of providing more information to potential recruits and hopefully reducing the number of washouts
America's Army , the official U.S. Army video game, helps military recruits sharpen their fighting skills and may even help protect them from the stress of combat. The website claims to provide players with "the most authentic military experience available, from exploring the development of soldiers in individual and collective training to their deployment in simulated missions"
It's effectiveness has been proven at least once when a man named Paxton Galvanek used the skills he learned from playing the game as a medic to save a man's life.

 
what type of jobs use computers?


Video Game Developer

  • People who work as video game developers use computers for the majority of their work. As part of their job, they create and implement video games, but they also test the video games. Computers are used in creating the graphics for the game and in just about every single activity from the beginning to when the game is launched. You need extensive computer knowledge to be able to use a computer as a video game developer.

Desktop Publisher

  • Another job that uses computers is desktop publishing. They are responsible for combining printed material, including pictures, charts and numbers to prepare publications. In addition, they do some writing and editing and create the graphics to go along with the text. Desktop publishers produce business cards, books, magazines and newspapers. Most page layout work is now done with computers, and they use computers for just about every facet of their job.

Secretary

  • Secretaries are a fixture of most administrative environments. They work in all fields, including medical and legal. Their duties vary but generally include filing, correspondence, travel plans and data entry. Secretaries spend most of their time in an office and in front of a computer.

Writer

  • Writers spend much of their time on computers. They may work for magazines, newspapers or television. Many writers begin the writing process by conducting research. That is commonly done using a computer and the Internet. Computers, specifically word processing programs, are used for actually writing the material.

Human Resources Assistant

  • Human resources assistants use computers to manage a lot of data that involves employees and their benefits. They must be familiar with using a computer to enter and maintain that data. The records include employee information such as job title, pay, name, address, phone numbers and benefit information. They also often run reports for their managers. Human resources assistants also recruit candidates for positions, often using the Internet on the computer to do so.
 
can we live without computers?
 

me as individual I can live without a computer. on the other hand, if society lost access to computers 55 million people will be dead (from starvation and plain old stupidity) in the next 6 months. It will also probably start WW3 which a whole lost more people will die and much faster too. Most people just don't realize how dependent are Americans (as a society) on computers. while individuals like me can survive, society (we) cannot. In the life of modern already more and more cannot leave computer. We are now living in the information times, which means we can't live without computer.
 
 
 

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Future computers

 


The Future of Computers: From Tubes to Tablets

Recent innovations such as the iPad provide an exciting glimpse into the future of computers. Before looking forward toward future computer trends, let's take a quick look back to gain a better appreciation of the evolution thus far. Do you remember when the first primitive computing machines occupied entire buildings? The massive machines from the mid-20th century consisted of row upon row of vacuum tubes and wires. You had to use stacks of punch cards to program these beasts.

The Future of Computers: Home Computers

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were both instrumental in bringing the computer down to size. With the introduction of the personal computer and its widespread acceptance, computers shrunk while processing power increased. Even the bulky CRT monitors got a makeover with flat LCD monitors now the norm. In addition, costs have fallen so much over the years that many households own several personal computers and wireless networks. Future technology won't necessarily render the home PC obsolete, but it will change it. For example, modern televisions and appliances are now Web-enabled. Expect future technology to blend appliances into the home network.

The Future of Computers: Laptops, Netbooks, and Ultrabooks

First there were laptops, then there were netbooks, and now there are "ultrabooks." These mobile devices share several characteristics including the integrated folding design and portability. Differences include size and storage (laptops use hard disks, netbooks rely more heavily on the cloud, and ultrabooks use Flash memory). Despite their similarities and differences, future computer trends point to a lesser reliance on keyboards which could potentially render this category obsolete.

The Future of Computers: Tablets

Apple's iPad has significantly influenced future computer trends. It was soon followed by a flood of tablets. With small sizes, simple designs, extreme portability, Internet access, thousands of apps, and loads of features, tablets can do just about anything a full-size desktop or laptop can do. They fall short in the keyboard arena, but again, that may be about to change.

computers today

Today computers are used in creating machines automatically and they are a household appliance for everyone. computers are used to aid scientists with experiments and a lot of the math they do for their theories. Computers are basically used everywhere with everything. Pretty much every thing has a compute in corparated from a space shuttle to a hot dog( packaging & mass prodution). But mostly computers are used for research and games.


 
 
Personal Impact

* privacy and personal rights
* data banks, computer terminals, data security
* employment
* job opportunities, new careers, the need for retraining
* business transactions
* automated billing, credit cards, interac, consumer spending
* the replacement of people through automation
* robots, word processing
* the impact that a machine has on a human - ergonomics

Community Impact

* employment
* traffic control
* urban planning
* law enforcement

National Impact

* communications media
* the use of information for control
* vote counting
* electronic funds transfer
* stock-market transactions
* defense
* surveillance
* national data banks
* employment
* shifting patterns
* telecommunications
* satellite broadcasting
* the possibility of fraud or theft using computer based systems
* standards for computer hardware and software

Global Impact

* reporting of current events
* communications media
* world government
* international standards
* exploration of space and sea
* world wide access to data

Future Impact

* computers in the home
* gaming
* learning
* electronic mail
* shopping
* business transactions
* information processing, storage and retrieval
* the home as a work center
* effect on the family unit and on familiar patterns of life
* travel
* computer communication as a replacement for travel
* the possible disappearance of hard copy as a medium of communication
* the cashless society
* possible effects on the formal education system
* the use of robots in industry and in the home
* teleprocessing networks
* communications networks
 
In these modern times, the computer has become an essential part of every day work and activities be in our homes, offices, school and even on social places. Everyone nowadays have some form of computers always in hand and ready to assist them in every way possible. But what if suddenly the dependable computers where to be taken away can we still live without them?






 




 
I think that would be kind of hard for everyone as World's total economy to every small work is dependent today on computers.
 We would be able to live without it but it would take a long time as we kinda live from the internet now.


 

Past Computers: information

Past Computers: information

Most of the computers for home use in the beginning were for the hobbyists, the very earliest home machines required you to put them together and often included the need for soldering. but as the cost of the electronics and microprocessors continued to drop so did the price of the computers and also slowly became easier to use and this in turn encouraged more to learn. One of the major driving forces in the purchase of these early computers were the games and as the computers increased in power the games improved. The number of magazines with pages and pages of basic code or machine code on the newsagents shelves increased and myself and many others spent hours and hours entering this code often to find that 1 silly typing mistake would stop the game from working.
We have listed below some of the most common home computers that were sold in large numbers prior to the introduction and standardisation on the PC or Apple platform .



It
 
 it appears that the first mechanicalcalculator may have been conceived byLeonardo da Vinci almost one hundredand fifty years earlier than Pascal'smachine
.
 

The word "computer" was first recorded as being used in 1613 and was originally was used to describe a person who performed calculations or computations. The definition of a computer remained the same until the end of the 19th century when it began referring to a machine that performed calculations.
 
The   Z1, originally created by Germany's  Konrad Zuse in his parents living room in 1936   to 1938 is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable (modern) computer and really the first functional computer.
 
The Colossus was the first electric programmable computer and was developed by Tommy Flowers and first demonstrated in December 1943. The Colossus was created to help the British code breakers read encrypted German messages.