The Middle East

Don’t call it a Twitter Revolution just yet. Sure, protesters in the Middle East are using the short-messaging service — and other social media tools — to organize … But don’t confuse tools with root causes, or means with ends. The protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen are against dictators who’ve held power — and clamped down on their people — for decades. That’s the fuel for the engine of dissent. The dozen or more protesters that self-immolated in Egypt didn’t do it for the tweets.

A quote from Wired Magazine that I found on TweetageWasteland, a blog which looks at the reality - and the problems - of social media.

Status update

Since I am now no longer officially in the Computer Science class (I'm self-studying the course) then any funny links, TED talks, Twits- sorry, Tweets (Freudian slip, my bad) or anything else cool that we're shown in class will be sincerely appreciated. Just post it in a comment or something.

Oh, also, if you have links to any work-related information or stuff that we need to know for the exams, feel free to send me that too. Thanks!

Operating systems

Operating systems have two major functions:

1. Controls information flow between input devices, secondary memory and output devices:

The operating system interprets information from input devices such as mice and keyboards, and sends this to output devices such as the screen. It also controls which information is written to and accessed from the hard drive. This includes programs which perform user-orientated tasks, as well as utility functions.

2. Allocate processor time and RAM space:

The operating system controls which applications can use the processor and for how long. It also controls the distribution of RAM.

Hardware

             PROCESSOR

                      ^

                      |

                      v

INPUT ---> RAM  ---> OUTPUT
                      ^
                      |
                      v
              STORAGE