QuickStudy

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High-Density Storage 03 February, 2009 10:07
What happens when we hit the wall for current magnetic storage? Where do we turn for more storage? A number of technologies that could help are under development.

The first storage media -- paper tape and punched cards -- were inefficient, slow and bulky. These gave way to magnetic storage: core memory, drums and, finally, hard drives. For backup, there were removable media: magnetic tape reels and cartridges, floppy disks and removable hard drives. Then optics (CD-ROM and DVD drives) supplanted magnetism for archival uses. Today's computers need to store more data than ever. The most recent storage generation replaces moving parts with solid-state electronics.
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QuickStudy: Identity-based encryption 03 December, 2008 09:20
IBE simplifies cryptography for message administrators, senders and receivers.

Public-key cryptography offers very strong protection for electronic communications. Much of its strength comes from the use of paired keys, which are separate (but mathematically related) codes that encrypt and decrypt a message; one key is public and one is known only to the recipient.
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QuickStudy: Global positioning systems 03 December, 2008 10:07
Sometimes technology is indistinguishable from magic

Like many people, I've come to take for granted the availability of navigation systems in cars and handheld devices based on the Global Positioning System. But it was all abstract until I recently acquired a modern GPS myself. My reaction reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
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QuickStudy: Transactional Memory 23 September, 2008 09:15
Programmers are learning new ways to code for multicore computing systems.

With the increasing use of multicore CPUs in computers, programmers have to learn new techniques for parallel processing. One very promising approach is transactional memory.
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QuickStudy: Blade servers 24 June, 2008 14:57

Definition
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Model Driven Architecture 06 September, 2006 15:20

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is an approach to translating real-world algorithms into computer code. It focuses on representing algorithms in a modelling language, followed by a possibly automatic translation of the models into computer code. Doing justice to the definition of MDA's innovation requires a short, potted history of computers.
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Internet2 28 August, 2006 16:25

Although today's Internet is often credited with creating so much change that society is still racing to catch up, it has also come to be seen as unwieldy, hidebound and problematic -- ripe for revision or replacement. Security issues, spam, slow downloads and the exploding need for URLs are only some of its problems. The Internet is sometimes seen as a victim of its own success, and several initiatives are under way to develop the Internet of the future.
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MIME 28 June, 2006 10:24

Definition: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is the fundamental Internet standard for sending multimedia e-mail (contain, for example, audio, video and/or graphics) and messages in non ASCII character sets. Also used by Web browsers, MIME specifies what types of media a message contains and the form in which it has been encoded.
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QuickStudy: Struts 30 May, 2006 16:36

In his blog, Craig McClanahan recounts how, when he joined Sun Microsystems in 2000, he continued to support the development of an open-source application project. As part of that effort, he needed to take a U.S.-centric application and produce it in four languages and make it available to European users on the Web and through other channels.
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Virtual tape 27 March, 2006 19:55

Since the dawn of the digital computer age, long-term data storage and backup have been the province of a single primary medium: magnetic tape. Tape has compelling advantages. It's inexpensive to operate and buy, and even cheaper to store, whether it exists on reels, inside cartridges or as part of an automated tape library system. Tape also has the benefit of separating the portable and inexpensive storage medium from the larger, more costly recording machinery. The introduction of tape made it possible to back up everything, keep copies off-site and restore older or deleted files as needed.
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Here comes Python 09 May, 2005 10:25
Lesser known scipting language steps up to the enterprise

Python is an object-oriented, open-source programming language often used for rapid application development. Python's simple syntax emphasizes readability, reducing the cost of program maintenance, while its large library of functions and calls encourages reuse and extensibility.
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COM 17 August, 2004 09:58

Component Object Model is a Microsoft-developed, language-independent architecture created in the 1990s that lets developers build applications from reusable, binary software components.
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RSS 15 July, 2004 13:58

RSS is an XML format for syndicating Web content. A Web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A user with a Web browser or a special RSS client program automatically receives notice of and links to new content on designated sites and can use it on a different site.
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XSL 05 May, 2004 15:17

Markup languages have been around since 1969, when three IBM Corp. researchers created the Generalized Markup Language. That was the grandfather of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which makes the Web work, and of Extensible Markup Language (XML), which has become the primary means of defining, storing and formatting data in a multitude of areas, including documents, forms and databases.
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ETL 17 February, 2004 10:53

ETL stands for extract, transform and load, the processes that enable companies to move data from multiple sources, reformat and cleanse it, and load it into another database, a data mart or a data warehouse for analysis, or on another operational system to support a business process.