THREE PROFESSIONAL GOALS OF
MHPATHFINDER.COM
- GOAL ONE: PROVIDE THE
MEANS BY WHICH PEOPLE CAN GAIN A BASIC, PRACTICAL UNDERSTANDING OF
THEIR COMPUTER, THE BASICS OF HOW IT WORKS, AND HOW IT STORES,
ORGANIZES AND USES INFORMATION FOR THEIR USE.
- GOAL TWO: PROVIDE
AN
UNDERSTANDING OF OPERATING SYSTEMS. HOW BEST TO CHOOSE ONE FOR
OPTIMAL SPEED, SECURITY AND PERFORMANCE, THAT DOES WHAT ONE WANTS WITH
LITTLE COST. MANY SOFTWARE SYSTEMS WILL OPERATE WITHOUT THE NEED
FOR ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE.
- GOAL THREE: INTRODUCE
PEOPLE TO FREE AND OPEN SOURCE OPERATING SYSTEMS, SUCH AS LINUX-BASED
OPERATING SYSTEMS, AND OPEN SOURCE PROGRAMS. THESE ARE VIABLE
ALTERNATIVES TO THE COMMERCIAL DOMINANCE OF MICROSOFT AND ITS LIMITED
AND COSTLY WINDOWS LICENSING STRUCTURE. MORE IMPORTANTLY IT PUTS
CONTROL OF THE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE OF ONE'S COMPUTER INTO THE HANDS
OF THE USER, AND THE DEVELOPMENT INTO A PUBLIC POOL OF PROGRAMMERS AND
DEVELOPERS. THERE ARE, LITERALLY, HUNDREDS OF AVAILABLE FREE
& OPEN SOURCE OPERATING SYSTEMS AVAILABLE THROUGH COOPERATIVES AND
COMPANIES OF PROGRAMMERS AND DEVELOPERS ACROSS THE GLOBE.
CYBERIA EXPLAINED
Random
Access Memory, or RAM, is the
virtual area to which we open our software files for use on computers
and computer-based devices such as iPhones and Blackberries. It
is the working space that allows software code to be expressed as
image, video and sound. It is a "virtual" space of these
expressions. Within this virtual space, or "cyberspace" we can
receive data through telecommunications media, via the Internet of
cables, satellites, wired and wireless devices that allow us to access
the world of information and people. This data is then converted
into text, images and sound, video and flash presentations. We
can view and hear these expressions through our monitor screens and
speakers, and dialogue with others via microphones, speakers and web
cams. "Cyberia" is not the
isolated, stark and cold land of its synonym, "Siberia," but a virtual
arena for conducting rich communications, research, entertainment and
professional work with people and resources all over the world.
A BIT, OR BYTE, OF HISTORY
COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY/INTERNET
TECHNOLOGY: EXPLOSIVE CHANGE WITH A SHORT THREE DECADES
Computer
technology has advanced rapidly since the first IBM peronal computer
hit the consumer market in the early 1980s. Computers were
first massive and bulky calculators, some taking up
entire rooms of space. The first few were used back 1936.
IBM
brought us the first
personal computer
in 1981 in the early 1980s, with a
monochrome display using only text, no hard drive, and a minute 64
kilobytes of RAM memory. This was followed by Apple computers who
offered up a graphic interface over their UNIX based operating
system. Using a pointing device called a "mouse" one could
navigate across a "desktop" screen to icons that opened up programs for
use. IBM gave up the patent for their hardware and software,
making Bill Gates a fortunate buyer and innovator of the operating
system, then known as DOS (disk operaing system). Microsoft was
born. Apple computers developed a system with a graphic interface
in 1984. MS DOS, competing with Apple's systems with a graphic
interface through wide
dispersal among U.S. public schools, developed Windows 1.0, nothing
close to the secure and stable Apple. format, but a nice first
step.
Windows early versions, from 1.0 to Windows 98, Service Pack1, were
disasterous. Many hardware and software compatibility issues, and
monster Microsoft predatory practices of ensuring that no other
competing operating system was packaged with a name brand computer,
except for MS Windows.
Parallel to the software development age,
was the era of computer
development, first with IBM clones. All the while, Apple
maintained its smaller, but consistent market share, with a stable
system that had no hardware compatibility issues, because Apple
computers only used Apple parts and Apple operating systems and software at this time. With IBM releasing
control of the patents to its computer hardware, tens of thousands of
manufacturers competed to fill the void, and an explosion in IBM clone
computers and hardware components began. It was quite a clunky
and imperfect process as the first several generations of equipment
development suffered from incompatibility issues among the
products of the manufacturers, with the computer systems themselves,
and/or with specific software programs. Yet, it was a means by
which consumers could obtain very inexpensive computers, cheaper than
the superior and stable, albeit, more expensive Apple Macs.
MICROSOFT AND THE RISE OF THE FREE,
OPEN SOURCE, SOFTWARE MOVEMENT
Microsoft's Windows 98, Service Pack 2, seemed to be running much more
securely and solidly, yet for a limited license at a lofty price, if
one wanted to keep their versions of Windows current. For the
overwhelming majority of computer purchasers, Microsoft Windows is the
operating system that is packaged and installed with their computers
when they are purchased. This was no accident. Microsoft's
monopolistic perch as the top of the operating system and software
world enabled it to control the market. To Bill Gates credit, he
knew that most of us wanted a universal operating system in which all
of our desired software programs would function with little to no
problems. Gates understood that we all wanted an integrated and
seamless computer environment where we could communicate through email
and the Internet, perform our word-processing, spreadsheet and other
professional tasks, and utilized multi-media programs all together,
without any glitch. But, this could also be done through the
competitive efforts of several software companies, each working to
develop their own components to integrate into an operating system,
whether it was Bill Gates' Microsoft Windows, a MAC OS system, or
others. Microsoft became a predatory monster to eat up or destroy
any potential competitor in the operating system market. Let us
suppose that Gates was genuinely concerned with protecting the
development process of a fully-integrated operating system. This
is still an insufficient reason to stifle competing companies who could
help through a wide spectrum of developers and programmers working on
such integrative programs to achieve this goal, albeit without all of
the profits going into Bill Gates' and his co-workers' pockets.
Software programmers were being threatened by the Microsoft giant
with
any competitive product they produced--web browsers, desktoop
utilities, email clients, and other software were being bullyingly
challenged. It took the courts in nations across the globe to put
the skids on Microsoft's predatory tactics and non-competitive
strategies meant to maintain its monopoly on operating systems, but
many software companies were ruined in the process. The
Free
Software Foundation, and other organizations like it, sprang up in
reaction to Microsoft's predatory tactics. Microsoft wasn't
selling it's operating system, only a license to install it on a single
computer, or a network license to install the system on a limited
number of computers. It didn't matter that an individual was
shelling out a couple of hundred dollars to buy the CD on which the
install data came. What a consumer was buying was a product
number to activate Windows on single computer, unless that computer
came prepackaged with Windows, which nearly all name brand computers
did.
LINUX operating
sytem distrbitutions, free and open
source versions of the UNIX based source code, have been around for
quite a while. There are literally hundreds, if not more, various
distributions of the LINUX kernel-based operating system, loaded with
many free software programs. They can be found at
www.distrowatch.com. These
full-functioning public operating
systems are free for the download, developed through the cooperative
work of programmers, developers and hackers, anyone able and willing to
add improvements, tweaking the code, fixing bugs, etc. The code
is then sent back
to the developers to incorporate into its finished operating system
product. The most popular LINUX base operating system today is
UBUNTU, developed by a group in
Africa and distributed through
CANONICAL, a company which
doesn't charge a penny for the operating
system nor the commercial-free enclosed software programs, but makes
its money by offering its engineering skills and technical support to
organizations and businesses
who want to network their server software with an office of computers,
or who want the operating system to be customized and tweaked for their
specific needs.
To be fair, in spite of all of its marketing sins, Microsoft is, by
far, still the universal operating system of choice for the
overwhelming majority of computer users in the world. It is
packaged and installed in probably ninety-five percent of all computers
sold in the world. If one never has a need to upgrade to a new
version of Windows, and can simply rely on the automatic security
updates and service packs through Microsoft, then not a single penny
more is spent on Microsoft Windows beyond the portion of the original
purchase price of a computer that pays for one's license to use
it. MAC OS, Apple Computers operating system is installed in all
of their computers, comprising somewhere between five- to six-percent
of the computer market. A very small handful of computers are now
sold with Ubuntu or some other LINUX-based operating system.
UBUNTU is my operating system of choice, because it is a
commercial-free operating system with many, many free and open source
software programs included, and access to hundreds more.
There are some limitations to UBUNTU and other LINUX-based operating
systems if one seeks to have their system completely
commercial-free. Many Internet web sites, even many non-profit
organizations and outlets, depend upon commercial media software and
file types to broadcast across the Internet airwaves. Otentimes,
there are no non-commercial alternatives to access the content of these
sites. Then, one has to make a decision on whether or not to
incorporate at least some commercial programs into their system or to
simply limit one's access to content for the sake of non-commercial and
open source purity. I mingle a few commercial plug-ins and
software programs, such as Adobe Flash and Real Player, because I can't
find viable non-commercial alternatives to access important content I
need for my research, but I where I can use a non-commercial program or
plug-in, I will.
The
Internet
, created by university and research scientists in order to
more quickly
exchange research information via telephone lines and computers, was
soon accessible to the general public through private Interent service
providers (or ISPs). This marriage of telecommunications and
computers would develop quickly. In the 1980s, a number of
commercial dial-up services became available. By the end of the
1990s faster
DSL broadband Internet services were made available, eventually leading
to cable Internet access, satellite Internet access, and wireless
access points made available for people with laptops, many free WIFI
zones exist in downtown centers, Starbucks and other cafes, and hotel
lobbies.
The wedding of computers with the Internet has created a global
information network that is nothing short of astounding. People
can
communited through multimedia formats with others across the globe who
share the same technology. A "virtual" world that is experienced
via
computer monitor screens, webcams, speakers and microphones is now a
shared world. Virtual communities comprised of people who
physically
live anywhere from a few to thousands of miles away from each other are
now forming based on mutual interests or causes, professional and
business alliances, shared academic ventures, or simply through sharing
personal profiles and matching elements of them through Internet
sharing appliances such as My Face, My Space, Face Book, You Tube, and
others.
NEW TECHNOLOGY MEANS NEW CAPABILITIES
AND NEW DANGERS WHICH DEMAND AN INTERNET ETHOS
Personally, I don't use Facebook, My Space, My Face, or anything that
mingles
people's personal lives through such public forums so readily.
This is
my
choice, my preference. I appreciate my privacy, and I hope that
people appreciate each others' privacies enough to use good decorum
when posting personal items about each other through global
forums. I do not text-message, because phone calls and emails are
much easier than texting. Those cell phone keypads are so damned
small. It is hard to imagine that so many people rely upon
texting each other as a primary means of social communication.
Issues
of privacy, Internet decorum, identity theft and Internet security, and
other issues have arisen with no previous ethos to direct our
course.
We are writing the script as we go. For many, it is a matter of
personal choice, but without knowing some of the dangers of sharing
information through the public venue of the Internet, or the means to
safeguard one's personal and financial information, many people,
especially younger people, are naively entering into virtual
relationships with little to no previous knowledge of the person, or
persons, with whom they are entering into such relationships.
Because
few rules exist about what kind of information is being shared and
about whom the information is about, unknowing people and their
security may be put at risk through the actions of others who put
informtion about them into these virtual meeting places.
With such
amazing new opportunities for humanity to mesh together, there are some
road hazards when traversing through cyberspace. Even something
that
seems so benign as sending an email message must be seen as putting a
message out into a public space, and for people to understand the
limits of confidentiality when we do so.
MANY DIFFERENT COMPUTER-BASED DEVICES,
YET COMMON ELEMENTS ARE THE SAME
Today we have many computer-based devices, and the cell phone has been
transformed into a mobile telecomm computer through technology which
has yielded the iphone, the Blackberry, the iGoogle device, and
others. The basic elements of these, desktop and laptop computers
are the same. All have a Central Processing Unit, or CPU, which
come in various speeds of information processing, measured in
megahertz or
gigahertz.
Each device comes with an amount of storage, either through a hard
drive or through a solid state drive SSD. Even iphones come with
as much as several gigabytes of storage. And, each device has
usable amount of RAM memory installed. Various components, such
as a video graphics adapter for seeing expressions of virtual data on a
screen, a sound adapter to hear virtual expressions, and a microphone
to send voice data through the computer apparatus, are usually
included, and now webcams are incorporated into cellphones and many
laptops to share virtual images of our selves and experiences with
others through the Internet. A telecomm device is obviously
installed. In a desktop or laptop, this is either an ethernet
(wired) or wireless broadband communication adapter to link up to one's
personal, shared or public broadband network. In addition, one
needs an INPUT device, such as a mouse, pointer, touchpad or
touchscreen, as well as a keypad or keyboard, in order to navigate the
icons of a software application onscreen or to input commands or text
to the device being used.
To Review, most computer-based devices contain the following for
practical use by most people:
- Central Processing Unit (CPU)
processing data in speeds measured in megahertz or gigahertz
- Storage Memory space, either through a hard drive or through a solid state drive, for storing the
operating system, programs and files.
- Random Access Memory or RAM
chips, through which stored data is loaded up to a useable RAM space
for actual use
- Output devices, i.e.,
video adapters and monitor screens, speakers
- Input devices, i.e.,
microphones, keypads; pointers, mice, touchpads or touchscreens;
keypads or keyboards, webcams.
- Communication hardware:
ethernet for wired broadband network connections or wireless (WIFI)
access devices to access personal, shared or public wireless Internet
access networks. For dial-up Internet access, some computer
devices still come with a dial-up modem installed, but fewer in this
age of BROADBAND Internet access.
- An operating system, i.e. MS Windows XP or Vista; Apple's MAC OS
X, or, one of the hundreds of LINUX-based operating systems, such as UBUNTU
- A number of software programs and applications that work well for
the particular device.
SOME UNDERSTANDING ABOUT DATA AND
STORAGE SIZES:
A BYTE is 26 bits. A KILOBYTE is a thousand bytes,
enough for a one-page, or less, simple text file. A MEGABYTE is a
thousand bytes, enough for one to a few photo files, such as a .jpg
file, or even the size of a simple software utility program. A
GIGABYTE is a thousand MEGABYTES, a large enough space for a basic
operating system with a few basic programs, such as MS Windows
XP...before installing any securty or other updates. Most modern
computers come with either one or two GIGABYTES of Random Access
Memory, or RAM, chips installed, and a hard drive of 120 or more
GIGABYTES of storage space. Before any data from programs
can be utilized and seen on your monitor, it must be loaded up from you
hard drive
storage space into
the accessible
RAM or
Random Access
Memory, much like the information from memories in your brain
must be
loaded up into the conscious working area of your brain. The more
RAM capacity you have, the more data that is immediately accessible for
your use when you are using your software programs. If you are
using a few programs at one time, your operating system will utilize a
SWAP file that swaps out the data between the hard drive and your
usable RAM space as needed.
Through the generous benefit of my friend, Larry Bressie, who sold it
to me for
a almost a token price, and my need for a computer for my return to
academia to
obtain my bachelors degree in human behavior and my masters in
counseling psychology, I had one of the first IBM PCs. Along with
my immersion into university life and academia, I immersed myself into
the ever-changing world of computer technology, first hand. Larry
and I shared a hobby of keeping up with the cutting edge of computer
central processing units (CPUs) and memory chips, a cutting edge with a
new generation every few months. We economically kept a few
generations behind the cutting edge in adding new components to our
systems. it became cost-effective to cannibalize our existing
systems and those of friends and family members who sought us out for
technical support. During the 1990s, massive computer shows were
offering the latest and greatest computer and software products at
extremely competitive prices. This would change as the Internet
would become the competitive marketplace for computers, computer parts
and just about anything else.
To make a potentially-long story shorter, I've learned about operating
systems and hardware through an on-going hobby and profession, working
on various desktop and laptop computer systems, researching the rich
pool of experience and knowledge shared through user forums of many
hardware and software programs. and keeping updated on many trends
amidst the myriads of extending branches of this technological
evolution. One of my favorite meditations is to see how much I
can do to an operating system to the point of crashing it, just to see
if I can retrieve data and system and still have things working in any
sort of functional order at the end of the process. If nothing
else, I have learned the value of redundant backups of documents and
data, and having a fair-sized external drive for such purposes.
COMPASSION