I am thankful that this article was stripped down and straight forward. Coming from a background with technical knowledge in electrics, it felt weird to not have basic computer knowledge. Have a much better grasp of the inner workings now, though I am still confused by RAM. I followed the link on the page to the RAM wikipedia entry, but even that did not alleviate my confusion. If the memory accessed is random, and wiped out when the computer is shut off, then exactly what functions does the RAM run? Is it being utilized to run programs on the computer, or is it being used to remember items like pages opened in an internet explorer?
Moore's Law Wikipedia and Video-
This law makes a lot of sense, especially when looking at it along side the growth of the internet. Both the charts, the on shown in class tracking web size and the one on the wikipedia tracking Moore's law show the same exponential growth. With technology continuously improving and our needs for everything to be better, faster and stronger, we drive the creation of newer technology until we reach a peak. Since Moore's law does have a natural plateau around 2015, there will be a point when we have improved as much as we are able too. The video did a wonderful job of helping one visualize Moore's law, and explaining the reason for the end of the shrinking of electronics. Though it did make me wonder how small technology could get realistically without being completely useless.
Computer History Museum-
Out of everything on this site, I was drawn to the computer restoration program. I found it interesting in a world full of people who want everything to be smaller and portable that efforts to better understand the history of technology were being made. After seeing old technology thrown to the wayside it was great to see it being refurbished and even functioning. Looking at the world's first disk drive in comparison to disk drive's of today shows how far we have come in such a short span of time. The women in the Moore video said that 40 years may seem short, but in actuality big change have been made.
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