Computer Science Canada Quick help! |
| Author: | Kilace [ Mon Oct 30, 2006 9:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Quick help! |
I have an exam in a few days and there are some things I don't get regarding computers... These questions are multiple choice... 1.) An integrated circuit is a slice of ____ containing wires, capacitors, and transistors. I thought the answer was silicon. But apparently its crystal. Wuh? 2.) Bob just installed a new hard drive in his computer. The next time he boots the computer he needs to update ____ to make the drive available. I thought the answer was RAM. But apparently its CMOS. I thought CMOS just handles the time, and other low-power functions. Wuh? 3.) Which of the following statements are flase with regards to virtual memory? Apparently the statement, "since it is essentially part of a secondary storage device, virtual memory is non volatile" |
|
| Author: | rdrake [ Mon Oct 30, 2006 9:56 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Quick help! |
Kilace wrote: I have an exam in a few days and there are some things I don't get regarding computers...
Maybe they mean silicon crystals? Honestly I don't know about this one.
These questions are multiple choice... 1.) An integrated circuit is a slice of ____ containing wires, capacitors, and transistors. I thought the answer was silicon. But apparently its crystal. Wuh? Kilace wrote: 2.) Bob just installed a new hard drive in his computer. The next time he boots the computer he needs to update ____ to make the drive available.
Most certainly not RAM. As for why it's CMOS... they might mean the BIOS.
I thought the answer was RAM. But apparently its CMOS. I thought CMOS just handles the time, and other low-power functions. Wuh? Kilace wrote: 3.) Which of the following statements are flase with regards to virtual memory?
Well, let's think about what the word "volatile" means in this sense. It means "changeable", so "non-volatile" would mean "not changeable." We know this is not true, as RAM can change. Even virtual memory can change, meaning it is volatile.Apparently the statement, "since it is essentially part of a secondary storage device, virtual memory is non volatile" |
|
| Author: | md [ Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:00 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Quick help! |
[quote="rdrake"] Kilace wrote: ] RAM. As for why it's CMOS... they might mean the BIOS.
Kilace wrote: 3.) Which of the following statements are flase with regards to virtual memory?
Well, let's think about what the word "volatile" means in this sense. It means "changeable", so "non-volatile" would mean "not changeable." We know this is not true, as RAM can change. Even virtual memory can change, meaning it is volatile.Apparently the statement, "since it is essentially part of a secondary storage device, virtual memory is non volatile" Actually because virtual memory is really just a copy of hte pages of memory in your system it shares all the same properties of memory (well... for all intensive purposes). RAM is volatile, if you turn it off you lose everything in it. Thus the same is true for virtual memory. |
|
| Author: | Dan [ Tue Oct 31, 2006 12:32 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
It might be me, but every time i have changed, removed or added a hard drive, floopy drive or cd room/dvd drive i have only had to change the jumper slector on the drive and had to make no changes to the BIOS or update anything. Even when i added a chip that alowed for 4 more such devices to be added only jumpers had to be pshyical changed. I guse if you had your BIOS set up in such a way where it could not auto dect such devices you whould need to either set it back to auto dect or for the device that is being added. And slice of crystal containing wires??? Silicon is gorwn in crystal from but that is like saying "computers have ____ chips" and you aswered silicon and they say the right awsswer realy was "green things with wires". Also they are not realy wires that are in the chips..... Honstly i whould be very woried if an insturcter gave me such a test/sheet with thos awnsers. |
|
| Author: | md [ Tue Oct 31, 2006 1:44 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
SATA drives don't even require you to turn off your computer to install them, clearly this isn't a very good test. |
|
| Author: | apomb [ Tue Oct 31, 2006 1:49 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
I'm Kind of wondering what grade/year this "exam" is for ... and like hacker_dan said ... i whould be worried if the instructor's answers were that inaccurate. |
|
| Author: | Kilace [ Tue Oct 31, 2006 6:54 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Well, to give you perspective on how pathetic this course is, just imagine your professor telling you that "wikipedia is a reliable source". Another question folks: This is in regards to converting octals to hexadecimal or vice versa via binary. The examples given to me are pretty pathetic. Suppose I want to convert 21 (octal) to hexadecimal. The binary value of 21 is 10001. Therefore the binary value in hexadecimal form is 00010001 right? Which would be 11, right? |
|
| Author: | [Gandalf] [ Tue Oct 31, 2006 7:08 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Kilace wrote: Well, to give you perspective on how pathetic this course is, just imagine your professor telling you that "wikipedia is a reliable source".
Wikipedia is a reliable source, a lot more than a lot of people seem to think. As for the rest, you seem to have a lot wrong, for example 21 in binary is 10101 not 10001. I'd suggest you double check your answers... |
|
| Author: | Kilace [ Tue Oct 31, 2006 7:15 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
[Gandalf] wrote: Kilace wrote: Well, to give you perspective on how pathetic this course is, just imagine your professor telling you that "wikipedia is a reliable source".
Wikipedia is a reliable source, a lot more than a lot of people seem to think. As for the rest, you seem to have a lot wrong, for example 21 in binary is 10101 not 10001. I'd suggest you double check your answers... I think 21 decimal is 10101 binary. But I was talking about 21 in octal, which I believe is 10001. And I don't know about wikipedia, it seems that very obscure material can be altered significantly and won't be noticed by the general public. For example, I could overstate the earnings of Microsoft in 1998. |
|
| Author: | Dan [ Tue Oct 31, 2006 8:09 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Wikipedia has a staf of peoleop that look over changes and will conrect them if they are unjustifyed. Most of the time if you do not justify your change with a refrence or other vaild sorce (either in the edit coment or in the talk page) it will be changed back prity fast. I whould say wikipedia is a vaild sorce for perosnal reasrch, personal information and double checking facts. I whould not use it as a sole sorce on a report or porfesntional indever however it is a good starting point for information and will lead you to many other sorces. Also the talk pages for a given page noramly tells you where alot of the information came from. |
|
| Author: | 1of42 [ Tue Oct 31, 2006 11:17 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Wikipedia should be used like translation software - it provides a "gist". Not the whole idea completely accurate in its details, necessarily, but it's normally pretty good - and it's only getting better. |
|
| Author: | apomb [ Wed Nov 01, 2006 12:36 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
Quote: Suppose I want to convert 21 (octal) to hexadecimal. The binary value of 21 is 10001. Therefore the binary value in hexadecimal form is 00010001 right? Which would be 11, right?
what exactly are you arguing here? octal -> hex rarely yields the exact number (unless its below 8) they are different. and yes, 21 oct ->0x11 |
|
| Author: | md [ Wed Nov 01, 2006 1:03 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
CompWiz333 wrote: Quote: Suppose I want to convert 21 (octal) to hexadecimal. The binary value of 21 is 10001. Therefore the binary value in hexadecimal form is 00010001 right? Which would be 11, right?
what exactly are you arguing here? octal -> hex rarely yields the exact number (unless its below 8) they are different. and yes, 21 oct ->0x11 You can easily convert from octal to hex; bot hare ways of representing *any* whole number, though you may need to use more octal digits then hex digits. On computers integers are limited to a set range; however hex/octal numbers are not limited to that same range in general. |
|
| Author: | Hikaru79 [ Wed Nov 01, 2006 1:06 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Solely as an experiment as to how effective "subtle" vandalisms would be, a friend of mine went to the pages of the presidents of all the Ivy League schools, and added to all of them that that president had been a co-founder of RIM (Research in Motion) As you may or may not know, that distinction belongs to former presidents of the University of Waterloo; but the vast majority of people will not know that, and it is not an in-your-face vandalism. He wanted to see how long the vandalisms would last; in essence, how EASY it is to sneak inaccurate info without it being in-your-face "ERIC IS A HOMO"-type of vandalism. Someone casually browsing the article would not get it, and even someone who is vaguely knowledgable on the topic would probably think "Hey, yeah, I remember reading that RIM was founded by the former presidents of some good school; I guess it was this one" Well, as proof of concepts go, this one was pretty telling. About two of them got corrected within a few days; the rest of the Ivy League presidents got to keep their distinctions for about two weeks until I got fed up and switched them back myself. I guess the moral is, you can't trust Wikipedia fully, particularly not on minute details. However, because of its huge array of links and such, I often use it as a starting point to my research, a way of finding other, more credible, sites. |
|
| Author: | [Gandalf] [ Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Hacker Dan wrote: I whould not use it as a sole sorce on a report or porfesntional indever however it is a good starting point for information and will lead you to many other sorces.
Yes, but would you use any other website, book, or anything else, as the sole source for a report or other professional endeavour? I hope not. Sure, small changes can be made, but in all other respects Wikipedia is pretty damn good. Weigh this against the high probability of bias in other works, and I'd say it's pretty even. |
|
| Author: | Dan [ Wed Nov 01, 2006 7:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Lets aucatly test this, i will make 3 changes. One to a low trafic page with an easy to catch change, one to a medium page with another easy to modert hard to catch change and a setteal change to a big page. I will report how long it takes for the change to be undone and what the change was once it was cougth. If the changes are not cougth in a month i will undo them all. |
|
| Author: | Dan [ Wed Nov 01, 2006 7:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Ok this is kind of intresting, the page i chaged witch was the most popualr one on my chaning list had my changes undone almost instaly but with wrong infromation. I am now checking the other 2 pages.... Edit: It whould seem that my edit was undone by a bot fixing some one eltes vandilsume so i will try the edit again on the same page to see what happens. My edit is much less obvuses then the vanlsiume that is curently going on. |
|