My Science School

The internet is a global network of millions of computers that can communicate with one another. Information can he sent and received across the network in the form of text, pictures, video and sound. Home computers often connect to the Internet using a normal phone line and a modem — a device that connects the computer to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Businesses and other large organizations may have their own network, known as a Local Area Network (LAN), which connects to an ISP with a high-speed link.

Everyone’s talking about the internet and whether, or how, it should be regulated. But not enough people know how the internet actually works—or what exactly the internet is.

You probably have your own “local area network” at home, and it’s made up of all the devices connected to your router, which connects to the internet. The word “internet” refers to a worldwide system of “interconnected computer networks”.

That’s all the internet really is—a large number of computer networks all over the world, connected together. Of course, there’s a lot of physical hardware—from the cables under your city streets to the massive cables on the ocean floors to satellites in orbit around the planet—that makes this communication possible. There’s also a lot of software at work in the background, allowing you to type in a website address like “google.com” and have your computer to send information to the physical location where that website is located in the fastest way possible.

Even when you’re just connecting to a single website, there’s a lot more going on under the hood. Your computer can’t directly send a piece of information, or “packet” of data, to the computer hosting the website. Instead, it passes a packet to your home router with information about where it’s going and where the web server should reply. Your router then sends it to the routers at your internet service provider (Comcast, Time Warner, or whoever else you use), where it’s sent to another router at another internet service provider, and so on, until it reaches its destination. Any packets sent back to your system from the remote server make the reverse journey.

To use an imperfect analogy, it’s a bit like sending a letter in the mail. Your local postal employee can’t just grab the letter and take it directly across the country or continent to its destination address. Instead, the letter goes to your local post office, where it’s sent to another post office, and then another one, and so on, until it gets to its destination. It takes longer for a letter to get to the other side of the world than the other side of the country because it has to make more stops, and that’s generally true for the internet as well. It will take a bit longer for packets to go longer distances with more transfers, or “hops”, as they’re called.

Unlike with physical mail, sending data packets is still very fast, though, and it happens many times a second. Each packet is very small, and large numbers of packets are sent back and forth when computers communicate—even if one is just loading a website from another one. A packet’s travel time is measured in milliseconds.

The use of computers by some stock market investors has created a procedure called stop loss selling which could threaten the stability of national and even world markets.

The owners of securities instruct brokers to program their computers with a price for each security. If the securities fall below that price, they are sold to cut the owners losses.

Even on the most automated exchanges, the process is not yet entirely automatic; the broker still has to speak to the market maker to carry out a major trades. But as computer to computer systems emerge, the financial world could face a computer led crash. A slight downturn in the stock market would trigger off a few stop loss sales, causing a further downturn, which would then set off others, and so on.

The domino effect is no different from what has happened in all stock market crashes, as people sell to preserve some of their money. But computers could make it happen faster- almost literally - overnight making it more difficult to control and sending the crash to greater depths.

 

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Because we have eight fingers and two thumbs, it seems natural for human beings to count in tens. It is just as natural for a computer to count in twos, for it has to decide between ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for every step in a process.

In everyday numbers, the digits from 0 to 9 are read from left to right and are based on the power of ten. For example, 110 is one hundred, ne ten, and no units.

The binary system uses only two digits: 0 and 1. Numbers are read from right to left and are based on the power of two. Moving from the right, each digit doubles in value, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and so on. 

Words fed into a computer are stored as binary numbers. If text such as LOAD”FILE in BASIC, computer language is keyed in, the word LOAD could be processed.

 

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There’s always a need for some form of extra storage to transfer or send large files to our friends. While there are several external storage devices available in the market, one might not get an opportunity to meet a friend to hand these over in person. But, worry not. There are ways to send large files almost instantly using the Internet. We list four of them here:

VPN

Short for Virtual Private Network, VPN is an encrypted connection on the Internet from a device to a network. It helps ensure that data is transmitted safely and securely. It is also prevents unauthorized people from prying into your data.

Some Internet Service Providers use broadband traffic management to monitor users’ upload bandwidth. Using a VPN will block them from knowing how large your files are, enabling you to send them over the Internet.

File compression

This is a well-known method to send large files, either over the Internet or using external storage devices.

Use file compression software available online to compress the files into one big file. 7-Zip is popular file compression software available online that lets you compress different files into one.

Most files compression software will compress files into .zip format. Most operating systems have the capability to open .zip files. However, there are different types of software online that also let you open .zip files.

Free nine services

Over the years, several free online services have been launched that allow you to send large files securely over the Internet.

You can register with them and start sending files. However, most will allow you to send only a certain size of file in a month for free. You would mostly have to pay extra if you regularly send files over the free-size restriction.

Jumpshare, Dropbox, Securely Send and WeTransfer are some of the popular online services that are available. Some of these can also be downloaded to the computer and used when connected to Internet.

Cloud storage

One of the easiest and most popular methods to store and send large files is using cloud storage. Most of the popular email service providers such as Gmail and Outlook after cloud services.

You can upload all the files you want in a folder in Google Drive or OneDrive and share the link to the folder with your friend.

Alternatively, you can also send this folder as an attachment in your email. The folder and the files will remain in your drive until you delete them. And as long as your friend has the link, he too can see it and download the files.

 

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Many times while using the computer, you can see a pop-up asking you to update particular software. While some of us choose to ignore it, a software update is necessary for the computer.

The need for a software update

A software update, also known as a software patch, is a set of changes to a computer program or its supporting codes, designed to fix, improve or update it.

An update is usually a free download for an application, operating system, and a software suite.

Usually, a software update offers fixes for features that are not working properly (bugs) or to ass minor enhancements and compatibility to the software. Sometimes they are released to address security issues, to improve the operation of hardware, and support new models of equipment.

A software update is not just limited to the computer. Any technology that uses software, such as a smart speaker or a smartwatch, requires a software update from time to time to keep it functioning in optional condition.

How is it beneficial?

They might be free, but software updates are important for the health of your system. Some of the benefits of a software update are:

It enhances existing features of the software, ensuring a seamless user experience at all times.

It protects the software and the system from any kind of security risk.

It fixes bugs in the software that can affect the user experience.

It extends the life of the equipment by allowing for its maximum productivity, while ensuring improved performance.

The difference between an update and an upgrade

We often use the words “update” and “upgrade” interchangeably. However, the two have many differences.

To start with, a software update adds new features to the existing product or fixes a problem.

However, a software upgrade is a new version of the software. This means there’s a significant change or improvement from the previous version of the software.

While software updates are free, a software upgrade can be priced. For example, if you are using Windows 7 as your operating system and you need to upgrade to Windows 10, you will have to buy the Windows 10 software. However, if you are lucky, Microsoft might allow for auto-upgradation of Windows 7 users to Windows 10.

Examples for a software update

Imagine you are using Adobe Reader to open the PDF documents on the system. As you use the software, you can encounter a minor issue of text getting jumbled up. You wonder what is wrong, and when you check online, you realize that there are others facing similar issues.

Soon, Adobe will get to know about the problem and release an update to fix it. This will come to you as a pop-up on your computer, or when you open the software. All you need to do is to install the update and voila! Your issue has been fixed.

 

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Not develop for Microsoft

We might know PowerPoint as software from Microsoft. But unlike Word and Excel, PowerPoint was not developed for Microsoft. The presentation program was created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc.

Not just for presentations

While PowerPoint is primarily presentation software, one can also use it to make infographics, GIFs, quizzes, photo albums and more!

Designed for MAC

WHEN Gaskins was working on PowerPoint, he designed it for the Macintosh OS (macOS). PowerPoint was released for MAC on April 20, 1987. Just three months after its release, the product was acquired by Microsoft from Forethought, Inc for $14 million.

It’s Karaoke time!

Yes, PowerPoint Karaoke is the current fad, though it does not involve music or singing. It is an improvisational activity, where a participant makes a presentation based on a set of slides he or she has never seen before! Imagine how comical this could turn out to be. PowerPoint Karaoke originated in January 2006 in Berlin as a creation of a collective of writers and artists.

Presenter to PowerPoint

The first version of PowerPoint, which was designed for MAC, was called ‘Presenter’. However, due to Trademark issues, the name had to be scrapped. It was later changed to PowerPoint.

 

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Not always called Word

MS Word was released on October 25, 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word. However, the marketing department of the company thought the name was too long, so they shortened it to its current name, Word.

Check that spelling?

Word helps thousands today by prompting spelling and grammatical errors. However, the AutoCorrect feature and the red squiggly line you see under misspelt words were introduced with Word 95 in the year 1933.

Before that users had to check their spelling and grammar on their own.

Say ‘Hello’ to Clippy!

With the version of Word 97, Microsoft introduced Clippy, an animated interactive paperclip. Clippy was a word assistant which would assist users with formatting word documents. However, Clippy is said to be despised by many users, as it would distract them. Microsoft finally pulled Clippy out of service with the release of Word 2007.

Not the first word processor

Word is popular around the world, but it wasn’t the first word processor to have been developed. That credit goes to Bravo. In 1981, Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi, the primary developer of Bravo. It was Simpnyi who developed MS Word along with others.

Games for features

While Clippy made its exit with Word 2007, Microsoft introduced the ‘Ribbon’ feature in this version. It was a change in the user-interface for most users. However, to ease the process, Microsoft developed Ribbon Hero, a video game to educate users about the features of MS Word.

 

Picture Credit : Google