Computing Flashcards
What is a standard file format?
Is one that will open and display correctly on all platforms.
What is lossy compression?
Lossy compression techniques compress data with a certain amount of visual loss when restored. Audio, video and some imaging applications can tolerate loss and in many cases, it may not be noticeable to the human ear or eye.
What is lossless compression?
Lossless compression is a technique that decompressed data back to its original form without any loss. All compression methods used to compress text, databases and other business data are lossless.
Factors that affect the size of a sound file are:
- The length of the recording - The longer the recording the more information there is to be stored
- The sampling depth - The number of bits used to store a sound sample. The more bits used the better the sound quality, but greater the file size.
- The sampling frequency - How many times per second that a sound is sampled. The more samples per second are taken the better the quality of the sound, but greater the file size.
What is an operating system?
An operating system is a large program which manages the hardware and software of the computer system.
What are the functions of an operating system?
- Interpreting user commands: The computer may have a menu-drives or a command driven user interface and this is how the user can give commands.
- Memory management: Allocates programs and data files to the space available in main memory.
- Input/output.
- File Management
- Error reporting
- Resource allocation
What is propietary software?
Is also known as ‘closed software’. It’s developed by companies who typically charge a license fee for the right to use their software.
(I.E: Microsoft office, Google earth, iOS, Skype)
What is open source software?
Open source software is developed, marketed and distributed by a community of individuals and is available for free.
What are some advantages of open source software?
- It is free to use, distribute and change. It has lower costs, and in most cases this is only a fraction of the cost of their propietary counterparts.
- It is more secure as the code is accessible to everyone. Anyone can fix bugs as they are found, and users do not have to wait for the next release. The fact that it is continuously analysed by a large community produces secure and stable code.
What are some disadvantages to open source software?
- It may not always be straightforward to use. Open source operating systems like Linux cannot be learned in a day. They require effort and possibly training from your side before you are able to master them.
- There is a shortage of applications that run both on open source and propietary operating systems; therefore, switching to an open source platform involves a compatibility analysis of all the other software used that run on propietary platforms (I.E, Much of Adobe’s design software is not available on Linux)
What is a meta tag?
Meta tags are used to specify page description, keywords, author of document, last modified and other metadata.
How would you do a compression calculation?
Step 1) Multiply the resolution, frame rate and bits per pixel together.
Step 2) Divide by 1024 until you get the lowest number possible (That is higher than 0).
What are some advantages of propierty software?
- You will be able to take advantage of the software companies customer service department for troubleshooting and setup purposes.
- Software is often very high quality as it has been developed by professional teams.
What are some disadvantages of propierty software?
- You will usually have to pay for the software as the company that produced it will be trying to make a profit.
- The software will not be adaptable; you cannot change it to meet your individual needs.
What is ‘portability’?
Portability is a measure of how easily an application can be transferred from one computer environment to another.
How do you reduce the size of a graphics file?
By cropping the image, lowering the resolution of changing the colour depth.
How do you reduce the size of a video file?
By trimming the length of the video, altering the resolution or reducing the frame rate.
What is a database driven website?
A database driven website is a web page that grabs information from a database and inserts that information into the web page each time it is loaded. If the information stored in the database changes the web page connected to the database will also change accordingly (and automatically) without human intervention.