Section IV: The Internet, Social Media, and Mobile Computing Flashcards
What is free software?
software with source code that could be inspected, modified, and used by anyone
What did Richard Stallman call his Unix-compatible OS?
GNU
What software license did GNU have?
a GPL
By the late 1980s, GNU was mostly complete except for which component?
the kernel
Where was the Linux kernel invented?
Finland
Who invented the Linux?
Linus Torvalds
Which OS did Torvalds use as a starting point for his Unix-like OS?
the Minix
Who invented Minix?
Andrew Tanenbaum
Torvalds began rewriting the Linux kernel to take advantage of what?
the features of the Intel 80386 processor
Over time, what happened to the Minix code used for the Linux kernel?
it was entirely rewritten
Torvalds released the Linux under which license?
the GPL
Which kernel did the GNU use?
the Linux
When did the U.S. break up the AT&T government monopoly?
1984
What was the result of the AT&T monopoly being broken up?
it could now market Unix more aggressively, charging steeper licensing fees
To which company did AT&T sell the Unix rights in 1993?
Novell
When was hypertext coined?
the 1960s
Who coined the term hypertext?
Ted Nelson
Hypertext was inspired by which hypothetical machine?
the memex
Who made the memex?
Vannevar Bush
In the 70s, Nelson began working on a hypertext system called _______.
Xanadu
What company was also working on a hypertext system during the 70s?
Apple, it was called HyperCard
What best-selling video game was based on HyperCard?
Myst
The World Wide Web is a combination of which 2 technologies?
hypertext and the Internet
Apple bundled HyperCard with which computer?
the Macintosh
Where was the World Wide Web made?
CERN
What is CERN?
a physics laboratory located in Switzerland
Who created the World Wide Web?
Tim Berners Lee
What does HTML stand for?
Hypertext Markup Language
What is HTML used for?
embedding links into web pages
What special syntax does HTML code use?
Tags
In HTML, what is used to mark the beginning and end of a paragraph?
<p>
</p>
In HTML, what is used to mark the end of a paragraph?
</p>
What did Lee make to find the location of a document on the World Wide Web?
the URL
What is HTTP?
a protocol that allows computers to transfer web pages over the Internet
What does HTTP stand for?
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
When was the Web created?
1990
Why was the Web not useful when it was first made?
because there was only one web server
Where was Gopher made?
the University of Minnesota
Why did users come to the World Wide Web?
because of Internet services
What was the first popular web browser?
Mosaic
Who made Mosaic?
Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina
Why was Mosaic superior to previous web browsers?
because it could display text and images, allowed mouse clicks to make it easier to surf the web, and was compatible with Windows, Macintosh, and Unix
Most graphical web browsers before Mosaic only supported which OS?
Unix
Mosaic was a killer app in which decade?
the 1990s
Who approached Andreesen and Bina and offered to market and form a business for Mosaic?
Jim Clark
What was Jim Clark famous for?
founding Silicon Graphics in 1983
When Clark offered to market and form a business for Mosaic, what happened?
the University of Illinois intervened and said no because they claimed it was theirs
Anderseen left the University of Illinois and founded which corporation?
Netscape Communications Corporation
What new web browser replaced Mosaic?
Netscape Navigator
When was Netscape Navigator released?
1994
By the end of 1994, how many web servers were online?
10,000
At the end of 1995, how many downloads had Netscape Navigator gotten?
15 million
What was Netscape’s business model?
give away the browser to regular users for free but charge companies a license fee for the browser and the server software
Which Windows computer was the first model to not need a copy of MS-DOS?
Windows 95
What was Microsoft’s first web browser called?
Internet Explorer
Microsoft licensed the source code for Internet Explorer from which other web browser and company?
Mosaic, Spyglass
Why wasn’t Internet Explorer as polished as Netscape?
because it was based on old Mosaic code
What were the browser wars?
Internet Explorer and Netscape constantly releasing new versions to outdo each other
What part of the browser wars were the designers of the Internet not proud of?
its incompatibility, they would display messages that were unique for their web browser
When did Internet Explorer finally catch up to Netscape?
1998
What Microsoft computer included Internet Explorer pre-installed for free?
Windows 98
How did the fact that Internet Explorer was integrated into Windows 98’s OS benefit Microsoft?
it made it so Microsoft didn’t have to pay royalties to Spyglass, it was free so more people came to IE, and it reduced competition from Netscape
What was the resulting product of Netscape releasing its source code?
it created Mozilla
What was Mozilla?
a web browser, an email client, a web page authoring tool, address book, and calender
Why did Mozilla not gain any market share?
because it was slow, bloated, and laggy
In 2004, Mozilla released which other web browser?
Firefox
How was Firefox better than Mozilla?
it was fast and didn’t have all the extra features that slowed Mozilla down
What were the 2 most successful early search engines?
Yahoo and Google
When was Yahoo founded?
1993
Who founded Yahoo?
Jerry Yand and David Filo
What was Yahoo’s method for a search engine?
created a manually curated list of websites they chose
Why was Yahoo’s search engine strategy problematic?
there were soon tons of websites and they couldn’t manually input them all
When was Google invented?
1997
Who invented Google?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
What are inbound links?
a link on a website that links to other web pages
What was Google’s strategy for creating an optimal search engine?
they created an algorithm that favored websites with more inbound links
When did Google start placing textual advertisements?
2000
What was the dot-com bubble?
a huge growth in people trying to strike it rich by creating their own tech companies, funded by wealthy investors
What were dot-coms?
tech companies started in the late 90s that grew very fast, but fell just as fast
What caused many dot-coms to fail?
when the global economy slowed and investors became more cautious about their money, occurred after the 2000 election and 9/11
Who created Java?
James Gosling
When was Java created?
1992
What was Java initially called?
Oak
What would Java’s compiler translate the programmer’s code into?
an intermediary assembly-like language called bytecode
What would bytecode be interpreted by?
another program called the Java Virtual machine
What was the goal of Java’s designers in making it?
binary compatibility across all computers
The first web pages consisted mostly of what?
static or non-moving text and images
What was Java used for?
creating applets
What is Java used for today?
creating mobile apps for Android devices
When was Jobs fired from Apple?
1985
When Jobs was fired from Apple, what was the name of the company he founded shortly after?
NeXT
What did the NeXT OS combine?
BSD Unix and GUI
About how many NeXT machines were sold in total?
50,000
What slowed NeXT’s adoption?
its high price tag
By 1996, what was Apple’s share of the computer market?
4%
What caused Apple’s market share to go down?
not developing and renewing MacOS
How did Jobs initially rejoin Apple?
as a member of the board of directors
When did Jobs become CEO again?
1997
What was Apple’s initial goal of buying NeXT?
getting their Unix-based software for MacOS
When was the iMac released?
1998
What does iMac stand for?
internet Macintosh
How was the iMac different from most computers?
it was encased in a turquoise shell, the chassis was round, and it didn’t have a floppy disk drive
How many iMacs were sold?
800,000
Why did the U.S. DOJ sue Microsoft?
because they integrated Internet Explorer into the Windows OS
What was the first successful portable computer?
the Osborne 1
What was the first laptop?
the GRiD Compass 1101
What slowed the adoption of the GRiD Compass 1101?
its high price tag and its incompatibility with Unix, CP/M, or MS/DOS
How much did the GRiD Compass cost?
$8,000
Handheld computers with flat video screens appeared in which science fiction film?
2001: A Space Odyssey
What was the first PDA?
the Psion Organizer II
When was the Psion Organizer II released?
1986
Which company made the Newton?
Apple
When did Apple release the Newton?
1993
What was the name of the Palm Pilot’s keyboard?
graffiti
Which company released the BlackBerry?
Research in Motion
When was the BlackBerry released?
1999
Which country was Research In Motion based in?
Canada
What does GPS stand for?
Global Positioning Service
Which decade did GPSs start appearing on cars?
the 1990s
What was the first GPS device made?
TomTom Go in 2004
What was TomTom’s main competitor?
Garmin
What was the Sony Walkman?
a small cassette tape player with headphones
Who made the iPod?
Apple
When was the iPod released?
2001
Cellphones have a history that stretches back to which century?
the early 20th century
When did the first commercially available cell phone appear?
1983
Why did early cell phones get the name “brick”?
because of their large and heavy size
What was the Handspring Treo considered?
an all-in-one PDA because it combined a cell phone with a PDA
What was the nickname that emerged for devices that combined a PDA, camera, and cell phone?
the smartphone
What did users call their BlackBerries?
Crackberries
Which company produced BlackBerry?
Nokia
Where was Nokia based?
Finland
Which OS did Nokia phones use?
Symbian
Symbian was derived from an OS used by which other company?
Psion
Who persuaded Jobs to use a touchscreen for the iPhone?
Jony Ive
Who was Jony Ive?
the leader of design at Apple
When was the first iPhone released?
2007
By the end of 2010, how many iPhones had Apple sold?
90+ million
The Android OS is based on what?
Linux
When did Microsoft purchase Nokia’s phone division?
2014
What was one of Apple’s and Android’s strengths?
their app stores
What did a blog allow users to do?
post content without having to manage a server or know HTML
Who invented Wikipedia?
Ward Cunningham
When was Wikipedia invented?
1995
Wikipedia is an example of what?
crowdsourcing
What is crowdsourcing?
distributing the workload among your audience
“wiki” is derived from which Hawaiian word?
wikiwiki
What does wikiwiki mean?
quick
What was Cunningham inspired by to make the name Wikipedia?
seeing the word on the side of an airport shuttle in Honolulu
What were 2 of the first social networking sites to be popular?
MySpace and Friendster
When were MySpace and Friendster launched?
2003
Social media is an example of what?
the Web 2.0
MySpace and Friendster were soon eclipsed by which other social networking site?
Which 2 social websites did Mark Zuckerberg make during his first semester at Harvard?
Course Match and Facemash
What was Course Match?
a site that allowed you to compare course schedules with someone else
What was Facemash?
a site where people rated others based on their appearances
After taking which course did Zuck make Facebook?
graph theory
What is graph theory?
A math model for describing relationships among different things
What was the original domain name for Facebook?
thefacebook.com
When was Facebook released?
Feb 2004
Unlike his previous projects, what was Facebook considered?
a general purpose social network
Initially, who did Zuck limit Facebook access to?
people with an @harvard.edu email address
Why did Zuck limit access to Facebook?
to prevent fake profiles and keep his audience relatively small
What did Zuck do to gradually gain more of audiences?
he gave additional schools access to Facebook one by one
When did Zuck move Facebook to California?
Summer 2004
When did Facebook remove “the” from its name?
2005
When was the News Feed added to Facebook?
2006
When was Instagram made available as a smartphone app?
2010
What was special about Instagram?
it was first made as an app and then added to web browsers
When did Facebook acquire Instagram?
2012
What 3 apps are mentioned in the resource guide that use GPS to function?
Uber, Lyft, and OpenTable
What does OpenTable allow users to do?
it allows them to locate and make reservations at nearby restaurants
When was the iPad introduced?
2010
What category of device is an iPad?
tablet
Who is Moore’s Law named after?
Gordon Moore
What is Moore’s Law?
a law that states that the number of transistors that can fit on a processor will double every 18-24 months
When did Moore’s Law start becoming less true?
the early 2000s
What 2 factors caused Moore’s Law to become less true?
tinier transistors started to leak and more powerful chips used more power and created heat, which laptops try to conserve power
How did Intel compromise performance without increasing clock speeds?
they put multiple processor cores on a single chip so they could share the workload, called multi-core processor
What is one of the main reasons timesharing systems failed in the early 70s?
because of Moore’s Law
As computers got cheaper, the cost for a data center was not the hardware, but which other factor?
the salaries of the people maintaining it
What current technology is based off of timesharing systems?
cloud computing
What audience is cloud computing beneficial for?
small businesses
When did Netflix switch to Amazon’s data center?
2016
What is one of the key technologies behind cloud computing?
virtualization
What is virtualization?
the ability to run multiple instances of an operating system on a computer to make “separate” computer without changing the computer
What mainframe was virtualization used in?
the IBM System/370 mainframe
Cloud computing gave rise to which other business model?
Software as a Service (SaaS)
What is SaaS?
where users pay a subscription to access software through a web browser
What was one of the first examples of SaaS?
Salesforce.com
What is blockchain made up of?
ledgers
What is a ledger used for?
tracking ownership and the value of things
What aspect of blockchain makes it different from traditional ledgers?
each entry for the blockchain contains a hash derived from the contents of the previous entry
What is a hash?
a sequence of bytes
What does blockchain technology allow?
it allows for complete transparency because changing or modifying an entry will change the integrity of the entire ledger
Blockchain is closely related to what technology?
bitcoin
What is Bitcoin?
a digital currency not associated with any government
Who invented Bitcoin?
Satoshi Nakamoto
Who invented blockchain?
Satoshi Nakamoto
What does NFTs stand for?
Non-Fungible Tokens
NFTs are an example of which technology?
blockchain
What does Non-fungible mean in the context of NFTs?
non-replaceable or unique
How is the ownership of an NFT verified?
through the blockchain
AI has been an active area of research since when?
the 50s
Which programming language has been associated with the study of AI?
LISP
Which figure mentioned earlier in the SS study guide was in the field of AI?
Richard Stallman
What is machine learning or ML?
where algorithms analyze extremely large amounts of data to find patterns, and then apply those patterns to new inputs
ML techniques are used in the design of what type of AI?
chatbots
What is an example of a chatbot mentioned in the SS study guide?
ChatGPT
When did Elon Musk announce that Tesla is working on intelligent robots?
2021
In a traditional electronic computer, what is the basic unit?
the bit, a 0 or 1
What are bits represented by in a traditional electronic computer?
high or low voltage
What are bits represented by in a quantum computer?
the positions of electrons in an atom
