Here’s a video of somebody stealing a laptop from a backpack. Watch the man who sits down at the top center of the image, and slowly moves another customer’s backpack with his foot.

Laptops and other mobile computing devices are a favorite target of thieves as they are small, expensive, and relatively easy to steal. Make sure you keep your devices safe, wherever you are.

Everyone:

We have final approval for make-up classes for CPS100 on January 24. This is to make up for the missed class last week Tuesday. The schedule is:

• Section 1: 3:00 ~ 4:30pm, NIC Media Center
• Study Skill Session: 4:45 ~ 5:45 pm
• Section 2: 6:00 ~ 7:30pm, NIC Media Center

Those students who are in their first semester of academic, please do not forget to attend the required study sessions! I’ll see you in class on Wednesday.

Everyone: I am afraid that I am still too ill to come to school and teach today. Class in canceled, and we will have a make-up class soon. Please prepare for Friday, however!!

OK, everybody… sorry for the problems. I found out what was wrong with the database. Because of an error in programming (my fault!), every time one student updated their information, it would replace ALL entries in the database with the new information! As a result, the original data entered was lost.

The database has now been fixed (I hope!) and should work OK.

Let’s try this one more time. You should be able to enter the data from any computer. Please visit the data entry page, and try typing in:

(1) Your Student ID #
(2) Your first name
(3) Your last name
(4) Your section #
(5) Your alternate email address

Then input the data. You should be able to update the data as well.

We will cover this in class on Friday also.

Thanks!

OK, a few people input data… and the same problem happened. Strange! Let’s wait on the database project until I can figure out the bug in the database. Thanks to all for your patience!

I checked the database where everyone input their data, and something interesting came up: all the entries were the same. It seems as if everyone entering data from the same location caused the error.

Let’s try again–this time try to enter the data from home. Please visit the data entry page. Because this is still possibly not working, don’t spend a lot of time typing everything in. ONLY type in:

(1) Your Student ID #
(2) Your first name
(3) Your last name
(4) Your section #
(5) Your alternate email address

Then input the data. I will check to see if the records were created correctly.

Thanks!

You will probably want to watch the news from Las Vegas this week, as the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) is held, allowing electronics companies to show off their new and future products. The focus this year: tablets, spurred by the great success of Apple’s iPad.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Spring 2011 semester!

I hope you enjoy the revamped web site.

New features include mouse-over tooltips, video tutorials, and best of all, chapter review quizzes! We also now have a database in which you will explain to me what kind of computer, software, and Internet connection you use for your primary computer. You will be expected to enter as much data as you know at first, and then you can later view and update the data when you find out more.

I look forward to a fun and productive semester with all of you!

Pocket* size!

* Godzilla’s pocket.

It might be hard for you and me to really paint using an iPad, but professionals can do amazing things with an $8 application and one finger:

Here are three examples of terrible decisions made in the early years of PCs.

Selling Too Soon

When Apple started up in 1976, it was founded by three people: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne. Wayne owned 10% of the company, and that would be worth tens of millions of dollars in the late 70’s, and billions of dollars today.

But Wayne did not think Apple would succeed. Just ten days after Apple started up, Wayne sold his 10% of Apple. Inc.–for $800.

Looking for Money in the Wrong Place

Apple became a huge hit in the late 70’s; it was the #1 computer company at the time. This did not sit well with IBM, a company which was considered the giant of computer makers. IBM wanted to create a PC that would take the market away from Apple–and they succeeded. For years, the computers that dominated the market were called “IBM PCs.” However, IBM made a huge mistake–which is why today, nobody says “IBM PCs” any more. Instead, we call them “Windows PCs.”

You see, in 1980, when IBM was getting ready to introduce their PC, they did not have an OS. So they went to this small businessman named Bill Gates, and asked him if he could make one for them. “No problem,” Gates said, “but I don’t want to sell it–I want to license it.” In other words, Gates did not want to make some software and sell it to IBM; instead, he wanted to keep ownership of the OS, and IBM would have the rights to use it in their computers.

The huge mistake: IBM thought that the real money was in the hardware, and that software was not important. So they said “OK.”

What’s funny is that Bill Gates didn’t even have an OS! So he went to Seattle and bought an OS called “QDOS” (”Quick and Dirty OS”) from Seattle Computer Products. He paid $50,000. Then Gates put a new name on it: MS-DOS (”MicroSoft Disk OS”), and the rest is history. IBM made some money, but in the end, other companies made similar computers for cheaper and IBM lost out (eventually, IBM sold their PC brand to the Chinese company Lenovo). But Microsoft became the most successful and richest company in the world.

Not Knowing a Great Thing

At about the same time, Xerox was developing a new computer which used this wild new OS called a “GUI,” and used a “mouse.” They even made a computer with it, but it didn’t sell well. The executives at Xerox thought it was a failure. However, Steve Jobs at Apple was interested, and offered Xerox $1 million in Apple stock in exchange for seeing the engineering behind the GUI computer, and the right to make a GUI of their own. Xerox said, “OK.” Five years later, Apple introduced the Macintosh.

Xerox still does not have a presence in the PC market today.