1 Welcome CMSC102 Information Technology and Internet Research I am John Arras Office: 1109 A.V. Williams Building Phone: –This is the best way to contact me.

2 Class Materials 4 large brown envelopes 4 3.5” diskettes Nothin’ but Net by E.Golub and J. Plane (3 rd edition) Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Hafner and Lyon WAM print account (get one in 1109 S Campus Dining Hall. $20 to start)

3 Grading 7 Projects – Practice what you learn. Paper (book report) 2 in-class exams Final exam Online skills exam A file called duedates in the class account will give approx. due dates for projects.

4 Administrative Missed Exams –No makeups. A Univ. approved excuse with prior notice can drop an exam. Academic Honesty –Do not discuss any assignments with other students. Come to me or the TA’s for help. The waitlist generally clears up. –I might oversubscribe, but not likely.

5 Late Assignments Assignments are not accepted late. This includes being “just 10 minutes late” or handing in to me in my office after class. This includes things like power outages the night before the assignment is due. I do this to be fair to the people that hand the assignment in on time.

6 Late Assignments 2 The one exception to “no late assignments” is if you have a university-approved excuse that says you were unable to do any work for a long time. You have about 1-2 weeks for each assignment, so any excuse would have to excuse you from most of that time.

7 Course Outline Introduction to computers, networks, and UNIX Editors and FTP, Telnet Usenet and online databases Browsers, the Web and HTML Javascript Spreadsheets

8 Hardware Hardware consists of the physical pieces of a computer. Different hardware can perform the same task. Hardware may be interchangeable Some computers are more modular (like PCs) and some are more monolithic (like laptops).

9 Operating Systems (Software) Low-level instructions between hardware and applications. Examples: Windows, MacOS, UNIX, and Linux. Usually hardware-specific. –Each type of hardware has a specific way of doing operations like “add two numbers”.

10 Applications Software They run over the operating system. Examples: word processors, web browsers and spreadsheets. Different programs perform similar tasks. Incompatible data files between programs. Incompatible data transmission between programs.

11 Hardware/Software Interaction Hardware physically processes instructions to and from devices like the keyboard, monitor, and printer. Applications software tells the hardware what to do. The operating system acts as a mediator between the hardware and applications software.

12 Compatability Generally software works on one kind of machine and one kind of operating system. Some software can work on many machines and operating systems. Examples: –Netscape runs on many platforms. –Java programs run on many platforms. They run many places for different reasons.

13 Examples of Computers Desktop PC’s, Macs. Laptops. Servers. PDA’s. Game Consoles. Some Cellphones. Some Electronic Toys.

14 Using a Computer Batch Mode vs. Interactive environments Command Line interface Graphical User Interface (GUI) Some other kinds of interfaces: –Electronic toys –Talking to voic –Buttons in home appliances

15 Types of Networks Single Machine Local Area Network (LAN) Wide Area Network (WAN) Internet (network of networks) Topologies: point to point, bus, ring Connections – Client/Server, Host/Terminal.

16 Protocols A set of rules for communication. A network can have many protocols. Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is used on the Internet. Machines send and receive information from each other using these protocols.

17 Internet Research Issues We will address this issue more as the semester goes along. –What kinds of research can you do? –What are some of the pitfalls? –How much use can the Internet be? –How accurate is the information? –Are you allowed to use the information?