The term in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review, in which authors Leavitt and Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology  (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery)  ."

General information

IT spans a wide variety of areas that include but are not limited to things such as processes, computer software, computer hardware, programming languages, and data constructs  (Dell Studio XPS 1640 Battery)  .

In short, anything that renders data, information or perceived knowledge in any visual format whatsoever, via any multimedia distribution mechanism, is considered part of the domain space known as Information Technology (IT)  (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery) .

IT professionals perform a variety of functions (IT Disciplines/Competencies) that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management  (Dell KM958 battery)  ,

networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as management and administration of entire systems. Information technology is starting to spread farther than the conventional personal computerand network technology, and more into integrations of other technologies such as the use of cell phones, televisions, automobiles, and more, which is increasing the demand for such jobs  (Sony VGP-BPS13 battery)   .

In the recent past, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and the Association for Computing Machinery have collaborated to form accreditation and curriculum standards for degrees in Information Technology as a distinct field of study as compared to Computer Science and Information Systems today  (Sony VGP-BPS13/B battery)  .

SIGITE is the ACM working group for defining these standards. The Worldwide IT services revenue totaled $763 billion in 2009.

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E  (Sony VGP-BPS13/S battery)  .

Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data. Since its inception it has broadened to find applications in many other areas, includingstatistical inference (Sony VGP-BPS13A/B battery)  ,

natural language processing, cryptography generally, networks other than communication networks — as in neurobiology, the evolution and function of molecular codes, model selection in ecology, thermal physics, quantum computing, plagiarism detectionand other forms of data analysis  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery) .

A key measure of information is known as entropy, which is usually expressed by the average number of bits needed for storage or communication. Entropy quantifies the uncertainty involved in predicting the value of a random variable. For example, specifying the outcome of a fair coin flip (two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a die (six equally likely outcomes)  (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery)  .

Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include lossless data compression (e.g. ZIP files), lossy data compression (e.g. MP3s), and channel coding (e.g. for DSL lines). The field is at the intersection of mathematics, statistics, computer science, physics, neurobiology, and electrical engineering  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)  .

Its impact has been crucial to the success of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention of the compact disc, the feasibility of mobile phones, the development of the Internet, the study of linguistics and of human perception, the understanding of black holes, and numerous other fields Sony VGP-BPL15 battery .

Important sub-fields of information theory are source coding, channel coding, algorithmic complexity theory, algorithmic information theory, information-theoretic security, and measures of information  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery) .

Overview

The main concepts of information theory can be grasped by considering the most widespread means of human communication: language. Two important aspects of a concise language are as follows: First, the most common words (e.g., "a", "the", "I") should be shorter than less common words (e.g., "benefit", "generation", "mediocre")  (Dell Latitude E6400 battery ,

so that sentences will not be too long. Such a tradeoff in word length is analogous to data compression and is the essential aspect of source coding. Second, if part of a sentence is unheard or misheard due to noise — e.g., a passing car — the listener should still be able to glean the meaning of the underlying message  (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery) .

Such robustness is as essential for an electronic communication system as it is for a language; properly building such robustness into communications is done by channel coding. Source coding and channel coding are the fundamental concerns of information theory.

Note that these concerns have nothing to do with the importance of messages  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ Battery)   .

For example, a platitude such as "Thank you; come again" takes about as long to say or write as the urgent plea, "Call an ambulance!" while the latter may be more important and more meaningful in many contexts. Information theory, however, does not consider message importance or meaning   (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ18 Battery ,

as these are matters of the quality of data rather than the quantity and readability of data, the latter of which is determined solely by probabilities.

Information theory is generally considered to have been founded in 1948 by Claude Shannon in his seminal work, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication"    (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ180E Battery) .

The central paradigm of classical information theory is the engineering problem of the transmission of information over a noisy channel. The most fundamental results of this theory are Shannon's source coding theorem, which establishes that, on average, the number of bits needed to represent the result of an uncertain event is given by its entropy  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ220E Battery) ;

and Shannon's noisy-channel coding theorem, which states that reliable communication is possible over noisy channels provided that the rate of communication is below a certain threshold, called the channel capacity. The channel capacity can be approached in practice by using appropriate encoding and decoding systems  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ340E Battery) .

Information theory is closely associated with a collection of pure and applied disciplines that have been investigated and reduced to engineering practice under a variety of rubrics throughout the world over the past half century or more: adaptive systems, anticipatory systems  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ430E Battery)  ,

artificial intelligence, complex systems, complexity science, cybernetics, informatics, machine learning, along with systems sciences of many descriptions. Information theory is a broad and deep mathematical theory, with equally broad and deep applications, amongst which is the vital field of coding theory  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ460E Battery) .

Coding theory is concerned with finding explicit methods, called codes, of increasing the efficiency and reducing the net error rate of data communication over a noisy channel to near the limit that Shannon proved is the maximum possible for that channel. These codes can be roughly subdivided into data compression (source coding) and error-correction (channel coding) techniques (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ480E Battery) .

In the latter case, it took many years to find the methods Shannon's work proved were possible. A third class of information theory codes are cryptographic algorithms (both codes and ciphers). Concepts, methods and results from coding theory and information theory are widely used in cryptography and cryptanalysis  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ4000 Battery) .

See the article ban (information) for a historical application.

Information theory is also used in information retrieval, intelligence gathering, gambling, statistics, and even in musical composition  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31E Battery) .

Historical background

Main article: History of information theory

The landmark event that established the discipline of information theory, and brought it to immediate worldwide attention, was the publication of Claude E. Shannon's classic paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in the Bell System Technical Journal in July and October 1948  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31B Battery)  .

Prior to this paper, limited information-theoretic ideas had been developed at Bell Labs, all implicitly assuming events of equal probability. Harry Nyquist's 1924 paper, Certain Factors Affecting Telegraph Speed, contains a theoretical section quantifying "intelligence" and the "line speed" at which it can be transmitted by a communication system  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31J Battery)   ,

giving the relation W = Klogm, where W is the speed of transmission of intelligence, m is the number of different voltage levels to choose from at each time step, and K is a constant. Ralph Hartley's 1928 paper, Transmission of Information, uses the word information as a measurable quantity    (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31M Battery) ,

reflecting the receiver's ability to distinguish one sequence of symbols from any other, thus quantifying information as H = logSn = nlogS, where S was the number of possible symbols, and n the number of symbols in a transmission. The natural unit of information was therefore the decimal digit, much later renamed the hartley in his honour as a unit or scale or measure of information  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31Z Battery) .

Alan Turing in 1940 used similar ideas as part of the statistical analysis of the breaking of the German second world war Enigma ciphers.

Much of the mathematics behind information theory with events of different probabilities was developed for the field of thermodynamics by Ludwig Boltzmann and J. Willard Gibbs  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ38M Battery) .

Connections between information-theoretic entropy and thermodynamic entropy, including the important contributions by Rolf Landauer in the 1960s, are explored in Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory  SONY VGP-BPS8 Battery .

In Shannon's revolutionary and groundbreaking paper, the work for which had been substantially completed at Bell Labs by the end of 1944, Shannon for the first time introduced the qualitative and quantitative model of communication as a statistical process underlying information theory, opening with the assertion that SONY VGP-BPS13 Battery .

"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point, either exactly or approximately, a message selected at another point."

With it came the ideas of

the information entropy and redundancy of a source, and its relevance through the source coding theorem  SONY VGP-BPS13/S Battery ;

the mutual information, and the channel capacity of a noisy channel, including the promise of perfect loss-free communication given by the noisy-channel coding theorem;

the practical result of the Shannon–Hartley law for the channel capacity of a Gaussian channel; as well as

the bit—a new way of seeing the most fundamental unit of information  SONY VGP-BPS13A/B Battery .

Quantities of information

Main article: Quantities of information

Information theory is based on probability theory and statistics. The most important quantities of information are entropy, the information in a random variable, and mutual information, the amount of information in common between two random variablesSONY VGP-BPS13B/B Battery .

The former quantity indicates how easily message data can be compressed while the latter can be used to find the communication rate across a channel.

The choice of logarithmic base in the following formulae determines the unit of information entropy that is used  SONY VGP-BPS13A/S Battery .

The most common unit of information is the bit, based on the binary logarithm. Other units include the nat, which is based on the natural logarithm, and the hartley, which is based on the common logarithm.

In what follows, an expression of the form  is considered by convention to be equal to zero whenever p = 0  SONY VGP-BPS13AS Battery .

This is justified because  for any logarithmic base.

Entropy

Entropy of a Bernoulli trial as a function of success probability, often called the binary entropy function, Hb(p) Dell Inspiron 1320n Battery .

The entropy is maximized at 1 bit per trial when the two possible outcomes are equally probable, as in an unbiased coin toss.

The entropy, H, of a discrete random variable X is a measure of the amount of uncertainty associated with the value of X  (Dell Inspiron 1464 Battery) .

Suppose one transmits 1000 bits (0s and 1s). If these bits are known ahead of transmission (to be a certain value with absolute probability), logic dictates that no information has been transmitted. If, however, each is equally and independently likely to be 0 or 1, 1000 bits (in the information theoretic sense) have been transmitted  (Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery)  .

Between these two extremes, information can be quantified as follows. If  is the set of all messages {x1,...,xn} that X could be, and p(x) is the probability of X given some , then the entropy of X is defined:

(Here, I(x) is the self-information, which is the entropy contribution of an individual message, and  is the expected value  (Dell Inspiron 1764 Battery) .)

An important property of entropy is that it is maximized when all the messages in the message space are equiprobable p(x) = 1 / n,—i.e., most unpredictable—in which case H(X) = logn.

The special case of information entropy for a random variable with two outcomes is the binary entropy function, usually taken to the logarithmic base 2  (Dell Studio 1450 Battery)  :

Joint entropy

The joint entropy of two discrete random variables X and Y is merely the entropy of their pairing: (X,Y). This implies that if X and Y are independent, then their joint entropy is the sum of their individual entropies  (Dell Studio 1457 Battery)  .

For example, if (X,Y) represents the position of a chess piece — X the row and Y the column, then the joint entropy of the row of the piece and the column of the piece will be the entropy of the position of the piece.

Despite similar notation, joint entropy should not be confused with cross entropy  (Dell Latitude D610 Battery)     .

Conditional entropy (equivocation)

The conditional entropy or conditional uncertainty of X given random variable Y (also called the equivocation of X about Y) is the average conditional entropy over Y  (Toshiba NB100 Battery)  :

Because entropy can be conditioned on a random variable or on that random variable being a certain value, care should be taken not to confuse these two definitions of conditional entropy, the former of which is in more common use. A basic property of this form of conditional entropy is that  (Toshiba Satellite M65 battery) :

Mutual information (transinformation)

Mutual information measures the amount of information that can be obtained about one random variable by observing another. It is important in communication where it can be used to maximize the amount of information shared between sent and received signals  (Toshiba Satellite M60 battery) .

The mutual information of X relative to Y is given by:

where SI (Specific mutual Information) is the pointwise mutual information.

A basic property of the mutual information is that

That is, knowing Y, we can save an average of I(X;Y) bits in encoding X compared to not knowing Y  (Dell Latitude D830 Battery) .

Mutual information is symmetric:

Mutual information can be expressed as the average Kullback–Leibler divergence (information gain) of the posterior probability distribution of X given the value of Y to the prior distribution on X  (Dell Latitude D620 Battery)  :

In other words, this is a measure of how much, on the average, the probability distribution on X will change if we are given the value of Y. This is often recalculated as the divergence from the product of the marginal distributions to the actual joint distribution (Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Battery) :

Mutual information is closely related to the log-likelihood ratio test in the context of contingency tables and the multinomial distribution and to Pearson's ?2 test: mutual information can be considered a statistic for assessing independence between a pair of variables, and has a well-specified asymptotic distribution  (Sony VGN-FW11S Battery) .

[edit]Kullback–Leibler divergence (information gain)

The Kullback–Leibler divergence (or information divergence, information gain, or relative entropy) is a way of comparing two distributions: a "true" probability distribution p(X), and an arbitrary probability distribution q(X)  (Sony VGN-FW11M Battery) .

If we compress data in a manner that assumes q(X) is the distribution underlying some data, when, in reality, p(X) is the correct distribution, the Kullback–Leibler divergence is the number of average additional bits per datum necessary for compression. It is thus defined  (Sony VGN-FW139E/H battery).

Although it is sometimes used as a 'distance metric', it is not a true metric since it is not symmetric and does not satisfy the triangle inequality (making it a semi-quasimetric)   (Dell Latitude E5400 Battery) .

Other quantities

Other important information theoretic quantities include Rényi entropy, (a generalization of entropy,) differential entropy, (a generalization of quantities of information to continuous distributions,) and the conditional mutual information  (Dell Latitude E4200 Battery) .

Coding theory

Main article: Coding theory

A picture showing scratches on the readable surface of a CD-R. Music and data CDs are coded using error correcting codes and thus can still be read even if they have minor scratches using error detection and correction  (Dell Vostro A840 Battery) .

Coding theory is one of the most important and direct applications of information theory. It can be subdivided into source coding theory and channel coding theory. Using a statistical description for data, information theory quantifies the number of bits needed to describe the data, which is the information entropy of the source  (Dell Inspiron 300M Battery)   .

Data compression (source coding): There are two formulations for the compression problem:

lossless data compression: the data must be reconstructed exactly (Dell Studio 1737 battery)  ;

lossy data compression: allocates bits needed to reconstruct the data, within a specified fidelity level measured by a distortion function. This subset of Information theory is called rate–distortion theory  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery)  .

Error-correcting codes (channel coding): While data compression removes as much redundancy as possible, an error correcting code adds just the right kind of redundancy (i.e., error correction) needed to transmit the data efficiently and faithfully across a noisy channel     (Dell RM791 battery) .

This division of coding theory into compression and transmission is justified by the information transmission theorems, or source–channel separation theorems that justify the use of bits as the universal currency for information in many contexts. However, these theorems only hold in the situation where one transmitting user wishes to communicate to one receiving user  (Dell XPS M1530 battery)  .

In scenarios with more than one transmitter (the multiple-access channel), more than one receiver (the broadcast channel) or intermediary "helpers" (the relay channel), or more general networks, compression followed by transmission may no longer be optimal. Network information theory refers to these multi-agent communication models  (Dell XPS M2010 battery)  .

Source theory

Any process that generates successive messages can be considered a source of information. A memoryless source is one in which each message is an independent identically-distributed random variable, whereas the properties of ergodicity and stationarity impose more general constraints      (Acer Aspire One battery) .

All such sources are stochastic. These terms are well studied in their own right outside information theory.

Rate

Information rate is the average entropy per symbol. For memoryless sources, this is merely the entropy of each symbol, while, in the case of a stationary stochastic process, it is that is, the conditional entropy of a symbol given all the previous symbols generated (Toshiba Satellite P10 Battery)    .

For the more general case of a process that is not necessarily stationary, the average rate is that is, the limit of the joint entropy per symbol. For stationary sources, these two expressions give the same result.

It is common in information theory to speak of the "rate" or "entropy" of a language  (SONY VGN-FZ210CE Battery)  .

This is appropriate, for example, when the source of information is English prose. The rate of a source of information is related to its redundancy and how well it can be compressed, the subject of source coding        (Dell Precision M70 Battery) .

Channel capacity

Main article: Channel capacity

Communications over a channel—such as an ethernet cable—is the primary motivation of information theory   (Toshiba Satellite L305 Battery)  .

As anyone who's ever used a telephone (mobile or landline) knows, however, such channels often fail to produce exact reconstruction of a signal; noise, periods of silence, and other forms of signal corruption often degrade quality. How much information can one hope to communicate over a noisy (or otherwise imperfect) channel  (Toshiba Satellite T4900 Battery) ?

Consider the communications process over a discrete channel. A simple model of the process is shown below:

Here X represents the space of messages transmitted, and Y the space of messages received during a unit time over our channel. Let p(y | x) be the conditional probability distribution function of Y given X  (Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery)  .

We will consider p(y | x) to be an inherent fixed property of our communications channel (representing the nature of the noise of our channel). Then the joint distribution of X and Y is completely determined by our channel and by our choice of f(x), the marginal distribution of messages we choose to send over the channel  (Toshiba Satellite A200 Battery)  .

Under these constraints, we would like to maximize the rate of information, or the signal, we can communicate over the channel. The appropriate measure for this is the mutual information, and this maximum mutual information is called the channel capacity and is given by    (Toshiba Satellite 1200 Battery)  :

This capacity has the following property related to communicating at information rate R (where R is usually bits per symbol). For any information rate R < C and coding error ? > 0, for large enough N, there exists a code of length N and rate ? R and a decoding algorithm, such that the maximal probability of block error is ? ?  (Toshiba Satellite M300 Battery)  ;

that is, it is always possible to transmit with arbitrarily small block error. In addition, for any rate R > C, it is impossible to transmit with arbitrarily small block error.

Channel coding is concerned with finding such nearly optimal codes that can be used to transmit data over a noisy channel with a small coding error at a rate near the channel capacity   (Sony Vaio PCG-5G2L Battery) .

Capacity of particular channel models

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Channel capacity . (Discuss)

A continuous-time analog communications channel subject to Gaussian noise — see Shannon–Hartley theorem  Sony Vaio PCG-5G3L Battery .

A binary symmetric channel (BSC) with crossover probability p is a binary input, binary output channel that flips the input bit with probability p. The BSC has a capacity of 1 ? Hb(p) bits per channel use, where Hb is the binary entropy function to the base 2 logarithm      Sony Vaio PCG-5J1L Battery :

A binary erasure channel (BEC) with erasure probability p is a binary input, ternary output channel. The possible channel outputs are 0, 1, and a third symbol 'e' called an erasure. The erasure represents complete loss of information about an input bit. The capacity of the BEC is 1 - p bits per channel use      Sony Vaio PCG-5K2L Battery .

Applications to other fields

Intelligence uses and secrecy applications

Information theoretic concepts apply to cryptography and cryptanalysis. Turing's information unit, the ban, was used in the Ultra project, breaking the German Enigma machine code and hastening the end of WWII in Europe  Sony Vaio PCG-5J2L Battery .

Shannon himself defined an important concept now called the unicity distance. Based on the redundancy of the plaintext, it attempts to give a minimum amount of ciphertext necessary to ensure unique decipherability.

Information theory leads us to believe it is much more difficult to keep secrets than it might first appear  Sony Vaio PCG-5K1L Battery.

A brute force attack can break systems based on asymmetric key algorithms or on most commonly used methods of symmetric key algorithms (sometimes called secret key algorithms), such as block ciphers. The security of all such methods currently comes from the assumption that no known attack can break them in a practical amount of time  Sony Vaio PCG-5L1L Battery .

Information theoretic security refers to methods such as the one-time pad that are not vulnerable to such brute force attacks. In such cases, the positive conditional mutual information between the plaintext and ciphertext (conditioned on the key) can ensure proper transmission     Sony Vaio PCG-6S2L Battery ,

while the unconditional mutual information between the plaintext and ciphertext remains zero, resulting in absolutely secure communications. In other words, an eavesdropper would not be able to improve his or her guess of the plaintext by gaining knowledge of the ciphertext but not of the key   Sony Vaio PCG-6S3L Battery .

However, as in any other cryptographic system, care must be used to correctly apply even information-theoretically secure methods; the Venona project was able to crack the one-time pads of the Soviet Union due to their improper reuse of key material  Sony Vaio PCG-6V1L Battery .

Pseudorandom number generation

Pseudorandom number generators are widely available in computer language libraries and application programs. They are, almost universally, unsuited to cryptographic use as they do not evade the deterministic nature of modern computer equipment and software    Sony Vaio PCG-6W1L Battery .

A class of improved random number generators is termed cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators, but even they require external to the software random seeds to work as intended. These can be obtained via extractors, if done carefully. The measure of sufficient randomness in extractors is min-entropy      Sony Vaio PCG-6W2L Battery ,

a value related to Shannon entropy through Rényi entropy; Rényi entropy is also used in evaluating randomness in cryptographic systems. Although related, the distinctions among these measures mean that a random variable with high Shannon entropy is not necessarily satisfactory for use in an extractor and so for cryptography uses Sony Vaio PCG-6W3L Battery .   .

Seismic exploration

One early commercial application of information theory was in the field seismic oil exploration. Work in this field made it possible to strip off and separate the unwanted noise from the desired seismic signal. Information theory and digital signal processing offer a major improvement of resolution and image clarity over previous analog methods Sony Vaio PCG-7111L Battery .

Miscellaneous applications

Information theory also has applications in gambling and investing, black holes, bioinformatics, and music.

Informatics is the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems. Informatics studies the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process, access and communicate information  Sony Vaio PCG-7112L Battery .

It also develops its own conceptual and theoretical foundations and utilizes foundations developed in other fields. Since the advent of computers, individuals and organizations increasingly process information digitally. This has led to the study of informatics that has computational, cognitive and social aspects, including study of the social impact of information technologies  Sony Vaio PCG-7113L Battery .

Etymology

In 1957 the German computer scientist Karl Steinbuch coined the word Informatik by publishing a paper called Informatik: Automatische Informationsverarbeitung ("Informatics: Automatic Information Processing")  Sony Vaio PCG-7133L Battery .

The English term Informatics is sometimes understood as meaning the same as computer science. However, the German word Informatik is the correct translation of English computer science Sony Vaio PCG-7Z2L Battery

The French term informatique was coined in 1962 by Philippe Dreyfus together with various translations—informatics (English), also proposed independently and simultaneously by Walter F. Bauerand associates who co-founded Informatics Inc., and informatica(Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, Dutch), referring to the application of computers to store and process information  Sony Vaio PCG-8Y1L Battery .

The term was coined as a combination of "information" and "automatic" to describe the science of automating information interactions      Sony Vaio PCG-8Y2L Battery .

The morphology—informat-ion + -ics—uses "the accepted form for names of sciences, as conics, linguistics, optics, or matters of practice, as economics, politics, tactics", and so, linguistically, the meaning extends easily to encompass both the science of information and the practice of information processing  Sony Vaio PCG-8Z1L Battery .

The naming for computer science is derived from the concept of computation which may or may not involve the existence of information. For example, quantum computation and digital logic do not involve information  Sony Vaio PCG-8Z2L Battery .

History

This new term was adopted across Western Europe, and, except in English, developed a meaning roughly translated by the English ‘computer science’, or ‘computing science’  Sony VAIO PCG-5G2L Battery .

Mikhailov et al. advocated the Russian term informatika (1966), and the English informatics (1967), as names for the theory of scientific information, and argued for a broader meaning, including study of the use of information technology in various communities (for example, scientific) and of the interaction of technology and human organizational structures  Sony VAIO PCG-5G3L Battery .

Informatics is the discipline of science which investigates the structure and properties (not specific content) of scientific information, as well as the regularities of scientific information activity, its theory, history, methodology and organization.

Usage has since modified this definition in three ways   Sony VAIO PCG-5J1L Battery .

First, the restriction to scientific information is removed, as in business informatics or legal informatics. Second, since most information is now digitally stored, computation is now central to informatics. Third, the representation, processing and communication of information are added as objects of investigation  Sony VAIO PCG-5K2L Battery ,

since they have been recognized as fundamental to any scientific account of information. Taking information as the central focus of study, then, distinguishes informatics, which includes study of biological and social mechanisms of information processing, from computer science, where digital computation plays a distinguished central role  Sony VAIO PCG-5J2L Battery .

Similarly, in the study of representation and communication, informatics is indifferent to the substrate that carries information. For example, it encompasses the study of communication using gesture, speech and language, as well as digital communications and networking    Sony VAIO PCG-5K1L Battery .

The first example of a degree level qualification in Informatics occurred in 1982 when Plymouth Polytechnic (now the University of Plymouth) offered a four year BSc(Honours) degree in Computing and Informatics – with an initial intake of only 35 students. The course still runs today making it the longest available qualification in the subject       Sony VAIO PCG-5L1L Battery .

A broad interpretation of informatics, as "the study of the structure, algorithms, behaviour, and interactions of natural and artificial computational systems," was introduced by the University of Edinburghin 1994 when it formed the grouping that is now its School of Informatics. This meaning is now (2006) increasingly used in the United Kingdom  Sony VAIO PCG-6S2L Battery .

Informatics encompasses the study of systems that represent, process, and communicate information. However, the theory of computation in the specific discipline of theoretical computer sciencewhich evolved from Alan Turing studies the notion of a complex system regardless if information actually exists    Sony VAIO PCG-6S3L Battery .

Since both fields process information, there is some disagreement among scientists as to field hierarchy; for example Arizona State University attempted to adopt a broader definition of informatics to even encompass cognitive science at the launch of its School of Computing and Informatics in September 2006      Sony VAIO PCG-6V1L Battery .

The confusion arises since information can be easily stored on a computer and hence informatics could be considered the parent of computer science. However, the original notion of a computer was the name given to the action of computation regardless of the existence of information or the existence of a von neumann architecture   Sony VAIO PCG-6W1L Battery .

Humans are examples of computational systems and not information systems. Many fields such as quantum computing theory are studied in theoretical computer science but not related to informatics.

The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, of the UK Funding Councils, includes a new, Computer Science and Informatics, unit of assessment (UoA), whose scope is described as follows    Sony VAIO PCG-6W2L Battery :

The UoA includes the study of methods for acquiring, storing, processing, communicating and reasoning about information, and the role of interactivity in natural and artificial systems, through the implementation, organisation and use of computer hardware, software and other resources Sony VAIO PCG-6W3L Battery .

The subjects are characterised by the rigorous application of analysis, experimentation and design.

At the Indiana University School of Informatics (Bloomington, Indianapolis and Southeast), informatics is defined as "the art, science and human dimensions of information technology" and "the study, application, and social consequences of technology Sony VAIO PCG-7111L Battery .

" It is also defined in Informatics I101, Introduction to Informatics as "the application of information technology to the arts, sciences, and professions." These definitions are widely accepted in the United States, and differ from British usage in omitting the study of natural computation   Sony VAIO PCG-7112L Battery .

At the University of California, Irvine Department of Informatics, informatics is defined as "the interdisciplinary study of the design, application, use and impact of information technology. The discipline of informatics is based on the recognition that the design of this technology is not solely a technical matter    Sony VAIO PCG-7113L Battery ,

but must focus on the relationship between the technology and its use in real-world settings. That is, informatics designs solutions in context, and takes into account the social, cultural and organizational settings in which computing and information technology will be used     Sony VAIO PCG-7133L Battery ."

At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Informatics interdisciplinary major, informatics is defined as "the study of information and the ways information is used by and affects human beings and social systems. Key to this growing field is that it applies both technological and social perspectives to the study of information   Sony VAIO PCG-7Z1L Battery .

Michigan's interdisciplinary approach to teaching Informatics gives you a solid grounding in contemporary computer programming, mathematics, and statistics, combined with study of the ethical and social science aspects of complex information systems. Experts in the field help design new information technology tools for specific scientific, business, and cultural needs  Sony VAIO PCG-7Z2L Battery ."

In the English-speaking world the term informatics was first widely used in the compound, ‘medical informatics’, taken to include "the cognitive, information processing, and communication tasks of medical practice, education, and research, including information science and the technology to support these tasks"  Sony VAIO PCG-8Y1L Battery .

Many such compounds are now in use; they can be viewed as different areas of applied informatics.

One of the most significant areas of applied informatics is that of organisational informatics  Sony VAIO PCG-8Y2L Battery .

Organisational informatics is fundamentally interested in the application of information, information systems and ICT within organisations of various forms including private sector, public sector and voluntary sector organisations. As such, organisational informatics can be seen to be sub-category of social informatics and a super-category of business informatics  Sony VAIO PCG-8Z1L Battery .

A practitioner of informatics may be called an informatician or an informaticist.

In 1989, the first International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) was held in Bulgaria  Sony VAIO PCG-8Z2L Battery .

The olympiad involves two days of intense competition for five hours each day. Four students are selected from each participating country to attend and compete for Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. The 2008 IOI was held in Cairo, Egypt  WD passport essential (500GB/640GB) .

Computer science has many sub-fields; some, such as computer graphics, emphasize the computation of specific results, while others, such as computational complexity theory, study the properties of computational problems. Still others focus on the challenges in implementing computations  (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery)     .

For example, programming language theory studies approaches to describe computations, while computer programming applies specific programming languages to solve specific computational problems, and human-computer interaction focuses on the challenges in making computers and computations useful, usable, and universally accessible to people (Dell Studio XPS 1640 Battery) .

The general public sometimes confuses computer science with careers that deal with computers (such as information technology), or think that it relates to their own experience of computers, which typically involves activities such as gaming, web-browsing, and word-processing  (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery)    .

However, the focus of computer science is more on understanding the properties of the programs used to implement software such as games and web-browsers, and using that understanding to create new programs or improve existing ones  (Dell KM958 battery) .

History

The early foundations of what would become computer science predate the invention of the modern digital computer. Machines for calculating fixed numerical tasks, such as the abacus, have existed since antiquity  (Sony VGP-BPS13 battery)    .

Wilhelm Schickard designed the first mechanical calculator in 1623, but did not complete its construction. Blaise Pascal designed and constructed the first working mechanical calculator, the Pascaline, in 1642. Charles Babbage designed adifference engine in Victorian times helped by Ada Lovelace  (Sony VGP-BPS13/B battery)   .

Around 1900, punch-card machines were introduced. However, all of these machines were constrained to perform a single task, or at best some subset of all possible tasks.

During the 1940s, as newer and more powerful computing machines were developed, the term computer came to refer to the machines rather than their human predecessors  (Sony VGP-BPS13/S battery)    .

As it became clear that computers could be used for more than just mathematical calculations, the field of computer science broadened to study computation in general. Computer science began to be established as a distinct academic discipline in the 1950s and early 1960s  (Sony VGP-BPS13A/B battery)    .

The first computer science degree program in the United States was formed at Purdue University in 1962. Since practical computers became available, many applications of computing have become distinct areas of study in their own right  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)   .

Although many initially believed it was impossible that computers themselves could actually be a scientific field of study, in the late fifties it gradually became accepted among the greater academic population. It is the now well-known IBM brand that formed part of the computer science revolution during this time  (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery)  .

IBM (short for International Business Machines) released the IBM 704 and later the IBM 709 computers, which were widely used during the exploration period of such devices. "Still, working with the IBM [computer] was frustrating...if you had misplaced as much as one letter in one instruction, the program would crash, and you would have to start the whole process over again" (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)   .

During the late 1950s, the computer science discipline was very much in its developmental stages, and such issues were commonplace.

Time has seen significant improvements in the usability and effectiveness of computer science technology  (Sony VGP-BPL15 battery)   .

Modern society has seen a significant shift from computers being used solely by experts or professionals to a more widespread user base. Initially, computers were quite costly, and for their most-effective use, some degree of human aid was needed, in part by professional computer operators  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery)  .

However, as computers became widespread and far more affordable, less human assistance was needed, although residues of the original assistance still remained.

Major achievements

The German military used the Enigma machine (shown here) during World War IIfor communication they thought to be secret (Dell Latitude E6400 battery)     .

The large-scale decryption of Enigma traffic at Bletchley Park was an important factor that contributed to Allied victory in WWII.

Despite its short history as a formal academic discipline, computer science has made a number of fundamental contributions to science and society  (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery)   .

These include:

• The start of the "digital revolution," which includes the current Information Age and the Internet.
• A formal definition of computation and computability, and proof that there are computationally unsolvable and intractable problems  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ Battery)        .
• The concept of a programming language, a tool for the precise expression of methodological information at various levels of abstraction  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ18 Battery)    .
• In cryptography, breaking the Enigma machine was an important factor contributing to the Allied victory in World War II.
• Scientific computing enabled practical evaluation of processes and situations of great complexity, as well as experimentation entirely by software  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ180E Battery)  .
• It also enabled advanced study of the mind, and mapping of the human genome became possible with the Human Genome Project. Distributed computingprojects such as Folding@home explore protein folding  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ220E Battery) .
• Algorithmic trading has increased the efficiency and liquidity of financial markets by using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other statistical andnumerical techniques on a large scale.
• Image synthesis, including video by computing individual video frames  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ340E Battery)  .
• Human language processing, including practical speech-to-text conversion and automated translation of languages
• Simulation of various processes, including computational fluid dynamics, physical, electrical, and electronic systems and circuits, as well as societies and social situations (notably war games) along with their habitats, among many others  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ430E Battery)     .
• Modern computers enable optimization of such designs as complete aircraft. Notable in electrical and electronic circuit design are SPICE as well as software for physical realization of new (or modified) designs. The latter includes essential design software for integrated circuits  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ460E Battery)    .

Areas of computer science

As a discipline, computer science spans a range of topics from theoretical studies of algorithms and the limits of computation to the practical issues of implementing computing systems in hardware and software (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ480E Battery)   .

CSAB, formerly called Computing Sciences Accreditation Board – which is made up of representatives of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS)  – identifies four areas that it considers crucial to the discipline of computer science:theory of computation, algorithms and data structures, programming methodology and languages, and computer elements and architecture (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ4000 Battery) .

In addition to these four areas, CSAB also identifies fields such as software engineering, artificial intelligence, computer networking and communication, database systems, parallel computation, distributed computation, computer-human interaction, computer graphics, operating systems, and numerical and symbolic computation as being important areas of computer science  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31E Battery)      .

Theoretical computer science

The broader field of theoretical computer science encompasses both the classical theory of computation and a wide range of other topics that focus on the more abstract, logical, and mathematical aspects of computing  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31B Battery)   .

Theory of computation

According to Peter J. Denning, the fundamental question underlying computer science is, "What can be (efficiently) automated?" The study of the theory of computation is focused on answering fundamental questions about what can be computed and what amount of resources are required to perform those computations  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31J Battery)  .

In an effort to answer the first question, computability theory examines which computational problems are solvable on various theoretical models of computation. The second question is addressed by computational complexity theory, which studies the time and space costs associated with different approaches to solving a computational problem  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31M Battery) .

The famous "P=NP?" problem, one of the Millennium Prize Problems, is an open problem in the theory of computation.

Multiprocessing

Multiprocessing is running a system with more than one processor  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31Z Battery)  .

The theory is of course that you can double performance by using two processors instead of one. And the reality of course is that it doesn't work this well, although multiprocessing can result in improved performance under certain conditions. In order to employ multiprocessing effectively, the computer system must have all of the following in place  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ38M Battery)  :

Motherboard Support

A motherboard capable of handling multiple processors. This means additional sockets or slots for the extra chips, and a chipset capable of handling the multiprocessing arrangement  SONY VGP-BPS8 Battery .

Processor Support

Processors that are capable of being used in a multiprocessing system. Not all are, and in fact some versions of the same processor are while others are not     SONY VGP-BPS13 Battery .

Operating System Support

An operating system that supports multiprocessing, such as Windows NT or one of the various flavors of UNIX  SONY VGP-BPS13/S Battery .

Computational science

Computational science (or scientific computing) is the field of study concerned with constructing mathematical models and quantitative analysis techniques and using computers to analyse and solvescientific problems  SONY VGP-BPS13A/B Battery .

In practical use, it is typically the application of computer simulation and other forms of computation to problems in various scientific disciplines   SONY VGP-BPS13B/B Battery .

Artificial Intelligence

This branch of computer science aims to create synthetic systems which solve computational problems, reason and/or communicate like animals and humans do   SONY VGP-BPS13A/S Battery .

This theoretical and applied subfield requires a very rigorous and integrated expertise in multiple subject areas such as applied mathematics, logic, semiotics, electrical engineering, philosophy of mind, neurophysiology, and social intelligence which can be used to advance the field of intelligence research or be applied to other subject areas which require computational understanding and modelling such as in finance or thephysical sciences   SONY VGP-BPS13AS Battery .

This field started in full earnest when Alan Turing, the pioneer of computer science and artificial intelligence, proposed the Turing Test for the purpose of answering the ultimate question... "Can computers think ?"  (Dell Inspiron 1320n Battery)     .

Software Systems

The field of software systems encompasses a wide range of sub-fields, which involve principled design and analysis of various kinds of software based systems  (Dell Inspiron 1464 Battery)   .

These fields use concepts and techniques from theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, electrical engineering, and so on to build software systems for various real world tasks       (Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery)    .

Paradigms

Following Peter Wegner, Amnon H. Eden proposes that there are three paradigms at work in various areas of computer science:

• a "rationalist paradigm", which treats computer science as branch of mathematics, which is prevalent in theoretical computer science, and mainly employs deductive reasoning     (Dell Inspiron 1764 Battery)    ,
• a "technocratic paradigm", readily identifiable with engineering approaches, most prominent in software engineering, and
• a "scientific paradigm", which approaches computer-related artifacts from the empirical perspective of natural sciences, and identifiable in some branches of artificial intelligence (the study of artificial life for instance)  (Dell Studio 1450 Battery)  .

Relationship with other fields

Despite its name, a significant amount of computer science does not involve the study of computers themselves. Because of this, several alternative names have been proposed. Certain departments of major universities prefer the term computing science, to emphasize precisely that difference  (Dell Studio 1457 Battery)   .

Danish scientist Peter Naur suggested the term datalogy, to reflect the fact that the scientific discipline revolves around data and data treatment, while not necessarily involving computers. The first scientific institution to use the term was the Department of Datalogy at the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1969, with Peter Naur being the first professor in datalogy (Dell Latitude D610 Battery) .

The term is used mainly in the Scandinavian countries. Also, in the early days of computing, a number of terms for the practitioners of the field of computing were suggested in the Communications of the ACM – turingineer, turologist, flow-charts-man, applied meta-mathematician, and applied epistemologist (Toshiba NB100 Battery)   .

Three months later in the same journal, comptologist was suggested, followed next year by hypologist. The term computics has also been suggested. In continental Europe, names such asinformatique (French), Informatik (German) or informatica (Dutch), derived from information and possibly mathematics or automatic, are more common than names derived from computer/computation  (Toshiba Satellite M65 battery)    .

The renowned computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra stated, "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." The design and deployment of computers and computer systems is generally considered the province of disciplines other than computer science  (Toshiba Satellite M60 battery)   .

For example, the study of computer hardware is usually considered part of computer engineering, while the study of commercial computer systems and their deployment is often called information technology or information systems. However, there has been much cross-fertilization of ideas between the various computer-related disciplines  (Dell Latitude D830 Battery) .

Computer science research has also often crossed into other disciplines, such as philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics,

mathematics, physics, statistics, andeconomics.Computer science is considered by some to have a much closer relationship with mathematics than many scientific disciplines, with some observers saying that computing is a mathematical science (Dell Latitude D620 Battery)   .

Early computer science was strongly influenced by the work of mathematicians such as Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, and there continues to be a useful interchange of ideas between the two fields in areas such as mathematical logic, category theory, domain theory, and algebra  (Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Battery)    .

The relationship between computer science and software engineering is a contentious issue, which is further muddied by disputes over what the term "software engineering" means, and how computer science is defined. David Parnas, taking a cue from the relationship between other engineering and science disciplines  (Sony VGN-FW11S Battery) ,

has claimed that the principal focus of computer science is studying the properties of computation in general, while the principal focus of software engineering is the design of specific computations to achieve practical goals, making the two separate but complementary disciplines  (Sony VGN-FW11M Battery)       .

The academic, political, and funding aspects of computer science tend to depend on whether a department formed with a mathematical emphasis or with an engineering emphasis. Computer science departments with a mathematics emphasis and with a numerical orientation consider alignment with computational science  (Sony VGN-FW139E/H battery) .

Both types of departments tend to make efforts to bridge the field educationally if not across all research.

Computer science education

Some universities teach computer science as a theoretical study of computation and algorithmic reasoning  (Dell Latitude E5400 Battery) .

These programs often feature the theory of computation, analysis of algorithms, formal methods, concurrency theory, databases, computer graphics, and systems analysis, among others. They typically also teach computer programming, but treat it as a vessel for the support of other fields of computer science rather than a central focus of high-level study (Dell Latitude E4200 Battery)    .

Other colleges and universities, as well as secondary schools and vocational programs that teach computer science, emphasize the practice of advanced programming rather than the theory of algorithms and computation in their computer science curricula. Such curricula tend to focus on those skills that are important to workers entering the software industry (Dell Vostro A840 Battery) .

The practical aspects of computer programming are often referred to as software engineering. However, there is a lot of disagreement over the meaning of the term, and whether or not it is the same thing as programming  (Dell Inspiron 300M Battery)    .

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computersystems  (Dell Studio 1737 battery)    .

Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computer systems, as opposed to the hardware side that computer engineers mainly focus on (although there is overlap). Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on specific areas (such as algorithm development and design  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery)    ,

software engineering, information theory, database theory, computational complexity theory, human-computer interaction, computer programming, programming language theory, computer graphics, and computer vision), their foundation is the theoretical study of computing from which these other fields derive  (Dell RM791 battery)   .

Computer scientists typically have some kind of degree in computer science.

As its name implies, computer science is a pure science, not an applied science or applied business field. As an analogy to the medical field, a computer scientist is like the cancer researcher who might study molecular biology or biochemistry in-depth  (Dell XPS M1530 battery)   ,

while an information technology specialist is like the physician who studies those fields at a higher level and focuses on their application to patient care.

Computer scientists can follow more practical applications of their knowledge, doing things such as software development, web development, and database programming  (Dell XPS M2010 battery)  .

Computer scientists can also be found in the field of information technology consulting. Computer scientists can also be seen as a type of mathematician, seeing as how much of the field is dependent on mathematics itself  (Acer Aspire One battery)     .

Informatics is the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems. Informatics studies the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process, access and communicate information   (Toshiba Satellite P10 Battery)  .

It also develops its own conceptual and theoretical foundations and utilizes foundations developed in other fields. Since the advent of computers, individuals and organizations increasingly process information digitally. This has led to the study of informatics that has computational, cognitive and social aspects, including study of the social impact of information technologies  (SONY VGN-FZ210CE Battery) .

Etymology

In 1957 the German computer scientist Karl Steinbuch coined the word Informatik by publishing a paper called Informatik: Automatische Informationsverarbeitung ("Informatics: Automatic Information Processing")  (Dell Precision M70 Battery)   .

The English term Informatics is sometimes understood as meaning the same as computer science. However, the German word Informatik is the correct translation of English computer science

The French term informatique was coined in 1962 by Philippe Dreyfus together with various translations—informatics (English)  (Toshiba Satellite L305 Battery)   ,

also proposed independently and simultaneously by Walter F. Bauerand associates who co-founded Informatics Inc., and informatica (Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, Dutch), referring to the application of computers to store and process information    (Toshiba Satellite T4900 Battery)     .

The term was coined as a combination of "information" and "automatic" to describe the science of automating information interactions. The morphology—informat-ion + -ics—uses "the accepted form for names of sciences, as conics, linguistics, optics, or matters of practice, as economics    (Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery)   ,

politics, tactics", and so, linguistically, the meaning extends easily to encompass both the science of information and the practice of information processing.

The naming for computer science is derived from the concept of computation which may or may not involve the existence of information  (Toshiba Satellite A200 Battery)    .

For example, quantum computation and digital logic do not involve information.

History

This new term was adopted across Western Europe, and, except in English, developed a meaning roughly translated by the English ‘computer science’, or ‘computing science’   (Toshiba Satellite 1200 Battery)     .

Mikhailov et al. advocated the Russian term informatika (1966), and the English informatics (1967), as names for the theory of scientific information, and argued for a broader meaning, including study of the use of information technology in various communities (for example, scientific) and of the interaction of technology and human organizational structures  (Toshiba Satellite M300 Battery)   .

Informatics is the discipline of science which investigates the structure and properties (not specific content) of scientific information, as well as the regularities of scientific information activity, its theory, history, methodology and organization.

Usage has since modified this definition in three ways  (Sony Vaio PCG-5G2L Battery)   .

First, the restriction to scientific information is removed, as in business informatics or legal informatics. Second, since most information is now digitally stored, computation is now central to informatics. Third, the representation, processing and communication of information are added as objects of investigation   Sony Vaio PCG-5G3L Battery ,

since they have been recognized as fundamental to any scientific account of information. Taking information as the central focus of study, then, distinguishes informatics, which includes study of biological and social mechanisms of information processing, from computer science, where digital computation plays a distinguished central role  Sony Vaio PCG-5J1L Battery .

Similarly, in the study of representation and communication, informatics is indifferent to the substrate that carries information. For example, it encompasses the study of communication using gesture, speech and language, as well as digital communications and networking  Sony Vaio PCG-5K2L Battery .

The first example of a degree level qualification in Informatics occurred in 1982 when Plymouth Polytechnic (now the University of Plymouth) offered a four year BSc(Honours) degree in Computing and Informatics – with an initial intake of only 35 students. The course still runs today  making it the longest available qualification in the subject  Sony Vaio PCG-5J2L Battery .

A broad interpretation of informatics, as "the study of the structure, algorithms, behaviour, and interactions of natural and artificial computational systems," was introduced by the University of Edinburghin 1994 when it formed the grouping that is now its School of Informatics. This meaning is now (2006) increasingly used in the United Kingdom  Sony Vaio PCG-5K1L Battery .

Informatics encompasses the study of systems that represent, process, and communicate information. However, the theory of computation in the specific discipline of theoretical computer sciencewhich evolved from Alan Turing studies the notion of a complex system regardless if information actually exists  Sony Vaio PCG-5L1L Battery .

Since both fields process information, there is some disagreement among scientists as to field hierarchy; for example Arizona State University attempted to adopt a broader definition of informatics to even encompass cognitive science at the launch of its School of Computing and Informatics in September 2006  Sony Vaio PCG-6S2L Battery .

The confusion arises since information can be easily stored on a computer and hence informatics could be considered the parent of computer science. However, the original notion of a computer was the name given to the action of computation regardless of the existence of information or the existence of a von neumann architecture   Sony Vaio PCG-6S3L Battery .

Humans are examples of computational systems and not information systems. Many fields such as quantum computing theory are studied in theoretical computer science but not related to informatics.

The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, of the UK Funding Councils, includes a new, Computer Science and Informatics, unit of assessment (UoA), whose scope is described as follows  Sony Vaio PCG-6V1L Battery :

The UoA includes the study of methods for acquiring, storing, processing, communicating and reasoning about information, and the role of interactivity in natural and artificial systems, through the implementation, organisation and use of computer hardware, software and other resources Sony Vaio PCG-6W1L Battery .

The subjects are characterised by the rigorous application of analysis, experimentation and design.

At the Indiana University School of Informatics (Bloomington, Indianapolis and Southeast), informatics is defined as "the art, science and human dimensions of information technology" and "the study, application, and social consequences of technology  Sony Vaio PCG-6W2L Battery .

" It is also defined in Informatics I101, Introduction to Informatics as "the application of information technology to the arts, sciences, and professions." These definitions are widely accepted in the United States, and differ from British usage in omitting the study of natural computation    Sony Vaio PCG-6W3L Battery .

At the University of California, Irvine Department of Informatics, informatics is defined as "the interdisciplinary study of the design, application, use and impact of information technology. The discipline of informatics is based on the recognition that the design of this technology is not solely a technical matter   Sony Vaio PCG-7111L Battery ,

but must focus on the relationship between the technology and its use in real-world settings. That is, informatics designs solutions in context, and takes into account the social, cultural and organizational settings in which computing and information technology will be used   Sony Vaio PCG-7112L Battery ."

At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Informatics interdisciplinary major, informatics is defined as "the study of information and the ways information is used by and affects human beings and social systems. Key to this growing field is that it applies both technological and social perspectives to the study of information   Sony Vaio PCG-7113L Battery .

Michigan's interdisciplinary approach to teaching Informatics gives you a solid grounding in contemporary computer programming, mathematics, and statistics, combined with study of the ethical and social science aspects of complex information systems. Experts in the field help design new information technology tools for specific scientific, business, and cultural needs  Sony Vaio PCG-7133L Battery ."

In the English-speaking world the term informatics was first widely used in the compound, ‘medical informatics’, taken to include "the cognitive, information processing, and communication tasks of medical practice, education, and research, including information science and the technology to support these tasks"  Sony Vaio PCG-7Z1L Battery .

Many such compounds are now in use; they can be viewed as different areas of applied informatics.

One of the most significant areas of applied informatics is that of organisational informatics     Sony Vaio PCG-7Z2L Battery .

Organisational informatics is fundamentally interested in the application of information, information systems and ICT within organisations of various forms including private sector, public sector and voluntary sector organisations. As such, organisational informatics can be seen to be sub-category of social informatics and a super-category of business informatics Sony Vaio PCG-8Y1L Battery .

A practitioner of informatics may be called an informatician or an informaticist.

In 1989, the first International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) was held in Bulgaria. The olympiad involves two days of intense competition for five hours each day  Sony Vaio PCG-8Y2L Battery .

Four students are selected from each participating country to attend and compete for Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. The 2008 IOI was held in Cairo, Egypt.

Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information  Sony Vaio PCG-8Z1L Battery .

Practitioners within the field study the application and usage of knowledge in organizations, along with the interaction between people, organizations and any existing information systems, with the aim of creating, replacing, improving or understanding information systems  Sony Vaio PCG-8Z2L Battery .

Information science is often (mistakenly) considered a branch of computer science. However, it is actually a broad, interdisciplinary field, incorporating not only aspects of computer science, but often diverse fields such as archival science, cognitive science, commerce, communications, law, library science,museology, management, mathematics, philosophy, public policy, and the social sciences  Sony VAIO PCG-5G2L Battery .

Information science focuses on understanding problems from the perspective of the stakeholders involved and then applying information and other technologies as needed. In other words, it tackles systemic problems first rather than individual pieces of technology within that system  Sony VAIO PCG-5G3L Battery .

In this respect, information science can be seen as a response to technological determinism, the belief that technology "develops by its own laws, that it realizes its own potential, limited only by the material resources available, and must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society  Sony VAIO PCG-5J1L Battery .

" Within information science, attention has been given in recent years to human–computer interaction,groupware, the semantic web, value sensitive design, iterative design processes and to the ways people generate, use and find information. Today this field is called the Field of Information, and there are a growing number of Schools and Colleges of Information Sony VAIO PCG-5K2L Battery .

Information science should not be confused with information theory, the study of a particular mathematical concept of information, or with library science, a field related to libraries which uses some of the principles of information science  Sony VAIO PCG-5J2L Battery .

Definitions of information science

Information Science consists of having the knowledge and understanding on how to collect, classify, manipulate, store, retrieve and disseminate any type of information     Sony VAIO PCG-5K1L Battery .

Some authors treat informatics as a synonym for information science, especially related to the concept developed by A. I. Mikhailov and other Soviet authors in the mid sixties, which suggested that informatics is a discipline related to the study of Scientific Information  Sony VAIO PCG-5L1L Battery .

Because of the rapidly evolving, interdisciplinary nature of informatics, a precise meaning of the term "informatics" is presently difficult to pin down.

Regional differences and international terminology complicate the problem  Sony VAIO PCG-6S2L Battery .

Some people note that much of what is called "Informatics" today was once called "Information Science" at least in fields such as Medical Informatics. For example, when library scientists began also to use the phrase "Information Science" to refer to their work, the term informatics emerged     Sony VAIO PCG-6S3L Battery :

• in the United States as a response by computer scientists to distinguish their work from that of library science, and
• in Britain as a term for a science of information that studies natural, as well as artificial or engineered, information-processing systems       Sony VAIO PCG-6V1L Battery .

History

Early beginnings

Information science, in studying the collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information has origins in the common stock of human knowledge     Sony VAIO PCG-6W1L Battery .

Information analysis has been carried out by scholars at least as early as the time of the Abyssinian Empire with the emergence of cultural depositories, what is today known as libraries and archives. Institutionally, information science emerged in the 19th century along with many other social science disciplines      Sony VAIO PCG-6W2L Battery .

As a science, however, it finds its institutional roots in the history of science, beginning with publication of the first issues of Philosophical Transactions, generally considered the first scientific journal, in 1665 by the Royal Society (London).

The institutionalization of science occurred throughout the 18th Century     Sony VAIO PCG-6W3L Battery .

In 1731, Benjamin Franklin established the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first library owned by a group of public citizens, which quickly expanded beyond the realm of books and became a center of scientific experiment, and which hosted public exhibitions of scientific experiments   Sony VAIO PCG-7111L Battery .

Benjamin Franklin did invest a town in Massachusetts with a collection of books that the town voted to make available to all free of charge, which formed the first Public Library. Academie de Chirurgia (Paris) published Memoires pour les Chirurgiens, generally considered to be the first medical journal, in 1736      Sony VAIO PCG-7112L Battery .

The American Philosophical Society, patterned on the Royal Society (London), was founded in Philadelphia in 1743. As numerous other scientific journals and societies are founded, Alois Senefelder develops the concept of lithography for use in mass printing work in Germany in 1796     Sony VAIO PCG-7113L Battery .

19th century

By the 19th Century the first signs of information science emerged as separate and distinct from other sciences and social sciences but in conjunction with communication and computation. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a punched card system to control operations of the cloth weaving loom in France      Sony VAIO PCG-7133L Battery .

It was the first use of "memory storage of patterns" system.As chemistry journals emerged throughout the 1820s and 1830s, Charles Babbage developed his "difference engine," the first step towards the modern computer, in 1822 and his "analytical engine” by 1834Sony VAIO PCG-7Z1L Battery .

By 1843 Richard Hoe developed the rotary press, and in 1844 Samuel Morse sent the first public telegraph message. By 1848 William F. Poole begins the Index to Periodical Literature, the first general periodical literature index in the US.

In 1854 George Boole published An Investigation into Laws of Thought..., which lays the foundations for Boolean algebra, which is later used in information retrieval    Sony VAIO PCG-7Z2L Battery .

In 1860 a congress is held at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule to discuss the feasibility of establishing a systematic and rational nomenclature for chemistry. The congress does not reach any conclusive results, but several key participants return home with Stanislao Cannizzaro's outline (1858), which ultimately convinces them of the validity of his scheme for calculating atomic weightsSony VAIO PCG-8Y1L Battery .

By 1865 the Smithsonian Institution began a catalog of current scientific papers, which became the International Catalogue of Scientific Papers in 1902. The following year the Royal Society began publication of its Catalogue of Papers in London. In 1868, Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and S. W   Sony VAIO PCG-8Y2L Battery .

Soule produced the first practical typewriter. By 1872 Lord Kelvin devised an analogue computer to predict the tides, and by 1875 Frank Stephen Baldwin was granted the first US patent for a practical calculating machine that performs four arithmetic functions  Sony VAIO PCG-8Z1L Battery .

Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison invented the telephone and phonograph in 1876 and 1877 respectively, and the American Library Association was founded in Philadelphia. In 1879 Index Medicus was first issued by the Library of the Surgeon General, U.S     Sony VAIO PCG-8Z2L Battery .

Army, with John Shaw Billings as librarian, and later the library issues Index Catalogue, which achieved an international reputation as the most complete catalog of medical literature     WD passport essential (500GB/640GB) .

European documentation

The discipline of European Documentation, which marks the earliest theoretical foundations of modern information science, emerged in the late part of the 19th Century together with several more scientific indexes whose purpose was to organize scholarly literature   WD passport essential (250GB/320GB) .

Most information science historians cite Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine as the fathers of information science with the founding of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) in 1895. A second generation of European Documentalists emerged after the Second World War, most notably Suzanne Briet     WD  passport essential SE (750GB/1TB) .

However, "information science" as a term is not popularly used in academia until sometime in the latter part of the 20th Century.

Documentalists emphasized the utilitarian integration of technology and technique toward specific social goals  WD  passport elite(250GB/320GB) .

According to Ronald Day, "As an organized system of techniques and technologies, documentation was understood as a player in the historical development of global organization in modernity – indeed, a major player inasmuch as that organization was dependent on the organization and transmission of information    WD passport elite(500GB/640GB) ."

Otlet and Lafontaine (who won the Nobel Prize in 1913) not only envisioned later technical innovations but also projected a global vision for information and information technologies that speaks directly to postwar visions of a global "information society  WD  passport studio for Mac(320GB/500GB) .

" Otlet and Lafontaine established numerous organizations dedicated to standardization, bibliography, international associations, and consequently, international cooperation. These organizations were fundamental for ensuring international production in commerce     WD  passport studio for Mac(500GB/640GB) ,

information, communication and modern economic development, and they later found their global form in such institutions as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Otlet designed the Universal Decimal Classification, based onMelville Dewey’s decimal classification system    WD  Elements series(250GB/320GB) .

Although he lived decades before computers and networks emerged, what he discussed prefigured what ultimately became the World Wide Web. His vision of a great network of knowledge focused ondocuments and included the notions of hyperlinks, search engines, remote access, and social networks    WD  Elements SE(500GB/640GB) .

Otlet not only imagined that all the world's knowledge should be interlinked and made available remotely to anyone, but he also proceeded to build a structured document collection      WD Elements SE(750GB/1TB) .

This collection involved standardized paper sheets and cards filed in custom-designed cabinets according to a hierarchical index (which culled information worldwide from diverse sources) and a commercial information retrieval service (which answered written requests by copying relevant information from index cards)     WD  Elements desktop(500GB/640GB) .

Users of this service were even warned if their query was likely to produce more than 50 results per search. By 1937 documentation had formally been institutionalized, as evidenced by the founding of the American Documentation Institute (ADI), later called the American Society for Information Science and Technology         WD  Elements desktop(750GB/1TB) .

Transition to modern information science

With the 1950s came increasing awareness of the potential of automatic devices for literature searching and information storage and retrieval. As these concepts grew in magnitude and potential, so did the variety of information science interests  WD  Elements desktop(1.5 TB/2TB) .

By the 1960s and 70s, there was a move from batch processing to online modes, from mainframe to mini and microcomputers. Additionally, traditional boundaries among disciplines began to fade and many information science scholars joined with library programs     WD  passport essential SE (750GB/1TB)--USB 3.0)       .

They further made themselves multidisciplinary by incorporating disciplines in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as other professional programs, such as law and medicine in their curriculum. By the 1980s, large databases, such as Grateful Med at the National Library of Medicine      WD  passport essential (500GB/640GB) ,

and user-oriented services such as Dialog and Compuserve, were for the first time accessible by individuals from their personal computers. The 1980s also saw the emergence of numerous special interest groups to respond to the changes. By the end of the decade, special interest groups were available involving non-print media  WD  passport for Mac(320GB/500GB) ,

social sciences, energy and the environment, and community information systems. Today, information science largely examines technical bases, social consequences, and theoretical understanding of online databases, widespread use of databases in government, industry, and education, and the development of the Internet and World Wide Web   WD  passport for Mac(640GB/1TB) .

Just about any gadget that keeps track of the time will have a battery.

How much you know about batteries and what they do? Test your knowledge with our Batteries Quiz  (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery)  !

In your computer (as well as other gadgets), the battery powers a chip called the Real Time Clock (RTC) chip. The RTC is essentially a quartz watch that runs all the time, whether or not the computer has power. The battery powers this clock. When the computer boots up, part of the process is to query the RTC to get the correct time and date  (Dell Studio XPS 1640 Battery)  .

A little quartz clock like this might run for five to seven years off of a small battery. Then it is time to replace the battery.

This does not explain why your computer would not boot, however. You would expect the computer to boot fine but have an incorrect time and date  (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery)   .

The reason your computer would not boot is because the RTC chip also contains 64 (or more) bytes of random access memory (RAM). The clock uses 10 bytes of this space, leaving 54 bytes for other purposes. The BIOS stores all sorts of information in the CMOS RAM area, like the number of floppy and hard disk drives, the hard disk drive type, etc  (Dell KM958 battery)   .

If the CMOS RAM loses power, the computer may not know anything about the hard disk configuration of your machine, and therefore it cannot boot.

Many more modern computers are not quite so dependent on the CMOS RAM  (Sony VGP-BPS13 battery)    .

They store the settings in non-volatile RAM that works without any power at all. If the battery goes dead, the clock fails but the computer can still boot using the information in the non-volatile RAM area  (Sony VGP-BPS13/B battery)     .

What is the difference between a normal lead-acid car battery and a deep cycle battery?

People who have recreational vehicles (RVs) and boats are familiar with deep cycle batteries. These batteries are also common in golf carts and large solar power systems (the sun produces power during the day and the batteries store some of the power for use at night)  (Sony VGP-BPS13/S battery)    .

If you have read the article How Emergency Power Systems Work, then you also know that an alternative to gasoline-powered generators is an inverter powered by one or more deep cycle batteries  (Sony VGP-BPS13A/B battery)   .

Both car batteries and deep cycle batteries are lead-acid batteries that use exactly the same chemistry for their operation (see How Batteries Work for more information). The difference is in the way that the batteries optimize their design  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)     :

A car's battery is designed to provide a very large amount of current for a short period of time. This surge of current is needed to turn the engine over during starting. Once the engine starts, the alternator provides all the power that the car needs, so a car battery may go through its entire life without ever being drained more than 20 percent of its total capacity (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery)   .

Used in this way, a car battery can last a number of years. To achieve a large amount of current, a car battery uses thin plates in order to increase its surface area.

A deep cycle battery is designed to provide a steady amount of current over a long period of time (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)   .

A deep cycle battery can provide a surge when needed, but nothing like the surge a car battery can. A deep cycle battery is also designed to be deeply discharged over and over again (something that would ruin a car battery very quickly). To accomplish this, a deep cycle battery uses thicker plates  (Sony VGP-BPL15 battery)   .

A car battery typically has two ratings:

CCA (Cold Cranking Amps) - The number of amps that the battery can produce at 32 degrees F (0 degrees C) for 30 seconds (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery) .

RC (Reserve Capacity) - The number of minutes that the battery can deliver 25 amps while keeping its voltage above 10.5 volts

Typically, a deep cycle battery will have two or three times the RC of a car battery, but will deliver one-half or three-quarters the CCAs  (Dell Latitude E6400 battery)      .

In addition, a deep cycle battery can withstand several hundred total discharge/recharge cycles, while a car battery is not designed to be totally discharged.

How do the battery testers on battery packages work?

The little disposable battery testers that you see on batteries or battery packages are a great example of combined technologies -- several existing technologies have been combined in a completely new way  (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery)  !

Battery testers depend on two special types of ink: thermochromic and conductive inks. Thermochromic ink changes color depending on its temperature. Conductive ink can conduct electricity. By applying layers of these special inks along with a layer of normal ink using a fairly normal printing press  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ Battery)   ,

it is possible to create an extremely inexpensive printed design that changes depending on the amount of electricity it receives.

There are two types of thermochromic ink: liquid crystal and leucodye. Liquid crystal based thermochromic ink is sensitive to very small changes in temperature, but it is fairly difficult to manufacture  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ18 Battery) .

This makes it perfect for use in items like thermometers where you need the sensitivity, but troublesome in an item that needs to be inexpensive and in which a large, abrupt change in temperature will occur. Leucodyes are specially formulated substances that change from a specific color  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ180E Battery)    ,

like blue, to a clear state when subjected to a temperature change of about 5 degrees F or more. Thermochromic inks can be formulated to change color at specific temperatures. For battery testers, the desired temperature is usually around 100-120 degrees F  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ220E Battery)    .

To create a battery tester, you start with a layer of conductive ink that gets progressively narrower as you move across the tester from "good" to "bad." In the picture above the tester has 3 bars. In other testers the ink is wedge-shaped. The narrowest point indicates the weakest charge; the widest area indicates a full charge  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ340E Battery)  .

When current passes through the thin layer of conductive ink, resistance in the ink creates heat. A small amount of current can generate enough heat to affect the smallest area of thermochromic ink; but, as the area widens, more current is needed to change colors  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ430E Battery)     .

On top of the conductive ink is a layer of normal ink that conveys the design. In most battery testers, this is some type of "fuel gauge" graphic or text that indicates that a battery is good. The design can be anything, since the normal ink layer does not affect the way the conductive and thermochromic layers interact  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ460E Battery)      .

Finally, there is the thermochromic layer. In the photo of the battery tester above, the thermochromic layer is black when cool. By touching a battery to the conductive ink on the back of the paper, a connection between the positive and negative terminals is created  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ480E Battery)   .

As a current is generated, the thermochromic ink will turn clear. This reveals the design that is printed in normal ink. If there is enough current, most or all of the thermochromic ink will heat to the temperature needed to become translucent.

One question you might have right now is, "Doesn't the battery tester drain some of the battery's energy?" The answer is, "yes, but not enough to matter." If you tested the battery every 5 minutes it might be a problem, but most people don't do that  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ4000 Battery)  .

One type of battery tester available now has the tester right on the battery. You press two small dots indicated on the battery to test it. These points complete a circuit between the battery and the tester, and electricity flows through the conductive ink in the same way as in the tester discussed above (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31E Battery)     .

the different ways to store energy besides using rechargeable batteries

Human beings have been looking for a good way to store energy for a long time. One of the major things that has been holding up electric cars is battery technology -- when you compare batteries to gasoline, the differences are huge  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31B Battery)     .

For example, a typical electric car might carry 1,000 pounds (454 kg) of lead-acid batteries. Those batteries take several hours to recharge, and might give the car a 100-mile (160-km) range. Two or 3 gallons of gasoline give the same range, weigh less than 30 pounds (13 kg), and you can pump that much gasoline in about a minute  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31J Battery)        .

Quiz Corner

How much you know about batteries and what they do? Test your knowledge with our Batteries Quiz!

Here is a list of other technologies that people commonly use to store energy. Some of these work in an electric car, while others are better for stationary applications  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31M Battery)  :

One of the oldest techniques people have used is the falling weight. You lift the weight to store the energy in it and then let the weight fall to extract the energy. Many grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks use this technique. By running the string attached to the weights through a gear train, you can use a heavy weight and let it fall over a long period of time   (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31Z Battery) .

(See How Pendulum Clocks Work.) This approach doesn't work very well in an electric car, but it has worked well in clocks for hundreds of years  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ38M Battery)  .

Many power plants use the "falling weight" approach in the form of water. The water is pumped uphill to a lake at night when the power plant has excess capacity. During high-demand daytime periods, the water runs through a turbine on its way downhill to a lower lake. (See How Hydropower Plants Work  SONY VGP-BPS8 Battery .)

Another way to store energy is in some form of repeatable mechanical deformation. This is the idea behind a spring used in a wind-up clock or a rubber band used in a wind-up airplane. You store the energy by bending (deforming) the material in a spring, and the material releases the energy as it returns to its original shape  SONY VGP-BPS13 Battery .

At the scale of a car, this technology has problems because of the weight of the spring, but at smaller scales (like a wristwatch) it works great. See also this page for an interesting example.

Nature has been storing energy for a long time, and if you want to think about it in this way, gasoline is really a form of stored energySONY VGP-BPS13/S Battery .

Plants absorb sunlight and turn it into carbohydrates (see How Food Works for a discussion of carbohydrates). Over millions of years, these carbohydrates can turn into oil or coal. On a more human time scale, we burn wood (which is a carbohydrate) to release stored energy, or turn corn into alcohol and burn the alcohol  SONY VGP-BPS13A/B Battery .

Another technique that nature uses to store energy is fat, which many of us are familiar with in a personal way. It is interesting to think about a car that somehow eats grass or some other carbohydrate and stores it as fat  SONY VGP-BPS13B/B Battery .

You can take energy and split water into its hydrogen and oxygen atoms using electrolysis. By storing the hydrogen and oxygen in tanks, you can later create energy by burning it, or (more efficiently) by running it through a fuel cell (see How Fuel Cells Work)  SONY VGP-BPS13A/S Battery .

You can use the energy to spin up a flywheel and then later extract the energy by using the flywheel to run a generator. This patent has lots of information.

You can store heat directly and later convert the heat to another form of energy like electricity  SONY VGP-BPS13AS Battery .

This page discusses some of NASA's experiments in this area.

You can use compressed air to store energy. Toys like the Air Hog store energy in this way. Compressing gases like nitrogen enough produces liquid nitrogen, and this page talks about how you can use liquid nitrogen to power a car  (Dell Inspiron 1320n Battery)     .

One of the new technologies that may become available in the future involves antimatter. When you combine normal matter with antimatter, you get energy. You store the energy by creating the antimatter. This page talks about it a bit.

Right now, none of these techniques can hold a candle (another form of stored energy!) to gasoline in the convenience sense (Dell Inspiron 1464 Battery)  .

Fuel cells using methanol look to be the closest competitor right now, and will probably become available to the general public over the next few years.

different ways to store energy besides using rechargeable batteries

Human beings have been looking for a good way to store energy for a long time  (Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery)   .

One of the major things that has been holding up electric cars is battery technology -- when you compare batteries to gasoline, the differences are huge. For example, a typical electric car might carry 1,000 pounds (454 kg) of lead-acid batteries. Those batteries take several hours to recharge, and might give the car a 100-mile (160-km) range  (Dell Inspiron 1764 Battery)  .

Two or 3 gallons of gasoline give the same range, weigh less than 30 pounds (13 kg), and you can pump that much gasoline in about a minute.

Quiz Corner

How much you know about batteries and what they do? Test your knowledge with our Batteries Quiz  (Dell Studio 1450 Battery) !

Here is a list of other technologies that people commonly use to store energy. Some of these work in an electric car, while others are better for stationary applications:

One of the oldest techniques people have used is the falling weight (Dell Studio 1457 Battery)  .

You lift the weight to store the energy in it and then let the weight fall to extract the energy. Many grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks use this technique. By running the string attached to the weights through a gear train, you can use a heavy weight and let it fall over a long period of time  (Dell Latitude D610 Battery)   .

(See How Pendulum Clocks Work.) This approach doesn't work very well in an electric car, but it has worked well in clocks for hundreds of years.

Many power plants use the "falling weight" approach in the form of water (Toshiba NB100 Battery)   .

The water is pumped uphill to a lake at night when the power plant has excess capacity. During high-demand daytime periods, the water runs through a turbine on its way downhill to a lower lake. (See How Hydropower Plants Work.)

Another way to store energy is in some form of repeatable mechanical deformation (Toshiba Satellite M65 battery)      .

This is the idea behind a spring used in a wind-up clock or a rubber band used in a wind-up airplane. You store the energy by bending (deforming) the material in a spring, and the material releases the energy as it returns to its original shape. At the scale of a car, this technology has problems because of the weight of the spring, but at smaller scales (like a wristwatch) it works great  (Toshiba Satellite M60 battery) .

See also this page for an interesting example.

Nature has been storing energy for a long time, and if you want to think about it in this way, gasoline is really a form of stored energy. Plants absorb sunlight and turn it into carbohydrates (see How Food Works for a discussion of carbohydrates) (Dell Latitude D830 Battery) .

Over millions of years, these carbohydrates can turn into oil or coal. On a more human time scale, we burn wood (which is a carbohydrate) to release stored energy, or turn corn into alcohol and burn the alcohol.

Another technique that nature uses to store energy is fat, which many of us are familiar with in a personal way  (Dell Latitude D620 Battery) .

It is interesting to think about a car that somehow eats grass or some other carbohydrate and stores it as fat!

You can take energy and split water into its hydrogen and oxygen atoms using electrolysis. By storing the hydrogen and oxygen in tanks, you can later create energy by burning it, or (more efficiently) by running it through a fuel cell (see How Fuel Cells Work) (Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Battery)   .

You can use the energy to spin up a flywheel and then later extract the energy by using the flywheel to run a generator. This patent has lots of information.

You can store heat directly and later convert the heat to another form of energy like electricity  (Sony VGN-FW11S Battery)  .

This page discusses some of NASA's experiments in this area.

You can use compressed air to store energy. Toys like the Air Hog store energy in this way. Compressing gases like nitrogen enough produces liquid nitrogen, and this page talks about how you can use liquid nitrogen to power a car   (Sony VGN-FW11M Battery)  .

One of the new technologies that may become available in the future involves antimatter. When you combine normal matter with antimatter, you get energy. You store the energy by creating the antimatter. This page talks about it a bit.

Right now, none of these techniques can hold a candle (another form of stored energy!) to gasoline in the convenience sense  (Sony VGN-FW139E/H battery)  .

Fuel cells using methanol look to be the closest competitor right now, and will probably become available to the general public over the next few years.

With the rise in portable devices such as laptops, cell phones, MP3 players and cordless power tools, the need for rechargeable batteries has grown substantially in recent years  (Dell Latitude E5400 Battery)    .

The concept of the rechargeable battery has been around since 1859, when French physicist Gaston Plante invented the lead acid cell, which would later become the world's first rechargeable battery. That same chemistry is still used in today's car battery (Dell Latitude E4200 Battery)     .

The basic idea behind the rechargeable battery is simple: when electrical energy is applied to the battery, the electron flow from negative to positive that occurs during discharge is reversed and power is restored (Dell Vostro A840 Battery)   .

This requires an adapter in the case of devices with built-in batteries or for standard nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal hydride batteries, the most common multi-use rechargeable batteries used today in your remote control, flashlight or digital camera  (Dell Inspiron 300M Battery)      .

Car batteries are one of the oldest kinds of rechargeable batteries and in fact, the electric car predates its gas-powered cousin. In a standard car, there is a single lead-acid SLI battery that supplies power to the starter, lights and ignition system. The battery charger in this case is the alternator, a clever device that converts gasoline power to electrical energy and distributes it where needed  (Dell Studio 1737 battery)  .

In electric and hybrid cars, traction batteries are used to power the vehicle down the road. Traction batteries come in many varieties, from lead acid, to nickel-cadmium, nickel metal hydride and lithium ion.

The recharging rate has improved substantially over the years and is broken down into three categories  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery)   :

Slow: 14-16 hours

Quick: 3-6 hours

Fast: Less than one hour

The rate of charge is determined by how much electrical current is allowed into the battery by the charger  (Dell RM791 battery)  .

Some batteries can handle higher voltage in a shorter amount of time without overheating, while others need a lesser voltage applied over a longer period of time. The quicker the rate of charge, the more chance there is of over charging, which can ruin a battery's chance of holding its charge  (Dell XPS M1530 battery) .

The key in avoiding an over charge is the ability to dissipate the charging current once maximum power has been reached. Most chargers have built-in voltage regulators do this, allowing you to safely leave your cell phone or computer plugged in overnight.

The speed and effectiveness of the charge depends largely on the quality of the charger itself  (Dell XPS M2010 battery)  .

Chargers vary in performance based on the price tag and like most products you get what you pay for. Chargers are generally designed for specific cell chemistries, although newer universal chargers have sensors built in that identify the cell type and react appropriately     (Acer Aspire One battery)     .

There are also smart chargers that use a microprocessor to monitor temperature, voltage and state of charge, which is the percentage of power available compared to its full capacity.

One common problem in nickel-cadmium rechargeable batteries is something known as the memory effect (Toshiba Satellite P10 Battery)       .

This is when the battery is continually recharged before it has discharged more than 50 percent of its power, causing it to essentially forget that it could fully discharge to begin with. Memory effect is caused by the formation of hard-to-dissolve cadmium crystals deep within the battery     (SONY VGN-FZ210CE Battery)    .

Cadmium crystals are an unavoidable by-product of discharge; the trick is to keep them small enough to be reformed as cadmium during the charging process. When a battery is not fully discharged, the crystals deep within the battery are not affected by the influx of electrical current, so they are not reformed as cadmium and can grow into the troublesome larger cadmium crystals  (Dell Precision M70 Battery)  .

The battery will still function normally, but is maxed out at 50 percent. The memory effect can be avoided by fully cycling the battery once every two to three weeks by allowing it to discharge completely, and then fully recharge.

It's important to remember that no battery, rechargeable or otherwise, will last forever   (Toshiba Satellite L305 Battery)  .

All batteries suffer from aging cells and the longer they are used, the less capacity they ultimately will have. Rechargeable batteries are still a great way to save money and reduce waste     (Toshiba Satellite T4900 Battery)      .

New Battery Technology Helps Stimulate Nerves

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2005) — MADISON -- With the help of new silicon-based compounds, scientists -- and patients -- are getting a significant new charge out of the tiny lithium batteries used in implantable devices to help treat nervous system and other disorders (Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery)      .

The lithium battery is the workhorse in implantable devices -- stimulators used to jump start the heart and help the central nervous system make critical connections in, for example, Parkinson's and epilepsy patients     (Toshiba Satellite A200 Battery)   .

Designed to be extraordinarily reliable and work continuously for years, the tiny batteries that power implantables are indispensable in everything from pacemakers to the electronic stimulators that help restore function in the brains of Parkinson's patients  (Toshiba Satellite 1200 Battery)      .

But lithium batteries don't last forever and new surgery to maintain many devices seeded into the body is required, as it is to replace batteries and devices at the end of their lives     (Toshiba Satellite M300 Battery)    .

Moreover, a new generation of tiny electrical devices to stimulate the nervous system, treat incontinence and overcome muscular impairment is coming on line as scientists and engineers continue to shrink the components that make up the devices  (Sony Vaio PCG-5G2L Battery)    .

Central to that ability, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Emeritus of chemistry Robert West, is new lithium battery technology, technology capable of making batteries smaller, last longer and, soon, accept a charge from outside the body without the need for surgery  Sony Vaio PCG-5G3L Battery .

Using organosilicon compounds, West and his UW-Madison colleagues have developed a new generation of rechargeable lithium ion batteries whose lifetimes are more than twice as long as the batteries now used in the tiny medical devices  Sony Vaio PCG-5J1L Battery .

"It turns out the organosilicon compounds are really good for improving lithium battery technology," says West, whose new battery technology powers a "microstimulater" not much larger than a pencil lead and that can be injected near target nerves to help overcome the faulty nervous system wiring at the heart of Parkinson's, epilepsy and incontinence  Sony Vaio PCG-5K2L Battery .

"The idea is that whenever you have a broken nerve connection, you can supply the electrical impulse to complete the circuit," West explains.

The microstimulator was developed by a consortium including UW-Madison's Organosilicon Research Center, Argonne National Laboratory, Advanced Bionics Corp., the Alfred Mann Foundation and Quallion, LLC  Sony Vaio PCG-5J2L Battery .

The device was recognized earlier this year with an "R&D 100 Award" from R&D Magazine.

West's group developed the electrolyte, the electricity-conducting liquid that is the heart of the battery. The new organosilicon compounds developed by the Wisconsin chemists, says West, have numerous advantages over traditional lithium battery chemistry.

"They're very flexible. They don't solidify  Sony Vaio PCG-5K1L Battery .

They're stable, nonflammable, non-toxic and they pose no threat to the environment," says West, an international authority on silicon chemistry. Silicon, the stuff computer chips are made of, is one of the Earth's most abundant elements. Organosilicons are compounds composed of silicon and other natural materials    Sony Vaio PCG-5L1L Battery .

In the context of the lithium battery, West's group has been making and testing "designer silicons" that are specially formulated to conduct electricity in a very compact environment. In the lithium battery, charge is maintained as lithium ions flow between the battery's positive and negative electrodes     Sony Vaio PCG-6S2L Battery .

"The battery requires something the ions can go through easily. We had to tweak the (organosilicon) molecules to get higher conductivity and stability," says West.

A critical advantage of the new battery technology is lifespan  Sony Vaio PCG-6S3L Battery :

"If you're going to implant these things, you want a (battery) lifetime of at least 10 years," says West, whose organosilicon batteries are projected to power the tiny implantable devices for more than 12 years.

In addition to implantable devices for medicine, lithium batteries are used in scores of applications, from spacecraft to iPods  Sony Vaio PCG-6V1L Battery .

Patented through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the new organosilicon compound technology is also being developed through a new start-up company, Polyron, Inc. The work to develop the new organosilicon compounds was funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology  Sony Vaio PCG-6W1L Battery ,

a federal technology agency that works with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements and standards

Battery Reactions and Chemistry

In any battery, an electrochemical reaction occurs like the ones described on the previous page  Sony Vaio PCG-6W2L Battery .

This reaction moves electrons from one pole to the other. The actual metals and electrolytes used control the voltage of the battery -- each different reaction has a characteristic voltage. For example, here's what happens in one cell of a car's lead-acid battery Sony Vaio PCG-6W3L Battery :

The cell has one plate made of lead and another plate made of lead dioxide, with a strong sulfuric acid electrolyte in which the plates are immersed.

Lead combines with SO4 (sulfate) to create PbSO4 (lead sulfate), plus one electron  Sony Vaio PCG-7111L Battery .

Lead dioxide, hydrogen ions and SO4 ions, plus electrons from the lead plate, create PbSO4 and water on the lead dioxide plate.

As the battery discharges, both plates build up PbSO4 and water builds up in the acid. The characteristic voltage is about 2 volts per cell, so by combining six cells you get a 12-volt battery  Sony Vaio PCG-7112L Battery .

A lead-acid battery has a nice feature -- the reaction is completely reversible. If you apply current to the battery at the right voltage, lead and lead dioxide form again on the plates so you can reuse the battery over and over. In a zinc-carbon battery, there is no easy way to reverse the reaction because there is no easy way to get hydrogen gas back into the electrolyte Sony Vaio PCG-7113L Battery .

Modern Battery Chemistry
Modern batteries use a variety of chemicals to power their reactions. Typical battery chemistries include:

Zinc-carbon battery - Also known as a standard carbon battery, zinc-carbon chemistry is used in all inexpensive AA, C and D dry-cell batteries  Sony Vaio PCG-7133L Battery .

The electrodes are zinc and carbon, with an acidic paste between them that serves as the electrolyte.

Alkaline battery - Alkaline chemistry is used in common Duracell and Energizer batteries, the electrodes are zinc and manganese-oxide, with an alkaline electrolyte     Sony Vaio PCG-7Z1L Battery .

Lithium-iodide battery - Lithium-iodide chemistry is used in pacemakers and hearing aides because of their long life.

Lead-acid battery - Lead-acid chemistry is used in automobiles, the electrodes are made of lead and lead-oxide with a strong acidic electrolyte (rechargeable)    Sony Vaio PCG-7Z2L Battery .

Nickel-cadmium battery - The electrodes are nickel-hydroxide and cadmium, with potassium-hydroxide as the electrolyte (rechargeable).

Nickel-metal hydride battery - This battery is rapidly replacing nickel-cadmium because it does not suffer from the memory effect that nickel-cadmiums do (rechargeable)      Sony Vaio PCG-8Y1L Battery .

Lithium-ion battery - With a very good power-to-weight ratio, this is often found in high-end laptop computers and cell phones (rechargeable).

Zinc-air battery - This battery is lightweight and rechargeable     Sony Vaio PCG-8Y2L Battery .

Zinc-mercury oxide battery - This is often used in hearing-aids.

Silver-zinc battery - This is used in aeronautical applications because the power-to-weight ratio is good  Sony Vaio PCG-8Z1L Battery .

As you can see, several of these batteries are rechargeable. What makes a battery rechargeable? In the next section, we'll check out how rechargeable batteries work.

How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death        Sony Vaio PCG-8Z2L Battery

In the last two parts of this series, I covered the factors of temperature and charging. While the high temperatures inside modern laptops are probably the worst enemy of a Li-ion battery, frequent discharge/charge cycles will negatively influence a battery’s life. If your laptop is a desktop replacement, then you probably only need the battery every now and then  Sony VAIO PCG-5G2L Battery.

It can be quite frustrating if you want to use your laptop for the first time after a year without AC, only to realize that your batteries are already dead even though you never really used them. However, if you remove the battery from the laptop and store it accurately, there is a good chance that it will be in good condition when you need it next time  Sony VAIO PCG-5G3L Battery .

Don’t store a battery that is almost empty. Stored batteries continue losing energy, albeit at a much slower pace. If the stored battery is totally discharged, it could be destroyed  Sony VAIO PCG-5J1L Battery .

Don’t store a fully charged battery. Fully charged batteries deteriorate faster than half-charged batteries. Most articles I’ve read recommended storing laptop batteries with a 40–60% charge  Sony VAIO PCG-5K2L Battery .

Store the battery at a low temperature. I usually put it in the fridge. It keeps my battery fresh and crisp. Check out this table at Wikipedia. 0°C (32°F) seems to be the best storage temperature. I wouldn’t put the battery in the freezer even though Li-ion batteries only freeze at approximately ?40°C  Sony VAIO PCG-5J2L Battery .

Store the battery in a dry place. A moist environment will accelerate discharging the battery  Sony VAIO PCG-5K1L Battery

Universal Laptop Battery Buying Tips

Most people own more than one laptop unit and of different brands. Owning a universal laptop battery seems to be the most convenient way to have when you travel as it allows you to use it with any laptop computer unit when your power supply is running out   Sony VAIO PCG-5L1L Battery .

It is true that taking care of your laptop battery is a priority as your mobile computer will be useless with a defective battery on it. There is a need to ensure that it works properly in order not to hamper your convenient usage of your notebook. Proper care of your laptop requires its storage in moderate temperature which is neither too cold not too hot  Sony VAIO PCG-6S2L Battery .

Your laptop battery will be short of power once it is cold and it will not discharge fast when it is hot. You need to frequently charge your battery to ensure it to be fully functioning well.

Going for a universal battery for laptops allows it to work on different models, brand, and units  Sony VAIO PCG-6S3L Battery .

There are varieties of choices available in most computer shops and online stores. But do know what type of universal battery to buy for your laptop?

One issue with laptop batteries is the danger of explosion    Sony VAIO PCG-6V1L Battery .

It may rarely happen but it does happen and anyone could be at risk when using poor quality battery for their laptops. Take note that lithium ion laptop batteries, which are commonly used in the market could explode owing to its cobalt oxide content.

Consideration may be directed also by choosing a laptop that is smaller in size such as ultra portable or light weight laptops  Sony VAIO PCG-6W1L Battery .

They have smaller LCD and it uses less power. It has a hard drive that runs only about 4200 rpm which uses less power than those than run at 5400 rpm. This makes your laptop battery drain less quickly    Sony VAIO PCG-6W2L Battery .

Universal batteries for laptop use are available in different types according to the size of your laptop. A friend bought a nickel metal laptop battery which is suitable for her small size notebook. I want to buy one myself however I was advised it is not suitable for my laptop which is 16 inches    Sony VAIO PCG-6W3L Battery .

The most suitable one is the ED369 battery which is best for laptops that are 13 inches or more in size and when one uses a lot of external devices that requires more battery power. This battery provides 2 to 3 hours of power supply in normal conditions. Simply plug it into the AC adapter of the laptop and it is ready to use    Sony VAIO PCG-7111L Battery .

When buying a battery for your laptop always consider the size of your computer and the average consumption of power. You can choose from variable output voltage. Voltage of 16 and 19 v DC are enough to supply most laptops  Sony VAIO PCG-7112L Battery .

How to Keep Your Laptop Battery in Good Working Condition

Most laptop batteries just don't last as long as they should because the rightful owner doesn't take the necessary steps to keep it operating properly  Sony VAIO PCG-7113L Battery .

Just a few normal maintenance of the laptop battery can certainly make a big difference in how long your battery will last both in short term life span and long term as well. Here are a few tips on how to take care of your battery to ensure you get the absolute most out of it  Sony VAIO PCG-7133L Battery .

The first point to consider is the fact that you should never use or store your battery in very extreme conditions. For instance, never leave your laptop in the trunk of your car when it is either freezing out or in the middle of a hot summer day. You shouldn't even leave it in your car period     Sony VAIO PCG-7Z1L Battery .

Make sure it is only used in room temperature conditions and also away from humid and wet conditions like those that exist in a steamy shower or bathroom.

If you are in the market for a laptop that only has a long lasting battery, consider buying one that is smaller and lighter in weight  Sony VAIO PCG-7Z2L Battery .

These ultra thin or compact laptops generally will last longer than their bigger and bulkier counterparts.

Be aware as well that you can always adjust the power settings in your control panel to make the battery last longer  Sony VAIO PCG-8Y1L Battery .

You will of course be somewhat limited in the functions that your computer can process and it will also operate at a much lower speed than normal.

There is an easy way to clean your battery so that it doesn't develop any rust or debris  Sony VAIO PCG-8Y2L Battery .

Simply take a cotton swab or Q-tip with a dab of rubbing alcohol and gently wipe off all of the connectors. Make sure to completely dry the battery before you ever attempt putting it back in the computer.

Every few weeks you want to make sure to drain your battery completely and then let it charge up all the way  Sony VAIO PCG-8Z1L Battery .

This is just a natural process that your battery needs to go through in order to maintain its long battery lifespan.

If all else fails and your laptops battery just isn't lasting as long as it should, it may then be time to think about just buying a new battery    Sony VAIO PCG-8Z2L Battery .

I always do a search online to find a suitable battery for my laptop. Ordering from the manufacturer itself will ensure that you do in fact get the right battery that will work properly in your laptop. If you end up getting the wrong battery, it could ultimately damage or completely ruin your laptop      WD passport essential (500GB/640GB) .

So always be careful and know what you are buying before you spend any money.

For even more great information about Replacement Laptop Batteries, visit Wade's new Laptop Power Adapters website. Learn about how to find the right batteries and adapters to fit your specific laptop     WD passport essential (250GB/320GB) .

The term computer system security means the collective processes and mechanisms by which sensitive and valuable information and services are protected from publication, tampering or collapse by unauthorized activities or untrustworthy individuals and unplanned events respectively (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery)    .

The strategies and methodologies of computer security often differ from most other computer technologies because of its somewhat elusive objective of preventing unwanted computer behavior instead of enabling wanted computer behavior  (Dell Studio XPS 1640 Battery)      .

Security by design

The technologies of computer security are based on logic. As security is not necessarily the primary goal of most computer applications, designing a program with security in mind often imposes restrictions on that program's behavior (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery)     .

There are 4 approaches to security in computing, sometimes a combination of approaches is valid:

1. Trust all the software to abide by a security policy but the software is not trustworthy (this is computer insecurity) (Dell KM958 battery)    .
2. Trust all the software to abide by a security policy and the software is validated as trustworthy (by tedious branch and path analysis for example).
3. Trust no software but enforce a security policy with mechanisms that are not trustworthy (again this is computer insecurity) (Sony VGP-BPS13 battery)     .
4. Trust no software but enforce a security policy with trustworthy hardware mechanisms.

Many systems have unintentionally resulted in the first possibility. Since approach two is expensive and non-deterministic, its use is very limited. Approaches one and three lead to failure  (Sony VGP-BPS13/B battery)   .

Because approach number four is often based on hardware mechanisms and avoids abstractions and a multiplicity of degrees of freedom, it is more practical. Combinations of approaches two and four are often used in a layered architecture with thin layers of two and thick layers of four  (Sony VGP-BPS13/S battery)     .

There are various strategies and techniques used to design security systems. However there are few, if any, effective strategies to enhance security after design. One technique enforces the principle of least privilege to great extent, where an entity has only the privileges that are needed for its function  (Sony VGP-BPS13A/B battery)    .

That way even if an attacker gains access to one part of the system, fine-grained security ensures that it is just as difficult for them to access the rest  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)      .

Furthermore, by breaking the system up into smaller components, the complexity of individual components is reduced, opening up the possibility of using techniques such as automated theorem proving to prove the correctness of crucial software subsystems  (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery)   .

This enables a closed form solution to security that works well when only a single well-characterized property can be isolated as critical, and that property is also assessible to math. Not surprisingly, it is impractical for generalized correctness, which probably cannot even be defined, much less proven  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)    .

Where formal correctness proofs are not possible, rigorous use of code review and unit testing represent a best-effort approach to make modules secure.

The design should use "defense in depth", where more than one subsystem needs to be violated to compromise the integrity of the system and the information it holds (Sony VGP-BPL15 battery)   .

Defense in depth works when the breaching of one security measure does not provide a platform to facilitate subverting another. Also, the cascading principle acknowledges that several low hurdles does not make a high hurdle. So cascading several weak mechanisms does not provide the safety of a single stronger mechanism  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery)   .

Subsystems should default to secure settings, and wherever possible should be designed to "fail secure" rather than "fail insecure" (see fail-safe for the equivalent in safety engineering). Ideally, a secure system should require a deliberate, conscious, knowledgeable and free decision on the part of legitimate authorities in order to make it insecure  (Dell Latitude E6400 battery)   .

In addition, security should not be an all or nothing issue. The designers and operators of systems should assume that security breaches are inevitable. Full audit trails should be kept of system activity, so that when a security breach occurs, the mechanism and extent of the breach can be determined  (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery)   .

Storing audit trails remotely, where they can only be appended to, can keep intruders from covering their tracks. Finally, full disclosure helps to ensure that when bugs are found the "window of vulnerability" is kept as short as possible  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ Battery) .

Security architecture

Security Architecture can be defined as the design artifacts that describe how the security controls (security countermeasures) are positioned, and how they relate to the overall information technology architecture  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ18 Battery) .

These controls serve the purpose to maintain the system's quality attributes, among them confidentiality, integrity, availability, accountability and assurance." .

Hardware mechanisms that protect computers and data  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ180E Battery)

Hardware based or assisted computer security offers grrtrnative to software-only computer security. Devices such as dongles may be considered more secure due to the physical access required in order to be compromised .

Secure operating systems

One use of the term computer security refers to technology to implement a secure operating system  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ220E Battery) .

Much of this technology is based on science developed in the 1980s and used to produce, may be some of the most impenetrable operating systems ever. Though still valid, the technology is in limited use today, primarily because it imposes some changes to system management and also because it is not widely understood  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ340E Battery)   .

Such ultra-strong secure operating systems are based on operating system kernel technology that can guarantee that certain security policies are absolutely enforced in an operating environment. An example of such a Computer security policy is the Bell-LaPadula model  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ430E Battery)     .

The strategy is based on a coupling of special microprocessor hardware features, often involving thememory management unit, to a special correctly implemented operating system kernel. This forms the foundation for a secure operating system which, if certain critical parts are designed and implemented correctly, can ensure the absolute impossibility of penetration by hostile elements (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ460E Battery)   .

This capability is enabled because the configuration not only imposes a security policy, but in theory completely protects itself from corruption. Ordinary operating systems, on the other hand, lack the features that assure this maximal level of security. The design methodology to produce such secure systems is precise, deterministic and logical  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ480E Battery)  .

Systems designed with such methodology represent the state of the art of computer security although products using such security are not widely known. In sharp contrast to most kinds of software, they meet specifications with verifiable certainty comparable to specifications for size, weight and power  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ4000 Battery)     .

Secure operating systems designed this way are used primarily to protect national security information, military secrets, and the data of international financial institutions. These are very powerful security tools and very few secure operating systems have been certified at the highest level (Orange Book A-1) to operate over the range of "Top Secret" to "unclassified" (including Honeywell SCOMP, USAF SACDIN, NSA Blacker and Boeing MLS LAN  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31E Battery)    .)

The assurance of security depends not only on the soundness of the design strategy, but also on the assurance of correctness of the implementation, and therefore there are degrees of security strength defined for COMPUSEC. The Common Criteria quantifies security strength of products in terms of two components, security functionality and assurance level (such as EAL levels) (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31B Battery)   ,

and these are specified in aProtection Profile for requirements and a Security Target for product descriptions. None of these ultra-high assurance secure general purpose operating systems have been produced for decades or certified under the Common Criteria (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31J Battery)     .

In USA parlance, the term High Assurance usually suggests the system has the right security functions that are implemented robustly enough to protect DoD and DoE classified information. Medium assurance suggests it can protect less valuable information, such as income tax information  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31M Battery)  .

Secure operating systems designed to meet medium robustness levels of security functionality and assurance have seen wider use within both government and commercial markets. Medium robust systems may provide the same security functions as high assurance secure operating systems but do so at a lower assurance level (such as Common Criteria levels EAL4 or EAL5) (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31Z Battery)  .

Lower levels mean we can be less certain that the security functions are implemented flawlessly, and therefore less dependable. These systems are found in use on web servers, guards, database servers, and management hosts and are used not only to protect the data stored on these systems but also to provide a high level of protection for network connections and routing services (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ38M Battery)    .

Secure coding

If the operating environment is not based on a secure operating system capable of maintaining a domain for its own execution, and capable of protecting application code from malicious subversion, and capable of protecting the system from subverted code, then high degrees of security are understandably not possible SONY VGP-BPS8 Battery .

While such secure operating systems are possible and have been implemented, most commercial systems fall in a 'low security' category because they rely on features not supported by secure operating systems (like portability, et al.). In low security operating environments, applications must be relied on to participate in their own protection SONY VGP-BPS13 Battery .

There are 'best effort' secure coding practices that can be followed to make an application more resistant to malicious subversion.

In commercial environments, the majority of software subversion vulnerabilities result from a few known kinds of coding defects. Common software defects include buffer overflows, format string vulnerabilities, integer overflow, and code/command injectionSONY VGP-BPS13/S Battery .

It is to be immediately noted that all of the foregoing are specific instances of a general class of attacks, where situations in which putative "data" actually contains implicit or explicit, executable instructions are cleverly exploited  SONY VGP-BPS13A/B Battery .

Some common languages such as C and C++ are vulnerable to all of these defects (see Seacord, "Secure Coding in C and C++"). Other languages, such as Java, are more resistant to some of these defects, but are still prone to code/command injection and other software defects which facilitate subversion  SONY VGP-BPS13B/B Battery .

Recently another bad coding practice has come under scrutiny; dangling pointers. The first known exploit for this particular problem was presented in July 2007. Before this publication the problem was known but considered to be academic and not practically exploitable  SONY VGP-BPS13A/S Battery .

Unfortunately, there is no theoretical model of "secure coding" practices, nor is one practically achievable, insofar as the variety of mechanisms are too wide and the manners in which they can be exploited are too variegated SONY VGP-BPS13AS Battery .

It is interesting to note, however, that such vulnerabilities often arise from archaic philosophies in which computers were assumed to be narrowly disseminated entities used by a chosen few, all of whom were likely highly educated, solidly trained academics with naught but the goodness of mankind in mind  (Dell Inspiron 1320n Battery)    .

Thus, it was considered quite harmless if, for (fictitious) example, a FORMAT string in a FORTRAN program could contain the J format specifier to mean "shut down system after printing." After all, who would use such a feature but a well-intentioned system programmer? It was simply beyond conception that software could be deployed in a destructive fashion  (Dell Inspiron 1464 Battery) .

It is worth noting that, in some languages, the distinction between code (ideally, read-only) and data (generally read/write) is blurred. In LISP, particularly, there is no distinction whatsoever between code and data, both taking the same form  (Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery)  :

an S-expression can be code, or data, or both, and the "user" of a LISP program who manages to insert an executable LAMBDA segment into putative "data" can achieve arbitrarily general and dangerous functionality. Even something as "modern" as Perl offers the eval() function, which enables one to generate Perl code and submit it to the interpreter, disguised as string data  (Dell Inspiron 1764 Battery)       .

Capabilities and access control lists

Within computer systems, two security models capable of enforcing privilege separation are access control lists (ACLs) and capability-based security. The semantics of ACLs have been proven to be insecure in many situations, e.g., the confused deputy problem  (Dell Studio 1450 Battery)    .

It has also been shown that the promise of ACLs of giving access to an object to only one person can never be guaranteed in practice. Both of these problems are resolved by capabilities. This does not mean practical flaws exist in all ACL-based systems, but only that the designers of certain utilities must take responsibility to ensure that they do not introduce flaws  (Dell Studio 1457 Battery)       .

Capabilities have been mostly restricted to research operating systems and commercial OSs still use ACLs. Capabilities can, however, also be implemented at the language level, leading to a style of programming that is essentially a refinement of standard object-oriented design. An open source project in the area is the E language  (Dell Latitude D610 Battery)   .

First the Plessey System 250 and then Cambridge CAP computer demonstrated the use of capabilities, both in hardware and software, in the 1970s. A reason for the lack of adoption of capabilities may be that ACLs appeared to offer a 'quick fix' for security without pervasive redesign of the operating system and hardware  (Toshiba NB100 Battery)  .

The most secure computers are those not connected to the Internet and shielded from any interference. In the real world, the most security comes from operating systems where security is not an add-on  (Toshiba Satellite M65 battery)   .

Applications

Computer security is critical in almost any technology-driven industry which operates on computer systems. Computer security can also be referred to as computer safety. The issues of computer based systems and addressing their countless vulnerabilities are an integral part of maintaining an operational industry  (Toshiba Satellite M60 battery) .

Cloud computing Security

Security in the cloud is challenging , due to varied degree of security features and management schemes within the cloud entitites. In this connection one logical protocol base need to evolve so that the entire gamet of components operate synchronously and securely (Dell Latitude D830 Battery) .

In aviation

The aviation industry is especially important when analyzing computer security because the involved risks include human life, expensive equipment, cargo, and transportation infrastructure  (Dell Latitude D620 Battery)   .

Security can be compromised by hardware and software malpractice, human error, and faulty operating environments. Threats that exploit computer vulnerabilities can stem from sabotage, espionage, industrial competition, terrorist attack, mechanical malfunction, and human error  (Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Battery)    .

The consequences of a successful deliberate or inadvertent misuse of a computer system in the aviation industry range from loss of confidentiality to loss of system integrity, which may lead to more serious concerns such as data theft or loss, network and air traffic control outages, which in turn can lead to airport closures, loss of aircraft, loss of passenger life  (Sony VGN-FW11S Battery) .

Military systems that control munitions can pose an even greater risk.

A proper attack does not need to be very high tech or well funded; for a power outage at an airport alone can cause repercussions worldwide   (Sony VGN-FW11M Battery)    .

One of the easiest and, arguably, the most difficult to trace security vulnerabilities is achievable by transmitting unauthorized communications over specific radio frequencies. These transmissions may spoof air traffic controllers or simply disrupt communications altogether  (Sony VGN-FW139E/H battery)   .

These incidents are very common, having altered flight courses of commercial aircraft and caused panic and confusion in the past. Controlling aircraft over oceans is especially dangerous because radar surveillance only extends 175 to 225 miles offshore. Beyond the radar's sight controllers must rely on periodic radio communications with a third party (Dell Latitude E5400 Battery) .

Lightning, power fluctuations, surges, brown-outs, blown fuses, and various other power outages instantly disable all computer systems, since they are dependent on an electrical source. Other accidental and intentional faults have caused significant disruption of safety critical systems throughout the last few decades and dependence on reliable communication and electrical power only jeopardizes computer safety  (Dell Latitude E4200 Battery)   .

Notable system accidents

In 1994, over a hundred intrusions were made by unidentified crackers into the Rome Laboratory, the US Air Force's main command and research facility. Using trojan horse viruses, hackers were able to obtain unrestricted access to Rome's networking systems and remove traces of their activities  (Dell Vostro A840 Battery)   .

The intruders were able to obtain classified files, such as air tasking order systems data and furthermore able to penetrate connected networks of National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, some Defense contractors, and other private sector organizations, by posing as a trusted Rome center user  (Dell Inspiron 300M Battery) .

Electromagnetic interference is another threat to computer safety and in 1989, a United States Air Force F-16 jet accidentally dropped a 230 kg bomb in West Georgia after unspecified interference caused the jet's computers to release it  (Dell Studio 1737 battery)   .

Computer security policy

United States

Cybersecurity Act of 2010

On April 1, 2009, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced the "Cybersecurity Act of 2009 - S. 773" (full text) in the Senate  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery) ;

the bill, co-written with Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), was referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which approved a revised version of the same bill (the "Cybersecurity Act of 2010") on March 24, 2010  (Dell RM791 battery)    .

The bill seeks to increase collaboration between the public and the private sector on cybersecurity issues, especially those private entities that own infrastructures that are critical to national security interests (the bill quotes John Brennan, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism  (Dell XPS M1530 battery)     :

"our nation’s security and economic prosperity depend on the security, stability, and integrity of communications and information infrastructure that are largely privately-owned and globally-operated" and talks about the country's response to a "cyber-Katrina" .), increase public awareness on cybersecurity issues, and foster and fund cybersecurity research  (Dell XPS M2010 battery)     .

Some of the most controversial parts of the bill include Paragraph 315, which grants the President the right to "order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network  (Acer Aspire One battery)   .

" The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States, characterized the bill as promoting a "potentially dangerous approach that favors the dramatic over the sober response" (Toshiba Satellite P10 Battery) .

International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act

On March 25, 2010, Representative Yvette Clarke (D-NY) introduced the "International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act - H.R.4962" (full text) in the House of Representatives; the bill, co-sponsored by seven other representatives (among whom only one Republican), was referred to three House committees  (SONY VGN-FZ210CE Battery)  .

The bill seeks to make sure that the administration keeps Congressinformed on information infrastructure, cybercrime, and end-user protection worldwide. It also "directs the President to give priority for assistance to improve legal, judicial, and enforcement capabilities with respect to cybercrime to countries with low information and communications technology levels of development or utilization in their critical infrastructure (Dell Precision M70 Battery) ,

telecommunications systems, and financial industries"  as well as to develop an action plan and an annual compliance assessment for countries of "cyber concern".

Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 ("Kill switch bill")

On June 19, 2010, United States Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) introduced a bill called "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 - S.3480" (full text in pdf) (Toshiba Satellite L305 Battery)   ,

which he co-wrote with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE). If signed into law, this controversial bill, which the American media dubbed the "Kill switch bill", would grant the President emergency powers over the Internet. However, all three co-authors of the bill issued a statement claiming that instead, the bill "  existing broad Presidential authority to take over telecommunications networks"  (Toshiba Satellite T4900 Battery)  .

Terminology

The following terms used in engineering secure systems are explained below.

• Authentication techniques can be used to ensure that communication end-points are who they say they are  (Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery)    .
• Automated theorem proving and other verification tools can enable critical algorithms and code used in secure systems to be mathematically proven to meet their specifications.
• Capability and access control list techniques can be used to ensure privilege separation and mandatory access control. This section discusses their use  (Toshiba Satellite A200 Battery)     .
• Chain of trust techniques can be used to attempt to ensure that all software loaded has been certified as authentic by the system's designers.
• Cryptographic techniques can be used to defend data in transit between systems, reducing the probability that data exchanged between systems can be intercepted or modified   (Toshiba Satellite 1200 Battery)        .
• Firewalls can provide some protection from online intrusion.

• A microkernel is a carefully crafted, deliberately small corpus of software that underlies the operating system per se and is used solely to provide very low-level, very precisely defined primitives upon which an operating system can be developed. A simple example with considerable didactic value is the early '90s GEMSOS (Gemini Computers) (Toshiba Satellite M300 Battery)  ,
• which provided extremely low-level primitives, such as "segment" management, atop which an operating system could be built. The theory (in the case of "segments") was that—rather than have the operating system itself worry about mandatory access separation by means of military-style labeling  (Sony Vaio PCG-5G2L Battery)
• —it is safer if a low-level, independently scrutinized module can be charged solely with the management of individually labeled segments, be they memory "segments" or file system "segments" or executable text "segments." If software below the visibility of the operating system is (as in this case) charged with labeling  Sony Vaio PCG-5G3L Battery,
• there is no theoretically viable means for a clever hacker to subvert the labeling scheme, since the operating system per sedoes not provide mechanisms for interfering with labeling: the operating system is, essentially, a client (an "application," arguably) atop the microkernel and, as such, subject to its restrictions  Sony Vaio PCG-5J1L Battery .

• Endpoint Security software helps networks to prevent data theft and virus infection through portable storage devices, such as USB drives.

Some of the following items may belong to the computer insecurity article:

• Access authorization restricts access to a computer to group of users through the use of authentication systems Sony Vaio PCG-5K2L Battery .
• These systems can protect either the whole computer – such as through an interactive logon screen – or individual services, such as an FTP server. There are many methods for identifying and authenticating users, such as passwords, identification cards, and, more recently, smart cards and biometric systems  Sony Vaio PCG-5J2L Battery .
• Anti-virus software consists of computer programs that attempt to identify, thwart and eliminate computer viruses and other malicious software (malware) Sony Vaio PCG-5K1L Battery .
• Applications with known security flaws should not be run. Either leave it turned off until it can be patched or otherwise fixed, or delete it and replace it with some other application. Publicly known flaws are the main entry used by worms to automatically break into a system and then spread to other systems connected to it Sony Vaio PCG-5L1L Battery .
• The security website Secunia provides a search tool for unpatched known flaws in popular products.
• Backups are a way of securing information; they are another copy of all the important computer files kept in another location. These files are kept on hard disks, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and tapes  Sony Vaio PCG-6S2L Battery .
• Suggested locations for backups are a fireproof, waterproof, and heat proof safe, or in a separate, offsite location than that in which the original files are contained. Some individuals and companies also keep their backups in safe deposit boxes inside bank vaults  Sony Vaio PCG-6S3L Battery .
• There is also a fourth option, which involves using one of the file hosting services that backs up files over the Internet for both business and individuals  Sony Vaio PCG-6V1L Battery .
  • Backups are also important for reasons other than security. Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or tornadoes, may strike the building where the computer is located. The building can be on fire, or an explosion may occur  Sony Vaio PCG-6W1L Battery .
  • There needs to be a recent backup at an alternate secure location, in case of such kind of disaster. Further, it is recommended that the alternate location be placed where the same disaster would not affect both locations Sony Vaio PCG-6W2L Battery .
  • Examples of alternate disaster recovery sites being compromised by the same disaster that affected the primary site include having had a primary site in World Trade Center I and the recovery site in 7 World Trade Center, both of which were destroyed in the 9/11 attack  Sony Vaio PCG-6W3L Battery ,
  • and having one's primary site and recovery site in the same coastal region, which leads to both being vulnerable to hurricane damage (e.g. primary site in New Orleans and recovery site in Jefferson Parish, both of which were hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005)  Sony Vaio PCG-7111L Battery .
  • The backup media should be moved between the geographic sites in a secure manner, in order to prevent them from being stolen  Sony Vaio PCG-7112L Battery .

Cryptographic techniques involve transforming information, scrambling it so it becomes unreadable during transmission. The intended recipient can unscramble the message, but eavesdroppers cannot  Sony Vaio PCG-7113L Battery .

• Encryption is used to protect the message from the eyes of others. Cryptographically secure ciphers are designed to make any practical attempt of breaking infeasible  Sony Vaio PCG-7133L Battery .
• Symmetric-key ciphers are suitable for bulk encryption using shared keys, and public-key encryption usingdigital certificates can provide a practical solution for the problem of securely communicating when no key is shared in advance  Sony Vaio PCG-7Z1L Battery .
• Firewalls are systems which help protect computers and computer networks from attack and subsequent intrusion by restricting the network traffic which can pass through them, based on a set of system administrator defined rules Sony Vaio PCG-7Z2L Battery .
• Honey pots are computers that are either intentionally or unintentionally left vulnerable to attack by crackers. They can be used to catch crackers or fix vulnerabilities  Sony Vaio PCG-8Y1L Battery .
• Intrusion-detection systems can scan a network for people that are on the network but who should not be there or are doing things that they should not be doing, for example trying a lot of passwords to gain access to the network  Sony Vaio PCG-8Y2L Battery .
• Pinging The ping application can be used by potential crackers to find if an IP address is reachable. If a cracker finds a computer, they can try a port scan to detect and attack services on that computer  Sony Vaio PCG-8Z1L Battery .
• Social engineering awareness keeps employees aware of the dangers of social engineering and/or having a policy in place to prevent social engineering can reduce successful breaches of the network and servers  Sony Vaio PCG-8Z2L Battery .
• File Integrity Monitors are tools used to detect changes in the integrity of systems and files.

Computer insecurity

Many current computer systems have only limited security precautions in place. This computer insecurity article describes the current battlefield of computer security exploits and defenses  Sony VAIO PCG-5G2L Battery .

Please see the computer security article for an alternative approach, based on security engineering principles.

Security and systems design

Many current real-world computer security efforts focus on external threats, and generally treat the computer system itself as a trusted system  Sony VAIO PCG-5G3L Battery .

Some knowledgeable observers consider this to be a disastrous mistake, and point out that this distinction is the cause of much of the insecurity of current computer systems — once an attacker has subverted one part of a system without fine-grained security, he or she usually has access to most or all of the features of that system   Sony VAIO PCG-5J1L Battery .

Because computer systems can be very complex, and cannot be guaranteed to be free of defects, thissecurity stance tends to produce insecure systems.

Financial cost

Serious financial damage has been caused by computer security breaches, but reliably estimating costs is quite difficult Sony VAIO PCG-5K2L Battery .

Figures in the billions of dollars have been quoted in relation to the damage caused by malware such as computer worms like the Code Red worm, but such estimates may be exaggerated. However, other losses, such as those caused by the compromise of credit cardinformation  Sony VAIO PCG-5J2L Battery ,

can be more easily determined, and they have been substantial, as measured by millions of individual victims of identity theft each year in each of several nations, and the severe hardship imposed on each victim, that can wipe out all of their finances, prevent them from getting a job, plus be treated as if they were the criminal  Sony VAIO PCG-5K1L Battery .

Volumes of victims of phishing and other scams may not be known.

Individuals who have been infected with spyware or malware likely go through a costly and time-consuming process of having their computer cleaned  Sony VAIO PCG-5L1L Battery .

Spyware is considered to be a problem specific to the various Microsoft Windows operating systems , however this can be partially explained by the fact that Microsoft controls a major share of the PC market and thus represents the most prominent target  Sony VAIO PCG-6S2L Battery .

Reasons

There are many similarities (yet many fundamental differences) between computer and physical security. Just like real-world security, the motivations for breaches of computer security vary between attackers, sometimes called hackers or crackers. Some are thrill-seekers or vandals (the kind often responsible for defacing web sites) Sony VAIO PCG-6S3L Battery ;

similarly, some web site defacements are done to make political statements. However, some attackers are highly skilled and motivated with the goal of compromising computers for financial gain or espionage. An example of the latter is Markus Hess (more diligent than skilled)  Sony VAIO PCG-6V1L Battery ,

who spied for the KGB and was ultimately caught because of the efforts of Clifford Stoll, who wrote a memoir, The Cuckoo's Egg, about his experiences  Sony VAIO PCG-6W1L Battery .

For those seeking to prevent security breaches, the first step is usually to attempt to identify what might motivate an attack on the system, how much the continued operation and information security of the system are worth, and who might be motivated to breach it  Sony VAIO PCG-6W2L Battery .

The precautions required for a home PC are very different for those of banks' Internet banking system, and different again for a classified military network. Other computer security writers suggest that, since an attacker using a network need know nothing about you or what you have on your computer, attacker motivation is inherently impossible to determine beyond guessing Sony VAIO PCG-6W3L Battery .

If true, blocking all possible attacks is the only plausible action to take.

Vulnerabilities

To understand the techniques for securing a computer system, it is important to first understand the various types of "attacks" that can be made against it  Sony VAIO PCG-7111L Battery .

These threats can typically be classified into one of these seven categories:

Exploits

An exploit (from the same word in the French language, meaning "achievement", or "accomplishment") is a piece of software, a chunk of data   Sony VAIO PCG-7112L Battery ,

or sequence of commands that take advantage of a software 'bug' or 'glitch' in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic (usually computerized). This frequently includes such things as gaining control of a computer system or allowing privilege escalation or a denial of service attack  Sony VAIO PCG-7113L Battery .

Many development methodologies rely on testing to ensure the quality of any code released; this process often fails to discover unusual potential exploits. The term "exploit" generally refers to small programs designed to take advantage of a software flaw that has been discovered, either remote or local  Sony VAIO PCG-7133L Battery .

The code from the exploit program is frequently reused in trojan horses and computer viruses. In some cases, a vulnerability can lie in certain programs' processing of a specific file type, such as a non-executable media file. Some security web sites maintain lists of currently known unpatched vulnerabilities found in common programs (see "External links" below) Sony VAIO PCG-7Z1L Battery .

Eavesdropping

Eavesdropping is the act of surreptitiously listening to a private conversation, typically between hosts on a network. Even machines that operate as a closed system (i.e., with no contact to the outside world) can be eavesdropped upon via monitoring the faint electro-magnetic transmissions generated by the hardware such as TEMPEST  Sony VAIO PCG-7Z2L Battery .

The FBI's proposed Carnivore program was intended to act as a system of eavesdropping protocols built into the systems of internet service providers.

Social engineering and human error

A computer system is no more secure than the human systems responsible for its operation  Sony VAIO PCG-8Y1L Battery .

Malicious individuals have regularly penetrated well-designed, secure computer systems by taking advantage of the carelessness of trusted individuals, or by deliberately deceiving them, for example sending messages that they are the system administrator and asking for passwords  Sony VAIO PCG-8Y2L Battery .

This deception is known as Social engineering.

Denial-of-service attack

Unlike other exploits, denial of service attacks are not used to gain unauthorized access or control of a system. They are instead designed to render it unusable  Sony VAIO PCG-8Z1L Battery .

Attackers can deny service to individual victims, such as by deliberately entering a wrong password 3 consecutive times and thus causing the victim account to be locked, or they may overload the capabilities of a machine or network and block all users at onceSony VAIO PCG-8Z2L Battery .

These types of attack are, in practice, very hard to prevent, because the behavior of whole networks needs to be analyzed, not only the behaviour of small pieces of code.Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are common, where a large number of compromised hosts (commonly referred to as "zombie computers", used as part of a botnet with, for example WD passport essential (500GB/640GB) ;

aworm, trojan horse, or backdoor exploit to control them.) are used to flood a target system with network requests, thus attempting to render it unusable through resource exhaustion. Another technique to exhaust victim resources is through the use of an attack amplifier   WD passport essential (250GB/320GB) —

where the attacker takes advantage of poorly designed protocols on 3rd party machines, such as FTP or DNS, in order to instruct these hosts to launch the flood. There are also commonly found vulnerabilities in applications that cannot be used to take control over a computer, but merely make the target application malfunction or crash  WD  passport essential SE (750GB/1TB)   .

This is known as a denial-of-service exploit.

Indirect attacks

An indirect attack is an attack launched by a third party computer  WD  passport elite(250GB/320GB) .

By using someone else's computer to launch an attack, it becomes far more difficult to track down the actual attacker. There have also been cases where attackers took advantage of public anonymizing systems, such as the tor onion router system WD passport elite(500GB/640GB) .

Backdoors

A backdoor in a computer system (or cryptosystem or algorithm) is a method of bypassing normal authentication, securing remote access to a computer, obtaining access to plaintext, and so on, while attempting to remain undetected  WD  passport studio for Mac(320GB/500GB) .

The backdoor may take the form of an installed program (e.g., Back Orifice), or could be a modification to an existing program or hardware device. A specific form of backdoors are rootkits, which replaces system binaries and/or hooks into the function calls of the operating system to hide the presence of other programs, users, services and open ports  WD  passport studio for Mac(500GB/640GB) .

It may also fake information about disk and memory usage.

Direct access attacks

Someone who has gained access to a computer can install any type of devices to compromise security, including operating system modifications, software worms, key loggers, and covert listening devices  WD  Elements series(250GB/320GB) .

The attacker can also easily download large quantities of data onto backup media, for instance CD-R/DVD-R, tape; or portable devices such as keydrives, digital cameras or digital audio players. Another common technique is to boot an operating system contained on a CD-ROM or other bootable media and read the data from the harddrive(s) this way  WD  Elements SE(500GB/640GB) .

The only way to defeat this is to encrypt the storage media and store the key separate from the system.

See also: Category:Cryptographic attacks

Reducing vulnerabilities

Computer code is regarded by some as a form of mathematics  WD Elements SE(750GB/1TB) .

It is theoretically possible to prove the correctness of certain classes of computer programs, though the feasibility of actually achieving this in large-scale practical systems is regarded as small by some with practical experience in the industry — seeBruce Schneier et al  WD  Elements desktop(500GB/640GB) .

It's also possible to protect messages in transit (i.e., communications) by means of cryptography. One method of encryption — the one-time pad — is unbreakable when correctly used. This method was used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, though flaws in their implementation allowed some cryptanalysis (See Venona Project)  WD  Elements desktop(750GB/1TB) .

The method uses a matching pair of key-codes, securely distributed, which are used once-and-only-once to encode and decode a single message. For transmitted computer encryption this method is difficult to use properly (securely), and highly inconvenient as well  WD  Elements desktop(1.5 TB/2TB) .

Other methods of encryption, while breakable in theory, are often virtually impossible to directly break by any means publicly known today. Breaking them requires some non-cryptographic input, such as a stolen key, stolen plaintext (at either end of the transmission), or some other extra cryptanalytic information  WD  passport essential SE (750GB/1TB)--USB 3.0)   .

Social engineering and direct computer access (physical) attacks can only be prevented by non-computer means, which can be difficult to enforce, relative to the sensitivity of the information. Even in a highly disciplined environment, such as in military organizations, social engineering attacks can still be difficult to foresee and prevent  WD  passport essential (500GB/640GB) .

In practice, only a small fraction of computer program code is mathematically proven, or even goes through comprehensive information technology audits or inexpensive but extremely valuable computer security audits, so it's usually possible for a determined hacker to read  WD  passport for Mac(320GB/500GB) ,

copy, alter or destroy data in well secured computers, albeit at the cost of great time and resources. Few attackers would audit applications for vulnerabilities just to attack a single specific system. It is possible to reduce an attacker's chances by keeping systems up to date, using a security scanner or/and hiring competent people responsible for security  WD  passport for Mac(640GB/1TB) .

The effects of data loss/damage can be reduced by careful backing up and insurance.

Security measures

A state of computer "security" is the conceptual ideal, attained by the use of the three processes:

1. Prevention  My book essential 4 generation  (640GB/1TB)
2. Detection
3. Response

• User account access controls and cryptography can protect systems files and data, respectively  WD  My book essential 4 generation( 1.5TB/2TB) .
• Firewalls are by far the most common prevention systems from a network security perspective as they can (if properly configured) shield access to internal network services, and block certain kinds of attacks through packet filtering  WD  My book elite( 1TB/1.5TB) .
• Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS's) are designed to detect network attacks in progress and assist in post-attack forensics, while audit trails and logs serve a similar function for individual systems  WD  My book studio(1TB/2TB) .
• "Response" is necessarily defined by the assessed security requirements of an individual system and may cover the range from simple upgrade of protections to notification of legal authorities, counter-attacks, and the like  WD  My book essential 4 generation( 1.5TB/2TB) .
• In some special cases, a complete destruction of the compromised system is favored, as it may happen that not all the compromised resources are detected   WD  My book elite(640GB/2TB) .

Today, computer security comprises mainly "preventive" measures, like firewalls or an Exit Procedure. A firewall can be defined as a way of filtering network data between a host or a network and another network, such as the Internet, and can be implemented as software running on the machine  Seagate  expansion portable (320GB/500GB) ,

hooking into the network stack (or, in the case of most UNIX-based operating systems such asLinux, built into the operating system kernel) to provide realtime filtering and blocking. Another implementation is a so called physical firewall which consists of a separate machine filtering network traffic  Seagate  expansion (1.5TB/2TB) .

Firewalls are common amongst machines that are permanently connected to the Internet. However, relatively few organisations maintain computer systems with effective detection systems, and fewer still have organised response mechanisms in place  Seagate  Freeagent Desktop (500GB/1TB) .

Difficulty with response

Responding forcefully to attempted security breaches (in the manner that one would for attempted physical security breaches) is often very difficult for a variety of reasons  Seagate  Freeagent Go(250GB/320GB) :

• Identifying attackers is difficult, as they are often in a different jurisdiction to the systems they attempt to breach, and operate through proxies, temporary anonymous dial-up accounts, wireless connections, and other anonymising procedures which make backtracing difficult and are often located in yet another jurisdiction  Seagate  Freeagent Go(500GB/640GB) .
• If they successfully breach security, they are often able to deletelogs to cover their tracks.
• The sheer number of attempted attacks is so large that organisations cannot spend time pursuing each attacker (a typical home user with a permanent (e.g., cable modem) connection will be attacked at least several times per day, so more attractive targets could be presumed to see many more)  Seagate  Freeagent Go(750GB/1TB) .
• Note however, that most of the sheer bulk of these attacks are made by automated vulnerability scanners and computer worms.
• Law enforcement officers are often unfamiliar with information technology, and so lack the skills and interest in pursuing attackers  Seagate  Freeagent Goflex(250GB/320GB) .
• There are also budgetary constraints. It has been argued that the high cost of technology, such as DNA testing, and improved forensics mean less money for other kinds of law enforcement, so the overall rate of criminals not getting dealt with goes up as the cost of the technology increases  Seagate Freeagent Goflex(500GB/640GB) .
• In addition, the identification of attackers across a network may require logs from various points in the network and in many countries, the release of these records to law enforcement Seagate  Freeagent Goflex(750GB/1TB)
• (with the exception of being voluntarily surrendered by a network administrator or a system administrator) requires a search warrant and, depending on the circumstances, the legal proceedings required can be drawn out to the point where the records are either regularly destroyed, or the information is no longer relevant Seagate  Freeagent Goflex Pro(500GB/750GB) Seagate  Freeagent Goflex desktop(1TB/2TB).

Get the Most Out of Your Laptop's Battery

A Gizmo addict acknowledges that the most unprotected component of their laptop is purely and simply the battery. Although nearly all of the laptop battery producers brag of producing batteries which are capable of lasting for up to five to six hours, they neglect to stress that such life can be afforded solely when you apply it in the most idealistic stipulations (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) http://www.hdd-shop.co.uk .

Therefore our batteries come up short of supplying our laptops with the necessary power more and more often. The cause is simplistic - we do not recognise how to use it judiciously to lengthen its life.The following tips are aimed at helping you get the most out of your battery  (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery)    .

1. Apply the Power-Saving Option

All laptops have a power-saving setting in the control panel. Applying this setting assists to cease the uninvited use of varied parts such as the disc drive, screen etc. In addition to bringing down the time limit for your screensaver approximately one minute aids a lot  (Dell Studio XPS 1640 Battery)    .

2. No Externals

Do not use a mouse with your laptop, use the built in one instead this reduces the usage on your battery. Another tip is to use headphones as they take up less power than your laptops speakers.. (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery)

3. Turn Off the Internet

If your laptop has wi-fi then, when you're not using it, turn it off so its not using your battery trying to find a connection you're not using  (Dell KM958 battery)  .

4. Daily Defragmentation

Daily defragmentation of the hard disc has 2 visible benefits. First, it accelerates your processor, and second, it keeps all the files in order reducing the time in locating files (Sony VGP-BPS13 battery)  .

5. Shut Down Processes

You're not compelled to use all the processes whilst using your laptop. So shut down all the processes which bring an uninvited load on the laptop  (Sony VGP-BPS13/B battery)     .

6. Clean the Battery

Keep cleaning, applying a cotton bud, the metal contacts of your battery at least once a month. Getting rid of the dirt betters the flow of energy  (Sony VGP-BPS13/S battery)    .

How to Replace a Toshiba Laptop Battery

1. Purchase a replacement battery for your Toshiba laptop model. To be sure you have the right battery, go to Toshiba's laptop battery finder website, or another laptop battery site with a good search feature (Sony VGP-BPS13A/B battery) .
2. Step 2

Turn off and unplug the laptop.

1. Step 3

Battery compartment with latches on a Toshiba Satellite  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)

Turn your laptop upside-down, so you are looking at the underside of the laptop. Locate the battery. The size and location will vary depending on the model of the laptop, but it is generally a large, square or rectangular area with one or two latches that lock it in (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery)  .

1. Step 4

Unlock the switches and slide the battery out.

1. Step 5

Place the new battery in the same way you pulled the old one out, and secure the latches  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)  .

Microsoft investigates laptop battery drain with Windows 7

One of the Windows Vista problems that Windows 7 was supposed to solve was the drain on laptop battery life, but while Windows 7 has made a number of significant improvements, Microsoft is now investigating reports its new operating system reduces battery life even more dramatically when installed on some laptops (Sony VGP-BPL11 battery)  .

Users have reported on Microsoft's TechNet forum reductions in battery life from two hours down to 30 minutes or less, with batteries failing to recharge fully. The battery life appears to decline over a short period, with another forum poster reporting the battery life dropped from 45 minutes to 15 or less over a couple of weeks  (Sony VGP-BPL15 battery)   .

Some Windows 7 users claim their laptop batteries have been permanently damaged by drainage problems occurring after they installed the new operating system. Other users report the appearance of error messages suggesting they replace their laptop battery, even though it had been working well before the installation  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery)   .

Microsoft said it was investigating the issue in collaboration with their hardware partners. A spokesman said the problem of the error message appears to be related to the firmware (BIOS), since Windows 7 uses data derived from firmware to determine if the battery needs to be replaced  (Dell Latitude E6400 battery)     .

Battery problems were noted by some users during the Windows 7 beta testing period, especially by those using Netbooks, but the complaints began to pour in after the official release of Windows 7 for general consumers in October last year  (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery)    .

Microsoft announced last Thursday it has so far sold about 60 million Windows 7 licenses, but it is unclear at present what proportion of users is affected by the battery drainage problems. Microsoft said it would update its TechNet forum as soon as the root cause has been identified, and will post information and guidance when it is available  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ Battery)   .

The Microsoft TechNet forum and community is intended to support IT users of Microsoft products.

Smaller And More Efficient Nuclear Battery Created

Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ18 Battery)     .

University of Missouri researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient.

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“To provide enough power, we need certain methods with high energy density,” said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ180E Battery)    .

 

“The radioisotope battery can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries.”

Kwon and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, currently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS)  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ220E Battery)  .

Although nuclear batteries can pose concerns, Kwon said they are safe.

“People hear the word ‘nuclear’ and think of something very dangerous,” he said. “However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace-makers, space satellites and underwater systems  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ340E Battery)  .”

His innovation is not only in the battery’s size, but also in its semiconductor. Kwon’s battery uses a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ430E Battery)       .

“The critical part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor,” Kwon said. “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ460E Battery)      .”

Kwon has been collaborating with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, and is working to build and test the battery at the facility. In the future, they hope to increase the battery’s power, shrink its size and try with various other materials  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ480E Battery)      .

Kwon said that the battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair. They’ve also applied for a provisional patent.

Kwon’s research has been published in the Journal of Applied Physics Letters and Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ4000 Battery)   .

Silicon-Coated Nanonets Could Build a Better Lithium-Ion Battery

A tiny scaffold-like titanium structure of Nanonets coated with silicon particles could pave the way for faster, lighter and longer-lasting Lithium-ion batteries, according to a team of Boston College chemists who developed the new anode material using nanotechnology  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31E Battery)     .

The web-like Nanonets developed in the lab of Boston College Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dunwei Wang offer a unique structural strength, more surface area and greater conductivity, which produced a charge/re-charge rate five to 10 times greater than typical Lithium-ion anode material  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31B Battery)   ,

a common component in batteries for a range of consumer electronics, according to findings published in the current online edition of the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.

In addition, the Nanonets proved exceptionally durable, showing a negligible drop-off in capacity during charge and re-charge cycles  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31J Battery)    .

The researchers observed an average of 0.1% capacity fade per cycle between the 20th and the 100th cycles.

"As researchers pursue the next generation of re-chargeable Lithium-ion battery technology, a premium has been placed on increased power and a greater battery life span," said Wang  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31M Battery)   .

"In that context, the Nanonet device makes a giant leap toward those two goals and gives us a superior anode material."

Lithium-ion batteries are commonly used in consumer electronics devices. This type of rechargeable battery allows Lithium ions to move from the anode electrode to the cathode when in use  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31S Battery)    .

When charged, the ions move from cathode back to the anode.

The structure and conductivity of the Nanonets improved the ability to insert and extract Lithium ions from the particulate Silicon coating, the team reported  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31Z Battery)    .

Running at a charge/discharge rate of 8,400 milliamps per gram (mA/g) -- which is approximately five to 10 times greater than similar devices -- the specific capacity of the material was greater than 1,000 milliamps-hour per gram (mA-h/g) (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ38M Battery)       .

Typically, laptop Lithium-ion batteries are rated anywhere between 4,000 and 12,000 mA/h, meaning it would only take between four and 12 grams of the Nanonet anode material to achieve similar capacity  (SONY VGP-BPS8 Battery)  .

Wang said the capability to preserve the crystalline Titanium Silicon core during the charge/discharge process was the key to achieving the high performance of the Nanonet anode material. Additional research in his lab will examine the performance of the Nanonet as a cathode material  (SONY VGP-BPS13 Battery)       .

Battery Of The Future: New Storage Material Improves Energy Density Of Lithium-Ion Battery

High-performance energy storage technologies for the automotive industry or mobile phone batteries and notebooks providing long battery times -- these visions of the future are being brought one step nearer by scientists from Graz University of Technology SONY VGP-BPS13/S Battery .

Researchers at the Institute for Chemistry and Technology of Materials have developed a new method that utilises silicon for lithium-ion batteries. Its storage capacity is ten times higher than the graphite substrate which has been used up to now, and promises considerable improvements for users  SONY VGP-BPS13A/B Battery .

The new findings -- which came to light in the "NanoPoliBat" EU project -- have been recently submitted to the patent office by researchers together with their co-operation partner Varta Microbattery  SONY VGP-BPS13B/B Battery .

Modern electronic devices need more energy and even the automotive industry is hankering after increasingly powerful energy storage systems. The technological development of battery research has been inadequate for some time now. "A real revolution is needed for the development of the next generation  SONY VGP-BPS13A/S Battery .

We need new storage materials for lithium-ion batteries," explains battery researcher Stefan Koller, who is familiar with the topic from his doctoral thesis. Together with colleagues from science and industry, he has managed to develop such a substrate material for electrochemical reactions at a low price  SONY VGP-BPS13AS Battery .

Silicon gel on graphite

In the newly developed process, researchers utilise a silicon-containing gel and apply it to the graphite substrate material. "In this way the graphite works as a buffer, cushioning the big changes in volume of the silicon during the uptake and transfer of lithium ions," explains Koller  (Dell Inspiron 1320 Battery)  .

Silicon has a lithium-ion storage capacity some ten times higher than the up-to-now commercially used graphite. The new material can thus store more than double the quantity of lithium ions without changes to the battery lifetime  (Dell Inspiron 1320n Battery) .

This method is far cheaper than the previous ones in which silicon is separated in the gas phase. The challenge lies in the poor storage density of materials in the counter electrode in the whole battery, something which we have been doing intensive research on," says Koller  (Dell Inspiron 1464 Battery)  .

Laptop's batteries lose power

Q: When I lost power last weekend, my six-year-old laptop shut down abruptly, even though its battery supposedly had a full charge good for three hours. Does the battery have a problem (Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery)  ?

A: Yes. The lithium-ion batteries in most laptops lose a little capacity after each charge/discharge cycle.

How much?

Hewlett-Packard estimates that its models will drop to 80 percent of their original capacity "after 300 cycles or about one year of use  (Dell Inspiron 1764 Battery)  ."

Dell advises that most people will see "noticeable" declines in battery life after 18 to 24 months. And Apple says its batteries will fall to 80 percent capacity after 300 cycles, while the inaccessible units in its newest laptops will take 1,000 cycles to reach that point.

I've seen major reductions in run time with batteries just a couple of years old  (Dell Studio 1450 Battery) .

After six years? Forget it -- the battery's gone. Get a new one, and consider buying from an aftermarket vendor that may charge less than the original manufacturer.

Q: I may need to move files between a Mac and a PC. What are the disk formats I should consider (Dell Studio 1457 Battery) ?

A: The simplest option is the one used on most removable disks in Windows, FAT32 (those letters stand for "File Allocation Table"). Macs and PCs can read and write disks in this format. Almost all internal Windows disks, however, use a higher-capacity version called NTFS ("NT File System")  (Dell Latitude D610 Battery)   ;

Macs can read that but need help from extra software, such as the free MacFUSE, to write to it.

Macs, in turn, employ a disk format known as HFS ("Hierarchical File System") Plus. Windows can neither read nor write to it without the assistance of such software as the $49.95 MacDrive  (Toshiba NB100 Battery) .

How Batteries Work

Ba­tteries are all over the place -- in our cars, our PCs, laptops, portable MP3 players and cell phones. A battery is essentially a can full of chemicals that produce electrons   (Toshiba Satellite M65 battery)  .

Chemical reactions that produce electrons are called electrochemical reactions. In this article, you'll learn all about batteries -- the basic concept at work, the actual chemistry going on inside a battery, rechargeable versions, what the future holds for batteries and possible power sources that could replace them    (Toshiba Satellite M60 battery)  .

If you look at any battery, you'll notice that it has two terminals.  One terminal is marked (+), or positive, while the other is marked (-), or negative. In an AA, C or D cell (normal flashlight batteries), the ends of the battery are the terminals. In a large car battery, there are two heavy lead posts that act as the terminals   (Dell Latitude D830 Battery)  .

Electrons collect on the negative terminal of the battery. If you connect a wire between the negative and positive terminals, the electrons will flow from the negative to the positive terminal as fast as they can (and wear out the battery very quickly -- this also tends to be dangerous, especially with large batteries, so it is not something you want to be doing) (Dell Latitude D620 Battery) .

Normally, you connect some type of load to the battery using the wire. The load might be something like a light bulb, a motor or an electronic circuit like a radio.

Inside the battery itself, a chemical reaction produces the electrons (Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Battery)  .

The speed of electron production by this chemical reaction (the battery's internal resistance) controls how many electrons can flow between the terminals. Electrons flow from the battery into a wire, and must travel from the negative to the positive terminal for the chemical reaction to take place  (Sony VGN-FW11S Battery)  .

That is why a battery can sit on a shelf for a year and still have plenty of power -- unless electrons are flowing from the negative to the positive terminal, the chemical reaction does not take place. Once you connect a wire, the reaction starts. The ability to harness this sort of reaction started with the voltaic pile  (Sony VGN-FW11M Battery) .

Next, we'll check out how a voltaic pile works and look at other types of batteries.

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Troubleshooting Laptop Battery Problems

If you have laptop battery problems check out a few simple tips before replacing your battery, not only could it help to revive or prolong the life of your current battery but also any new battery your purchase  (Sony VGN-FW139E/H battery)  .

Just to clarify when we refer to a laptop battery in this article we are referring to the main battery and not the CMOS type (if your computer is losing date and time settings frequently checkout our other article on this)   (Dell Latitude E5400 Battery) ?

Laptop battery problems are amongst the most common issues with laptops, this could be one of the reasons most laptop manufacturers may offer 3 or 4 years warranty on a laptop, but if you check you’ll find the battery may only be covered for a year, so it indicates that manufacturers also know that the battery is in most cases the part which is most likely to fail, or need replacing (Dell Latitude E4200 Battery)  .

As laptop batteries are not cheap, its worth trying a few things to make sure the battery cannot be revived before replacing with a new unit  (Dell Vostro A840 Battery)  .

The first way to resolve many laptop battery problems is to completely discharge the battery, simply let you laptop drain it completely, you may need to disable the power saving settings in both the Windows control panel and your laptops BIOS to stop the power saving preventing the battery discharging completely  (Dell Inspiron 300M Battery) .

Once done allow it to charge fully for around 12 hours, its worth repeating this 2 or 3 times to make sure any battery memory is completely removed.

This method should only be used onNiMH type batteries and not LiION    (Dell Studio 1737 battery)     .

Next  and the easiest way is to download software from your laptop manufacturer which will reset or run maintenance on the battery, for example IBM uses power manager which is part of it’s Think vantage software suite, this has a nice little option called Battery Maintenance (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery) .

this tells you the condition of the battery as it currently is and how much charge it can hold, this also offers options such as resetting, optimizing the batteries lifespan. Having tested the software ourselves I can confirm it can make a large difference, a battery holding a charge of around 15 minutes can now hold a charge of around an hour    (Dell RM791 battery)  .

This type of software is available for many mainstream laptops, but for some reason it does not usually come bundled with the laptop and needs to be downloaded separately from the manufacturers website  (Dell XPS M1530 battery)  .

The most extreme way to resolve laptop battery problems is to replace the actual cells or batteries within the batteries plastic casing, many laptop manufactures use common battery types so they are easy to find replacements,  this is not for everyone though, as it does require soldering as well as a certain amount of know how as if wired incorrectly could result in damage to your laptop  (Dell XPS M2010 battery)    .

Its generally accepted that when a laptop battery begins to hold less and less charge it’s a good indication that the battery has reached or is reaching the end of it’s life and will need replacing  (Dell Vostro 1000 battery) .

A laptop battery should last between 18-24 months its impossible to be more accurate than this due to the way a laptop uses its battery, how often the battery is used, and how much of a load is required of it and how often the battery is almost fully discharged (Acer Aspire One battery)  .

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Why Is Laptop Battery Not Holding A Charge?

T his tutorial would help you solve the problem to press power button even when there’s no power on. I will explain how to find the failure reason for system shutdown of a laptop, but the tips are not aiming for some special brands or models, they should work for most laptops  (Toshiba Satellite P10 Battery) .

Laptop is completely dead, and new laptop battery cannot charge!

When you plug in the oower adapter and press on the power button, but the laptop has no response, no starting sound, no LED light, no fan rotating, except black screen, there’s nothing else….in all, the laptop is completely broken, then under this circumstance, what can you do (SONY VGN-FZ210CE Battery)   ?

1.Ensure your wall outlet is working, which laptop AC  adapter could get power from the outlet. But how could you know whether there’s power or not? You’d better find a reading lamp with plug to monitor it, check whether the bulb was lit when you press power button. If you cannot assure, then try another wall outlet  (Dell Precision M70 Battery)  .

2.Unplug power cord from an AC adapter for laptop, and then plug in the power cord back forcibly, to try turning on the laptop again.

Most power cord has a bad connected with power adapter’s outlet, which caused the problem, so you should ensure that the two ends of the cord are completely plugged into the wall outlet and AC adapter power outlet  (Toshiba Satellite L305 Battery)  .

3.If the power lights still off, then you must change a new power cord and test the AC  adapter laptop again, ensure the input voltage is normal, you could use voltage meter to test the power adapter  (Toshiba Satellite T4900 Battery)  .

4.All right, now our adapter is good, and it could output correct voltage. In this circumstance, unplug the power adapter from the laptop, and remove the battery, then holding press the power button to wait for about 1 minute, after that, plugged into the adapter and attempt starting on the laptop again  (Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery)    .

5. Now, your test result is: the laptop still cannot start. Suppose the AC adapter was bad, if you decide to replace it with a generic one, you would have to follow the next rule:

the voltage output of your new adapter should be exactly same as previous one’s  (Toshiba Satellite A200 Battery)  .

Such as 19V hp AC Adapter, you’d better only use it of 19V, and the amperage of your new adapter also should be the same or even a little higher, such as 4.74A, you should use 4.74 -4.9A.

If the measure above is useless, and the laptop is still at dead state, then probably motherboard gets something wrong, or DC power Jack has a problem (Toshiba Satellite 1200 Battery) .

Actually the latter one stands a good chance, so the motherboard cannot get any power from the AC adapter. In this case, you’d have to disassemble the laptop and replace the DC power Jack. Please take a look at this article: Tips of Laptop DC Jack Repair (Toshiba Satellite M300 Battery)   .

These messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various media. Advertising can also serve to communicate an idea to a large number of people in an attempt to convince them to take a certain action  (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery)     .

Commercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort to associate related qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers  (Dell Studio XPS 1640 Battery)      .

Non-commercial advertisers who spend money to advertise items other than a consumer product or service include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies.Nonprofit organizations may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as a public service announcement  (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery)     .

Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mass media can be defined as any media meant to reach a mass amount of people. Different types of media can be used to deliver these messages, including traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, outdoor or direct mail (Dell KM958 battery)   ;

or new media such as websites and text messages.

In 2010, spending on advertising was estimated at more than $300 billion in the United States and $500 billion worldwide.

Internationally, the largest ("big four") advertising conglomerates are Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP (Sony VGP-BPS13 battery)   .

History

Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome  (Sony VGP-BPS13/B battery)     .

Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BC  (Sony VGP-BPS13/S battery)    .

History tells us that Out-of-home advertising and billboards are the oldest forms of advertising.

As the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general populace was unable to read, signs that today would say cobbler, miller   (Sony VGP-BPS13A/B battery)     ,

tailor or blacksmith would use an image associated with their trade such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horse shoe, a candle or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for the convenience of the customers  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)         .

As education became an apparent need and reading, as well as printing, developed advertising expanded to include handbills. In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery)    ;

and medicines, which were increasingly sought after as disease ravaged Europe. However, false advertising and so-called "quack" advertisements became a problem, which ushered in the regulation of advertising content  (Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery)  .

As the economy expanded during the 19th century, advertising grew alongside. In the United States, the success of this advertising format eventually led to the growth of mail-order advertising  (Sony VGP-BPL11 battery)    .

In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse was the first to include paid advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability and the formula was soon copied by all titles. Around 1840, Volney B. Palmer established a predecessor to advertising agencies inBoston  (Sony VGP-BPL15 battery)     .

Around the same time, in France, Charles-Louis Havas extended the services of his news agency, Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first French group to organize. At first, agencies were brokers for advertisement space in newspapers. N. W. Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibility for advertising content  (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery)  .

N.W. Ayer opened in 1869, and was located in Philadelphia.

At the turn of the century, there were few career choices for women in business; however, advertising was one of the few. Since women were responsible for most of the purchasing done in their household, advertisers and agencies recognized the value of women's insight during the creative process  (Dell Latitude E6400 battery)  .

In fact, the first American advertising to use a sexual sell was created by a woman – for a soap product. Although tame by today's standards, the advertisement featured a couple with the message "The skin you love to touch".

In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers  (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery)      .

As time passed, many non-profit organizations followed suit in setting up their own radio stations, and included: schools, clubs and civic groups. When the practice of sponsoring programs was popularised, each individual radio program was usually sponsored by a single business in exchange for a brief mention of the business' name at the beginning and end of the sponsored shows  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ Battery)   .

However, radio station owners soon realised they could earn more money by selling sponsorship rights in small time allocations to multiple businesses throughout their radio station's broadcasts, rather than selling the sponsorship rights to single businesses per show   (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ18 Battery)   .

This practice was carried over to television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A fierce battle was fought between those seeking to commercialise the radio and people who argued that the radio spectrum should be considered a part of the commons – to be used only non-commercially and for the public good   (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ180E Battery)      .

The United Kingdom pursued a public funding model for the BBC, originally a private company, the British Broadcasting Company, but incorporated as a public body by Royal Charter in 1927. In Canada, advocates like Graham Spry were likewise able to persuade the federal government to adopt a public funding model, creating the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ220E Battery)  .

However, in the United States, the capitalist model prevailed with the passage of the Communications Act of 1934 which created the Federal Communications Commission. However, the U.S. Congress did require commercial broadcasters to operate in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity"  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ340E Battery)    .

Public broadcasting now exists in the United States due to the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act which led to the Public Broadcasting Service andNational Public Radio.

In the early 1950s, the DuMont Television Network began the modern practice of selling advertisement time to multiple sponsors (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ430E Battery)     .

Previously, DuMont had trouble finding sponsors for many of their programs and compensated by selling smaller blocks of advertising time to several businesses. This eventually became the standard for the commercial television industry in the United States  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ460E Battery)       .

However, it was still a common practice to have single sponsor shows, such as The United States Steel Hour. In some instances the sponsors exercised great control over the content of the show—up to and including having one's advertising agency actually writing the show   (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ480E Battery)       .

The single sponsor model is much less prevalent now, a notable exception being the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

The 1960s saw advertising transform into a modern approach in which creativity was allowed to shine, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements more tempting to consumers' eyes  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ4000 Battery)      .

The Volkswagen ad campaign—featuring such headlines as "Think Small" and "Lemon" (which were used to describe the appearance of the car)—ushered in the era of modern advertising by promoting a "position" or "unique selling proposition" designed to associate each brand with a specific idea in the reader or viewer's mind  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31E Battery)    .

This period of American advertising is called the Creative Revolution and its archetypewas William Bernbach who helped create the revolutionary Volkswagen ads among others. Some of the most creative and long-standing American advertising dates to this period.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31B Battery) .

Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertising message, rather than it being a by-product or afterthought. As cable and satellite televisionbecame increasingly prevalent, specialty channels emerged, including channels entirely devoted to advertising, such as QVC, Home Shopping Network, andShopTV Canada (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31J Battery) .

Marketing through the Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and contributed to the "dot-com" boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access. At the turn of the 21st century, a number of websites including the search engine Google  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31M Battery)      ,

started a change in online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant, unobtrusive ads intended to help, rather than inundate, users. This has led to a plethora of similar efforts and an increasing trend of interactive advertising.

The share of advertising spending relative to GDP has changed little across large changes in media (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31S Battery) .

For example, in the US in 1925, the main advertising media were newspapers, magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters. Advertising spending as a share of GDP was about 2.9 percent. By 1998, television and radio had become major advertising media. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower—about 2.4 percent (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31Z Battery) .

A recent advertising innovation is "guerrilla marketing", which involve unusual approaches such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars that are covered with brand messages, and interactive advertising where the viewer can respond to become part of the advertising message  (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ38M Battery)    .

Guerrilla advertising is becoming increasing more popular with a lot of companies. This type of advertising is unpredictable and innovative, which causes consumers to buy the product or idea. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and "embedded" ads, such as via product placement, having consumers vote through text messages, and various innovations utilizing social network services such as Facebook  (SONY VGP-BPS8 Battery)      .

Public service advertising

The same advertising techniques used to promote commercial goods and services can be used to inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues, such as HIV/AIDS, political ideology, energy conservation and deforestation (SONY VGP-BPS13 Battery)     .

Advertising, in its non-commercial guise, is a powerful educational tool capable of reaching and motivating large audiences. "Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest—it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes." Attributed to Howard Gossage by David Ogilvy  SONY VGP-BPS13/S Battery .

Public service advertising, non-commercial advertising, public interest advertising, cause marketing, and social marketing are different terms for (or aspects of) the use of sophisticated advertising and marketing communications techniques (generally associated with commercial enterprise) on behalf of non-commercial, public interest issues and initiatives SONY VGP-BPS13A/B Battery .

In the United States, the granting of television and radio licenses by the FCC is contingent upon the station broadcasting a certain amount of public service advertising. To meet these requirements, many broadcast stations in America air the bulk of their required public service announcements during the late night SONY VGP-BPS13B/B Battery

or early morning when the smallest percentage of viewers are watching, leaving more day and prime time commercial slots available for high-paying advertisers.

Public service advertising reached its height during World Wars I and II under the direction of more than one government SONY VGP-BPS13A/S Battery .

During WWII President Roosevelt commissioned the creation of The War Advertising Council (now known as the Ad Council) which is the nation's largest developer of PSA campaigns on behalf of government agencies and non-profit organizations, including the longest-running PSA campaign, Smokey Bear SONY VGP-BPS13AS Battery .

Marketing mix

The marketing mix has been the key concept to advertising. The marketing mix was suggested by Jeremy McCarthy, professor at Harvard Business School, in the 1960s. The marketing mix consists of four basic elements called the four P’s Product is the first P representing the actual product  (Dell Inspiron 1320 Battery)  .

Price represents the process of determining the value of a product. Place represents the variables of getting the product to the consumer like distribution channels, market coverage and movement organization. The last P stands for Promotion which is the process of reaching the target market and convincing them to go out and buy the product.Geana, Mugur Valentin (Dell Inspiron 1320n Battery)   .

Advertising Theory

• Hierarchy of effects model

It clarifies the objectives of an advertising campaign and for each individual advertisement. The model suggests that there are six steps a consumer or a business buyer moves through when making a purchase  (Dell Inspiron 1464 Battery) .

The steps are:

1. Awareness
2. Knowledge
3. Liking
4. Preference
5. Conviction
6. The actual purchase  (Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery)

• Means-End Theory

This approach suggests that an advertisement should contain a message or means that leads the consumer to a desired end state.

• Leverage Points (Dell Inspiron 1764 Battery)

It is designed to move the consumer from understanding a product's benefits to linking those benefits with personal values.

• Verbal and Visual Images    (Dell Studio 1450 Battery)

Types of advertising

Virtually any medium can be used for advertising. Commercial advertising media can include wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio, cinema and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts  (Dell Studio 1457 Battery)  ,

web popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, banners attached to or sides of airplanes ("logojets"), in-flight advertisements on seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens (Dell Latitude D610 Battery) ,

musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers,doors of bathroom stalls,stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts  (Toshiba NB100 Battery)  .

Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.

Digital advertising

Television advertising / Music in advertising

The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format, as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events  (Toshiba Satellite M65 battery)     .

The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most prominent advertising event on television. The average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached US$3 million (as of 2009). The majority of television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to the product  (Toshiba Satellite M60 battery)  .

Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular television programming through computer graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast audience. More controversially, virtual billboards may be inserted into the background where none exist in real-life  (Dell Latitude D830 Battery) .

This technique is especially used in televised sporting events Virtual product placement is also possible.;Infomercials: An infomercial is a long-format television commercial, typically five minutes or longer. The word "infomercial" combining the words "information" & "commercial"  (Dell Latitude D620 Battery)    .

The main objective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase, so that the consumer sees the presentation and then immediately buys the product through the advertisedtoll-free telephone number or website. Infomercials describe, display, and often demonstrate products and their features, and commonly have testimonials from consumers and industry professionals  (Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Battery)     .

Radio advertising

Radio advertising is a form of advertising via the medium of radio. Radio advertisements are broadcast as radio waves to the air from a transmitter to an antenna and a thus to a receiving device  (Sony VGN-FW11S Battery)    .

Airtime is purchased from a station or network in exchange for airing the commercials. While radio has the obvious limitation of being restricted to sound, proponents of radio advertising often cite this as an advantage  (Sony VGN-FW11M Battery)  .

Online advertising

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers  (Sony VGN-FW139E/H battery)  .

Examples of online advertising include contextual ads that appear on search engine results pages, banner ads, in text ads, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam  (Dell Latitude E5400 Battery)     .

Product placements

Covert advertising, also known as guerrilla advertising, is when a product or brand is embedded in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an item or other of a definite brand, as in the movie Minority Report (Dell Latitude E4200 Battery)   ,

where Tom Cruise's character John Anderton owns a phone with the Nokia logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch engraved with the Bulgari logo. Another example of advertising in film is in I, Robot, where main character played by Will Smith mentions his Converse shoes several times, calling them "classics," because the film is set far in the future (Dell Vostro A840 Battery) .

I, Robot and Spaceballs also showcase futuristic cars with the Audi and Mercedes-Benz logos clearly displayed on the front of the vehicles. Cadillacchose to advertise in the movie The Matrix Reloaded, which as a result contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were used   (Dell Inspiron 300M Battery)      .

Similarly, product placement for Omega Watches, Ford, VAIO,BMW and Aston Martin cars are featured in recent James Bond films, most notably Casino Royale. In "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer", the main transport vehicle shows a large Dodgelogo on the front     (Dell Studio 1737 battery)   .

Blade Runner includes some of the most obvious product placement; the whole film stops to show a Coca-Cola billboard.

Physical advertising

Press advertising

Press advertising describes advertising in a printed medium such as a newspaper   (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery)     ,

magazine, or trade journal. This encompasses everything from media with a very broad readership base, such as a major national newspaper or magazine, to more narrowly targeted media such as local newspapers and trade journals on very specialized topics (Dell RM791 battery)   .

A form of press advertising is classified advertising, which allows private individuals or companies to purchase a small, narrowly targeted ad for a low fee advertising a product or service. Another form of press advertising is the Display Ad, which is a larger ad (can include art) that typically run in an article section of a newspaper  (Dell XPS M1530 battery)    .

Billboard advertising: Billboards are large structures located in public places which display advertisements to passing pedestrians and motorists. Most often, they are located on main roads with a large amount of passing motor and pedestrian traffic; however, they can be placed in any location with large amounts of viewers, such as on mass transit vehicles and in stations, in shopping malls or office buildings, and in stadiums  (Dell XPS M2010 battery)    .

Mobile billboard advertising

Mobile billboards are generally vehicle mounted billboards or digital screens. These can be on dedicated vehicles built solely for carrying advertisements along routes preselected by clients, they can also be specially equipped cargo trucks or, in some cases, large banners strewn from planes  (Dell Vostro 1000 battery)   .

The billboards are often lighted; some being backlit, and others employing spotlights. Some billboard displays are static, while others change; for example, continuously or periodically rotating among a set of advertisements. Mobile displays are used for various situations in metropolitan areas throughout the world, including  (Acer Aspire One battery)  :

Target advertising, One-day, and long-term campaigns, Conventions, Sporting events, Store openings and similar promotional events, and Big advertisements from smaller companies.

In-store advertising

In-store advertising is any advertisement placed in a retail store  (Toshiba Satellite P10 Battery)  .

It includes placement of a product in visible locations in a store, such as at eye level, at the ends of aisles and near checkout counters, eye-catching displays promoting a specific product, and advertisements in such places as shopping carts and in-store video displays  (SONY VGN-FZ210CE Battery)     .

Coffee cup advertising

Coffee cup advertising is any advertisement placed upon a coffee cup that is distributed out of an office, café, or drive-through coffee shop. This form of advertising was first popularized in Australia, and has begun growing in popularity in the United States, India, and parts of the Middle East  (Dell Precision M70 Battery)     .

Street advertising

This type of advertising first came to prominence in the UK by Street Advertising Services to create outdoor advertising on street furniture and pavements. Working with products such as Reverse Graffiti and 3d pavement advertising, the media became an affordable and effective tool for getting brand messages out into public spaces  (Toshiba Satellite L305 Battery)    .

Celebrity branding

This type of advertising focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain recognition for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often advertise their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear clothes by specific brands or designers  (Toshiba Satellite T4900 Battery)   .

Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns such as television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products. The use of celebrities to endorse a brand can have its downsides, however. One mistake by a celebrity can be detrimental to the public relations of a brand    (Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery)     .

For example, following his performance of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, swimmer Michael Phelps' contract with Kellogg's was terminated, as Kellogg's did not want to associate with him after he was photographed smoking marijuana (Toshiba Satellite A200 Battery)    .

Sales promotions

Sales promotions are another way to advertise. Sales promotions are double purposed because they are used to gather information about what type of customers you draw in and where they are, and to jumpstart sales  (Toshiba Satellite 1200 Battery)  .

Sales promotions include things like contests and games, sweepstakes, product giveaways, samples coupons, loyalty programs, and discounts. The ultimate goal of sales promotions is to stimulate potential customers to action  (Toshiba Satellite M300 Battery)  .

Media and advertising approaches

Increasingly, other media are overtaking many of the "traditional" media such as television, radio and newspaper because of a shift toward consumer's usage of the Internet for news and music as well as devices like digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo WD passport essential (500GB/640GB) .

Advertising on the World Wide Web is a recent phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives.

Digital signage is poised to become a major mass media because of its ability to reach larger audiences for less money  WD passport essential (250GB/320GB) .

Digital signage also offer the unique ability to see the target audience where they are reached by the medium. Technological advances have also made it possible to control the message on digital signage with much precision, enabling the messages to be relevant to the target audience at any given time and location which in turn, gets more response from the advertising  WD  passport essential SE (750GB/1TB)  .

Digital signage is being successfully employed in supermarkets.Another successful use of digital signage is in hospitality locations such as restaurants. and malls.

E-mail advertising is another recent phenomenon. Unsolicited bulk E-mail advertising is known as "e-mail spam". Spam has been a problem for email users for many years WD  passport elite(250GB/320GB) .

Some companies have proposed placing messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and the International Space Station. Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising (see mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass messages (see propaganda)  WD passport elite(500GB/640GB) .

Unpaid advertising (also called "publicity advertising"), can provide good exposure at minimal cost. Personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it"), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun (in the United States, "Xerox" = "photocopier", "Kleenex" = tissue, "Vaseline" = petroleum jelly, "Hoover" = vacuum cleaner, "Nintendo" WD  passport studio for Mac(320GB/500GB)

(often used by those exposed to many video games) = video games, and "Band-Aid" = adhesive bandage) — these can be seen as the pinnacle of any advertising campaign. However, some companies oppose the use of their brand name to label an object  WD  passport studio for Mac(500GB/640GB) .

Equating a brand with a common noun also risks turning that brand into a genericized trademark - turning it into a generic term which means that its legal protection as a trademark is lost.

As the mobile phone became a new mass media in 1998 when the first paid downloadable content appeared on mobile phones in WD  Elements series(250GB/320GB) .

Finland, it was only a matter of time until mobile advertising followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000. By 2007 the value of mobile advertising had reached $2.2 billion and providers such as Admob delivered billions of mobile ads.

More advanced mobile ads include banner ads, coupons, Multimedia Messaging Service picture and video messages, advergames and various engagement marketing campaigns  WD  Elements SE(500GB/640GB) .

A particular feature driving mobile ads is the 2D Barcode, which replaces the need to do any typing of web addresses, and uses the camera feature of modern phones to gain immediate access to web content. 83 percent of Japanese mobile phone users already are active users of 2D barcodes  WD Elements SE(750GB/1TB) .

A new form of advertising that is growing rapidly is social network advertising. It is online advertising with a focus on social networking sites. This is a relatively immature market, but it has shown a lot of promise as advertisers are able to take advantage of the demographic information the user has provided to the social networking site  WD  Elements desktop(500GB/640GB) .

Friendertising is a more precise advertising term in which people are able to direct advertisements toward others directly using social network service.

From time to time, The CW Television Network airs short programming breaks called "Content Wraps," to advertise one company's product during an entire commercial break  WD  Elements desktop(750GB/1TB) .

The CW pioneered "content wraps" and some products featured were Herbal Essences, Crest, Guitar Hero II, CoverGirl, and recently Toyota.

Recently, there appeared a new promotion concept, "ARvertising", advertising on Augmented Reality technology WD  Elements desktop(1.5 TB/2TB) .

Current trends

Rise in new media

With the dawn of the Internet came many new advertising opportunities. Popup, Flash, banner, Popunder, advergaming, and email advertisements (the last often being a form of spam) are now commonplace  WD  passport essential SE (750GB/1TB)--USB 3.0) .

Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" advertising, some people may like an advertisement enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend. In general, the advertising community has not yet made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute their ads to anyone willing to see or hear them  WD  passport essential (500GB/640GB) .

In the last three quarters of 2009 mobile and internet advertising grew by 18.1% and 9.2% respectively. Older media advertising saw declines: ?10.1% (TV), ?11.7% (radio), ?14.8% (magazines) and ?18.7% (newspapers ).

Niche marketing

Another significant trend regarding future of advertising is the growing importance of the niche market using niche or targeted adsWD  passport for Mac(320GB/500GB) .

Also brought about by the Internet and the theory of The Long Tail, advertisers will have an increasing ability to reach specific audiences. In the past, the most efficient way to deliver a message was to blanket the largest mass market audience possible WD  passport for Mac(640GB/1TB) .

However, usage tracking, customer profiles and the growing popularity of niche content brought about by everything from blogs to social networking sites, provide advertisers with audiences that are smaller but much better defined, leading to ads that are more relevant to viewers and more effective for companies' marketing products  My book essential 4 generation  (640GB/1TB) .

Among others, Comcast Spotlight is one such advertiser employing this method in their video on demand menus. These advertisements are targeted to a specific group and can be viewed by anyone wishing to find out more about a particular business or practice at any time, right from their home  WD  My book essential 4 generation( 1.5TB/2TB) .

This causes the viewer to become proactive and actually choose what advertisements they want to view.

Crowdsourcing

The concept of crowdsourcing has given way to the trend of user-generated advertisements  WD  My book elite( 1TB/1.5TB) .

User-generated ads are created by consumers as opposed to an advertising agency or the company themselves, most often they are a result of brand sponsored advertising competitions. For the 2007 Super Bowl, the Frito-Lays division of PepsiCo held the Crash the Super Bowl contest, allowing consumers to create their own Doritos commercial  WD  My book studio(1TB/2TB) .

Chevrolet held a similar competition for their Tahoe line of SUVs. Due to the success of the Doritos user-generated ads in the 2007 Super Bowl, Frito-Lays relaunched the competition for the 2009 and 2010 Super Bowl. The resulting ads were among the most-watched and most-liked Super Bowl ads  WD  My book essential 4 generation( 1.5TB/2TB) .

In fact, the winning ad that aired in the 2009 Super Bowl was ranked by the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter as the top ad for the year while the winning ads that aired in the 2010 Super Bowl were found by Nielsen's BuzzMetrics to be the "most buzzed-about".

This trend has given rise to several online platforms that host user-generated advertising competitions on behalf of a company WD  My book elite(640GB/2TB) .

Founded in 2007, Zooppa has launched ad competitions for brands such as Google, Nike, Hershey’s, General Mills, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Zinio, and Mini Cooper. Crowdsourced advertisements have gained popularity in part to its cost effective nature, high consumer engagement, and ability to generate word-of-mouth  Seagate  expansion portable (320GB/500GB) .

However, it remains controversial, as the long-term impact on the advertising industry is still unclear.

Global advertising

Advertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international, multi-national, and global Seagate  expansion (1.5TB/2TB) .

For global advertisers, there are four, potentially competing, business objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide advertising: building a brand while speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale in the creative process, maximising local effectiveness of ads, and increasing the company’s speed of implementation  Seagate  Freeagent Desktop (500GB/1TB) .

Born from the evolutionary stages of global marketing are the three primary and fundamentally different approaches to the development of global advertising executions: exporting executions, producing local executions, and importing ideas that travel.

Advertising research is key to determining the success of an ad in any country or region Seagate  Freeagent Go(250GB/320GB) .

The ability to identify which elements and/or moments of an ad that contributes to its success is how economies of scale are maximised. Once one knows what works in an ad, that idea or ideas can be imported by any other market. Market research measures, such as Flow of Attention  Seagate  Freeagent Go(500GB/640GB) ,

Flow of Emotion and branding moments provide insight into what is working in an ad in any country or region because the measures are based on the visual, not verbal, elements of the ad  Seagate  Freeagent Go(750GB/1TB) .

Foreign public messaging

Foreign governments, particularly those that own marketable commercial products or services, often promote their interests and positions through the advertising of those goods because the target audience is not only largely unaware of the forum as vehicle for foreign messaging but also willing to receive the message Seagate  Freeagent Goflex(250GB/320GB)

while in a mental state of absorbing information from advertisements during television commercial breaks, while reading a periodical, or while passing by billboards in public spaces. A prime example of this messaging technique is advertising campaigns to promote international travel  Seagate Freeagent Goflex(500GB/640GB) .

While advertising foreign destinations and services may stem from the typical goal of increasing revenue by drawing more tourism, some travel campaigns carry the additional or alternative intended purpose of promoting good sentiments or improving existing ones among the target audience towards a given nation or region  Seagate  Freeagent Goflex(750GB/1TB) .

It is common for advertising promoting foreign countries to be produced and distributed by the tourism ministries of those countries, so these ads often carry political statements and/or depictions of the foreign government's desired international public perception   Seagate  Freeagent Goflex Pro(500GB/750GB) .

Additionally, a wide range of foreign airlines and travel-related services which advertise separately from the destinations, themselves, are owned by their respective governments; examples include, though are not limited to, the Emirates airline (Dubai), Singapore Airlines (Singapore), Qatar Airways (Qatar), China Airlines (Taiwan/Republic of China), and Air China (People's Republic of China)     Seagate  Freeagent Goflex desktop(1TB/2TB) .

By depicting their destinations, airlines, and other services in a favorable and pleasant light, countries market themselves to populations abroad in a manner that could mitigate prior public impressions.See: Soft Power

Diversification

In the realm of advertising agencies, continued industry diversification has seen observers note that “big global clients don't need big global agencies any more”  Seagate  Freeagent go for Mac(320GB/640GB) .

This is reflected by the growth of non-traditional agencies in various global markets, such as Canadian business TAXI and SMART in Australia and has been referred to as "a revolution in the ad world".

New technology

The ability to record shows on digital video recorders (such as TiVo) allow users to record the programs for later viewing, enabling them to fast forward through commercials     Samsung  G2 protable (250gb/320GB) .

Additionally, as more seasons of pre-recorded box sets are offered for sale of television programs; fewer people watch the shows on TV. However, the fact that these sets are sold, means the company will receive additional profits from the sales of these sets. To counter this effect, many advertisers have opted for product placement on TV shows like Survivor   Samsung  G2 protable (500GB/640GB) .

Advertising education

Advertising education has become widely popular with bachelor, master and doctorate degrees becoming available in the emphasis. A surge in advertising interest is typically attributed to the strong relationship advertising plays in cultural and technological changes, such as the advance of online social networking  Samsung  S2 protable (320GB/500GB) .

A unique model for teaching advertising is the student-run advertising agency, where advertising students create campaigns for real companies. Organizations such as American Advertising Federation and AdU Network partner established companies with students to create these campaigns       Samsung S1 Mini (120GB/160GB) .

Criticisms

While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without social costs. Unsolicited Commercial Email and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on internet service providers Samsung  S1 Mini (250GB/320GB) .

Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation. In addition, advertising frequently uses psychological pressure (for example, appealing to feelings of inadequacy) on the intended consumer, which may be harmful   Samsung story station (1TB/1.5TB) .

Regulation

In the US many communities believe that many forms of outdoor advertising blight the public realm. As long ago as the 1960s in the US there were attempts to ban billboard advertising in the open countryside.Cities such as São Paulo have introduced an outright banwith London also having specific legislation to control unlawful displays      Samsung Story station (1.5TB/2TB) .

There have been increasing efforts to protect the public interest by regulating the content and the influence of advertising. Some examples are: the ban on television tobacco advertising imposed in many countries, and the total ban of advertising to children under 12 imposed by the Swedish government in 1991 Samsung story station Esata(1TB/1.5TB) .

Though that regulation continues in effect for broadcasts originating within the country, it has been weakened by the European Court of Justice, which had found that Sweden was obliged to accept foreign programming, including those from neighboring countries or via satellite  Samsung  G3 station (1TB/1.5TB) .

Greece’s regulations are of a similar nature, “banning advertisements for children's toys between 7 am and 10 pm and a total ban on advertisement for war toys".

In Europe and elsewhere, there is a vigorous debate on whether (or how much) advertising to children should be regulated Maxtor  one touch 4 plus (500GB/750GB) .

This debate was exacerbated by a report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation in February 2004 which suggested fast food advertising that targets children was an important factor in the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States.

In New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and many European countries, the advertising industry operates a system of self-regulationMaxtor one touch 4 plus (1TB/1.5TB) .

Advertisers, advertising agencies and the media agree on a code of advertising standards that they attempt to uphold. The general aim of such codes is to ensure that any advertising is 'legal, decent, honest and truthful'. Some self-regulatory organizations are funded by the industry, but remain independent, with the intent of upholding the standards or codes like the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK  Maxtor cool black(640GB/1TB) .

In the UK most forms of outdoor advertising such as the display of billboards is regulated by the UK Town and County Planning system. Currently the display of an advertisement without consent from the Planning Authority is a criminal offense liable to a fine of £2,500 per offence Maxtor Black diamond (320GB/500GB) .

All of the major outdoor billboard companies in the UK have convictions of this nature.

Naturally, many advertisers view governmental regulation or even self-regulation as intrusion of their freedom of speech or a necessary evil     Hitachi  simple touch (250GB/320GB) .

Therefore, they employ a wide-variety of linguistic devices to bypass regulatory laws (e.g. printing English words in bold and French translations in fine print to deal with the Article 120 of the 1994 Toubon Law limiting the use of English in French advertising) Hitachi simple touch (320GB/500GB) .

The advertisement of controversial products such as cigarettes and condoms are subject to government regulation in many countries. For instance, the tobacco industry is required by law in most countries to display warnings cautioning consumers about the health hazards of their products. Linguistic variation is often used by advertisers as a creative device to reduce the impact of such requirements        Hitachi  life studio (320GB/500GB) .

Advertising research

Advertising research is a specialized form of research that works to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising. It entails numerous forms of research which employ different methodologies  Hitachi life studio (250GB/320GB) .

Advertising research includes pre-testing (also known as copy testing) and post-testing of ads and/or campaigns—pre-testing is done before an ad airs to gauge how well it will perform and post-testing is done after an ad airs to determine the in-market impact of the ad or campaign on the consumer  Hitachi  life studio platinum (250GB/320GB) .

Continuous ad tracking and the Communicus System are competing examples of post-testing advertising research types.