Will everything be digital?

What happens in a world in which atoms are replaced by bits? In which everything that was wired becomes wireless, and vice versa?

The important thing to remember is that bits are bits. In the digital world there are no movies or magazines or pieces of music. There are just 1s and 0s, for which we did not even have a name until 1946 when Princeton sta­tistician John Tukey concatenated the words bina­ry and digit into the term bit.

For the next 25 years, bits were of interest only to a few specialized members of the scientific community. But of late, bits have become important to everybody, because we can represent anything as bits—anything. In the not-too-distant future, we'll be able to describe the human body with bits and try out new drugs on these models rather than on living beings.

Books and magazines and newspapers are not the meaningful element. Words are one of the most powerful and efficient forms of human communication. A few words - i.e., a few bits—can create religions, can make war or peace. Those words when presented to the eye are pre­sented as text. In the past we could render text only by print­ing it on paper, carving it in stone, writing it with smoke.

Today we can do something new. We can reduce the text to bits, which we cannot see or hear, take this new representation and store it, manipulate it or transmit it, and then later render it on a computer display or a piece of paper. The same is true of music, movies, still pho­tographs. While this is widely recognized, few people have a sense of the quantity of bits needed to achieve one rep­resentation vs. another. For example, when you read a book, you consume about 3 mil­lion bits an hour. When you look at television, you consume 3 mil­lion a second. UNDERSTANDING BANDWIDTH.Bandwidth is the ability to move bits. Broadband is the ability to move a lot of bits per second. Though everybody seems to do it, likening bandwidth to the diameter of a pipe is misleading, because our consumption of bits is not analogous to drinking from a gar­den or fire hose. We don't necessarily consume bits in a continuous fashion (like water), and even if we did, that does not perforce mean our computers have to receive them that way.

One of the most profound changes afforded by the digital world is the ability to be asynchronous, in the smallest and largest time scales. In the smallest sense, this allows us to use efficiently our channels of communications; for example, interleaving peo­ple's conversations—packetizing them—so that many people share the same channel without being aware that they are. In the larger sense, we can expand, contract and shift our personal time in new ways, leaving and receiving messages at mutual convenience. On a yet larger scale, social behavior will also become more asyn­chronous, with all of us moving in much less lockstep rhythm and with more personal cadence than we do today.

But in this new world, more bandwidth is not necessarily good, or even what we want. And, when we do want it, it is not nec­essarily in order to sit in front of a device and consume a few bil­lion bits an hour. Moreover, the dominant user of the Net in the future will not be people at all. It will be machines talking to one another in ways we cannot imagine. For them, trickle charging information or blasting at a billion bits a second are options not directly meaning­ful to people. Increasingly, these bits will arrive wirelessly.

BEING WIRELESS.Plugs are the past. The need to be tethered is disappearing for two reasons: better battery technologies (and less power-hungry devices) and improved use of radio frequencies, so-called RFs. Eventually, everything electric will talk with everything else elec­tric, using very fine-grained, wireless communications. Ultimate­ly, all long-distance traffic will be fiber and all short-distance traf­fic will be RF.

Today you may have one or two dozen wireless devices (radio, cell phone, TV, pager, car key). Tomorrow, you will probably have thousands of them.

One place you’ll find these micro wireless devices will be on packaging, when RF identification tags replace the Universal Product Code—those little vertical bars read by supermarket checkout scanners. With emerging print technologies, it will be possible to print active tags directly onto containers—tiny com­puters that broadcast their ID, price and other characteristics (such as the expiration date). A refrigerator or a medicine cabi­net can thus know what is inside it. A container could be aware of the absence or presence of each pill. In the future, all these inanimate objects will be able to talk to one another and pass messages among themselves.

Vocabulary notes:

to concatenate – связывать

meaningful – значимый

to render – отдавать

bandwidth – полоса пропускания

broadband – широкополосная передача

likening – уподобление

perforce – необходимость

asynchronous – асинхронный

interleaving – чередование

lockstep – жесткая конфигурация

cadence – ритм, модуляция, тактовый сигнал

bursty – пульсирующий

trickle – сочиться

blasting – освобождение

tethered – связывать

fine-grained – мелко-модульный

expiration – истечение

RF - радиочастотный

IX. Translate the following sentences paying attention to the verbs in the Subjunctive Mood:

1. Without radio we should hardly be able to observe artificial satellites and receive scientific information from space. 2. The solution of the problem requires that all the experimental data obtained be exact. 3. It is required that all measurements be done beforehand. 4. It is nece­ssary that these data should be processed as soon as possible. 5. It is important that engineers should develop automatic control systems. 6. Atomic energy finds such wide and varied application in our life that our age might be called the age of atom. 7. It is important that safe­ty measures be taken while working with the electric equipment. 8. It is desirable that the engine should combine high efficiency and lightness. 9. We suggested that his project be discussed in detail. 10. It is essential that he should inform us about the results of his research.

X. Translate the sentences. Mind the means of expressing the Subjunctive Mood:

1. Provided all of the requirements were met, the efficiency of the apparatus would be increased. 2. Without the new instrument this experi­ment would not have been successful. 3. If you classified the data fewer tests would be needed. 4. If you had known about semiconductors more, you would have understood the arrangement of this device. 5. You could have done this work better. 6. You might have asked me about the work of this machine before putting it into operation. 7. They suggest that he should begin the test immediately. 8. It is required that those devices be used in this case. 9. Had he informed me in time I should have sent this device. 10. Without proper care and maintenance this equipment wouldn't operate so well. 11. If the machine were repair­ed, it would be set in motion immediately. 12. If he had been able to get all the books on that subject, his report would have been much better. 13. Had you taken all the safety measures the machine would not have been broken.

XI. Define the types of Conditional Clauses in the following complex sentences. Translate them into Russian:

A. 1. If a solid body or a liquid is heated, it will usually expand. 2. If you want to carry out your experiment successfully, you thoroughly prepare all the necessary ingredients. 3. The measurements were always correct provided the necessary instruments were used. 4. If you want to speak a language, you must hear it spoken. 5. If a machine is to make usable translations, the machine itself must be able to extract some meaning of the text. 6. If we are to believe some forecasts, compu­ters may become a common thing of every day used by almost every­body. 7. If the model fits well, the observed data will be correct.

B. 1. If sound could propagate in interplanetary space it would cover this distance in 14 years. 2. If the earth were as hot as Venus, the oceans would evaporate. 3. Were it not for ionosphere, radio waves would propagate like light waves only within the limits of visible hori­zon. 4. If I were to see your experiment, I should get a clear conception of this phenomenon. 5. But for electricity little could be done in a mo­dern research laboratory. 6. If a new telephone system were installed on the line we should be able to improve the reliability of telephone service. 7. If life existed on the Venus, we should know it. 8. It would be better if some experiments were repeated. 9. If the Earth did not rotate, it would not take the shape of a ball.

C. 1. If he had prepared the material beforehand, he might have done the work quite easily. 2. If they had completed the research, the results would have been discussed at the conference. 3. The manned spaceships might not have been launched into the cosmos, unless scien­tists had studied the information received from the space satellites. 4. Could these observations have been proved theoretically they would have done much to advance our knowledge in the field of space research. 5. If he had been able to get all the books on that subject, his report would have been much better. 6. Had he taken into account the pro­perties of the substance under investigation, he would have been careful when working with it.

XII. Define the functions of shouldand would.Translate the sen­tences:

A. 1. He thought I should come to the laboratory. 2. We know we should be able to overcome all the difficulties in our research. 3. We were sure that we should finish our work in time. 4. The director asked whether the materials of our research would be typed. 5. He said that he would mention your work in his report. 6. The teacher thought that the students of this group would be able to understand the new text. 7. Yes­terday I found out that the professor would lecture on the latest deve­lopments in cybernetics.

B. 1. It is very important that you should take part in the discussion. 2. It is necessary that they should come in time. 3. It is important that the current should be measured exactly. 4. Without radio electronics there would be no cybernetics, cosmonautics and nuclear physics. 5. It would be impossible to measure the temperature of Venus without a radio-telescope. 6. They suggest that we should begin the tests imme­diately. 7. Don't raise the temperature lest the speed of the reaction should be too high. 8. The instruments were packed carefully lest they should be broken during transportation.

C. 1. If they had completed the research, the results would have been discussed at the conference. 2. If you had applied your theoretical knowledge to your practical work, you would have got a different re­sult. 3. If he had not used this formula, he would not have made this mistake. 4. They would finish the work in time, provided they had the necessary material. 5. Should one transmitter fail the other takes over its functions. 6. Should the temperature decrease, the velocity of elect­rons will decrease too.

D. 1. It should be borne in mind that this method fails to give good results. 2. He would work on his design for hours. 3. One should keep in mind this property of water. 4. The reaction wouldn't proceed until we added some water. 5. This transistor would operate at 400°C. 6. The results of the experiments should be checked up very carefully. 7. He would prepare for his exams for hours. 8. You should work at your English as hard as possible. 9. Last year we would spend much time in the laboratory.

Supplementary reading

Windows XP

Windows XP is the next version of Microsoft Windows beyond Windows 2000 and Windows Millennium. Windows XP brings the convergence of Windows operating systems by integrating the strengths of Windows 2000—standards-based security, manageability and reliability with the best features of Windows 98 and Windows Me—Plug and Play, easy-to-use user interface, and innovative support services to create the best Windows yet. It shows how new technologies and features make it easier to get work done, share information, manage your desktop, stay productive while traveling with a mobile computer, obtain help and support, and perform many other computing tasks. Windows XP is built on an enhanced Windows 2000 code base, with different versions aimed at home users and business users: Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional.

While maintaining the core of Windows 2000, Windows XP features a fresh new visual design. Common tasks have been consolidated, and simplified, and new visual cues have been added to help you navigate your computer more easily.

Fast user switching makes it easier for families to share a single computer. For example, if a mother uses the computer to work on finances and has to leave for a short period of time, her son can switch to his own account and play a game. The financial application is left running and open in the mother's account. All of this is done without logging off. Switching users is easy with the new Welcome screen easily customizable with pictures for each user who logs on to the computer.

Windows XP has new visual styles and themes that use sharp 24-bit color icons and unique colors that can be easily related to specific tasks. For example, green represents tasks that enable you do something or go somewhere, such as the Start menu.

Windows XP makes it easy to keep track of your files by letting you arrange them in various groups. You can view your documents by type. You can also group files according to the last time you modified them such as today, yesterday, last week, two months ago, earlier this year, or last year.

Windows XP uses Webview technology helping you better manage files and the file namespace. For example, if you select a file or folder, you see a list of options allowing you to rename, move, copy, e-mail, remove it, or publish to the Web. This functionality is similar to what you see in Windows 2000 if you right-click on a file or folder; Windows XP takes this information and brings it into view directly on the desktop.

Windows XP introduces an easier-to-manage taskbar by grouping multiple instances of the same application. For example, instead of having nine instances of a Microsoft Word file each arranged horizontally on the taskbar, Windows XP groups them together on one taskbar button. In this scenario, you see only one taskbar button, showing the number of files that are open for the application. Clicking the button shows the vertical list of all file names. In addition, the files can all be cascaded, tiled, or minimized at the same time. The new user interface takes the Windows operating system to a new level of usability, enabling you to complete tasks more easily and faster than ever before.

Windows XP features Windows Media Player 8, which brings together common digital media activities including CD and DVD playback, jukebox management and recording, audio CD creation, Internet radio playback, and media transfer to portable devices. Windows Media Player 8 includes new features such as DVD video playback with rich media information and foil screen controls, CD-to-PC music copying and automatic conversion of MP3 files. In addition, Windows Media Player 8 includes the following:

Digital broadcast support supports analog and digital TV (including HDTV). This includes signal demodulation, tuning, software de-multiplexing, and guide store. In addition you can enable IP data broadcasting such as extract streams from a digital TV signal.

Accelerated video rendering standardized MPEG-2 video acceleration provides smoother and faster playback using a subset of DirectX® APIs.

Video mixing renderer supports alpha blending letting you phase in multiple videos, overlay them, or integrate close captioning of text. Video is treated as a texture and can take advantage of 3-D graphics. For example, you could overlay videos on each side of a cube as it rotates.

Windows XP has expanded support for more audio cards and their features. For example, card manufacturers can provide support for Dolby Digital.

Windows Movie Maker version 1.1 provides base-level features for Windows Media capture and file creation, simple editing of video and audio, and the saving and publishing of Windows Media files. Although the utility produces output only in the Windows Media format, it will import all file formats and compression types supported by the DirectShow architecture.

If your computer does not contain any video capture hardware, all other non-video capture-related features of the application are fully functional and they allow for the importing and editing of media assets that exist on your computer.

Widows Movie Maker has many practical uses. If you want to archive your home video library collection onto the hard drive of a PC, you can record, edit, organize, and share the home video library from a PC. You could also share the home video with family and friends via e-mail or over the Web. If you want to make a video slide show, you can combine still images and publish into a Windows Media format.

Windows XP makes it easier to use digital devices and provides many options to manipulate images such as publishing pictures to the Web, e-mailing photos (with an option of compressing them for you for smaller file size), displaying pictures in an automatic slideshow, andallowing you to zoom in on images.

VIRUSES

A bit of history

2 November 1988 Robert Morris younger, graduate studentof informatics faculty of Cornwall University (USA) infected a great amount of computers, connected to Internet network. This network unites machines of university centres, private companies and governmental agents, including National Aeronautics Space Administration, as well as some military scientific centres and labs.

Network worm struck 6200 machines that formed 73% computers to network, and showed that UNIX was not okay too. Amongst damaged were NASA, Los Alamos National Lab, exploratory centre VMS USA, California Technology Institute, and Wisconsin University (200 from 300 systems). Spread on networks ArpaNet, MilNet, Science Internet, NSF Net it practically removed these network from building. According to "Wall Street Journal", virus infiltrated networks in Europe and Australia, where there were also registered events of blocking the computers. Hundreds or thousands of jobs running on a UNIX system brought responses to zero. The attacked systems were UNIX systems, 4.3BSD UNIX & their variants (e.g.: SUNs). This virus was spreading very quickly over the Milnet. Within the past 4 hours, it had hit more than 10 sites across the country, both Arpanet and Milnet sites. Well over 50 sites had been hit. Most of these were "major" sites and gateways.

Morris had written a program that used a hole in SMTP Sendmail utility.This utility can send a message into another program. Apparently what the attacker did was this: he or she connected to, issued the appropriate debug command, and had a small С program compiled. This program took as an argument a host number, and copied two programs - one ending in VAX.OS and the other ending in SunOS - and tried to load and execute them. In those cases where the load and execution succeeded, the worm did two things (at least): spawned a lot of shells that did nothing but clogged the process table and burnt CPU cycles; looked in two places - the password file and the internet services file - for other sites it could connect to. It used both individual host files (which it found using the password file), and any other remote hosts it could locate which it had a chance of connecting to.

All of Vaxen and some of Suns here were infected with the virus. The virus forksrepeated copies of themselves as it tried to spread itself, and the load averages on the infected machines skyrocketed. In fact, it got to the point that some of the machines ran out of swap space andkerneltable entries, preventing loginto even see what was going on!

The virus also "cleaned" up after itself. If you reboot an infected machine (or it crashes), the /tmp directory was normally cleaned up on reboot. The other incriminating files were already deleted by the virus itself.

4 November the author of the virus - Morris - came to FBI headquarters in Washington on his own. FBI imposed a prohibition on all material relating to the Morris virus.

22 January 1989 a court of jurors acknowledged Morris guilty. If denunciatory verdict had been approved without modification, Morris would have been sentenced to 5 years of prison and 250 000 dollars of fine. However Morris' attorneyimmediately lodged a protest and directed all papers to the Circuit Court with the petition to decline the decision of court. Finally Morris was sentenced to 3 months of prisons and fine of 270 thousand dollars, but in addition Cornwall University carried a heavy loss, having excluded Morris from its members. Author then had to take part in liquidation of its own creation.

What is a computer virus?

It is an executable code able to reproduce itself. Viruses are an area of pure programming, and, unlike other computer programs, carry intellectual functions on protection from being found and destroyed. They have to fight for survival in complex conditions of conflicting computer systems. That's why they evolve as if they were alive. They may have complex crypting/decrypting engines in order to carry out processes of duplicating, adaptation and disguise.

It is necessary to differentiate between reproducing programs and Trojan horses. Reproducing programs will not necessarily harm your system because they are aimed at producing as many copies (or somewhat-copies) of their own as possible by means of so-called agent programs or without their help. In the latter case they are referred to as "worms". Meanwhile Trojan horses are programs aimed at causing harm or damage to PCs.

As you see, there are different types of viruses, and they have already been separated into classes and categories. For instance: dangerous, harmless, and very dangerous. No destruction means a harmless one, tricks with system haltsmeans a dangerous one, and finally with a devastating destruction means a very dangerous virus.

But viruses are famous not only for their destructive actions, but also for their special effects, which are almost impossible to classify. Some virus-writers suggest the following: funny, very funny and sad or melancholy (keeps silence and infects). But one should remember that special effects must occur only after a certain number of contaminations.Users should also be given a chance to restrict execution of destructive actions, such as deleting files, formatting hard disks. Thereby virus can be considered to be a useful program, keeping a check on system changes and preventing any surprises such as of deletion of files or wiping out hard disks.

E-mail Viruses

The latest thing in the world of computer viruses is the e-mail virus, and the Melissa virus in March 1999 was spectacular. Melissa spread in Microsoft Word documents sent via e-mail, and it worked like this: someone created the virus as a Word document uploaded to an Internet newsgroup.Anyone who downloadedthe document and opened it would triggerthe virus. The virus would men send the document (and therefore itself) in an e-mail message to the first 50 people in the person's address book. The e-mail message contained a friendly note that included the person's name, so the recipientwould open the document thinking it was harmless. The virus would then create 50 new messages from the recipient's machine. As a result, the Melissa virus was the fastest-spreading virus ever seen! As mentioned earlier, it forced a number of large companies to shut down their e-mail systems.

The ILOVEYOU virus, which appeared on May 4, 2000, was even simpler. It contained a piece of code as an attachment.People who double clicked on the attachment allowed the code to execute. The code sent copies of itself to everyone in the victim's address book and then started corrupting files on the victim's machine. This was the simplest thing the virus could do. It was really more of a Trojan horse distributed by e-mail than it was a virus. The Melissa virus took advantage of the programming language built into Microsoft Word called VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications. It is a complete programming language and it can be programmed to do things like modify files and send e-mail messages. It also has a useful but dangerous auto-execute feature. A programmer can insert a program into a document that runs instantly whenever the document is opened. This is how the Melissa virus was programmed. Anyone who opened a document infected with Melissa would immediately activate the virus. It would send the 50 e-mails, and then infect a central file called NORMAL.DOT so that any file saved later would also contain the virus! It created a huge mess.

Microsoft applications have a feature called Macro Virus Protection built into them to prevent this sort of thing. With Macro Virus Protection turned on (the default option is ON), its auto-execute feature is disabled. So when a document tries to auto-execute viral code, a dialog pops up warning the user. Unfortunately, many people don't know what macros or macro viruses are, and when they see the dialog they ignore it, so the virus runs anyway. Many other people turn off the protection mechanism. So the Melissa virus spread despite the safeguards in place to prevent it.

What Is A Macro Virus?

The most common viruses that infect computers today - viruses such as Concept, Nuclear, Showoff, Adam, Wazzu, and Laroux - are macro viruses. They replicate by a completely different method than conventional viruses.

Macro viruses can not attach themselves to just any program. Rather, each one can only spread through one specific program. The two most common types of macro viruses are Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel viruses. These two programs are equipped with sophisticated macro languages so that many tasks can be automated with little or no input from the user. Virus writers quickly realized that it would be possible to construct self-replicating macros using these languages. The reason why this is possible is because Word documents and Excel spreadsheetscan contain auto open macros. This means that when you open a Word Document in Word or an Excel spreadsheet in Excel any auto open macros contained within the document will execute automatically and you won't even know it's happening. You open an infected document in Microsoft Word. (Remember, Word documents can contain auto open macros). These macros, which in this example contain a virus, execute when the document is opened and copy themselves into the global template that Word uses to store global macros. In this case, since the infected macros are now part of your global template file they will automatically execute and copy themselves into other word documents whenever you open any document in Microsoft Word. Excel macro viruses work in relatively the same way. Because Word documents and Excel spreadsheets contain auto open macros it is important to think of them as computer programs in a sense. In other words, when you open Word documents in Word, or excel spreadsheets in Excel, you could be executing harmful code that is built right into the objects you're opening. They should be checked thoroughlyfor viruses before you open them in their respective programs. It is important to have an effective anti-virus strategy in place to prevent infection by these and all other kinds of viruses.