Assignment: Read the text, write the annotation to it and retell it.

OTHER WINDOWS PRODUCTS

       Today, the reliable and familiar Microsoft Windows® platform  extends beyond the office desktop, helping make "any time, any place" computing a reality. Embedded technology is the means by which computing power is placed in more places than ever, from handheld devices to automobiles.

Many of the rapidly evolving embedded products rely on special versions of the Windows operating system. Now software developers and hardware manufacturers can use Windows technology to build intelligent, 32-bit Windows–based devices that connect people to information in innovative ways.

Windows CE.NET

Microsoft Windows CE.NET, the successor to Windows CE 3.0, combines a real-time, embedded operating system with the powerful tools for rapidly creating the next generation of smart, connected, and small-footprint devices. With a complete operating system feature set and comprehensive development tools, Windows CE.NET contains the features developers need to build, debug, and deploy customized Windows CE.NET–based devices.

Built on its own code base from the ground up, this operating system debuted in September 1996. Windows CE originally ran on the Handheld PC but now is used in devices of different shapes, sizes, and degrees of ruggedness, such as mobile handhelds, industrial controllers, gateways, and advanced consumer electronics.

Windows CE.NET has been optimized for the next generation of smart, connected devices requiring reliable networking, real-time operations, and rich multimedia and Web browsing. With support for multiple CPU architectures, its scalable, open foundation has become a popular choice for hardware manufacturers in building a wide variety of embedded products.

 

Windows XP Embedded

Windows XP Embedded is an operating system and development platform that delivers the power of Windows in componentized form for the rapid development of reliable, advanced embedded devices.

Based on the same code base as Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Embedded offers more than 10,000 individual feature components from which embedded developers can choose to achieve optimum functionality in a reduced footprint. Developers receive the added advantage of a familiar programming model along with the latest multimedia, Web browsing, power management, and device support.

 

TEXT 4

Assignment: Read the texts and find similarity and things that differ the first hackers from hackers of today.

THE FIRST HACKERS

 

 The first "hackers" were students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who belonged to the TMRC (Tech Model Railroad Club). Some of the members really built model trains. But many were more interested in the wires and circuits underneath the track platform. Spending hours at TMRC creating better circuitry was called "a mere hack." Those members who were interested in creating innovative, stylistic, and technically clever circuits called themselves (with pride) hackers.

During the spring of 1959, a new course was offered at MIT, a freshman programming class. Soon the hackers of the railroad club were spending days, hours, and nights hacking away at their computer, an IBM 704. Instead of creating a better circuit, their hack became creating faster, more efficient program — with the least number of lines of code. Eventually they formed a group and cre­ated the first set of hacker's rules, called the Hacker's Ethic.

Steven Levy, in his book Hackers, presented the rules:

· Rule 1: Access to computers – and anything, which might teach you, something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total.

· Rule 2: All information should be free.

· Rule 3: Mistrust authority – promote decentralization.

· Rule 4: Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, race, or position.

· Rule 5: You can create art and beauty on a computer.

· Rule 6: Computers can change your life for the better.

These rules made programming at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory a challenging, all encompassing endeavor. Just for the exhilaration of programming, students in the AI Lab would write a new program to perform even the smallest tasks. The program would be made available to others who would try to perform the same task with fewer instructions. The act of making the computer work more elegantly was, to a bonafide hacker, awe-inspiring.

Hackers were given free reign on the computer by two AI Lab professors, "Uncle" John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, who realized that hacking created new insights. Over the years, the AI Lab created many innovations: LIFE, a game about survival; LISP, a new kind of programming language; the first computer chess game; The CAVE, the first computer adventure; and SPACEWAR, the first video game.

 

HACKERS OF TODAY

 

Hackers, having started as toy railroad circuitry designers in the late fifties, are completely new people now. Once turned to computers, they became gods and devils. Nowadays holders and users of the World Wide Web hide their PCs under passwords when the keyword "hacker" is heard. When and how did this change take place? Why are we so frightened of Hacker The Mighty and The Elusive?

One of the legends says that hackers have changed under the influence of "crackers" — the people who loved to talk on the phone at somebody else 's expense. Those people hooked up to any number and enjoyed the pleasure of telephone conversation, leaving the most fun — bills —for the victim. Another legend tells us that modern hackers were born when a new computer game concept was invented. Rules were very simple: two computer programs were fighting for the reign on the computer. Memory, disk-space and CPU time were the battlefield. The results of that game are two in number and are well known: hackers and computer viruses. One more story tells that the "new " hackers came to existence when two MIT students that attended the AI Lab found an error in a network program. They let people, responsible for the network, know but with no result. The offended wrote a code that completely paralyzed the network and only after that the error was fixed. By the way, those students founded The Motorola Company later.

Today, when the Internet has entered everyone's house there's no shield between a hacker and your PC. You can password yourself up, but then either hackers will crack your PC anyway or nobody will enter your site, because passwords kill accessibility. If your PC is easy to access no one can guarantee what 'II happen to your computer - hackers, you know them.

Monsters? Chimeras? Not at all! Every hacker is a human being and has soft spots: good food, pretty girls or boys (it happens both ways), classical music, hot chocolate at the fireplace, apple pie on Sunday. Hacker is first of all a connoisseur, a professional with no computer secret out of his experience. And what is the application for skills depends on him. God, and Holy Spirit.

 

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