Operating System - Essay Example

According to American Heritage Dictionary defines an operating system as software that is intended to handle basic essentials of computer processes, like conveying instructions to hardware devices such as disk drives and computer screens, and assigning system resources like memory to diverse software applications being run.

There are several operating systems which depend on the hardware and devices being used. The operating systems are specific to the devices that use them. Categories of operating systems are: 1) desktop operating systems 2) network operating systems 3) Embedded operating systems.

In the history of teaching information systems, there has been a shift of emphasis in regard to teaching OS material. Previously the focus was on disk operating systems (DOS). This was the first operating system for IBM-compatible desk top computers. Then, the RAM was quite limited and the programming language used was BASIC (Hailperin 57).

In the 1980s sequential storage devices were used to store programs. Unlike RAM, these types of data are stored and accessed in sequence. Today we have many different types of operating systems, and they can be broken down into two types of OS. 1) Open source Operating Systems 2) Proprietary Operating Systems

Proprietary OS is owned by corporations and controlled by them. Examples are DOS and WINDOWS versions. In open source OS, the codes are open to everyone, and therefore, anyone can make changes to the OS.

There is a third class of OS labeled Embedded Operating Systems. They are the operating systems that are permanently stored on ROM (Read Only Memory) chips that are embedded into smartphones, video games, and other electronic devices. 

Market share of most used OS in the US from March 2011 to March 2012.

OS                                          % of Market

Win7                                       38.01

WinXP                                    26.67

WinVista                                16.63

MacOSX                                14.81

iOS                                         2.05

Linux                                     0.77

A network operating system manages requests from multiple clients that are occurring at the same time. The embedded operating system trends are remarkably different in different countries. 

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was developed. The code typically uses an 8-bit code which would have 2 to the 8th power possible orderings of the bits. This could represent 256 different characters (Hailperin 264).

The following is a list of some of the frequent measurements in bytes:

Kilobyte                     KB      2 to the 10th power of bytes

Megabytes                  MB      2 to the 20th power of bytes

Gigabyte                     GB      2 to the 30th power of bytes

Terabyte                     TB       2 to the 40th power of bytes

Petabyte                     EB       2 to the 50th power of bytes

Exabyte                      EB       2 to the 60th power of bytes

Zettabyte                    ZB       2 to the 70th power of bytes

Special purpose software

This application software is more restricted in whatever it performs, but it often completes a task much better or easier than general-purpose software. For example, a tax calculation program that keeps a record of expenses for tax purposes.

There are many other categories of software such as antivirus software programs.

Netcraft.com

The internet community knows that the main step in shielding their private information on the internet is to certify that they use an encrypted link. As a consequence, phishing attacks, which make use of SSL certificates, are risky as they are linked with an increased level of guarantee.

September web server survey

The site reduced by 8m since the previous month’s study. A huge part of this drop was caused by a great network of link-farmed domains vanishing from under the .com TLD.

The extent of an RSA public key gives a signal of the power of the encryption — the smaller the public key is; the simpler it is for an enemy to brute-force. An enemy, armed with a cooperation private key copied from a small public key, would be capable of decrypting both precedent and future SSL-secured associations if she were capable of incepting the encrypted traffic. She could also imitate the administration to which the SSL certificate was issued if she has the chance to manipulate DNS lookups.

As we've observed in the preceding months, the most consistent hosting corporations are all powered by Windows Server 2008, Linux, or FreeBSD. The prior time a different OS placed in the peak ten was once Windows Server 2003 emerged, back in February.

Operating system used by:

Indstate.com: Microsoft Windows

Tribstar.com: UNIX & Linux

sycamorepride.com: Macintosh

Startcounter.com, cnet.com

Smartphones as keys? Good technology sees an opening.

Good technology and Netflix concluded field trials of near-field communication technology that enable one to use a Samsung Galaxy S III handset with an NFC-facilitated microSD card to get access to a structure. The technology that uses HID Global students still faces various technological disputes, and it is unlikely to be deployed any time soon.