CS456/556 - Internet Services - Week 2 Assignment

1. What questions might someone ask if you tried to sell them Internet communication services?
2. Make a list of basic utilities you assume everyone has and then check statistics. For example, do more homes in your country have television or indoor plumbing? Do the results surprise you? What might you conclude will happen when networking services become widely available?
3. Is the U.S. government encouraging Internet growth?
4. Although numbers appears on all thermometers, most are analog devices. Explain why.
5. Does a compact disc have a shorter playing time if it contains the sounds of a full orchestra than a single soloist? Explain.
6. Which of the following is analog and which is digital? a) A pie-chart that shows twelve colored regions in a circle with the area of a region proportional to sales in a given month. b) A table with twelve rows that contains the sales for twelve months rounded to the nearest thousand dollars. c) A bar-graph in which the height of twelve bars shows the sales in twelve months.
7. What problems does a user encounter with audio tapes that a compact disc eliminates?
8. What was the first digital communication system that used electricity?
9. Why is Morse Code digital if it does not use numeric digits?
10. Who knew and used Morse code: telegraph customers? telegraph owners? telegraph operators?
11. What two values did the telegraph use to encode data?
12. The two values the Internet uses to encode data are called _______________________
13. Why did Morse use only two values in his telegraph code?
14. If a telegraph could deliver a message to a remote town in 30 seconds while a rider on horseback took over 16 hours, approximately how much faster was the telegraph than horseback (10 times, 1000 times or 100,000 times)?

    ---

15. computer stores data in _______________________ on disk.
16. The major Internet file transfer service is known by the three-letter abbreviation ________
17. When a user runs an FTP client program, the client contacts a remote FTP ________
18. The FTP command ls lists the names of the files that reside on the _______
19. Anonymous FTP is a term that describes a method of accessing ___________
20. How many commands does your FTP client software offer? (Hint: to find out, type help after starting FTP.)
21. Most versions of FTP permit a user to specify the name of a remote computer when invoking the FTP client program. Explain why the FTP opencommand might still be needed.

    ---

22. The process of looking for information is called _______________________
23. The Internet's most popular browsing service is named the ______ _______ ____________
24. In a hypermedia browsing system, a selection on one page can lead to a _____, a ______, or a _________
25. A _______________ can be used to store the location of a page, making it possible to return to the location quickly.
26. Explain why a user may need to remember previous selections to understand a given page.
27. What is the chief disadvantage of a structured information system like the Web? (Hint: is selecting items from a list efficient for all lookups?)
28. Suppose the selectable links on a set of Web pages contains a cycle in which a link leads to a page which eventually leads back to the original page. Explain what can happen if a user does not remember which pages were visited earlier during browsing.
29. Does the situation in the previous question ever arise in practice? Experiment with a browser by selecting a link, and then using the Back function to return to the previous page. What do you notice about the link that was followed? What happens if a long time (e.g., a week) elapses between the time a link is selected and the time a page containing that link is revisited?

Bulletin Board Discussion
[post your answers to the bulletin board for CS456/556 - Internet Services by 4:00 p.m. MDT/MST Monday]
Answer these questions in your own words.

1. Identify analog and digital devices that you use each day.
2. Do any computers within your organization run an FTP server? If so, contact the server to find out which files are available.
3. Would you enjoy browsing through pages of information? Try browsing on the Internet and report on the interesting information you find.
4. If you were asked to plan a Web page for your organization, how would you choose to structure the information?

Homework
(Due before class on Sept. 4, 2001) The following assignment is intended to show you the basics of ftp. [e-mail your answers to summers_wayne@ColumbusState.edu by 8:00 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2001]

1. Read about compact disc technology. What is the maximum playing time for a compact disc?
2. Morse assigned short codes to the English letters he expected operators to send most often. The letters E, I , S , and T have the shortest codes. Find out how frequently each letter appears in commonEnglish text. Did Morse devise an optimum code? Explain.
3. Write your name (First and Last) in Morse Code.
4. Discuss what differences you would have in your life if the telephone had not been invented and all communications was still conducted by telegraph.
5. e-mail me a copy of sheep.exe found on the ftp server in the CS456 folder on cs.nmhu.edu
6. Discuss your impressions of this class: your likes and dislikes so far.

Click here to return to Wayne's World's homepage: