Computer Programming

Randy Pausch was born on October 23, 1960.

// declare a function

int* function(int, int);

or

int* (function)(int, int);

// declare a pointer to a function

int* (*pointer_to_function)(int, int);

UNIX is an open source operating system. As natural for an OS, it has its own way of doing all the tasks it is supposed to do- like managing files, allocating resources, handling user accounts- so on and so forth. These features make working on UNIX a different experience to working on Windows or Mac OSx- just like the experience of Windows is dissimilar to the OSx experience.

Keeping this in mind, the platform and the tools UNIX offers is collectively known as the UNIX environment.

Cygwin is used to port applications that were written for Unix or Linux to a Windows environment.

o(eloge)

The full history of computers is too long to type in one WikiAnswers answer, so I would recommend Googling it.

The "machine language" and "assembly language" for each CPU architecture are the lowest-level programming languages.

The "Forth language" and the "C programming language" are perhaps the most popular non-CPU-specific low-level programming languages. They were once considered high-level programming languages, and certainly they are at a higher level than assembly language, but now they are considered low-level programming languages when compared to the much higher-level languages available today (Python, Java, C++, etc).

Low-level programming languages provide little or no abstraction from the CPU's instruction set architecture; typically they interact with the hardware directly.

You don't.

A flowchart is one form of a visualization for an algorithm. Overloaded functions are one of many tools used to implement such an algorithm. The algorithm (and, therefore, the flowchart) isn't concerned with the tool needed for the implementation.

Smart phones, laptops, notebooks, e-books, internet

One example of a time-sharing system is the bank's bankcard system, which allows hundreds of people to access the same program on the mainframe at the same time.

The Multics & Unix operating systems are time sharing Operating Systems

You need to make the previous record's next pointer point to the record you are removing's next record, and (if it is a doubly linked list) the next record's previous pointer point to the record you are removing's previous record.

If you are keeping track of the head and/or tail of the list, you need to make sure you update them if you have just removed one of them.

generally application specific code written in assembly language.

TV tuner,wireless NIC,and capture card

This may seem like a silly question, but you will gain some knowledge on the inner working of the preprocessor of the recursive macro expansion. It will actually require a lot of scripts.

It's by design. You can still do it, with type-cast:

void *p;

p= (void *)((char *)p + 256);

OEM stands for original equipment manufacturer. Software, especially versions of the Windows Operating system, can often be provided as an OEM version. That means it's designed and licensed to be supplied already loaded onto a new computer by the manufacturer. With an OEM version, there is no support from the software company - the equipment manufacturer is expected to provide that. Usually there is no printed literature although the manual is provided as a computer file.

Buying an OEM version is usually much cheaper than the retail version, although if you didn't build the machine, you're contravening the licence terms. If it goes wrong, you're on your own!

Yacc provides a general tool for imposing structure on the input to a computer program. The Yacc user prepares a specification of the input process; this includes rules describing the input structure, code to be invoked when these rules are recognized, and a low-level routine to do the basic input. Yacc then generates a function to control the input process. This function, called a parser, calls the user-supplied low-level input routine (the lexical analyzer) to pick up the basic items (called tokens) from the input stream.

Windows XP is an operating system, not a programming language.

It's not that easy, you should read a book and/or take a course about.

There is no such thing as a typical computer program. Some programs are tiny occupying just a few kilobytes of computer memory, others are massive, occupying many megabytes. The amount of code required is a function of the complexity of the problem you are trying to solve.

Files should be archived as often as possible. Backup programs (of which there are many to choose from) are used to create archives.

Backups can be made to a variety of storage mediums including removable drives and optical discs (CD, DVD or BluRay). Removable drives are the best option in terms of storage capacity and speed and they allow backups to be kept off-site which provides an additional measure of security in the event of fire or flood damage, for instance. Cloud-based backups are also an option for maintaining off-site backups.

If you have a lot of data, a RAID system makes sense as they can be used to create automatic backups by duplicating files across two or more discs. If one disc fails, the other will keep you up and running until the faulty disc is replaced. However, if both should fail (which can happen), you'll be glad you made an off-site backup. Indeed, it's good practice to have several levels of redundancy, combining a RAID with an on-site backup in a fire-proof safe, an off-site backup in a dedicated data storage facility and a cloud-based backup for when all else fails.

How often you backup is entirely dependant upon how much you are prepared to lose should disaster strike. We've all had those occasions when we've been working on a lengthy document and suddenly the power goes out, losing an hours worth of work. While there are measures we can take to minimise the loss, it is nonetheless frustrating. But when a disk fails, an hours worth of work is the least of your worries; you might lose days, weeks, even months of work, depending on when you last made a backup. So it's vital that you make regular backups.

It's also important to make system backups as well as data backups. System backups only need to be done after making a change to the system, such as when updating software or adding new programs but restoring a system from backup is many times quicker than re-installing from scratch. System backups don't need to be done as often as data backups but you should always have at least one full backup of the system and another of the data. Thereafter you can make incremental backups (recording the changes since the last backup) however full backups should be made periodically.

To create an archive, you first choose which files should be part of that archive. If all your documents are in your personal folder then it's simply a matter of selecting that one folder and creating a complete backup. Keeping system files separate from your data, preferably on completely separate drives, makes it easy to create separate system and data archives, however backup programs allow you to create multiple backup configurations (or tasks) that you can easily recall.

Note that every file on your system has an ARCHIVE attribute associated with it. Every time you backup a file, the ARCHIVE attribute is cleared. Every time you modify or create a file, the ARCHIVE attribute is set. This simple mechanism makes it possible to determine which files have changed since they were last backed up, thus allowing you to create incremental backups. So having selected the files you wish to backup, you simply choose a full backup or an incremental backup. Incremental backups obviously take less time to complete.

A normal backup cycle requires that you make a full backup at the end of each week or at the end of each month, depending on how changeable your data is. In between these backups you will make incremental backups. However, it is important that you never overwrite the most recent backup, so always keep several volumes in rotation. For instance, if you perform weekly incremental backups with a full backup every month, it would be prudent to keep at least 3 full backups in circulation (covering the previous three months) and as many as 15 incremental backups, covering up to 5 weeks in each of those 3 months. So long as one of the three full backups works, the worst case would be losing 3 months work. This is why it is important to verify your backups as soon as you make them. It's no use making a backup if it cannot be relied upon. Backup programs normally include an option to automatically verify a backup after it is made.

Above all else, if your data is vital, backup your backups with an off-site backup.

identify two composite numbers that each have 8 as a factor

The answer to this question depends on several things, the most important of which is the fitness evaluation. I'm going to ignore evaluation- you must determine this for yourself based on your application.

Some of the things the effect the time complexity are:the data structures used to represent the individuals and the population, the genetic operators used, and the implementation of the genetic operators. Roulette wheel selection, for example, can be anywhere from O(n^2) when done naively, to O(log(n)), or even O(n) using something like Vose Alias Algorithm.

The simplest case- roulette wheel selection, point mutation, and one point crossover with both individuals and populations represented by fixed length vectors- has time complexity O(gens * (mut + cross + select)) where gens is the number of generations, mut is the complexity of point mutation (n*m with n the size of the population and m the size of the individuals), cross the time complexity of crossover (n*m again), and select the time complexity of selection (n in the case of an efficiently done roulette wheel).

Therefore, the time complexity of a simple Genetic Algorithm is O(gens*n*m) as this is the dominating term.

I'm sure a much better explanation can be found in the literature.

Example for System/360 CPU:

L R0,A

A R0,B

ST R0,SUM

...

A DS F

B DS F

SUM DS F