Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Don't forget to comment about the course (good or bad) with the registrar!

This is our last day to cover the good stuff, so let's get to it!

We talked about ones and zeros, as well as the way those numbers are stored.  Now, let's talk about how they represent the things we care about...from letters, to music, to pictures from home.

With images, there is a lot to take in to consideration.  We can use black and white images to talk a little about image compression, but there is so much more to think about.  Remember hex?  Let's revisit it and start talking megapixels!

Where would computers be without sound?  Sound also requires a lot of space, but like with images, we can compress those items.  We're actually so used to the compression methods that we don't even question the .mp3 extension anymore!

All of this helps us see how incredibly important it is to have talented computer scientists.  As data continues to consume more and more space, it's going to be evermore important to store and transmit it efficiently.

For now, we can focus on manipulating the bits that we have.  Let's take out a piece of paper, then take one last go at our webpages!