Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer for I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech end. Hey, we're back
Speaker 1: with our tech Glossary series. We've made it up to
Speaker 1: acronyms and initialisms that start with the letter P. This
Speaker 1: is part five. So if you're joining me now and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: the alphabet doesn't start with the letter P, that means
Speaker 1: you should probably go back, you know, several episodes to
Speaker 1: listen to the beginning of this series. So we're taking
Speaker 1: lots of popular groupings of letters that you typically see
Speaker 1: in tech, and we're explaining what those actually means. So
Speaker 1: when you come across them, you'll say, oh, I know
Speaker 1: what that stands for, and I know what it's for,
Speaker 1: so let's get back to it. First up is pc B.
Speaker 1: This means printed circuit board. Alright, So a circuit is
Speaker 1: essentially a path for transmitting electric current, and you know,
Speaker 1: typically we make circuits so that we can have electric
Speaker 1: current do work for us in some way. For example,
Speaker 1: a circuit might include a path that leads to a
Speaker 1: light bulb that has an incandescent filament inside it. The
Speaker 1: current flows through the path, flows into the light bulb
Speaker 1: goes through that filament, causing it to heat up and
Speaker 1: incandesce or give off light, and then the current continues
Speaker 1: through to the end of the circuit, which is pretty simple. Now,
Speaker 1: in the early days of circuitry, you would use conductive
Speaker 1: wire to connect all the elements of your circuits. But
Speaker 1: wires take up space, they can get tangled, they can
Speaker 1: get disconnected. Uh, you would have to solder things. If
Speaker 1: we could only depend upon the types of circuits that
Speaker 1: you can build with like bread boards and stuff where
Speaker 1: you're just learning, all of our electronics would be much
Speaker 1: much larger, and again you would have to sauder stuff.
Speaker 1: That's a very slow and painstaking process, especially when you
Speaker 1: first start and you're not too sure of yourself, and
Speaker 1: if you make a mistake, it really slows you down
Speaker 1: even more. Then, in nine a guy named Charles Ducas
Speaker 1: filed a patent for a design that served as a
Speaker 1: foundation for modern circuits. What he did was he took
Speaker 1: a wooden board and he used a stencil, and he
Speaker 1: laid the stencil against the wooden board, and then he
Speaker 1: attached conductive materials onto the board itself. Through this stincil.
Speaker 1: The conductive materials served the same purpose as wires, but
Speaker 1: it laid flat against the boards, which saved a lot
Speaker 1: of space and hassle. Move forward a little more than
Speaker 1: a decade, and in nineteen thirty six you had an
Speaker 1: Austrian inventor named Paul Eisler who made the first actual
Speaker 1: printed circuit board. While Ducas had stenciled conductive material to
Speaker 1: a board, Eisler had experience with industrial printers that were
Speaker 1: used in the publishing world, and he theorized that he
Speaker 1: could use that same sort of technology to print a
Speaker 1: circuit directly to a non conductive base. That's really important,
Speaker 1: you know, do costed the same thing he used a
Speaker 1: wooden board. Wood is non conductive. The material that the
Speaker 1: circuit is built on top of has to be non conductive,
Speaker 1: or else you can't channel where the current is supposed
Speaker 1: to go. It'll just flow through all the conductive material.
Speaker 1: So with modern PCBs we call this base the substrate.
Speaker 1: Printing a circuit board solved tons of problems. For one thing,
Speaker 1: as long as you design your circuit properly on the
Speaker 1: front end, and as long as the printing equipment was
Speaker 1: working as intended. You could print and reproduce your circuit
Speaker 1: without having to be fussed about making a mistake. You
Speaker 1: weren't in danger of soldering a wire to the wrong
Speaker 1: contact or anything like that, so that was a huge
Speaker 1: benefit to this approach. Paul Eisler's story is a really
Speaker 1: dramatic one. There are a lot of trials and tribulations
Speaker 1: and tragedy and triumphlets of alliteration there, and I may
Speaker 1: have to dedicate a full episode to him in the
Speaker 1: future because it's a pretty fascinating story. These days, PCBs
Speaker 1: tend to be made by taking a non conductive substrate
Speaker 1: then laminating a thin layer of copper foil to the surface. Now,
Speaker 1: copper is conductive, so you might wonder, well, what gives
Speaker 1: if you completely coat the surface with a copper coding
Speaker 1: and well there's a following step which involves using chemicals
Speaker 1: to etch the copper away. So what you do is
Speaker 1: you coat the bits of copper you want to keep,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that's actually going to serve as
Speaker 1: the connective channels for your circuit components. So all the
Speaker 1: circuit tree parts, you cote that with a protective chemical
Speaker 1: you leave the rest of the copper uncovered. Then when
Speaker 1: you introduced the chemicals to the circuit board, the chemicals
Speaker 1: are only able to eat the exposed copper away. They
Speaker 1: leave behind all the stuff that you've protected, and voila,
Speaker 1: you've got your printed circuit board. You can also make
Speaker 1: circuit boards with much smaller channels this way, using the
Speaker 1: etching method, and you'll find PCBs in all sorts of
Speaker 1: modern electronics. Computer motherboards are a type of PCB. Smartphones, radios,
Speaker 1: DVD players, game consoles, cars, systems, tons of stuff have
Speaker 1: printed circuit boards in them. It's pretty nifty. Okay. Moving
Speaker 1: on p d A. Now, in tech this does not
Speaker 1: refer to public displays of affection. And I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make some sort of you know, crew joke about
Speaker 1: how tech nerds don't have experience with that type of
Speaker 1: p d A because that joke is old and tired
Speaker 1: and not accurate, thank you very much. It's in fact
Speaker 1: so old and tired that it's even more old and
Speaker 1: tired than I am. And that's saying something. But no,
Speaker 1: a p d A in this context is a personal
Speaker 1: digital assistant, which is more or less just a handheld computer.
Speaker 1: These devices predated the smartphone. One way to describe a
Speaker 1: traditional p d A is to say it was kind
Speaker 1: of like a smartphone without the phone part. In the
Speaker 1: old days, you would have your p d A and
Speaker 1: you would use a cable or a docking station to
Speaker 1: sinc the pd A to a computer, and software running
Speaker 1: on your computer would interact with the doct p d
Speaker 1: A and transfer over information like contacts, new email documents,
Speaker 1: et cetera. This could go both ways. The p d
Speaker 1: A could end up adding new context to your database
Speaker 1: on your computer, and that way you would have access
Speaker 1: to this information on the go while your computer remained
Speaker 1: packed up or back at the office. They were really
Speaker 1: just an electronic version of the old pen and paper
Speaker 1: schedulers and appointment calendars that you know, organized people relied upon.
Speaker 1: While you could make a decent argument that the nineteen
Speaker 1: four British made handheld computer called the Ion Organizer counts
Speaker 1: as a p d A, I think most folks would
Speaker 1: really point to the early nineteen nineties when talking about
Speaker 1: the earliest p d A s and we get the
Speaker 1: term personal digital assistant from Apple and the infamous Apple
Speaker 1: Newton in Two Apples. Then CEO John Scully, someone who
Speaker 1: is frequently reviled in the history of Apple, revealed the
Speaker 1: Newton at C E S and yeah, back in the day,
Speaker 1: way back in the day, Apple would actually attend C
Speaker 1: E S. How how times have changed. The Newton was
Speaker 1: to have handwriting recognition technology, and it would allow people
Speaker 1: to write notes down on a digital screen using a
Speaker 1: special stylus, and the Newton would then, in theory, convert
Speaker 1: the handwritten stuff you put on the screen into text
Speaker 1: and you would have an electronic copy of your notes. Now,
Speaker 1: some technical shortcomings gave Newton a bad name early on,
Speaker 1: though Apple would continue to work on the technology and
Speaker 1: improve it. However, our first impressions are really hard to shake,
Speaker 1: and generally speaking, the Apple Newton became something of a joke,
Speaker 1: literally in the case of a Simpsons episode. But many
Speaker 1: other companies introduced PDAs over the years. One of the
Speaker 1: big ones was Palm, and over time companies would build
Speaker 1: in capabilities to allow PDAs to connect directly to the Internet,
Speaker 1: removing the necessity to dock a p d A with
Speaker 1: a computer to transfer information to the p d A.
Speaker 1: For the most part, smartphones have replaced p d A s.
Speaker 1: As you know smartphone apps replicate the various functions found
Speaker 1: in those old devices. But it was a pretty darn
Speaker 1: good run. It's just a short one, and I've heard
Speaker 1: some folks, including myself, use p d A to refer
Speaker 1: to stuff like Sirie, Google Assistant, and Alexa. But I
Speaker 1: suspect this is not super accurate and that I am
Speaker 1: guilty of perpetuating a misunderstanding, for which I apologize. I
Speaker 1: think the generally accepted terms for those kind of things
Speaker 1: are smart assistant or virtual assistant, and sometimes just personal assistant,
Speaker 1: So I will try to remember not to use personal
Speaker 1: digital assistant when referring to stuff like Siri. Next up
Speaker 1: p d F. This stands for Portable Document Format. So
Speaker 1: the company Adobe developed the PDF format to address a problem.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you are working on electronic document and
Speaker 1: a word processing program on a PC, and that this
Speaker 1: is back in the early nineties, and you want to
Speaker 1: send this document to someone else for them to review it.
Speaker 1: But that person uses a Mac computer and the Mac
Speaker 1: computer is not compatible with the file formats that your
Speaker 1: PC based word processing program generates. So what do you do?
Speaker 1: Adobe solution was creating a file type that isn't tied
Speaker 1: to a specific operating system or a type of hardware,
Speaker 1: or a type of word processing or you know, productivity software.
Speaker 1: It was, however, proprietary to Adobe nearly two decades before
Speaker 1: the company released it as an open standard in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. The original concept was that you would create
Speaker 1: a document with whichever software you were reliant upon and
Speaker 1: on whatever type of computer you happen to own. Then
Speaker 1: you would convert that document to the PDF format, which
Speaker 1: effectively captured the document in its final state. Then you
Speaker 1: could send that BDF to whomever you needed to and
Speaker 1: they would be able to view it on whatever type
Speaker 1: of machine they used. However, you did need a special
Speaker 1: PDF viewer to look at those documents, at least initially.
Speaker 1: The file sizes could get quite big as well, uh
Speaker 1: larger than the native file formats you were working with.
Speaker 1: So let's say you were making a word document then
Speaker 1: you converted it to PDF. You would see that the
Speaker 1: PDF file might be much larger than the word file,
Speaker 1: and they weren't meant to be edited, so making changes
Speaker 1: to a PDF file wasn't really meant to be a thing.
Speaker 1: A b DF is kind of more like an image
Speaker 1: than a document file. It's more like a picture of
Speaker 1: a document. It is possible to edit them these days,
Speaker 1: either directly using Adobe products or using software like Microsoft
Speaker 1: Word or the cloud based Google Drive suite. And when
Speaker 1: creating PDFs, you can make some fields interactive, which allows
Speaker 1: people to place digital signatures on files and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, or you know, check boxes in a checklist.
Speaker 1: But one thing that I think is important to remember
Speaker 1: is that PDF files can sometimes also be hosts to malware.
Speaker 1: Because PDFs can hold embedded code, including hyperlinks or those
Speaker 1: interactive fields, it is possible to embed malware within a
Speaker 1: PDF itself, so it's always good to keep your antivirus
Speaker 1: software up to date. It's also a good idea to
Speaker 1: scan your files if you aren't confident that they came
Speaker 1: from a safe source, or just not open them at
Speaker 1: all if you aren't you know, sure of where they
Speaker 1: came from. This is a good rule in general. Next,
Speaker 1: we've U P HP and originally this initialism stood for
Speaker 1: personal home page, but now it doesn't. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like how MTV used to stand for Music Television but
Speaker 1: now it's just MTV, or how AMC used to be
Speaker 1: American Movie Classics, but now it's just a MC p
Speaker 1: HP is a type of scripting language used in web development.
Speaker 1: It's an open source language and it can be embedded
Speaker 1: into HTML, which is hypertext markup language. We covered that
Speaker 1: in a previous episode in this series. PHP code executes
Speaker 1: on the server side of things, and it can be
Speaker 1: used to make dynamic web content, meaning content that actually
Speaker 1: changes either because of an interaction that happens on a
Speaker 1: web page or it just is able to change over time.
Speaker 1: This is a good time for us to kind of
Speaker 1: reflect and remember the old old days of the web.
Speaker 1: So back when the World Wide Web was very young,
Speaker 1: it took a pretty good amount of work to make
Speaker 1: a web page. You might use a document program. For instance,
Speaker 1: I used just a very simple text editor program to
Speaker 1: build out a page in HTML before then uploading the
Speaker 1: code to a server. Then you would hop on over
Speaker 1: onto a web browser and see what the results were
Speaker 1: of your hard work and whether or not you laid
Speaker 1: out your page correctly or if in fact you were
Speaker 1: going to have to go back into that text editor
Speaker 1: and make some changes to your HTML code. It was
Speaker 1: a fairly slow process and because of that, and because
Speaker 1: HTML initially didn't really support dynamic elements, it would mean
Speaker 1: that most web pages you encountered would be static. That is,
Speaker 1: each web page was sort of a stable document and
Speaker 1: it didn't change. So if you visited someone's web page,
Speaker 1: there wasn't real really much point in visiting it again.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's going to be the same page.
Speaker 1: You could click on links and stuff and go to
Speaker 1: other you know, web pages or documents or whatever, but
Speaker 1: what you saw on the web page was going to
Speaker 1: remain the same over time. PHP is one of the
Speaker 1: scripting languages that allows developers to create web pages that
Speaker 1: are not static, but they can update or change in
Speaker 1: real time. Dynamic scripting allows for stuff like posting comments
Speaker 1: on a page and having them show up. That's one
Speaker 1: of the simplest versions I could think of. Dynamic elements
Speaker 1: allow for stuff like e commerce. Without it, businesses web
Speaker 1: page might be nothing more than the electronic equivalent of
Speaker 1: an advertising flyer, you know, maybe giving a perspective customer
Speaker 1: and email address to write to or a phone number
Speaker 1: to call. As I record this. PHP version eight point
Speaker 1: one point oh Alpha two is in early testing. It
Speaker 1: is not yet ready for production, but it is a
Speaker 1: scripting language that continues to receive updates, so that's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Okay, we've got a lot more letters of
Speaker 1: the alphabet to get through. Let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: all right. Next up, we've got p n G, or
Speaker 1: portable network Graphics. Some people pronounce it as ping, which
Speaker 1: is somewhat confusing because ping is something else. A ping
Speaker 1: in tech typically is when you're talking about a signal
Speaker 1: that's sent from a client to a server to wait
Speaker 1: for a response and find out how much latency there
Speaker 1: is between the two connections, so you know how much
Speaker 1: of a delay there is between the two. That's not
Speaker 1: what this gonna ping is. P n G is a
Speaker 1: graphics file format that supports lossless data compression, So that
Speaker 1: means it uses a method to compress file sizes that
Speaker 1: does not discard information about the file itself. When you
Speaker 1: view the image, you get all the information from the original.
Speaker 1: This makes it similar to the GIF file format or
Speaker 1: or jeff if you insist on being wrong. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this is in contrast with the JPEG format. Jpeg uses
Speaker 1: a lossy form of compression. Now, the PM format can
Speaker 1: compress down further than a GIFT can, and that means
Speaker 1: that many of the images on the web these days
Speaker 1: are actually PM files not GIF files. Greater compression means
Speaker 1: you get smaller file sizes. That means faster loading times
Speaker 1: when you're visiting a web page. It also means less
Speaker 1: bandwidth usage, so there are a lot of benefits to it.
Speaker 1: The group that developed PNG aimed to create a format
Speaker 1: that would allow for better color recreation, and also to
Speaker 1: make a format that wouldn't be covered under a patent.
Speaker 1: That would mean that people and companies would actually be
Speaker 1: able to use this new format without having to apply
Speaker 1: for a license from a patent holder in order to
Speaker 1: do so. The format also allows control of opacity and transparency,
Speaker 1: which is quite handy. This is what allows people to
Speaker 1: make images that lay right on top of a background
Speaker 1: without having that irritating block of white around the image,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a canvas or frame. And
Speaker 1: with aacity control, it's possible to make parts of the
Speaker 1: image transparent and parts of it opaque. That could come
Speaker 1: in pretty handy depending upon what effect you're striving for.
Speaker 1: Moving on, we've got raid. It's not a not an
Speaker 1: insect aside in this case, here's an acronym that actually
Speaker 1: has two similar full names and they both mean the
Speaker 1: same thing. So another example of this in this series
Speaker 1: was digital versatile disc and digital video disc. Both of
Speaker 1: those mean DVD. They're both for the same thing. It's
Speaker 1: just that digital versatile disc is the quote unquote official
Speaker 1: name for it. Anyway. A RAID is either a redundant
Speaker 1: array of independent discs or a redundant array of inexpensive discs.
Speaker 1: And it's a very practical solution to some pretty common problems.
Speaker 1: Problem no one technology breaks and I'm sure we've all
Speaker 1: experienced this. Maybe your computer keeps crashing, maybe your car
Speaker 1: are won't start, maybe the washing machine starts making this weird,
Speaker 1: high pitched sound and then it just gives up. The
Speaker 1: ghost stuff breaks down thanks a lot in tropy stupid
Speaker 1: laws of the universe. But what if you happen to
Speaker 1: be reliant on digital information, like that's the basis of
Speaker 1: your business or some endeavor you're pursuing, and if access
Speaker 1: to the digital information went away, you would be up
Speaker 1: the proverbial poopy creek without a paddle. That would be
Speaker 1: what we call in the tech business, a bad thing.
Speaker 1: So you'd probably want to store the information in a
Speaker 1: couple of different places so that if one of those
Speaker 1: things fails, you would still have it somewhere else. In fact,
Speaker 1: some of us do this in our day to day
Speaker 1: lives without even having it ever touched tech. I know
Speaker 1: I have written down the same thing a few times
Speaker 1: in different places so that I can make sure I
Speaker 1: had access to it. This is called redundancy, the practice
Speaker 1: of having backups so that you're not at a loss
Speaker 1: if your primary system should fail. And then there's the
Speaker 1: word inexpensive. That's also important. Sure, you could create a
Speaker 1: system in which you were using the top of the
Speaker 1: line equipment with the fastest processors and all of that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But if what you're really just trying
Speaker 1: to do is store some information, then going with that
Speaker 1: sort of bleeding edge technology would be a really big waste.
Speaker 1: It would just be throwing way too much hardware at
Speaker 1: something that didn't need that as a solution. What you
Speaker 1: really need is something that's reliable, but it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be the best of the best. You just need
Speaker 1: something that's going to work when you need it to.
Speaker 1: And even then you can start tweaking these settings a
Speaker 1: little bit, right Like, you can think of this like
Speaker 1: sliders on a control board. Maybe you've got one slider
Speaker 1: that's labeled cost and you've got a second slider that's
Speaker 1: labeled reliability, and their linked to each other. And the
Speaker 1: more rely will the tech, the more expensive it is.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the cost might increase faster than the
Speaker 1: reliability does. So maybe when you're at you know, level three,
Speaker 1: cost is three and reliability is three. But if you
Speaker 1: move reliability up to five, suddenly cost is six and
Speaker 1: reliability is five. Move reliability up to seven, cost is ten.
Speaker 1: You see what I'm saying, Like, costs can get higher
Speaker 1: faster than you actually see an increased reliability. But maybe
Speaker 1: you find a sweet spot somewhere that because the cost
Speaker 1: is at a certain level, you can have several redundant
Speaker 1: systems to support each service, and yeah they're not the
Speaker 1: most reliable, but the reliable enough you might see some failures,
Speaker 1: but you would save money on the far end of
Speaker 1: it because the cheaper systems work well enough that you
Speaker 1: didn't have to shell out the big, big bucks for
Speaker 1: the more expensive ones. So it becomes this sort of
Speaker 1: risk analysis kind of thing. You figure out, well, how
Speaker 1: likely is any system to go down at any given time,
Speaker 1: how many backups do I need to make sure that
Speaker 1: that is not a problem, and how expensive will it be,
Speaker 1: and generally speaking, you can go for some pretty cheap stuff.
Speaker 1: Big data centers use RAID servers to handle data through virtualization.
Speaker 1: Now that refers to using computer software to build out
Speaker 1: a virtual machine that relies on actual physical hardware but
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily tied to a single device. You can have
Speaker 1: a computer running one or more virtual machines, or you
Speaker 1: can have virtual machines that are kind of distributed across
Speaker 1: multiple computers. Using virtualization and RAID architecture, companies can have
Speaker 1: high performance, reliable systems and not freak out should part
Speaker 1: of it go down. And I'm pretty sure just about
Speaker 1: every cloud service out there relies on RAID implementations. There
Speaker 1: are different ways to handle the redundancy aspect, but the
Speaker 1: goal is always the same to provide a way to
Speaker 1: ensure service is not going to get interrupted even in
Speaker 1: the event of a catastrophic failure of one system. Like
Speaker 1: let's say that a server just breaks down entirely, maybe
Speaker 1: it's power supply goes bad. Others can then end up
Speaker 1: taking on the load because they are redundant systems. Now,
Speaker 1: there there are other things that can go wrong and
Speaker 1: they can interrupt service, like if the communication lines out
Speaker 1: to the general Internet are broken. Well, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how many redundant systems you have, right if your communication
Speaker 1: channel is cut, then you don't have any way of communicating.
Speaker 1: So there are other things that can go wrong, but
Speaker 1: at least on this particular end of the system, you
Speaker 1: have some failsafe measures. There's a lot more that could
Speaker 1: be said about RAID systems. I could go into a
Speaker 1: lot more detail, but I'm gonna save that for a
Speaker 1: full episode in the future at some point. Next up,
Speaker 1: we got RAM and DRAM and stram and RAM, or
Speaker 1: rather r A M d R A M S d
Speaker 1: R A M v R A M, etcetera. So welcome
Speaker 1: to the many flavors of random access memory. That's what
Speaker 1: RAMS stands for. I would call it random access memories,
Speaker 1: but that's a daft punk album, which is awesome of course,
Speaker 1: But that's not what I need to cover today. First,
Speaker 1: let's talk about computer memory in general. So computers, when
Speaker 1: you boil them down, uh, but you know, don't boil
Speaker 1: them down. That will invalidate your warranty anyway. Computers are
Speaker 1: machines that take data, they perform some type of operation
Speaker 1: on that data, and they produce output based on the
Speaker 1: outcome of that process. Now, the data needs to come
Speaker 1: from somewhere. It could come directly from input, like you know,
Speaker 1: a switch being thrown, or a key being pressed or
Speaker 1: a button being pushed, or a computer might pull data
Speaker 1: from a long term storage solution such as a hard disk.
Speaker 1: But to work quickly and efficiently, computers need a way
Speaker 1: to store at least some information temporarily in order to
Speaker 1: refer back to that. And sometimes techno nerds like me
Speaker 1: will use analogy of long term versus short term memory
Speaker 1: with humans. Data stored on a hard drive is more
Speaker 1: like long term memory, it's there for the long haul,
Speaker 1: but RAM is more like short term memory. Like if
Speaker 1: someone tells you, hey, just so you know, you need
Speaker 1: to push on that door to open it. You've got
Speaker 1: the information stored in short term memory, and you can
Speaker 1: use that info when you go up to the door,
Speaker 1: but you don't necessarily need it forever, right like, if
Speaker 1: you're only going through that door once, you really just
Speaker 1: need that information long enough to not make you look
Speaker 1: like a weirdo as you are pulling very hard on
Speaker 1: a door that's meant to be pushed. Now, beyond this
Speaker 1: little surface level, this analogy starts to break down. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna shift a bit. We're not gonna you know,
Speaker 1: it's not exactly the same. It's not apples to apples.
Speaker 1: Computer memory represents a way for a computer to reference
Speaker 1: information quickly without seeking it in long term storage and
Speaker 1: random access memory is dynamic, meaning it can be read
Speaker 1: from or chain to buy the computer without a problem.
Speaker 1: It can also be accessed in any order, which gives
Speaker 1: the computer a quick ability to go straight to the
Speaker 1: bit of data in the memory that's necessary, that's needed
Speaker 1: for whatever is going on, without having to read through
Speaker 1: all the data in random axis memory. To use another analogy,
Speaker 1: let's say that you're told to find the specific quote
Speaker 1: there was only one catch, and that was catch twenty
Speaker 1: two from the novel catch twenty two. But you're not
Speaker 1: giving any information about where in the novel that quote appears.
Speaker 1: You would probably start from the very beginning of the
Speaker 1: book and start scanning the novel line by line looking
Speaker 1: for that quote, which is time consuming. But let's say
Speaker 1: instead you have a reference that gives you the chapter
Speaker 1: and page number, and it tells you to look in
Speaker 1: chapter five to find this quote. Now you can skip
Speaker 1: right over chapters one through four, you can go to
Speaker 1: where the info you need happens to be. That's kind
Speaker 1: of like how RAM works. The computer doesn't have to
Speaker 1: scan through the entirety of what's in this dynamic memory
Speaker 1: to find what it needs. RAM can also be volatile,
Speaker 1: meaning that if you were to turn off your computer,
Speaker 1: the information stored within the machines RAM gets wiped out.
Speaker 1: RAM is really only important for helping to do the
Speaker 1: things that you're actually doing on the computer right then
Speaker 1: and there, so it doesn't need to get etched in
Speaker 1: stone or anything. You've got long term storage for that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. That's RAM in a nutshell. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about these other flavors really quickly, and this is
Speaker 1: just a very high level I'm not going to dive
Speaker 1: into each of these. That would take way too long.
Speaker 1: So d RAM stands for dynamic random access memory and
Speaker 1: s d RAM is a subtype of that. It's called
Speaker 1: synchronous dynamic random access memory. There's also d d R
Speaker 1: s d RAM, which at first I thought was dance
Speaker 1: Dance Revolution s d RAM, but no. In fact, d
Speaker 1: d R stands for it double data rate. Now, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: these behave very much in the same way as RAM,
Speaker 1: but with improved efficiency and speed for certain applications and implementation.
Speaker 1: So it's you could say, it's RAM but better. D
Speaker 1: RAM requires more power and generates more heat than your
Speaker 1: run of the mill RAM does, however, so there are
Speaker 1: tradeoffs here. Then we've got v RAM. This is video RAM,
Speaker 1: which is a variant of dynamic RAM, and it used
Speaker 1: to be a popular way to help buffer frames and
Speaker 1: graphics cards so that you would have a smooth experience
Speaker 1: running graphic intensive applications like you know, like video games.
Speaker 1: It's not really used anymore, however. It's essentially been replaced
Speaker 1: by s d RAM, which eventually got good enough so
Speaker 1: that we didn't need a specialized video RAM anymore. Next,
Speaker 1: we have our f C. The stands for request for comments.
Speaker 1: It's also a pretty misleading term these days, but back
Speaker 1: in the old days, and RFC really was more of
Speaker 1: a request for comments than it is today, and it
Speaker 1: was all in an effort to initiate a dialogue about
Speaker 1: how to set up the systems that one day would
Speaker 1: be the the stuff that powers the Internet. Alright, so,
Speaker 1: way back in the nineteen sixties, you had a group
Speaker 1: of researchers and engineers and scientists who are working for
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense in an effort to build out
Speaker 1: networking technology UH and ultimately to create what was called
Speaker 1: ARPA Net. In the ARPA Net project, it wasn't practical
Speaker 1: to have everyone present at every working group meeting in
Speaker 1: order to hash out the various protocols and approaches and
Speaker 1: even philosophies that the group would initiate in order to
Speaker 1: make computer and networking reality. However, there was also kind
Speaker 1: of a general desire not to create an environment in
Speaker 1: which maybe one small working group, for example, makes some
Speaker 1: sort of declarative proclamation of this is how it must
Speaker 1: be so the RFC approach, and which researchers would circulate
Speaker 1: a proposed set of specifications or protocols or whatever, would
Speaker 1: allow others to chime in and make suggestions or ask
Speaker 1: for clarification. The goal was to make better systems through
Speaker 1: this kind of collaborative approach, and not to have any
Speaker 1: one working group dominate the process. Now, over time, these
Speaker 1: documents became less about bringing an input and more about
Speaker 1: just circulating technical information about the Internet, including the actual
Speaker 1: infrastructure of computer networks, the protocols used by machines to
Speaker 1: communicate with one another, and even more general concepts related
Speaker 1: to networking. It's more about providing a series of technical
Speaker 1: documents that explain the underpinnings of networks in general and
Speaker 1: the Internet in particular, rather than encouraging some form of
Speaker 1: group discussion. Once published, and RFC never changes, it is
Speaker 1: not edited, it is not updated. This means that sometimes
Speaker 1: there are errors in an RFC, then that means they're
Speaker 1: there forever. The I E. T F one of the
Speaker 1: organizations that oversee these r f c s. It does
Speaker 1: have a way for people to report errors and it
Speaker 1: does keep track of all errata. Next up is r
Speaker 1: F I D. This stands for radio frequency identification. It's
Speaker 1: actually a subset of automatic identification and data capture or
Speaker 1: a I D C technologies. Now, generally speaking, these technologies
Speaker 1: involved systems that allow for automatic detection of something specific,
Speaker 1: and it includes identifying those specific things and then collecting
Speaker 1: data about those specific things and maybe even incorporating that
Speaker 1: data into databases without the need for a human operator.
Speaker 1: It can all be on the automated side of things.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you've interacted with r F I D
Speaker 1: tags before, and r F I D tag has the
Speaker 1: information coded directly into it. So the r f I
Speaker 1: D tag itself is an integrated circuit and it can
Speaker 1: be a really thin and flexible one. Even it can
Speaker 1: be in tags and stuff that are flexible. Uh this
Speaker 1: sort it also includes an antenna. Now, most r f
Speaker 1: I D chips are passive r f I D chips,
Speaker 1: which means they don't have any power on their own.
Speaker 1: They don't broadcast or anything like that. They are just there. However,
Speaker 1: when they are brought within the broadcast reach of a
Speaker 1: of an r f I D reader, which is essentially
Speaker 1: broadcasting radio waves of a certain frequency, things change. The
Speaker 1: r f I D tags antenna will pick up on
Speaker 1: those radio waves which passed through the antenna, and then
Speaker 1: it'll turn into essentially electricity. The whole process for that
Speaker 1: is one I've covered several times in tech stuff. But
Speaker 1: the energy goes into the passive chip that modulates the
Speaker 1: signal and then broadcasts the modulated signal back out which
Speaker 1: the reader can pick up on. That gives the reader
Speaker 1: whatever information was hard coded into that r f I
Speaker 1: D and that information can be lots of different stuff.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are a lot of security systems that
Speaker 1: use this sort of approach. You get badges that are
Speaker 1: containing thin r f I D chips inside them and
Speaker 1: the r f I D m the badge has a
Speaker 1: identification in it that should match up to a database
Speaker 1: of authorized personnel. Okay, so you walk up to a
Speaker 1: door and it has an r f I D reader
Speaker 1: next to it. That's your little badge reader. You hold
Speaker 1: the badge up. The r f I D reader is
Speaker 1: constantly sending out this low power radio signal. The r
Speaker 1: f I D chip inside your badge detects the signal,
Speaker 1: it goes through the antenna. It creates this modulated frequency
Speaker 1: that gets sent back the reader picks up on. That
Speaker 1: compares your badge to a database of authorized users. If
Speaker 1: you show up on that boom, you get in. If
Speaker 1: you don't show up on that, the door stays locked.
Speaker 1: There are also active r f I D chips. These
Speaker 1: are chips that actually require a battery. They have to
Speaker 1: have a power source because these chips do constantly broadcast
Speaker 1: out information that can be picked up by readers. They
Speaker 1: also tend to be bulk here because they require a
Speaker 1: power source, they're more expensive, and they're not really necessary
Speaker 1: for a lot of the applications that we typically use.
Speaker 1: R F I D four. Okay, it's time for another break.
Speaker 1: But when we come back, we will continue down the
Speaker 1: RS like a pirate. Next up is r G B
Speaker 1: and this stands for red, green, and blue. It's an
Speaker 1: additive color model. That means it's a color model in
Speaker 1: which you can create different colors by adding different amounts
Speaker 1: or intensities of the three primary colors of the model together.
Speaker 1: In this case red, green, and blue. So to get white,
Speaker 1: you would add all three together. And this works when
Speaker 1: you're talking about light, right, when you're talking about wavelengths
Speaker 1: of light, because essentially you're adding wavelengths together. If you
Speaker 1: remember from the color spectrum, know that it's not just
Speaker 1: that it goes from red to orange, to yellow, to green,
Speaker 1: to blue, to indigo to violet, but that the wavelength
Speaker 1: of light for each of those bands is different with
Speaker 1: with it getting smaller as you get further into the spectrum.
Speaker 1: So red wavelengths have the longest wavelengths and then violet
Speaker 1: has the shortest. And UM. Yeah, by adding different lights together,
Speaker 1: you're essentially adding the wavelengths together, and you can adjust
Speaker 1: the color that way. This UM this really only works
Speaker 1: when you're talking about light. If you're using physical dyes
Speaker 1: like actual paint or something. If you were to keep
Speaker 1: mixing all the colors together, then you would end up
Speaker 1: with black or really just a really dark, unpleasant color.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't work with that approach. It only works
Speaker 1: really with light display technologies rely on the r GB
Speaker 1: color model. Older displays had cables and and and ports
Speaker 1: for composite signals. That was not as nice like that's
Speaker 1: where these different light sources would be merged together before
Speaker 1: being sent to a display. But by keeping these signals
Speaker 1: separate in their red, green, and blue colors, our GB
Speaker 1: displays can combine them into a better quality image. That
Speaker 1: was a short one. Let's move on. How about r
Speaker 1: I s C or RISK. This actually stands for reduced
Speaker 1: instruction set computer. So your typical computer is a general
Speaker 1: purpose device, which means it needs to be able to
Speaker 1: do a little bit of everything. But in order for
Speaker 1: a machine to be capable of doing a bit of everything,
Speaker 1: you have to make certain sacrifices when it comes to
Speaker 1: stuff like speed and efficiency. If you were to optimize
Speaker 1: a machine for a subset of routines, you might make
Speaker 1: it perform at you know, a lower rate for anything
Speaker 1: outside of those routines, but anything that fell into its
Speaker 1: wheelhouse it could do really, really well. So when you're
Speaker 1: making a general purpose machine, you might just bite the
Speaker 1: bullet and create a system that can handle pretty much
Speaker 1: everything but isn't really optimized for anything. In particular. Risk, however,
Speaker 1: relies on highly optimized instruction sets. So let's say you
Speaker 1: want to build out a system that would really focus
Speaker 1: on something specific like video processing. This task doesn't require
Speaker 1: your system to also be good at other stuff. It
Speaker 1: just needs to be wicked good at processing video, So
Speaker 1: you architect a system that optimizes everything towards video production. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to use the system to process videos,
Speaker 1: it's really fast, much faster than a general purpose computer
Speaker 1: would be. In fact, you can have an optimized video
Speaker 1: processing station that's faster than a general purpose computer, even
Speaker 1: if that general purpose computer technically has better hardware in it,
Speaker 1: like a better processor, because optimization can go a really
Speaker 1: long way. But another way to look at it is
Speaker 1: just in how processors complete instructions. So the opposite of
Speaker 1: an R I s C machine is a C I
Speaker 1: s C, or complex instruction set computer. A complex instruction
Speaker 1: might involve lots of individual steps per instruction, and a
Speaker 1: a c I s C or CISK CPU would understand that.
Speaker 1: You would understand, oh, this one instruction involves multiple steps,
Speaker 1: and would execute those steps to complete the task. For
Speaker 1: an r I s C system, first you would have
Speaker 1: to break down those steps into simpler instructions, and depending
Speaker 1: on the task, the r I s C machine might
Speaker 1: complete the overall effort faster than the C I s
Speaker 1: C machine. But if the task means that the RISK
Speaker 1: system is having to break down lots of complex instructions
Speaker 1: into simpler ones, the CISC machine wins out. So it's
Speaker 1: all dependent upon what applications you're trying to run. You
Speaker 1: can think of RISK machines as needing instructions to be
Speaker 1: broken down to their most basic level before it can
Speaker 1: execute them, whereas a CISCU machine can take a more
Speaker 1: general set of instructions and get to work. So there's
Speaker 1: not really one that's better than the other. It's all
Speaker 1: dependent upon how you're using them and how they've been optimized.
Speaker 1: Next up, we've got ROM. This stands for read only memory. Now,
Speaker 1: remember when we talked about RAM and how that kind
Speaker 1: of memory is volatile. I mean, once you shut down
Speaker 1: a machine, the information in RAM goes away. Well. ROM
Speaker 1: is non volatile. It is hard coded, so ROM includes
Speaker 1: hard coded instructions that persist whether the computer is on
Speaker 1: or not. Also, as the describer read only suggests, this
Speaker 1: type of memory cannot be changed under normal circumstances. You
Speaker 1: can read from this, but you cannot write to it.
Speaker 1: And if you're an old Fogy like me, you might
Speaker 1: remember the days of home video game consoles that took cartridges.
Speaker 1: The cartridges actually had printed circuit boards inside them, and
Speaker 1: these were ROMs. The game everything from the graphics to
Speaker 1: the instructions on how the console should respond to player input,
Speaker 1: to the music, you know, everything that made the game
Speaker 1: the game was printed on the circuit boards. They were
Speaker 1: unchangeable unless you were to like break open the cartridge
Speaker 1: and get the old soldering iron out and make some
Speaker 1: changes by hand, which is not recommended by the way.
Speaker 1: So the stuff that goes into ROM typically includes the
Speaker 1: instructions the computer needs to start up. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like the basic information the computer uses in the booting process,
Speaker 1: and that's why you wouldn't really want to be able
Speaker 1: to change it. Next up, we have r t F
Speaker 1: that stands for Rich Text Format which is a proprietary
Speaker 1: document format from Microsoft. The company introduced this format in
Speaker 1: then with the intent for it to be kind of
Speaker 1: a step up from plain old text files. So unlike
Speaker 1: you know, the the older text files, the RTF format
Speaker 1: can actually hold some extra information that text files can't,
Speaker 1: including stuff like font style you don't get that with
Speaker 1: regular text files, or how to incorporate images is another
Speaker 1: feature that you don't find in text files. Now, it's
Speaker 1: nowhere near as feature full as like you know, a
Speaker 1: word document from Microsoft would be. However, lots of different
Speaker 1: apps and programs can open r t F files, but
Speaker 1: they can't open word files. So if you need to
Speaker 1: type up a document but you couldn't be certain that
Speaker 1: the people you were going to share this document with
Speaker 1: had word you might go with r TF. Microsoft ended
Speaker 1: development of r TF back in two thousand eight. Now
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean the format disappeared. Many word processing apps
Speaker 1: still support it because of that universality. You might open
Speaker 1: a file using one word processing program, make some changes
Speaker 1: to it, save it back as r TF, then open
Speaker 1: that same file but using a totally different computer with
Speaker 1: a different operating system and a different word processing program.
Speaker 1: In order to continue so it still has its uses,
Speaker 1: though with the growth of cloud based solutions, it's not
Speaker 1: quite as relevant as it used to be. Next, we
Speaker 1: have S A A S, big S, little, A little,
Speaker 1: A big S, and this ties right into what we
Speaker 1: were just talking about. S A A S stands for
Speaker 1: software as a service, and this marks a different approach
Speaker 1: to the software business from the old days. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about those old days and about how we moved
Speaker 1: from product to service. All right, So it's the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and you just bought your first personal computer
Speaker 1: and you're so excited, and you're gonna go shopping for
Speaker 1: some software that you want on your new PC. And
Speaker 1: you want to use this PC to do some productivity work.
Speaker 1: So you invest in a word processing program and a
Speaker 1: spreadsheet program and maybe a few other applications. You purchase
Speaker 1: each of these from some software company, maybe all of
Speaker 1: them come from the same company, and each program has
Speaker 1: a set price, so you pay the price and boom,
Speaker 1: the program is yours to install on your computer, and
Speaker 1: the transaction is over. That's it. You've got it. Now.
Speaker 1: Over time, maybe the software company releases new versions of
Speaker 1: those programs with you know, more features and stuff and
Speaker 1: if you want to be able to use those features,
Speaker 1: you would need to go out and buy the new
Speaker 1: version of this program and then install that on your computer. However,
Speaker 1: each purchase would be its own discrete event. You buy it,
Speaker 1: you install it, it's yours. Now let's take a little
Speaker 1: step forward. Let's say that you start to run a
Speaker 1: small office and you want each of your employees to
Speaker 1: have a computer that's running a certain suite of software.
Speaker 1: You might make an arrangement with big company like Microsoft
Speaker 1: to get a license for multiple copies of software. Because
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to just buy one copy of a
Speaker 1: program and then install it on five or ten computers
Speaker 1: or whatever. Companies actually developed ways to prevent users from
Speaker 1: doing that. There are penalties if you try and work
Speaker 1: around it. So now you get a license to use
Speaker 1: a certain number of installations of software. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit different from before. But let's take another step forward. Now,
Speaker 1: Let's say you're running an office and you find that
Speaker 1: there's a company that's offering a suite of productivity solutions
Speaker 1: that are running over the cloud. So the actual applications
Speaker 1: like the word processor and the spreadsheet program, they're all
Speaker 1: running on servers on the Internet. They're not running on
Speaker 1: your own computers. You use the Internet to connect to
Speaker 1: those services. So instead of installing software to your machines,
Speaker 1: you use some form of client software to access them,
Speaker 1: which is probably just a web browser. Rather than purchasing
Speaker 1: the software outright, you're paying a subscription fee in order
Speaker 1: to access the software. There are pros and cons to this.
Speaker 1: As a user, the big con, as I guess you
Speaker 1: can spot right off the bat, is that you're not
Speaker 1: just making a single purchase and then that's the end
Speaker 1: of the transaction. Instead, you have this recurring subscription fee,
Speaker 1: so you continue to pay for the product as you
Speaker 1: use it, or as I should say, you continue to
Speaker 1: pay for the service as you use it. But on
Speaker 1: the pro side of things, with software as a service,
Speaker 1: you can expect to benefit from improvements to the software
Speaker 1: over time. You know, in the old days, like I said,
Speaker 1: you would have to purchase a new version of the
Speaker 1: software when the company would release it if you wanted
Speaker 1: those features. Instead, with software as a service, you get
Speaker 1: those benefits as the company that provides the service improves
Speaker 1: the cloud based software. So as long as you're a subscriber,
Speaker 1: you get access to those new features that means no
Speaker 1: more having to upgrade all of your offices copies of
Speaker 1: say Microsoft off this every few years. Instead, you just
Speaker 1: subscribe to this software as a service and you get
Speaker 1: the new features as they are implemented. The other big
Speaker 1: benefit to software as a service is that you might
Speaker 1: be able to access the software with any compatible machine
Speaker 1: as long as you have your log in credentials. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you don't have to worry if this
Speaker 1: new computer has the software loaded onto it. We're not
Speaker 1: as long as it has web browser or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the client is to access the service. It makes
Speaker 1: the software way more flexible and portable because you, as
Speaker 1: a user, can access it with any compatible network connected device.
Speaker 1: So let's say that I forgot my work computer at
Speaker 1: the office I accidentally left it there. Well, fortunately, because
Speaker 1: we're using a lot of cloud based productivity software, I
Speaker 1: could use my home computer and log into my account
Speaker 1: via the cloud and get access to all of my notes,
Speaker 1: all of my scripts, everything like that. Uh, because I'm
Speaker 1: able to access it through this cloud based service as
Speaker 1: opposed to it having a native application running on just
Speaker 1: my office computer. For companies like Microsoft, this approach is
Speaker 1: crazy profitable, like profit margin, so from a revenue sense,
Speaker 1: it works out great, and it can actually cost less
Speaker 1: money for the user over time. If we're talking about
Speaker 1: the kind of user who would regularly upgrade to the
Speaker 1: latest version of a software package once it was released. If, however,
Speaker 1: the user is the type who would normally just stick
Speaker 1: with a basic version of software until like the heat
Speaker 1: death of the Universe, it would not be as good
Speaker 1: a deal. The A a S or as a service
Speaker 1: extension goes to tons of other stuff as well. Like
Speaker 1: there's platform as a service or p a a S.
Speaker 1: That's where you have a company providing a typically a
Speaker 1: modular computer GRAHAM for the purposes of developing, deploying, or
Speaker 1: running applications. But there's lots of other stuff. There's artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence as a service, there's big data as a service,
Speaker 1: games as a service, machine learning as a service. The
Speaker 1: list goes on and on. Essentially, it all comes down
Speaker 1: to this switch from treating software or whatever as a
Speaker 1: product to treating it as an ongoing service. You know,
Speaker 1: something you can smack an ongoing subscription fee onto. We
Speaker 1: see this reflected in how we consume media these days.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing a lot of the music and movies and
Speaker 1: television shows you watch come to you through some sort
Speaker 1: of streaming service. Again, we've migrated away from purchasing something
Speaker 1: like an album or a Blu ray or whatever, and
Speaker 1: we've moved towards media through a subscription based streaming service.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's not a subscription based service. Maybe it
Speaker 1: supports itself through ads, but it's the same basic idea.
Speaker 1: It's a brave new world. I suppose I am cautiously
Speaker 1: optimistic that our next episode will close out the last
Speaker 1: of our acronyms and initialisms for now, So join me
Speaker 1: on Wednesday to get through the rest of the alphabet.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you have suggestions for future topics
Speaker 1: I should cover on tech stuff, reach out to me
Speaker 1: and let me know what they are. A lot of
Speaker 1: you have been doing that. It's awesome. Keep doing it.
Speaker 1: The Twitter handle where you can reach me is text
Speaker 1: stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.