Week 6 Reading Notes

Local Area Network (Wikipedia article)

•  I have often heard my “gamer” friends talk about “LAN Parties” when they would bring their computers, link to a LAN, and play online games.

“There was much enthusiasm for the concept and for several years, from about 1983 onward, computer industry pundits would regularly declare the coming year to be “the year of the LAN”.”

•   Was 1984 indeed the year of the LAN?

•  The article talks about Windows and Linux systems having their own network operating systems. Can a PC and an Apple computer connect/share information on the same LAN? Is there a way that the LAN makes the different systems compatible?

•  LANs are interesting to think about; I never really consider how it’s possible that my computer is connected to other people in my home.

Computer Network (Wikipedia article)

 “The best-known computer network is the Internet.”

•       I find this very funny – but I bet a lot of people don’t consider how the Internet is actually a data network – I know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

“This boom in communications would not have been possible without the progressively advancing computer network.”

•         The information explosion was made possible by the data network that is the Internet.

“The expansion of related industries is mirrored by growth in the numbers and types of people using networks, from the researcher to the home user.”

•          Interesting fact to point out. Is it a symbiotic relationship – the number of users grows causing the network to grow causing the number of users to grow, etc.
•        Is the Internet a global LAN?

“A network interface controller (NIC) is a hardware accessory that provides a computer with both a physical interface for accepting a network cable connector and the ability to process low-level network information.”

•        Is an example of this a modem or router?
•     What is the layout of the Internet? Star, bus, ring, mesh, fully connected, or tree network? Or does it have a different layout entirely?

“An intranet is a set of networks that are under the control of a single administrative entity.”

•        I’ve always wondered what “intranet” meant. I thought that it was the inside of the Internet!

Management of RFID in libraries.

·      RFID – radio frequency identifier

•           Is an RFID embedded into eBooks to track how many times it has veen downloaded?

“A key thing to understand about RFID is that it isn’t a single technology; there are hundreds of different RFID products on the market today, and new ones appearing constantly.”

•        I initially thought it was a single form of technology.

“There are the RFID tags that are used for automated toll-taking for cars that can be read from many feet away as cars speed along highways. There are those that are in the card keys that many of us use to gain entry to our office buildings by swiping the card within a few inches of a pad by the office door. There are chips that are used to track animals on farms or identify lost pets, and others that help warehouses manage the inventory of pallets of goods. [7] The Food Drug Administration is considering the use of RFID to identify drugs and prevent counterfeiting,[8] and there may be a use for RFID in DVD’s to prevent movie piracy.”

•        I never realized RFID was used so prolifically! I would be interested to learn how it could be used to prevent movie piracy – much the same way it is used in eBooks?

“Because of the privacy issues, some librarians and library users question whether libraries should consider using RFID at all. While we can ask this question today, we may be facing RFID in our future regardless, especially if RFID becomes the successor technology to barcodes.”

•        As we see how RFID develops, privacy concerns about its use in libraries will no doubt develop as well.

“It is also coming into its own for payment systems, including the ever-elusive "micro-payment," the holy grail of non-cash transactions.”

•       What are some examples of RFID being used in this way? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it before.

“As well as being an inventory technology, barcodes also serve the point of sale (or lending).”

•        I think I encountered RFID used this way in the Seattle Public Library. Self-checkout at SPL doesn’t require the scanning of a barcode – one merely places the book on the checkout surface (not sure what it’s called – RFID reader?) and the information is displayed on the computer screen.

“Libraries need tags that are durable, since they be placed on an item that will be used repeatedly. The library function will probably have the longest-lived tags of any other sector, since books can remain on shelves and circulate over decades, while retail products have a short shelf life and even debit cards rarely are issued for more than four or five years. Libraries may also need tags that, although inexpensive, can be reprogrammed and may even need to have more than one "lifetime," for example in the case of an item that is moved into storage or is sent to another library through interlibrary loan.”

• These are interesting distinction between the way RFID tags are used in the retail industry and how they would be used in libraries.