POS 355 All DQs

Week 1

Discussion Questions

What are some of the many considerations in selecting the correct information system to use for trading futures and stocks?

Is Service Oriented Architecture a new solution to information technology, or is it a new name for the rehash of providing the user with what the user wants? Explain.

Based on the article by Zhu, Ding, Li and Kemp (2009), what components or modules of a standard electronic computer system might be engineered into a bio-chip? What problem in the development of future electronic computer does the developing bio-chip technology address?

Based on the article by Pronk, Pimentel, Roos and Breit (2007), especially Figure 1, what are the general functions of processors, software and networks? What is the classical (von Neumann) architecture of a computer system?

Week 2

Discussion Questions

Do you agree or disagree that throughput and capacity are determining factors for effectiveness of a system more so than processor speed? Why or why not?

What security issues must be resolved now that cannot wait for the next version of Windows to arrive? Are we looking at a patch or a work-around to solve the present issues?

Based on Ornes (2009) article, what are the improvements that a memristor might have over current physical and electronic storage devices? Is a memristor a green technology?

Based on the article by Polakovic and Stefani (2008), what are the main requirements to reconfigure software on-the-fly? How do the authors define a computer component?

Week 3

Discussion Questions

Based on Eleraths (2009) article, what are the two main categories of hard disk drive failure? How does SMART technology work and what does it mean when limits are exceeded?

Based on Thibodeaus (2008) article, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the use of mainframes?

Find a recent article about the use of mainframes in today's IT world, review it for the class and include the link to the article.

Week 4

Discussion Questions

Does a new software product always provide a fundamental improvement to the system where we install the new software product? What could some of the gains include?

Based on the article by Jason Brooks (2009), what capability will XP Mode in the Windows7 operating system add to PCs? What computer system hardware resource(s) may need to be enhanced to use this capability?

Based on the article by Michael Vizard (2009), why is the Hyper-V virtualization technology available in Windows Server 2008 an important resource for many business IT environments? What role does the SUSE version of Linux play?

What question would you ask about a topic you would like to talk about relating to operating systems that has not been touched on thus far in the course.