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Being confronted with many questions and problems about computers and software, i requested to dedicate a column in the Ko-Go especially for those people who have particular questions about this.
As an introduction to computering I would like to share some knowledge with you first;
The PC
The computer itself is a dumb machine. It doesn’t do anything unless or until it has been told to switch some bits around here and there. So … the computer never makes mistakes, but the programmers of the software or the one that inputs anything (you) do. Programming errors in software are called ‘bugs’. Why? Because in the old days, computers with small capacity were big-sized, not to fit in your livingroom alone. In that time a fly – or bug – could fly in the machine and shortcircuit the thing at any place. This resulted in errors being made by the system, eventually called a ‘bug’.
 Bits and bytes
A bit is nothing less than a miniscule switch, which is set to 0 or 1 (off or on) by a pulse. In the old days we humans used the word ‘byte’ for a collection of 8 bits. But in more recent times we started using systems running on 16, 32 and soon 64-bits chips. So, since a byte is eight bits, the word ‘byte’ nowadays is rarely used anymore.
Endless?
So a bit can be switched to 0 and 1. That gives us two possibilities: off and on. But two bits have four possibilities: off+off / off+on / on+on / on+off… So three bits have eight different possibilities. Actually the mathematical approach teaches us that the number of bits is determining the number of possiblities: 2 bits: 2² = 4 / 3 bits: 2³ = 8 / etc. Eight bits (or a byte) gives us 256, sixteen bits = 65536, etc…
 Pixels
A pixel is a single dot on your screen. Your screen can be set to display a number of colours. Here we recognize the number of bits again. If you set your displaycard to display 32-bits colour, each pixel is able to display 2³² = 4,294,967,296 different colours on its own, which is enough colours to call it ‘true’colour, because the human eye can’t distinquish any difference between colour 3,173,485,194 and 3,173,485,195…
Questions?
If you have any questions about PC hard- and software or related problems, don’t hesitate to email them to this column. We will try to answer all your questions in the next edition.
info@flavios.eu
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