Microsoft Ribbon

When Microsoft first introduced the ribbon to their Office Suite, it caused quite a bit of division amongst those who spend all day using productivity software. Some people loved it and others preferred the classic menu system that’s pretty much as old as the graphical user interface itself. In the end, the ribbon won the war and seems to be here to stay. Luckily, even if you’re not a fan, you can actually customize the Microsoft Office ribbon to better fit your workflow and needs. Ribbons are meant to organize software functions by their general type. So functions that are usually used in conjunction with each other all share the same ribbon. In an application like Microsoft Word you’ll see a ribbon for design, layout, academic referencing and so on. If you’re doing the same, highly-specific sets of tasks on a daily basis however, you can speed up your workflow by tuning exactly which Microsoft Office ribbons are at your fingertips.  Ribbons are further subdivided into groups of related commands. For example, the Home ribbon has a group named “Font”. This has the commands that relate to font formatting all in one place.

PC Hardware

Computer hardware can be defined as all the physical components that are a part of a computer system. This means that all the devices that you can see on your computer can be characterized as computer hardware. For example, the screen of a computer that you see the second you turn on the device is hardware. In other words, it can also be said that hardware simply refers to all the tangible and physical components of a computer. This includes all the components that can be seen or touched. There are also different types of hardware. For example input devices are the mouse and keyboard, output devices are monitors and printers, and of course all the internal components inside the computer (motherboard, RAM, CPU). Also people can upgrade their hardware a hardware upgrade can be defined as the replacement of old hardware with new hardware. It can also mean that additional hardware has been added. This helps in improving the performance of the existing hardware. For example, individuals usually get RAM upgrades to increase the total memory of their computers. Video card upgrades are also very common. In this upgrade, the old video card is removed and replaced with a new card.

RGB

The abbreviation RGB stands for "Red Green Blue," and as you might have guessed, it has to do with colors and how they are made up. You may wonder why red, green, and blue are used. The answer is that any other hue that the human eye can see from the visible spectrum can be created by mixing varied proportions of the main colors' red, green, and blue. An additive color model is RGB. In other words, you combine the main red, green, and blue hues to create new colors. White results from combining all three hues at their full (100%) intensity. However, if you combine them all at their lowest intensity (0%), you get black. 

The most popular color model in software is RGB. Each of the three numbers in the RGB color model, which each represent the intensity of red, green, and blue colors, can be used to specify a specific color. The three numbers' ranges can change depending on which reference you use, though. Standard RGB notations allow for the use of triplets of values ranging from 0 to 255, arithmetic values ranging from 0.0 to 1.0, and percentage values ranging from 0% to 100%. 

It's all quite interesting I never really looked into this before 1.1.12. I never knew the color system would be somewhat interesting.

Quantum Computing

First let's start off with what is quantum computing. It's computing that makes use of the quantum states of subatomic particles to store information. One scholar source states that "interest in the field grew in the 1990's with the introduction of Shor's algorithm which if implemented on a quantum computer would exponentially speed up an important class of cryptoanalysis and potentially threaten some of the cryptographic methods used to protect government and civilian communications and stored data". One primary source (IBM) states that "We are continuously scaling up and advancing our quantum technology across hardware, software and classical integration to meet the biggest challenges of our time, in conjunction with our partners and clients worldwide. This work will prove foundational for the coming era of quantum-centric supercomputing." One secondary states that "Quantum computing could eventually revolutionize the way medicines are developed, financial options are priced, and climate change is managed, experts say. It’s been lauded for its ability (or, at least, its potential) to complete complex calculations in a fraction of the time it would take even the fastest traditional computers today." One thing is certain quantum computing is a revolutionary piece of technology that has changed computing forever.

Scholar Reference:

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/25196/chapter/2

Primary Reference:

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2022-11-09-IBM-Unveils-400-Qubit-Plus-Quantum-Processor-and-Next-Generation-IBM-Quantum-System-Two

Secondary Source:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/14/tech/quantum-computing-cloud/index.html

New Year 2023

Happy 2023, I hope nothing disastrous happens this year or in the next coming decade. Since the 2008 financial crash, the world has witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of social protest in every major continent. Beginning with the birth of the Occupy movement in the US and Western Europe, and the Arab Spring, the eruption of civil unrest has continued to wreak havoc unpredictably from Greece to Ukraine, from China to Thailand, from Brazil to Turkey, and beyond. In some regions, civil unrest has coalesced into the collapse of incumbent governments or even the eruption of a prolonged state of internecine warfare, as is happening in Iraq-Syria and Ukraine-Russia. Increasing public dissatisfaction with government is correlated with continued government difficulties in meeting public expectations.