97
+bonus for correcting my error on question #9: +2
99
Þ Time: 10:45-1:15
Þ Please clear Drive C.
Þ You may consult the internet, but not books, coursepack, notes, or neighbors.
Þ This test constitutes 15% of your final grade in this class.
Þ If you are unclear about anything, do not call me for clarifications--just do the best you can.
Þ Every misspelled (marked with red) word will cost you 1 point!
Þ [-3] Please use blue font for all your answers.
Þ Save this file as YourNameTest2, and re-open it in WORD
[5 points] 1. The figure below is made up of 5 symbols. Please open PAINT and draw the ninth logical figure, then e-mail it to me as a PAINT file YourNameTest1Paint.
[1] 2. When done, please delete the figure above from this file.
[3] 3a. Use the symbols # and @ to construct a code for the numbers 1,2,3,4. Each number should be expressed in 2, and only 2, symbols.
1: # #
2: @ #
3: #@
4: @@
[3] 3b. Now use the code you have just constructed to write the number 3421. Please separate numbers with a space. #@ @@ @# ##
[4] 4. Find the ASCII code on the internet and write down below, in blue font as usual, the message: Hi! (note caps, lower case, and exclamation mark)
01001000 01101001 00100001
[-2 missing: freedom and invisibility, among other things4] 5. Please summarize Oprah Winfrey’s views on education in at least 20 words. = Oprah Winfrey believes that the ability to read and understand what you read is very important to gaining knowledge. Reading helps people educate themselves and with this education people have the power to go anywhere in life. Oprah believes that if you are educated that there are no gates keeping you from success.
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[3] 6. What’s WSU’s professor William Lynch’s E-mail address? = Office Phone? = 313-577-4614
[4] 7. You have been asked to read a chapter in Marc Bekoff’s book, The Cognitive Animal, and want to use your computer to find out the following information about it:
a. Who are the editors of this book, besides Bekoff? = Colin Allen, and Gordon M. Burghardt.
b. Which Wayne State library has it? Purdy-Kresge Library
c. What is its call number? QL 785 .C485 2002
d. Can you check it out today? Why or why not? No, it is not due back until 5/5/05
[6] 7b. Use the internet to answer these questions:
a. What’s the capital of Chile? = Santiago
b. -1Which countries border Chile? Argentina and Bolivia and ?
c. What’s the main language of Chile? Spanish
d. For us now, it’s the end of winter. For Chileans, it is . . .? the beginning of fall
e. What’s the expected temperature high today in Detroit? High54°F
f. What is the URL (internet address) for question e above? http://www.weathercentral.com/weather/us/cities/mi_detroit.html
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[5] 8. Use the calculator to answer:
- 17^6 = 24137569
- Log of 100,000,000 = 8
- Binary 1000 equals decimal ? = 8
- Decimal 111111111111 equals binary ? = 1100111011110101111010000000111000111
- 2^18 = 262144
[3] 9. Write 5^2 by using these two, and only these two, symbols: 5 and + = 5+5+5+5+5
At the bottom of this test, there is an article: The Oligarchs. Copy and paste it as a new word file <YourNameTest2WP> [1]and remove it from this test. Imagine that this is a paper you have written for another class, and that the instructor gave you the following instructions. Please doctor that file appropriately, then e-mail it to me as an attachment.
[2] 10. All pages of your paper must be numbered, at center, bottom.
[2] 11. Title of that file (but not author’s name) should be: BOLD, CENTERED, FONT SIZE 18.
[2] 12. All 4 margins should be 1.2”
[2] 13. Text should be double-spaced
[2] 14. The first line of each paragraph should be indented by 0.3”
[4] 14b. First actual paragraph should be in caps, blue font, yellow highlight, font size 16, framed by red ants, underlined, struck-through,
[2] 15. Just below the title, the file should include a photo of your choice from the internet.
[2] 16. How many letters E (lower-case or caps) does this file have? = 771
Please go to our class site, save Spread Sheet 3 into your computer, Drive C. Re-open this sheet in Excel and answer the following questions:
[3] 17. Average of all cells in the table= 415941
[3] 18. Sum of cells in Row 1. 77474333
[3] 19. Standard deviation of cells in Row 6. 694027.5648
[3] 20. Median of all the numbers in columns A, C, E, G (your answer should be just one number) 570
[5] 21. Did the people who started the internet have an idea of how it might look like today? Please explain (min. 25 words). = No, no one had any idea that the internet would expand so dramatically and be used by so many for so many things. The internet was only to created to send secure indestructible messages in case of nuclear war. It was only to be used military and government officials. Today everyone uses the internet for pleasure, communication, business, education and many other things. For something that started out small, it has surpassed all original expectations and become as key part of a lot of individuals’ lives.
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Look up the etymology of the word etymology in the dictionary.
[3] 23. What language is this word taken from (note: I’m not interested in transitional points, only in the original, first point, in time)? —Greek—
[3] 24. In that language, what does the word mean? —true sense of a word—
[3] 24. Imagine that you are playing a number guessing game with a friend. She first chooses a number between 1 and 14. Now, you must guess that number in as few steps as you possibly can. If your guess is right, your friend says: “You’ve got it.” If your guess is too low, she says: “too low.” If your guess is too high, she says “too high.” What would be your best strategy? (Please describe it in as much detail as you can (e.g., I shall first choose ?, then, if she says right, I’ll stop. If she says, too high, I’ll choose ?, if she says too low, I’ll choose ?, and so on and so on.)
To find the number, I would first choose the number in the middle which is 7. If that is too high, then I would choose a number in the middle between 1 and 7, which is 3. If that is correct, I would stop but if it is too high then I would choose 2 because it is the middle number between 1 and 3. If that was correct I’d stop. If it was not correct, then there is only one number remaining. I would use a similar strategy if 7 was too low.
[4] 25. Now, explain: Why is this the best strategy? By choosing the number in the middle I eliminate half of the numbers immediately. If I continue doing that with each guess, I eliminate half of the numbers until I reach the correct one. No other strategy can eliminate so many numbers so fast.
You’ll find below instructions to the computer for playing the 0 to 8 number guessing game. They are actually divided into 3 parts:
[2] 26. Programmer’s notes to himself. Mark these in the instructions below with green font.
[2] 27. Written messages that the computer gives to the player. Mark them in blue in the box below.
[2] 28 Instructions that the programmer gave to the computer: mark them in red.
[2] 29. Now, edit the program, so that the computer consistently offers a 0 to 18 number guessing game.
[2] 30. Change the wording of the whole thing, so that this is really your program now.
[2] 31. Change the programmer’s name into yours.
[2] 32. You want to cheat in the player’s favor, by 10 trials.
[2] 33. Change the instructions so that, when you start a new game, you can still see what happened in the previous game.
Hint: The best way to answer these questions is to open q-basics, start a game, change the instructions there, make sure that they work, and only then change the instructions below.
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IST 2710 Interdisciplinary Studies Moti's Webpage
The Oligarchs
By URI AVNERY
This is a TV series about Russia. But it could have been about Israel. Or about the United States. It is entitled "The Oligarchs" and is now being screened on Israeli television.
Some of its episodes are simply unbelievable--or would have been, if they had not come straight from the horses' mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about their despicable exploits. The series was produced by Israeli immigrants from Russia.
The "oligarchs" are a tiny group of entrepreneurs who exploited the disintegration of the Soviet system to loot the treasures of the state and to amass plunder amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. In order to safeguard the perpetuation of their business, they took control of the state. Six out of the seven are Jews.
In popular parlance they are called "oligarchs"--from the Greek word meaning "rule of the few".
In the first years of post-Soviet Russian capitalism they were the bold and nimble ones who knew how to exploit the economic anarchy in order to acquire enormous possessions for a hundredth or a thousandth of their value: oil, natural gas, nickel and other minerals. They used every possible trick, including cheating, bribery and murder. Every one of them had a small private army. In the course of the series they are proud to tell in great detail how they did it.
But the most intriguing part of the series recounts the way they took control of the political apparatus. After a period of fighting each other, they decided that it would be more profitable for them to cooperate in order to take over the state.
At the time, President Boris Yeltsin was in a steep decline. On the eve of the new elections for the presidency, his rating in public opinion polls stood at 4%. He was an alcoholic with a severe heart disease, working about two hours a day. The state was, in practice, ruled by his bodyguard and his daughter; corruption was the order of the day.
The oligarchs decided to take power through him. They had almost unlimited funds, control of all TV channels and most of the other media. They put all these at the disposal of Yeltsin's reelection campaign, denying his opponents even one minute of TV time and pouring huge sums of money into the effort. (The series omits an interesting detail: they secretly brought over the most outstanding American election experts and copywriters, who applied methods previously unknown in Russia.)
The campaign bore fruit: Yeltsin was indeed reelected. On the very same day he had another heart attack and spent the rest of his term in hospital. In practice, the oligarchs ruled Russia. One of them, Boris Berezovsky, appointed himself Prime Minister. There was a minor scandal when it became known that he (like most of the oligarchs) had acquired Israeli citizenship, but he gave up his Israeli passport and everything was in order again.
By the way, Berezovsky boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya, in which tens of thousands have been killed and a whole country devastated. He was interested in the mineral resources and a prospective pipeline there. In order to achieve this he put an end to the peace agreement that gave the country some kind of independence. The oligarchs dismissed and destroyed Alexander Lebed, the popular general who engineered the agreement, and the war has been going on since then.
In the end, there was a reaction: Vladimir Putin, the taciturn and tough ex-KGB operative, assumed power, took control of the media, put one of the oligarchs (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) in prison, caused the others to flee (Berezovsky is in England, Vladimir Gusinsky is in Israel, another, Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding here.)
Since all the exploits of the oligarchs occurred in public, there is a danger that the affair might cause an increase in anti-Semitism in Russia. Indeed, the anti-Semites argue that these doings confirm the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a document fabricated by the Russian secret police a century ago, purporting to reveal a Jewish conspiracy to control the world.
Moving from Russia to America--the same thing happened, of course, in the US, but more than a hundred years ago. At the time, the great "robber barons", Morgan, Rockefeller at al., all of them good Christians, used very similar methods to acquire capital and power on a massive scale. Today, it works in far more refined ways.
In the present election campaign, the candidates collect hundreds of millions of dollars. George W. Bush and John Kerry both brag about their talent for raising enormous sums of money. From whom? From pensioners? From the mythical "old lady in tennis shoes"? Of course not, but from the cabals of billionaires, the giant corporations and powerful lobbies (arms dealers, Jewish organiztions, doctors, lawyers and such). Many of them give money to both candidates--just to be on the safe side.