History Of Home Video Game Consoles

History Of Home Video Game Consoles Entertainment and technology have worked hand-in-hand on the path of progress since the beginning. Computer gaming has had an ever changing face ever since it was first introduced. We take a look at the predecessor of the heavily upgraded video consoles in the market today. A Video Game console is a device generally used for playing video games for non-commercial purposes. The video game console can be either an interactive computer or an electronic device. It produces a video display signal that is displayed using a display device (a television, monitor, etc.) to display a video game. The term video game console and is used to differentiate a machine designed for consumers to buy and use solely for playing video games from a personal computer, which has many other functions, or arcade machines, which are designed for video game businesses. The video game console requires a monitor, be it a television screen or a computer monitor, to display the images. The video game console is termed such to differentiate between arcade game machines, which are used for commercial purposes and personal computers, which offer many more features to the end-user. The first video game console was the brainchild of Ralph Baer of Sanders Associates. It was termed the Magnavox Odyssey and was released in 1972. Later, Atari came up with the extremely popular PONG games, which brought a flurry of Pong and Pong related games into the market. Apart from PONG, the other players in the market were Coleco Telstar and APF TV Fun. These consoles are known to be the first generation of video game consoles. The term videogame console was first used by Fairchild Systems for their Video Entertainment Systems (VES) in 1976. This was the first console to contain a programmable microprocessor. Soon, other manufacturers like RCA and Atari came up with microprocessor based video game consoles. These consoles are known as the second generation of videogame consoles. The Video Game console market faced its second and biggest crash in 1983. While the first crash in 1977 was mainly due to obsolete gaming consoles being sold at a loss-making price, the crash of 1983 had entirely different reasons behind it. In 1977, manufacturers of older, obsolete consoles sold their systems at a loss to clear stock, creating a glut in the market and causing Fairchild and RCA to abandon their game consoles. It was not until Atari released a conversion of the arcade hit Space Invaders in 1980 that the home console industry was completely revived. Many consumers bought an Atari just for Space Invaders. Its unprecedented success started the trend of console manufacturers trying to get exclusive rights to arcade titles, and the trend of advertisements for game consoles claiming to bring arcade experience home. Other companies released video game consoles of their own, throughout the early 1980s. Many of them were technically superior to Atari 2600. However Atari dominated the console market in the early 1980s. By 1983, the video game console market was in full bloom, and a number of companies had invested money and released either their own console games or consoles. Many of these were low on quality, high on advertising products which tried to bank on the popularity wave of video game consoles. One such game which gained massive unpopularity, and is often blamed (wrongly) for the video game crash of 1983 is E.T. The game was made with only six weeks of development time and tried to bank on two of the biggest booms at that time, E.T the movie and the video game console boom. It was full of programming bugs, improper and illogical programming and features and concepts which made the game unplayable. It has been dubbed as the worst video game of all time by many. This was critical in putting to an end the second generation of video game consoles. In 1983, Nintendo came up with the Famicom (Family Computer) or NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) series of games, which brought about a change in the video game console market. The NES series featured full colour, high resolution and longer games with detailed graphics. The game was bundled with a plastic Robot and a light gun. Like Space Invaders for the 2600, Nintendo found its breakout hit game in Super Mario Bros. Nintendos success revived the video game industry and new consoles were soon introduced in the following years to compete with the NES. The NESs massive success with Super Mario Bros, which heralded the return of video game consoles. This wrapped up the success of the third generation of video game consoles. Nintendo ran a tight ship as regards its NES system. It introduced a lockout system, which forced game manufacturers to go through Nintendo only for their games. Also, it allowed third party game manufacturers to make only five games per year for the NES. The fourth generation of video game consoles saw the release of Segas Master System and Segas Sega Mega Drive. The Sega Mega Drive was released on October 29, 1989, two years before the release of Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Sega extended the Mega Drive with the Mega CD/Sega CD, to provide increased storage space for multi-media based games that were then in vogue among the development community. Later Sega released the 32X, which added some of the polygon processing functionality common in the fifth-generation machines. However the peripheral was a commercial failure due to the lack of software support, with developers more keen to concentrate on more powerful machines, with a wider user base, such as Saturn that followed shortly after. The fifth generation video game consoles were feature-rich and had many other capabilities as compared to their previous counterparts. Chief among these was the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. The other players in the market were 3DO and Atari. Atari Jaguar and the 3DO, both of these systems were much more powerful than SNES or Mega Drive. They were better at rendering polygons, could display more onscreen colours and the 3DO contained discs that contained far more information than cartridges and were cheaper to produce. Neither of these consoles were serious threat to Sega or Nintendo, though. It was not until Segas Saturn, Sonys Play station and the Nintendo 64 were released that fifth generation consoles started to become popular. The Saturn and PlayStation used CDs to store games, while the Nintendo 64 used cartridges. All three cost far less than the 3DO, and were easier to program than the Jaguar. The Saturn also had 2D sprite handling power on par with the Neo-Geo. The sixth generation of video game consoles saw updates and new releases. This generation saw a move towards Pc-like architectures in gaming consoles, as well as a shift towards using DVDs for game media. This brought games that were visually more appealing. Furthermore, this generation also saw experimentation with online console gaming and implementing both flash and hard drive storage for game storage. Sonys released the next version of the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, while Nintendo and Microsoft fought competition with the GameCube and the Xbox respectively. Sega came up with the Dreamcast, but has since then stopped production. The Xbox heralded a new age in video game consoles, by being the first console to have a hard disk drive. It had many similarities to a low end computer. The features introduced in the seventh generation include the support of the new disc formats: Blu-Ray Disc, utilized by the PlayStation-3, and HD DVD supported by the Xbox 360. Another new technology is the use of motion as input, and IR tracking (as implemented in Wii). Microsoft kicked off the seventh generation with the release of the Xbox 306 in 2005. It featured processing power never before seen until Sony stroked back with its PlayStation 3 one year later. The software used on these dedicated computer systems has evolved amazingly from the simple rectangular blips used in Pong. Games today feature richly textured, full-colour graphics, awesome sound and complex interaction between player and system. The increased storage capacity of the cartridges and discs allows game developers to include incredibly detailed graphics and CD-quality soundtracks. Several of the video game systems have built-in special effects that add features like unique lighting or texture mapping in real-time. Each new generation of console hardware made use of the rapid development of processing technology. Newer machines could output a greater range of colours, more sprites, and introduced graphical technologies such as scaling and vector graphics.}

Investigating the Kinetics of the reaction between Iodide ions and Pero

PLANNING Investigating the Kinetics of the reaction between Iodide ions and Peroxodisulphate (VI) ions By the use of an Iodine clock reaction I hope to obtain the length of time taken for Iodine ions (in potassium iodide) to react fully with Peroxodisulphate ions (in potassium Peroxodisulphate). I will do three sets of experiments changing first the concentration of iodide ions, then the concentration of Peroxodisulphate ions and finally the temperature of the solution in which the reaction is taking place. From these results, I hope to draw conclusions as to the effects of these changes to the environment of the reaction on the rate and also determine the order of the reaction and the activation enthalpy. Background information The rate of a reaction is determined by a number of factors. These include: pressure, temperature, concentration of reactants, surface area of reactants, presence of a catalyst and radiation. The effect of these factors can be explained using collision theory. Reactions occur when the reactant particles collide, provided the colliding particles have enough energy for the reaction to take place. As the molecules approach their electron clouds repel. This requires energy – the minimum amount of which is called the ‘activation enthalpy’ - and comes from translational, vibrational, and rotational energy of each molecule. If there is enough energy available, this repulsion is overcome and the molecules get close enough for attractions between the molecules to cause a rearrangement of bonds and therefore an ‘effective’ reaction has taken place. The more collisions of particles with kinetic energy over the activation enthalpy that occur, the faster the overall reaction. During this investigation I am focusing on the effect of temperature and concentration while aiming to maintain other rate determining factors at a constant level in order to ensu re reliable results. Effect of concentration Taking the collision theory into account the effect of concentration is simple in that the more particles of the reactants there are in the same area of space the more likely the collisions and therefore the faster the overall reaction. The following equation has been determined through experimentation showing that the rate of a reaction depends on concentration of reactants A: Rate [A]n Where n is a constant called the order of the reaction. T... ... record the temperatures of every experiment and take into consideration how this may affect the results. Also, it is important to record the start and end tempertaure of the solution during the temperature-focused experiments because higher temperature lose their heat more quickly and if the temperature drops during the time of the reactions this information has to be involved in finding the average temperature. Predications I predict that the higher the concentration of the reactants the higher the rate of the reaction. I predict that the higher the temperature of the reactants the higher the rate of the reaction. I predict that the order of the reaction with respect to I- ions will be 1 and the order of the reaction with repect to S2O82-ions will also be 1 giving a overall order for the reaction of 2. This is information obtained from data books and backed up by information from the internet. (see references) I predict that the activation energy of the reaction will be 52.9 kJ mol-1. This information is taken from the ILPAC Resource Pack for Advanced Practical Chemistry and is for the uncatalysed reaction between iodide ions and peroxodisulphate ions.

Family Relationships Essay

Whatever form they take, family relationships are a central feature of most of our lives (Wyse and Hawtin, 2000). The family is the basic social unity of a society. A family is made up of members and there exists a relationship between members of a family. A family plays a very important role in the life of an individual. It is for this reason that it becomes very important for people to enhance good relations with members of their family. Depending on the type of family, people in a family are related either by blood or marriage. One thing that cannot be disputed however is the fact that although family members are related family relations sometimes can be challenging as members of a family attempt to get along with each other. The following paper takes an in-depth look at the changing nature of family life and the roles and responsibilities of people within the family. As already mentioned although a family is made up of people who are close sometimes handling relationships in a family can be challenging. The saying that ‘it takes two to tango’ is very relevant in a family relationship. A single individual does not have control of family relationship solely. Every member of the family plays a role either in building or destroying family relationships. Many a times family members experience internal wrangles majorly caused by different interests by the members. During such times the best way forward is to attempt to understand one another and change is key to ensure that such wrangles are solved. Sometimes family members try to change others so that they can get along. But this is not always easy and when you realize that you cannot change the personality of another member of the family then it is always best to understand them. Yet another alterative would be to change and adjust yourself in a manner that will help you get along with other members of the family (Pryor, 2001). Family life is dynamic. This means that it keeps changing with time and the kind of change that takes place are dependent on the circumstances that surround an individual family member as years pass by. For instance the relationship that a person has with his or her parents while growing up is not the same as one grows older. During the adolescent stage there are many changes that take place both physical and emotional. It is during the adolescent age for instance that a person begins to appreciate more those outside the family especially those of the opposite sex. This is one factor that contributes to the dynaminism in nature of family relationships. Eventually a person finds that they are spending more time away from home than they used to. Relationships with one’s parents become more difficult as one keeps growing and becomes more independent than before. It is during this time that when a young person is asked something which they consider personal they get irritated and they feel that the parents are intruding on their privacy. The other factor that changes family relationships as children grow is that at some stage during growth especially during adolescence children discover some things that they didn’t know previously especially matters related to sexuality and they are not as comfortable to discuss with their parents as they would with their peers. So they prefer spending much of their time with their peers discussing the â€Å"new discoveries† and thus the close relationship with their parents is gradually and slowly eroded (Wyse and Hawtin, 2000). The expectations that parents have on their children as they grow up also contribute to dynamism in family relationships. Although parents will always have good will on their children they may unknowingly put undue pressure by demanding that they must behave in a certain manner or that they must conduct things in a particular manner which is opposed to what they (children) would want. A young person may more often than not tend to disagree with some of the beliefs, practices or the general way of doing things by their parents. This mainly happens due to generational gap. This usually leads to conflicts and changes the nature of the family life. For parents and children to have good and successful relationship respect is of utmost importance. As much as the children will want their parents to respect their freedom and independence they must also respect their parents’ views and opinions (Pryor, 2001). Having looked at some of the factors that bring about change or dynamism within the family life let us now shift or focus on the roes and responsibilities of family members. Although these two terns are used interchangeably in the practical sense they are actually different. The roles of a person basically emanates from the dictation of the society by virtues of the person being a man, a woman or a child (Morrow, 1998). For instance in many societies, the roles of a man include providing to the family and offering protection to his family while his responsibilities many include among others helping out on the difficult tasks around the homestead like fixing the fence or the bulb. For a family to exist in harmony and to strengthen their relationship the roles and responsibilities of each ember of the family must be well spelt out. This helps to ensure that no member of the family feels oppresses with work around the house while the rest are left with nothing to do. However one important thing to note is that the responsibilities should be not fixed in form of timetable. It is enough to notify family members their roles and responsibilities. This gives room for flexibility so that family members can also get to experience what other family members do. In any given family parents are always in charge and it is of paramount important that children understand this. However the best approach in parenting as recommended by psychiatrists is the one where parents do not act as dictators (Morrow, 1998). Decision making ought to be shared among all members of the family. Whenever all members re involved in decision making they feel that they are part of the family and it becomes easier to implement that decision. In conclusion, a family though made of people who are close can be difficult to manage. It is therefore of paramount importance that family members respect each other’s views and opinions in order to relate harmoniously. Bibliography: Morrow, V (1998). Understanding Families. Children’s Perspectives. London: NCB Wyse, D. & Hawtin, A. (2000). Children a Multi-Professional Perspective, London: Arnold. Pryor, J. & Rodgers, B. (2001). Children in Changing Families. Oxford: Blackwell.

Should Assistive Technology Be Disabled Students With...

The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 1997 and IDEA 2004 provided disabled students with options for assistive technology in the classroom as well as assistive technology services. It is through these mandates that Individual Educational Plans (IEP) began to include assistive technology options. The IDEA 2004 â€Å"law mandates that assistive technology devices and services be provided to students with disabilities if the technology is essential for accessing education-related resources. (Dell, Newton, Petroff, 2012, p. 7) The end result is, to make it possible for the student to access the curriculum that he/she otherwise could not without the assistive technology. Assistive technology is any device, aids or services, that substitute or compensate for an impaired physical or mental ability. (Grand Canyon University. n.d. Lecture 1) There are a number of assistive technology devices available to use with students. The members of the IEP team will collaborate to determine the devices, if any, that fit the needs of the special education student. There is a range of options available, from low-tech devices using no electronics and usually inexpensive, to high-tech devices, that are often computer based and can be expensive. (Dell, Newton, Petroff, 2012) Some examples of a low-tech assistive devices are, pencil grips and extra wide pens or pencils. These devices will aid the student with fine motor problems and help them to write and draw inShow MoreRelatedThe Effects Of Special Education On Special Needs Students1505 Words   |  7 Pagespolicies related to special needs students are set in place to assist in providing an appropriate education in the most least restrictive environment possible for special needs students. A Law is defined as a rule that is created by the government of a town, state or country. A law is created in hopes of settling a cause. 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