Information Technology 1100-1B02

The course aims at full understanding of the basic mechanisms, omnipresent in the contemporary world governed by information. Exercises provide the practical knowledge, needed to use the information technologies during the studies.

Program of the lecture:

1. Digital vs. analog. Checksums.
2. Most frequently used programs: text editor, spreadsheet, presentation manager. Databases: why do we need an index?
3. Data formats. ASCII and Unicode. Vector and bitmap graphics. Movies, sound, loseless and loosy compression.
4. From an operator to the operating system. Devices handling, compatibility. Algorithm -> source code -> executable: compilation, errors...
5. URL, packets, route of information in the Internet. Does every computer connected to the Internet needs its own IP number? Dynamic IP, NAT. HTML: the language of WWW. POP3 and WebMail. Instant Messengers.
6. Copyrights and licenses. Open Source, GNU and Freedom of Software. Wikipedia.
7. Digital signature: how does it work? Public key cryptography.
8. Administrator vs. "normal" user. Viruses and data safety. Backups.
9. Mathematical modelling: from Conway's "Life" to weather forecasting. Do computers think? Turing test, artificial neural networks.

Program of the exercises: basics of programming in a high-level language (Python, Matlab)