copyright

Copyright is a type of property that is founded on a person's creative skill and labour. It is designed to prevent the unauthorised use by others of a work, that is, the original form in which an idea or information has been expressed by the creator.
Copyright is not a tangible thing. It is made up of a bundle of exclusive economic rights to do certain acts with an original work or other copyright subject-matter. These rights include the right to copy, publish, communicate (eg broadcast, make available online) and publicly perform the copyright material.
Copyright creators also have a number of non-economic rights. These are known as moral rights. This term derives from the French droit moral. Moral rights recognised in Australia are the right of integrity of authorship, the right of attribution of authorship and the right against false attribution of authorship.
Copyright is distinct from physical property
A clear distinction exists between the copyright in a work and the ownership of the physical article in which the work exists. For example, an author may own the copyright in the text in a book even though the physical copy of the book will be owned by the person who purchases it. Similarly, the purchaser of an original painting does not have the right to make copies of it without the permission of the owner of copyright: the right of reproduction remains with the copyright owner who is generally the artist.

What is intellectual property?
Copyright is part of an area of law known as intellectual property. Intellectual property law protects the property rights in creative and inventive endeavours and gives creators and inventors certain exclusive economic rights, generally for a limited time, to deal with their creative works or inventions. This legal protection is designed as a reward to creators to encourage further intellectual creativity and innovation, as well as enabling access by the community to the products of intellectual property. Because intellectual property protects rights, rather than physical property, intellectual property is an intangible form of property. It is property which cannot be seen or touched.
Intellectual property is the general name given to the laws covering patents, trade marks, designs, circuit layouts, plant breeder's rights and copyright. Each of these forms of intellectual property is protected by a specific Act of the Commonwealth Parliament. The framework for these Acts is largely based on Australia's obligations under international treaties.

Information system

The term information system (IS) sometimes refers to a system of persons, data records and activities that process the data and information in an organization, and it includes the organization's manual and automated processes. Computer-based information systems are the field of study for information technology, elements of which are sometimes called an "information system" as well, a usage some consider to be incorrect.
Overview
The term "information system" has different meanings:
In computer security, an information system is described by three objects (Aceituno, 2004):
Structure:
Repositories, which hold data permanently or temporarily, such as buffers, RAM, hard disks, cache, etc.
Interfaces, which exchange information with the non-digital world, such as keyboards, speakers, scanners, printers, etc.
Channels, which connect repositories, such as buses, cables, wireless links, etc. A Network is a set of logical or physical channels.
Behavior:
Services, which provide value to users or to other services via messages interchange.
Messages, which carries a meaning to users or services.
In geography and cartography, a geographic information system (GIS) is used to integrate, store, edit, analyze, share, and display georeferenced information. There are many applications of GIS, ranging from ecology and geology, to the social sciences.
In knowledge representation, an information system consists of three components: human, technology, organization. In this view, information is defined in terms of the three levels of semiotics. Data which can be automatically processed by the application system corresponds to the syntax-level. In the context of an individual who interprets the data they become information, which correspond to the semantic-level. Information becomes knowledge when an individual knows (understands) and evaluates the information (e.g., for a specific task). This corresponds to the pragmatic-level.
In mathematics in the area of domain theory, a Scott information system (after its inventor Dana Scott) is a mathematical 'structure' that provides an alternative representation of Scott domains and, as a special case, algebraic lattices.
In mathematics rough set theory, an information system is an attribute-value system.
In sociology information systems are also social systems whose behavior is heavily influenced by the goals, values and beliefs of individuals and groups, as well as the performance of the technology.
In systems theory, an information system is a system, automated or manual, that comprises people, machines, and/or methods organized to collect, process, transmit, and disseminate data that represent user information.
In telecommunications, an information system is any telecommunications and/or computer related equipment or interconnected system or subsystems of equipment that is used in the acquisition, storage, manipulation, management, movement, control, display, switching, interchange, transmission, or reception of voice and/or data, and includes software, firmware, and hardware.
In organisational informatics an information system is a system of communication between people. Information systems are systems involved in the gathering, processing, distribution and use of information and as such support human activity systems .
The most common[citation needed]. view of an information system is one of Input-Process-Output.
History of information systems
The study of information systems originated as a sub-discipline of computer science in an attempt to understand and rationalize the management of technology within organizations. It has matured into a major field of management, that is increasingly being emphasized as an important area of research in management studies, and is taught at all major universities and business schools in the world. Börje Langefors introduced the concept of "Information Systems" at the third International Conference on Information Processing and Computer Science in New York in 1965.
Information technology is a very important malleable resource available to executives.[5] Many companies have created a position of Chief Information Officer (CIO) that sits on the executive board with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Technical Officer (CTO).The CTO may also serve as CIO, and vice versa.
Applications of information systems

Information systems deal with the development, use and management of an organization's IT infrastructure.
In the post-industrial information age, the focus of companies has shifted from being product-oriented to knowledge-oriented in the sense that market operators today compete in process and innovation rather than in products: the emphasis has shifted from the quality and quantity of production to the production process itself--and the services that accompany the production process.
The biggest asset of companies today is their information--represented by people, experience, know-how, innovations (patents, copyrights, trade secrets)--and for a market operator to be able to compete, he or she must have a strong information infrastructure, at the heart of which lies the information technology infrastructure. Thus the study of information systems focuses on why and how technology can be put into best use to serve the information flow within an organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Systems - 54k - 54k

computer history

A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: PREHISTORY

The abacus, a simple counting aid, may have been invented in Babylonia (now Iraq) in the fourth century B.C.
The Antikythera mechanism, used for registering and predicting the motion of the stars and planets, is dated to the first century B.C. It was discovered off the coast of Greece in 1901.
Arabic numerals are introduced to Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. Roman numerals remain in use in some parts of Europe until the seventeenth century. The Arabic system introduced the concepts of the zero and fixed places for tens, hundreds, thousand, etc., and greatly simplified mathematical calculations.
John Napier, Baron of Merchiston, Scotland, invents logs in 1614. Logs allow multiplication and division to be reduced to addition and subtraction.
Wilhelm Schickard builds the first mechanical calculator in 1623. It can work with six digits, and carries digits across columns. It works, but never makes it beyond the prototype stage. Schickard is a professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany.
Blaise Pascal builds a mechanical calculator in 1642. It has the capacity for eight digits, but has trouble carrying and its gears tend to jam.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents an automatic loom controlled by punch cards.
Charles Babbage conceives of a "Difference Engine" in 1820 or 1821. It is a massive steam-powered mechanical calculator designed to print astronomical tables. He attempts to build it over the course of the next 20 years, only to have the project cancelled by the British government in 1842. Babbage's next idea is the Analytical Engine - a mechanical computer that can solve any mathematical problem. It uses punch-cards similar to those used by the Jacquard loom and can perform simple conditional operations.
Augusta Ada Byron, the countess of Lovelace, met Babbage in 1833. She describes the Analytical Engine as weaving "algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves." Her published analysis of the Analytical Engine is our best record of its programming potential. In it she outlines the fundamentals of computer programming, including data analysis, looping and memory addressing.

A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: ELECTRONICS

Konrad Zuse, a German engineer, completes the first general purpose progammable calculator in 1941. He pioneers the use of binary math and boolean logic in electronic calculation.
Colossus, a British computer used for code-breaking, is operational by December of 1943. ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzor and Computer, is developed by the Ballistics Research Laboratory in Maryland to assist in the preparation of firing tables for artillery. It is built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering and completed in November 1945.
Bell Telephone Laboratories develops the transistor in 1947.
UNIVAC, the Universal Automatic Computer (pictured below), is developed in 1951. It can store 12,000 digits in random access mercury-delay lines.
EDVAC, for Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, is completed under contract for the Ordinance Department in 1952.
In 1952 G.W. Dummer, a radar expert from the British Royal Radar Establishment, proposes that electronic equipment be manufactured as a solid block with no connecting wires. The prototype he builds doesn't work and he receives little support for his research.
Texas Instruments and Fairchild semiconductor both announce the integrated circuit in 1959.
The IBM 360 is introduced in April of 1964 and quickly becomes the standard institutional mainframe computer. By the mid-80s the 360 and its descendents will have generated more than $100 billion in revenue for IBM.

A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: MINI

Texas Instruments and Fairchild semiconductor both announce the integrated circuit in 1959.
Ivan Sutherland demonstrates a program called Sketchpad on a TX-2 mainframe at MIT's Lincoln Labs in 1962. It allows him to make engineering drawings with a light pen.
A typical minicomputer costs about $20,000.
1965: An IC that cost $1000 in 1959 now costs less than $10. Gordon Moore predicts that the number of components in an IC will double every year. This is known as Moore's Law.
Doug Engelbart demonstrates in 1968 a word processor, an early hypertext system and a collaborative application: three now common computer applications.
Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Intel in 1968.
Xerox creates its Palo Alto Research Center - Xerox PARC - in 1969. Its mission is to explore the "architecture of information."
Fairchild Semiconductor introduces a 256-bit RAM chip in 1970.
In late 1970 Intel introduces a 1K RAM chip and the 4004, a 4-bit microprocessor. Two years later comes the 8008, an 8-bit microprocessor.

A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: MICRO

Bill Gates and Paul Allen form Traf-O-Data in 1971 to sell their computer traffic-analysis systems.
1972: Gary Kildall writes PL/M, the first high-level programming language for the Intel microprocessor.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are building and selling "blue boxes" in Southern California in 1971.
April 1972: Intel introduces the 8008, the first 8-bit microprocessor.
Jonathan A. Titus designs the Mark-8, "Your Personal Minicomputer," according to the July, 1974 cover of Radio-Electronics.
Popular Electronics features the MITS Altair 8800 on its cover, January 1975. It is hailed as the first "personal" computer. Thousands of orders for the 8800 rescue MITS from bankruptcy.
Pictured below: The Homebrew Computer Club in 1975.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates develop BASIC for the Altair 8800. Microsoft is born.
1977: Apple is selling its Apple II for $1,195, including 16K of RAM but no monitor.
Software Arts develops the first spreadsheet program, Visicalc, by the spring of 1979. It is released in October and is an immediate success. Copies shipped per month rise from 500 to 12,000 between 1979 and 1981.
By 1980 Apple has captured 50% of the personal computer market.
In 1980 Microsoft is approached by IBM to develop BASIC for its personal computer project. The IBM PC is released in August, 1981.
The Apple Macintosh debuts in 1984. It features a simple, graphical interface, uses the 8-MHz, 32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU, and has a built-in 9-inch B/W screen.
Microsoft Windows 1.0 ships in November, 1985.
Motorola announces the 68040, a 32-bit 25MHz microprocessor.
Microsoft's sales for 1989 reach $1 billion, the first year to do so.

A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: NETWORK

Timesharing, the concept of linking a large numbers of users to a single computer via remote terminals, is developed at MIT in the late 50s and early 60s.
1962: Paul Baran of RAND develops the idea of distributed, packet-switching networks.
ARPANET goes online in 1969.
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf develop the basic ideas of the Internet in 1973.
In 1974 BBN opens the first public packet-switched network - Telenet.
A UUCP link between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University establishes USENET in 1979. The first MUD is also developed in 1979, at the University of Essex.
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) is established as the standard for ARPANET in 1982.
1987: the number of network hosts breaks 10,000.
1989: the number of hosts breaks 100,000.
Tim Berners-Lee develops the World Wide Web. CERN releases the first Web server in 1991.
1992: the number of hosts breaks 1,000,000.
The World Wide Web sports a growth rate of 341,634% in service traffic in its third year, 1993.
The main U.S. Internet backbone traffic begins routing through commercial providers as NSFNET reverts to a research network in 1994.
The Internet 1996 World Exposition is the first World's Fair to be held on the internet.
WORLD INTERNET CONNECTIVITY (As of 6/15/95)