Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute have developed Minput, a proof-of-concept miniature input device that provides mouse control and optical tracking for handheld devices. Minput features a 1.5-inch liquid-crystal display taken from a wristwatch originally developed to allow users to watch TV or movies, and two optical sensors. The researchers say Minput can be operated anywhere, including the surface of a table, on a user’s leg, or on the palm of a user’s hand. Users can manipulate Minput and control different programs via gestures such as flicking and twisting. For example, turning it like a knob would adjust the volume and sliding it left and right would change songs. Another modality functions like a virtual window, and users can slide Minput over photographs, text documents, and Web pages to interact with them. Minput also offers cursor control, which functions like a mouse for playing simple games.
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Finding young women to fill tech jobs continues to be a problem for the German information technology (IT) industry, according to a new study from German technology and telecoms association Bitkom and research firm Forsa. Women accounted for 9 percent of the 40,500 trainees in the sector in 2009, down from 14 percent in 2001. Meanwhile, just 15 percent of students pursuing computer science studies at universities last year were women. The industry still has to contend with negative perceptions, such as those about the workload and opportunities for advancement, says Bitkom’s August-Wilhem Scheer. “Many preconceptions can be easily corrected,” Scheer says. “The image of the lonely programmer who spends his nights in a basement and cannot find a partner is really dated.” The industry continues to hold Girls’ Days to get more young women interested in IT and communication technology, and companies have begun to implement their own programs for attracting female employees.
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Malicious content on the Web can be very difficult to stop, said security experts at the recent Source Boston computer security conference. The difficulties involved in stopping malicious Web content can be seen in the 2008 shutdown of the malicious hosting company McColo, which at one point was responsible for more than 66 percent of the spam on the Internet. Although that spam stopped when McColo was shut down, botnets, such as the Grum, have taken its place, according to FireEye security researcher Alex Lanstein. He says that he has tried and failed to shut down SteepHost, the Ukraine-based company that is hosting the block of IP addresses that Grum uses for its attacks. But even if malicious hosting companies such as SteepHost were shut down, another company would quickly replace it, Lanstein says. An additional obstacle involved in stopping malicious Web content is the fact that IP addresses cannot be confiscated as long as their owners have paid for them, Lanstein says. Rapid chief security officer HD Moore says that it will continue to be difficult to shut down malicious hosting companies after IPv6 is introduced, since the implementation of the protocol would enable companies to purchase large blocks of IP addresses in order to evade tracking.
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