Hardware Component - The Computer Mouse

In 1963 two very important things were created – me and the mouse! I had not thought the mouse was around as long as I’vebeen but when researching same, I discovered it has indeed. Douglas Engelbart, Stanford Research Institute, was the person who invented the mouse though poor Douglas never received any royalties as his patent ran out before it became an integral part of personal computers. He envisioned people holding the mouse in one hand and typing on a five key chord keyset with the other hand. It was called a mouse in that it resembled an actual mouse with the cord looking like a tail. Funny enough the cordless mouse of today without its “tail” is still called a mouse! Trackballs had been used previously to mouse devices and the first trackball is traced back to 1952 to three men Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor who invented a five-pin bowling ball to use on the Royal Canadian Navy DATAR system, part of a military secret. It was in 1981 that the first marketed integrated mouse accompanied the Xerox 8010 Star Information System and we have been introduced to many mice since then in many shapes and forms.

At the start it was mainly mechanical mouse devices as in the ball mouse, wheel mouse, color mouse and analog mouse. Then the computer industry progressed to offering optical mouse devices, which differs mainly from the mechanical mouse in that it “uses a light-emitting diode and photodiodes to detect movement relative to the underlying surface, rather than moving some of its parts, as in the mechanical mouse.” Infrared, Laser and Color are all example of different type of optical mice. The mouse most commonly used today with PC and Mac computers is a mixture of elements of both optical and mechanical. Other mouse devices that are worth a mention along the way are Inertial Mouse, 3D Mice, Double Mouse System, Tactile Mouse, Microsoft IntelliMouse, Typhoon Mouse, and Apple’s Mighty Mouse. I’m beginning to think that there are more mice of this kind than the animal version!

A mouse is used to control the position of the cursor on the monitor. A mouse is made up of a small jude held beneath users hands with one or more buttons. It has been the subject of great debate as to how many buttons a mouse should have. Up to 2005 Apple recommended just one single button as more user-friendly though many now agree that the three-button scrollmouse works best and is more precise. Gaming Companies prefer to add more buttons because players need easy and quick access to many functions, sometimes simultaneously. The regular mouse is capable of activating/initiating many functions on the computer. Clicking on the right or left button or moving the scroll wheel all initiate different functions. Sometimes it is necessary to click the mouse along with holding a key on the keyboard simultaneously to make specific functions happen. Other noted functions are its capability to drag and drop, move around text/images/graphics, point, scroll, select and highlight.

Other interesting factsI learned that there are two acceptable plurals in the Oxford Dictionary for computer mouse – one being computer mice the other computer mouses. Also, I learned that though Douglas Engelbart’s original mouse did not actually require a mousepad, most mouse devices run more efficiently when using a mouse-pad. And apparently some run most efficiently when using in addition mouse foot-covers, which I had never even heard of before. These are made of low-friction or polished plastic and enables the mouse to glide more smoothly on the mousepad. The best though most expensive in the market are teflon feet so for Christmas we have new mouse accessories to consider☺

Technology Assignment on Dr. Michael Russell, Boston College

When interviewing Associate Professor Michael Russell here in Boston College, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he did not take his first computer class until Grade 11 in High School and did not become interested in technology until he was 22 years old. I immediately thought of other late starters such as Greg Gorman who did not pick up a golf club until he was 15 or the Irish tenor Ronan Tynan whose singing career only started after age 35. This just goes to show as Mike has indicated that “it’s never too late to try your hand at something new.” In fact the subjects that interested him in school in his home town Rochester, New York were not technology but history and social studies. He went on to major in US History in Brown University with a focus on US Foreign Policy. It was only after college at age 22 when he was working for a financial consulting firm and had to build a large model to help an institution with long term planning that he developed a keen interest in technology and realized he had a flair for same. The interesting thing is that the technology he learnt was mostly self-taught, especially in his earlier years.

He completed both his Masters and Ph.D. Degrees in Boston College; his Masters in Secondary Education (1994) and his Ph.D. in Educational, Research, Measurement and Evaluation/ERME (1999). It was when completing his Ph.D. as a Graduate Assistant and later as a Research Associate that he became associated with the Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy (CSTEEP) and found a valuable mentor there in the area of technology/ testing and student drawings by the name of Professor Walt Haney. Mike’s early research has led to innovations in the marketplace, particularly around computer-based testing and accommodations. Now a Senior Research Associate in CSTEEP, Director of inTASC (Technology and Assessment Study Collaborative) in BC, and Associate ERME/LSOE Professor since March 2005, Mike’s research interests lie mainly at the intersection of technology, assessment and learning. In summary his technological research “include applications of technology to testing; relationships among school district support of technology; classroom use of technology; and impacts of technology on students and their learning.”

Mike has written numerous articles on these related subjects and directs several projects in CSTEEP including some which are well publicized such as: eLearning for Educators; JTLA (Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment); The Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative; Diagnostic Geometry Assessment/DGA; Optimizing the Impact of Online Professional Development/OPD; An Alpha Smart for Each Student; Diagnostic Algebra Assessment; Talking Tactile Tablet; and numerous smaller scale projects. Let me expand on a few of the above to understand the scope of these projects. The primary aim of the eLearning for Educators Study conducted throughout eight states is to evaluate the impact of online professional development on both teacher quality but more importantly on students’ academic achievement. This study is still underway, starting 3 years ago and reports will be broadcast next year and already anxiously awaited. The blind and visually impaired benefited when the computer-based Talking Tactile Tablet (TTT) was examined as a test accommodation in one of Mike’s projects, taking the TTT’s original use of map/sign reading up a notch. Mike has also developed a Diagnostic Geometry Assessment Tool that can be given from any internet connected computer and is capable of given immediate feedback to teachers on the understanding their students have of Geometry and the problems/ misconceptions that are holding them back.

I enjoyed my conversation with Mike and found his technological research interesting.

Sarah Palin's "Fishy" Email Hack

Using Google News http://news.google.com/ I read a technology related article written by Mark Hachman in PC Magazine that interested me entitled “No Indictment in Palin Email Hack” dated September 24, 2008. We had discussed this a little bit in class the day the incident happened but I missed the news that night and the night after and basically missed out on the details of the whole episode. So when I saw this article on Google news I used this as an opportunity to research the incident as I was interested to learn how a high-profiled person’s email could in fact be hacked. I thought if the email account of Republican Vice Presidential hopeful Governor Sarah Palin could be broken into, what hope was there for the rest of us. The article explained how it was her personal rather than state email account that was infiltrated, her yahoo account, gov.palin@yahoo.com to be precise. The article itself gave mostly post event news of the story. It explained how David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student and son of Tennessee Democrat representative Mike Kernell, had not been indicted as expected for committing the offence. Mark Hachman stated how the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported the day before that “a federal grand jury had wrapped up hearings after failing to return an indictment.” That paper hinted that there would be subsequent Grand Juries because Kernell was still being investigated by the FBI.

To learn more about how the email was hacked I could have entered one of the links offered on this page but since we were asked to do some additional research by using the conventional Google search engine, I used that instead. Through various effective search words like “Palin and email”, “Palin and hacked” and “Sarah Palin’s email” I found several articles that answered all my questions and gave me a detailed account of all aspects of the story. The best article, in that it provided how the job was actually done, was an article written by Brian Heater on September 18, 2008 simply entitled “How Sarah Palin’s Email was Hacked.” Apparently the hack was a simple hack in that it did not need sophisticated technical expertise. Kernell successfully navigated through Yahoo’s password reset process.
Yahoo uses a password reset feature which makes use of personal data to gain access to an account. This would work ok for most of us but not so well for those in public office where personal information is public knowledge or can at least be found pretty easily on the internet. It only took Kernell 45 minutes to get access to Sarah Palin’s email account. All he had to do was find out Palin’s birthdate, zipcode, and research where she met her spouse which turned out the be Wasilla High. Between Google and Wikipedia’s research engines he reset Palin’s security questions, renamed her password to popcorn, and entered her account. What he found was five screen shots of email accounts (including some emails to/from Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell, staffer Ivy Frye, and Amy McCorkell/ Governor’s Advisory board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse), two digital photos of Sarah Palin’s family, and an address book. 4Chan’s “random” /b/board then sent the documents to Wilileaks, which is a “whistleblower” website that allows users to anonymously publish sensitive documents. Wilileaks then made the data available on its web site via zip files.

In another article, Chloe Albanesius gave us the reasoning behind Kernell’s “investigation” in the first place. Sarah Palin had already come under fire for allegedly using her personal Yahoo account to conduct business matters. This is forbidden by law for accountability and security reasons. Andree McLeod, former vice chair of the Alaskan Republican party had already requested Palin to release more than 1,100 emails that she withheld from a public records request. So Kernell decided to take the law into his own hards. “Rubico” Kernell’s alias, was hoping to dig up some major dirt on Palin. Eric Blair, in his article in eFlux Media dated 9/19/08, stated how this was rather ironic. Kernell in his hopes to dig up “dirt” on Palin went about it in a way that was far from “clean.” Now Sarah Palin’s two email accounts have also been “cleaned” – in fact they have been deleted.

So after reading several articles I had the full Palin Email Hack story!