A NEW SPIN ON COMPUTER MOUSE

1. How many engineers does it take to design a computer mouse? At Logitech, the leader in the global mouse market, it took more than 30 electrical, mechanical, computer, and industrial engineers working for two years to create the company's MX Revolution. The company calls the engineering project the largest in its history. The mouse has a curvy grey-and-black body and is cordless, optical, and decked with plenty of buttons, but the same can be said of other high-end mice. What sets it apart is its high-speed "inertial" scroll wheel.

2. While most mice have a plastic or rubber scroll wheel that weighs a gram or two, the MX Revolution has a 14-gram chrome-plated brass wheel. Turn it slowly and you'll scroll one line at a time, the wheel's

internal ratchets clicking under your fingertip, just like in a usual mouse. But give the wheel a good spin and the result is entirely different: a tiny electric motor retracts the ratchet mechanism and the wheel revolves freely for up to seven seconds. A single flick of your finger sends you whizzing through 50 pages in a Word document.

3. Logitech has also created a special version aimed at notebook users, the Л~Х Revolution, which has the same inertial wheel. The "Revolution" in the name may be рте PR hick, but the company showed it's possible to innovate in a category that hasn't changed much since Douglas Engelbart and his colleagues invented the mouse in the late 1960s. Improving scrolling was high on users' wish lists.

4. Most people may take their mice for granted, but for users like earners and artists these devices are more than iust boxes with buttons. Some know by heart their mice's coefficient of friction and maximum acceleration, while others enjoy "mouse modding"— modifying mice to change their appearance or enhance their tracking and scrolling performance. The MX Revolution confirms Logitech Company's strategy of designing products aimed at "power" mouse users as one way of staying ahead of Microsoft, which is No. 2 in the world mouse market.

ratchets — трещотка, храповик

Определите, является ли утверждение:

Logitech is the leader in the world mouse market, staying ahead of

Microsoft.

Варианты ответов:

Должен быть выбран один правильный вариант ответа

П~ истинным П~ ложным

Г~ в тексте нет информации

earners and artists these devices are more than iust boxes with

 

 

NETWORK SECURITY

1. Internet security professionals are, by occupational temperament, a pretty anxious people. But lately they've had more reason than ever to be nervous. Not long ago, a new kind of worm, known as Storm, began to sweep through the Internet. It hasn't received much attention in the mainstream press, but it has given security professionals more than a few* sleepless nights. Storm is far more sophisticated than previous worms, because it uses peer-to-peer technologies and other new techniques to avoid detection.

2. Storm methodically infiltrates computers with inactive code that could be used to damage the whole network of a company, creating opportunities for getting money illegally. And Storm's creators, whoever they are, continue to modify their dangerous product even as it already stands as a dark cloud poised over the Internet.

3. Network security software products on the market today offer only limited defence. They use firewalls, which simply block access to unauthorized users, and software patches, which can be created only after a worm or virus's unique bit pattern is decoded. By the time this difficult process of hand coding is complete, the worm has had hours and hours to spread, mutate, or be modified by its creators. 4. A new kind of answer is needed. Network security researchers are developing software that can rapidly detect a wide variety of intrusions from worms, viruses, and other attacks without the high rate of false alarms that outbreaks many conventional Internet security products. These new programs can detect any anomalous network behavior in seconds and block threats. This new generation of algorithms is based on concepts related to the thermodynamic concept of entropy. Often defined briefly as a measure of the disorder of a system, entropy as a cornerstone of thermodynamic theory goes back more than a century and a half. But as a construct of information theory it is only 60 years old, and its application to data communications began only in the last decade or so.

Определите, является ли утверждение:

The worm, known as Storm, is less sophisticated than the previous

worms.

 

 

USB

1. In the late 1990s, a few computer manufacturers started embedding Universal Serial Bus, or USB, support in their new* systems, but today USB has become a standard connection port for many USB-enabled devices such as keyboards, mice, joysticks, digital cameras, etc. USB is able to support and is supported by a large range of products.

2. USB is supported at the operating system level, and compared to alternative ports such as parallel or serial ports, USB is very user-friendly. When USB first started appealing in the marketplace, it was (and still is) referred to as a plug-and-play port because of its ease of use. Consumers without a lot of technical or hardware knowledge were able to easily connect USB devices to their computer. USB devices can also be used across multiple platforms. USB works on Window*s and Mac, plus can be used with other operating systems, such as Linux, for example, with a reliable degree of success.

3. Before USB, connecting devices to a computer was often a difficult*. Modems and digital cameras were connected via the serial port which was quite slow*, as only one bit is transmitted at a time through a serial port. While printers generally required a parallel printer port, which is able to receive more than one bit at a time — that is, it receives several bits in parallel. Most computers provided two serial ports and a parallel printer port. If you had several devices, unhooking one device and setting up the software and drivers to use another device could often be problematic for the user.

4. The introduction of USB ended many of these headaches. USB offered consumers the option to connect up to 127 devices, either directly or through the use of a USB hub. It was much faster since USB supports data transfer rates of 12 Mbps for disk drives and other high-speed throughput and 1.5 Mbps for devices that need less bandwidth. Additionally, consumers can literally plug almost any USB device into their computer, and Window's will detect it and automatically set-up the hardware settings for the device.

 

Определите, является ли утверждение:

People with little technical knowledge can't attach USB devices to a

system.

Варианты ответов:

Должен быть выбран один правильный вариант ответа

ложным Г~ истинным

в тексте нет информации