text stringlengths 234 589k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 62 values | url stringlengths 16 734 | date stringlengths 20 20 ⌀ | file_path stringlengths 109 155 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.65 1 | token_count int64 57 124k | score float64 2.52 4.91 | int_score int64 3 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
In a DNS zone, every record carries its own time-to-live, so that it can be cached, yet still changed if necessary.
This information is originally served by authoritative servers for the related zone. The TTL is represented as an integer number of seconds.
At first sight, the mechanism looks straightforward: if the www.example.com record has a TTL of 30, it’s only valid up to 30 second, and caches must fetch it again if requested after this delay.
DNS caches can be chained: instead of directly querying authoritative servers, a cache can forward queries to a another server, and cache the result.
Having 3 or 4 chained caches is actually very common. Web browsers, operating systems and routers can cache and forward DNS a query. Eventually, this query will be sent to an upstream cache, like the ISP cache or a third-party service like OpenDNS. And these caches can also actually hide multiple chained caches.
In order to respect the original TTL, caches are modifying records as they forward them to clients. The response to a query that has been sitting in a cache for 10 second will be served with a TTL reduced by 10 second. That way, if the original TTL was 30 second, the whole chain is guaranteed to consider this record as expired as the same time: the original meaning of the TTL is retained no matter how many resolvers there are in the way.
Well, not exactly. A TTL is just a time interval, not an absolute date. Unlike a HTTP response, a DNS response doesn’t contain any timestamp. Thus, requests processing and network latency are causing caches to keep a record longer than they actually should in order to respect the initial TTL.
A TTL being an integer value makes things even worse: a chain of N caches can introduce a N second bias.
In practice, this is rarely an issue: TTLs as served by authoritative servers are considered indicative, and not as something to depend on when accurate timing is required.
How does the TTL of a record served by a DNS cache decays over time?
Surprisingly, different implementations exhibit different behaviors.
For a record initially served with a TTL equal to N by authoritative servers:
Hold on… Does it mean that how frequently an entry will actually be refreshed depends on what software resolvers are running?
Sadly, yes. Given a record with a TTL equal to N:
Although a TTL of zero can cause interoperability issues, most DNS caches are considering records with a TTL of zero as records that should not be cached.
This perfectly makes sense when the TTL of zero is the original TTL, as served by authoritative servers.
However, when a cache artificially changes the TTL to zero, it changes a record that had been designed for being cached to an uncachable record that contaminates the rest of the chain.
To illustrate this, a Linux box has been setup with a local DNS cache. Unbound has been chosen, but the last component of the chain actually makes little difference. Even web browsers caches have a very similar behavior.
Queries are forwarded to an upstream cache on the same LAN, running dnscache, and outgoing queries are recorded with ngrep. The same query, whose response has a TTL of 1, is made at a 10 queries per second rate.
The X axis represents outgoing queries, whereas the Y axis is the time elapsed since the previous query.
Even though a TTL of 1 is served by authoritative servers for this record, a large amount of responses are cached and served for 2 second. This is due to the local Unbound resolver.
However, there is also quite a lot of responses that haven’t been cached at all. It happens when dnscache serves a response with a TTL of 0. Since it happens one third of the time, this is suboptimal and not on par with the intent of the authoritate record, which is served with non-zero TTL.
And although dnscache and Unbound are handling TTLs the same way, we can’t expect their caches to be perfectly synchronized. When the local cache considers a record as expired and issues an outgoing query, the upstream server can consider it as not expired yet, just in the middle of the last second. What we get is a constant race between caches, causing jitter and outgoing queries sent after 1 second.
The following experiment has been made by observing outgoing queries when sending 10,000 queries for a record with a TTL of 2, at an average 10 qps rate, to a local cache, using Google, OpenDNS and Level 3 as upstream resolvers.
Here is the number of outgoing queries that were required to complete the 10,000 local queries using different services:
When using Google DNS (blue dots), queries are effectively never cached more than 2 second, even locally. This is due to the max TTL returned by Google DNS being the initial TTL minus one.
When Google DNS returns a TTL of zero, we observe the same jitter and the same slew of queries that couldn’t be served from the local cache.
OpenDNS (orange dots) has the same behavior as dnscache and Unbound, with TTLs in the [0, N] interval. Our initial TTL with a value of 2 actually causes 3, 2, and 1 second delays between request, plus a sensitive amount of consecutive outgoing queries due a null TTL.
Note: Since the original post OpenDNS resolvers have been updated to behave like Bind: TTLs are in the [1, N] interval.
Level 3 (green dots) is running Bind, which returns a TTL in the [1, N] interval. Bind caches records one second less than dnscache and Unbound. Because our local resolver is Unbound, queries received with a TTL of N are actually cached N + 1 second. But as expected, the frequency of required outgoing queries very rarely exceeds 3 second.
What the correct behavior is, is out of scope of this article. All major implementations are probably correct.
But from a user perspective, with only 2 caches in the chain, and for a given record, the same set of queries can require up to 3.5 more outgoing queries to get resolved, depending on what software the remote cache is running.
With CDNs and popular web sites having records with a very low TTL (Facebook has a 30 second TTL, Skyrock has a 10 second TTL), the way a cache handles TTLs can have a sensible impact on performance. That said, some resolvers can be configured to pre-fetch records before they expire, effectively mitigating this problem.
MacOS X provides a system-wide name cache, which is enabled by default.
Its behavior is quite surprising, though. It seems to enforce a minimum TTL of 12.5 seconds, while still requiring some outgoing queries delayed by the initial TTL value, and some consecutive ones. Resolving the 10,000 queries from the previous test took only an average of 232 outgoing queries.
Using Google DNS, OpenDNS and Level 3 as a remote resolver produce the same result, with the exception on Level 3 (Bind) avoiding frequent (less than 1 sec) consecutive queries during the time other return a TTL of zero. | <urn:uuid:9ebd9121-3bc6-477c-aaf8-fa52a5a10bb7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://blog.catchpoint.com/2012/04/04/dns-records-and-ttl-how-long-does-a-second-actually-last/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280730.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00526-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942982 | 1,504 | 3.265625 | 3 |
The new Smithsonian Learning Lab provides online tools for teachers to engage students in a blended learning environment for K-12 classrooms and college campuses.
“Not everyone can come to the Smithsonian, but they can visit the Learning Lab to inspire and design their own digital learning experiences,” said Stephanie Norby, director of the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access. “Teachers can use trusted, authentic resources and interactive tools to make lessons more relevant and compelling to students while meeting curriculum standards and fostering higher-order thinking skills.”
The Learning Lab provides free access to more than a million digital resources for students and teachers to discover, create, and share their ideas.
“These resources aren’t a traditional lesson plan,” said Darren Milligan, the senior digital strategist for the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access. “They’re not designed and formatted and published as a really specific sequence. They are built in a way that enables a teacher to customize them.”
Teachers can explore based on a specific discipline and customize the resources with notes, assignments, or other interactive learning activities. As these customized resources are built by educators or students, they can share their creations with other Learning Lab users.
“For students, it’s going to be more about them–where they have a chance to explore their interests,” said Norby. “[It is] easy for a teacher to tailor it to those particular needs to those particular voices she has in the classroom.” | <urn:uuid:5a7c0de5-d066-46ef-ba04-a63db933f264> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.meritalk.com/articles/smithsonian-provides-digital-learning-tools-for-students/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00554-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942678 | 315 | 3.28125 | 3 |
New things are coming in the world of Wi-Fi technology, in the form of beamforming and MU-MIMO. Beamforming makes it possible for routers to adjust their phase and power for better signal by allowing Wi-Fi routers and clients to exchange information about their locations. Beamforming, in either the explicit or implicit form, provides significantly better radio signals, faster forwarding, at greater distances. Devices manufactured in the last two years will support explicit beamforming, that allows client and Wi-Fi to communicate about their locations, and providing better steering of signals between the two. Implicit beamforming works in a similar way, steering signals based on the routers internal measurements rather than the respective locations of the router and the client. Prior to beamforming, Wi-Fi routers sent signals out in all directions. The signals need only go where Wi-Fi devices are, beamforming makes Wi-Fi capabilities more efficient by solving this problem and employing signals in the direction of devices. MU-MIMO, short for multi-user, multiple input, and multiple output, makes more bandwidth available to wireless users. Moving networking away from the one-at-a-time model to a more complex system, multiple devices can converse simultaneously.
David Newman with Network World, reviewed the MU-MIMO and beamforming capabilities within the Linksys EA-7500 and his results were noteworthy. After a quick power-up, online configuration, and downloaded firmware update, the router was up and running. Comparing transfer rates between the old 802.11n access point and the new Linksys EA-7500 router, Newman found a significant increase in results. The old 802.11n downloaded data at 25Mbps while the new Linskys EA-7500 downloaded data much faster at 58Mbps.
His conclusion is as follows:
So, can beamforming and MU-MIMO help you? The answer is “yes, for sure” if you’re in one of three categories:
- if you’ve got devices 2 years old or newer, beamforming can help
- if you’ve got distance issues, beamforming and MU-MIMO can help
- if you’ve got multiple devices, MU-MIMO can help
In all these cases, we saw significant improvements using MU-MIMO and beamforming technology in the Linksys EA7500 Wi-Fi router.
If you would like to educate yourself in more detail about the information presented in this blog post please visit: Review: Wave 2 Wi-Fi delivers dramatic performance boost for home networks | <urn:uuid:3055552b-2b0f-4b38-8340-8b03a7bb0355> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.bvainc.com/wi-fi-capabilities-increase-beamforming/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00186-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918961 | 535 | 2.640625 | 3 |
About half of technology experts think the gathering and analysis of troves of big data will produce a “huge positive” for society, while about 40 percent think it will produce a “big negative,” a study released Friday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found.
Big data generally refers to large amounts of unstructured information that can’t be neatly compressed into a spreadsheet, such as Global Positioning System signals from cellphones, collections of tweets on a particular topic, satellite video of traffic patterns, or pulses from the Large Hadron Collider.
New tools to analyze that information promise to aid data-driven analyses of everything from consumer habits to smart infrastructure planning to the big-bang theory.
The government is investing $200 million in new research and development related to the mining, processing and storage of big data, spurred by a June 2011 report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which found a gap in the private sector's investment in basic big data research and development.
Advances in big data will produce a more predictable economy, more nuanced health care diagnoses and smarter business decisions, technology leaders who are optimistic about big data told Pew researchers.
“Demonizing data, big or small, is demonizing knowledge and that is never wise,” Internet pundit Jeff Jarvis said.
Some skeptics told Pew they were concerned most big data is in the hands of governments and corporations along with the tools to analyze it. That could result in people’s daily lives being commoditized rather than improved, they said.
“If big data could be used primarily for social benefit, rather than the pursuit of profit [and the social-control systems that support that effort], then I could ‘sign on,’ ” said Oscar Gandy, communications theorist and retired University of Pennsylvania communications professor.
Other skeptics worried conclusions drawn from big data would too often be erroneous and based on poor assumptions about causation.
“A lot of big data today is biased and missing context,” said Dan Ness, a research analyst at MetaFacts, a technology market research firm.
Pew partnered on the study with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center. | <urn:uuid:7164697f-48f5-4299-8aa0-52b737383a88> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2012/07/half-technology-leaders-are-bullish-big-data/56903/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282932.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00094-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93126 | 458 | 2.71875 | 3 |
In January 1874, early feminist icon Susan B. Anthony petitioned Congress to remit a fine she'd received for illegally voting in the 1872 presidential election, 47 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the franchise.
Until recently, anyone hoping to read that petition would have been limited to a few scanned pages from the original document posted on the National Archives website or would have had to travel to Washington to take a look at the source document itself.
Earlier this summer, though, the National Archives' first Wikipedian in residence, graduate student Dominic McDevitt-Parks, put out a call to volunteer transcribers on Wikisource, the user-generated online encyclopedia's sister site for primary documents, who banded together to turn Anthony's 19th century curlicued script into simple, searchable Web text. The document is now awaiting a final validation before it goes online.
Anthony's petition is just one of about 40 documents McDevitt-Parks has sent out to volunteer Wiki-transcribers during his six weeks at the Archives -- some dating as far back as Alexander Hamilton's commission to the rank of full colonel in October 1783, a month after the British had officially given up the American colonies, and others as recent as pages from President Nixon's official diary from January 1969, his first month in office.
McDevitt-Parks also has posted new photos and other documents from the National Archives to Wikipedia with the goal of enticing volunteer authors to write articles around them. One of the first photos he posted was of Howard Perry, the first black Marine recruit after the Corps was desegregated in 1942. That article prompted another Wikipedian to write a full article on desegregation in the Marine Corps, which was briefly featured on the site's home page.
A series of Ansel Adams photos, which the National Park Service commissioned in the 1940s, prompted a contributor to write a short article on an Adams photo of Cartridge Creek near Fresno, Calif.
"There's just so much potential, so much stuff here," said McDevitt-Parks, a Simmons College graduate student in history and archives management and a seven-year Wikipedia editor. "In reality, you could have a whole department of Wikipedians in residence and still have work to do."
In the absence of a full department, McDevitt-Parks is using his summer-long fellowship to begin the long process of organizing Wikipedia's volunteer workforce around the National Archives' vast holdings.
For the Archives, that's meant encouraging staff to upload scans of Archive documents and digitized photos to Wikipedia or Wiksource in addition to Flickr or other sites that are more common photo repositories but where they can't tap into Wikipedia's crowd sourcing model.
For Wikipedians, that's meant whipping up some excitement in the online community about the chance of bringing the Archive's holdings to a wider audience through organized projects and challenges.
A major barrier, McDevitt-Parks said, is the quality of the Archives' digitized files, the most important of which were scanned in the 1990s using early technology that makes them difficult to read online.
"So now we have all these really important documents, like the original draft of the Marbury v. Madison decision, digitized by 1990s standards," he said. "They're 3-megabyte files and if you zoom in they get all blurry. If you digitized them now, it would be a 50-megabyte file. Unfortunately, it's hard to [make the case to] go back and scan things that are already scanned when there are millions and millions of things that aren't in any digitized form at all."
Another challenge, he said, has been simply being overwhelmed by the vastness of the Archives' holdings, the majority of which haven't even been cataloged, much less digitized or posted online.
His request list for Wikisource transcribers, for example, includes the protest letter the final queen of independent Hawaii sent to Congress when the United States annexed the island in 1898. It also includes a claim escaped slave and underground railroad worker Harriet Tubman made to the U.S. government that same year to collect her pension for work as a Union spy during the Civil War. Neither document has ever been posted online in clear, typed prose.
The Wikipedian in residence model has been adopted in numerous cultural institutions in the United States and abroad. Cooperation between Wikipedians and private museums has sometimes been stymied, though, by ideological disagreements between Wikipedians, who generally favor absolutely free information, and some museums that prefer to keep access to selected works proprietary, McDevitt-Parks said.
But most Archives staff see cooperation with Wikipedia as a chance to improve the site's accuracy and to get information out to people where they're already looking for it, McDevitt-Parks said.
"If we ever felt like we were in competition with Wikipedia, we lost that battle a long time ago," he said, noting that a Google search on the Declaration of Independence brings up the Wikipedia entry first, far above the National Archives' article.
"We used to be in the 20th century mind-set of access," he said, "open research rooms so people can come and look at our collections. But we're moving into an era where having open access means more than that. You don't have to have physical access to a facility to have access to its holdings and Wikipedia is one of the best models for that." | <urn:uuid:f99fc625-b124-40e5-887d-761b92996396> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nextgov.com/technology-news/2011/07/national-archives-first-wikipedian-in-residence-to-bring-more-holdings-to-the-public/49380/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00491-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964221 | 1,135 | 2.703125 | 3 |
I recently blogged about Firesheep, the Firefox extension that can be used to compromise a secure connection to a website that you have connected to from an open Wi-Fi hotspot. The truth is the vulnerability that Firesheep exposes is not new, but little was done about it. Not so anymore, help is on the way.
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) or STS is a new security policy mechanism where a web server tells a supporting browser that it can only connect to it over secure connections (i.e. SSL). HSTS allows web site operators, serious about security, to force secure connections with users that are also serious about security (or lucky enough to have a supporting browser). HSTS is supported in Google Chrome and the Firefox extension NoScript. Firefox 4.0 will also support HSTS when it is released in early 2011.
HSTS is simple for browsers to support. When a browser connects to an HSTS site it finds a new header in an HTTPS (i.e. secure SSL conection) reply such as:
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=2592000; includeSubDomains
When the HSTS supported browser sees this, it will remember for the specified period (i.e. “max-age” in seconds) that the current domain can only be contacted over HTTPS. If the user subsequently tries to connect to the site with HTTP only, the browser will default to HTTPS. The “includeSubDomains” extension will enforce the HSTS policy on all pages under the current domain.
Now the onus is on the web site operators to configure their sites to support HSTS. Details can be found in the IETF Internet Draft specification. As more web sites adopt and more browsers support HSTS, the end users browsing experience will become a safer one. | <urn:uuid:b90dea2b-7a4e-447b-8754-c4a847b67a6e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.entrust.com/http-strict-transport-security-hsts/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281069.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00545-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899458 | 392 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Wide-Area Network (WAN), also called long haul network, is a network that covers a broad area using leased telecommunication lines. WAN includes any telecommunications network which links across metropolitan, regional, national or international boundaries. In general, a WAN connects different smaller networks, such as local area networks (LAN) and metropolitan area networks (MAN). This ensures that computers and users in one location can communicate with the other locations. WAN implementation can be done either with the help of the public transmission system or a private network. Compared to the small area network, like LAN or MAN, WAN is applied more in business and government. They use WANs to transmit data among their staffs, clients or even the suppliers from different geographical location. Actually, this type of telecommunication helps them solving the location limitation of communication.
In general, the data transfer rate of WAN is higher than LAN while the signal propagation delay of WAN is much larger than LAN. The typical rate of a WAN is usually from 56kbps to 155Mbps. And with the increasing development of technology, there are also 622Mbps, 2.4 Gbps and even higher-speed WANs. The signal propagation delay can be from a few milliseconds to hundreds of milliseconds (when using the satellite channel). Main features of WANs is as the following: | <urn:uuid:732ff24a-eeb0-41b4-aa5d-b141e228dde5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.fs.com/blog/wan.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279248.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00179-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927049 | 276 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Freedom vs Free Stuff: What is Free Software?
For those unfamiliar with the programmer’s lexicon, the difference between freeware and free software can be as elusive as the variations between C and C++. While many assume one is simply an abbreviation of the other, the Free Software Foundation assures users that this is not the case. Its Web site instructs visitors to think of free software in terms of “free speech,” not “free beer.”
For users more interested in bootlegging movies than discussing philosophy, freeware is the software of choice. These programs are made available to users at no cost for an unlimited period of time. Yet, price is the only element that separates freeware from other forms of proprietary software. Source codes generally are not provided with freeware programs, and their copyright licenses generally restrict the product’s use, modification and distribution.
Free software, however, is not about price. Started in 1984, the free software movement fights for users’ freedom to copy, modify, redistribute and run software as they see fit. Free software can be sold, traded or given away for free. Proponents of this movement see their computer as an extension of their home, and they think they should have as much authority over their software as they do over their golf clubs.
“Free software is a philosophy,” said Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). “It’s an ethical decision to create software that gives users fundamental freedoms.”
These freedoms are laid out in the copyright licenses of free software programs. The key to these agreements, which FSF refer to as “copyleft” licenses, is that users must not revoke these privileges when they redistribute free software — new users must have the same degree of ownership and access as every previous author.
“In that sense, the freedoms accumulate,” Brown said. “So, when you get a copy of the free software from me, you get freedom. When you pass it on to someone else, they get freedom too. That’s the rule. That’s what copyleft license does. It guarantees users freedom.”
It is this philosophical base that distinguishes free software from another related software type, open source. While both forms allow users to copy, run, modify and redistribute programs as they see fit, open source sees itself as strictly a business model.
Brown said this makes open source weak because if a better model were created, this type of technology would go by the wayside. Free software proponents, on the other hand, think their software has an innate worth, independent of economic variables.
“Regardless of whether there’s a better development model or more money to be made elsewhere, we believe free software is the right thing to do because it’s good for society,” Brown said.
Based on the success of free software in the marketplace, it seems that society agrees.
Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice, Apache Web Server and GNU/Linux itself are just a few of the well-respected free software products that are used by both tech-savvy college students and Internet bigwigs. Both Google and Yahoo servers run free software, as do businesses such as Red Hat, IBM, Novell and HP, Brown said.
Enhanced security is one of the main reasons many individuals and corporations switch to free software. With spyware piggybacking on many desirable programs, not to mention the prevalence of viruses, cookies and worms, FSF thinks users need to protect and empower themselves with transparent software that they know they can trust.
Brown said that just as people refuse to allow closed-circuit televisions to monitor their actions at home, neither should they let invasive programs track their activity online.
“The people who believe in free software create software to empower you,” he said. “Not to spy on you, not to take your private data, not to install viruses but to give you freedom.” | <urn:uuid:b5c321a2-5291-40b4-962e-ad422daf7819> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://certmag.com/freedom-versus-free-stuff-what-is-free-software-anyway/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00481-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946695 | 840 | 2.953125 | 3 |
A fiber optic coupler is a device used in fiber optic systems with single or more input fibers and single or several output fibers, which is different from WDM devices. WDM multiplexer and demultiplexer divide the different wavelength fiber light into different channels, while fiber optic couplers divide the light power and send it to different channel.
Most types of couplers work only in a limited range of wavelength (a limited bandwidth), since the coupling strength is wavelength-dependent (and often also polarization-dependent). This is a typical property of those couplers where the coupling occurs over a certain length. Typical bandwidths of fused couplers are a few tens of nanometers. In high-power fiber lasers and amplifiers, multimode fiber couplers are often used for combining the radiation of several laser diodes and sending them into inner cladding of the active fiber.
A basic fiber optic coupler has N input ports and M output ports. N and M typically range from 1 to 64. M is the number of input ports (one or more). N is the number of output ports and is always equal to or greater than M. The number of input ports and output ports vary depending on the intended application for the coupler.
Light from an input fiber can appear at one or more outputs, with the power distribution potentially depending on the wavelength and polarization. Such couplers can be fabricated in different ways. Some couplers use side-polished fibers, providing access to the fiber core; Couplers can also be made from bulk optics, for example in the form of microlenses and beam splitters, which can be coupled to fibers (“fiber pig-tailed”).
Fiber optic couplers can either be passive or active devices. Passive fiber optic couplers are simple fiber optic components that are used to redirect light waves. Passive couplers either use micro-lenses, graded-refractive-index (GRIN) rods and beam splitters, optical mixers, or splice and fuse the core of the optical fibers together. Active fiber optic couplers require an external power source. They receive input signals, and then use a combination of fiber optic detectors, optical-to-electrical converters, and light sources to transmit fiber optic signals.
Types of fiber optic couplers include optical splitters, optical combiners, X couplers, star couplers, and tree couplers. The device allows the transmission of light waves through multiple paths.
Fused couplers are used to split optical signals between two fibers, or to combine optical signals from two fibers into one fiber. They are constructed by fusing and tapering two fibers together. This method provides a simple, rugged, and compact method of splitting and combining optical signals. Typical excess losses are as low as 0.2dB, while splitting ratios are accurate to within ±5 percent at the design wavelength. The devices are bi-directional, and offer low backreflection. The technique is best suited to singlemode and multimode couplers.
Choices for fiber optic coupler also include Single window narrow band, Single window Wide band, and Dual window Wide band fiber optic coupler. Single window fiber optic coupler is with one working wavelength. Dual window fiber optic coupler is with two working wavelength. For Single mode fiber, is optimized for 1310 nm and 1550 nm; For Multimode fiber, is optimized for 850 nm and 1310 nm. | <urn:uuid:64b8cd9a-f6cc-4dfa-acd6-b0bccfebacee> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.fs.com/blog/fiber-optic-couplers.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280221.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00509-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915264 | 725 | 3.90625 | 4 |
This blog post is taken from the INE Resources area Understanding Frame-Relay Traffic Shaping presentation by Brian Dennis.
Frame-Relay traffic shaping is designed to control the amount of traffic the router sends out of an interface or out of a particular DLCI. Common reasons for Frame-Relay traffic shaping are:
- It allows the router to conform to the rate subscribed with the service provider
- It allows for the throttling of a higher speed site (768K) so that it does not overrun a lower speed site (64K)
Traffic shaping is designed to delay excess traffic, whereas policing is designed to drop excess traffic.
- Available Rate (AR) – the actual physical speed of the interface; on a DCE serial interface this is determined by the configured clock rate. On a DTE serial interface, it is determined by the received clock rate. A router will always (by default) try to send out at the AR regardless of the interface bandwidth. AR is also commonly referred to as port speed, line rate, or access rate.
Tags: ccie, exam, frts, lab
Two new Hands On Labs are being added to the course this weekend. Enjoy!
- Configuring a Back-to-Back Serial WAN Connection
- Configuring a Back-to-Back PPP WAN Connection
Tags: CCENT, cisco, exam, lab, strategy, tips, written
We are adding practices for common commands you need to know to the CCENT course. We uploaded an updated Verifying the WAN Connection lesson tonight. Want to experience a sample practice right now? Use the link below. Happy studies!
Verifying the WAN Connection
Tags: CCENT, practice, simulation, strategy, tips, written
In this post, we will examine the steps required to ensure full reachability over a Serial interface between two Cisco routers. Here is the network diagram that presents the topology used in this scenario:
Tags: cisco, connectivity, interface, ip, serial | <urn:uuid:9f22e594-e739-4b2d-872b-3ba4b0b47803> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://blog.ine.com/category/ccent/wan-links/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00417-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.890705 | 416 | 2.6875 | 3 |
By taking a light beam and twisting it, fiber optic cables get a turbo boost, according to researchers at Boston University. The findings — recently published in Science — show that twisting the light beam allows transmission of 1.6 terabits of data a second through a one kilometer long fiber cable, roughly eight times that of Blu-Ray.
The technology isn’t exactly new, but prior to the Boston University study scientists couldn’t get the beam to go farther than one meter. Before this study, the only option to increase bandwidth was to lay more fiber optic lines, but this advancement allows for integral growth.
“Service providers can put in more fiber optic lines, but that’s a linear process, it’s not exponential growth,” lead author Siddharth Ramachandran said in an interview with Motherboard. “We’ve added another degree of freedom to these fibers.”
Everything is becoming more connected: smart phones, iPads, Google Glass, smart TVs. The more connected the world becomes, the increase in demand placed on the fiber optic infrastructure. Fiber cables work by assigning each customer a unique color light, so that transmissions do not get confused. A data transmitter and receiver decode each color light. As new customers and products start to send and receive data, more and more colored lights must be added and all the beams get closer together, which causes nonlinear distortion.
With this technology, instead of sending light beams straight down the cable, the light is beamed with a tornado-like shape, called orbital angular momentum (OAM). Current technology sends light beams in the shape of straight steel rods. By corkscrewing beams, they become more flexible and that allows for more beams in each fiber. While it is still limited, Ramachandran said that the fiber has a good application for companies with huge server farms, such as Facebook and Google.
“We’re not sure if it’ll work for long haul networks, but data communications potentially has an even bigger bottleneck on server farms,” Ramachandran said. “A lot of the communication between those servers is done with fiber right now, and they’re hurting on how to figure out how to keep up with the massive amounts of data.”
Unlike other new technologies, the tornado-like producing OAM cables are ready for use now. OFSFitel — one of the world’s largest fiber optic cable manufacturers — was involved in the project.When service providers look to lay new fiber optic cables or are planning on upgrading their infrastructure, OAM cables may be a practical solution.
Service providers planning new networks can utilize GeoTel’s metro fiber, long haul fiber, and fiber lit buildings to make informed business decisions. GeoTel’s telecom data products integrate telecommunications infrastructure data with GIS so users can accurately and efficiently analyze data in a spatial environment. GeoTel Communications offers custom-made fiber maps for client requests – give us a call at 800-277-2172 to learn more! | <urn:uuid:0d3440dc-ecde-4637-a968-9093ab79c8fa> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.geo-tel.com/2013/tornado-like-technology-improves-bandwidth/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00417-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906469 | 632 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Cameras in the Cockpit
Cameras in the cockpit
The first thing we need to do is install cameras in the cockpit that can be turned on in justified situations to see if there is something wrong. Or, the cameras could be on all the time and have the images recorded in the Flight Data Recorder (FDR).
The most important thing we need to do is add technology to allow the FAA to take over the control of any flight over United States airspace if there are indications of problems onboard that would interfere with the safety of the flight. Humans make mistakes. Worse, they do bad things.
Look at what happened on Oct. 31, 1999. EgyptAir Flight 990 was flying from Los Angeles to New York and then on to Cairo, Egypt. At around 01:50 E.T., the plane plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, in international waters, killing all of the 217 people onboard. [Note: I had a friend that was onboard this flight and I subsequently raised money for a scholarship in his name at Stanford University].
An FAA investigation concluded that first officer Gameel Al-Batouti was suffering from depression and decided to commit suicide and take the entire flight with him into the ocean. The captain had gone to the restroom, then noticed the problem and tried to re-take command of the plane-but the copilot proved stronger and the flight went into the ocean. The flight deviated from its assigned altitude of 33,000 feet and dived to 16,000 feet for over 44 seconds, then climbed to 24,000 and began a final dive, hitting the Atlantic Ocean in about two and a half minutes. | <urn:uuid:d9f297dc-ca61-4476-b2c2-933f785b582e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/INSIDE-MOBILE-Planes-Trains-Automobiles-Why-Computers-Should-Be-In-Control/1 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281202.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00233-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964267 | 352 | 2.6875 | 3 |
It’s a busy day in your company and everyone is rushing around trying to respond to requests. Audrey gets an email that looks like it’s from a partner asking her to look into a recently placed order. She clicks on the PDF to check it out. But instead of seeing the partner’s order, she sees a landing page from the company’s security team letting her know she fell prey to a simulated phishing attack. As she looks around the room, she sees that a few co-workers also have stunned looks on their faces.
If real, such a phishing attack could have put your company’s sensitive information—such as usernames, passwords, credit card details or PINs of your customers—at risk. According to data from Kaspersky Lab, phishers launched attacks impacting more than 100,000 people daily last year.
Despite attempts by security software firms to stop them, cybercriminals are getting craftier by the day. A recent scam, uncovered by security firm Symantec, was targeted against users of Google Drive, which is frequently used by businesses for collaboration. Users were sent a message with the subject header “Documents” and directed to a sign-in page that closely mirrored Google’s. After they signed in, users were sent to a PHP script on a compromised Web server. This page then redirected to a real Google Drive document, leaving visitors unaware that their login credentials had been stolen.
Based on the startled looks of the impacted employees, the mock phishing attack that Audrey and her co-workers experienced jolted the system, but did it make the company any safer from cyber threats?
Simulated attacks can’t stand alone
Phishing impacts thousands of companies each year, but it’s not the only issue they face: malware attacks; physical attacks on company data by workers posing as service personnel; and attacks aimed specifically at mobile devices are on the rise, and are just a few examples of the many threat vectors. The mock phishing attack orchestrated by the company’s security team provides a wake-up call but isn’t the only security education solution the company needs. Here’s why:
You have to worry about more than just phishing. Unfortunately, attacks on data don’t stop at users clicking on a link or document in an email from their laptop. For example, access could be granted through a link the user receives via text or information given out by an employee over the phone. Malware can be downloaded through a mobile phone or by clicking something on a perfectly legitimate website.
It only teaches in the moment. Yes, the simulated attack did its job by creating shock factor, but what’s next? How can you reduce the risk of it happening again in the same or a slightly different way? Do employees have actionable information about how to avoid the next attack?
It does not measure vulnerability to all attacks. If employees fell for a mock phishing attack, will they also fall for other types of attacks? How can you understand the complete vulnerability of individual employees?
As you can see, simulated attacks can provide value in assessing vulnerability but don’t provide the complete answer for CISOs. A more complete approach is needed.
However, one big issue that security officers face is that most employees think they are immune to security threats. Despite the high news coverage that large breaches receive, and despite tales told by their co-workers and friends about losing their laptops for a few days while a malware infection is cleared up, employees generally believe they are immune to security risks. Those types of things happen to other, less careful people.
Mock attacks do have certain benefits, however. For example, they can shock complacent employees-even momentarily. A simulation causes some people to realize how vulnerable to social engineering they really are. This keeps them on their toes and improves overall security. Most importantly, it may cause employees to pause the next time they see anything potentially suspicious.
Moreover, it can be a motivator for certain people. After mock phishing attacks employees think “If I’m vulnerable to this, what else am I vulnerable to,” and that’s a win for the security team. Mock attacks can also help break down walls. They can help create a valuable communications channel between users and security and IT staff. It helps people understand that they can report phishing and other potentially malicious attacks to their IT department, even if it turns out to be a false alarm.
Creating the best of both worlds
As we’ve seen, mock attacks can complete part of the security education picture. As part of a comprehensive security education strategy, they become a valuable way to test and measure progress. Employees who are aware of the company’s plan to sporadically conduct simulated events are often more careful overall, adopting a “If you see something, say something” thought process.
However, the overarching goal of any security education program needs to focus on changing the user’s behavior, making him or her less likely to fall for any scheme that will put the company—and its sensitive data—at risk. Mock attacks are a part of this training, but to reach a point where there is a real and lasting behavioral change, a program needs to take into account the entire security picture. This includes:
Understanding different kinds of attacks
It’s natural to focus on how to keep computers free from malware and data safe from phishers, but security training should also include physical security (how front desk staff and other employees should react when an unscheduled “service person” arrives at their door) and phone training (what to do when a caller asks for information that shouldn’t be divulged). These lessons are difficult to teach via a simulated event, but the right training can teach employees to ask questions such as “Can I see your ID?” “Do you have paperwork?” or “Who at my company requested this?”
Protecting different devices
Mobile phones have rapidly become a potential treasure trove of personal data for the cyber criminal. They also represent an easy way to get to end users through social engineering techniques such as fake antivirus, which trick users into paying to get rid of non-existent malware. Android is the OS most under attack; according to a report from security vendor Sophos, since it first detected Android malware in August 2010, it has recorded more than 300 malware families and more than 650,000 individual pieces of Android malware.
Determining if a URL is legitimate or fraudulent
Teaching employees how URLs work is the first step in preventing them from clicking on fraudulent ones even when they are browsing the Internet. In the lower left of most browsers, users can preview and verify where the link is going to take them. Making employees more aware of how to spot fraudulent URLs could help change their actions when they come across those that seem suspicious.
Creating strong passwords
Many users think easy-to-remember passwords such as 123456 are “good enough,” not realizing that weak passwords make them a company’s vulnerable link. Training users how to properly create and store strong passwords, and putting measures in place that tell individuals the password they’ve created is “weak” can help change behavior.
Overall, if a company is going to arm its end users to help keep its data secure, it has to do more than occasional mock attacks. Simulated attacks work best when done as part of an overall security education plan, whose benefits are well articulated and understood, and with the end result being a positive change in employee behavior. In this environment, they can be very valuable to a company, providing data that helps elucidate on the true vulnerability of a company and its employees. | <urn:uuid:bd5b46ad-11dd-4cde-a5ff-e69671d91f0a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2014/04/22/how-can-we-create-a-culture-of-secure-behavior/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281331.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00499-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963282 | 1,607 | 2.625 | 3 |
On Tuesday, researcher Dan Kaminsky will show how a Web-based attack could be used to seize control of certain routers.
Kaminsky has spent the past year studying how design flaws in the way that browsers work with the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) can be abused in order to get attackers behind the firewall. But at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, he will demonstrate how this attack would work on widely used routers, including those made by Cisco's Linksys division and D-Link.
The technique, called a DNS rebinding attack, would work on virtually any device, including printers, that uses a default password and a Web-based administration interface, said Kaminsky, who is director of penetration testing with IOActive.
Either way, the attacker would be able to control his victim's Internet communications.
The technical details of a DNS rebinding attack are complex, but essentially the attacker is taking advantage of the way the browser uses the DNS system to decide what parts of the network it can reach.
Although security researchers had known that this type of hack was theoretically possible, Kaminsky's demo will show that it can work in the real world, said David Ulevitch, CEO of DNS service provider OpenDNS. "I'm always a fan of when something that's theoretical gets made real, because it makes people act," he said.
On Tuesday, OpenDNS will offer users of its free service a way to prevent this type of attack, and the company will also set up a Web site that will use Kaminsky's techniques to give users a way to change the passwords of vulnerable routers.
The attack "underscores the need for people to be able to have more intelligence on the DNS," Ulevitch said.
Although this particular attack takes advantage of the fact that routers often use default passwords that can be easily guessed by the hacker, there is no bug in the routers themselves, Kaminsky said. Rather, the issue is a "core browser bug," he said.
Router makers have known for some time how their default passwords can be misused by attackers. Three months ago, hackers showed how a similar attack could be launched, exploiting a flaw in the way Universal Plug-and-Play works on PCs.
Cisco tries hard to discourage Linksys customers from using routers with default passwords, said Trevor Bratton, a company spokesman. "One of the first things that our setup software does is change that default name," he said. "So anyone who does as we ask with the initial setup will be prompted to change that."
The problem is that home users rarely follow this advice, Kaminsky said. "The vast majority of home users have a device with a default password," he said. | <urn:uuid:1ef5dc4f-7df7-425a-94a0-73780d6f4a32> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.csoonline.com/article/2122428/malware-cybercrime/web-based-attacks-on-routers.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279657.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00133-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95704 | 559 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The operations of both industries support the protection of our nation’s wellbeing in the United States and abroad. The pressure of preventing information security breaches is intensified with the need to protect intellectual property, supply and distribution chains, employees and customers.
Cyber-attacks are increasing in frequency and complexity for both the aerospace and defense industries, and the safety, security and reliability of data has never been more important. In an effort to mitigate risks and provide a framework for reliable information security operations, there also exist several regulatory and compliance requirements which must be adhered to.
A&D organizations must ensure compliance with a number of regulatory requirements related to the identification and protection of intellectual property, as well as controlling exported information. The Internal Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations are two pieces of legislation which aim to govern particular technologies and the data associated to prevent the compromise of sensitive information to a foreign national. To avoid penalties, it is imperative that all A&D organizations complete the processes required to verify compliance with both ITAR and EAR.
EAR includes a Commercial Control List of regulated commercial items, while ITAR includes a United States Munitions List of restricted articles and services. Organizations must register with the U.S. State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) to be considered ITAR or EAR compliant. The challenge often comes to life when global corporations come into play. Particular data may need to be transferred via the internet or stored outside of the United States.
Beyond maintaining compliance, there are a number of security concerns among the domains of aerospace and defense. Cyber-attacks are a longstanding threat, with newly developed attack methods being developed constantly and with an increased potential for damage. The information being sought is highly sensitive and valuable, and the organizations operating within the A&D sector typically function at a high level of public exposure. It is critical that decision makers ensure robust security measures to protect against cyber-attacks.
Working with DoD agencies may require a connection with the Federal Bridge.
The Federal Bridge is a cross-governmental Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to enable digital certificates for e-signature technology to create trusted paths and improve business processes among government agencies and vendors. The challenge lies in that an organization must meet the strict Federal Bridge PKI requirements based on the needed security clearance.
CSS PKI and digital certificate experts have worked with a number of organizations to design and implement PKI and certificate management systems that can be trusted and interoperable with the Federal Bridge, allowing companies to meet stringent security requirements needed to verify identities for collaboration on classified, sensitive projects. | <urn:uuid:d8703c18-cab1-43de-85fb-053c3ff4e9e3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.css-security.com/solutions/industry-solutions/aerospace-defense/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279657.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00133-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930239 | 529 | 2.53125 | 3 |
As state and local governments work on greening their environments -- to reduce energy consumption, which produces monetary savings -- sometimes the simplest acts, like shutting down a computer, can produce significant savings.
August 27 will mark the second annual Power IT Down Day, in which government and industry participants can pledge to turn their computers off at the end of the day, as well as printers, monitors and other IT devices that won't be used overnight. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, IT accounts for 2 percent of all power consumption in the nation. Dave Podwojski, director of Citrix Government, Education and Health, said turning off computers, monitors and printers at the end of a day saves $1.50 per person in energy.
Citrix, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Intel are promoting the day. "It started as a campaign by Citrix to raise awareness about green IT and how a few simple acts could have a profound impact on electrical consumption on creating a green environment across the whole country," Podwojski said. "And so it was our way of ringing the bell and saying, 'If we just did this then this would be result and the result would be good for all Americans.'"
Last year more than 2,800 people participated, which resulted in more than 37,000 kilowatt hours saved. Podwojski offered an interesting take on energy and cost savings at the state and local government levels: "If 1 percent of state government's 19 million employees powered IT down, that would result in 2.5 billion kilowatt hours in savings in one night -- and that's worth about a quarter million dollars. If it happened at the local government level, if 1 percent of the 2.9 million employees did it, then you would find that you saved another 380,000 kilowatts and another $380,000."
Individuals can sign up to participate on the Power IT Down Web site. When signing up, there's a field to enter the state or local government agency a person works for, but the number of participants is the main aspect that will be tracked to determine how many kilowatt hours are being saved in order to determine how much money is saved. According to the Web site, as of Monday morning, 706 people had signed up to participate, which will result in 9,178 kilowatt hours being saved on August 27.
The sponsoring companies will make a contribution to the Wounded Warrior Project that will be representative of the amount of money that could be saved by powering IT down -- currently that amount is at least $20,000. According to a statement, the donation serves as a tangible reminder of the money that could be saved when government and industry power down their IT equipment. | <urn:uuid:c2ebdf4c-28d0-48e3-b945-e4283f7cb333> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.govtech.com/technology/Power-IT-Down-Day-Represents-the.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280308.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00041-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957755 | 563 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The world around us has advanced so much that science fiction is fast becoming a reality! Moving from prototyping to tooling, additive manufacturing commonly known as “3D printing” has expanded to full-scale end-part production and replacement part production. Be it a 3D printed bionic ear enabling you to hear beyond human hearing frequencies, or 3D printed cake toppings taking culinary innovation to another level, or 3D printing of your dream house in just a few hours - 3D printing is revolutionizing every walk of life! According to Wohlers Report 2014, worldwide revenues from 3D printing are expected to grow from $3.07 billion in 2013 to $12.8 billion by 2018, and exceed $21 billion by 2020.
No wonder one of the biggest players in printing, HP (Hewlett-Packard), entered the field with a faster, cheaper version of a 3D Printer focused on the Enterprise Market. So, is this the first step from a “revolutionary” Maker Movement to an industrialized scale that technology eventually needs to survive for the long term? A world that can take a 3D physical product or idea into the 2D digital world and then back out to 3D physical form, anywhere across the globe! Anywhere an IP address and enough bandwidth are available to be able to transmit the Digital Model. This does have significant disruption potential. How much, and when this will happen will of course depend on several factors across economics, technological feasibility, policies, and of course, politics. So, are we finally ready to go beyond the growth that DIY enthusiasts have driven from 200% to 400% in personal 3D printers between 2007 and 2011? (McKinsey study)
Before we explore the future, let’s look at what has been already achieved or nearly achieved across markets beyond printing prototypes, toys and models.
In the field of Medicine, 3D printing of complex living tissues, commonly known as bioprinting is opening up new avenues for regenerative medicine. With an improved understanding of this technology, researchers are even trying to catalyze the natural healing mechanism of the body by creating porous structures that aid in bone stabilization, in the field of orthopedics. This cutting edge technology, in conjunction with stem cell research, is likely to revolutionize made-to-order organs, cutting across transplant waiting lists. Even intricate human body parts like the brain can be replicated using 3D technology to aid in complex medical surgeries through simulation. The Aerospace industry, an early adopter of this technology, is already designing small to large 3D printed parts saving time, material and costs. 3D printing also offers the biggest advantage critical to aerospace manufacturers – weight reduction. It also accelerates the supply chain by manufacturing non-critical parts on demand to maintain JIT (Just-in-time) inventory. The power of additive manufacturing can do away with several manufacturing steps and the tooling that goes with it.
The Automobile world is already witnessing crowd-sourced, open-source 3D printed vehicles driving off of the showroom floors. Local Motors caught the audience by surprise by 3D printing its car ‘Strati’ live at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago. So, how can an auto part be a challenge by any means? Are we headed towards making that exhilarating smell of burnt rubber a thing of the past? Something future generations (or even the preteens from today) will ask - was that such a big deal? How about robots with muscle tissue powered parts? The 3D printed ‘bio-bot’, developed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is likely to be really flexible in its movements and navigation. With this breakthrough, researchers are contemplating the possibility of designing machines enabled with sensory responding abilities to complex environmental signals. So, the ability to relate to a robot’s dance moves may soon be a major challenge!
Where does all this lead us?
The excitement growing around 3D technology is palpable and not without a reason. 3D technology surely shifts the ownership of production to individuals and brings to light most of the inflexibilities of mass-production. Of course, not everything can be 3D printed (at least not yet), but a wider use of 3D printers might reduce the need for logistics as designs could be transferred digitally leading to a decentralization and customization of manufacturing. 3D scanning as an enabling technology will also help in creating an ecosystem to support users. Layer by layer manufacturing by 3D printing has the dexterity to efficiently fabricate intricate geometries and thus reduce the wastage caused by traditional manufacturing methods.
By reducing the cost and complexity of production, 3D printing will force companies to pursue alternate ways to differentiate their products. It will also help companies enhance their aftermarket services by facilitating easy and on-demand manufacturing of replacement parts. As manufacturing is moving closer to the consumer, the consumer is fast transforming into a prosumer!
Today, 80% of manufacturing facilities surveyed in the USA are suffering from a lack of talent with respect to the complex process of traditional manufacturing. However, 3D printing can definitely make a workforce far more adept in producing manufactured goods, available.
There are opportunities here for entrepreneurs to convert an idea to a finished product with far less dependency on costly manufacturing processes, and an ability to make their business plans economically viable. While the new generation of digital technologies are making more of the services economy move remote in terms of location, from digital receptionist, to web based kiosks for practically all aspects of the travel industry to telemedicine; it’s ironic that 3D printing is actually having the opposite impact. It’s bringing manufacturing closer to the customer.
Of course, there are hurdles to overcome, not the least of which are entrenched incumbency and policies, which will be governed by more short term economic and social issues. The positive outcomes of such revolutions have to also overcome issues around security, IP protection, and several other aspects that will probably act to slow down the pace of adoption.
McKinsey has estimated a potential of generating an economic impact of $230 billion to $550 billion per year by 2025 with various 3D applications, the largest impact being expected from consumer uses, followed by direct manufacturing. As the breadth of application of 3D printing continues to grow, it will be interesting to observe how industries will mix with and influence the future of additive manufacturing. Almost every sector of the industry is riding the 3D opportunity, bringing innovations to reality.
The world is poised to hop on to a decentralized industrial revolution. Are you? | <urn:uuid:cd248637-6342-45f3-a202-b574770b06f8> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hcltech.com/blogs/sbanerjee/conquering-3rd-dimension | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00492-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948793 | 1,356 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Kuntz S.,Astrium GEO Information Services |
Von Poncet F.,Astrium GEO Information Services |
Baldauf T.,Institute for World Forestry |
Plugge D.,SFM Consultants |
And 2 more authors.
34th International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment - The GEOSS Era: Towards Operational Environmental Monitoring | Year: 2011
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is an international effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forest and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. Of critical importance is the estimation of carbon stocks in forests and their dynamics. The paper presents a scientifically sound and technically feasible approach for carbon stock assessment over large areas by applying a multi-stage inventory concept. This concept combines in-situ data and wall-to-wall forest monitoring using medium to very high resolution remote sensing data from both, optical and SAR satellite systems. This approach assures that not only forest cover is assessed but that estimates on forest degradation and forest dynamics can be monitored with high accuracy. Source | <urn:uuid:c9d63030-4459-4234-9850-6c271df8d2c9> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.linknovate.com/affiliation/institute-for-forestry-2091667/all/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00400-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.861243 | 238 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Yale School of Medicine researchers have found in studies using mice that exposure to radiation from cell phones during pregnancy can lead offspring to develop hyperactivity.
“This is the first experimental evidence that fetal exposure to radiofrequency radiation from cellular telephones does in fact affect adult behavior,” said senior author Dr. Hugh S. Taylor, professor and chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, in a statement. The research from Taylor and co-authors Geliang Gan and Xiao-Bing Gao has been published in the March 15 issue of Scientific Reports, a Nature publication.
The study involved exposing one set of pregnant mice to radiation from an active, but muted and silenced cellphone, while a control group was exposed to a deactivated phone. Those exposed to the activated phone were found to develop hyperactivity and have reduced memory as they grew up. Taylor pointed to the phone's impact on neuron development in the brain's prefrontal cortex.
“We have shown that behavioral problems in mice that resemble ADHD are caused by cell phone exposure in the womb,” said Taylor. “The rise in behavioral disorders in human children may be in part due to fetal cellular telephone irradiation exposure.”
The study was funded by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, and Environment and Human Health.
Separately, an assistant professor of psychiatry and colleagues at Dartmouth Medical School/the Thresholds-Dartmouth Research Center in Chicago, are using smartphone tools to assess and treat mental illness.
Dror Ben-Zeev and colleagues are using phones to gather information about patients symptoms and moods as well as using them to deliver interventions, such as reminders to take medication or exercise.
“We are using the technology that is already in your pocket to create a completely new medium for psychotherapeutic intervention,” says Ben-Zeev in a statement. “You can have therapy with you and accessible to you whenever and wherever you have the need, potentially anywhere in the world.”
Ben-Zeev and colleagues recently conducted a survey of 1,600 peole in Chicago who are under treatment for mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. “We showed that 70 percent of the people had cellphones and used them for calling, texting, and for accessing the Internet,” he remarks. “It’s not quite up to the 94 percent of people in the U.S. overall but I think that these results are going to be very surprising to many who expect much less from people with serious mental illness.”
Ben-Zeev has published a series of papers with co-authors around the world to help spread word of the findings and the potential use of smartphones to help patients. | <urn:uuid:ba9090a8-f2af-47c3-b4a6-dd408702dd5b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2221933/smartphones/researchers-find-cellphones-may-harm-offspring--help-people-with-mental-illness.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280774.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00216-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960717 | 593 | 2.890625 | 3 |
As demand for high performance computing (HPC) continues to grow, so does the demand for energy efficient HPC solutions. Liquid-cooling technology can offer an optimal solution. It balances somewhat higher up-front costs with a much lower lifecycle cost. Using warm instead of cool water has the additional advantage of doing away with a water chiller unit, greatly simplifying the plumbing, and reducing installation costs of an HPC solution.
While warm water doesn’t have the chilling capacity of cold water, it can cool even the hottest processors as long as it is in close proximity to the hardware. Water as warm as 45°C (113°F) can effectively cool a modern processor. Like cool water setups, the warmer outlet water from the servers can be reused to heat the datacenter and surrounding facilities.
The other development driving adoption for this technology is the proliferation of high-wattage chips. The demand for performance means server chips are continuing to push the power envelope. Fast, high performance x86 CPUs can easily reach 130 watts. In a dense two-socket or four-socket system, heat can build up quickly. An additional burden has been added with the advent of accelerators: GPUs and coprocessors. Although the chips themselves aren’t much hotter than a top-bin CPU, the inclusion of multiple gigabytes of graphics memory on an accelerator card pushes these devices well past 200 watts.
In response to these cooling challenges, Cray offers a warm water liquid-cooled option – the Cray CS300-LC™ cluster supercomputer.The Cray CS300-LC system can reduce energy consumption by 50 percent and provide a PUE below 1.1. Its design uses modular building block platforms and fits into any standard rack cabinet.
The Cray CS300-LC system’s building block blade platform features dual-processor nodes — 60 nodes can fit into a standard 42U rack cabinet. Intel® Xeon® Phi coprocessors and GPU accelerators are supported as well.
The Cray CS300-LC system is built around a standard rack infrastructure making it unique from other proprietary warm water cooling solutions. At the heart of the system is the RackCDU, a rack-level cooling distribution unit which sits inside the rack enclosure and functions as a heat exchanger between the internal isolated cooling loop and the external facility secondary loop. The internal liquid cooling loop directly cools the processors — the primary sources of heat of the system. Dripless quick connectors are used for serviceability and reliability. From the facility manager’s point of view, it’s plug-and-play with reliable system management, temperature control and monitoring. Cray does the entire installation with outstanding worldwide support and services.
The system can be configured as a fat tree or 3D torus architecture with interconnect options for single or dual rail, QDR or FDR InfiniBand or Ethernet, making it optimized for superior application performance. The Cray CS300-LC system is integrated with Advanced Cluster Engine™ (ACE) management software delivering network, server, cluster and storage management capabilities to report fine-grain system power and temperature.
Designed for end users who require an energy efficient architecture that is highly configurable, scalable, reliable and manageable, the Cray CS300-LC system addresses the sweet spot of the HPC market by delivering an innovative industry standard system that reduces datacenter power and cooling operations costs at a price point that will deliver a faster return on investment.
The Cray CS300-LC cluster supercomputer is available now and we will be demonstrating the product at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC’13) June 17–19. Visit us at booth 540.
For a quick intro of the Cray CS300-LC cluster supercomputer series watch this quick video, go to http://www.cray.com/CS300 or simply send us an email, and our sales representatives will be glad to assist you in finding the right products and services to meet your needs.
Portions of this In the Spotlight advertorial have been adapted from an article previously appearing in HPCwire. | <urn:uuid:6ca29141-eb38-4687-9183-66c1f7e6f21c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2013/06/10/cray_cools_hpc_with_cs300_cluster_supercomputers/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285289.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00426-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912232 | 849 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Several lectures from the VSCSE Summer School on Science Clouds (July 30, 2012) are now available for viewing on YouTube. The presentations provide a clear and concise overview on the state of cloud and virtualization technologies with a particular focus on MapReduce.
These free, online lectures are part of the MOOC movement – referring to massive open online course. MOOCs are the product of an open education ethic that is characterized by the features of open access and scalability.
There are currently four “Cloud Computing MOOC” lectures are available for viewing. In the first one, Professor Geoffrey Fox introduces the Indiana University Cloud MOOC. In addition to laying out the agenda, Fox provides examples of the applications that are best-suited for clouds, most notably those that are “pleasingly parallel.” He highlights several science projects, for example FutureGrid, that are using cloud-based technologies, but also alludes to a lot of untapped potential.
Fox points to some interesting future possibilities. For example, it is projected that 24 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020. This Internet of Things will rely on cloud for control and management functions. More and more, computing will look like a grid or mesh that touches nearly every aspect of our lives. The ability to offload computational tasks to the cloud will also enable advances in mobile computer devices and robotics.
Life science is another major vertical when it comes to cloud technology. Assistant Prof. Michael Schatz of the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology lectures on the use of cloud computing in genetic sequencing. Schatz is known for having produced some highly-sophisticated uses of MapReduce for biology applications. MapReduce was developed at Google for big data computations. It is a proprietary framework, but thanks to a 2004 paper, there are now open source implementations, most notably Hadoop.
Schatz notes that “Google every single day does the equivalent of a year’s worth of sequence analysis.” Traditional servers are no longer sufficient to handle such enormous data loads, but that’s where parallel computing technologies like MapReduce come in. Schatz gives an overview of the benefits and challenges of Hadoop and MapReduce before delving into specific implementations.
In the next video series, Professor J. Hacker argues that there is a growing need for virtualization in HPC. He explains the motivation for this conclusion is threefold: the clock speed increases following Moore’s law have ceased; hardware is going to multicore (example Intel MIC); and memory capacity of systems is increasing (512 GB on systems today). He notes that the traditional approach is to tie a single application to a single server. With 50-plus cores, this approach is no longer effective. Virtualization technology is being used to partition large scale servers to run many operating systems and VMs independent of each other.
The entire lecture is less than one hour long and provides an overview of virtualization and cloud technology in relation to HPC and then offers some practical advice for leveraging virtual HPC clusters. Hacker refers to cloud computing as the “distributed computing of this decade.” He views cloud as a computing utility that provides services over a network that “pushes functionality from devices at the edge (e.g. laptops and mobile phones) to centralized servers.”
In the last video series, Jonathan Klinginsmith, a PhD candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, speaks about virtual clusters, MapReduce and the cloud. He covers such important questions as “Why is cloud interesting?” (hint: scalability, elasticity, utility computing).
While Klinginsmith’s main research interest is machine learning and artificial intelligence, he has turned to computer science and information systems to address the problem of growing data sets. He is not alone. Researchers from nearly scientific endeavor are finding it necessary to attain some degree of computational proficiency.
Klinginsmith aims his talk primarily at these non-computer scientists. Thus his presentation focuses mainly on running applications on top of clusters rather than getting too deep into the nuts and bolts of building and operating clusters. For anyone who is just getting started with Hadoop or MapReduce, this will be a valuable resource. In under an hour, the viewer should acquire a basic understanding of MapReduce, virtual machines, clusters, cloud and virtualization. | <urn:uuid:13af5de6-59e5-46cd-a891-f2d5a1531581> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2013/01/07/free_lectures_cloud_virtualization_mapreduce_and_more/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280801.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00060-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937578 | 911 | 2.828125 | 3 |
GK Quiz - 100 General Knowledge Questions with Answers
We present you with a collection of 100 General Knowledge Questions with Answers along with some current affairs questions for Competitive Exams and Bank Exams. If you think this is an excellent blog about general knowledge as a subject of study for civil services and bank exams, then please share the ideas in your comments. These questions can also help you to conduct a general knowledge quiz.
100 General Knowledge Questions with Answers
We shall be giving updates that will include General Knowledge, Current Affairs GK Questions and more. The GK Quiz will help you refresh your memory on current affairs of India and the world targeted at getting you ready for the UPSC exam. This General Knowledge Quiz will updated on regular basis. If you would like to get notification when more general knowledge question answers are added to this article then you can become a subscriber of this article. It is the best way to be notified when this article is updated with more general knowledge quiz questions.
Question: What is called as the "Roof of the World"?
- Indira Point
- Pamir Knot
- Indira Col
Question: The illustrious names of Aryabhatta and Varahamihir are associated with the age of the
Question: Who generally acknowledged as the pioneer of local self government in modern India?
Question: Which Article of the Constitution of India abolishes untouchability and forbids its practice in any form?
- Article 16
- Article 17
- Article 18
- Article 15
Question: The idea of Pakistan was first conceived by
- Muhammad Iqbal
- M. A. Jinnah
- Shaukat Ali
- Aga Khan
Question: Which of the following countries has introduced "Direct Democracy"?
Question: Inflation occurs when aggregate supply is
- More that aggregate demand
- Less than aggregate demand
- Equal to aggregate demand
- None of the above
Question: Which State has the lowest per capita income in India?
Question: In the budget figures of the Government of India, fiscal deficit is
- Total expenditure - total receipts
- Revenue expenditure - revenue receipts
- Capital expenditure - capital receipts + market borrowings
- Sum of budget deficit and Government's market borrowings and liabilities
Question: The eighth Joint Economic Group dialogue between China and India was held in January 2010 in Beijing, China after a gap of
- two years
- three years
- four years
- five years
Question: According to the recently released World Bank Report, the Chinese economy grew by the close of fourth quarter of 2009 at the rate of
- 9.7 percent
- 10.7 percent
- 10.8 percent
- 11 percent
Question: As per the quality of life Index 2010, which was released worldwide in January 2010, the united States occupies the
- Second Place
- Third Place
- Fifth Place
- Seventh Place
Question: The India-France deal for civil nuclear corporation, which came into force in January 2010, had been signed between the two countries in
- September 2008
- October 2008
- November 2008
- December 2008
Question: Wodeyars were the ruler of
- Princely State of Mysore
- Princely State of Travancore
- None of these
Question: "Black Pagoda" is in
Question: The meeting of the Rajya Sabha are presided over by the
- Vice President
- Prime Minister
Question: Lunar eclipse occurs on
- A new moon day
- A full moon day
- A half moon day
- both 1 and 2
Question: Which of the following crops helps in nitrogen fixation?
Question: Detroit in the U. S. A. is known as the city of
- Motor Car
Question: The term "Fourth Estate" refers to
- Backward States
- Tea Estate
Question: SAIL's plant in Karnataka is situated at
Question: At which of the following place Rajiv Gandhi died of human bomb explosion?
- New Delhi
Question: Who is not the Speaker of the Lok Sabha ever?
- Somnath Chatterjee
- P. A. Sangma
- Meira Kumar
- Sushma Swaraj
Question: The Governor General associated with the abolition of slavery was
Question: The name of India's first carrier is
- INS Vikrant
- INS Nilgiri
- INS Kukri
- INS Himgiri
Question: The general direct flow of summer monsoon in India is -
- From South to North
- From South West to South East
- From South East to South West
- From South West to North East
Question: World No-Tobacco Day is observed on -
- May 25
- May 31
- May 24
Question: Which one of the following ecosystems covers the largest area of the earth's surface?
- Desert Ecosystem
- Grassland Ecosystem
- Mountain Ecosystem
- Marine Ecosystem
Question: With which game is the Double Fault associated?
- Lawn Tennis
Question: Where is the oldest oil refinery in India located?
Question: The Siwaliks stretch between -
- Indus and Sutlaj
- Potwar basin and Teesta
- Sutlaj and Kali
- None of these
Question: Thalassaemia is a hereditary disease affecting -
Question: Polythene is industrially prepared by the polymerization of -
Question: In cricket the length of pitch between the two wickets is -
- 24 yards
- 23 yards
- 22 yards
- 21 yards
Question: Which one of the following is not the official language of the United Nations Organisation?
Question: Which countries are separated by Mac Mohan Line?
- India and Pakistan
- China and Tibet
- India and China
- India and Bangladesh
Question: Which one of the following is a water soluble vitamin?
- Vitamin A
- Vitamin C
- Vitamin D
- Vitamin K
Question: Among the following who was the Speaker in two Lok Sabhas?
- Rabi Ray
- Shivraj Patil
- P. A. Sangma
- G. M. C Balyogi
Question: 'Lakshya' which is part of Indian Defence System is
- Surface of air missile
- Missile Firing Submarine
- multi Barrel rocket System
- Pilotless target aircraft
Question: Which one of the following states has only one representatives each in Lok Sabha?
- Manipur, Meghalaya
- Himachal Pradesh and Jammu Kashmir
- Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura
- Mizoram and Nagaland
Question: Who among the following is known as the guardian of the Public Purse in India?
- The Comptroller and Auditor General of India
- The President
- The Minister of Finance
- The parliament
Question: Biological Oxygen demand (BOD) is used as a standard measure of
- Oxygen level in forest System
- Oxygen level in animals
- Oxygen level in water system
- Oxygen level in atmosphere
Question: Which of the following Crops is of Kharif Season?
Question: Fruit most suitable for making jelly is
Question: Who was the first chief Justice of Supreme court of Calcutta?
- Elijah Impey
Question: By which of the following Acts were the Commercial Rights of East India Company Abolished?
- Regulating Act of 1773
- Charter Act of 1813
- Charter Act of 1833
- Charter Act of 1853
Question: Who Was the founder of All India Muslim League?
- Sir Syed Ahmad Khan
- Nawab Saleem Ullah Khan
- Liyaqat Ali Khan
- Mohammad Ali Jinnah
Question: Vishakhapatnam Steel Plant obtains its iron ore from the mines of
Question: The First Finance Commission was constituted in the year
Question: Which one of the following Settlements comprised Zamindar as middleman to collect the land revenue?
- Mahalwari Settlement
- Ryotwari Settlement
- Permanent Settlement
- None of the above
Question: Which of the following was the court language during the reign of Akbar?
Question: What were the districts called in the Vijaynagar empire?
Question: Which was the first National News Agency of India?
- The Indian Review
- The Free Press of India
- The Associated Press of India
- None of the above
Question: The depiction of the stones of the previous lives of Gautama Buddha was first done in the art of
- Sarnath Pillar of Asoka
- Bharhut Stupa
- Ajanta Caves
- Eilora Caves
Question: The British Parliament can do everything except make a woman a man and a woman a man?To whom is this statement ascribed?
- De Lolme
- none of above
Question: Which of the following states did not come into being in 1987?
- Arunachal Pradesh
Question: The number of Zonal Councils in India is
Question: National Commission for Back ward Classes was established in
Question: Indravati Hydroelectric Project is the multipurpose projet of
- Maharashtra state
- Gujarat state
- Orissa State
- Tamil Nadu state
Question: Which sector contributes the maximum share in National income of India?
- All the above have equal share
Question: Shankarlal Guru committee was associated With
- Agricultural Marketing
- Agricultural production
- Public Distribution System
- None of above
Question: IMF is the result of
- Hawana Conference
- Rome Conference
- Brettonwood Conference
- Geneva Conference
Question: The Difference between Gross Domestic product and Net Domestic product is
- Government Revenue
- Net Indirect Tax (Indirect Tax Subsidy)
- Consumption of fixed Capital
- Net Capital Formation
Question: First share market in India was established in
Question: The acronym STD written on Telephone booth stands for
- Straight Telephone Dial
- Switch Telephone Dial
- Subscriber Telephone Dialing
- Save Telephone Dialing
Question: India has signed a landamrk deal for sale of Dhruv Advance Light Helicopters (ALHs) with
Question: Humidity is measured by which of the following instrument?
Question: Rabindranath Tagore was awarded Noble Prize for his literary work named
- Chokher Bali
- Kapal Kundala
Question: Which of the following department of Indian Government takes care of education of children with physical disabilities?
- Ministry of Welfare
- Ministry of Sports
- Ministry of HRD
- Ministry of Rural Development
Question: Amrita Pritam's work "A Revenue Stamp" is
- A book of stories
- A novel
- A biography
- An autobiography
Question: "Nadi Ke Dweep" is the creation of
- Nirmala Verma
- Krishna Sobit
- Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh
- Sachidananda Heeranand Vatsyayan Agyeya
Question: The poetic work "Rashmirathi" was written by
- Maithilisharan Gupt
- Mahadevi Verma
- Ramdhari Singh Dinkar
- Surya Kant Tripathi Nirala
Question: "Operation Black Board" refers to providing schools with
- Enough number of black boards
- New type of black boards
- Training for using new type of black boards
- All essential learning materials.
Question: Transistors used in electronic equipments are mostly made of
Question: The disease diphtheria affects
- Body joints
Question: Which of the following is the brightest planet as seen from the earth?
Question: The Harry Potter series is written by
- K K Rowling
- K J Rowling
- J K Rowling
- A K Rowling
Question: The most common communicable disease is
Question: Among the following, the richest source of protein is
- Ground Nut
Question: Taoism is a school of
- Chinese philosophy
- Japanese philosophy
- Buddhist philosophy
- Sri Lankan philosophy
Question: Hydrogen is used instead of Helium to fill balloons for meteorology because
- of its low density
- It is not very reactive under normal conditions
- It is almost insoluble in water
- It can be prepared easily
Question: The most abundant element in the earth's crust is
Question: Stainless steel is an example of
- A metallic compound
- A homogeneous mixture
- A heterogeneous mixture
- An inorganic compound
Question: The Non-Cooperation Movement was ultimately withdrawn by Mahatma Gandhi
- On the directions of the Party
- On account of amicable settlement with the British
- On account of violent incidents at Chauri-Chaura
- On account of excessive repression by the Government
Question: The Preamble of the Constitution after 42nd amendment declares India
- Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic
- Sovereign Democratic Republic
- Federal Democratic Republic
- Federal Socialist Democratic Republic
Question: The International Date Line is the
- 0 Longitude
- 88 East Longitude
- 180 Longitude
Question: The real executive power under a Parliamentary Government rests with
- The Parliament
- The King
- The Council of Ministers
- The Civil Servants
Question: Who among the following was the first Maratha Ruler to get legal recognition from the Mughals?
- Balaji Baji Rao
Question: The average solar day is approximately
- 24 hrs
- 24 hrs 15 minutes
- 24 hrs 52 minutes
- 24 hrs 15 Second
Question: The constellation Sapta-Rishi is known to westerns as the
- Seven Monks
- Alpha Centauri
- Big Dipper
- Small Bear
Question: One kilobyte is equal to
- 1000 bytes
- 1024 bytes
- 100 bytes
- 1023 bytes
Question: Which of the following is a cellulose fiber?
Question: Which of the following is not an example of Operating System?
- Windows 98
- BSD Unix
- Microsoft Office XP
- Red Hat Linux
Question: Which of the following vitamins helps in the absorption of calcium?
- Vitamin A
- Vitamin B
- Vitamin C
- Vitamin D
Question: Dengue fever is spread by
- Aedes aegypti mosquito
- Common House flies
- Anophilies mosquito
- Rodent like rats and squirrels
Question: Which of the following is not a fundamental right of the Indian citizens?
- Right to property
- Right to freedom of expression
- Right to vote
- Right to remain silence
Question: Which supercomputer is developed by the Indian Scientists?
- Super 301
- Compaq Presario
- CRAY YMP
Question: Genome is the key to tomorrow's medical practices because
- It unleashes an information revolution
- It provides a new outlook into medicine
- It is a new way of making drugs
- It can enable customized medicines.
Question: Which of the following is not a missile tested in Indian Missile Programme?
Question: Mahatma Gandhi started his struggle against apartheid in
This list is based on the content of the title and/or content of the article displayed above which makes them more relevant and more likely to be of interest to you.
We're glad you have chosen to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our comment policy, and all links are nofollow. Do not use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation.comments powered by Disqus | <urn:uuid:635074d8-4e81-47e2-88d0-060581ec1445> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.knowledgepublisher.com/article-923.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281151.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00390-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904914 | 3,282 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Students in southern Sweden have developed a biometric payment system that can be used to buy things simply by placing a palm on a screen.
The biometric reader that the system is built around emits infrared light that is absorbed by the veins in the palm. The vein pattern is subsequently analysed by the terminal to establish the user's identity, and process a payment from a previously linked bank account.
Inventor Fredrik Leifland, a software engineer at Lund University, said he decided to develop a biometric payment solution with several classmates, through a start-up called Quixter, after realising how long card transactions can take.
The technique that underpins their system already existed but until now there has been no system for using it as a form of payment.
"We had to connect all the players ourselves, which was quite complex," said Leifland. "The vein scanning terminals, the banks, the stores and the customers. The next step was finding ways of packaging it into a solution that was user-friendly."
One of the technology's main benefits is security, according to Leifland. "Every individual's vein pattern is completely unique, so there really is no way of committing fraud with this system. You always need your hand scanned for a payment to go through," he said.
In order to sign up for to use the hand payment service, a person must visit a store with a terminal, and enter their social security number and phone number. The palm scanner then takes three readings before sending a text message with an activation link from the website. Registration is completed by filling in a form with other information.
There are currently 15 stores and restaurants predominantly around the Lund University campus that use the terminals, with roughly 1,600 active users. Quixter's business model is to take a cut of transactions in the same way that credit card companies do.
Leifland said he plans to expand the idea further, adding there are businesses around the world that are interested.
This story, "Swedish Students Enable People to Buy Cups of Coffee with Their Veins" was originally published by Techworld.com. | <urn:uuid:3e33c369-f2d7-4fb1-a9ed-e48e2ed13fc7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.cio.com/article/2377072/enterprise-software/swedish-students-enable-people-to-buy-cups-of-coffee-with-their-veins.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281574.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00298-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975563 | 436 | 2.53125 | 3 |
So I've been doing a lot of wireless related stuff lately. Mainly audits of wireless environments. Lots of passive sniffing and packet analysis, so it's necessary to have a solid understanding of 802.11 Framing and the various packet types. By simply looking at the packets you can determine a great deal about the network in question.
A typical packet is made up of the following:
Frame Control [2 bytes] – This defines the options in the header fields and specifies the type of frame (management, data or control) in use. The frames format changes depending on the options specified in this Frame Control field.
Duration/ID [2 bytes] – This defines the amount time that the transmission medium is expected to be busy for the duration of the data transmission.
Address 1 [6 bytes] – This is the destination/receiving address.
Address 2 [6 bytes] - This is the source address. The address of the device that sent the frame.
Address 3 [6 bytes] – This is a filtering address. It is used to filter traffic on the same frequency as other BSS networks.
Sequence Control [2 bytes] – This is used for fragmentation in management and data frames and contains the sequence number and fragment number fields. Frames with payloads larger than 2312 bytes will be fragmented. Fragmentation is seldom used, as the maximum size of an Ethernet frame is 1500 bytes.
Address 4 [6 bytes] – This address is only used in WDS (Wireless Distribution Systems) to specify the source address. This is the station that sent the packet over the WDS.
Data Frame [variable] – This contains the payload. In management frames the structure is strictly ordered and contains fixed length parameters followed by variable length parameters in any order.
Frame Check Sequence [4 bytes] – This is a CRC32 checksum and is used to provide message integrity against accidental corruption of the frame in transit.
Obviously this is a very simple breakdown of an 802.11 frame.
In the Frame Control header field, which defines the options for the remainder of the header fields, there are two bits called the ‘To DS’ and ‘From DS’ bits. These are the 8th and 9th bits respectively. The To Distribution System and From Distribution bits are important for analysis as, depending on the combination of these flags, they identify the type of network the packet originated from.
The distribution system can have various definitions but it’s easiest to define the distribution system as that which connects the wireless network to other networks. In most cases this will be the wired network. By looking at which bit is set we can determine the source and destination MAC addresses in use.
To DS bit is set – The packet is coming from a wireless station to the wired network
From DS bit is set – The packet is coming from the wired network, or possibly the AP itself and is destined for a wireless station.
From DS and To DS are cleared – The packet is from an Ad-hoc network.
From DS and To DS are set – The packet is from a WDS network. Most often a WDS network is used to connect networks together. An example would be a bridge between buildings.
WDS networks are the only ones that will have a value set for all four address fields. When analyzing a packet from a WDS network it is important that you don’t mix up the Receiver Address (address 1), the Transmitter Address (Address 2), the Destination Address (Address 3) and the Source Address (Address 4).
The Receiver Address is the MAC address of the device at one end of a WDS network (I.e.: a bridge) that bridges the wireless connection to the wired network.
The Transmitter Address is the MAC address of the device at the other end of the WDS network that bridges the traffic from the wired network to the wireless network.
Node ←→Wired Network ←→ AP/bridge ←→ AP/bridge ←→ Wireless Network ←→ Node
The Transmitter and Receiver neither create the frame or are the intended recipient of the frame, they merely receive and forward the frame on. The frame is created by the device identified by the MAC address in the source address field. The destination address field identifies the final recipient of the frame.
Hopefully this has clarified how addressing works in a 802.11 frame. | <urn:uuid:257355d8-e89f-48a7-bee3-1ffefb51afc2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://carnal0wnage.attackresearch.com/2007/05/addressing-in-80211-frames.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283475.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00206-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918691 | 906 | 2.953125 | 3 |
The study of climate change is one of those scientific problems where it is almost essential to model the entire Earth to attain accurate results and make worthwhile predictions.
However, according to NASA, “It takes a small army of scientists and computer programmers a year or more to build a model. Then they need a supercomputer fast enough to run it. Like those models, the machines themselves can be unfriendly.”
In an attempt to make climate science more accessible to smaller research facilities, NASA introduced what they call ‘Climate in a Box,’ a system they note acts as a desktop supercomputer.
The notion of a desktop supercomputer, according to Project Manager Mike Seablom, for running global climate models is to run preliminary tests and simulations on small but high-performance systems before being transplanted and incorporated into applications on NASA’s larger supercomputers.
The ‘Climate in a Box’ systems all come standardized with a baseline software framework to facilitate a common environment in which researchers can program. The idea is that these systems could all be connected in somewhat of a virtualized cloud environment. Further, it allows scientists working in different areas to combine their expertise in a simplified manner.
“The reason we put in a common software framework is exactly for the different disciplines to come in and use the same interface to be able to exchange data, models, and workflow,” said Tsendgar Lee, High End Computing Manager, NASA HQ.
These common climate modeling conditions are based on the NASA-generated GEOS-5 model, which according to the video below, “produces highly detailed, tightly calibrated output by facilitating heavyweight climate research on modest budgets.”
The system, which runs on Linux, according to NASA, but can also be used with Windows HPC, has its programming models written in FORTRAN, meaning programmers are for the most part writing their applications in a familiar environment. Further, those programmers, according to NASA, will be able to start their applications quicker than they would for larger supercomputers for the system is “able to ingest data and start crunching shortly after installation.”
Building a comprehensive model of global climate change is essential to understanding the planet’s underlying environmental problems. A deeper understanding is the first step in taking meaningful action to correct those problems and mitigate climate change.
It is NASA’s hope that facilitating high-performance access points for smaller research institutions will further the global research effort as a whole. “[NASA’s] plan would essentially declare a minimum standard for planet climate and weather research.” | <urn:uuid:1a9beee4-a367-4422-a340-1059a349bad1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2013/05/23/nasa_builds_climate_in_a_box/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283475.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00206-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940179 | 536 | 3.921875 | 4 |
In 2010 major companies like Google,Adobe,Symantec,Juniper Networks and others have been attacked by an exploit called Aurora.Metasploit framework has an exploit that uses the same technique of the famous Aurora and takes advantage a memory corruption flaw in Internet Explorer.
For this example we will test the exploit against a machine running Windows XP in order to see how it affects the Internet Explorer 6.So we are opening the metasploit framework and we are searching for the ms10_002 the Aurora exploit.
For this attack as you can see and from the image above we have chosen as a payload the meterpreter reverse TCP.Next it is time to have a look at the available options of the exploit.
As we can see the default setting for the SRVHOST is 0.0.0.0: If we choose to leave it like that the web server will bind to all interfaces.The next option is the SRVPORT which is the port that the user needs to connect in order to trigger the exploit. By default the port is 8080 but we will use the port 80 for this example.We have the option also to set up the server for SSL connections but here we will not configure it.The next setting is the URIPATH which is not enabled by default.URIPATH is the URL that the victim will need to enter to trigger the vulnerability.We can use a custom URL or we can set this to slash (/).
For the payload settings we just need to configure the local port and the listen address.For this scenario we have chosen the port 443 and the IP address 192.168.1.1 which is our local address.The next image is showing the settings that we have made so far:
Now that all the settings are correct it is time to use the command exploit in order to run the exploit.We will notice that it will start the web server in our local IP address.All we need now is to send the URL or the URI path if you prefer to our victims and to wait for someone to connect.For this scenario we have set the URI path as / so this means it will be only our IP address.
From the moment that someone opens the link the exploit will start the heap spray.The Internet explorer of the remote target will not respond for a while and the amount of memory will increased dramatically causing the system to act slowly.
The next image is showing how the Aurora exploit is opening a meterpreter session.
Now we have a Meterpreter shell on the remote machine and we can start the session by using the command sessions -i 1.However if the user closes the browser then we will lose our shell.In order to avoid that we can type the command in our meterpreter session run migrate and it will automatically migrates with another process of the system so we will keep our shell.
Additionally we can try to escalate privileges with the command getsystem and we can see the running processes of the remote system with the command ps.
- Internet Explorer 6
Microsoft claims that it is also possible to affect Internet Explorer 7 and 8 but nobody so far have seen this exploit to work on these versions.
This was a client-side attack with the use of the famous exploit Aurora.Microsoft claims that affects and Internet Explorer 7 and 8 but from our testings against these versions we couldn’t get a shell.
The problem with this exploit is that it requires the user interaction in order to get a shell.The user must open an unknown link that will come from an unknown user so you need to workaround a method that will convince your targets.Also if the user closes the Web browser then the shell is lost.This means that we have to migrate the existing process to another process very fast.
Finally it is an exploit that in nowadays has limited use because it affects Internet Explorer 6 versions only.So it is very difficult during a penetration test to find this version of browser. on your client’s systems. | <urn:uuid:2a7a5a47-a28b-4127-8b95-9a08d3ac5060> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://pentestlab.blog/2012/03/12/internet-explorer-aurora-exploit/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279379.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00024-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914612 | 818 | 2.796875 | 3 |
A Ransomware infection is a program that ransoms the data or functionality of your computer until you perform an action. This action is typically to pay a ransom in the form of Bitcoins or another payment method. When a computer is infected with ransomware the effects can be either a nuisance or devastating depending on what the infection does. For example, many ransomware just lock you out of your computer, which can easily be fixed with the right tools. Other ransomware, such as Crypto Ransomware, are much more devastating as they will actually encrypt the data on your computer and require you to pay a ransom in order to decrypt your files.
Effects of a ransomware infection include:
Once you pay the requested ransom, the criminals may send you a code that you can input into the Ransomware program that then allows you to use your computer or decrypt your data. In some situations, though, even if you do pay the ransom, the criminals will just take your money and run, with you being left with your problem unresolved.
Though the loss of your data and computer can be devastating, sending the ransom could be even more so. Depending on how the criminals want you to pay the ransom could put you at risk for Identity Theft as the information you send may contain personal information. Therefore, we suggest that you never pay a ransom unless it is absolutely necessary for data recovery. For screenlockers you should never pay a ransom as there are always solutions to remove these infections without paying anything.
Last, but not least, it is important to remember that paying the ransom only continues to fuel the release of new variants of these types of programs. | <urn:uuid:57b81caa-2a04-4459-8124-67d2750e67dc> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/threat/ransomware/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279379.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00024-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943875 | 330 | 2.96875 | 3 |
This story has been updated.
Persistent mental health conditions -- anxiety, depression and sleep disorders -- along with neck, back, and joint pains among Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans may someday “be recognized as signature scars of the long war,” that began with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Armed Forces Heath Surveillance Center reported today.
The center, which conducts epidemiological and health surveillance studies for the Defense Department, said in the April issue of its Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, that “mental disorders were the only illness/injury category for which hospitalization rates markedly increased.” They were 8 percent higher in 2006 than 2002 and more than twice as high in 2012. The center examined health care provided to active duty service members from 2001 through 2012.
The long-war study came up with several unanticipated findings. Most notably, that “no major categories of illnesses or injuries accounted for marked increases in rates of hospitalizations or ambulatory visits among U.S. military members until the fifth year (2006) of the war period.”
The Center said its findings have important implications, including that “there may be dose-response relationships between the cumulative exposure of a military forces to war fighting and the natures and magnitudes of their health care needs.”
The Center said that clinical manifestations, such as mental and musculoskeletal disorders, resulting from continuous exposure to combat, may not appear for several years.
War-related stresses may increase over time: “Prolonged exposures to war fighting may be chronic and resistant to treatment. If so, clinical manifestations of the war may persist among many war veterans long after war fighting ends,” the report said.
This means that veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars could require long-term care, the Center said. “To the extent that some adverse health effects of prolonged periods of war fighting may be persistent and resistant to treatment, medical care may be needed by large numbers of war veterans long after war fighting ends.”
It concluded, “If so, someday persistence of anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, neck, back, and joint pains, headache, and various ill-defined conditions among Afghanistan/Iraq war veterans may be recognized as signature scars of the long war.”
In April 2008, the nonprofit RAND Corp. estimated the cost of dealing with post-combat stress and psychological illnesses of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans at $6.2 billion for just the first two years after troops return home. These costs include direct medical care, lost productivity and suicides.
The long war report backs up a study done by the center last November that showed mental disorders accounted for 63 percent of excess hospitalizations for active duty troops from October 2001 through June 2012 compared to pre-war rates.
The center also reported in its April surveillance report that in 2012, mental disorders topped the list as the cause of hospitalizations for active duty troops -- 16,175, or 26 percent out of a total of 85,901 hospital admissions.
“Adjustment reactions (including post-traumatic stress disorder) and episodic mood disorders were associated with more hospitalizations among active component members than any other specific condition,” the report said. “Together, these two conditions accounted for 18 percent and 20 percent of all hospitalizations of males and females (excluding pregnancy/delivery), respectively,” it said. Alcohol dependence accounted for 11 percent of hospitalizations in 2012.
Hospitalizations for mental health disorders have jumped by more than 50 percent since 2008. The Center said this sharp increase likely reflects repeated deployments, prolonged exposure to combat stress, improved mental health screening and a heightened awareness by commanders and families about mental health issues. | <urn:uuid:6c705044-441d-4be4-9b01-788acb944468> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nextgov.com/health/2013/04/poor-mental-health-signature-scar-afghanistan-and-iraq-wars/62757/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280668.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00262-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951837 | 763 | 2.546875 | 3 |
2.2.4 What is a digital envelope?
When using secret-key cryptosystems, users must first agree on a session key, that is, a secret key to be used for the duration of one message or communication session. In completing this task there is a risk the key will be intercepted during transmission. This is part of the key management problem (see Section 4.1). Public-key cryptography offers an attractive solution to this problem within a framework called a digital envelope.
The digital envelope consists of a message encrypted using secret-key cryptography and an encrypted secret key. While digital envelopes usually use public-key cryptography to encrypt the secret key, this is not necessary. If Alice and Bob have an established secret key, they could use this to encrypt the secret key in the digital envelope.
Suppose Alice wants to send a message to Bob using secret-key cryptography for message encryption and public-key cryptography to transfer the message encryption key. Alice chooses a secret key and encrypts the message with it, then encrypts the secret key using Bob's public key. She sends Bob both the encrypted secret key and the encrypted message. When Bob wants to read the message he decrypts the secret key, using his private key, and then decrypts the message, using the secret key. In a multi-addressed communications environment such as e-mail, this can be extended directly and usefully. If Alice's message is intended for both Bob and Carol, the message encryption key can be represented concisely in encrypted forms for Bob and for Carol, along with a single copy of the message's content encrypted under that message encryption key.
Alice and Bob may use this key to encrypt just one message or they may use it for an extended communication. One of the nice features about this technique is they may switch secret keys as frequently as they would like. Switching keys often is beneficial because it is more difficult for an adversary to find a key that is only used for a short period of time (see Question 184.108.40.206 for more information on the life cycle of a key).
Not only do digital envelopes help solve the key management problem, they increase performance (relative to using a public-key system for direct encryption of message data) without sacrificing security. The increase in performance is obtained by using a secret-key cryptosystem to encrypt the large and variably sized amount of message data, reserving public-key cryptography for encryption of short-length keys. In general, secret-key cryptosystems are much faster than public-key cryptosystems.
The digital envelope technique is a method of key exchange, but not all key exchange protocols use digital envelopes (see Question 2.2.3). | <urn:uuid:6ba36716-f011-484e-a68f-96d2c16fce11> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.emc.com/emc-plus/rsa-labs/standards-initiatives/what-is-a-digital-envelope.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280668.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00262-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900196 | 560 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Teens Learn to Teach Seniors About the Internet
Google contributed grant money for the Kansas City program, which will match teens with seniors who want to learn about going online and using the Internet.Google Fiber arrived in Kansas City in the fall of 2012, and now Google is helping to get more people—particularly senior citizens—up to speed on using the Internet so they also can take advantage of the super high-speed fiber service. To do that, Arts Tech, a Kansas City, Mo.-based youth organization that works with underserved urban teens to help them develop marketable artistic and technical skills, is using grant funds from Google Fiber and other organizations to train a group of local teens so that they can then teach senior citizens about using computers and the Internet. The program, which is providing training for the teens right now, was unveiled by Dave Sullivan, the executive director of Arts Tech, in an April 14 post on the Google Fiber Blog. The Arts Tech project to match teens and seniors for technology lessons is being funded by the Kansas City Digital Inclusion Fund, a pool of money that was made available to nonprofit organizations that want to close the digital divide, wrote Sullivan. The funding comes from Google, The Sprint Foundation and other groups.
When Sullivan heard about the funding possibilities, he envisioned a local project that could match the 44 percent of seniors in the area who don't use the Internet with the 93 percent of local teens who use the Internet regularly, he wrote. "My colleagues were excited by the idea; after all, it fits right in with our mission to help urban teens develop technical skills. But I was really blown away by the excitement and enthusiasm our teens showed. Dozens of them said they'd want to participate in a program like this." | <urn:uuid:ed961d61-2e55-49dd-be98-a78918d00f6c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.eweek.com/cloud/teens-learn-to-teach-seniors-about-the-internet.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00472-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95228 | 353 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The Internet of Things Needs Security
The Internet of Things (IoT) is made of more than 5 billion Internet-connected devices today. From wearables to cars to baby monitors to medical devices, the assortment and number of connected devices is growing at a rapid rate and Gartner predicts devices will exceed 40 billion by 2020.
When the vision for the IoT was first proposed in the 1990's, security was overlooked as a priority. But now there are millions of devices in use with new attacks every day; it is clear IoT security is a necessary element for every device transferring sensitive data over one or multiple networks. Security solutions should be implemented at the beginning of IoT product design and development.
Internet of Things Security
IoT security is the effort to secure connected devices communicating over one (or several) networks.
In the past manufacturers have overlooked product security during development in favor of bringing the product to market faster. Security implementations can sometimes mean a slower production time. But encryption is a necessity for user privacy and data security.
To talk to an expert, call 1-801-877-2119 »Learn More
The IoT Is Vulnerable
Many connected devices remain unsecure. IoT breaches are almost an everyday occurrence. In August 2013, one father heard a stranger talking to his baby through the "smart" baby monitor in the nursery. As frightening as this sounds, it isn't the only incident of its kind. Another IoT vulnerability was documented when hackers worked their way into the control system of a Jeep vehicle and were able to remotely control the car's commands from a computer.
The size of many devices plays a role in security implementation. This is a challenging puzzle for manufacturers. Some may delay incorporating security features into the device, but in the larger span of things, implementing IoT security during design exponentially decreases cost in the long run (saving on redesign, consultations, and reproduction). A data breach of an IoT device could potentially cost millions of dollars when recalls, loss of sensitive data, and a tarnished brand image are considered.
Implementing IoT security from the beginning allows companies and consumers alike to take advantage of the exciting future the Internet of Things has in store for users.
How to Secure the IoT
The IoT needs security and DigiCert’s PKI solution makes IoT security realistic, scalable, and flexible.
DigiCert's PKI solution is the perfect security solution for providing device identity and authentication, sensitive communication encryption, and data and system integrity. PKI allows manufacturers to create a strong security ecosystem for IoT devices.
To learn more about DigiCert's IoT solutions, visit Security Solutions for the Internet of Things »
Talk to an IoT PKI Expert
If you have specific questions about our PKI solution for securing IoT devices, please enter your information in the form below, and an IoT security expert will contact you for a personal consultation.
|Request More Information|
|Fill out this form to request more information or call an expert at 1-801-877-2119| | <urn:uuid:d12378d8-28a3-45a7-a7cb-4efe69acafe4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.digicert.com/internet-of-things/what-is-iot-security.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284405.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00316-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933574 | 616 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Pre-combustion carbon capture is a process where the carbon in the fuel is separated or removed, before the combustion process. Pre-combustion capture technology is only applicable to new fossil fuel power plants because the capture process requires a strong integration with the combustion process. Pre-combustion capture is applicable to Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants and refers to removal of the CO2 from the syngas prior to its combustion for power production.
The report “Pre-Combustion Carbon Capture Market forecast, 2014-2019” analyses by application geography. In term of geography, this region is segmented into Americas, Europe, Middle East & Africa and Asia-Pacific.
Pre-combustion carbon capture refers to removing CO2 from fossil fuels before combustion is completed. Instead of burning coal or natural gas in a combustion plant, the fuel can also be converted to hydrogen and carbon prior to combustion. The carbon can then be captured and stored, while the hydrogen is burned to produce power.
The report in addition provides an extensive competitive landscaping of key companies operating in the carbon capture and sequestration market which include General Electric (U.S.), KBR (U.S.), Siemens (Germany), Linde (Germany), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Japan) and others. The report also provides an extensive competitive landscaping of companies operating in this market, country wise market share, new product and services launches, M&A, product portfolio of key market players.
Additional Offer/Customization Option:
With Market data, you can also customize MMM assessments that meet your Company’s specific needs. Customize to get comprehensive industry standard and deep dive analysis of the following parameters:
Product benchmarking outlook
Comparison of various technologies used by different companies
Information about the carbon capture capacity of the technology in different countries
Customer Segment Outlook
Key upcoming project analyses includes
o Project Name
o Developing company
o Size (in MW)
o Capture process
o CO2 Fate
Cancelled and inactive projects with reasons
Additional information on storage processes and their efficiency and effectiveness
Additional information on pipelines required in carbon capture and transportation segment
Quick turn around on key upcoming CCS projects driving the demand
Analysis and impacts of local and regional environmental regulations by country
Market Capital Outlook
• Historical and forecasted Capex information for each project
• Cost of CCS Components
Current Industry Challenges
Challenges faced in pre-combustion technique
Challenges faced in CCS industry
• Managing environmental and human safety risks associated with geologic storage of CO2
Risk management plans generally include
• Programmatic risks (including resource and management risks) that may inhibit project progress or costs
Role of CCS as a Mitigation Technology and Challenges to its Commercialization
Please fill in the form below to receive a free copy of the Summary of this Report
Please visit http://www.micromarketmonitor.com/custom-research-services.html to specify your custom Research Requirement | <urn:uuid:9f00bd79-1db2-4b23-b6e4-852208a1643c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.micromarketmonitor.com/market-report/pre-combustion-capture-reports-5102962829.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281353.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00344-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.890897 | 626 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The majority of college students–77 percent–think that schools should be using more of their personal data to improve their college experience, according to a study by the Wakefield Research group.
The study, published by Ellucian on Oct. 26, polled 1,000 college students from Oct. 13-19. Colleges and universities collect large amounts of personal data on their students, from where they live to what financial background they come from to what they like to do for fun. Ellucian’s survey indicates that students want schools to use that information to provide better experiences; 98 percent of respondents said they wanted their colleges to use personal data to improve academic processes, such as tracking credit completion, picking out courses, and scheduling academic advising appointments.
Students want their schools to use personal data to improve their social activities in addition to their academic habits, according to the survey. Ninety-five percent of respondents said they expect their college to use this information to improve social life, including student health care, housing, and student organizations. Forty-two percent of respondents said they are willing to have their data used to obtain offers from local bookstores, retailers, and restaurants.
“Today’s students are savvy users of technology and comfortable sharing their data, but they expect more from colleges and universities when they do,” said Jeff Ray, president and CEO at Ellucian, in a release on the Ellucian website. “They expect institutions to utilize their data to improve their educational/academic experience just like the apps on their phone.”
The study also revealed that 82 percent of students believe the personal information schools collect will transform the college experience in 10 years. Respondents also said they would provide additional information to enhance their college experience. For example, one in four surveyed students said that they would provide their least favorite childhood photos if it improved their chances of getting admitted to an institution.
“With the right data and analytics, colleges and universities can positively impact the experience they have with the student, improve retention, and help them graduate on time,” said James Willey, vice president, product management at Ellucian. “There is a big divide between how colleges and universities are currently using student information and the potential to transform the college experience.” | <urn:uuid:54098951-181f-4579-a337-98cf7699fb63> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.meritalk.com/articles/students-want-their-colleges-to-use-more-personal-info/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280310.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00464-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972847 | 469 | 2.5625 | 3 |
With the proliferation of smart phones, tablets, notebooks and various other electronic devices in our everyday work and personal lives comes another thing -- e-waste.
The average person replaces his or her mobile phone every 18 months, and in the U.S. alone, more than 130 million mobile phones are discarded each year (as of 2010 -- that number is likely higher at this point). That equals 17,000 tons of e-waste, some of which is recycled, but much of which is just thrown out.
But increased recycling equates to harvesting valuable and precious metals found in complex electronics, according to the infographic by Fonebank.com below. What's the primary metal that can be pulled? Find the answer below (click infographic to enlarge): | <urn:uuid:7785baaa-b345-4301-bf34-093af647b44f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.govtech.com/data/E-Waste-and-Us-17000-Tons-Trashed-Each-Year-Infographic.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285244.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00004-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956643 | 154 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Today's storage world would appear to have been divided into three major and mutually exclusive categories: block, file and object storage. Much of the marketing that shapes much of the user demand would appear to suggest that these are three quite distinct animals, and many systems are sold as exclusively either SAN for block, NAS for file or object. And object is often conflated with cloud, a consumption model that can in reality be block, file or object.
But a fixed taxonomy that divides the storage world this way is very limiting, and can be confusing; for instance, when we talk about cloud. How should providers and users buy and consume their storage? Are there other classifications that might help in providing storage solutions to meet specific or more general application needs?
This webcast will explore clustered storage solutions that not only provide multiple end users access to shared storage over a network, but allow the storage itself to be distributed and managed over multiple discrete storage systems. In this webcast, we’ll discuss:
•General principles and specific clustered and distributed systems and the facilities they provide built on the underlying storage
•Better known file systems like NFS, GPFS and Lustre along with a few of the less well known
•How object based systems like S3 have blurred the lines between them and traditional file based solutions.
This webcast should appeal to those interested in exploring some of the different ways of accessing & managing storage, and how that might affect how storage systems are provisioned and consumed. POSIX and other acronyms may be mentioned, but no rocket science beyond a general understanding of the principles of storage will be assumed. Contains no nuts and is suitable for vegans! | <urn:uuid:e5b4c6ae-16e9-4f66-9d11-c2f10bc72896> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.brighttalk.com/channel/663/snia-webcasts | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280425.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00153-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956688 | 342 | 2.625 | 3 |
In a recent report in Real World Technologies, chip guru David Kanter dissects the new 64-bit ARM design (ARMv8) and what it might mean to the IT landscape. His take on the architecture is almost uniformly positive, noting that not only did the designers manage to develop an elegant instruction set that was backwardly compatible with the existing ISA, but they also took the extra step to jettison a few of the poorly designed features of the 32-bit architecture.
Announced in October 2011, 64-bit ARM is the biggest makeover the processor architecture has received in its 26-year history. The first implementation in 1985, ARM1, was a 32-bit chip developed for Acorn Computers (ARM = Acorn RISC Machine). Although the architecture never caught on in the PC biz, it’s simple, low-power RISC design made it a natural for embedded/mobile SoC applications and microcontrollers.
While the server and personal computer world moved on to 64 bits, ARM was safely ensconced in the embedded/mobile space where 32 bits of addressing (basically 4 GB) was plenty. But now that devices like tablets and other mobile gadgets are pushing up against this limit, a larger address reach will soon become necessary. Also, the expanded address reach will allow ARM chips for the first time to enter the server market and compete against the x86, the processor architecture that has dominated the datacenter for decades.
In a sense, ARM is trying to duplicate the success of the x86 when it made its own jump from 32 to 64 bits in 2000. In that case, the 64-bit Intel Xeons and AMD Opertons ended up displacing a lot of their high-end RISC-based competition — especially SPARC and Power. If 64-bit ARM ends up cutting into the x86 share of the server market, it would be fitting revenge for the RISC faithful.
As mentioned, before the most critical enabling feature for 64-bit ARM is extending the address space. Although 64 bits could reach 16 exabytes, there’s little application demand to access data at that scale. For the time being, only 48 bits will be used to form an address, which gives software a 256 GB address reach. Presumably, additional address bits can be tacked on in the future as applications scale up.
With the ARMv8 design, integer and floating point structures are also being enhanced, with all general purpose registers being extended to 64 bits. The floating point design has been tweaked to support IEEE754-2008, including additional instructions to make the architecture compliant with the standard.
For vector operations, the changes are more extensive. In the 32-bit spec, the SIMD design (known as NEON) already contained 32 64-bit registers, which could be aliased to 16 128-bit pseudo-registers. For the 64-bit design, that’s been extended to 32 128-bit registers, with the lower half being used if only 64 bit values are needed. Not only does that double the capacity of the vector unit, it makes for a somewhat cleaner arrangement. The SIMD design also adds full IEEE support and double precision floating point operations.
Curiously missing form ARMv8 is multi-threading support, a feature common to all other major server CPUs — x86, SPARC, Power, and even HPC processors like the Blue Gene/Q ASIC (PowerPC A2). Kanter speculates that the ARM designers decided to forego multi-threading for now since it is notoriously difficult to validate, and the new design already encapsulated a lot of changes. Although the jury is still out on the aggregate benefit of this feature, for certain classes of software, the lack of multi-threading support could turn out to be a decided disadvantage.
Overall though, Kanter likes what ARM developers have come up with, which he says is “clearly a sound design that was well though out and should enable reasonable implementations.” As he notes though, there are currently no chip implementations around to judge the the architecture’s performance in the field.
But within a couple of years, we should see multiple 64-bit ARM SoCs at various segments of the market — everything from high performance computers to workstations. Applied Micro already has an FPGA implementation of ARMv8, which the company unveiled in October 2011 and subsequently demonstrated running on an Apache web server. Samsung, Qualcomm, Calxeda, Microsoft, Marvell and NVIDIA have either stated plans to implement a chip or have already bought licenses. At this point, NVIDIA is the only one that has specifically talked about a 64-bit ARM implementation (Project Denver) aimed at HPC, but Calxeda also has high performance computing on its radar.
Samsung is a particularly interesting entrant to the market. The Korean firm is mostly in the consumer electronics business and its involvement in the server space is currently confined to supplying DRAM and flash components. But Samsung would make a formidable competitor against Intel in the server chip arena if the company funneled its resources there. While Intel has more than twice Samsung’s revenue today, the latter company is growing at a much faster rate.
That led industry analyst firm IC Insights to project that Samsung would eclipse Intel as the world’s largest supplier of semiconductor parts by 2014. Coincidentally, that’s that same year the company plans to roll out its first 64-bit ARM server chips. As Kanter concluded: “Certainly, the next few years should be very interesting.” | <urn:uuid:1d9b11b1-c074-4859-9137-3818ac61a465> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2012/08/16/analyst_weighs_in_on_64-bit_arm/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283008.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00363-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953203 | 1,152 | 2.984375 | 3 |
After you have designed the basic structure of the eDirectory tree and have set up partitioning and replication, you should plan the user environment to simplify management and increase access to network resources. To create a user environment plan, review the users' needs and create accessibility guidelines for each area.
When you review users' needs, consider the following:
Physical network needs, such as printers or file storage space
Evaluate if resources are shared by groups of users within a tree or shared by groups of users from multiple containers. Also consider the physical resource needs of remote users.
Bindery services needs for users
Consider which applications are bindery-based and who uses them.
Consider which applications and data files are needed by users, what operating systems exist, and which groups or users need access to applications. Consider if the shared applications should be manually or automatically launched by applications such as ZENworks.
After you have gathered information about user needs, you should determine the eDirectory objects that you will use to create the users' environments. For example, if you create policy packages or Application objects, you should determine how many you will create and where you will allow them to be placed in the tree.
You should also determine how you will implement security to restrict user access. You should identify any security precautions related to specific security practices. For example, you could warn network administrators to avoid granting the eDirectory Supervisor right to Server objects because this right is inherited by the file system. | <urn:uuid:cca53bd5-5b02-489d-9809-295343275a8b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.netiq.com/documentation/edir88/edir88/data/a2iiie5.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280483.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00575-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925866 | 300 | 3.078125 | 3 |
CenturyLink invests in STEM education initiative
We all have a stake in ensuring our school systems, educators and students are prepared with the hard and soft skills necessary to fill 21st century jobs. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education gives students the opportunity to experience principles of science and technology to develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills. These skills translate into successful careers. Technology companies like CenturyLink are building their pipeline of future employees, and a highly trained workforce benefits the communities where we live, work, grow and support one another.
In addition to our Teachers and Technology grant program for STEM projects that has awarded more than $6 million in technology grants to classrooms across the country since 2008, we recently partnered with IBM and the Cyber Innovation Center (CIC) to host a training workshop for sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade teachers from the Monroe City, Ouachita Parish and private school systems.
The following are the details of the CIC program:
- Serving as an anchor of Louisiana’s Cyber Corridor, the CIC and its National Cyber Research Park in Bossier City, Louisiana, provide a physical location for government, industry, and academia to collaborate, conduct leading research, and develop state-of-the-art technologies.
- CIC’s professional development workshops are designed to empower teachers with hands-on training, as well as STEM and cyber resources, so they can then transform the classroom into a 21st century learning environment. This philosophy enables teachers to connect STEM and cyber concepts in the classrooms to potential technology-focused career paths in the future.
- Upon completion of the CIC’s professional development workshops, teachers obtain access to teacher manuals, student manuals and other curriculum materials to enrich the learning experience in the classroom. The CIC curriculum has been implemented in schools in all 50 states across the country and many parishes in Louisiana.
Full-time and PreK-12 teachers in public, private and/or charter schools located in CenturyLink’s local service area should visit www.centurylink.com/teachersandtechnology by Jan. 12, 2017, to apply for a CenturyLink Teachers and Technology grant to innovatively introduce technology in the classroom and increase student achievement. | <urn:uuid:c7ea4539-c18b-4995-948d-3a9356cae5a1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://news.centurylink.com/blogs/corporate/centurylink-invests-in-stem-education-initiative | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281574.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00299-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943896 | 458 | 2.953125 | 3 |
The cybersecurity world is at a crossroads in its evolution. In the same way that concentric castles, with inner and outer walls, were built in response to advances in siege technology, a new approach is required for cybersecurity due to the evolving nature of today’s threats. This new approach should combine the existing tenets of “converged security” and “defense-in-depth” with the new tenets of “zero trust” and “adaptive perimeter”.
In recent years, traditional “perimeter-based” security models have been rendered less effective by two evolving forces: the increasing sophistication, frequency, and scale of cybercrime and the rapid adoption of new, disruptive IT technologies such as social, mobile and cloud. In addition, the next wave of emerging trends, such as the Internet of Things, wearables, and software defined networks are challenging and, in some cases, eroding the traditional perimeter model even further.
Perimeter-based strategies are now many years old and today’s cybercriminals can simply go straight to the end user, their devices and applications, to get their data.Taking just one example, the IoT opens up a whole new attack surface and set of vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit. Cyber risk scenarios include theft of sensitive data, introduction of malware, and ultimately “command and control”-style sabotage of connected, controllable devices. In addition, the threat intensity increases as IoT devices become more controllable and more autonomous.
CISO challenges & considerations
The net effect is that today’s market forces and challenges are forcing many organizations to re-think their policies for sensitive data protection and their overall cybersecurity response in terms of future investments and operations. The issue is so severe that Gartner predicts that, if things stay the same, “by 2020, enterprises and governments will fail to protect 75% of sensitive data, and will declassify and grant broad/public access to it”. Of course, some of this may be due to data that’s incorrectly classified in the first place, but you get the general point.
In addition, consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about identity theft and data breeches. The recent retail point of sale malware incident compromised over 70 million identities and the biggest case of cyber fraud in the U.S., just last year, compromised 160 million credit cards with losses in excess of $300M. All in all, according to a sponsored survey by the Ponemon Group, the average annual cost of cybercrime per company has risen from $6.5M in 2010 to $11.6M in 2013.
In the latest Unisys Security Index, we found that nearly 60 percent of Americans surveyed say a security breach involving their personal or credit card data would make them less likely to do business at a bank or store they commonly use. (Disclosure: I am employed by Unisys.)
So, using the traditional castle analogy, what should you do to shore up your defenses if your castle walls are increasingly getting breached? What are the strategic choices? What kinds of new defenses and armaments are necessary?
To address this potential cybersecurity melt-down, CISOs are faced with three strategic options in terms of how to proceed with their cybersecurity strategies: maintain current course and speed while hoping for the best, pile on more of the same defenses, or change the paradigm with the addition of some totally new defenses. The third option appears to be the only logical alternative to address the challenge head-on and move towards a new and improved security model.
So what types of new approaches are required on top of existing defenses? In addition to traditional “converged security” and “defense-in-depth”, organizations must assume that cyber-criminals will penetrate their perimeter and prepare to protect their critical assets in several additional ways: a “zero-trust” approach and an “adaptive perimeter” approach are two key aspects. Ultimately, it’s the combination of these approaches all working in unison, not necessarily one particular approach, that will yield the most benefit in terms of risk management.
Zero trust approach
The zero trust approach has been advocated for several years now and is an approach to protect valuable data and assets from the inside-out. It’s basically a “trust no-one” approach where you assume the traditional security perimeter will be breached, including all your “defense-in-depth” layers of security, and you need to protect what’s inside. Of course, this approach is also required for insider threats as well.
Some of the key requirements for a zero-trust approach include providing advanced data protection to all critical data assets, both at-rest and in-motion. This may involve encryption, data cloaking, data masking, and other forms of sensitive data protection such as secure communities of interest. Another requirement includes preventing lateral movement of malware within the IT environment.
Using the traditional castle analogy, what you’re doing is providing additional fortifications inside the castle walls as well as hiding your valuable assets with a security by obscurity approach so that only those with a need to know have access and visibility.
Adaptive perimeter approach
There’s been much talk about adaptive point solutions such as identity and access management, but what’s really needed is a more holistic, adaptive perimeter approach to dynamically re-define and re-configure the perimeter around vulnerable new attack surfaces.
Some of the key requirements involve protecting “new” IT assets such as cloud infrastructure, mobile devices, and the Internet of Things (IoT). The goal is to reduce the attack surface to inhibit more sophisticated forms of cyber-attack. The secure communities of interest and application wrapping approaches are a couple of examples of how organizations can effectively protect these new assets.
Using the castle analogy, if the zero-trust approach is the new approach for protecting what’s inside the castle walls, the adaptive perimeter approach can be thought of as the new approach for protecting what’s on the outside of the castle walls. In essence, you’re building additional fortifications around your valuable assets that are currently undefended, or under-defended, on the outside.
Putting it all together
What’s needed is a totally new approach to cybersecurity that can enable the transformative benefits and use of new disruptive technologies without increasing the risk of sensitive data loss. This new approach should combine the existing tenets of “converged security” and “defense-in-depth” with the new tenets of “zero trust” and “adaptive perimeter”. To help unify this approach, a new cybersecurity framework and logical architecture is needed to secure the borderless enterprise.
An added advantage of an integrated approach to cybersecurity, combining these various tenets, is that you’ll be able to accelerate your path to digitization – meaning effective leverage of disruptive technologies to re-think and re-design your organization’s business models and processes. According to a report by the World Economic Forum, estimated delays in dealing with cybersecurity risks typically range anywhere from 2.6 months for social technologies, to 4.7 for mobile technologies, to 11.4 months for cloud. Getting a new, integrated approach in place will help you forge ahead with digital transformation initiatives, knowing that your assets are more secure.
As part of this new approach, it’s also important to re-evaluate the percentage of your IT security spend that’s going into each of these areas. Today, “80 percent of security spend is still going on firewalls, IDS and anti-virus solutions, despite only being effective against 30 percent of threats”.
Of course, the perimeter model is still a highly valuable asset in the security arsenal, and one of the primary defense strategies, much like a castle wall. Today, however, it needs to be complemented with approaches and tools that address the newer aspects of “zero trust” and “adaptive perimeter”. With these new defenses in place, your kingdom will be a lot safer in the years to come - both inside and out.
This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join? | <urn:uuid:eb3eae38-48bd-412a-aac1-c46d00cca8ac> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.computerworld.com/article/2476276/security0/the-importance-of-zero-trust-and-an-adaptive-perimeter-in-cyber-fortifications.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279379.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00025-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941379 | 1,712 | 2.578125 | 3 |
With the growing demand of broadband, passive optical network (PON) is the most promising NGN (Next Generation Networking) technology to meet the demand currently. GEPON (Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network) use WDM technology and it is with 1Gbps bandwidth and up to 20km working distance, which is a perfect combination of Ethernet technology and passive optical network technology. Due to its economical and efficient network structure, EPON is an effective and popular communication approach for the access network.
EPON product family includes optical line termination (OLT) system deployed at the central office as well as several models of optical network terminal (ONT) deployed at the customer’s premises. And passive optical splitters connects OLT/ONU, whose function is to split downstream signal from one fiber into several fibers and combine optical upstream signals from multiple fibers into one. EPON eliminates the usage of active fiber optic components between OLT and ONT, this will greatly cut the cost and make the network easier to maintain.
EPON OLT is located in the central switching office, it serves as the point of origination for FTTP (Fiber-to-the-Premises) transmissions coming into and out of the national Verizon network. An OLT, in a nutshell, is where the PON cards reside. The OLT’s also contain the CPU and the GWR and VGW uplink cards. Each OLT can have a few or many dozens of PON cards. Each PON card transmits 1490nm laser data signal to the ONT, and receives the ONT transmission of the 1310nm laser data signal. The one-way 1550nm laser video signal to the ONT is injected into the fiber.
The ONT converts fiber-optic light signals to copper/electric signals. The ONT has a power cord that goes into your location through the ONT Power Supply Unit where it plugs into an existing standard electrical outlet.
Three wavelengths of light are used between the ONT and the Optical Line Terminal:
Each ONT is capable of delivering:
Splitters are installed in each optical network between the PON optical line termination (OLT) and the optical network unit (ONU) that the OLT serves. These optical splitters are very compact, efficient, and reliable. Networks implementing BPON, GPON, EPON, 10G EPON, and 10G GPON technologies all use these simple optical splitters. The splitter can be deployed in the central office (CO) alongside the OLT, or it may be deployed in an outside plant (OSP) cabinet closer to the subscribers. A splitter can also be deployed in the basement of a building for a multiple dwelling unit (MDU) installation.
Passive optical splitter plays an important role in Fiber to the Home (FTTH) networks by allowing a single PON network interface to be shared among many subscribers. A PON network may be designed with a single optical splitter, or two or more splitters cascaded together. Since each optical connection adds attenuation, a single splitter is superior to multiple cascaded splitters. Splitters are available in a variety of split ratios, including 1:8, 1:16, and 1:32. | <urn:uuid:f068cbdd-258e-492c-a429-1d61efdbb4ad> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.fs.com/blog/how-does-optical-splitter-work-in-gepon-network.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280221.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00511-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929256 | 674 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Driving while holding a cell phone to talk, and even worse, texting, is extremely dangerous. In fact, it's illegal in many states. But what about hands-free devices that allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road while taking care of digital business?
It turns out that these hands-free systems may not be safe at all, because they can distract drivers just as much, maybe even more in some cases, than hands-on activities. That’s according to a recent study from University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer, on behalf of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Strayer and his colleagues found that drivers' mental workloads increased while using advanced, voice-controlled systems. That slowed driver reaction times and could make them miss things in front of them, including pedestrians and stop signs.
(Driver on left is wearing test helmet to measure reactions.)
I’m no researcher, but the study is consistent with my own experiences. I’ve seen too many people do really clumsy things while using a cell phone equipped with an ear piece and microphone to doubt the conclusion. Yes, their hands were free, but their brains weren’t. When a person's attention span is divided, something has to give. Sure, some people's brains are probably wired differently than mine, and they may be capable of multitasking safely while driving. But they're probably in the minority.
Things that don’t seem very distracting can also causes problems. A recent University of San Diego study, for example, shows that when you're subjected to other people’s conversations on cell phones you're much more distracted than if you had listened to a conversation between two people in the same room or elevator or train.
But getting back to the voice-activated devices: Strayer's researchers measured driver brainwaves and eye movements to see what happened when they performed different tasks, such as listening to the radio and talking on the phone while driving. The conclusion:
"Moreover, compared to the other activities studied (e.g., listening to the radio, conversing with passengers, etc.) we found that interacting with the speech-to-text system was the most cognitively distracting. This clearly suggests that the adoption of voice-based systems in the vehicle may have unintended consequences that adversely affect traffic safety."
In other words, using those devices is dangerous and could get you and other people killed or badly injured.
Not surprisingly, the people who have the most to gain by placing these devices in cars—the auto and electronics device makers—have found all kinds of reasons to quibble about the results. I still think keeping hands-free devices out of cars is the safest bet. What's really lost if the devices are banned? Time online. But countless lives could be saved. | <urn:uuid:edeafd3e-654e-4707-9536-2984833872ba> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.cio.com/article/2370431/mobile/hands-free-tech-in-cars-not-as-safe-as-you-think--researchers-say.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280668.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00263-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971913 | 574 | 2.984375 | 3 |
A Data Classification Program is an extremely important first step to building a secure organization.
Classifying data is the process of categorizing data assets based on nominal values according to its sensitivity (e.g., impact of applicable laws and regulations).
For example, data might be classified as: public, internal, confidential (or highly confidential), restricted, regulatory, or top secret.
Data and information assets are classified respective of the risk of unauthorized disclosure (e.g., lost or stolen inadvertently or nefariously). High risk data, typically classified “Confidential”, requires a greater level of protection, while lower risk data, possibly labeled “internal” requires proportionately less protection.
Large data stores, such as databases, tables, or files carry an increased risk, since a single event could result in a large data breach. In most data collections, highly sensitive data elements are not segregated from less sensitive data elements.
Consequently, the classification of the most sensitive element in a data collection will determine the data classification of the entire collection.
An example of a Data Classification System:
Public - Information that may or must be open to the general public. It is defined as information with no existing local, national, or international legal restrictions on access or usage. Public data, while subject to disclosure rules, is available to all employees and all individuals or entities external to the corporation. Examples include:
- Publicly posted press release
- Publicly available marketing materials
- Publicly posted job announcements
Internal - Information that must be guarded due to proprietary, ethical, or privacy considerations and must be protected from unauthorized access, modification, transmission, storage or other use. This classification applies even though there may not be a civil statute requiring this protection. Internal Data is information that is restricted to personnel who have a legitimate reason to access it. Examples include:
- General employment data (e.g., excluded SSN, salary)
- Business partner information where no more restrictive confidentiality agreement exist
Confidential - Highly sensitive data intended for limited, specific use by a workgroup, department, or group of individuals with a legitimate need-to-know. Explicit authorization by the Data Steward is required for access because of legal, contractual, privacy, or other constraints. Confidential data have a very high level of sensitivity. Examples include:
- Payment Card Industry (PCI)
- Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX)
- Privacy ce
Regulatory Data Classification - Information that’s protected by statutes and regulations, and governed by a regulatory body or council regarding the investigation, response, reporting and handling of incidents. Regulatory Data is sensitive in nature, and access is restricted. Disclosure is limited to individuals on a need-to-know basis. Examples include:
- Must be protected to prevent loss, theft, unauthorized access, and / or unauthorized disclosure as dictated by the regulating body or council
- Must be destroyed when no longer needed. Destruction must be per the body or council data policies
- Will require specific methodologies, procedures and reporting requirements for the response and handling of incidents
A company should adopt a common set of terms and relationships between those terms in order to clearly communicate and begin to classify data types. By classifying data, the company can prepare generally to identify the risk and impact of an incident based upon what type of data is involved.
The classifications as listed (public, internal, confidential) give a basis for determining the impact based upon the level and type of access to data. Together, data classification and level of access drive the business impact which will determine the response, escalation and notifications of incidents.
An incident Response Team (IR) ca be comprised of industry experts with experience in Military Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Big X Consulting. They can help to manage and facilitate the response and readiness capabilities of an organization, identifies and develops business impact and planning, and becomes an essential keystone within the enterprise to ensure the security program matures.
(click image to enlarge)
The left side of the table contains types of events and potential access to the types of data as defined at the bottom; together, this defines the impact. The impact of an incident or potential data loss drives the notification and escalation of who to call, when, why, and how as described below:
(click image to enlarge)
When it comes to a Data Classification System, one size does not fit all. Classifying data not only makes good sense, but it defines data protection requirements, specific to data sensitivity.
Once you know which data needs the most protection, you can properly allocate funds and resources to defend those assets. Employing a proper data classification scheme is cost effective, as it allows a business to focus on protecting its higher risk data assets.
For an example, businesses that do not have a data classification system treat all data as highly confidential; however, in reality they often apply the wrong controls to protect the data.
So employees may shred public information but recycle confidential information because they do not have clear guidance on what to do.
Cross-posted from SecureState | <urn:uuid:aaa5014b-6ab9-4b98-a657-86c847e4683b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/20881-Data-Classification-Why-it-is-Important-for-Information-Security.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280668.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00263-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909049 | 1,043 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Launching a supercomputer like Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan machine – the current TOP500 chart-topper – is a many-step process. While a lot of work went into standing up the Titan system, ultimately the hardware is only as good as the software running on it. This is an apt saying for systems of all sizes, but delivering on this promise becomes ever more challenging as systems grow in core count and complexity.
Titan is a 27 petaflops (peak) Cray XK7 supercomputer with a hybrid architecture that combines 18,688 AMD Opteron CPUs with 18,688 NVIDIA Tesla K20X GPUs. The setup poses a challenge for software developers in getting scientific applications to scale across all of Titan’s nearly 300,000 compute cores. An article at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility website describes how implementing this degree of scaling inevitably introduces bugs that squash the system’s productivity if they are not handled appropriately.
Identifying bugs among thousands of lines of code running across 300,000 cores is a tricky problem, but one that OLCF anticipated. The lab’s staff understood they would need to develop a tool that would foster a smooth transition to the much larger environment. For help with this task, they turned to software vendor Allinea, who had helped create the debugging tool for Titan’s previous incarnation, Jaguar.
Allinea’s distributed debugging tool, Allinea DDT, was designed to quickly locate failures on the largest systems in the world. It does this by displaying a single view of every process in a parallel job and the exact line of code that is being executed. Allinea DDT also supports the most popular HPC programming languages, i.e., Fortran, C, and C++.
OLCF and Allinea collaborated to customize the debugger to make it compatible with Titan’s hybrid architecture. The goal was to enable the supercomputer’s initial users to access large portions of the machine as well as support OLCF with Titan’s acceptance phase. By the end of the project, Allinea DDT is expected to reach scales 40 times over and above previous best-of-class debugging tools.
“Before we joined this project, tools weren’t capable of getting anywhere near the size of the hardware,” said Allinea’s COO David Lecomber. “The problem was that a debugging tool might do 5,000 or 10,000 parallel tasks if it was lucky, when the machines and applications wanted to write things that could do 200,000 plus. So the tools just got beaten up by the hardware.”
Once onerous development chores like bug-spotting are streamlined, researchers can spend more of their time advancing their core discipline. | <urn:uuid:d2fc97db-a915-4664-9c91-a4b8fe8674b4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2013/04/15/debugging_at_titan_scale/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00473-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945371 | 574 | 2.640625 | 3 |
In its weekly Mars Curiosity Rover report, we get a look at what's going on over on Mars.
This week, we get a discussion of the CheMin tool and some of the analysis of soil samples that the rover has acquired. After running the analysis, it was discovered that the sample consisted of plagioclase feldspar, pyroxene and olivine minerals. This should excite my uncle, who has a PhD in geology.
It's also cool to see that the technology used on Mars has applications here on Earth. Yay science!
Keith Shaw rounds up the best in geek video in his ITworld.tv blog. Follow Keith on Twitter at @shawkeith. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-tos, follow ITworld on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Watch some more cool videos: Science Monday #1: Why it's dark at night BBC gives Doctor Who fans an Amy/Rory postscript The best remote-control car chase ever Science Monday: Origins of Quantum Mechanics in under 5 minutes Motion-copy robot can mimic painting brush strokes | <urn:uuid:52390622-c2cc-490c-86d3-0407036d0eb2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.itworld.com/article/2719793/consumer-tech-science/this-week-on-mars--soil-samplin-.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280280.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00199-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918155 | 229 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Web Application Vulnerability Scanners are tools designed toautomatically scan web applications for potential vulnerabilities.These tools differ from general vulnerability assessment tools in thatthey do not perform a broad range of checks on a myriad of software andhardware. Instead, they perform other checks, such as potential fieldmanipulation and cookie poisoning, which allows a more focusedassessment of web applications by exposing vulnerabilities of whichstandard VA tools are unaware.
Web Application Security
Web Applications Issues-Scripting issues
-Sources of input: forms, text boxes, dialog windows, etc.
-Multiple Charset Encodings (UTF-8, ISO-8859-15, UTF-7, etc.)
-Regular expression checks
-Header integrity (e.g. Multiple HTTP Content Length, HTTP Response Splitting)
-Framework vulnerabities(Java Server Pages, .NET, Ruby On Rails, Django, etc.)
-Success control: front door, back door vulnerability assessment
-Penetration attempts versus failures
Technical vulnerabilities-Unvalidated input:
.Tainted parameters - Parameters users in URLs, HTTP headers,and forms are often used to control and validate access to sentitiveinformation.
-Cross-Site Scripting flaws:
.XSS takes advantage of a vulnerable web site to attack clientswho visit that web site. The most frequent goal is to steal thecredentials of users who visit the site.
-Content Injection flaws:
.SQL injection - SQL injection allows commands to be executeddirectly against the database, allowing disclosure and modification ofdata in the database
.XPath injection - XPath injection allows attacker to manipulate the data in the XML database
.Command injection - OS and platform commands can often beused to give attackers access to data and escalate privileges onbackend servers.
-Cross-site Request Forgeries
Security Vulnerabilities-Denial of Service
-Broken access control
-Broken session management (synchronization timing problems)
-Weak cryptographic functions, Non salt hash
Architectural/Logical Vulnerabilities-Information leakage
-Password change form disclosing detailed errors
-Session-idle deconstruction not consistent with policies
-Spend deposit before deposit funds are validated
Other vulnerabilities-Debug mode
-Hidden Form Field Manipulation
-Weak Session Cookies: Cookies are often used to transitsensitive credentials, and are often easily modified to escalate accessor assume another user's identify.
-Fail Open Authentication
-Dangers of HTML Comments
- Acunetix WVS by Acunetix
- AppScan DE by IBM/Watchfire, Inc.
- Hailstorm by Cenzic
- N-Stealth by N-Stalker
- NTOSpider by NTObjectives
- WebInspect by HP/SPI-Dynamics
- WebKing by Parasoft
- elanize's Security Scanner by Elanize KG
- MileScan Web Security Auditor by MileSCAN Tech
- Grabber by Romain Gaucher
- Grendel-Scan by David Byrne and Eric Duprey
- Nikto by Sullo
- Pantera by Simon Roses Femerling (OWASP Project)
- Paros by Chinotec
- Spike Proxy by Immunity (Now as OWASP Pantera)
- WebScarab by Rogan Dawes of Aspect Security (OWASP Project)
- Wapiti by Nicolas Surribas
- W3AF by Andres Riancho
A more complete list of tools is available in the OWASP Phoenix/Tools
Extraído de http://unlugarsinfin.blogspot.es | <urn:uuid:65ed2bf7-36d6-48f7-aa3f-ba7ce2de45eb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.hackplayers.com/2008_10_01_archive.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282140.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00409-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.784988 | 768 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The US Air Force this week said it will base the first Space Fence radar post on Kwajalein Island in the Republic of the Marshall Islands with the site planned to be operational by 2017.
The Space Fence is part of the Department of Defense's effort to better track and detect space objects which can consist of thousands of pieces of space debris as well as commercial and military satellite parts. Approximately 19,000 objects larger than 10 cm are known to exist, according to NASA. The Space Fence will replace the current VHF Air Force Space Surveillance System built in 1961.
The Space Fence will use multiple S-band ground-based radars -- the exact number will depend on operational performance and design considerations -- that will permit detection, tracking and accurate measurement of orbiting space objects. The idea is that the Space Fence is going to be the most precise radar in the space situational surveillance network and the S-band capability will provide the highest accuracy in detecting even the smallest space objects, the Air Force stated. The Fence will have greater sensitivity, allowing it to detect, track and measure an object the size of a softball orbiting more than 1,200 miles in space. Because it is an uncued tracking system, it will provide evidence of satellite break-ups, collisions or unexpected maneuvers of satellites, the Air Force said.
The Space Fence program, which will ultimately cost more than $3.5 billion, will be made up of a system of geographically dispersed ground-based sensors to provide timely assessment of space events.
"The Space Fence will provide precise positional data on orbiting objects and will be the most accurate radar in the Space Surveillance Network. Space Fence data will be fed to the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Data from the Space Fence radar will be integrated with other Space Surveillance Network data to provide a comprehensive space situational awareness and integrated space picture," the Air Force said.
Construction is expected to begin September 2013 and is planned to take 48 months to complete construction and testing, the Air Force said.
Lockheed Martin reported earlier this year that a prototype system it is developing to track all manner of space debris is now tracking actual orbiting space objects. Raytheon and others are involved in that Space Fence development process.
Check out these other hot stories: | <urn:uuid:916ad700-742b-4ee8-b797-556a434c4165> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223205/security/air-force-sets-first-post-in-ambitious-space-fence-project.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282140.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00409-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912396 | 473 | 2.734375 | 3 |
One of the six giant -- 27 feet across, 20 ton -- circular mirrors that will be part of the 4,000 sq. ft., Giant Magellan Telescope that ultimately look for stars, galaxies and black holes has been polished and completed - now for the other five.
The mirrors will form the heart of the 25-meter Giant Magellan Telescope, and when complete will provide more than 380 square meters, or 4,000 square feet, of light-collecting area. The mirror has an unconventional shape because it is part of what ultimately will be a single 25-meter (82 feet) optical surface composed of seven circular segments, each 8.4 meters (27 ½ feet) in diameter according to a release from the Carnegie Institution for Science.
The Giant Magellan Telescope will be located in the Chilean Andes and will explore planets around other stars and the formation of stars, galaxies and black holes in the early universe, according to the Carnegie Institution.
The mirror is made from 20 tons of glass, melted in a rotating furnace until it flowed into a honeycomb mold. Once the glass had cooled and the mold material was removed, scientists at the lab used a series of fine abrasives to polish the mirror, checking its figure regularly using a number of precision optical tests, according to the institution.
Optical scientists and engineers working at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory underneath the UA's football stadium have been polishing the mirror. One of the other mirrors has been cast and a third is set for next year.
At the Carnegie Institution for Science's Las Campanas Observatory in northern Chile, earthmovers are completing the removal of 4 million cubic feet of rock to produce a flat platform for the telescope and its supporting buildings. The telescope is scheduled to come online in about 10 years.
Check out these other hot stories: | <urn:uuid:3f8e6a30-19a6-44c2-a099-02fed9d2d791> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223384/data-center/first-20-ton-mega-mirror-finished-off-for-massive-magellan-telescope.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280308.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00043-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933679 | 373 | 2.90625 | 3 |
A happy New Year to everyone!
In my last blog I talked about how hi-tech folks like ourselves can help improve science and technology education through outreach programs. I have been following a number of these programs and I thought I would start the year with a quick overview of some of them.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLCP) association is a fascinating project that has the objective of mass producing low-cost laptops for educating children in developing countries. The target price for each laptop is $100. The project is really starting to make progress and as it rolls out it will need many trained installers to get the program working in each country. The user interface for this laptop, known as sugar, is quite different from that of Apple and Microsoft and is fun to play with.
The OLCP association is a spin-off from the MIT Media Lab. The MIT Lab was the creator of the Lego Mindstorms technology that uses Legos to teach children about robotics. It is also the place where PicoCrickets were created. PicoCrickets are tiny computers children can use to create musical sculptures, interactive jewelry, dancing creatures, and other playful inventions. I am currently working with our local science museum to introduce PicoCricket programs into schools with at risk children. The MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten group has many other projects that are designed to help children grow up as creative thinkers and its web site is worth a visit.
You you are interested in reading more about these programs you might find the following links useful:
MIT Lifelong Kindergarten | <urn:uuid:e2e94dde-c23c-4cad-bcce-3b6f02c7c588> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/white/archives/2007/01/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284429.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00161-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952282 | 323 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The key thing to remember about MPLS is that it’s a technique, not a service — so it can be used to deliver anything from IP VPNs to metro Ethernet services, or even to provision optical services. So although carriers build MPLS backbones, the services that users buy may not be called “MPLS”. They could be called anything from “IP VPN” to “metro Ethernet”—or whatever the carriers’ marketing departments dream up next.
The fundamental concept behind MPLS is that of labeling packets. In a traditional routed IP network, each router makes an independent forwarding decision for each packet based solely on the packet’s network-layer header. Thus, every time a packet arrives at a router, the router has to “think through” where to send the packet next.
With MPLS, the first time the packet enters a network, it’s assigned to a specific forwarding equivalence class (FEC), indicated by appending a short bit sequence (the label) to the packet. Each router in the network has a table indicating how to handle packets of a specific FEC type, so once the packet has entered the network, routers don’t need to perform header analysis. Instead, subsequent routers use the label as an index into a table that provides them with a new FEC for that packet.
This gives the MPLS network the ability to handle packets with particular characteristics (such as coming from particular ports or carrying traffic of particular application types) in a consistent fashion. Packets carrying real-time traffic, such as voice or video, can easily be mapped to low-latency routes across the network — something that’s challenging with conventional routing. The key architectural point with all this is that the labels provide a way to “attach” additional information to each packet — information above and beyond what the routers previously had.
Layer 2 or Layer 3?
There’s been a lot of confusion over the years about whether MPLS is a Layer 2 or Layer 3 service. But MPLS doesn’t fit neatly into the OSI seven-layer hierarchy. In fact, one of the key benefits of MPLS is that it separates forwarding mechanisms from the underlying data-link service. MPLS can be used to create forwarding tables for ATM or frame relay switches (using the existing ATM or DLCI header) or for plain old IP routers by appending MPLS tags to IP packets.
The bottom line is that network operators can use MPLS to deliver a wide variety of services. The two most popular implementations of MPLS are layer 3 BGP/MPLS-VPNs (based on RFC 2547) and Layer 2 (or pseudowire) VPNs.
RFC 2547 VPNs have been implemented by most of the major service providers, including AT&T, Verizon, BT and many others. The fundamental characteristics of a 2547 is that traffic is isolated into MPLS-VPNs as it enters the network.
Interior routers have no knowledge of IP information beyond the label-only base forwarding decisions on the MPLS label. BGP is used by edge routers to exchange knowledge of VPNs, thus enabling service providers to isolate traffic from multiple customers or even the Internet over a shared backbone.
There are several flavors of layer 2 MPLS services, but what they have in common is that a Layer 2 packet (or ATM cell or frame relay frame) is encased in an MPLS header and forwarded through the MPLS core. When it reaches the other side, the packet’s labels are removed, and the packet that arrives at the ultimate destination exactly where it entered the MPLS network. Thus, Layer 2 MPLS services effectively extend services such as Ethernet or frame relay across an IP WAN.
What are the different types of MPLS?
The version of MPLS that’s generally used to encapsulate connection-oriented frame relay and ATM services is called pseudo Wire Edge to Edge Emulation (PWE3). PWE3 defines point-to-point tunnels across the MPLS backbone, and thus works well for circuit-oriented networking protocols. PWE3 can also be used to support connectionless LAN protocols, but it’s not the preferred solution.
For connectionless protocols (primarily Ethernet) there’s a different specification, called virtual private LAN service (VPLS). VPLS addresses some of the specific challenges with extending Ethernet across the metropolitan area or WAN, most notably scalability and availability. Another emerging spec is the ITU’s transport-MPLS (T-MPLS), which is designed to simplify deployment of Ethernet services
It’s worth noting that MPLS isn’t the only game in town when it comes to Ethernet services, though. Several vendors —including Nortel, Extreme and Siemens — are promoting an alternative approach called Provider Backbone Transport, or PBT, for metropolitan area Ethernet.
PBT is based on using existing IEEE 802.1 VLAN tags to deliver Ethernet services across a provider network. PBT competes head-to-head with T-MPLS, and the jury’s still out on which one will gain the most traction.
Finally, a variant of MPLS called Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching (GMPLS) gives routers the ability intelligently signal the optical layer, enabling providers to establish, change or tear down optical links in real time. Thus, service providers can provision “optical wavelength” services based on MPLS.
Learn more about this topicSprint misses global MPLS mark
03/27/07Verizon Business enhances MPLS VPN
03/21/07Late to MPLS party, XO says its timing with VPN service is right | <urn:uuid:4b6774ef-ba1e-48a3-a952-ab5ff843300c> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2297171/network-security/network-security-mpls-explained.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282932.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00097-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912677 | 1,201 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Understanding the IPSec protocol
I recently had a conversation with a friend in which he was telling me about a particular database that his company uses. He said that the information contained within the database demands the utmost confidentiality. However, the database had been around for many years and was written in a way that offers very little security beyond a basic password. Anyone who knew what to look for could easily see confidential information flowing freely across the network.
Later, what my friend had told me really bothered me. I started looking for a way to secure legacy applications, and I decided that perhaps the best way to secure such an application is with the IPSec protocol.
What is IPSec?
|"Another cool security feature is the anti-replay code, which prevents the packets from being resent by a hacker. "|
As the name implies, IPSec is an extension of the basic IP protocol. The main difference is that it's geared toward encrypting packets. Because the encryption occurs at the transport layer of the OSI model, the application doesn't have to support encryption for the encryption process to work. Therefore, all network traffic generated by applications can be encrypted regardless of the application.
IPSec works by setting up a negotiation between two computers. During this negotiation, the machines must agree on which keys and policies to use. Once the negotiation is complete, the computers use the Internet Security Association Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP) to exchange security keys. Once the computers are communicating under the protection of this protocol, they begin negotiating a second time. This time, they determine which encryption algorithms to use. Two different algorithms are generated, one for inbound communication and one for outbound communication. These algorithms are exchanged in the form of SA (Security Association) messages which also contain references to the IPSec protocols that will be used.
To make IPSec communications even more secure, IPSec supports some other security features. For example, IPSec performs an integrity check to make sure that the data being sent hasn't been altered. IPSec also supports digital signatures and the ability to rekey a message midstream without exposing the key. Another cool security feature is the anti-replay code, which prevents the packets from being resent by a hacker. Such a technique is often used as a way of stealing the encryption key and gaining access to an unauthorized system.
The IPSec policy
When you boot an IPSec-enabled computer, it retrieves an IPSec policy from either the Registry or the Active Directory. The location depends on several factors such as the computer's role and the connection to the network. The policy governs the basic rules regarding the way that IPSec will behave. For example, it establishes such guidelines as which IP traffic should be filtered and the types of authentication and key exchange that should be used. IPSec policies tend to get a little complicated; I'll write a more detailed article on IPSec policies in the future. //
Brien M. Posey is an MCSE who works as a freelance writer. His past experience includes working as the Director of Information Systems for a national chain of health care facilities and as a network engineer for the Department of Defense. Because of the extremely high volume of e-mail that Brien receives, it's impossible for him to respond to every message, although he does read them all. | <urn:uuid:80206c2c-6bd9-41d3-994c-6fa38d951126> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/print/netsp/article.php/623881/Understanding-the-IPSec-protocol.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285244.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00005-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950671 | 676 | 3.390625 | 3 |
The country’s only underground nuclear waste storage site, located 26 miles southeast of Carlsbad, N.M., experienced a radiation leak last Friday, ten days after an underground vehicle caught fire at the facility.
The Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, estimated to have cost more $1 billion to develop, went into operation in 1999 and stores plutonium-contaminated waste in salt caverns 2,150 feet below the surface.
Last Friday an air monitor detected airborne radiation in the facility. “No contamination has been found on any equipment, personnel or facilities," Energy said in a press release. "Any possible release is minimized by the highly protective filtration system that is designed to filter any air leaving the WIPP repository.”
On Feb. 5, an underground vehicle used to transport salt in the facility caught fire, all personnel were evacuated and “multiple employees” were transported to a local hospital for smoke inhalation, Energy said.
Don Hancock, director of the Nuclear Waste Safety Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, a nuclear watchdog group in Albuquerque, said WIPP currently stores 3.2 million cubic feet of plutonium-contaminated waste generated during the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons by the Defense Department. The bulk of it is stored in drums that can be “contact handled” by workers, Hancock said. An Energy fact sheet describes the waste as “clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris, soil and other items contaminated with radioactive elements.”
WIPP tracks the location of each waste container stored in the facility with a waste data system that also identifies the physical, chemical and radiological properties of the waste.
Hancock said even the smallest particle of plutonium can cause lung cancer if inhaled.
WIPP’s sophisticated air filtration system has four separate ventilation circuits and probes that sample effluent air as it is exhausted from the repository, Energy said. The ventilation system automatically switched to “filtration mode” to capture any radioactive particles when airborne radiation was detected last Friday, the department said.
Hancock said last week's leak was the first in the history of the plant and, along with the fire, calls into question the safety of the facility. He said Energy has become complacent and has also shifted its focus from storage of low level waste to potential storage of “hot” waste precluded by the legislation that authorized WIPP.
Get the Nextgov iPhone app to keep up with government technology news. | <urn:uuid:093fb9a2-9818-4ac0-811d-36c8f83d827d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2014/02/underground-plutonium-waste-plant-hit-radiation-leak-and-fire/78971/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279189.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00338-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948678 | 519 | 2.9375 | 3 |
With TOP500 list stagnation likely signaling the slow-down of an exponential known as Moore’s law, what better time to consider alternatives to silicon-based microelectronics. Researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering point to carbon nanotubes as a promising replacement for silicon as the traditional transistor material. The advantage of carbon nanotubes is that they are more transparent, flexible, and can be processed at a lower cost, according to the research team. In the journal Nature Communications, the researchers describe an energy-efficient hybrid circuit that combines carbon nanotube (CNT) thin film transistors (TFT) with thin film transistors comprised of indium, gallium and zinc oxide (IGZO).
In order to develop the carbon nanotube based circuit, the team, which includes electrical engineering professor Dr. Chongwu Zhou and USC Viterbi graduate students Haitian Chen, Yu Cao, and Jialu Zhang, had to overcome a major limitation in carbon nanotube technology.
“I came up with this concept in January 2013,” said Dr. Chongwu Zhou, professor in USC Viterbi’s Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, in an article on the USC website. “Before then, we were working hard to try to turn carbon nanotubes into n-type transistors and then one day, the idea came to me. Instead of working so hard to force nanotubes to do something that they are not good for, why don’t we just find another material which would be ideal for n-type transistors—in this case, IGZO—so we can achieve complementary circuits?”
Carbon nanotubes are essentially one-atom thick sheets of carbon that have been rolled in a tube. The team achieved the integrated form by combining circuits that can operate complimentarily, optimizing power loss and efficiency. The addition of IGZO thin film transistors was the necessary step to increasing battery life. Using only carbon nanotubes constrains power efficiency. “By combining the two materials, their strengths have been joined and their weaknesses hidden,” explains the USC article.
“It’s like a perfect marriage,” said Zhou. “We are very excited about this idea of hybrid integration and we believe there is a lot of potential for it.”
The integrated circuitry created by the team could show up in a range of applications, including Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs), digital circuits, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, sensors, wearable electronics, and flash memory devices. Electrodes based on the new technology could also benefit medical patient care.
There’s also a real possibility that the team could further develop the technique to use in more complex circuits, suitable for computers.
“We believe this is a technological breakthrough, as no one has done this before,” said Haitian Chen, research assistant and electrical engineering PhD student at USC Viterbi. “This gives us further proof that we can make larger integrations so we can make more complicated circuits for computers and circuits.”
In fact, building more complicated circuits with additional functionality is the next step for the team. | <urn:uuid:247b0d2f-f1ab-487c-b4dc-b95175b58176> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2014/06/23/carbon-nanotubes-pitched-post-silicon-contender/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279189.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00338-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946781 | 668 | 3.234375 | 3 |
…or How to Put the Internet in a Van…
One of the foremost issues facing science and industry today is storing the ever-increasing amounts of data that are created globally. Google’s Eric Schmidt claims that every two days humanity generates as much information as it did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. There may be a way to address this challenge thanks to the world’s oldest storage medium – DNA. Studies conducted by pioneering researchers George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, and Ewan Birney, associate director of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), show DNA-based storage to be remarkably effective and efficient.
Delivering the keynote talk for the EUDAT 2nd Conference in October of last year, Ewan Birney discussed the exciting activity that is occurring at the intersection of biology and big data science. In an interview with ISGTW, Birney shares additional details about his DNA encoding projects, working with source material like Shakespeare’s sonnets, an excerpt from Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, a PDF of Watson and Crick’s famous paper describing the double helix structure of DNA, a picture of the EBI, and a piece of code that explains the encoding procedure.
The beauty of DNA as a storage mechanism, according to Birney, is that it’s electricity-free, incredibly dense, and stable. DNA that’s over 700,000 years old has been recovered. “You’ve just got to keep it cold, dry and in the dark,” Birney told ISGTW.
Birney goes on to explain that the technology to read and write DNA has existed since bacteria were first genetically engineered in 1973. A 2003 project, lead by Pak Chung Wong from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, transferred encrypted text into DNA by converting each character into a base-4 sequence of numbers, each corresponding to one of the four DNA bases (Adenine, Cytosine, Thymine, and Guanine – also known by the abbreviations A, C, T, and G). Bacteria were considered to be an optimal host because they replicate quickly, generating multiple copies of the data in the process, and if a mutation occurs within an individual bacterium, the remaining bacteria will still retain the original information.
Live DNA is not without problems, though. Fast replication rates threaten to compromise data over long periods of time. There is also a risk that the inserted DNA could interfere with the host bacteria’s normal cellular processes, destabilizing the bacterial genome. As Geoff Baldwin, a reader in biochemistry at Imperial College London, UK, explains “This does not bode well for the use of bacteria as a mass data storage device.”
Researchers proposed using ‘naked’ DNA instead since living cells are not necessary for DNA to remain intact. Unlike bacteria, naked DNA doesn’t require genetic manipulations to safely insert it into a host. Birney and his team encoded computer files totaling 739 kilobytes of unique data – including all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets – into naked DNA code, synthesized the DNA, sequenced it and reconstructed the the files with over 99 percent accuracy.
With the current high costs of reading and writing DNA, this technology is not yet suitable for mass storage. It is, however, already economically viable for very long term (1,000 years or more) applications, such as nuclear site location data, and other governmental, legal and scientific archives that need to be kept long-term but are infrequently accessed. Furthermore, the researchers note that current trends are reducing DNA synthesis costs at a pace that should make DNA-based storage cost-effective for long-term archiving (~50 year periods) within a decade.
“DNA is remarkable,” observes Birney, “just one gram of DNA can store about a petabyte’s worth of data, and that’s with the redundancy required to ensure that it’s fully error tolerant. It’s estimated that you could put the whole internet into the size of a van! You can also copy trivially. The only problem at the moment is cost: it’s prohibitively expensive to write DNA. Nevertheless, this technology is expected to come down in price dramatically over the coming years. The only question is: how quickly will it come down in price?” | <urn:uuid:3800b1e8-1592-416f-b02e-5013413e6ec0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2014/01/16/old-world-technology-meets-new-world-problem/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00420-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939402 | 920 | 3.359375 | 3 |
As the CEO of a company that specializes in securing the privileged account passwords that control access to an organization’s confidential data, I field a lot of questions about passwords. What makes a suitably strong password? Why have so many passwords been so easy to crack? And, is real password security even possible?
So here’s a primer on passwords, how to effectively secure them, and what alternatives to passwords – if any – exist.
Think of a password as a secret shared between you and the computer. At the time when a user account is created, someone (either you or an IT administrator where you work) inputs the password into the operating system, and the typed-in password is converted into a unique long number known as a hash.
The purpose of a hash is to destroy the information needed to reconstruct the password. A computer can use the hash to efficiently verify the password, but it should be difficult for anyone to figure out the password based on the hash alone.
Cracking passwords is difficult, but not impossible. While the hash does destroy the information needed to reconstruct a password, password cracker tools exist which can take large numbers of words, generate the corresponding hashes, and compare these to the hash value stored on your system.
These password crackers use techniques known as dictionary attacks that supply files containing hashes for common terms in major languages, or brute force attacks, where every possible character is tried. Many programs use a combination of dictionary and brute force attacks by appending a number to each word or by replacing characters (i.e. change E to 3, T to 7, etc.).
Crackers also make use of common password lists. Since many users tend to rely on a lot of the same passwords (“123456”, “qwerty” and, of course, “password”) cracker programs are typically successful in cracking passwords that use these weak words or phrases.
The Unbreakable Password
So, if you want to defend against today’s cracker tools, is there such a thing as unbreakable passwords? As a matter of fact, yes there is, and it’s actually easy to create them.
Passwords that are not in a dictionary, with a length of more than 14 characters that include uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation are normally secure. Unfortunately, these complex passwords can be difficult to remember. Sometimes users resort to writing them down on sticky notes and pasting them to the front of their monitors. So much for security.
Password Management Software
Rather than creating their own passwords, some people opt for software that automates the process. There are some good tools that do this, but in some ways creating your own passwords using long phrases is superior to randomly generated passwords, as long as you can create a unique phrase that only you understand (i.e. no common lines from movies such as “I’ll be back”). If you don’t want to be creative and absolutely must have the shortest secure password, then a password generator could be a good idea.
Local devices, like vaults, offer another convenient way to store passwords and, in some cases, automatically type passwords for the many different systems you may use. Another option is to use a cloud service to store your passwords.
Of course the first bit of advice I’d offer is to backup your passwords in case you lose your hardware storage system or your cloud-based supplier goes out of business. You should also consider how much you trust a cloud provider with your passwords, and you should weigh the possibility that someone could compromise your cloud account and access your passwords.
Commercial, locally hosted solutions can automatically generate, store and retrieve those passwords that fall outside the control of an organization’s identity access management (IAM) systems. These solutions, known as privileged identity management, provide unique credentials for each privileged account in the organization for one time, temporary use. The generated passwords can be up to 127 characters long – containing letters, numbers, and punctuation – so they are practically uncrackable by any technology.
Today there is no realistic alternative to passwords because almost every application and operating system uses them. Options do exist – such as smartcards, biometrics, tokens, fobs, and a host of devices that plug in, scan you, or are accessed wirelessly. None of these are widely used as a de facto standard, though some of these technologies are a lot of fun to play with.
So for now, at least, it appears that passwords are our best method for secure system access. But it would be wise to remember the old adage, “you’re only as secure as your weakest link”. Or perhaps your weakest password.
How do you keep your passwords secure? Share your thoughts on the blog below for others to learn. You can also follow us on Twitter: @liebsoft. | <urn:uuid:174d2a60-0a67-463f-ae78-cb87f01c641a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.identityweek.com/the-secret-to-strong-passwords/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281659.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00144-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942399 | 1,018 | 3.359375 | 3 |
All murderers have an important and obvious thing in common: They have deliberately taken at least one human life. But researchers are discovering vast differences between the minds of impulsive killers and premeditated murderers. "Impulsive murderers were much more mentally impaired, particularly cognitively impaired, in terms of both their intelligence and other cognitive functions," said Robert Hanlon, associate professor of clinical psychiatry and clinical neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Hanlon is the lead author of a study published in the online journal Criminal Justice and Behavior. The research team examined neuropsychological and intelligence differences between impulse killers and those who murder as the result of a premeditated plan. Among the findings:
* Compared to impulsive murderers, premeditated murderers are almost twice as likely to have a history of mood disorders or psychotic disorders -- 61% versus 34%.
* Compared to predatory murderers, impulsive murderers are more likely to be developmentally disabled and have cognitive and intellectual impairments -- 59% versus 36%.* Nearly all of the impulsive murderers have a history of alcohol or drug abuse and/or were intoxicated at the time of the crime -- 93% versus 76% of those who strategized about their crimes.
What I find interesting in the data above is that premeditated murderers are more likely to have mood and/or psychotic disorders. I would have expected impulsive murderers to be more burdened by mood and psychotic issues. Hanlon's team studied 77 murderers from prisons in Illinois and Missouri, administering tests for intelligence, memory, attention and other neuropsychological factors. By studying the minds of murderers, Hanlon says, "We may be able to increase our rates of prevention and also assist the courts, particularly helping judges and juries be more informed about the minds and the mental abnormalities of the people who commit these violent crimes." Now read this: | <urn:uuid:3c986d5c-bd27-4043-af6a-8afd397aad53> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.itworld.com/article/2706637/hardware/understanding-the-minds-of-murderers.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281659.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00144-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952244 | 376 | 2.625 | 3 |
A function f from a set A to a set B assigns to each element a in A a unique element b in B. For each element a Î A, the corresponding element in B assigned to a by f is denoted f(a); we say that a is mapped to f(a). The notation f :A ® B means that f is a function from A to B.
Consider the set Z of integers. We may define a function f : Z ® Z such that f(x) = x2 for each x Î Z. For example, f(5) = 25.
Let f : A ® B and g : B ® C be functions. The composition g °f of g and f is the function h : A® C defined as h(a) = g(f(a)) for each a Î A. Note, however, that ``f °g'' does not make sense unless A = C.
Let N be the set of nonnegative numbers. With f : Z ® N defined as f(x) = x2 and g : N ® Z defined as g(y) = y-y2, we obtain that g °f : Z ®Z is the function h defined as
h(x) = g(x2) = x2 - x4.
A function f : A ® B is one-to-one or injective if f(a) = f(a¢) implies that a = a¢, that is, no two elements in A are mapped to the same element in B. The function f is onto or surjective if, for each b Î B, there exists an element a Î A such that f(a) = b. Finally, f is bijective if f is one-to-one and onto. Given a bijective function f : A ® B, the inverse f-1 of f is the unique function g : B ® A with the property that g °f(a) = a for all a Î A. A bijective function f : A ® A is a permutation of the set A.
For any subset S of A, f(S) is the set of elements b such that f(a) = b for some a Î S. Note that f being surjective means that f(A) = B. The restriction of f to a subset S of A is the function fS : S ® B defined as fS(s) = f(s) for all s Î S.
- The function f : Z ® Z defined as f(x) = x3 is injective, because x3 = y3 implies that x = y. However, f is not surjective; for example, there is no x such that f(x) = 2.
- Let |x| be the absolute value of x Î Z (for example, |-5| = |5| = 5). The function g : Z ®N defined as g(x) = |x| is surjective but not injective. Namely, for all x, the elements x and -x are mapped to the same element |x|. However, the restriction of g to N is injective and surjective, hence bijective.
- If A and B are finite sets of the same size, then a function f : A ® B is injective if and only if f is surjective. | <urn:uuid:946c9ab6-40ad-4f49-b27b-d0b912a19424> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.emc.com/emc-plus/rsa-labs/standards-initiatives/functions.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281659.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00144-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.885113 | 725 | 4.15625 | 4 |
You know what’s cool? When a bunch of geeks who know how wield a camera, brandish social media, and reach the eyeballs of the populous, harness their power to get a message out in order to exact positive change in a short period of time. During Computer Science Education Week (December 9-15), Code.org founders Ali and Hadi Partovi rallied the world to encourage everyone and anyone to spend one hour learning to code.
It was an amazing success. During the week they pushed us to participate in the Hour of Code, students worldwide wrote 500,000,000 lines of code (Microsoft Windows contains 50 million lines), one in five US students wrote code, and more girls participated in computer science than in the last 70 years. It took Tumblr, 3.5 years to get to 15 million users. It took Facebook 3 years to hit that number. The Hour of Code? Five days. I think that makes this campaign successful enough to be a hopeful indicator that – with the continued help of motivated geeks – we can alter the rather embarrassing fact that most of U.S. schools don’t teach coding, a subject that most adults informed on the subject agree is the literacy of the future. There are, of course, naysayers debating the quality of this success. Did the code work? Did everyone who participated actually finish the hour? Will anyone remember any of what they learned? I think that’s missing the point. The campaign exposed the idea of coding to a lot of people. It changed minds, young minds many of them. Kids who thought coding was hard or who had no idea what it was now know what it is, roughly how it’s done, and where to learn more – even if their code didn’t work the first time. They also know that it’s important to their future and they should learn more about it. Why do you buy one brand over another – even once? Probably because of an ad campaign. No one asks if that campaign was successful or not if you buy a particular brand of gas but never become a car mechanic or if you buy laundry soap and never get around to doing your laundry. All they want is your attention. It was only an hour. And an awesome hour it was. Why not go code a last minute holiday card to celebrate? | <urn:uuid:f6c3127e-6d2c-4de5-9155-e60e59533fcb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.itworld.com/article/2701580/careers/code-org-gets-15-million-students-in-170-countries-to-code.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281263.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00080-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973704 | 480 | 2.734375 | 3 |
AUTHENTICATION services: Functions and purposes
Authentication denotes the progression where the identity of an entity is authenticated, characteristically by providing substantiation that it holds a definite digital character an identifier and the related identification. Illustration of varieties of credentials are one-time tokens, passwords, digital signatures, digital certificates, in addition to phone numbers .
RADIUS is a security overhaul for endorsing and sanctioning dial-up clients. A distinctive enterprise system may have a contact server fixed to a modem band, down with a RADIUS server to offer certification services. Distant users call into the access server, and the access server drives confirmation requests to the RADIUS server. RADIUS was initially extended by Livingston Enterprises for their Port Master sequence of system access servers. Lucent Technologies purchased Livingston in October 1997, and now declares the software was "discovered by the Distant Access Commerce Corps of Lucent Technologies in 1992." The rest of this stuff describes on RADIUS explanation presented by Lucent. RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial in User Service), defined in RFC 2865, is a protocol for isolated client verification and accounting. These networks may employ modems, implicit confidential network ports, digital subscriber line (DSL), Web servers etc.
RADIUS permits federal management of certification statistics, for instance usernames and passwords. RADIUS is most extensively utilized by Internet service contributor and commerce enterprises as of its ever-present kind and extensive support. It is exploited to confirm access to inner and wireless networks and extra included email services. The RADIUS user is customarily a Network Access Server (NAS) and the Radius server is a route that moves on UNIX or Windows NT appliance. The Radius server reacts to consumer's concerns linked to server availability, re-diffusion, and timeouts. Radius server also switches user's link requests, authenticates the client, and transmits the required configuration information to user to transport services to the client. As its meek start, RADIUS has extended to turn into a generic distant authentication service.
TACACS (Terminal Access Controller Access Control System) is a former authentication protocol frequent to UNIX networks that tolerates a distant access server to ahead a client's logon password to a certification server to resolve whether access can be allocated to a specified system. TACACS is an encryption protocol and so less safe than the presently TACACS+ and Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service protocols. The unique TACACS sustained only authentication to an inner server. An anon version of TACACS is XTACACS (Extended TACACS). Both are explained in Request for Comments 1492. TACACS+ employs the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). A few executives advise exploiting TACACS+ as TCP is noticed as a further consistent protocol. The recent zest of the protocol is called TACACS Plus (TACACS+) and it is being sponsored by Cisco in favour of the earlier two versions. At first a Cisco proprietary key, TACACS+ has been put forward for consent as regular by the IETF. TACACS+ is abstractly alike to RADIUS, in that it offers AAA potential and defends an environment where a sole or few TACACS+ servers can assist lots of remote dial-in servers. Like RADIUS, TACACS+ is extremely scalable, so that it can efforts with systems with only a few or a lot of clients. Fixing up a TACACS+ server provides you the facility to have an inner server for directing Access, certification, and Accounting of your routers, knobs and just regarding any further network device. TACACS+ proceeds on Linux, Sun and Windows and best of all it's at no cost.
Kerberos, a network security protocol extended MIT for its Athena working out environment is now an eminent, yet not well-unstated technology. The fundamental Kerberos certification progression continues as follows: A user transmits a demand to the authentication server (AS) for "credentials" for a certain server. The AS reacts with these credentials, encrypted in the user's key. The credentials consist of a "ticket" for the server and a temporary encryption key (frequently termed a "session key").As well of curiosity to lots of clients, Kerberos has the capability to deal out "session keys" to permit encrypted information streams above an IP network. The user broadcasts the ticket (which holds the user's identity and a replica of the session key, all included in the server's key) to the server. The session key (now assigned by the client and server) is employed to confirm the user and may electively be exploited to authenticate the server. It may also be employed to encrypt additional communication between the two clients or to swap a discrete sub-session key to be exploited to encrypt more communication. Utilized to protected mostly susceptible network connections like telnet, FTP and other Internet protocols, which frequently diffuses user IDs and passwords in apparent text, Kerberos supplies the backbone for locked communications in lots of wide networks. Most Kerberos sharing also comprise APIs for extending new Kerberos-facilitated (Kerberized) applications. Even as Kerberized services are best assistance under UNIX, users are accessible for most key desktop operating systems like DOS, Windows95, Windows NT and Mac OS. In count to its untainted form, Kerberos offers the core certification services for calculating environments such as the Open Group's (previously, the Open Software Foundation) DCE (Distributed Computing Environment) on top of Microsoft Corp.'s forthcoming ADS (Active Directory Service). As Windows Server 2000, Kerberos protocol has been segment of our routine job. Its three heads (Key Distribution Centre, the client user and the server hosting resources) are the devices that facilitate the single sign-on (SSO) employed to verify on the domain and to admittance resources in our corporate system. It works as well outer surface our network margins, getting to the Cloud with Dir Sync and other extra features. IT Analytics Solution 7.1 entails that the following parts subsist within the environment to move successfully: Symantec Administration Stage, SQL Server Testing Server and SQL Server Report Server. Supporting on the environmental constraint and ease of use, these services may be horded on one, two or three part servers. While these components are horded on over one server Kerberos is needed to certify the connection between servers.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, better recognized as LDAP, is footed on the X.500 standard, but drastically easier and more willingly adjusted to meet custom requires. Distinct X.500, LDAP supports TCP/IP, which is required for Internet access. Network directories are focused databases that hoard information about devices, applications, public and other features of a computer network. LDAP is both a network protocol and a standard architecture for arranging the directory information. LDAP was generated in 1995 as an academic university project, next commercialized by Netscape in the behind 1990s. As a protocol, LDAP is an easy version of the Data Access Protocol (DAP) employed in the former standard X.500. Just as a Database Management System (DBMS) from Sybase, Oracle, Informix, or Microsoft is exploited to sort out queries and informs to a familiar database, an LDAP server is employed to process queries and informs to an LDAP data directory. In few words, an LDAP information directory is a kind of database, but it's not a familiar database. And different databases that are intended for processing hundreds or thousands of alters per minute - for example the Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems frequently employed in e-commerce - LDAP directories are greatly optimized for interpret recital. LDAP's most important benefit over its forerunner is the capacity to run over TCP/IP. As structural design, LDAP uses a disseminated tree structure alike to X.500. The director structure available by LDAP is footed on the X.500 model based on the following:
- Each entry is invented of traits
- Every feature has a name with one or lots of values termed in a scheme
- Each entry has a distinctive recognizer called a Distinguished Name (DN)
- The DN tends to Relative Distinguished Name (RDN).
LDAP has steadily reinstated all of these furthers has a universal standard "building block." Now-a-day's trendy directory technologies like Microsoft Active Directory can employ LDAP as a standard foundation to look up their performance and their maintainability.
XTACACS goes for widen Terminal Access Controller Access Control System. An anon version of TACACS is XTACACS (Extended TACACS). Both are explained in Request for Comments 1492. XTACACS, or expanded TACACS, which disconnects the tasks of certification, approval and logging. TACACS+, created by Cisco, which makes on XTACACS by adding up a two-factor client authentication (showing that a client is who they say they are through together something they recognize, like a password, and something they have, like a smart card), network and encrypting all user/server communication.
"SAML, extended by the Security Services Technical Committee of OASIS, is an XML-footed framework for linking client authentication, entitlement, and trait information. As its name advises, SAML permits business units to create assertions according to the identity, features and articles of a subject (an unit that is often a human user) to other parts, such as a associate company or other enterprise application. Federation is the leading movement in identity organization today. Coalition indicates to the formation of some or all of commerce deals, cryptographic trust, and user recognizers or traits across security and policy areas to access more seamless cross-domain commerce exchanges. The Security Assertion Mark up Language (SAML) permits cross-platform certification between Web applications or Web services launching in a Web Logic domain and Web browsers or other HTTP users. Web Logic Server carries single sign-on (SSO) footed on SAML. When clients are verified at one site that take parts in a single sign-on (SSO) configuration, they are repeatedly confirmed at other sites in the SSO configuration and do not require to log in separately. The Security Assertion Mark up Language (SAML) is being extended by the OASIS XML-Based Security Services Technical Committee (SSTC). The Security Assertion Mark up Language (SAML) is "an XML-based framework for swapping security data. This security information is uttered in the form of assertions about topics, where a subject is a part (either human or computer) that has an identity in few security areas. A classic example of a matter is a person, recognized by his or her email address in a meticulous Internet DNS domain. Assertions can suggest data about certification acts carried out by subjects, features of subjects, and approval decisions about whether subjects are permitted to enable certain resources. Assertions are presented as XML constructs and have a nested form, whereby a single assertion might hold several unlike inner reports about authentication, approval, and traits. Security Assertion Mark up Language 2.0 (SAML 2.0) is the most recent version of the SAML OASIS standard for swapping certification and authorization information between security domains, or extensively submitted to as single sign-on.
SAML 2.0 is an XML-footed protocol that employs security tokens holding statements to forward information about a fundamental (Frequently an end client) between a SAML authority, that is an distinctiveness provider, and a web service, that is a service provider. SAML 2.0 permits web-based certification and approval scenarios counting single sign-on (SSO).
SAML 2.0 was confirmed as an OASIS Standard in March 2005, swapping SAML 1.1. The crucial aspects of SAML 2.0 are enclosed in detail in the official documents SAML Conform, SAML Core, SAML Bind, and SAML Prof.
By evasion, LDAP communications between user and server applications are not encrypted. This denotes that it would be probable to employ a network monitoring device or software and observe the communications trekking between LDAP client and server computers. This is particularly tricky when an LDAP easy attach is employed as credentials (username and password) is approved over the network unencrypted. This could rapidly lead to the negotiation of credentials. Accurate SSL/TLS key production, position, and configuration offer lots of potentials for something to fail. By Drupal and Samba 4 LDAP over SSL/TLS (LDAPS) is routinely. When you have a multi-tier (such as a two-tier or three-tier) CA hierarchy, you will not routinely have the proper certificate for LDAPS certification on THE DOMAIN. Allowing LDAPS on the user is not required to secure credentials accepted from the user to the server when LDAPS is already allowed on the server. This just permits the user to really confirm itself to the server - an additional layer of protection to make sure that the user linking as COMPUTER_X is really COMPUTER_X and not some further computer attempting to authenticate with COMPUTER_X credentials. The client must be employing verification from a CA that the LDAP server trusts.
While RADIUS merges authorization with authentication in a user profile; TACACS+ disconnects the two processes. Yet another distinction is that TACACS+ employs the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) whereas RADIUS exploits the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). So, one must know about them all to make some better usage out of them. | <urn:uuid:2a3c8f20-1a4f-430b-9bb5-95bd2caa466b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.examcollection.com/certification-training/security-plus-authentication-services-functions-and-purposes.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281263.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00080-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918389 | 2,850 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Domain name system (DNS) servers translate names suitable for use by people (such as www.example.com) into network addresses (e.g., 192.168.4.22) suitable for use by computers. There are a number of different name server software packages available today. Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND), produced by the Internet Software Consortium (http://www.isc.org), is the most widely deployed name server package, and is available on a wide variety of platforms. Other popular DNS packages include Microsoft DNS and djbdns.
The goal of this document is to discuss general name server security. However, in order to provide useful examples we have chosen to focus on BIND since it is the most commonly used software for DNS servers.
Download the paper in PDF format here. | <urn:uuid:a4d58b2c-e1c4-4ccd-bbdc-3618bd77780e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2002/09/17/securing-an-internet-name-server/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00474-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896665 | 164 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Intrusion detection is the process of monitoring the events occurring in a computer system or network and analyzing them for signs of possible incidents, which are violations or imminent threats of violation of computer security policies, acceptable use policies, or standard security practices.
Intrusion prevention is the process of performing intrusion detection and attempting to stop detected possible incidents. Intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS)1 are primarily focused on identifying possible incidents, logging information about them, attempting to stop them, and reporting them to security administrators.
In addition, organizations use IDPSs for other purposes, such as identifying problems with security policies, documenting existing threats, and deterring individuals from violating security policies. IDPSs have become a necessary addition to the security infrastructure of nearly every organization.
IDPSs typically record information related to observed events, notify security administrators of important observed events, and produce reports. Many IDPSs can also respond to a detected threat by attempting to prevent it from succeeding. They use several response techniques, which involve the IDPS stopping the attack itself, changing the security environment (e.g., reconfiguring a firewall), or changing the attack’s content.
This publication describes the characteristics of IDPS technologies and provides recommendations for designing, implementing, configuring, securing, monitoring, and maintaining them. The types of IDPS technologies are differentiated primarily by the types of events that they monitor and the ways in which they are deployed.
This publication discusses the following four types of IDPS technologies:
- Network-Based, which monitors network traffic for particular network segments or devices and analyzes the network and application protocol activity to identify suspicious activity
- Wireless, which monitors wireless network traffic and analyzes it to identify suspicious activity involving the wireless networking protocols themselves
- Network Behavior Analysis (NBA), which examines network traffic to identify threats that generate unusual traffic flows, such as denial of service (DoS) attacks, certain forms of malware, and policy violations (e.g., a client system providing network services to other systems)
- Host-Based, which monitors the characteristics of a single host and the events occurring within that host for suspicious activity.
Implementing the following recommendations should facilitate more efficient and effective intrusion detection and prevention system use for Federal departments and agencies. Organizations should ensure that all IDPS components are secured appropriately.
Securing IDPS components is very important because IDPSs are often targeted by attackers who want to prevent the IDPSs from detecting attacks or want to gain access to sensitive information in the IDPSs, such as host configurations and known vulnerabilities. IDPSs are composed of several types of components, including sensors or agents, management servers, database servers, user and administrator consoles, and management networks.
All components’ operating systems and applications should be kept fully up-to-date, and all software-based IDPS components should be hardened against threats. Specific protective actions of particular importance include creating separate accounts for each IDPS user and administrator, restricting network access to IDPS components, and ensuring that IDPS management communications are protected appropriately, such as encrypting them or transmitting them over a physically or logically separate network.
Administrators should maintain the security of the IDPS components on an ongoing basis, including verifying that the components are functioning as desired, monitoring the components for security issues, performing regular vulnerability assessments, responding appropriately to vulnerabilities in the IDPS components, and testing and deploying IDPS updates. Administrators should also back up configuration settings periodically and before applying updates to ensure that existing settings are not inadvertently lost.
Organizations should consider using multiple types of IDPS technologies to achieve more comprehensive and accurate detection and prevention of malicious activity.
The four primary types of IDPS technologies—network-based, wireless, NBA, and host-based—each offer fundamentally different information gathering, logging, detection, and prevention capabilities. Each technology type offers benefits over the others, such as detecting some events that the others cannot and detecting some events with significantly greater accuracy than the other technologies. In many environments, a robust IDPS solution cannot be achieved without using multiple types of IDPS technologies. For most environments, a combination of network-based and host-based IDPS technologies is needed for an effective IDPS solution.
Wireless IDPS technologies may also be needed if the organization determines that its wireless networks need additional monitoring or if the organization wants to ensure that rogue wireless networks are not in use in the organization’s facilities. NBA technologies can also be deployed if organizations desire additional detection capabilities for denial of service attacks, worms, and other threats that NBAs are particularly well-suited to detecting. Organizations should consider the different capabilities of each technology type along with other cost-benefit information when selecting IDPS technologies.
Organizations planning to use multiple types of IDPS technologies or multiple products of the same IDPS technology type should consider whether or not the IDPSs should be integrated.
Direct IDPS integration most often occurs when an organization uses multiple IDPS products from a single vendor, by having a single console that can be used to manage and monitor the multiple products. Some products can also mutually share data, which can speed the analysis process and help users to better prioritize threats. A more limited form of direct IDPS integration is having one IDPS product provide data for another IDPS product (but no data sharing in the opposite direction).
Indirect IDPS integration is usually performed with security information and event management (SIEM) software, which is designed to import information from various security-related logs and correlate events among them. SIEM software complements IDPS technologies in several ways, including correlating events logged by different technologies, displaying data from many event sources, and providing supporting information from other sources to help users verify the accuracy of IDPS alerts.
Before evaluating IDPS products, organizations should define the requirements that the products should meet.
Evaluators need to understand the characteristics of the organization’s system and network environments, so that a compatible IDPS can be selected that can monitor the events of interest on the systems and/or networks. Evaluators should articulate the goals and objectives they wish to attain by using an IDPS, such as stopping common attacks, identifying misconfigured wireless network devices, and detecting misuse of the organization’s system and network resources.
Evaluators should also review their existing security policies, which serve as a specification for many of the features that the IDPS products need to provide. In addition, evaluators should understand whether or not the organization is subject to oversight or review by another organization. If so, they should determine if that oversight authority requires IDPSs or other specific system security resources. Resource constraints should also be taken into consideration by evaluators.
Evaluators also need to define specialized sets of requirements for the following:
- Security capabilities, including information gathering, logging, detection, and prevention
- Performance, including maximum capacity and performance features
- Management, including design and implementation (e.g., reliability, interoperability, scalability, product security), operation and maintenance (including software updates), and training, documentation, and technical support
- Life cycle costs, both initial and maintenance costs.
When evaluating IDPS products, organizations should consider using a combination of several sources of data on the products’ characteristics and capabilities.
Common product data sources include test lab or real-world product testing, vendor-provided information, third-party product reviews, and previous IDPS experience from individuals within the organization and trusted individuals at other organizations.
When using data from other parties, organizations should consider the fidelity of the data because it is often presented without an explanation of how it was generated. There are several major challenges in performing in-depth hands-on IDPS testing, such as the considerable resources needed and the lack of a standard test methodology and test suites, which often make it infeasible. However, limited IDPS testing is helpful for evaluating security requirements, performance, and operation and maintenance capabilities.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is asking for comments on the updated guidelines. Comments should be sent to email@example.com by August 31.
The NIST Guide to Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems can be downloaded here: | <urn:uuid:26668e87-6be1-4ae3-a989-c4bc09dc32eb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://infosecisland.com/documentview/22049-NIST-Guide-to-Intrusion-Detection-and-Prevention-Systems.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280280.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00200-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944041 | 1,693 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Pay Inequity Shows No Signs of Waning
At many of the nation's biggest companies, the wage gap between white men and nearly everyone else in the workplace still exists, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau analysis.
In fact, it was only with Asian-American men, where median wages were just one percent less than those of white men who worked full-time, that the wage gap was nearly obliterated.
Everywhere else, wage gaps were not only apparent, but in many cases, substantial. By race, Hispanic women were found to earn 52 percent of the annual pay of white men in the same roles, black women earned 63 percent, white women earned 73 percent and Asian-American women earned 78 percent.
Young women earned 20 to 25 percent less than young men at the same education level--about equal to men at an education level below theirs.
Meanwhile, white men still wielded the most power in business, making up 81.6 percent of the work force and 83.5 percent of the managers. Men of color held only 6.4 percent of corporate officer positions at 260 big companies.
"It's disheartening because the rate of progress toward equality that we saw in the 1970s and 1980s has slowed in recent years," Heidi Hartmann, president and economist at the Institute for Women's Policy Research, told the Journal. "At the current rate, equal pay will take another 50 years." | <urn:uuid:037ee7b6-51be-435d-9f9b-18ed17f5dcad> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.eweek.com/careers/pay-inequity-shows-no-signs-of-waning.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280888.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00016-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973102 | 299 | 2.84375 | 3 |
How to structure ISO 14001 documentation
Development of the documentation and record control system for your ISO 14001-based EMS (Environmental Management System) is a very important part of the implementation, because it will define the method of creation, publishing, withdrawal, and use of your documents and records. It is up to the organization to create the most suitable documentation, because it will affect the way you maintain and improve your EMS. It can be a burden that will make your EMS harder to maintain, and therefore become just a formality, or it can facilitate the maintenance and enable the company to yield the benefits of ISO 14001 implementation. For more information about the benefits of implementing ISO 14001, see: 6 Key Benefits of ISO 14001.
Which document is more important?
Before starting to develop EMS documentation, it is important to get a clear picture of the purpose of each type of document, and where it belongs in the documentation hierarchy. There are several types of documents used to establish an EMS: policy, objectives, manual, procedures, work instructions, guidelines or SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), and records and forms. Every type of document and record has its place and role in the EMS, as represented below:
Figure 1 – Documentation hierarchy
At the beginning of the implementation and developing of the documentation, people are often confused on which document is the most important and what document comes before another. The simplest way to determine the hierarchy is to see who writes the document, who is it for, and what is its purpose. If the document is written by the top management, then it goes on the top; if it is filled in by the employees, it goes on the bottom of the pyramid.
How to structure your EMS documentation
It is true that the international standard for Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001) requires certain documentation (see this article: List of mandatory documents required by ISO 14001:2015). The purpose and the benefits of the EMS documentation are manifold: it provides a clear framework of the operations in an organization, it allows consistency of processes and better understanding of the EMS, and it provides evidence for achievement of objectives and goals. When designing EMS documentation, you should focus on efficiency and create processes and documents that are applicable in your organization. The best way to start producing the documents is to understand their role and purpose before creating and enforcing them. The documentation for an Environmental Management System should be structured as follows:
1) EMS Policy. A policy represents a declarative statement by an organization – something like a constitution of the system – and all other documents arise from it. The policy is written by the top management and its purpose is to define the general direction and aim of the EMS. The Environmental Policy also provides a framework for establishing EMS Objectives. For more information about the EMS Policy, see: How to write an ISO 14001 environmental policy.
2) EMS Manual. Although it is not a mandatory document according to ISO 14001, it is often used to document the scope of the EMS and the main elements of the EMS and their interaction, and reference to related documents. Since it is a very common document, it is usually the first document that the certification body wants to see to get familiar with the system. In cases where it is a small company or a company with simple hazards, all procedures can be placed into an EMS Manual. For more information about the EMS Manual, see: What is an environmental management system manual?
3) Procedures. EMS procedures can have different formats and structures. They can be narrative, i.e., described through text; they can be more structured by using tables; they can be more illustrative, i.e., flow charts; or they can be any combination of the above. Procedures should include title, purpose, scope, responsibilities and authorities, description of activities, and reference to relevant work instructions, SOPs, and records.
4) Work instructions, guidelines, and SOPs. The main purpose of work instructions is to avoid nonconformities by explaining exactly how a certain activity is carried out. It is usually written for the activities within the process with the highest chances of nonconformities occurring, or for complex or rarely conducted activities. Work instructions can be part of a procedure, or they can be referenced in a procedure. Generally, work instructions have a similar structure to the procedures and cover the same elements; however, the work instructions include details of activities that need to be realized, focusing on the sequencing of the steps, tools, and methods to be used and required accuracy.
5) Records and forms. Finally, there must be some evidence that activities and processes are conducted in the way prescribed in the procedures and work instructions. This is the main purpose of the records and forms. Most of them are filled in by employees, but some of them (e.g., Management Review Minutes) are filled in by the top management. The best way to make them practical is to avoid requiring employees to write essays. Having records with checkboxes instead of empty rows for employees to write sentences will ensure that the forms or records are filled in quickly and easily.
Good documentation is essential for an effective EMS
Dimensioning the EMS documentation based on your organizational needs is essential for a functional EMS. Moreover, properly structured documentation will make your operations much easier, while incorrect documentation will bring you nothing but trouble.
Click here to download a free whitepaper: List of ISO 14001 mandatory documents, to learn which policies, procedures, and plans are mandatory and which are commonly used. | <urn:uuid:1cc38777-07b8-4630-8c1f-1403cb99db43> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://advisera.com/14001academy/blog/2016/11/28/how-to-structure-iso-14001-documentation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282140.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00410-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929204 | 1,128 | 2.640625 | 3 |
|Frost & Sullivan Market Insight||Published: 14 Nov 2001|
By Joerg Dittmer
Automakers are forever seeking ways to reduce vehicle weight, because lower weight means less fuel consumption, which in turn means lower emissions. As a rule of thumb, reducing the weight of a vehicle by 100 pounds adds one mile per gallon (MPG) to fuel economy. Over 100,000 miles, increasing fuel economy from 25 MPG to 26 MPG saves 154 gallons of fuel.
Electronic systems have helped automakers toward this goal because these are often lighter than the mechanical systems that they replace. Additionally, electronic systems have proven to be precise in their functioning, reliable, and low maintenance. Thus, engines, transmissions, airbags, brakes, and many other systems are now controlled electronically on many vehicles.
The electronic revolution is not over - other vehicular systems may benefit from this technology. On future vehicles, steering and braking systems may be not just controlled electronically, but become completely electronic systems, just as throttle control already is going electronic. Collectively, these technologies are called "drive-by-wire".
Electronic Throttle Control
At one time, a cable linked the accelerator pedal to the carburetor, opening a butterfly valve when the driver stepped on the pedal. This mechanical system already is being replaced by wires. With this newer technology, a sensor measures the position of the accelerator pedal to determine the driver's intentions. This sensor sends a signal to the engine management electronic control unit (ECU), which sends a signal to an actuator that appropriately sets the fuel injection system (which has replaced the carburetor).
Similarly, the mechanical linkages of a steering system could be replaced by sensors, wires, an electric motor, and an ECU. Without the mechanical linkages, the steering wheel could be replaced by a joystick - a large steering wheel is only needed to give the driver sufficient leverage should it be necessary to steer without power assist. Without mechanical linkages, leverage is not an issue.
A steer-by-wire system has a position sensor at the steering wheel or joystick which provides input to the steering ECU. The ECU controls an electric motor that sets the position of the front wheels. Substantial weight savings results from the elimination of the steering column. However, it might take drivers a while to get used to the notion that they no longer have a mechanical backup should a problem develop in the electronic system. With redundant components and electronic self-diagnosis, steer-by-wire systems should be as safe as current systems.
Today's power steering systems get power assist from a hydraulic system, but electric power steering (EPS) systems have been developed. This is an enabling technology for steer-by-wire, because electric motors are easy for ECUs to control. EPS has advantages in addition to allowing a related technology to advance. By eliminating the hydraulic pump, which puts a full-time load on the engine, in favor of an electric motor that draws power only when needed, fuel economy is boosted. EPS systems are easier to install in vehicles on the assembly line because hydraulic lines do need to be fitted, and the elimination of power steering fluid is an environmental plus. In mass production, they should be cost-competitive with hydraulic power steering systems.
Similarly, braking systems may go electric. Instead of calipers and wheel cylinders actuated by the pressure of hydraulic brake fluid, electric brake actuators would be used. These would be controlled by an ECU that gets input from a brake pedal sensor.
Electrically actuated brakes are particularly suited for use with technologies such as antilock braking and stability control, because electric actuators can be controlled very precisely by the brake system ECU.
Shift-by-wire technology combines the benefits of manual transmissions (lower cost, weight, and fuel consumption) with the benefits of automatic transmissions (easier driving and less stress on the drivetrain). Shift-by-wire refers to automated manual transmissions, in which computer-controlled actuators handle the shifting. Shifting occurs at the optimal moment, and each shift is perfect.
Steer-by-wire and brake-by-wire have been in development for years, but have not yet appeared on North American production vehicles. Acceptance by automakers is one issue - automakers are concerned about reliability, warranty, safety, and liability issues whenever they are offered new technology. Thus, drive-by-wire technologies must fully prove themselves before they will be widely used. Public acceptance is also an issue - automakers are reluctant to take steps that are too big for the vehicle-buying public to follow.
However, certain dynamics suggest that these technologies eventually will be introduced on North American vehicles. Not only do they advance goals such as better fuel economy and easier vehicle assembly, they may advance safety despite concerns over the lack of mechanical backup should power assist fail - for example, electric systems can function even when the engine stalls, drawing power from the battery. Hydraulic power assist fails if the engine stalls, making steering and braking more difficult.
Electrically powered equipment places additional load on a vehicle's alternator, which must provide extra electricity. Vehicles are expected to transition from 12/14-volt electrical systems to 36/42-volt systems, which make more electricity available because they are more efficient. Additionally, substantially more electricity can be generated by crankshaft-mounted integrated starter-alternators than today's belt-driven alternators can provide.
As 36/42-volt systems and integrated starter-alternators are introduced, automakers can be expected to take advantage of new opportunities opened up by the sudden increase in available onboard electric power.
In the longer term, fuel cells may become practical for mobile applications. With an electric motor propelling the vehicle, it only makes sense for other vehicular systems to be electrically powered.
When Will It Happen?
The key question, of course, is when will these new technologies appear on the road? Drive-by-wire systems are already appearing in Europe. For example, electro-hydraulic brake-by-wire appeared on the Mercedes-Benz S-Class in August 2001. This is a strong indication that drive-by-wire technologies will also come to North American vehicles. Europe tends to be ahead of North America in automotive technology.
Electro-hydraulic power steering (EHPS) systems are one step to full electric power steering, which in turn will be followed by steer-by-wire systems. EHPS drives the power steering pump by an electric motor rather than by a belt tied to the engine. This intermediate technology was used in some low-volume vehicles years ago.
A kind of steer-by-wire technology, called Quadrasteer, will appear on the 2002 GMC Sierra Denali. Quadrasteer is a four-wheel steering system developed by Delphi Automotive Systems. By allowing the rear wheels to turn up to 12 degrees, maneuverability is enhanced. Rear-wheel steering is accomplished with by-wire technology.
Similarly, anti-lock brake systems and electronic stability systems are steps toward brake-by-wire systems. Drivers are already familiar with anti-lock brakes, and awareness of stability systems is increasing. Electric-over-hydraulic braking systems may be introduced before full electric brakes are introduced.
Such gradual introduction facilitates the acceptance of new technologies.
However, the availability of more electric power will be key to the wide application of full electric systems. Automakers have been considering 36/42-volt systems, which would allow more vehicular systems to go electric. But automakers have delayed committing to 36/42-volt systems as the costs and challenges of their introduction have become clearer. Automotive use of this technology is still several years off.
Cost-effective fuel cells for electric vehicles may become available late in this decade. However, fuel cells may appear earlier as auxiliary power units that supplement or replace the alternator on conventionally powered vehicles. This technology would also facilitate the introduction of additional electrically powered vehicular systems. | <urn:uuid:04f4090e-89f0-4734-aba6-a241ee896103> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/market-insight-print.pag?docid=CEHR-54YTXP | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280364.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00311-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941543 | 1,641 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Green tech: NASA brings space tech down to earth
NASA is getting into the green tech business, it seems, by using software designed for such things as the International Space Station and Mars Rover missions to control indoor energy systems.
Discover.com asked Steve Zornetzer, associate center director at NASA Ames, what was going on, and he explained how the stuff used to optimize outer space environments can just as well be used to track more mundane earth-bound energy sinks such as temperature, electricity, water and lights.
It can be used to reduce the energy demands on solar panels when the sun don’t shine so much, for example, or to calculate what the air conditioning demands of a room might be at any given time of the day and control the temperature accordingly.
A building that NASA is calling Sustainability Base (of course) will be the test site for all of this. Zornetzer expects it to be “the greenest, if not among the greenest, government buildings.”
Given that all of government is under orders to cut back on energy use, them’s fighting words. I doubt that the Defense or Energy departments, to name just a few, will stand idly by and let that boast stand!
Posted by Brian Robinson on Jan 20, 2010 at 12:19 PM | <urn:uuid:b5ad4c4e-4de4-47a3-973e-8336fd0df0b4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://fcw.com/blogs/quick-study/2010/01/nasa-green-buildings.aspx | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281001.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00127-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934163 | 273 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The contest is based on the DES cipher. A brief piece of printable ASCII text (containing byte values in hexadecimal notation from 0x20 to 0x7e) will be appended to the fixed 24-character string "The unknown message is:". The result will be padded and then encrypted with the associated cipher under a randomly-generated key. The padding method used will be that specified in the RSA Laboratories' Public Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) #7 document.
In particular, if the total plaintext to be encrypted is s bytes in length then, since DES has a block size of eight bytes, the plaintext will be padded with exactly 8-(s mod 8) bytes, each of which take the value 8-(s mod 8). As an example, if the complete plaintext requires exactly one additional byte to produce an integral number of plaintext blocks, then it is padded with the byte that has hexadecimal value 0x01. If the plaintext needs exactly two additional bytes, then it is padded with the bytes 0x02 0x02, and so forth. Finally, if the text needs no additional bytes to produce an integral number of plaintext blocks, then it is padded with eight bytes, each containing the value 0x08. This means that plaintexts with a length in bytes equal to a multiple of eight, are padded with the string 0x08 0x08 0x08 0x08 0x08 0x08 0x08 0x08.
Encryption of the padded plaintext will take place in CBC mode (cipher-block chaining mode), with a randomly-generated key and a randomly generated IV (initial value).
For example, if the mystery text for a DES challenge were "Clipper chips go well with salsa!" (thanks to Kazuo Ohta for introducing us to Clipper chips at Crypto!), then, after adding in the known header bytes and performing padding, the actual plaintext to be encrypted would be the following eight 64-bit blocks, in this order (shown in hexadecimal):
61 67 65 20 69 73 3a 20 43 6c 69 70 70 65 72 20
63 68 69 70 73 20 67 6f 20 77 65 6c 6c 20 77 69
74 68 20 73 61 6c 73 61 21 07 07 07 07 07 07 07
The ciphertext produced, of course, would depend on the key and the IV that is used for the encryption. For this example, the ciphertext would also consist of eight 64-bit blocks.
At the start of the contest, the ciphertext (the encrypted text) for that contest will be revealed, together with the IV used for the encryption. The first sender of the key that was used during encryption will win the prize for that contest.
The candidate key must be sent via email to RSA Data Security in precisely the fashion specified in the section "Format of Submissions", and the winning submission for a contest will be the one that was received first by RSA Data Security and processed and judged to be correct.
No employees of RSA Data Security or their relatives are eligible to participate or win prizes in any of RSA Data Security's cryptographic challenges.
RSA Data Security reserves the right to change the contest rules at any time at its sole discretion, without notice, including the right to change or extend the challenge lists, to change the prize amounts, and/or to terminate the contest. RSA Data Security is the sole arbiter and administrator for this contest; the judgment of RSA Data Security in all matters is final.
Queries on either the RSA Factoring Challenge or the RSA Secret-Key Challenge can be addressed to:
RSA Challenge Administrator
RSA Data Security, Inc.
2955 Campus Drive, Suite 400
San Mateo, California 94403-2507 - USA
If you have any questions regarding the RSA DES Challenge III, send email to firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:44ef1733-505e-4e8e-81dd-bab51052a3ee> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.emc.com/emc-plus/rsa-labs/historical/contest-rules.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281001.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00127-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.874319 | 818 | 3.140625 | 3 |
3.6.4 What are RC5 and RC6?
RC5 [Riv95] is a fast block cipher designed by Ronald Rivest for RSA Data Security (now RSA Security) in 1994. It is a parameterized algorithm with a variable block size, a variable key size, and a variable number of rounds. Allowable choices for the block size are 32 bits (for experimentation and evaluation purposes only), 64 bits (for use a drop-in replacement for DES), and 128 bits. The number of rounds can range from 0 to 255, while the key can range from 0 bits to 2040 bits in size. Such built-in variability provides flexibility at all levels of security and efficiency.
There are three routines in RC5: key expansion, encryption, and decryption. In the key-expansion routine, the user-provided secret key is expanded to fill a key table whose size depends on the number of rounds. The key table is then used in both encryption and decryption. The encryption routine consists of three primitive operations: integer addition, bitwise XOR, and variable rotation. The exceptional simplicity of RC5 makes it easy to implement and analyze. Indeed, like the RSA system, the encryption steps of RC5 can be written on the "back of an envelope".
The heavy use of data-dependent rotations and the mixture of different operations provide the security of RC5. In particular, the use of data-dependent rotations helps defeat differential and linear cryptanalysis (see Question 2.4.5).
In the five years since RC5 was proposed, there have been numerous studies of RC5's security [KY95] [KM96] [BK98] [Sel98]. Each study has provided a greater understanding of how RC5's structure and components contribute to its security. For a summary of known cryptanalytic results, see the survey article [Yin97].
RC6 is a block cipher based on RC5 and designed by Rivest, Sidney, and Yin for RSA Security. Like RC5, RC6 is a parameterized algorithm where the block size, the key size, and the number of rounds are variable; again, the upper limit on the key size is 2040 bits. The main goal for the inventors has been to meet the requirements of the AES (see Section 3.3). Indeed, RC6 is among the five finalists (see Question 3.3.2).
There are two main new features in RC6 compared to RC5: the inclusion of integer multiplication and the use of four b/4-bit working registers instead of two b/2-bit registers as in RC5 (b is the block size). Integer multiplication is used to increase the diffusion achieved per round so that fewer rounds are needed and the speed of the cipher can be increased. The reason for using four working registers instead of two is technical rather than theoretical. Namely, the default block size of the AES is 128 bits; while RC5 deals with 64-bit operations when using this block size, 32-bit operations are preferable given the intended architecture of the AES
The U.S. patent office granted the RC5 patent to RSA Data Security (now RSA Security) in May 1997. RC6 is proprietary of RSA Security but can be freely used for research and evaluation purposes during the AES evaluation period. We emphasize that if RC6 is selected for the AES, RSA Security will not require any licensing or royalty payments for products using the algorithm; there will be no restrictions beyond those specified for the AES by the U.S. government. However, RC6 may remain a trademark of RSA Security. | <urn:uuid:a6063464-12b1-4751-b420-cc1999964d93> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.emc.com/emc-plus/rsa-labs/standards-initiatives/rc5-and-rc6.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281001.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00127-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913139 | 744 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Despite stagnation at the upper echelon of supercomputing, countries around the world are continuing to invest in supercomputing as a tool for science and innovation. In Austria, several universities have joined forces to purchase an energy-efficient supercomputer that relies on oil immersion to keep cool.
Eight Austrian universities are participating in the project and will share the supercomputing resource, which was recently installed at the Science Center at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) and became operational on July 4, 2014.
Phase VSC-3 (Vienna Scientific Cluster 3), as it’s called – VSC-1 and VSC-2 were predecessors – emphasizes not just computing power but energy-efficiency, facilitated by an innovative oil-based cooling method. Built by Clustervision, VSC-3 has 2,020 nodes, each with 16 processor cores, for more than 32,000 cores in all. Capable of outputting 600 teraflops of computing power, VSC-3 will accelerate research in a wide range of disciplines, including meteorology, materials research, biology and particle physics.
“Modern science would be inconceivable without adequate simulation and calculation methods,” explains Horst Bischof, Vice Rector for Research at Graz University of Technology. “As a technical university, it is crucial that we have access to the requisite computer capacities. Take, for example, the simulations performed in modern-day mechanical engineering. With VSC-3, we can provide our researchers with a modern infrastructure that can compete on an international scale.”
VSC-3 employs oil-cooling instead of air or water to keep its power-hungry processors from overheating. The system’s processors are immersed in tanks containing 35 tonnes of paraffin oil. Because there is no air cooling, the computer room can forego costly and energy-intensive air conditioning systems.
According to Professor Herbert Störi of TU Wien, a project manager for VSC-3, the system uses about 540 kilowatts of power – around 0.8 kilowatts per teraflop. This is a much better efficiency metric than that of its predecessor, the VSC-2 cluster. Although it was very energy-efficient for its time, the 150-teraflops VSC-2 cluster required roughly 2.3 kilowatts per teraflop.
Project officials explain that the VSC-3 was designed primarily for energy-efficiency and to satisfy the needs of the Austrian science program, and not to meet an artificial target. “Many of the computers currently topping the world rankings are now made up of graphic cards. However, we need to offer processors on which the existing scientific programme codes will run as well as possible,” states Professor Störi. “You have to make a choice: do you want a racing car or do you want a bus, which can transport many more people with a similar amount of power? In any case, VSC-3 is ideally suited to the current needs of Austria’s scientific community.” | <urn:uuid:f3e4dedd-c16d-4fbd-b04d-1aa898f7dd21> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2014/07/15/austrian-unis-stand-paraffin-cooled-supercomputer/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281426.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00035-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945993 | 642 | 3.265625 | 3 |
First there's a little stutter. Next a program hangs, and a funny noise creeps from your machine. Then that familiar blue screen slaps you in the face. Your computer just crashed, and all you can do is sit in the awkward silence of a restart, and hope it wasn't fatal.
There are many possible causes for these hellish episodes, and it's important to be educated on the why and hows of PC crashes to prevent them in the future. After all, the next crash could be your PC's last. Following is a rundown of seven common causes and solutions.
Many blue screens are a result of hardware and installation conflicts. All of your system's components consume IRQs (interrupt request channels) when installed, and every device requires its own channel to function properly. When two devices share the same channel and are used simultaneously, a crash can occur.
Thumb through your Device Manager, and look for any devices marked with a yellow exclamation point. These are the ones with issues, and can usually be fixed with a driver update. Just search your device manufacturer's website for the latest driver software, or, in a pinch, reinstall the offending hardware itself.
Bad memory is to blame for many blue screens and failed boots. Fortunately, however, your RAM modules are some of the easiest components to check and replace.
First, use the software utility Memtest86+ to ensure your RAM is the problem. If errors arise, you next need to determine exactly which memory stick is to blame. To do this, remove all the sticks from your systemsave one inserted in the primary memory slot. If the system boots fine, and no errors are detected in Memtest86+, continue testing in the same fashionone stick at a time, inserted in the primary slotuntil the system fails to boot, or Memtest86+ indicates problems.
Eventually, you'll nail down exactly which memory module is causing trouble, and then you can replace it with a fresh, clean stick (just make it's fully compatible with your motherboard and other sticks of RAM).
Heat is thy enemy
Computers get hot. We know this from the loud fans bolted inside our desktops, and the alarming burning sensation we feel on our legs after using a laptop for too long. Everything inside a PC generates heat, and heat can cause components to become unstable and crash your PC. Indeed, computers are designed to crash as a last-ditch effort to protect their own internal components from permanent heat damage.
If you suspect your PC isn't effectively dispersing enough heat, first check to make sure all your fans are spinning properly. If one isn't moving, or appears to be spinning abnormally slow, check its connections to make sure it's properly powered. If all appears fine, but the fan still isn't doing its job, it's best to replace it.
Next make sure that all of your PC's vents, grates and filters are unhindered by dust, pet hair and other gross materials that prevent proper airflow. These areas are hotbeds (pun intended) for heat buildup. If you find any problem areas (see the disgusting example below), use a can of compressed air to clear the airways. | <urn:uuid:52471b86-1fd1-4ba7-bf59-36e3f1bb07f9> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.itworld.com/article/2715178/hardware/anatomy-of-a-pc-crash--7-scenarios--and-how-to-avoid-them.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280801.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00063-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940262 | 657 | 2.5625 | 3 |
A growing number of states are taking up legislation that addresses self-driving vehicles in an effort to make it easier for researchers to explore the technology.
But most of the legislation deals with how states can facilitate testing -- as opposed to consumer use of the vehicles -- largely because truly automated vehicles aren't yet available on the market. When that day comes, states will face a host of thorny questions. Historically, states have regulated drivers, and the feds have regulated vehicles. But what happens when the vehicle is the driver?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said issues such as licensing, driver training, and how the vehicles will be operated are best handled by the states. "Some states are going to act much faster than the feds can or will," says Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, who has written extensively about the legal implications of automated vehicles.
Nevada became the first state to authorize the operation of autonomous vehicles on its roadways in 2011; since then California, Florida and the District of Columbia have all passed laws that open the door for self-driving vehicle testing on public roads as well. Those places -- and other states considering bills -- have largely deferred many of the questions of how to regulate autonomous vehicles to their motor vehicle departments.
"Legislatures usually break things when they create rules themselves," says New Jersey state Sen. Tom Kean, Jr., who introduced a bill this summer that calls on the Motor Vehicle Commission to develop regulations for self-driving vehicles. "Five years from now, or 25 years from now, we won't know what technology exists."
But not even those departments have all the answers yet. Florida's new automated vehicle law, for example, requires that the state's highway patrol submit a report to the legislature next year, but it's unclear whether they'll have learned much since the law was enacted in 2012; nobody has actually registered an autonomous vehicle in the Sunshine State yet. "At this point, we're not certain what we're going to report," says Julie Baker, chief of the Bureau of Issuance Oversight within the Department of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles.
NHTSA expects its first stage of self-driving vehicle research to be completed within the next four years. Meanwhile, some industry officials say by 2025, fully autonomous vehicles could be mainstream, according to the Wall Street Journal. That gives states some time -- but not tons -- to start sorting out the legal questions that come with the technology. Here are six they should consider.
1. Will drivers need any sort of training?
Driver's education classes have been a staple of American teenage life, as have the nerve-wracking driver's tests that follow. Thankfully, drivers aren't required get a new license and go through the rigmarole of driver's ed every time they buy a new vehicle. But would drivers need new training before getting behind the wheel of a self-driving vehicle? If training became a requirement, would it be the responsibility of the the government, the manufacturer, the dealer, or some other entity?
The answer to this question probably won't be clear until the technology is further along and officials have an understanding of just how intuitive fully-automated vehicles will or won't be. "If you asked five years ago, should there be special training required for people who use adaptive cruise control... you really could have gone either way on that," says Smith, of Stanford. Today, training of that sort wold seem preposterous.
NHTSA, for its part, recommends states develop a special license or endorsement based on some sort of prerequisite like a test or certification from a manufacturer of autonomous vehicle systems. Smith says states will also have to decide whether people with disabilities that preclude them from driving traditional vehicles would be eligible for an autonomous vehicle instead.
2. Is it possible to speed?
Just about every driver has, at some point, inched at least a few notches past the speed limit either to save time on a trip or to overtake a slower vehicle. But speeding is illegal. One key question that both policymakers and manufacturers will need to answer is whether it should be technically possible for a self-driven car to go above the speed limit.
The big promise of autonomous vehicles is the assumption that they'd be much safer than typical cars. On one hand, if they have the capability of speeding, that would seem at odds with the goal of safety. On the other hand, if breaking the speed limit isn't possible in autonomous vehicles, they could be unpopular with some drivers.
Smith says that so far, automated vehicles in the testing phase allow the human tester to set the speed. Assuming that continues to be the case with consumer vehicles, violations of the speed limit, from a legal perspective, would clearly fall on the driver's shoulders. "You could make creative arguments that if there's no driver, the law doesn't apply," Smith says. "But that won't fly."
3. Is distracted driving allowed?
Self-driving cars have been touted as enormously safe -- even safer than a human driver -- but during the testing phase, they are still required to have an alert driver at the helm just in case of malfunctions.
If self-driving cars become available to consumers, lawmakers will need to decide just how alert drivers need to be. One big selling point to consumers would likely be freedom they'd enjoy during their commutes to work on other activities instead of paying attention to the road. Or, hypothetically, someone who's had a few too many drinks might find an autonomous vehicle to be a safe way to get home. But is the technology reliable enough to handle drivers who are completely disengaged from the experience, or even impaired?
Without clear legal language saying otherwise, the person using the autonomous vehicle is still considered the driver and would have the same legal obligations as any other driver in the state: no texting (if it's prohibited) and certainly no drinking.
But Nevada's law has a twist and specifically says autonomous vehicle drivers can text (though drunk driving is still prohibited). That would seemingly suggest states have the ability to create narrowly-tailored laws addressing specific types of distractions.
NHTSA recommends that states require properly-licensed drivers to be in the driver's seat and ready to take control, even when the vehicle is in self-driving mode. But in order to make the vehicles appealing, states may need to relieve motorists of some of the current duties they have when driving today.
4. Who's liable for accidents?
Perhaps the biggest question facing self-driving cars is who's ultimately responsible when things go wrong. If a self-driving car causes a collision, who's really to blame: the driver or the manufacturer? And can someone get a ticket while behind the wheel of a self-driving car? It wouldn't be hard to imagine a motorist arguing, "I wasn't driving; the car was."
Indeed, some skeptics have suggested the liability question is the biggest threat to the future of the technology, though Smith disagrees. "I think when the technology is ready and society considers it to be safe, then the law will find a way," he argues.
Human drivers will likely remain legally liable for parking and speeding violations, he says. But "the tragic stuff," like vehicular manslaughter, could be a different story. In that case, "to be guilty legally, a human has to have acted with some level of culpability," Smith says. "If you're sitting in an autonomous vehicle, and you're not behaving recklessly, and the vehicle swerves over and hits somebody, you are not guilty of manslaughter. You didn't even act."
But in the same situation, depending on state law, both the operator of the vehicle as well as the manufacturer -- and perhaps others involved in its design -- could be held liable if a defect caused or even contributed to the collision. And if computer programmers eventually play a bigger role in the way vehicles move than drivers do, it's likely manufacturers will build the cost of litigation and insurance into their vehicles.
5. What kind of registration would the vehicle have?
Generally, consumer vehicles have the same type of registration, but should a self-driving car be subject to a special category? And should autonomous vehicles have easily-identifiable license plates so other motorists as well as police are aware they're dealing with something different? States are still sorting out those questions. Nevada, for example, has a special tag for autonomous vehicles, but California has yet to make a decision.
Smith raises another question. Very soon low-speed, low-mass vehicles -- think glorified golf carts -- will have the ability to operate on a closed-loop to help shuttle people through places like airports and college campuses. Those vehicles might not need any sort of human driver at all, which could further complicate questions about registration.
6. How to transition from manual to auto-pilot?
Self-driving cars can be driven in a traditional fashion as well as an automated mode, but lawmakers and manufacturers will need to figure out how drivers should switch between those two functions. Would a motorist need to choose one or the other at the moment he starts his car? Or could he switch freely back-and-forth while in motion?
If the latter is possible, how would police know whether the car or the driver was responsible during an accident? At one time Nevada, considered an external light that indicating when a car was in autonomous mode, but that idea was killed. The question about transitioning modes is an early one, and the answer will largely depend on how the technology evolves.
This story originally appeared on GOVERNING.com. | <urn:uuid:c6338b58-2849-4748-9684-c6d2fa4d63b0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.govtech.com/transportation/6-Questions-States-Should-Ask-About-Driverless-Cars.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281450.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00457-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971941 | 1,974 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Visual Search Presents a Challenge for People and Computers
June 24, 2013
We found a recent Science Daily article, “Visual Search Function: Where Scene Context Happens in Our Brain,“ to be pretty fascinating. We might write a lot about how search works as far as computers process search but another interesting perspective lies in the investigation of how search happens through our eyes and with the power of our brain behind it.
The brain, since the beginnings of human evolution, has developed a framework for search based mostly on context such as the surrounding environment and scene context.
According to the article, scene context creates a strong bias in search. In one study discussed, many people that were shown images of something that looked like a computer mouse on a desk automatically interpreted the object as a mouse.
Computers are only recently being taught such a skill set found in the area of our brains known as the lateral occipital complex:
‘So, if you’re looking for a computer mouse on a cluttered desk, a machine would be looking for things shaped like a mouse. It might find it, but it might see other objects of similar shape, and classify that as a mouse,’ [Miguel Eckstein, professor in UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences] said. Computer vision systems might also not associate their target with specific locations or other objects. So, to a machine, the floor is just as likely a place for a mouse as a desk.
Sure, text search remains a work in progress. But why not go ahead and take on a challenge with visual search?
Megan Feil, June 24, 2013 | <urn:uuid:c18521af-a0a7-4126-8bbe-7257e5520add> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2013/06/24/visual-search-presents-a-challenge-for-people-and-computers/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00485-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957261 | 342 | 3.25 | 3 |
For millions of Americans, the Internet is not only their main source of news and information, it also provides an outlet to stay connected with family and friends.
But for those with hearing or sight impairments — or both — access to the Internet has been an impossibility ... until now.
The National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program (NDBEDP), more commonly known as iCanConnect, is a federally funded initiative designed to help those Americans with combined hearing and vision loss to connect through the use of electronic devices.
Established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to comply with the 21st Century Video and Communications Accessibility Act, the law requires people with disabilities to have access to modern communication technology that enables distance communication, according to information from icanconnect.org.
“This program recognizes that there is a significant population that has impairments to sight or vision,” said Marcia Brooks, national project manager with the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Mass. “It also serves those that were born or not born with sensory loss. There are seniors that may have had vision loss but are now also losing their hearing.”
She noted that the number of people in the United States who are categorized as deaf-blind ranges from 40,000 to 70,000.
The main focus of iCanConnect is to provide those with hearing and sight impairments with modern technology that gives them improved communications and access to information outlets such as the Internet. Financial assistance for program participants based on income guidelines is also available for single individuals and families.
Brooks said the program ultimately “levels the playing field” for those who are deaf-blind in a world where technology is ever changing. “To be able to access the Internet and use social media not only adds a lot of value to their lives but also increases the changes for employment,” she added.
Ryan Odland, coordinator for the New York Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program with the Helen Keller National Center (HKNC), noted that isolation for those living with sight and hearing impairments is a major issue that limits options and often restricts individuals to their homes.
“The technology offered through this program allows deaf-blind individuals to join in as contributive members with the rest of our society,” said Odland. “Humans depend on one another for support to function, deaf-blind individuals are no different.”
Officials involved with iCanConnect said deaf-blind individuals often have to purchase more than one computer in order to participate in the program.
“This technology enables qualified deaf-blind individuals with low income to gain equal access to the telecommunication hardware and software necessary to communicate with his or her family, friends and peers,” Odland said. “They need additional hardware such as refreshable Braille display devices, amplifiers – FM system, monitors with display of better quality for clarity, as well as software such as screen magnifications and screen readers [text to speech].”
Odland noted that iCanConnect gives deaf and blind individuals an opportunity to gain equal footing in what he termed “our rapidly evolving world.”
“This does not just connect them with other people, but also opens doors to many new possibilities in employment and social mediums,” he said.
To implement the program, the Perkins School works with the Helen Keller Center and serves as the lead agency in 14 states, while various other agencies serve to administer the program in 20 other states.
According to Odland, HKNC worked with the American Association of the Deaf-Blind and Perkins School in spearheading the movement to pass the 21st Century Video and Communications Accessibility Act, and that is what lead to the program's inception.
“We meet with the Federal Communications Commission on a regular basis to review the program and make recommendations to improve [its] execution,” Odland said.
According to the iCanConnect website, several technologies are used as part of the program.
Braille devices include various refreshable displays and sophisticated multipurpose devices that enhance access to distance communication. Some can be used as stand-alone devices connected through Wi-Fi, while others are paired with a mobile device to provide tactile access to email, text messaging and other modern communication resources used by the general public. To receive Braille equipment, an eligible participant needs either Internet access or cellular service.
The program also provides either Windows or Apple computers, be they desktops or laptops, to eligible participants with Internet access.
Brooks noted that numerous Apple computers and mobile devices are sold with pre-installed software for use by those with sight or hearing impairments.
Also included in the program are amplified speakerphones, cordless phones and other related devices that connect to the landline telephone service. Signalers that provide audible, visual and vibrating alerts that a phone is ringing or new email has arrived are also available.
On the software side, program participants are able to access screen readers and screen magnifier programs. According to the iCanConnect website, a screen reader can serve as an interface between a computer and a Braille display. The user interacts with the screen reader and the computer via a complex set of keyboard commands. A screen magnifier selectively enlarges what is on the computer screen to enable access by individuals with limited vision.
As for the future, Odland expects iCanConnect will continue and grow beyond its current scope.
"It is currently in its pilot phase, and we anticipate that the program will continue to evolve,” Odland said. “To what extent, I do not know, but it is safe to say that we will be seeing more companies pitching in their resources to develop new assistive technology to make current and future technology accessible for deaf-blind community.” | <urn:uuid:32343f74-7b4f-4760-852c-858ceeadf679> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.govtech.com/internet/iCanConnect-Helps-Deaf-Blind-Americans-Access-the-Internet.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281202.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00237-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954926 | 1,203 | 3.09375 | 3 |
"When your data passes through a public network--such as the Wi-Fi at the coffee shop or airport--it is at risk." I've been writing variations on that sentence for 10 years now, and I expect I'll be writing it for many more. That's because it's easy to snoop on such networks, and the data on them isn't safeguarded against those prying eyes. You have to take action to keep your data safe. Fortunately, doing so doesn't have to be hard.
You could encrypt networked data one service at a time, by securing your email sessions or configuring your Twitter and Facebook accounts to use HTTPS. (Actually, I recommend both steps regardless of whatever other security measures you take.) But that means adjusting settings in lots of different apps, one at a time. There's a more comprehensive solution: a virtual private network (VPN).
When you set up a VPN on your Mac or iOS device, client software encrypts all of your outbound data (wrapping it in something often called a secure tunnel) and sends it to a secure server. That server has the appropriate encryption keys and other credentials to unwrap the data and send it along to wherever it's supposed to go. Likewise, the server returns data--requested webpages, email messages, or even streaming audio and video--to the client through the same tunnel; only the client can unravel those responses or streams.
VPNs are valuable because several segments of the path between you and the Internet are easy to exploit. It could be the segment from your Mac, iPhone, or iPad to the coffeeshop's Wi-Fi network. It could be the ethernet network behind the counter to which that router connects. In some cases, such as countries without a firm grasp on the idea of free speech, the weak link could even be the ISP that connects that coffeeshop to the Internet at large. VPNs can help protect your data along all of those vulnerable segments. (That's why VPNs have become critical tools for dissidents worldwide.)
Corporations use VPNs all the time, to keep communications to and from remote workers as secure as those that take place inside the office. Companies often require mobile workers and telecommuters to use the corporate VPN to connect to internal, for-employees-only servers. Using such secure links, those remote workers can also take advantage of the company's Internet connection--including filtering, virus-checking and firewall--for general Net access.
If you don't have access to a corporate VPN, you do have an alternative: VPNs-for-hire that anyone can use, which provide many of the same protections as those company VPNs. These services rent VPN access by the month or by the year. Their servers live in data centers around the world, and you use the client software built into OS X or iOS to protect connections between your machines and those servers.
Settings and apps
Virtually all of these services try to take the pain out of configuring VPN connections by offering step-by-step instructions for entering all the specs--server, password, connection type, and other details--for the major software platforms, including iOS, Mac OS X, Windows, and Android. Still, this setup process almost always requires some tedious data entry; fortunately, you only have to do it once per VPN for each device. (Some services do offer downloadable packages for desktop operating systems which automate setup.)
In Mac OS X, you enter VPN details and manage those connections in the Network pane of System Preferences. It's a good idea to check the Show VPN Status in Menu Bar option for any VPN connection you set up in that pane; you can then connect to, see the status of, and disconnect from your VPN connection without reopening the Network pane.
In iOS, you use the Settings app (General -> Network -> VPN) to configure a VPN; once you've done that, a VPN on-off switch appears in the main Settings view.
There are also several iOS apps that seem to provide VPN services, but they are not quite what they seem: They're really conduits for payment to private VPN services, rather than VPN clients per se. They use in-app purchasing to let you subscribe to a specific VPN for a period of time; some also allow you to purchase a fixed amount of bandwidth to be used in that period.
These apps do provide you with the necessary configuration details, but you must still enter those details manually in the Settings apps. A few of them can also provide a mobileconfig file customized for your account. These files download then prompt you to accept them; when you do, they auto-configure your VPN account. Then you can just use Settings to activate or deactivate a VPN connection.
A few examples
These services differentiate themselves in their support for VPN protocols. Some of those protocols--L2TP-over-IPsec and PPTP--occasionally fail on public networks because the routers on those networks intentionally or incidentally block portions of the connection those protocols require. (On any given network, both might fail, or one might fail while the other works.)
PPTP is considered the weakest of the common VPN protocols from a security standpoint, because short PPTP passwords can be cracked. (If you do use that protocol, make sure to use a password of 12 or more characters that mixes text and numbers nonsensically.) If you've subscribed to a service that uses only PPTP, you might be stuck; subscribing to a more expensive offering, even from the same provider, could give you more flexibility.
Another way these apps/services differ: Some providers (especially those targeting iOS) may limit your monthly bandwidth, throttle overall speed, or recommend against video streaming (or require special configuration for it). Others offer multiple server locations, which you can choose to speed up a connection or to route around governmental snooping.
There are tons of private-VPN providers. Looking at three that have stood the test of time as examples, you can get a sense of the differences that distinguish all of them:
Witopia: Witopia has two services: personalVPN (Basic), which costs from $6 per month to $50 per year, and personalVPN Pro ($40 for 6 months or $70 for a year). Both versions support PPTP, L2TP-over-IPsec, and the Cisco flavor of IPsec used by iOS. The Basic flavor excludes a desktop SSL option, which may be needed in some countries or networks. Witopia provides unlimited bandwidth. WiTopia offers a desktop VPN management program that handles connections, bypassing the Network preference pane. But it also provides manual setup guides for mobile and desktop operating systems.
publicVPN: A combined PPTP and L2TP-over-IPsec provider, publicVPN charges $7 a month or $70 per year, with no bandwidth limits. You have to type or tap in the configuration details manually.
TunnelBear: Works in Mac OS X and Windows only, and requires a software installation. A free version includes 500 MB of use each month, while the $5 per month and $50 per year offerings get rid of the bandwidth limits. It's optimized for video streaming, especially to get video services that aren't available in your country.
Those are only three. A search of the Web and the iTunes App Store will find dozens of other options. If one of those three doesn't meet your needs, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding one that does.
Glenn Fleishman is a senior contributor to Macworld, and is one of the writers of the Economist's Babbage blog. He is also the author of Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network (2012, Take Control Books.
This story, "How to surf safely with a VPN-for-hire" was originally published by Macworld. | <urn:uuid:a673441a-bf71-4b49-82bc-d81a4b16a10d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.itworld.com/article/2726859/networking/how-to-surf-safely-with-a-vpn-for-hire.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281263.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00081-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938076 | 1,614 | 2.703125 | 3 |
In a previous article dealing with online security prompted many readers with home PCs to ask for advice on how to stay safe and still get the most out of the “information highway”.
The first and fundamental step is to install software on the computer that will protect you from any nasty surprises. This software should include a program capable of detecting potentially dangerous activity on the computer as well as warning when a dangerous file tries to enter the system.
It should also be capable of detecting any suspicious file or activity, even if the software has no prior record of this activity. An old enemy is easy to spot, but what about new threats? Reliable software should be able to detect dangerous behavior without needing a previous description of the culprit.
This software should also be able to operate at low levels i.e. when data enters the system, the program should be the first to know it and alert the user when necessary. For example, in the event of an e-mail-borne virus that activates simply when viewed in the Preview Pane (without having to open the message or any attached files), the user should be alerted even before the e-mail program notifies that a new message has been received.
Another essential feature of a reliable program is that it should be independent from the rest of the software on the computer. This means that the protection should be the same regardless of whether browsing the Internet with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator or Opera, or whether mail is processed through Eudora, Outlook Express or Pegasus.
So what kind of software are we looking at here? We’re talking about antivirus programs. Although you might think that, as the name suggests, these programs only protect against viruses, they are also a fundamental part of protection against all attacks. By preventing even the smallest amount of software from entering your computer, no one will be able to take control of your system to carry out malicious acts, like hackers.
An antivirus doesn’t just simply deal with viruses. As the software is fundamentally designed to root out viruses, it is quite simple to add information to the database to detect Trojans, backdoors, etc. So when an attacker tries to insert a program on a computer, it will be filtered by the antivirus, which will sound the alarm.
Flaws or vulnerabilities in software applications are another cause for concern, as they can make an attacker’s job easier, without them even needing to insert programs or code on the victim’s computer. In these cases there is usually a solution or “patch’ available before most users have even realized that a problem exists. All software manufacturers are constantly updating products to protect against possible errors, so it is well worth being aware of these issues and applying the updates where necessary. If in doubt, the manufactures website is usually a reliable source for the latest information and all license holders are entitled to download these updates. So there are good reasons for avoiding pirated software after all!
Speaking of updates, remember that all antiviruses should be updated regularly. How often? Well this really depends on the manufacturer. Each vendor will no doubt recommend updating as soon as a new update is available -logically-, but bear in mind that 15 or so new viruses appear every day, waiting two or three days before updating an antivirus can prove to be an increased risk.
Another practical security measure is the installation of a personal firewall. Firewalls constantly monitor activity across all ports on a computer. It is possible to configure the firewall to keep a specific port closed or to warn when someone is scanning open ports
These tools are generally not easy to configure, and they are not simple to configure, which is why they are not recommended for basic users. Reading the user guide carefully before installing and configuring your personal settings can save you valuable time.
To stay on top of security when connected to the Internet, there are several systems for finding out exactly what is happening to your PC at any moment. If you have a personal firewall and an up-to-date antivirus installed, much of this monitoring is carried out automatically by these applications.
That said, it is still worth checking the security levels in your browsers. In most cases, security settings in a browser can be configured according to a wide range of security criteria, from accepting almost everything to rejecting all but the most trustworthy information. A balance between security and practicality is normally the most advisable.
A powerful tool, called NBSTAT, exists which lets users monitor open connections on their PCs. Simply using the parameter “-a”, you will be able see all active connections on your computer. For example, type “NETSTAT -A” and you will see the following:
TCP FCUADRA:1588 WWW.PANDASOFTWARE.COM:80 ESTABLISHED
The information after TCP, is the type of protocol used, the first word indicates the name of the local machine, followed by the port in use. This is followed by the website and port to which you’re connected and finally the connection status.
The most frequently used ports are those used for http connections (80), e-mail (110 and 25), FTP transfers (21), accessing NNTP newsgroups (119) or IRC chats (194). All ports between 0 and 1,023 are registered for standard services, and those between 1,024 and 49,151 are assigned to non-standard, but recognized functions. Ports from 49,152 to 65,535 however, are dynamic and can be used for a variety of functions, which can unfortunately include the notorious activities of Trojans. If you notice that one of these ports is open, it is time to start worrying as someone else may be accessing your system. The web page http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers has a complete list of these ports.
The ports used by Trojans and other malware tend to vary greatly. In fact there are so many that it would be virtually impossible to list them all here. Your antivirus vendor should be able to help you determine whether a connection has been made by an e-mail program or Trojan trying to enter your machine.
If you suspect that someone or something is connected to your PC without your consent, you should immediately disconnect. Another solution, although not without risks, is to try to enter the machine that is trying to attack you. However, a safer option is just to disconnect, scan your entire system with your antivirus and then reconnect. | <urn:uuid:784e57af-6558-423c-b91e-fca77d4fe5c1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2002/10/15/security-online---some-basic-it-hygiene-tips/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00567-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937559 | 1,342 | 3.125 | 3 |
Anyone viewing SHRDLU in 1971 would have predicted great things for computers' ability to understand language and, more generally, for artificial intelligence (AI). But the closest that most of us come to AI today is the grammar checker in a word processor.
The other technology in SHRDLU, built simply to showcase the natural-language processing as the main act, was the blocks world. This was a simple 3D wire-frame graphical environment. Though not bad for its day, it gave no indication of a bright future for computer graphics.
In hindsight, we can see why graphics succeeded but AI didn't. The obstacle for realistic graphics was not ideas and algorithms but computing horsepower, and Moore's Law has provided that in abundance over the past 35 years. This isn't to dismiss the creativity and genius behind the software that gives us dazzling movie special effects and video games, but simply to note that software wasn't the bottleneck.
On the other hand, the stumbling block for AI has been the software. Who cares how fast your processor is when you don't have the algorithm to run on it? We simply don't know how to program language understanding, vision or human creativity.
Predicting the Future
What a surprise to have serious and practical AI proceed slowly while computer graphics, driven by frivolous games and movies, proceeded quickly. The problem is that you can't schedule a breakthrough. Progress goes at its own pace.
AI researchers were hit with what I think of as a sound barrier problem. Progress is steady until "Wham!" you hit an unforeseen difficult obstacle.
These problems have sprung up in many disciplines. Virtual-reality researchers didn't expect that users would occasionally suffer vertigo, sometimes hours after leaving a VR simulation. Civil engineers built caissons in rivers to allow workers to dig down to bedrock for bridge foundations, but they didn't expect workers to suffer from the bends. Airplane designers didn't expect the sound barrier to be so challenging, and even today the speed of sound remains a barrier for commercial airplanes.
Computer graphics and AI illustrate two of the four possible technology outcomes; that of long-term success and long-term disappointment. Here are examples of the final two outcomes:
In 1967, the 100-year-old company Keuffel & Esser was commissioned to study the future. A major failure of its analysis was not seeing that its own flagship product would become obsolete in just a few years. K&E was the country's leading slide-rule manufacturer, and it was blindsided by the product it failed to see, the electronic calculator. | <urn:uuid:0a7aea95-7206-47fc-bde8-2b654c15d180> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.cioupdate.com/trends/article.php/3643206/The-Perils-of-Prediction.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280723.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00109-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969482 | 527 | 3.109375 | 3 |
6.4.3 Why is cryptography export-controlled?
Cryptography is export-controlled for several reasons. Strong cryptography can be used for criminal purposes or even as a weapon of war. During wartime, the ability to intercept and decipher enemy communications is crucial. For that reason, cryptographic technologies are subject to export controls.
In accordance with the Wassenaar Arrangement (see Question 6.5.3), U.S. government agencies consider strong encryption to be systems that use RSA with key sizes over 512 bits or symmetric algorithms (such as triple-DES, IDEA, or RC5) with key sizes over 56 bits. Since government encryption policy is heavily influenced by the agencies responsible for gathering domestic and international intelligence (the FBI and NSA, respectively) the government is compelled to balance the conflicting requirements of making strong cryptography available for commercial purposes while still making it possible for those agencies to break the codes, if need be. As already mentioned several times in this section, the major restrictions on export regulations were eliminated in the beginning of the year 2000.
To most cryptographers, the above level of cryptography - 512 for RSA and 56 for symmetric algorithms - is not considered ``strong'' at all. In fact, it is worth noting that RSA Laboratories has considered this level of cryptography to be commercially inadequate for several years.
Government agencies often prefer to use the terms ``strategic'' and ``standard'' to differentiate encryption systems. ``Standard'' refers to algorithms that have been drafted and selected as a federal standard; DES is the primary example. The government defines ``strategic'' as any algorithm that requires ``excessive work factors'' to successfully attack. Unfortunately, the government rarely publishes criteria for what it defines as ``acceptable'' or ``excessive'' work factors. | <urn:uuid:5a280ad1-53e4-4097-b889-ae3bd8eb94b2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.emc.com/emc-plus/rsa-labs/standards-initiatives/cryptography-export-controlled.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284405.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00319-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941846 | 360 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Artificial intelligence in the enterprise -- what you need to know
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a bit of a buzzword among technology professionals (and even within the mainstream public) but truthfully, most people do not know how it works or how it is already being integrated within leading enterprise businesses. AI for businesses is today mostly made up of machine learning, wherein algorithms are applied in order to teach systems to learn from data to automate and optimize processes and predict outcomes and gain insights. This simplifies, scales and even introduces new important processes and solutions for complex business problems as machine learning applications learn and improve over time. From medical diagnostics systems, search and recommendation engines, robotics, risk management systems, to security systems, in the future nearly everything connected to the internet will use a form of a machine learning algorithm in order to bring value. It is the same thing as for humans, we attend schools for many years and we gain practical experience in order to deliver some kind of value.
But what exactly is machine learning, how is it being applied within organizations today, and what does it mean for the future of business? It is becoming ever more crucial for enterprise leaders to understand machine learning, particularly the benefits that it can provide for companies today. Machine learning today is already allowing many businesses to achieve higher productivity and efficiency, innovating their business, and those that do not begin to explore this new tool ultimately are at risk for falling behind their competition.
Intelligent Business Insights
While it is more widely known that machine learning is utilized as a way to provide recommendations or suggestions on platforms such as Pandora and Spotify and with ecommerce companies such as Amazon and eBay, many may not know that machine learning and data mining are also employed within businesses to provide intelligent business insights via utilizing data and employing predictive analytics.
By incorporating the data that an organization already has at hand, and applying predictive algorithms, organizations are beginning to be able to create adaptive pricing models depending on customer behavior. In turn, they also can predict what future customer demand may be and adapt their inventory of product as such. Machine learning allows companies to take their data to the next level and develop even more intelligent insights by gathering, processing and analyzing the data and improving and learning over time.
For example, companies can utilize analytics to predict customer sentiment. By analyzing incoming queries from a customer base, enterprises are able to better manage their image. Additionally, by gathering data in real-time, the organization can choose when to intervene and interact directly with customer complaints in order to increase consumer confidence and sentiment. These business insights from the data gathered can in turn be used to create and improve consumer-facing solutions.
Google is currently utilizing machine learning for intelligent insights in order to build neural networks that optimize their data centers. At Data Centers Europe in March, Google’s Joe Kava (the company’s president of data centers) educated conference attendees about how Google was doing so. He told the audience, "In a dynamic environment like a data center, it can be difficult for humans to see how all of the variables interact with each other. We’ve been at this (data center optimization) for a long time. All of the obvious best practices have already been implemented, and you really have to look beyond that". In doing so, Google, and other companies who are exploring utilizing machine learning in this way, are relying on big data analytics to learn from the massive amounts of data within their systems – amounts of data that humans do not have the brain capacity to process at such a level.
Beyond Information Systems, to Building Knowledge Systems
Perhaps one of the best known examples of how AI is revolutionizing the enterprise lies with "Watson" -- IBM’s cognitive computing technology in which they have invested millions of dollars, in order to revolutionize their information systems, making them true knowledge systems. But IBM isn’t the only organization investing money in these sorts of knowledge systems. Another example is CyCorp, having invested 30 years in building a platform that understands common sense, which in turn can be used to extract meaning from multiple sources of unstructured data.
But why would organizations invest so much money, and what does creating knowledge systems essentially do? One answer would be that they amplify human intelligence, where machine learning plays a crucial role. As machine learning is a technology that identifies important patterns, adjusts accordingly and thus learns from experience (data), it enables systems to speed up and intelligently scale to a degree that simple information systems cannot rival.
The Future of Artificial Intelligence for Companies
When thinking beyond simply utilizing machine intelligence to compete in this day and age, companies need to keep top of mind that it will also be a key ingredient to their future. Machine intelligence, although it exists and is providing intelligent solutions across many different industries, is still evolving and continuing to revolutionize in many different ways. Even more so, it’s important for all enterprise leaders not ignore the fact that computers are able to process significantly more data than humans can, and machine learning will play an ever-increasing role in enterprises monopolizing on the opportunity that the data that they have at hand presents. The companies that begin to explore utilizing machine learning within their business now, will be leaps ahead of the organizations that choose to wait to employ these technologies.
Lars has over 20 years of experience in running advanced AI development teams, both in Europe and North America. In 1984 he started Greve Graphics, the first video game developer in Scandinavia, and has since pioneered large-scale use of AI. In 2006, Lars founded Expertmaker as an AI platform solution that would help transform search, discovery and recommendation, and enable broad deployment of intelligent solutions for companies and developers. Lars is also a guest lecturer at Lund University on the topics of theoretical ecology and genetics and is a frequent speaker at conferences on technology innovation and mobile evolution. In 2012, he was a featured speaker at Mobile World Congress in one of the most popular seminars, Mobile Innovation: A Vision of 2022. Most recently, Lars hosted a workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Apps at AnDevCon. Expertmaker is based in Malmo, Sweden and San Francisco, California. | <urn:uuid:e2586fc2-638d-4446-9c84-5b6c512b664d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://betanews.com/2014/08/13/artificial-intelligence-in-the-enterprise-what-you-need-to-know/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed+-+bn+-+Betanews+Full+Content+Feed+-+BN | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279657.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00137-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951803 | 1,253 | 2.578125 | 3 |
A paradigm shift is occurring within the agricultural sciences, owing to the genomics-based data explosion and concurrent computational advances. In India, leaders are intent on furthering the burgeoning genomic supercomputing discipline through the establishment of a supercomputing center and a nationwide grid to support bioinformatics and agricultural science.
A recent article in BioSpectrum explores this transformation, noting that data-intensive nature of genomics is such that it is not well-suited to traditional analytical approaches. Thus “the role of bioinformatics emerged as an inter-disciplinary programme, linking computational and mathematical sciences with life sciences,” observes the article’s author Rahul Koul.
In New Delhi, ASHOKA – short for Advanced Super-computing Hub for OMICS Knowledge in Agriculture – was established at the Centre for Agricultural Bioinformatics (CABin) as the first supercomputing hub for Indian agriculture. CABin, part of the Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI), fosters collaborative bioinformatics pursuits at the national and international levels. The center has dedicated high speed connectivity to multiple domain-centric research organizations relating to crops, animals, fisheries and agricultural microbes.
IASRI is working with the agriculture ministry and CDAC, Pune, to build a nationwide grid of supercomputers for agri-science and agricultural planning. The goal of the effort is to have biologists, statisticians and computer scientists working together with a system biology approach geared toward problem-solving. This facility will be open to Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) members as well as agricultural scientists across India.
The author notes that bioinformatics projects have been underway at ICAR institutions, but these were small scale, isolated efforts. The current initiatives seek to integrate these activities at the national level with an additional emphasis on the field of agriculture. The supercomputing environment that will undergird the research was developed to support the requirements of agricultural bioinformatics and computational biology science.
The subproject “Establishment of National Agricultural Bioinformatics Grid (NABG) in ICAR” is overseen by the National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), part of ICAR. The state-of-art datacenter hub, ASHOKA, includes two supercomputers that rank at numbers 11 and 24 in the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) list of top supercomputers of India. The hub has approximately 1.5 petabytes of storage divided in to three different types of storage architecture: Network Attached Storage (NAS), Parallel File System (PFS) and archival.
This hub connects to supercomputing systems to form a National Agricultural Bioinformatics Grid that includes the National Bureaux of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) in New Delhi, and Lucknow, the National Bureaux of Agriculturally Important Microbes (NBAIM) in Mau, and the National Bureaux of Agriculturally Important Insects (NBAII) in Bangalore. There are a number of computational biology and agricultural bioinformatics software/workflow/pipelines currently in development. The goal is to provide seamless access to these biological computing resources to scientists across the country.
Head and principal scientist at CABin Dr. Anil Rai explains the impetus for the computational grid and access portal. “We are trying to build this system so that scientists don’t have to come here every-time for the analysis but to ensure that they can carry out the same while sitting on their desktops,” he states. “For that we are building national bioinfomatics portal which is almost 80 percent ready. There is a provision for monitoring of the data results by respective scientists regularly and even sms alerts to provide quick info on progress is also there. This system will support computational requirements of the biotechnological research in the country. This will also bridge the gap between genomic information and knowledge, utilizing statistical and computational sciences. Further, this will help in establishment of large genomic databases, data warehouse, software & tools, algorithms, genome browsers with high-end computational power to extract information and knowledge from cross-species genomic resources.”
Dr. Dinesh Kumar, senior scientist in biotechnology at CABin, adds his support.”It will open up new vistas for downstream research in bioinformatics ranging from modelling of cellular function, genetic networks, metabolic pathways, validation of drug targets to understand gene function and culminating in the development of improved varieties and breeds for enhancing agricultural productivity to many folds.” | <urn:uuid:6a6df6a2-417d-46cb-a885-b1dd3714d6c3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2013/12/17/supercomputing-bolsters-agricultural-science-india/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282631.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00255-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91548 | 943 | 2.8125 | 3 |
What are the prime factors, or multipliers, for the number 15? Most grade school students know the answer — 3 and 5 — by memory. A larger number, such as 91, may take some pen and paper. An even larger number, say with 232 digits, can (and has) taken scientists two years to factor, using hundreds of classical computers operating in parallel. Because factoring large numbers is so devilishly hard, this “factoring problem” is the basis for many encryption schemes for protecting credit cards, state secrets and other confidential data. It’s thought that a single quantum computer may easily crack this problem, by using hundreds of atoms, essentially in parallel, to quickly factor huge numbers. In 1994, Peter Shor, the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, came up with a quantum algorithm that calculates the prime factors of a large number, vastly more efficiently than a classical computer. However, the algorithm’s success depends on a computer with a large number of quantum bits. While others have attempted to implement Shor’s algorithm in various quantum systems, none have been able to do so with more than a few quantum bits, in a scalable way. Now, in a paper published March 3, 2016, in the journal Science, researchers from MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria report that they have designed and built a quantum computer from five atoms in an ion trap. The computer uses laser pulses to carry out Shor’s algorithm on each atom, to correctly factor the number 15. The system is designed in such a way that more atoms and lasers can be added to build a bigger and faster quantum computer, able to factor much larger numbers. The results, they say, represent the first scalable implementation of Shor’s algorithm. “We show that Shor’s algorithm, the most complex quantum algorithm known to date, is realizable in a way where, yes, all you have to do is go in the lab, apply more technology, and you should be able to make a bigger quantum computer,” says Isaac Chuang, professor of physics and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. “It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build — you won’t be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop anytime soon — but now it’s much more an engineering effort, and not a basic physics question.” Seeing through the quantum forest In classical computing, numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s, and calculations are carried out according to an algorithm’s “instructions,” which manipulate these 0s and 1s to transform an input to an output. In contrast, quantum computing relies on atomic-scale units, or “qubits,” that can be simultaneously 0 and 1 — a state known as a superposition. In this state, a single qubit can essentially carry out two separate streams of calculations in parallel, making computations far more efficient than a classical computer. In 2001, Chuang, a pioneer in the field of quantum computing, designed a quantum computer based on one molecule that could be held in superposition and manipulated with nuclear magnetic resonance to factor the number 15. The results, which were published in Nature, represented the first experimental realization of Shor’s algorithm. But the system wasn’t scalable; it became more difficult to control the system as more atoms were added. “Once you had too many atoms, it was like a big forest — it was very hard to control one atom from the next one,” Chuang says. “The difficulty is to implement [the algorithm] in a system that’s sufficiently isolated that it can stay quantum mechanical for long enough that you can actually have a chance to do the whole algorithm.” Chuang and his colleagues have now come up with a new, scalable quantum system for factoring numbers efficiently. While it typically takes about 12 qubits to factor the number 15, they found a way to shave the system down to five qubits, each represented by a single atom. Each atom can be held in a superposition of two different energy states simultaneously. The researchers use laser pulses to perform “logic gates,” or components of Shor’s algorithm, on four of the five atoms. The results are then stored, forwarded, extracted, and recycled via the fifth atom, thereby carrying out Shor’s algorithm in parallel, with fewer qubits than is typically required. The team was able to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, where they removed an electron from each atom, thereby charging it. They then held each atom in place with an electric field. “That way, we know exactly where that atom is in space,” Chuang explains. “Then we do that with another atom, a few microns away — [a distance] about 100th the width of a human hair. By having a number of these atoms together, they can still interact with each other, because they’re charged. That interaction lets us perform logic gates, which allow us to realize the primitives of the Shor factoring algorithm. The gates we perform can work on any of these kinds of atoms, no matter how large we make the system.” Chuang’s team first worked out the quantum design in principle. His colleagues at the University of Innsbruck then built an experimental apparatus based on his methodology. They directed the quantum system to factor the number 15 — the smallest number that can meaningfully demonstrate Shor’s algorithm. Without any prior knowledge of the answers, the system returned the correct factors, with a confidence exceeding 99 percent. “In future generations, we foresee it being straightforwardly scalable, once the apparatus can trap more atoms and more laser beams can control the pulses,” Chuang says. “We see no physical reason why that is not going to be in the cards.” Mark Ritter, senior manager of physical sciences at IBM, says the group’s method of recycling qubits reduces the resources required in the system by a factor of 3 — a significant though small step towards scaling up quantum computing. “Improving the state-of-the-art by a factor of 3 is good,” says Ritter. But truly scaling the system “requires orders of magnitude more qubits, and these qubits must be shuttled around advanced traps with many thousands of simultaneous laser control pulses.” If the team can successfully add more quantum components to the system, Ritter says it will have accomplished a long-unrealized feat. “Shor's algorithm was the first non-trivial quantum algorithm showing a potential of ‘exponential’ speed-up over classical algorithms,” Ritter says. “It captured the imagination of many researchers who took notice of quantum computing because of its promise of truly remarkable algorithmic acceleration. Therefore, to implement Shor's algorithm is comparable to the ‘Hello, World’ of classical computing.” What will all this eventually mean for encryption schemes of the future? “Well, one thing is that if you are a nation state, you probably don’t want to publicly store your secrets using encryption that relies on factoring as a hard-to-invert problem,” Chuang says. “Because when these quantum computers start coming out, you’ll be able to go back and unencrypt all those old secrets.” This research was supported, in part, by the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity (IARPA), and the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, a National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center.
Why the brain is folded can be rationalized easily from an evolutionary perspective; folded brains likely evolved to fit a large cortex into a small volume with the benefit of reducing neuronal wiring length and improving cognitive function. Less understood is how the brain folds. Several hypotheses have been proposed but none have been directly used to make testable predictions. Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences collaborating with scientists in Finland and France have shown that while many molecular processes are important in determining cellular events, what ultimately causes the brain to fold is a simple mechanical instability associated with buckling. The research is published in Nature Physics. Understanding how the brain folds could help unlock the inner workings of the brain and unravel brain-related disorders, as function often follows form. "We found that we could mimic cortical folding using a very simple physical principle and get results qualitatively similar to what we see in real fetal brains," said L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Physics. The number, size, shape and position of neuronal cells during brain growth all lead to the expansion of the gray matter, known as the cortex, relative to the underlying white matter. This puts the cortex under compression, leading to a mechanical instability that causes it to crease locally. "This simple evolutionary innovation, with iterations and variations, allows for a large cortex to be packed into a small volume, and is likely the dominant cause behind brain folding, known as gyrification," said Mahadevan, who is also a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and member of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology, at Harvard University. Mahadevan's previous research found that the growth differential between the brain's outer cortex and the soft tissue underneath explains the variations in the folding patterns across organisms in terms of just two parameters, the relative size of the brain, and the relative expansion of the cortex. Building on this, the team collaborated with neuroanatomists and radiologists in France and directly tested this theory using data from human fetuses. The team made a three-dimensional, gel model of a smooth fetal brain based on MRI images. The model's surface was coated with a thin layer of elastomer gel, as an analog of the cortex. To mimic cortical expansion, the gel brain was immersed in a solvent that is absorbed by the outer layer causing it to swell relative to the deeper regions. Within minutes of being immersed in liquid solvent, the resulting compression led to the formation of folds similar in size and shape to real brains. The extent of the similarities surprised even the researchers. "When I put the model into the solvent, I knew there should be folding but I never expected that kind of close pattern compared to human brain," said Jun Young Chung, post doctoral fellow and co-first author of the paper. "It looks like a real brain." The key to those similarities lies in the unique shape of the human brain. "The geometry of the brain is really important because it serves to orient the folds in certain directions," said Chung. "Our model, which has the same large scale geometry and curvature as a human brain, leads to the formation of folds that matches those seen in real fetal brains quite well." The largest folds seen in the model gel brain are similar in shape, size and orientation to what is seen in the fetal brain, and can be replicated in multiple gel experiments. The smallest folds are not conserved, mirroring similar variations across human brains. "Brains are not exactly the same from one human to another, but we should all have the same major folds in order to be healthy," said Chung. "Our research shows that if a part of the brain does not grow properly, or if the global geometry is disrupted, we may not have the major folds in the right place, which may cause dysfunction in the brain. " Explore further: Simple origami fold may hold the key to designing pop-up furniture, medical devices and scientific tools
Home > Press > Designing a pop-up future: Simple origami fold may hold the key to designing pop-up furniture, medical devices and scientific tools Abstract: What if you could make any object out of a flat sheet of paper? That future is on the horizon thanks to new research by L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). He is also a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and member of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology, at Harvard University. Mahadevan and his team have characterized a fundamental origami fold, or tessellation, that could be used as a building block to create almost any three-dimensional shape, from nanostructures to buildings. The research is published in Nature Materials. The folding pattern, known as the Miura-ori, is a periodic way to tile the plane using the simplest mountain-valley fold in origami. It was used as a decorative item in clothing at least as long ago as the 15th century. A folded Miura can be packed into a flat, compact shape and unfolded in one continuous motion, making it ideal for packing rigid structures like solar panels. It also occurs in nature in a variety of situations, such as in insect wings and certain leaves. "Could this simple folding pattern serve as a template for more complicated shapes, such as saddles, spheres, cylinders, and helices?" asked Mahadevan. "We found an incredible amount of flexibility hidden inside the geometry of the Miura-ori," said Levi Dudte, graduate student in the Mahadevan lab and first author of the paper. "As it turns out, this fold is capable of creating many more shapes than we imagined." Think surgical stents that can be packed flat and pop-up into three-dimensional structures once inside the body or dining room tables that can lean flat against the wall until they are ready to be used. "The collapsibility, transportability and deployability of Miura-ori folded objects makes it a potentially attractive design for everything from space-bound payloads to small-space living to laparoscopic surgery and soft robotics," said Dudte. To explore the potential of the tessellation, the team developed an algorithm that can create certain shapes using the Miura-ori fold, repeated with small variations. Given the specifications of the target shape, the program lays out the folds needed to create the design, which can then be laser printed for folding. The program takes into account several factors, including the stiffness of the folded material and the trade-off between the accuracy of the pattern and the effort associated with creating finer folds - an important characterization because, as of now, these shapes are all folded by hand. "Essentially, we would like to be able to tailor any shape by using an appropriate folding pattern," said Mahadevan. "Starting with the basic mountain-valley fold, our algorithm determines how to vary it by gently tweaking it from one location to the other to make a vase, a hat, a saddle, or to stitch them together to make more and more complex structures." "This is a step in the direction of being able to solve the inverse problem - given a functional shape, how can we design the folds on a sheet to achieve it," Dudte said. "The really exciting thing about this fold is it is completely scalable," said Mahadevan. "You can do this with graphene, which is one atom thick, or you can do it on the architectural scale." ### Co-authors on the study include Etienne Vouga, currently at the University of Texas at Austin, and Tomohiro Tachi from the University of Tokyo. The work was funded by the Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering, the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology, and the Harvard MRSEC. For more information, please click If you have a comment, please us. Issuers of news releases, not 7th Wave, Inc. or Nanotechnology Now, are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.
Music functions as a universal connector that pervades most cultures. More specifically, rhythm and synchronization — both within and beyond the realm of music — are forms of communication that stimulate brain activity. In a recently-published paper in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, authors Donald Drew, Kevin Dolch and Maury Castro propose a stochastic differential equation model that simulates how musical performers in a large ensemble sustain tempo and phase while responding to a conductor, other musicians and additional distractions modeled as “noise.” In an ideal situation, musicians would be able to perfectly coordinate the rate of change at which pitch and relative loudness occur while simultaneously ignoring noise and the distractions of the other musicians. However, the authors recognize that the aforementioned stimuli cause execution errors from each individual. The authors assume that individual performers preserve an internal tempo when responding to the conductor, who offers the correct rhythm sequence. Their phase correction model assumes that the correction of a rate of error is contingent on the ratio of tempo variation to a performer’s ability to resist noise distraction and concentrate solely on the conductor. The correction model is based on deliberate responses of the human brain when determining tempo and phase, rather than assuming error correction based on biochemical oscillators, as in other models. The authors acknowledge that musical performances involve a certain amount of individual tempo variations to achieve a sense of artistry. But their proposed models offer a means by which to manage tempo discrepancies, improve synchronization, and thus enhance the overall quality of performed music. Citation: Donald Drew, Kevin Dolch, Maury Castro. A Model for Tempo Synchronization in Music Performance. SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, 2015; 75 (6): 2540 DOI: 10.1137/140992357 Read the full article Donald Drew is now retired; before retiring he was the Chair of Mathematical Sciences and Professor of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Kevin Dolch studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Maury Castro is the Organist & Choirmaster and Director of Communications at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church. About SIAM The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, is an international society of more than 14,000 individual, academic and corporate members from 85 countries. SIAM helps build cooperation between mathematics and the worlds of science and technology to solve real-world problems through publications, conferences and communities like chapters, sections and activity groups.
News Article | August 31, 2016
A team led by Nanfang Yu, assistant professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, has discovered a new phase-transition optical material and demonstrated novel devices that dynamically control light over a much broader wavelength range and with larger modulation amplitude than what has currently been possible. The team, including researchers from Purdue, Harvard, Drexel, and Brookhaven National Laboratory, found that samarium nickelate (SmNiO3) can be electrically tuned continuously between a transparent and an opaque state over an unprecedented broad range of spectrum from the blue in the visible (wavelength of 400 nm) to the thermal radiation spectrum in the mid-infrared (wavelength of a few tens of micrometers). The study, which is the first investigation of the optical properties of SmNiO and the first demonstration of the material in photonic device applications, is published online in Advanced Materials. “The performance of SmNiO is record-breaking in terms of the magnitude and wavelength range of optical tuning,” Yu says. “There is hardly any other material that offers such a combination of properties that are highly desirable for optoelectronic devices. The reversible tuning between the transparent and opaque states is based on electron doping at room temperature, and potentially very fast, which opens up a wide range of exciting applications, such as ‘smart windows’ for dynamic and complete control of sunlight, variable thermal emissivity coatings for infrared camouflage and radiative temperature control, optical modulators, and optical memory devices.” Some of the potential new functions include using SmNiO ‘s capability in controlling thermal radiation to build “intelligent” coatings for infrared camouflage and thermoregulation. These coatings could make people and vehicles, for example, appear much colder than they actually are and thus indiscernible under a thermal camera at night. The coating could help reduce the large temperature gradients on a satellite by adjusting the relative thermal radiation from its bright and dark side with respect to the sun and thereby prolong the lifetime of the satellite. Because this phase-transition material can potentially switch between the transparent and opaque states with high speed, it may be used in modulators for free-space optical communication and optical radar and in optical memory devices. Researchers have long been trying to build active optical devices that can dynamically control light. These include Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s “smart windows,” which control (but not completely) the transmission of sunlight, rewritable DVD discs on which we can use a laser beam to write and erase data, and high-data-rate, long-distance fiber optic communications systems where information is “written” into light beams by optical modulators. Active optical devices are not more common in everyday life, however, because it has been so difficult to find advanced actively tunable optical materials, and to design proper device architectures that amplify the effects of such tunable materials. When Shriram Ramanathan, associate professor of materials science at Harvard, discovered SmNiO ‘s giant tunable electric resistivity at room temperature, Yu took note. The two met at the IEEE Photonics Conference in 2013 and decided to collaborate. Yu and his students, working with Ramanathan, who is a co-author of this paper, conducted initial optical studies of the phase-transition material, integrated the material into nanostructured designer optical interfaces — “metasurfaces” — and created prototype active optoelectronic devices, including optical modulators that control a beam of light, and variable emissivity coatings that control the efficiency of thermal radiation. “SmNiO is really an unusual material,” says Zhaoyi Li, the paper’s lead author and Yu’s PhD student, “because it becomes electrically more insulating and optically more transparent as it is doped with more electrons — this is just the opposite of common materials such as semiconductors.” It turns out that doped electrons “lock” into pairs with the electrons initially in the material, a quantum mechanical phenomenon called “strong electron correlation,” and this effect makes these electrons unavailable to conduct electric current and absorbing light. So, after electron doping, SmNiO3 thin films that were originally opaque suddenly allow more than 70 percent of visible light and infrared radiation to transmit through. “One of our biggest challenges,” Zhaoyi adds, “was to integrate SmNiO into optical devices. To address this challenge, we developed special nanofabrication techniques to pattern metasurface structures on SmNiO thin films. In addition, we carefully chose the device architecture and materials to ensure that the devices can sustain high temperature and pressure that are required in the fabrication process to activate SmNiO .” Yu and his collaborators plan next to run a systematic study to understand the basic science of the phase transition of SmNiO and to explore its technological applications. The team will investigate the intrinsic speed of phase transition and the number of phase-transition cycles the material can endure before it breaks down. They will also work on addressing technological problems, including synthesizing ultra-thin and smooth films of the material and developing nanofabrication techniques to integrate the material into novel flat optical devices. “This work is one crucial step towards realizing the major goal of my research lab, which is to make an optical interface a functional optical device,” Yu notes. “We envision replacing bulky optical devices and components with ‘flat optics’ by utilizing strong interactions between light and two-dimensional structured materials to control light at will. The discovery of this phase-transition material and the successful integration of it into a flat device architecture are a major leap forward to realizing active flat optical devices not only with enhanced performance from the devices we are using today, but with completely new functionalities.” Yu’s team included Ramanathan, his Harvard PhD student You Zhou, and his Purdue postdoctoral fellow Zhen Zhang, who synthesized the phase-transition material and did some of the phase transition experiments (this work began at Harvard and continued when Ramanathan moved to Purdue); Drexel University Materials Science Professor Christopher Li, PhD student Hao Qi, and research scientist Qiwei Pan, who helped make solid-state devices by integrating SmNiO with novel solid polymer electrolytes; and Brookhaven National Laboratory staff scientists Ming Lu and Aaron Stein, who helped device nanofabrication. Yuan Yang, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia Engineering, was consulted during the progress of this research. The study was funded by DARPA YFA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award), ONR YIP (Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program), AFOSR MURI (Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative) on metasurfaces, Army Research Office, and NSF EPMD (Electronics, Photonics, and Magnetic Devices) program. | <urn:uuid:0375b5cf-3691-46fe-b805-0d329160323e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.linknovate.com/affiliation/applied-mathematics-1337901/all/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00283-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941655 | 5,266 | 4.09375 | 4 |
Below shows a frame format of a Data Frame. (source IEEE 802.11-2012 standard)
The content of the address fields of data frames are dependent upon the values of the To DS and From DS fields in the Frame Control field and whether the Frame Body field contains either an MSDU (or fragment thereof) or an entire A-MSDU, as determined by the A-MSDU Present subfield of the QoS Control field.
The content of the address fields is shown in below table (source IEEE 802-11 2012 Table 8-19). Where the content of a field is shown as not applicable (N/A), the field is omitted. Note that Address 1 always holds the receiver address of the intended receiver, and that Address 2 always holds the address of the STA that is transmitting the frame.
Source Address (SA) : This is the address where the frame is sent from.
Destination Address (DA) : This is the address where the frame is being sent to.
Transmitter Address (TA) : This is the address of the station that is transmitting the RF frame.
Receiver Address (RA) : This is the address of the station that is receiving the RF frame.
Basic Service Set Identifier (BSSID) : This is the basic service set ID of the AP.
Typically all 4 address fields are used only in Wireless Distribution system (WDS) or Mesh AP back-haul scenarios. Below shows a Wireless bridge topology where you can see all the 4 address fields are being used.
Address 1: RA – 64:ae:0c:93:75:90 (AAP2 802.11 BSSID for SSID-MGMT)
Address 2: TA – a4:0c:c3:1a:ee:60 (AAP1 802.11 BSSID for SSID-MGMT)
Address 3: DA – c8:f9:f9:d7:3b:a7 (7965 MAC address)
Address 4: SA – 00:1a:e3:a7:ff:40 (vlan 2 gateway MAC in C3750)
For data frames of subtype Null (no data), CF-Ack (no data), CF-Poll (no data), and CF-Ack+CF-Poll (no data) and for the corresponding QoS data frame subtypes, the Frame Body field is null (i.e., has a length of 0 octets); these subtypes are used for MAC control purposes.
For data frames of subtypes Data, Data+CF-Ack, Data+CF-Poll, and Data+CF-Ack+CF-Poll, the Frame Body field contains all of, or a fragment of, an MSDU after any encapsulation for security.
For data frames of subtypes QoS Data, QoS Data+CF-Ack, QoS Data+CF-Poll, and QoS Data+CF-Ack+CF-Poll, the Frame Body field contains an MSDU (or fragment thereof) or A-MSDU after any encapsulation for security.
The maximum length of the Frame Body field can be determined from the maximum MSDU length plus the length of the Mesh Control field (if present) plus any overhead from encapsulation for encryption (i.e., it is always possible to send a maximum length MSDU, with any encapsulations provided by the MAC layer within a single data MPDU). When the frame body carries an A-MSDU, the size of the frame body field is limited by:
— The PHY’s maximum PLCP service data unit (PSDU) length
— If A-MPDU aggregation is used, a maximum MPDU length of 4095 octets
The duration value calculation for the data frame is based on the rules in 9.7 that determine the data rate at which the control frames in the frame exchange sequence are transmitted. If the calculated duration includes a fractional microsecond, that value is rounded up to the next higher integer. All STAs process Duration/ID field values less than or equal to 32 767 from valid data frames (without regard for the RA, DA, and/or BSSID address values that might be present in these frames) to update their NAV settings as appropriate under the coordination function rules.
1. CWAP Official Study Guide – Chapter 6
2. IEEE 802.11-2102 Standard | <urn:uuid:4ad20da1-f168-414b-9a44-1c44ef1ad5e2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://mrncciew.com/2014/11/03/cwap-data-frame-address-fields/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281421.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00191-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.821531 | 939 | 2.75 | 3 |
Ethernet has dominated the computer interconnect market for over two decades. The first Ethernet standard was approved in 1983; Fast Ethernet appeared in 1995; 1 Gigabit Ethernet four years later and most recently, in 2002, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10gbe) standard was approved. 10gbe is supposed to be the end-all of all networks, but its adoption has been slow.
InfiniBand was announced in 2000, but has had a slow adoption rate. Being a new technology, and not just a faster version of an established solution, that is to be expected. In fact, InfiniBand all but disappeared a few years ago.
Many companies are considering an upgrade to their existing Gig-E infrastructures. Most of these companies are only looking at 10Gbe as an option. InfiniBand may be a viable alternative.
InfiniBand has always been associated with high-performance computing environments. While it is an excellent fit for those that need maximum performance and minimum latency, it is also a great solution for todays general computing environment.
Ethernet, the most prevalent interconnect available today, is a mature technology. Like most developed technologies, Ethernet has been slow to advance. 10gbe came out two years after 10Gb InfiniBand was announced.
Since its adoption, InfiniBand has jumped to 60Gb performance and 120Gb is planned. There is no talk of 120Gb Ethernet. InfiniBand latency, the amount of time it takes data to travel from source to destination, is also well below that of 10GbE.
It is not uncommon for a server to have multiple network connections. Each server will have a primary connection into the main network (usually Gig-E), another connection to a private backup network (again, Gig-E) and a connection for storage (either Gig-E for iSCSI or Fibre Channel for a SAN. Many will have two or more of each of these connections for redundancy). Servers that are part of a cluster will also have another dedicated network connection to maintain the cluster.
How can InfiniBand help here? Simple. With three Gig-E connections (primary, backup and cluster) and a redundant pair of 2Gb FC connections for storage, there is a total of five connections and seven Gb worth of performance for that one server. A single InfiniBand connection, with 10Gb worth of bandwidth, will easily outperform the five connections that were previously needed. The lower latencies of InfiniBand will also improve the overall performance of the server.
The obvious result of decreasing connections from a server is a drop in cost. To obtain maximum performance, each of the Gig-E connections should have a TOE (TCP/IP Offload Engine) card and each FC connection should have a FC HBA. All of these can be replaced with a single InfiniBand host channel adapter (HCA). Many servers will have an onboard HCA which further drops the cost of the solution.
Now that each server doesnt need five cards for connectivity, many solutions will fit comfortably in a blade-based server. Using blade-servers can significantly reduce the amount of space needed in a rack and in the datacenter and decrease the amount of cooling and power needed to keep a system running.
As just discussed, InfiniBand can dramatically decrease the cost associated with the servers in a solution. InfiniBand can also decrease the cost of the networking infrastructure. Again, using a server with five connections into the infrastructure, that is five ports in various switches. With InfiniBand, there is a need for only 20% of the switch ports required with the non-InfiniBand solution.
Assuming that the servers in question can perform adequately with a 10GbE connection, there will still be a cost savings with InfiniBand. The price of 10GbE TOE cards and switches is more than the InfiniBand alternatives. Assuming a comparison of like solutions (the same amount of switches and HBAs and HCAs) the InfiniBand solution will be more economical.
There are some solutions that will thrive in an InfiniBand environment. Two of these solutions are data replication and clusters.
Clusters. Clusters were initially implemented to provide protection against the loss of a server. Now, clusters can be implemented to provide scalable performance as well. As mentioned above, these clusters can grow very large without taking a lot of spaces.
A server now fits on a blade as long as there is no need for multiple network cards; InfiniBand eliminates that need. A major function of a cluster is the ability to take multiple servers and have them act as one. In order to do this, there must be a common set of data. This data sharing has been managed by the application or by using NAS.
Recently, the concept of a shared block-based file system (implemented with a SAN) has become more popular. Some of the drawbacks of these solutions have been the latency and the overhead of the locking mechanism needed to maintain data integrity.
With todays faster servers and InfiniBand, the overhead is minimal and these shared file systems can run close to the speed of un-shared file systems.
Replication. There are many reasons to replicate data from one storage array to another: disaster recovery, remote backup and analysis are just a few. Copying data from one storage array to another has always had its challenges.
One of the biggest challenges has been to keep the primary copy and the remote copy of the data completely in sync without impacting the performance of the applications too much. With the low latencies of an InfiniBand infrastructure, replications can occur with minimal impact to the applications.
Jim McKinstry is senior systems engineer with the Engenio Storage Group of LSI Logic, an OEM of storage solutions for IBM, TeraData, Sun/StorageTek, SGI and others. | <urn:uuid:a8a8fe93-f3ee-4aec-829f-e0155b528627> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.cioupdate.com/trends/article.php/3596261/The-Ethernet-Alternative-InfiniBand.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00496-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957703 | 1,211 | 3 | 3 |
Build an IPSEC VPN Without Losing Your Mind
With latency-sensitive or high bandwidth requirements, often we find OpenVPN unable to perform. IPSEC is the solution, but the barrier to using IPSEC is great. It is potentially difficult to configure, and one's first exposure to VPN concepts is often confusing.
With the concepts explained, the task of actually making IPSEC work becomes much more tenable. Likewise, using Openswan, the fork and improvement of FreeS/WAN, makes configuring IPSEC almost fun.
We will explain how to create a network-to-network connection so hosts at two remote sites can communicate with each other. If you have trouble setting this up, first try host-to-host mode, using the excellent tutorial on the Openswan wiki.
To successfully run Openswan, there are only four things you need:
- a pre-shared key to make encryption work
- to know the IP addresses of the two gateway servers on each end
- to know the subnet ranges of the networks at each end
- a drawing, if this is your first time
You can ignore requirement number one, for now, since Openswan makes this simple.
Openswan also takes care of adding routing table entries, so this list is really all you need for the basic "make one subnet reach another" configuration. After configuring a tunnel, Openswan will inherently know which traffic is destined for the network on the other side of the tunnel, and automatically adds the route. Of course, you can send traffic for more subnets through the IPSEC tunnel, assuming the gateway on the other end knows how to route there. When everything else is working, simply add another route similar to the one Openswan adds for you, but for the other network.
When configuring IPSEC, you need to draw out your subnets and which interfaces are on the gateways, and label them accordingly. Using the intuitive left/right terminology from Openswan (because all diagrams of this nature are two-dimensional, and in/out or local/remote mean different things to different people), create a diagram similar to the figure below with your own information:
The site represented on the left side, with Gateway A, is known as the "left" when we configure Openswan, and likewise for the right.
We are now ready. Install Openswan and locate its ipsec.conf file.
If a key was generated by your installer package, you can retrieve it by running ipsec showhostkey --left
We will use the resulting key for the configuration file. If instead you see something like "ipsec showhostkey: no default key in /etc/ipsec.secrets," you will need to generate one as root: ipsec newhostkey --output /etc/ipsec.secrets
Repeat the process on the other side of the soon-to-be VPN, and you should now have two keys.
The ipsec.conf file is really quite simple with Openswan. We are now going to combine all the information previously gathered above.
# Openswan ipsec.conf
The "left" and "right" declarations are externally accessible IP addresses of the gateway routers. The "leftid" is the hostname of the machine.
Copy this file to Gateway B, and you are ready to start the tunnel on both ends: ipsec auto --up GatewayA-to-GatewayB
The quick test is of course to ping the external IP of Gateway B from Gateway A. You will notice a route in the routing table that directs this traffic, and traffic to the defined rightsubnet through the tunnel. If IP forwarding is enabled, as it probably is, given that these machines are both already routers, you can now try pinging a host in the remote subnet.
That certainly wasn't hard. You can also define more connections in the same configuration file. They are differentiated by the leftid and rightid parameters, allowing you to use a single configuration across many hosts.
Why This Is Difficult
First of all, if you are using iptables to filter or NAT packets, the above test may not have been successful. The quick and easy way around NAT is to modify your MASQUERADE rule, on both ends, to exclude the internal destination on the opposite. Traffic destined for the subnet behind the other NAT cannot be NAT'd, as NAT attempts to modify layer 4 headers, which are encrypted. Everything in the IP data section, including TCP and UDP packets in their entirety, are encrypted and cannot be changed. Furthermore, if you are attempting to start an IPSEC connection from a box that lives behind (a possibly secret) NAT device, it will fail. The NAT device can be configured to allow IPSEC passthrough for you, though.
Filtering traffic with IPSEC in the mix gets messy. When the packet arrives, everything but the first part of the IP header is encrypted. Filter rules designed to detect TCP/UDP ports, or even specific upper layer protocols, will not be able to see that data until the packet is decrypted. You can mark packets, or use policy match rules; both are convoluted, but have been discussed at length on various mailing lists including the Openswan list.
One other reason for IPSEC failing to start could be blocked ports. First get it working without iptables in the way, to make sure IPSEC is configured and working, then re-enable the firewall. Port 500 needs to be reachable by both IPSEC endpoints, for IKE, the key exchange protocol.
We can't stress enough that configuring IPSEC is actually quite painless--until you add NAT or firewalls into the picture. You absolutely must test the IPSEC connection outside of any firewall or NAT presence to ensure it is working, before adding back the challenging piece (if you absolutely must). Your sanity will be preserved, and the installation process time dramatically reduced.
Charlie Schluting is the author of Network Ninja, a must-read for every network engineer. | <urn:uuid:1ed3b30d-6df9-4c82-930a-8a227262aff7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/print/netsysm/article.php/3845966/Build-an-IPSEC-VPN-Without-Losing-Your-Mind.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00496-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914219 | 1,262 | 2.671875 | 3 |
The company has encrypted critical parts of its operating system to protect it from software pirates, according to a researcher.
A computer researcher has made public information that Apple Computer has encrypted at the binary level critical parts of its Mac OS X operating system.
These "Apple-protected binaries" can serve to protect the OS from being pirated and also to make it "nontrivial" to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, said Amit Singh, a member of Googles technical staff in Mountain View, Calif., and the author of "Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach." Singh has also given lectures on Mac OS X to the National Security Agency and at Apples main campus in Cupertino, Calif.
According to Singh, the parts of Mac OS X that are protected include the Finder and Dock applications, as well as parts of Rosetta (Mac OS Xs application for running Power PC applications on an Intel-based Mac) and services that manage the user interface.
Singh noted that his list was not exhaustive.
Much of Mac OS X is open source
, including Darwin
, an entirely functional, open-source operating system based on FreeBSD 5.0 and the Mach 3.0 microkernel, and the basis for Mac OS X.
The Apple-protected binaries signal their protected status by setting a special bit in the header, Singh said. When any binary is called upon by the system, the kernel checks to see if it is Apple-protected; if it is, the kernel unencrypts the code through an "unprotect" operation.
This operation, Singh noted, includes a "dsmos_page_transform" command, in which "dsmos" stands for "Dont Steal Mac OS X". He also found a "Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext" kernel extension in the operating system.
"A lot of times, encrypted binaries are used as piracy protection," said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technology officer of Mountain View, Calif.-based Counterpace Internet Security. "Its a common technique," he said.
"But more often, and probably what its used for here," he added, "is as anti-reverse engineering."
Click here to read about an exploit for an unpatched vulnerability in the Apple Airport driver that ships with some PowerBook and iMac computers.
Schneier noted that encrypted binaries can affect application performance due to the extra decoding step before they can be executed.
However, he said, "As computers grow faster, theres more processing power to do stuff like this.
"The devils in the details," he said.
Speaking to concerns about privacy, Schneier said, "Theres nothing sinister here."
"This is a method for Apple to protect its code," he said, adding that for people who still want to try to get Mac OS X running on commodity PC hardware, "you can get around it, but not easily."
Apple representatives were not available to comment.
Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis on Apple in the enterprise. | <urn:uuid:a50add51-a2d0-40dc-be24-6ae02f935bfb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Apple/Apple-Places-Encrypted-Binaries-in-Mac-OS-X | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281426.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00036-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96068 | 640 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Optical Time-domain Reflectometer is the full name of OTDR. In fiber tester fields, it is a very important and common optoelectronic instrument used for certifying and characterizing the optical fibers. During its working process, the optical time domain reflectmeter send a series of fiber optic pulses into the fiber cable, the fiber signal light will be scattered back and reflected back from points along the fibers. because of the fiberglass attribute, fiber joint point or fiber break. The strength of the return pulses is measured and integrated as a function of time, and is plotted as a function of fiber length. By this way, the OTDR can detect the fiber optic cable length, fiber optic cable overall attenuation and locate the break point. In the following text, we will introduce the two major function of the optical time domain reflectmeter.
Certifying Fiber Optics
A good quality of fiber optic networks is very important for the healthy of the critical networks especially for business use. For a network administrator, it is very necessary to known how well the invested fiber cabling network performed and how to solve problems at the first time they occur. Fiber optics certification has experienced a development from Tier 1, the Fiber Optics Certification Basic to Tier 2 fiber certification, that extended Tier 1 with an Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR).
The Tier 1 tests are attenuation (insertion loss), length and polarit, the complete Tier 1 fiber certification is required in all fiber optic cabling links. During the Tier 1 testing, each fiber
link is measured for attenuation and results are documented. This test ensures that the fiber link exhibits less loss than the maximum allowable loss budget for the immediate application. This CertiFiber is one handheld tester that quickly and easily certifies multimode networks. One button measures fiber length and optical loss on two fibers at two wavelengths, computes the optical loss budget, compares the results to the selected industry standard and provides an instant PASS or FAIL indication. By Tier 1 testing, the invisible events are hardly to locate.
Tier2 is the extended Tier 1 with the application of an additional tool, OTDR, which is used to trace each fiber link. An OTDR trace is a graphical signature of a fiber’s attenuation along its
length. You can gain insight into the performance of the link components such as fiber optic cable, connectors and splices and the quality of the installation by examining non-uniformities in the trace. This fiber test certifies that the workmanship and quality of the installation meets the design and warrantee specifications for current and future applications. An obvious advantage of using OTDR is that is helps detect the invisible events that may happened when conducting only loss/length (tier 1) testing, which is regarded as a complete fiber certification.
Maintaining Fiber Infrastructure Performance
Besides fiber optics certification, OTDR is also used for repairing problem fiber plant. Because the OTDR makes you detect any details on the cabling installation, termination quality and offers advanced diagnostics to isolate a point of failure that may hinder network performance.
OTDR tester characterize features such as attenuation uniformity and attenuation rate, segment length, location and insertion loss of connectors and splices, and other events such as sharp bends that may have been incurred during cable installation. The right OTDR must has certain functionality, such as loss-length certification, channel/map view, power meter capabilities, an easy-to-use interface, and smart-remote options.
Fiber optic testing tools manufacturers such as FiberStore, provides the ultimate optical time domain reflectometer series for your testing and troubleshooting solution of fiber optic networks, which includes EXFO AXS-100, EXFO AXS-110-12CD, DVP-321 OTDR, EXFO FTB-200 OTDR and more. They are all perfect for perform inspection, verification, certification, troubleshooting. | <urn:uuid:7e5cd035-492f-4ee9-addb-01bbaf0260ff> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.fs.com/blog/what-is-an-optical-time-domain-reflectometer-used-for.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279189.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00340-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918871 | 800 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Scientists from around the world have been scanning the heavens for other habitable planets to find an answer to the age-old question: Are we alone in the universe?
A study released Monday by a team of researchers from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University finds that the odds are good that we're not.
There may be 60 billion planets -- double the number cited in earlier studies -- in the Milky Way galaxy alone that could support life, according to the study.
In its search, NASA has so far found only 10 or so potentially habitable planets in their search for Earth-like planets, which the space agency describes as small, rocky planets orbiting sun-like stars.
The latest study found that cloud cover that could affect planet climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, which are the most common type of stars in the universe.
"Most of the planets in the Milky Way orbit red dwarfs," said Nicolas Cowan, a Northwestern researcher. "A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don't have to look as far to find a habitable planet."
The Northwestern-University of Chicago team based their findings on computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets.
Data collected from NASA's Kepler Telescope, which has been searching for potentially habitable planets orbiting other stars for the last four years, showed NASA scientists that each red dwarf could have one planet orbiting in its habitable zone, a relatively small area where an Earth-like planet could maintain liquid water on its surface.
The study that was released this week doubles that estimate.
"Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth," said Dorian Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. "They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That's part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life."
Last week, a group of astronomers working with the European Southern Observatory reported the discovery of a solar system with three super-Earths that could possibly hold liquid water and thus support life.
The three potentially habitable planets are part of a system of at least six planets that orbit a star known as Gliese 667C, which is 22 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Scorpius or The Scorpion.
It was the first time that three planets have been found orbiting in a habitable zone in the same system.
Meanwhile, NASA in April reported that its Kepler Space Telescope found two other planets, 1,200 light years from earth, that are perfectly sized and positioned to potentially hold life.
The Kepler telescope has been a critical tool for scientists hunting the heavens for Earth-like planets. Last fall, the telescope finished its prime mission but NASA scientists extended its search efforts.
However, Kepler ran into trouble in May when it lost the use of one of the four wheels that control its orientation in space.
The malfunction means NASA is no longer able to manipulate the telescope's positioning. Ground engineers also are having a hard time communicating with it since the communications link comes and goes as the spacecraft spins uncontrollably.
If the Kepler telescope isn't repaired, astronomers will be forced to rely even more on the James Webb Telescope, NASA's next great observatory. With the James Web Telescope, which isn't slated to launch until 2018, scientists will test the validity of their findings about cloud cover influencing the number of potentially habitable planets.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her email address is firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:b5a63276-6fe5-44e3-95c3-ea0dc29f7805> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.computerworld.com/article/2498386/emerging-technology/60-billion-planets-in-milky-way-could-hold-life.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280425.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00156-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946872 | 758 | 3.625 | 4 |
What You'll Learn
- Implement automatic archival for database logs
- Recover a database to a specific point in time using the archived logs
- Use EXPLAIN tools to review the access plans for SQL statements
- Add indexes to improve SQL performance.
- Implement database security, including adding a security administrator and security administration authority (SECADM) user
- Implement database roles to simplify security management.
Participants should have the following skills:
- Perform basic database administration tasks on a relational database system
- Use basic OS functions such as utilities, file permissions, hierarchical file system, commands and editor
State the functions of the Structured Query Language (SQL) and be able to construct DDL, DML and authorization statements
- Discuss basic relational database concepts and objects such as tables, indexes, views and joins
- These skills can be developed by taking:
-DB2 SQL Workshop
Who Needs To Attend
This is an intermediate level course for students that will perform Database Administration tasks, who plan, implement and maintain DB2 10.5 for Linux, UNIX and Windows databases. | <urn:uuid:2e4c61b2-d26f-4f2d-949c-2b41b37f0102> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.globalknowledge.com/ca-en/course/151489/db2-105-administration-workshop-for-linux/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280425.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00156-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.819236 | 225 | 3 | 3 |
Three of Europe’s most prominent research centers, CERN, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have teamed up to launch a massive cloud computing project. Helix Nebula – the Science Cloud, which takes its name from a large planetary nebula in the Aquarius constellation, will support the fast-growing IT requirements of European scientists. After an initial two-year pilot phase, the project will be expanded to include governmental organizations and industry.
The launch is part of the wider Digital Agenda for Europe. Europe’s cloud-first goals are outlined in the Strategic Plan for a Scientific Cloud Computing infrastructure for Europe, which includes this ambitious vision statement:
In 2020, all scientists of all disciplines will choose the European Cloud Computing Infrastructure as their first option to store and access data, for data processing and analysis. This infrastructure will be considered as a natural infrastructure for the global science community similar to the road or telecommunication infrastructure for the general public today.
This infrastructure will contain vast quantities of data, an unrivalled array of open source tools, and a literally infinite amount of computing power accessible and usable from any kind of computer, smart phone or tablet device. Science will make significant progresses by applying data sharing and interdisciplinary research using this infrastructure as the fundamental tool. Important articles for leading publications, such as Nature and Science, will be derived from this infrastructure and it will be the source of a drastic increase of patents in Europe.
This infrastructure will have such a reliability and worldwide recognition for its implemented security/privacy scheme that also commercial companies will be using this “high security area” to derive patents.
For now, at least, the Helix Nebula project is a Europe-only endeavor due to concern over US laws like the Patriot Act, which conflict with European data security and privacy mandates. Commercial partners include Atos, Capgemini, CloudSigma, Interoute, Logica, Orange Business Services, SAP, SixSq, Telefonica, Terradue, Thales, The Server Labs and T-Systems, as well as the Cloud Security Alliance, the OpenNebula Project and the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI.eu).
The participants are working on creating a common framework, documenting everything and getting real computing going, but as the project gains steam, other scientific organizations and service providers will be invited to join.
“Assuming this phase is successful, an expansion to include more applications, more research and public organizations and more cloud computing suppliers is foreseen. Of particular interest is to stimulate a market where SME can make use of the computing platform to provide new services,” notes Bob Jones, head of CERN openlab.
CloudSigma, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider, based in Zurich, Switzerland, is supplying the cloud infrastructure for the project. CEO Robert Jenkins explains that the research partners were frustrated by a lack of communication among cloud providers, and decided to use their collective buying power to commission a pan-European cloud for HPC and scientific computing. CloudSigma has been working with supply and demand side partners since June 2011, to assess the HPC requirements of the research institutions and from there design a cloud computing environment that meets these specific needs.
At this stage, they’ve completed a successful proof-of-concept pilot with CERN, which is using the additional computing power to process data from the Large Hadron Collider as part of the search for the theoretical Higgs boson. They’re currently working with EMBL to enable more accurate gene sequencing methodology and with ESA to process large amounts of earth science data to support natural disaster research. While Jenkins was reticent to comment on the individual compute requirements of the three partners, he estimates that the total combined computing power for the project will be in the neighborhood of 50,000 – 100,000 CPU cores.
The data requirements of these institutions are accelerating rapidly, a bit like a car accelerating out in front of them, as Jenkins puts it. At EMBL, the wet lab output and the data from extracting DNA is doubling every six months or so. This puts pressure on the later stages, in terms of assembly and sequencing, and so forth. The research sites must spend more and more time and effort chasing after the extra computing capacity, which increasingly distracts them from their primary mission, the science.
In a nutshell, there’s a shortfall in computing capacity. Not to mention some of these very important projects and problems that they are trying to solve are limited by the amount of actual computing power they can deploy because of coordination problems and practical issues. As just one example of the latter, CERN cannot do more science at the moment because Geneva cannot give them more electricity.
“It’s kind of crazy that these problems are holding back some of the most important scientific research areas for mankind,” remarks Jenkins, “The idea of Helix Nebula is that we can bring the collective computing power of these different providers and the cloud delivery mechanism, with the flexibility and transparency that it enables, to be able to allow these institutions to essentially burst into cloud and pull down those extra computing resources.”
A committee of supply side and demand side partners meets regularly to map out the cloud system architectures. They evaluate the information coming in from the different proof-of-concepts to determine how the various partners are getting their work done and the requirements that involves. Then they document the performance requirements in terms of networking, CPU, RAM, etc. – all these different aspects of computing are captured and fed back to the group.
Jenkins stresses the importance of coordination and the role of networking to support that. “One of things we’re working on at Helix Nebula is creating proper coordination between the cloud and the different providers so that we’re able to hand off data and transfer it to each other very efficiently and reliably,” he says. The participants all sit down to optimize their networking, to make it easier for data to get where it needs to go.
“There’s a big win to be had from cloud providers coordinating to make their clouds much more user-friendly when you’re actually using more than one cloud. That doesn’t generally happen,” notes Jenkins.
CERN’s Bob Jones shares a similar outlook: “The extreme scale of the computing needs of CERN, in terms of processing power, data transfer rates and data storage capacity, pushes what can be done with cloud computing beyond its current limits. Science relies on collaboration, so the cloud services being deployed need to able to allow groups of researchers around the world to share their data and results in a secure manner. The sharing of resources in a secure manner is challenging what can be done with cloud computing today.”
When it comes to cloud technology, one of the strengths of Helix Nebula is that it’s very open, Jenkins explains. It doesn’t have any specific cloud technology requirements, stipulating what software providers must run. It’s more about the use case, being able to process a given data type with a specified level of performance. The methodology is cross-technology, with some providers using VMware, others using KVM, OpenStack or OpenNebula, all coordinating together to create a common framework. In the future, Jenkins says they may choose a cross-cloud driver, but during this proof-of-concept phase, which is where they’re at now, they want to capture all the requirements first.
The initial work dovetails with the project’s strategic objective, which states: “The European Research Area shall drive the development and implementation of a secure and globally recognised European Cloud Computing Infrastructure, initially targeting science users. This infrastructure will become ‘the’ platform for Europe, under public governance, ensuring open standard and interoperability and adhering to European policies, norms and requirements.” | <urn:uuid:72af00dd-9fbe-46b6-94b0-7bf938ddb4a6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2012/03/06/pan-european_cloud_to_support_big_science/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560285337.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095125-00274-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926313 | 1,639 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Iris recognition is a biometric modality which captures a photo of the eye pattern, converts the photo to a binary template and then saves the data to a server for future matching. Iris cameras are used to recognize an individual’s unique identity by analyzing the random, unique patterns which visibly appear inside their eye from a certain distance. It utilizes multiple technologies including optics, statistical conclusions, pattern recognition, and computer vision.
Iris recognition biometrics is widely considered to be the most accurate biometric modality among those currently available in the market. A recent Twitter poll we conducted asked what the public feels is the most reliable biometric modality and results indicated that most people trust the reliability and accuracy of iris recognition technology over any other biometric alternative.
What is the “iris?”
The iris is the colored ring around the pupil of our eyes which controls its size and regulates the amount of light received. Like a thumbprint, the iris is a unique human physiological characteristic which means there are no two identical patterns on the planet. A human’s iris pattern randomly develops while in utero through a process called morphogenesis, eventually reaching completion at approximately one year of age.
How do you use an iris camera for identification?
Iris recognition requires an advanced digital camera to capture images of the detailed, unique structures of the iris, and then compares this data to an encrypted enrollment template on file. The matching is based on one-to-many (1:N) search capabilities, useful for large databases where alternative biometric technologies could be at a disadvantage because of its reliance on one-to-one (1:1) matching which may require database segmentation to work efficiently. For more information on the differences between 1:N and 1:1 biometric matching and why it’s important to understand, please read this post.
Iris cameras can accurately scan the iris from between 10 cm to about 2 meters away and can even work with glasses or contact lenses in place (although these are recommended to be removed prior to a photo). If the iris is not injured or damaged by any health issues (e.g. severe cataracts), it will remain stable over time and just one initial enrollment can last forever.
If you want to setup an iris camera, you need to integrate it with a programming language such as .NET or a C# platform. It has some libraries which need to integrate with an application to control the iris camera. Once properly implemented, the camera will allow you to capture and save iris pattern images. You can choose which image format to use such as jpeg or WSQ, or you can create direct biometric templates in standardized formats such as ISO, ICS, and ANSI. Subsequently, you can save the data to a server for future biometric matching.
Benefits of iris recognition:
- Accuracy: Iris recognition is considered to be the most accurate biometric modality available. There is a 1 in 10⁷⁸ chance that the iris pattern of two individuals are identical.
- Stability: The iris pattern generally doesn’t change throughout our lifetime.
- Hygiene: Iris recognition is contactless rendering it much more hygienic than other available modalities.
- Speed: The iris template size is small which helps facilitate fast matching.
- Popularity/Acceptance: Along with fingerprint, iris recognition technology is arguably one of the most popular and recognizable biometric technologies around the world as it has a strong acceptance rate based on the non-invasive, non-contact, hygienic characteristics of the technology.
A report by Research and Market shows that the global iris recognition in access control market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 18.09% during the period 2016-2020. Another report says that iris biometrics provide anonymity and security at U.S. Private Vaults. In environments such as airports, border control, and patient identification in healthcare, where identification accuracy and security are paramount, iris recognition technology is proven to be the best suited biometric modality.
Based on the aforementioned characteristics, it is safe to say that iris recognition biometric technology will continue to rapidly expand around the world, supplanting more traditional modalities such as fingerprint.
If you have still any queries about iris recognition, contact us for more information. | <urn:uuid:f682b4bb-c662-40f8-bbe9-ccd1524e3316> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://blog.m2sys.com/biometric-hardware/iris-recognition-biometrics-becoming-popular/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00486-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924834 | 909 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Many of us have had the experience when we prepare a file – say, an important presentation – on one computer, where it looks and performs beautifully, and then load it up on a different computer only to have it glitch, look strange, or not function at all.
Now imagine that on the scale of a major big data project for a large corporation.
The problem is real: a slightly different version of the application or operating system between development and run can cause big problems, requiring expensive delays and fixes.
And this is where data containers come in.
A container is an application, including all its dependencies, libraries, and other binaries, and the configuration files needed to run it, bundled into a single package that can be moved, in total, from one computing environment to another.
A container might be used when moving from a developer’s laptop to a testing environment, from that testing environment to live production, or even from a physical machine to a virtual machine in the cloud. It can be used to get around differences in operating systems, software versions, infrastructure, security protocols, and storage.
In fact, the flexible and portable nature of containers often makes them very well suited for cloud-based applications – certainly a factor that has contributed to containers’ rise in popularity among IT systems architects. Many think that as computing and storage increasingly moves into the cloud, containerization will become an increasingly important tool.
Data containers are a separate technology from virtualization, though they are based on some of the same theories. With virtualization, an entire machine is replicated, up to and including the operating system, and can be several gigabytes in size. By contrast, a data container shares an operating system with any other container on the same machine, making the file size only tens of megabytes and, therefore, much lighter and resource friendly. In addition, there is no need for data containers to be provided with virtual memory and system resources in the same way as virtual machines, meaning they consume less processing power when running. They also boot and load faster. While a typical server at a web scale enterprise might be expected to support 10 or 15 virtual machine environments, the same server might run hundreds of containerized applications. Crucially, containers are also are far easier to transfer from one environment to another.
Data containers can run on a single operating system, but when users access a container, the container looks and behaves as if it owns the entire operating system. But because containers must be able to interact with the outside world, they can network and share data between containers.
Why You Should Use Data Containers
A data container can be created that allows multiple application containers to access the same data. These application containers can be created, moved, or destroyed without affecting the original data. This gives data held in containers a “stateless” nature, where the data will be identical no matter how many times it is iterated across different operating systems and applications. This is an important development for organizations wanting to run multiple tests or analyses with persistent data. It also eliminates those problems that arise when an entire application is set up in one environment and moved to another.
It’s also this facet of their nature that makes containers particularly suited for deploying microservices – large-scale applications that are built from a number of components, each one being a separate and distinct application in itself. This system of software engineering allows applications to be scaled quickly, by updating existing components or adding new ones while ensuring that the overall integrity of the parent application remains stable.
A notable example of the large-scale adoption of containers in a cloud service is provided by Spotify. It recognized the advantages of this technology in late 2013, when it deployed the open-source container-management platform Docker in order to reduce coding workload and CPU overheads. Google is another large-scale user of containers, reportedly launching around 2 billion every week.
Another advantage of a containerized approach to data is the potential it offers for more comprehensive governance. Laws pertaining to data rights and privacy are in a state of flux and subject to change. Containerized data can be packaged with information regarding who does or does not have the right to access the data, and the purposes for which the data can be used.
Of course, because they share an operating system, data containers are somewhat less secure than virtual machines and so are unlikely to totally replace virtualization any time soon. This means that for certain data, containers may not be suitable. Great care would have to be taken with storing personal medical or financial information, for example.
An inherent flaw in the concept of containers is that data could possibly be leaked through security flaws in the operating system. There also is the possibility that a malicious or inefficiently coded application sharing the same operating system could give rise to a security threat.
Due to these inherent disadvantages, many see virtualization and containerization as complementary, not competing, technologies. Neither are they mutually exclusive, as virtual machines are as capable as any of running containerized applications. The tools required for containerization are not yet as advanced as those for running virtual machines, but they are certainly gaining ground – meaning that containers are quickly becoming an efficient and reliable option for forward-thinking application architects.
Bernard Marr is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, strategic performance consultant, and analytics, KPI, and big data guru. In addition, he is a member of the Data Informed Board of Advisers. He helps companies to better manage, measure, report, and analyze performance. His leading-edge work with major companies, organizations, and governments across the globe makes him an acclaimed and award-winning keynote speaker, researcher, consultant, and teacher.
Subscribe to Data Informed for the latest information and news on big data and analytics for the enterprise, plus get instant access to more than 20 eBooks. | <urn:uuid:c3340e5d-014c-469c-b502-604a9cdf9626> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://data-informed.com/data-containers-what-they-are-and-how-they-are-used/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280825.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00486-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942866 | 1,188 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Microsoft Research has teamed up with researchers from the University of Washington to develop a sonar-based Kinnect-like motion sensing system based only on the speakers and microphone fitted in laptops.
The system depends on the Doppler effect, producing inaudible tones between 18 to 22KHz. The microphone picks up the shifted frequencies to sense movement of objects in front of the speakers in a sonar-like system Microsoft is calling SoundWave.
In a video on Microsoft's Research website, the researchers showed how it was possible to sense gestures including two-handed gestures. A demonstration even shows one researcher playing a game of Tetris simply by making gestures in front of the laptop.
Another simple but obvious application is turning on a laptop display when a user approaches the device. Microsoft also demonstrated SoundWave and hand gestures working in a noisy environment, showing that the system still worked on a laptop in a coffee shop.
Microsoft presented SoundWave at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems that took place in Austin, Texas over the last few days. A short paper with more technical details is available here (pdf). | <urn:uuid:91fce4e6-c1ca-4232-be7d-b7d951dfbbba> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/microsoft-demos-sonar-based-motion-detection/028320 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281151.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00394-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920305 | 230 | 2.828125 | 3 |
One of the biggest developments in communications and technology in recent months is the rise of HTML5. This new programming language has serious potential to destabilize a variety of different computing environments as we know them, and yield impact to the field that can only be barely conceived of today. But what in particular is likely to hit? There's been plenty of analysis of the field, and many conclusions that can be reached as a result.
One of the biggest impacts HTML5 is likely to generate in 2013 is in the field of mobile platforms. Already, HTML5 is looking to destabilize the mobile environment, with Web-based apps that can be run via browser potentially looking to encroach on app stores in their current form. Several publications like Bright Ideas are already using HTML5 as a way to bring out its magazine to mobile devices—it can be found in the iPad App Store—and that's just one key point. More and more mobile applications will come available using HTML5, and that's going to mean a huge difference in the way these mobile applications are developed.
Though mobile development is likely to overtake desktop development with HTML5 technology over the coming months, it's not going to completely swamp the desktop market. Desktop systems are still going to remain a development priority thanks to the substantial numbers of information workers that will need the desktop format for some time to come. But the rise of mobile technology will leave many developers looking for a way to develop for desktops that also allows for use on mobile devices. The PC will be, essentially, just another screen in the rotation rather than the primary screen for development.
What's more, HTML5 is looking to change the way apps are developed. There will be, as previously mentioned, an increased focus on mobile, but apps in general will be somewhat easier to develop. Apps without plugins, without so-called “heavyweight programming” methods, and applications developed with single page application (SPA) methods are expected to be on the rise.
HTML5's rise will also bring the rise of other complementary technologies. Technologies like famo.us, which allows for improvements in terms of writing fast HTML5 applications, as well as the equally rapidly-growing Web-based real time communications (WebRTC) field, which allows for not only chat and video communications, but also point-to-point file sharing all from a browser without the need for plugins. Microsoft (News - Alert) Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) and IE9 are likely to gain ground as well thanks to improved focus on HTML5 via Microsoft's HTML5 Labs.
Rises commonly don't come without falls, either, so look for several still widely-used platforms to fall by the wayside as HTML5 advances and more users want in on the associated benefits. Microsoft IE6, IE7 and IE8 are likely to fall next, as is Android (News - Alert) 2.0, which is still surprisingly widely used.
HTML5 has a lot of potential to change the environment as we know it. It's going to remove some systems from consideration in many users' normal slate of operations, and it's also going to put an increased emphasis on others. This is largely the standard for a major technological advance—consider the difference in how people reacted to the computing environment when smartphones and tablets first started to rise—and may well bring in other possibilities as yet unconsidered.
The future of HTML5 is comprised of a huge array of possibilities, and it's only a matter of time before we find out which possibilities become realities.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey | <urn:uuid:6e50b044-f537-4360-9c13-cab444cbf694> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.html5report.com/topics/html5/articles/328046-rise-html5-what-does-it-mean.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280504.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00422-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961791 | 726 | 2.671875 | 3 |
"How are babies made?"
That simple question came from my inquisitive daughter.
Of course, she asked the question during a small gathering of friends and family. Right at the moment conversation naturally lulled, she leapt in with a question she'd clearly been pondering for a while.
Despite the fact that everyone heard the question, the adults sat for a moment in a hushed silence. Some looked around, others averted their gaze. A few of us smirked. The other children sat quiet, waiting to find out something they, too, had wondered about.
For some of the kids and most of the adults, this inevitable question was risky. After all, since they didn't already know and the answer was previously brushed aside, it must be a secret& or something.
For my daughter, it was a simple question. And she wanted an answer.
Without the experience of being told no, shunned or otherwise culturally guided into silence, she asked what many children wonder about. Among those who smirked, I was happy to see her courage to ask questions — and so boldly.
As a result of her question, she got an answer. Not at the table with a large audience; instead, we saw to it that she was praised for the courage to ask. Later, we made sure she got an answer that she could understand.
Adults — especially in the business world — are conditioned to avoid uncomfortable questions, especially if the discomfort is likely to be experienced by the person asking. While the guidance to avoid discomfort and potential embarrassment might be useful in some situations, it also means that many times we avoid asking risky questions.
By avoiding risky questions, we actually increase our risk!
Children hold a secret: they have no filter, no learned experience and boundless curiosity that drives them to ask questions.
In fact, children ask lots of questions.
Consider what happens as a result:
- Sometimes they learn what not to ask
- Other times they learn whom not to ask
- But mostly, they get the answer to their question
They take risks, but it doesn't feel risky. In the process, they learn.
Spend time around me and it's quickly evident that I ask questions; non-stop, actually. I'm interested in everything. As a result, I actively encourage my children to question everything.
Am I crazy? Perhaps.
However, three things generally happen as a result of their questions:
1. I learn in the process, usually in the pursuit of the correct answer
2. My perspective shifts and changes
3. We both end up with more questions, built on a rich set of shared experiences.
In the security industry, we often avoid asking risky questions. In the process, we increase our risk by missing out on opportunities to learn, to change our perspective and to build a series of shared experiences necessary for continued success.
When we flip it around and exercise the courage to ask what we consider a risky question, we generally get an answer. Chances are, too, those around us will be relieved — they were likely wondering the same thing and your risk solved their problem.
Sometimes, this approach even invites others to ask more questions of you. That free exchange of questions and conversation reduces risk by increasing — and hopefully improving — communication.
A new year invites a new approach.
What risky questions have you been holding off asking? Today is a great day to ask. Tomorrow works, too.
A modern raconteur — writer, speaker and catalyst — Michael blends the science of human ecology with the principles of effective communication to help organizations harness the human side of security. Learn more at | <urn:uuid:1a7e15c3-16fb-44a1-9aef-f77e697cb02e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.csoonline.com/article/2130828/security-awareness/three-reasons-why-asking-risky-questions-reduces-risk.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00358-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969066 | 752 | 2.78125 | 3 |
A computer problem onboard the Mars rover Curiosity has forced NASA scientists to put the rover into safe mode while they try to bring a backup system online and try to figure out what is wrong with the main computer.
"We are doing multiple things at the same time," Jim Erickson, Curiosity's deputy project manager, told Computerworld. "All we know is the vehicle is telling us that there are multiple errors in the memory ... We think it's a hardware error of one type or another but the software did not handle it gracefully. We'd like to have our vehicles withstand hardware trouble and continue to function."
Erickson explained that last week engineers watching the rover's telemetry noticed certain applications would begin and then terminate mid-sequence. The problem appears to be a file corruption.
Scientists put Curiosity, which landed on Mars last August, into a minimal-activity safe mode last Wednesday. Since then they have been working on three different issues.
They are trying to switch the rover over onto its redundant, onboard computer system, referred to as the B-side. And while trying to repair the problem on the main system, Erickson noted that engineers are also trying to shore up the rover's software so it can better withstand hardware glitches.
"We are bringing the B-side online and getting it ready to conduct science experiments, and conduct all the driving and other activities that we normally do," Erickson said.
He added that NASA should know within two weeks if it will be able to bring the main computer back to full operation.
"I wouldn't say we're concerned but we'll go through the process and find out what happened and go from there," said Erickson. "If we have to stay on the B-side, there will be no change in science capabilities but we'd have only one side to work with and wouldn't have resilience. But we'll take what the reality is."
NASA is on a deadline to get the rover's computer repaired because as of April 4, the agency will not be able to communicate with any of the Mars rovers or orbiters for a month.
Erickson explained that NASA was approaching the solar conjunction, when the Sun will be in the path between the Earth and Mars for about a month. With the Sun in the way, NASA won't be able to send daily instructions to the rover, or receive data and images in return.
That means NASA will have to send all operational instructions for that month-long span to Curiosity before the solar conjunction begins. And it will keep the rover stationary, as well as keeping its work to a minimum.
"It will continue functioning but it will be doing limited activities," said Erickson. "It won't move but we will have it doing limited science that won't include taking the drill out or anything. We'll have it doing imaging, using the mass cam and the chem cam."
Of course, that will be the case if NASA can either get Curiosity fully switched over to its backup system, or if it can get the main system back up and running.
This won't be the first time NASA engineers have had to work on Curiosity's software. Soon after it landed on the Red Planet, NASA updated the software on the rover's main and backup computers. Engineers moved from the software that handled Curiosity's entry, descent and landing to software that managed its ability to drive and do scientific work.
Not long before Curiosity's computer trouble began last week, the rover had collected a sample from the inside of a Martian rock. It's the first time NASA has been able to collect a rock sample on another planet.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is email@example.com.
Read more about emerging technologies in Computerworld's Emerging Technologies Topic Center.
This story, "NASA conducts Martian tech support to repair Curiosity" was originally published by Computerworld. | <urn:uuid:1a834281-b3cd-4a3e-8f67-d2340b522a70> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2164110/data-center/nasa-conducts-martian-tech-support-to-repair-curiosity.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00358-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963625 | 835 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Despite being endorsed by President Obama, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 has been blocked by the US Senate.
The bill was aimed at enhancing the security and resiliency of the cyber and communications infrastructure of the United States and, among other things, would have allowed a the Department of Homeland Security to have access to the computer systems of all private companies that controlled infrastructure deemed critical for the normal day-to-day running of the country and the servicing of its citizens, in order to assess cyber risks.
First introduced back in February 2012 by independent Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman and four of his Democratic colleagues, it was modified before being presented to the Senate because the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out a number of problems with the wording defining some key issues.
Consequently, the term “cybersecurity threat” was more narrowly defined in order to exclude constitutionally-protected free speech and terms of service violations, the reporting of cyber security incidents related to the systems in question was made mandatory, and the participation of critical infrastructure owners in national cybersecurity programs was made voluntary instead of required.
It was also defined that the data collected under cybersecurity purposes would not be share with law enforcement and would not be used to prosecute unrelated crimes, and that only civilian agencies would be in charge of US’ cybersecurity systems.
Still, some politicians were against the law for ideological reasons since it would allow government and its agencies to interfere with private companies, while the owners and the operators of the infrastructure in question were more concerned with the costs of setting and keeping of the security standards the law would have required of them.
According to the National Journal, Senator Lieberman didn’t hide his disappointment at the result of the vote, saying that this was one of those days when he wasn’t proud of the United States Senate.
Republican minority Leader Mitch McConnell retorted by saying that they all recognize the problem, and that no one doubts that the nation’s cyberdefenses need strengthening, but that they weren’t willing to let the majority leader “steamroll” the bill through senate. | <urn:uuid:5d430ac7-704b-4158-982c-8ce6298c30b3> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2012/08/02/us-senate-shoots-down-cybersecurity-act-of-2012/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00568-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978839 | 423 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Green A.L.,West End University College |
Green A.L.,James Cook University |
Maypa A.P.,Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation |
Almany G.R.,CNRS Insular Research Center and Environment Observatory |
And 7 more authors.
Biological Reviews | Year: 2015
Well-designed and effectively managed networks of marine reserves can be effective tools for both fisheries management and biodiversity conservation. Connectivity, the demographic linking of local populations through the dispersal of individuals as larvae, juveniles or adults, is a key ecological factor to consider in marine reserve design, since it has important implications for the persistence of metapopulations and their recovery from disturbance. For marine reserves to protect biodiversity and enhance populations of species in fished areas, they must be able to sustain focal species (particularly fishery species) within their boundaries, and be spaced such that they can function as mutually replenishing networks whilst providing recruitment subsidies to fished areas. Thus the configuration (size, spacing and location) of individual reserves within a network should be informed by larval dispersal and movement patterns of the species for which protection is required. In the past, empirical data regarding larval dispersal and movement patterns of adults and juveniles of many tropical marine species have been unavailable or inaccessible to practitioners responsible for marine reserve design. Recent empirical studies using new technologies have also provided fresh insights into movement patterns of many species and redefined our understanding of connectivity among populations through larval dispersal. Our review of movement patterns of 34 families (210 species) of coral reef fishes demonstrates that movement patterns (home ranges, ontogenetic shifts and spawning migrations) vary among and within species, and are influenced by a range of factors (e.g. size, sex, behaviour, density, habitat characteristics, season, tide and time of day). Some species move <0.1-0.5 km (e.g. damselfishes, butterflyfishes and angelfishes), <0.5-3 km (e.g. most parrotfishes, goatfishes and surgeonfishes) or 3-10 km (e.g. large parrotfishes and wrasses), while others move tens to hundreds (e.g. some groupers, emperors, snappers and jacks) or thousands of kilometres (e.g. some sharks and tuna). Larval dispersal distances tend to be <5-15 km, and self-recruitment is common. Synthesising this information allows us, for the first time, to provide species, specific advice on the size, spacing and location of marine reserves in tropical marine ecosystems to maximise benefits for conservation and fisheries management for a range of taxa. We recommend that: (i) marine reserves should be more than twice the size of the home range of focal species (in all directions), thus marine reserves of various sizes will be required depending on which species require protection, how far they move, and if other effective protection is in place outside reserves; (ii) reserve spacing should be <15 km, with smaller reserves spaced more closely; and (iii) marine reserves should include habitats that are critical to the life history of focal species (e.g. home ranges, nursery grounds, migration corridors and spawning aggregations), and be located to accommodate movement patterns among these. We also provide practical advice for practitioners on how to use this information to design, evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of marine reserve networks within broader ecological, socioeconomic and management contexts. © 2014 The Nature Conservancy. Source
Magdaong E.T.,Hokkaido University |
Fujii M.,Hokkaido University |
Yamano H.,Japan National Institute of Environmental Studies |
Licuanan W.Y.,De La Salle University - Manila |
And 6 more authors.
Hydrobiologia | Year: 2014
Although coral declines have been reported from major reefs of the world, region-specific trends still remain unclear, particularly in areas with high diversity such as the Philippines. We assessed the temporal patterns of the magnitude and trajectory of coral cover change in the Philippines using survey data collected from 317 sites. We examined the rate of change in coral cover in relation to time, effects of bleaching and protection against fishing and assessed the efficacy of marine protected areas (MPAs) using meta-analysis. Results showed an overall increase in coral cover in the Philippines from 1981 to 2010. Protection from fishing contributed to the overall increase in the mean annual rate of change as the coral cover significantly increased within MPAs than outside. The significant differences in the rate of coral cover change through time were influenced by chronic anthropogenic stresses, coinciding with the timing of thermal stress and the establishment of MPAs. The rate of change in coral cover was independent of the level of protection and the age and size of MPA. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Source
Fidler R.Y.,Florida Institute of Technology |
Maypa A.,Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation |
Maypa A.,University of Hawaii at Manoa |
Apistar D.,Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation |
And 2 more authors.
Biology | Year: 2014
As a consequence of intense fishing pressure, fished populations experience reduced population sizes and shifts in body size toward the predominance of smaller and early maturing individuals. Small, early-maturing fish exhibit significantly reduced reproductive output and, ultimately, reduced fitness. As part of resource management and biodiversity conservation programs worldwide, no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) are expected to ameliorate the adverse effects of fishing pressure. In an attempt to advance our understanding of how coral reef MPAs meet their long-term goals, this study used visual census data from 23 MPAs and fished reefs in the Philippines to address three questions: (1) Do MPAs promote shifts in fish body size frequency distribution towards larger body sizes when compared to fished reefs? (2) Do MPA size and (3) age contribute to the efficacy of MPAs in promoting such shifts? This study revealed that across all MPAs surveyed, the distribution of fishes between MPAs and fished reefs were similar; however, large-bodied fish were more abundant within MPAs, along with small, young-of-the-year individuals. Additionally, there was a significant shift in body size frequency distribution towards larger body sizes in 12 of 23 individual reef sites surveyed. Of 22 fish families, eleven demonstrated significantly different body size frequency distributions between MPAs and fished reefs, indicating that shifts in the size spectrum of fishes in response to protection are family-specific. Family-level shifts demonstrated a significant, positive correlation with MPA age, indicating that MPAs become more effective at increasing the density of large-bodied fish within their boundaries over time. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Source | <urn:uuid:2803c219-01a0-47c0-863b-44bb2fccce56> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.linknovate.com/affiliation/coastal-conservation-and-education-foundation-861992/all/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284429.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00164-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922915 | 1,416 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Automated cyber attacks set up by criminal organisations mean no business is immune to data theft, IDC's IT Security Conference in London has heard.
By submitting your personal information, you agree that TechTarget and its partners may contact you regarding relevant content, products and special offers.
Businesses following a risk-based approach to security tend to assume that if their risk profile is low, they are unlikely to be targeted, said James Lyne, senior technologist at security firm Sophos. "This is not true because an increasing number of automated attacks target any business they can, irrespective of the company profile."
Although cyber attacks have become increasingly targeted, the use of automated search engines to look for vulnerabilities in web applications means that no business can bank on being overlooked, Lyne said.
A comprehensive security plan to mitigate these and other web-based attacks is important for all organisations connected to the internet, he said.
"Threats are increasingly becoming invisible, such as those carried out using PDF documents that are used and trusted by most businesses," said Lyne. In reality, PDF documents are easily exploited by cybercriminals, who can take control of a computer in an organisation simply by inserting a Java script into a PDF document, he said.
An increasing number of legitimate websites are also being exploited by cybercriminals to carry out attacks using SQL-injection, which is also invisible to end-users targeted by these attacks.
Cybercriminals are focusing on stealing information, which can be done by planting malware on legitimate websites, include those routinely visited by companies under standard business processes, he said. According to Lyne, up to 70% of legitimate websites are routinely targeted by cybercriminals for information such as log-in credentials, intellectual property and financial information.
"Cybercriminals are outsourcing information captured in this way to specialists in various industry verticals who can make sense of the data and sell that intelligence to other criminals," he said. | <urn:uuid:23716eea-c5c6-46f1-a0de-d91f39f2d6a0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.computerweekly.com/news/1280090759/No-business-safe-from-hackers-says-security-researcher | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00284-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9647 | 400 | 2.515625 | 3 |
A Token is a random number which, when presented to a server by
a client application, allows the server to verify that the client
is the same one with whom it communicated previously. Token's
are used to maintain the Authentication state of a Login Session
in otherwise-stateless protocols, such as HTTP / HTTPS. | <urn:uuid:7cc5d310-3b6e-47bf-abcd-06335f0ddfb7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://hitachi-id.com/concepts/token.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280086.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00249-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.857421 | 66 | 2.828125 | 3 |
How Virtualization Figures into Power Savings
How does virtualization figure into this power-saving equation? Does it
save-or cost us-energy?
When you transfer a vast amount of data on a virtualized basis, you're going to be activating areas within the data center that have probably cooled down and not processed anything in awhile. So the local building or energy management systems may have throttled those areas down to save energy.
But you need to be able to go there because virtualization, to be successful, has two components to an equation that most people don't realize: You virtualize IT, but you also have to have the equal virtualization of the facility.
So, "VxIT," from a mathematical perspective, is equal to "VxFacility." You have to keep the two in harmony. There is a reason for that. When you virtualize a process on the IT side on a data center that is not a green field, the problem is that the data center was designed with upper and lower [power] limits.
We always knew what happens when you exceeded [a power limit]: The system shuts down. But we did not understand what would happen if you could actually drive a process below its design requirements. Power and cooling are designed for a window of operation. When you go below the lower limits of the window, what happens from a cooling perspective? Systems will shut off. Our root cause analysis is done, the data center crashed, yet no one knows why. The system simply shut down.
What happened was, virtualization saw there was a problem [and] it transferred the workload someplace else, so that line went above the design requirement again. Same thing with the power systems. The frequency among multiple UPSes [uninterruptible power supplies] can become unstable. When that instability exceeds the threshold level, they'll take themselves offline.
The safety circuits are operating; they're doing what they were designed to do. So what's the answer? The answer is to understand that when you virtualize the IT, you have to review the facility part. | <urn:uuid:5cb99cc9-ad7d-46d8-826c-151102ff07a7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Green-IT/Ciscos-Marcoux-Charged-Up-for-Designing-a-Corporate-Green-Roadmap/2 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281151.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00395-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966669 | 428 | 2.578125 | 3 |
The issue of net neutrality is often portrayed (by both sides) as a black-and-white matter, where either the government is aiming to take control of private network infrastructure or greedy telecom companies are looking for ways to wring money from companies and consumers. In a Washington Post column, Jeffrey H. Birnbaum notes that “commercials on either side of the [net neutrality] issue are confusing, opaque or downright deceptive.” That is because the topic is more than just a matter of whether telecommunication companies (telcos) can charge network users like Google and Yahoo extra for so-called premium services or otherwise control the flow of data through their networks. Regardless of what side of the debate you take, recognizing the complicating factors that tangle the issue is important to a nuanced and reasonable position.
Private Property Rights—Slow Down, There
Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, defines net neutrality as “a network design principle”: “a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.” Strong proponents of private property might be quick to say that although such an approach is fine if a telco chooses it, that telco should not be forced to operate its private infrastructure equipment in a manner prescribed by the government. On its face, this argument has some appeal: after all, imagine a “car neutrality” policy that allowed anyone to use anyone else’s car, since the highways are public. The analogy here isn’t precise, but it illustrates the concern.
The problem is that telcos are not private companies. They are essentially monopolistic entities roughly (but not entirely) on par with the U.S. Post Office. Although they have the veneer of a private company, they rely heavily on government power to enable their infrastructure and stifle competition. Try, for instance, to fight a utility company over a new easement through your property. These conditions mean that telcos cannot justify claiming the same rights as truly private companies.
A knee-jerk reaction might be to simply remove any special regulatory considerations for telcos and let them fight for customers just like most other businesses. In a suburbanized nation, however, where land is divided, subdivided and sub-subdivided, imagine the headaches of actually delivering services to customers, particularly those in landlocked tracts away from public roads (which can and do offer relatively trouble-free easements—although it’s amusing when utilities charge customers for the cost of using public rights-of-way). Even ignoring such logistical issues, Andy Kessler observes at The Weekly Standard that “even if you end the monopolies, the incumbents have the advantage of a huge head start.”
Deregulation of telcos and easing of restrictions on competition is worth considering, but in the current system, appeals to private property in order to oppose net neutrality fail to consider that the rules are simply too muddled to allow such argumentation free and clear. Like it or not, the issue must deal with the mess created by entangling huge telcos and governments in the name of the “public good”—a murky concept that could enable all manner of shenanigans.
Net Neutrality: Six of One or a Half-Dozen of the Other
One of the mantras of parties on both sides of the debate is, ironically, that consumers should control the Internet (one side might say in the name of the “public good,” and the other might say in the name of letting consumers pay for what they want and not what someone else wants). But in either case, the government still maintains control.
For instance, assume net neutrality is upheld. Presumably, then, government regulators would have the authority to compel or proscribe certain activities on the part of telcos—for instance, not allowing cable provider Comcast to charge Google for transmitting YouTube videos under pain of bandwidth throttling. On the other hand, even if net neutrality is shot down, the government still doles out monopoly rights to the telcos. And you’re still stuck with dialup if you happen to be in one of those loathsome rural locations that CenturyLink and Comcast (or some similar faceless telco) refuse to serve with broadband access—effectively a throttling of all traffic because the monopoly faces no competition.
In either case, consumers will foot the bill, whatever the megacompanies and gargantuan government agencies decide. “First, regulators and/or legislators will have to decide one way or the other…Washington is involved, like it or not, no matter what the outcome,” said Birnbaum. And “consumers will pay the freight any way you look at it. That’s Economics 101. They will either pay the telephone and cable companies via higher rates, or they will pay the online firms the same way.”
Does the Outcome Even Matter?
Despite shrill claims from both sides of the debate, the outcome of legal proceedings and legislation regarding net neutrality may actually make little difference in how the Internet develops. For instance, The Washington Post notes that despite the FCC’s net neutrality rules, “In 2010, Comcast forced the backbone provider Level 3 to pay it to upgrade its network to pay for increased traffic from video streaming giant Netflix. Technically this didn’t violate network neutrality, which is a rule about network administration, not network upgrade decisions. But…Netflix was effectively forced to pay extra to deliver its content to Comcast customers.”
Even if telcos were to prioritize some traffic over others (which, in all likelihood, will overwhelmingly relate to video), the idea that they will either block or throttle ecommerce, political or press sites to the point of uselessness is farfetched. These companies still have some fear of public disapproval—the C word (censorship) can quickly rile the public, regardless of whether it accurately applies—and they remain under the thumb of government regulators regardless of the particulars of policy. Censoring controversial web content could easily be remedied by a call from a lobbyist, leading to subpoenas of telco executives to appear before various Congressional committees. So, the threat of either net neutrality or its absence is probably overblown.
The problem with the net neutrality debate is the lack of a clean slate to defend either model of the Internet. Telcos are not private companies in any honest sense of the word, so they cannot take unmitigated refuge in the concept of private property. On the other hand, these companies still aim to make a profit, so no matter what the legislation or regulations say, they will find some way around them if traffic prioritization can garner a return. In addition, attempting to treat telcos as purely public entities is likewise unwarranted. They are not simply about serving the “public good” (whatever that might be), so generalizing their mission as simply being to deliver the same service quality for any traffic to any individual, without qualification, is unrealistic—lest these companies become the digital equivalents of the Post Office, which only exists because of its monopoly on mail. Essentially, then, net neutrality is less far reaching a topic than proponents and opponents would insist. Apart from a clearer discussion of the precise public/private nature of telcos and thus the abstract entity known as the Internet, no rational basis for a clear-headed resolution exists. But the alarmist claims of both sides will still make for entertaining theater.
Image courtesy of believekevin | <urn:uuid:b334cc01-b1df-48e2-b6b1-149f2d5a0e77> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.datacenterjournal.com/thorny-issue-net-neutrality/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279379.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00029-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940198 | 1,547 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The age of wireless computing has brought unprecedented freedom and mobility for computer systems users in a variety of circumstances. Even in the home setting, a wireless network at home enables each family member to access the internet and be productive without the constraints of one room set aside for the computer or competition for access to the line. The kids can do their homework, mom and dad their web surfing, email or work and all with complete freedom of movement due to the wireless LAN infrastructure set up in the home setting.
However, going totally wireless at home brings with it some possible problems as any new technology will do. Not the least of those concerns is security.
Going wireless means by definition that access to your computing resources and the internet is occurring without wires, through the air. And just as every computer in the house can access those digital signals, so can those outside the house and those who might not wish to use those signals properly.
Therefore when planning your wireless network at home, some precautions and preventative measures should be observed so assure that your network at home is just as secure in a wireless mode as it was when you used cables and physical connections.
This purpose of this article is to help you understand the terminology of wireless security in the home setting as well as to develop a check list for key security oriented steps you should take when setting up and using your network.
Some New Terminology
The wireless world has its own language and set of acronyms. So it’s appropriate before beginning our discussion of security to define some of the terms we need to understand to be effective at securing your home wireless network.
SSID (Service Set Identifier) – This is the name of your network. All devices on the wireless network must use the same SSID to communicate with each other.
WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) – A discipline that was integrated into the very earliest wireless standardization efforts that were put into place for the development of wireless technology. This protocol provides base level security standardization for all WI-FI vendors and systems that benefit from the OSI standardization effort. This standard, also called 802.11 is a default security level that is mandatory for all wireless products. WEP is either turned “on” or “off”. WEP was designed around the same security paradigms that were used in the wired network development time frame.
WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) – A security protocol for the wireless technology industry that was developed to improve on the limitations of WEP.
TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) – TKIP is a more secure version of WEP which is required to utilize WPA for network security. TKIP encryption is stronger and more resilient than the WEP algorithm.
MAC Addressing (Media Access Control) – Similar to and of as great of importance as an IP Address, the MAC address is a 12 digit hexadecimal number that is associated with the network adapter directly. Also known as the hardware or physical address of the adapter.
DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) – Otherwise known as dynamic IP addressing DHCP allows a network to join the internet without a preset IP address.
DHCP is a utility that assigns the IP address to devices as they enter the network in an ad hoc or dynamic basis then releases that IP address for reuse once the device departs active network participation. In this way, the logged on unit never has a “static” IP address. Similarly home wireless network routers support DHCP to make development and utilization of the home wireless network more convenient and less complicated.
Assessing the Threat
There are a couple of ways a hacker or someone who is looking to steal or otherwise misuse your home wireless network can infiltrate your system. The first one is through “eavesdropping” and other is what is called a DOS attack.
Eavesdropping as the name implies involves utilizing tools and listening software utilities that have been easy to find since before wireless came along to capture the traffic that is passing through the air in your home wireless network. If the data contained in those packets is not encrypted a wealth of information about you can be captured about you. This includes login names, passwords and credit card information.
Encryption and use of the built in security measures described in this paper are excellent defenses against eavesdropping.
The second most prevalent attack is called a Denial of Service or DOS attack. In a DOS attack the hacker introduces noise or interference into the wireless network from without which artificially causes devices within the network to fail or issues a Denial of Service response to contact from other devices in the network.
Attackers can use these DOS signals to gather SSID and other important network addressing data that can be used to mount a more intrusive attack down the road.
You and Your SSID
In a wireless network implementation there are three ways to set the SSID for network communications. (1) The SSID can be set manually, (2) the SSID can be left the default that your network hardware provider set it to when your equipment was shipped or (3) The SSID can be generated automatically.
Wireless components such as routers and other access point devices provide a methodology for changing the SSID for network access.
The devices will usually come with a default SSID that is easy to figure out such as the company name or “default”. So the first step in securing your network is to change the default SSID that came with your wireless access point device.
Now when deciding upon an SSID name for your network, remember to make it something difficult to figure out. Do not use your last name, a name of your pet or your favorite Star Wars character.
In that this name will be something used exclusively for internal recognition of your network to itself, make it something obscure and difficult to figure out.
Encryption – WEP and WPA
As we discussed under definitions, WEP encryption is a standard security option that is the default encryption for all OSI compliant network products. However encryption is not automatically turned on. If you leave the defaults so encryption is not used, critical information is moving through the air between your wireless devices including user names, passwords, credit card information or other sensitive information about your home is not secure.
Through “eavesdropping” a network hacker or spy can access volumes of information about your family from your network. Therefore make it a priority to turn on WEP encryption as soon as you set up your wireless network.
WEP encryption, while the standardized “plain vanilla” security encryption available, is not flawless. A clever hacker can find ways to break WEP encryption. A number of improved encryption protocols are available that were built upon the WEP model but provide much more sophisticated encryption algorithms and correspondingly, much better security.
WPA and TKIP are upgrades to WEP encryption that more securely protect your wireless network. It is worth your time to research how to go about implementing these improved security protocols.
MAC Addressing and Filtering
As we discussed under definitions, the MAC address is a hexadecimal number that represents the physical address of your network adapter, similar to an IP address.
Just as with SSID broadcasting, this is a key security code that allows the devices on your wireless network to talk with your network adapter. By keeping the MAC address secure, you can dramatically limit the ability of unauthorized persons to access your network.
Do not allow the MAC address to be broadcast. The method for filtering your MAC address is to manually enter the MAC address of your network card into your network access point devices. As before, it requires a little more work but make this part of your network development check list and you will have an increased confidence that your network security precautions were thorough.
Usually the MAC address of your network card is located on the device itself.
Dump the Defaults
So far we have seen that in all cases, the default broadcast permissions and addresses and passwords that come with a network device are a point of security concern. Default broadcasts of security codes are provided to make it easy for you to set up and take care of your network. Resist the instinct to “do it the easy way”. Put the extra effort into changing all defaults that might provide access to secure address or codes and to change preset passwords and user names in the devices you purchase to set your network initially or expand your network later.
Each time you add a net network access device, make the following two steps as important as opening the box and taking the shrink wrap off.
Take out your wireless network security with the checklist located at the end of this article.
Change the default user name and password for your new wireless network security access point.
Another often overlooked default to change when setting up your wireless network is your default IP router subnet. Routers are preprogrammed with a default IP address of 192.168.1.0. Just as that is easy for you to know, it is easy for those who would hack your network to know that. Therefore put into place an IP network id that you will use that is not the default and not easily decoded by an intruder.
DHCP is one more method that network designers implemented to make your entry into the wireless world worry free and to reduce the “work” of setting up and maintaining your network. Through DHCP the IP address used internally for access of your wireless network is generated each time an access point enters the internet. This is a critical function for a large network because the use of a “static” IP address (that is one that does not change) can cause difficulties accessing the internet due to IP address conflicts etc.
If the number of access points to your home wireless network is small turn off DHCP so the network does not generate dynamic IP addresses. Implement static IP addressing and in that way, there is no need to broadcast your IP data to the wireless world. By keeping your IP address secure and out of the hands of sniffers and hackers, you introduce one more frustration to those who might look to break into your network and do it harm.
The firewall is a critical part of desktop security, corporate network and the “wired” network environment. However, there is a place for the firewall in the wireless setting. That place is between the wireless network and other external networks and/or between the wireless network and the internet. Our discussion of security in this paper has focused on attackers who might attempt to hijack or eavesdrop on the network directly “through the air”. However, as each node on your network accesses the internet, that interaction continues to be a high traffic security concern. Each desktop should have all of the standard security protections including a quality firewall, spyware and virus detection etc. These are for the health of the node.
However, as the “network administrator”, research the best resource for a network firewall that stands between the internet and all of the access points on your wireless network. Such precautions will be worth the upfront effort and research. Is it overkill to have a firewall there as well as on the access points? No, when it comes to security, as long as the presence of the protection does not impact productivity, no precaution is over kill.
To assist you with ongoing maintenance and review of your security concerns, we have provided a check list at the end of this article that you can use to take out and use every time your network is changed or expanded.
If you do not experience routine changes to your network, set a regular time, perhaps once every three months to take out this check list and review how your network security is doing.
Such check ups not only give you a chance to see if your security has been tampered with but it helps you have that peace of mind that you have done all you can to make your network secure.
Here’s the check list:
- Change the default SSID for each wireless network access point device.
- Disable automatic SSID broadcast.
- Turn on WEP encryption.
- Research upgrading your wireless network encryption to WPA/TKIP.
- Filter the MAC address of your network card.
- Change all default user names and passwords for new network access devices.
- Change the default IP subnet that your wireless router is preset to (192.168.1.0).
- Disable DHCP IP address generation.
- Implement firewall protection between the wireless network and other networks and between the wireless network and the internet.
Jerry Malcolm is an I.T. professional with 30 years of experience at all levels of IT project development, design, management and documentation. Since 2003 Mr. Malcolm has been the owner/principle of Malcolm Systems Services, an IT services consulting firm specializing in project management consultation, technical writing, development of technical white papers and web page content and I.T. project problem resolutions. | <urn:uuid:43c562da-9d5a-4f1d-a9b6-f312708ec267> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2005/08/09/how-to-secure-your-wireless-network/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279379.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00029-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938943 | 2,647 | 3.34375 | 3 |
The search for renewable energy is a continual one. It's also a necessary one, as we dry up the world's remaining resources with a fervor that rivals the most focused of attentions. A Cambridge, MA based company, Joule Unlimited, however, thinks that race might be over with it's ethanol creating genetically engineered bacteria.
The bacteria is called Cyanobacteria, one of the oldest living organisms in the world. They are what made Earth inhabitable to oxygen-loving folks like humans through photosynthesis, turning light energy into oxygen and other things. At least, that's what they do if left to their own devices. Joule's cyanobacteria take light, water and carbon dioxide in order to spit out alkanes, the building block of diesel fuel. To be even more clear, the bacteria they've manipulated genetically take the byproduct of industrial sites releasing and turn it into clean fuel. Pretty cool, huh?
So, what's the down side? Well, you have to grow the bacteria in large tanks with ample sunlight and water; Joule Unlimited has created a tank called the SolarConverter to facilitate this. Costs, according to Joule, should be competitive with the company planning to create 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre annually at costs as low as 20 dollars per barrel.
[via New Scientist]
Like this? You might also enjoy...
- Caltech Researchers Scale up DNA Computing
- Astronomers Attempt To Map The Cosmos, Try to Out-Google Google
- Martin Jetpack Flies to 5000 Feet; Tests Ballistic Parachute Safety System
This story, "Bacteria as biofuel: It's coming" was originally published by PCWorld. | <urn:uuid:4f9ed6dd-cd22-4871-801a-333071d25e8b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.itworld.com/article/2740396/green-it/bacteria-as-biofuel--it-s-coming.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281202.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00239-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949628 | 346 | 3.5 | 4 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.