ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
An application-aware data storage model
Authors: Todd A. Anderson, James Griffioen
Venue: Proceedings of the annual conference on USENIX Annual Technical Conference (1999)

We describe a new application-controlled file persistence model in which applications select the desired stability from a range of persistence guarantees. This new abstraction extends conventional abstractions by allowing applications to specify a file's volatility and methods for automatic reconstruction in case of loss. The model allows applications, particularly ones with weak persistence requirements, to leverage the memory space of other machines to improve their performance. An automated (filename-matching) interface permits legacy applications to take advantage of the variable persistence guarantees without being modified. Our prototype implementation shows significant speed-ups, in some cases more than an order of magnitude over conventional network file systems such as NFS version 3.
A structured approach for managing a practical software engineering course
Authors: A. Q. Gates
Venue: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Frontiers in Education - Volume 01 (2000)

The challenges of teaching software engineering include achieving functioning teams, enforcing individual accountability, ensuring progress of the students, and evaluating quality of the product. The two-semester, software engineering course at the University of Texas at El Paso incorporates a cooperative group method and an improvement process model that enables learning from past results. The course centers on a cross-disciplinary, large-scale project that provides students with an opportunity to deal with the challenges of developing a real-world product. The experience of working with incomplete, ambiguous and changing requirements motivates the need for applying software engineering techniques and approaches to the project. In the first semester, students perform analysis and define requirements specifications for the proposed system. The second semester course covers design, implementation, and testing. This paper details the structure of the course. Specifically, it outlines how cooperative teams are structured, how students learn the importance of process refinement and improvement, and how the project is presented and managed while achieving individual accountability.
A New Teleconference System and Its Applications by Omni-directional Audio and Video Transmission
Authors: Yosuke Sato, Yuya Maita, Koji Hashimoto, Yoshitaka Shibata
Venue: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (2007)

In this paper, a flexible middleware system for omni-directional video transmission for various teleconferencing applications is introduced. The omni-directional image has more advantages in that it provides a wider view than a single directional camera and able to realize flexible TV conferencing even between remotely separated small rooms. In this paper, we describe system architecture and functions of the middleware for high-definition omni-directional image control and effective video transmission system using DV and HDV (1080i format)[4]. The MidField system which we have developed so far is used for video stream transmission over IPv4/IPv6 networks. The prototype system of a TV conference is constructed to evaluate our suggested high-definition omni-directional middleware. Through the functional and performance evaluation of the prototyped system, we could verify the usefulness of our proposed system.
Reconfigurable Systems with a User-Centric Focus
Authors: Giovanni Bartolomeo, Stefano Salsano, Nicola Blefari-Melazzi
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 International Symposium on Applications and the Internet Workshops (2007)

Today's reconfigurable radio systems have several interesting functionalities ranging from traditional reconfigurable systems operating at the physical layer only to fully fledged reconfigurability. Along this path we envisage a shift of perspective from a terminal-centric approach to a user-centric one. The main characteristics of this evolution are the provisioning of an unique user identity to be used over different RATs, and the increasing importance of profile information, needed to configure, customize and personalize terminal capabilities and. In this paper we i) examine a possible choice for a unique user identifier ii) propose a user profile and design a distributed approach to manage user profile information iii) introduce the "Dataweb" paradigm under standardization in the Oasis consortium and iv) show how it may be used to link all the expressed concepts.
Experience with an object reputation system for peer-to-peer filesharing
Authors: Kevin Walsh, Emin Gün Sirer
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Networked Systems Design & Implementation - Volume 3 (2006)

In this paper, we describe Credence, a decentralized object reputation and ranking system for large-scale peer-to-peer filesharing networks. Credence counteracts pollution in these networks by allowing honest peers to assess the authenticity of online content through secure tabulation and management of endorsements from other peers. Our system enables peers to learn relationships even in the absence of direct observations or interactions through a novel, flow-based trust computation to discover trustworthy peers. We have deployed Credence as an overlay on top of the Gnutella filesharing network, with more than 10,000 downloads of our client software to date. We describe the system design, our experience with its deployment, and results from a long-term study of the trust network built by users. Data from the live deployment shows that Credence's flow-based trust computation enables users to avoid undesirable content. Honest Credence clients can identify three quarters of the decoys encountered when querying the Gnutella network.
Interacting with Volume Data: Deformations using Forward Projection
Authors: Simon Walton, Mark Jones
Venue: Proceedings of the International Conference on Medical Information Visualisation - BioMedical Visualisation (2007)

We present a rendering algorithm for the forward projection of volume deformations. Spatial deformations are modeled by allowing the user to define curve skeletons inside the target object. Our rendering method utilises modern consumer graphics hardware and is integrated into an easy to use interface. In addition, we give an analysis of spatial transfer functions computed on the GPU, and give a solution to the problem of cracks appearing in image space when samples are pulled apart.
Synthesizing fast intrusion prevention/detection systems from high-level specifications
Authors: R. Sekar, P. Uppuluri
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 8 (1999)

To build survivable information systems (i.e., systems that continue to provide their services in spite of coordinated attacks), it is necessary to detect and isolate intrusions before they impact system performance or functionality. Previous research in this area has focussed primarily on detecting intrusions after the fact, rather than preventing them in the first place. We have developed a new approach based on specifying intended program behaviors using patterns over sequences of system calls. The patterns can also capture conditions on the values of system-call arguments. At runtime, we intercept the system calls made by processes, compare them against specifications, and disallow (or otherwise modify) those calls that deviate from specifications. Since our approach is capable of modifying a system call before it is delivered to the operating system kernel, it is capable of reacting before any damage-causing system call is executed by a process under attack. We present our specification language and illustrate its use by developing a specification for the ftp server. Observe that in our approach, every system call is intercepted and subject to potentially expensive operations for matching against many patterns that specify normal/abnormal behavior. Thus, minimizing the overheads incurred for pattern-matching is critical for the viability of our approach. We solve this problem by developing a new, low-overhead algorithm for matching runtime behaviors against specifications. A salient feature of our algorithm is that its runtime is almost independent of the number of patterns. In most cases, it uses a constant amount of time per system call intercepted, and uses a constant amount of storage, both independent of either the size or number of patterns. These benefits make our algorithm useful for many other intrusion detection methods that employ pattern-matching. We describe our algorithm, and evaluate its performance through experiments.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Linux Security
Authors: Bob Toxen
Venue: Queue (2007)

Avoid these common security risks like the devil. The problem with security advice is that there is too much of it and that those responsible for security certainly have too little time to implement all of it. The challenge is to determine what the biggest risks are and to worry about those first and about others as time permits. Presented here are the seven common problems - the seven deadly sins of security - most likely to allow major damage to occur to your system or bank account. If any of these are a problem on any of your systems, you will want to take care of them immediately.
Using Foreign Forums
Authors: Yuri Takhteyev
Venue: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)

The paper considers the use of online technical discussions by software developers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, drawing on the results of a 5 month interview study. In the course of their daily work, Brazilian software developers routinely rely on online resources, which include as a key component foreign forums dedicated to technical questions. In rare cases, they actively participate in those forums; somewhat more often they "lurk." Even more often, however, forum posts are simply found while searching for a specific topic. Forums are thus experienced not as intertwining threads of conversations, but rather as a searchable collection of questions and answers free from conversational context, which is appreciated in a detached, asocial way.
Novel scheme for efficient and scalable multihoming support in IPv6
Authors: K. I. Kim, C. M. Park, T. Kim
Venue: Proceedings of the The 8th International Conference on Communication Systems - Volume 02 (2002)

The typical motivation for multihoming is to improve reliability and performance. However, being multihomed is intrinsically complicated. Specially, the fundamental to IPv6 is the concept of firm route aggregation, by which that TLA (top level aggregator) will need to announce the aggregate of their space only to other TLA peers. Due to above reason, it requires a fair of amount of thought and careful configuration to deploy multihoming in IPv6. In this paper, we propose a new efficient and scalable multihoming scheme, which is to target for solving the technical and potential problem of multihoming support at the site exit router (RFC 2260). Multihoming supporting at the site exit uses tunneling between the border router of the ISP and the site exit router during link-failure. However, this tunneling may not be established where there do not exist contracts for traffic between ISPs. So, the key feature of our scheme is to establish a tunneling section directly between the site exit router at the multihomed site and the border router of the source site. Though additional functionalities must be included on the border router under our scheme, the proposed scheme not only has better adaptability but also can perform limited load sharing.
Constrained path computation for qos routing in computer networks
Authors: J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves
Venue:  (2006)

In this thesis, we investigate new algorithms and methodologies that facilitate the computation of multi-constrained path for QoS routing in wired and wireless networks. First, we present the extended depth-first-search (EDFS) algorithm that solves the general k-constrained multi-constrained path (MCP) problem with pseudo-polynoinial time complexity O(m 2&middot;EN + N2), where m is the maximum number of non-dominated paths maintained for each destination, E and N are the number of links and nodes of a graph, respectively. EDFS is a centralized algorithm requiring global network state (topology and resource information) maintained at each source, and has the unique property that the tighter the constraints are, the better the performance it can achieve, w.r.t. both time complexity and routing success ratio. Second, we propose the fully distributed multi-constrained routing (DMR) protocol that addresses both constrained path computation and resource optimization problems for QoS routing. DMR operates in line with the hop-by-hop, connectionless routing model assumed in the IP Internet, and need not to maintain a global view of the network state at each node. This is in sharp contrast with all previous approaches, which rely on complete or partial network state made available at each node for path selection subject to multiple constraints, which may incur excessive communication overhead in large networks and is hard to achieve in practice. Third, we present the ellipse-bounded ad-hoc routing (eBAR), a new ondemand routing scheme for wireless ad hoc networks where non-duplicate route request (RREQ) messages are further forwarded only if the relaying node stays within an ellipse that has the source and destination nodes as the foci. This is achieved by the traffic-driven, destination-initiated signaling of estimates of the distance to each active destination (i.e., data sinks). Last, we investigate key distribution and secure routing issues in rnulti-hop wireless networks. We present a new non-interactive key agreement and progression (NIKAP) scheme that does not require an on-line centralized authority, can establish and update pairwise shared keys between any two nodes in a non-interactive manner, is configurable to operate synchronously (S-NIKAP) or asynchronously (A-NIKAP), and has the ability to provide differentiated security services w.r.t. the given security policies. This thesis includes research work that have been previously published in [29, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 28, 33]; and coauthored with Prof. J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves.
Security and Trust in IT Business Outsourcing: a Manifesto
Authors: Y. Karabulut, F. Kerschbaum, F. Massacci, P. Robinson, A. Yautsiukhin
Venue: Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS) (2007)

Nowadays many companies understand the benefit of outsourcing. Yet, in current outsourcing practices, clients usually focus primarily on business objectives and security is negotiated only for communication links. It is however not determined how data must be protected after transmission. Strong protection of a communication link is of little value if data can be easily stolen or corrupted while on a supplier's server. The problem raises a number of related challenges such as: identification of metrics which are more suitable for security-level negotiation, client and contractor perspective and security guarantees in service composition scenarios. These challenges and some others are discussed in depth in the article.
Testable design for advanced serial-link transceivers
Authors: Mitchell Lin, Kwang-Ting (Tim) Cheng
Venue: Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe (2007)

This paper describes a DfT solution for modern serial-link transceivers. We first summarize the architectures of the Crosstalk Canceller and the Equalizer used in advanced transceivers to which the proposed solution can be applied. The solution addresses the testability and observability issues of the transceiver for both characterization and production testing. Without using sophisticated testing instrument setting, the proposed solution could test the clock and data recovery circuit and characterize the decision-feedback equalizer in the receiver. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method has significant higher fault coverage and lower hardware requirement than the conventional approach of probing the eye-opening of the signals inside the transceiver.
Safety-Oriented Design of Component Assemblies using Safety Interfaces
Authors: Jonas Elmqvist, Simin Nadjm-Tehrani
Venue: Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS) (2007)

This paper promotes compositional reasoning in the context of safety-critical systems, and demonstrates a safety-oriented component model using an application from the automotive industry: an Adaptive Cruise Controller (ACC). The application consists of four components for which a set of 18 fault modes have been identified. We show the impact of all single faults and double faults selected from this set, on a safety property associated with the ACC assembly. Analysis related to each fault mode is performed using compositional rules and derived safety interfaces for each component. The derivation of safety interfaces for the ACC components has been supported by implementation of two extensions to the SCADE tool set: (1) a front end that iteratively and automatically builds the environment in which the component is resilient in presence of a given fault, (2) fault mode libraries that can be reused for modeling several classes of faults affecting the input of a component. The result of the study is the illustration of system level safety in presence of certain single and double faults, based on compositional reasoning and the automatically generated interfaces. The component model uses reactive modules as the formal notation. The instantiation of the model in terms of modules specified in SCADE provides a link between formal analysis of components in safety-critical systems and the traditional engineering processes supported by model-based development.
A Simple Sequential Reasoning Approach for Sound Modular Verification of Mainstream Multithreaded Programs
Authors: Bart Jacobs, Jan Smans, Frank Piessens, Wolfram Schulte
Venue: Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (ENTCS) (2007)

Reasoning about multithreaded object-oriented programs is difficult, due to the non-local nature of object aliasing, data races, and deadlocks. We propose a programming model that prevents data races and deadlocks, and supports local reasoning in the presence of object aliasing and concurrency. Our programming model builds on the multi-threading and synchronization primitives as they are present in current mainstream languages. Java or C# programs developed according to our model can be annotated by means of stylized comments to make the use of the model explicit. We show that such annotated programs can be formally verified to comply with the programming model. In other words, if the annotated program verifies, the underlying Java or C# program is guaranteed to be free from data races and deadlocks, and it is sound to reason locally about program behavior. Our approach supports immutable objects as well as static fields and static initializers. We have implemented a verifier for programs developed according to our model in a custom build of the Spec# programming system, and have validated our approach on a case study.
Software distributed shared memory over virtual interface architecture: implementation and performance
Authors: Muralidharan Rangarajan, Liviu Iftode
Venue: Proceedings of the 4th annual Linux Showcase & Conference - Volume 4 (2000)

In this paper, we describe an implementation of software Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) over Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA) for a Linux-based cluster of PCs and evaluate its performance. VIA is a user-level memory-mapped communication model that provides zero-copy communication and low-overhead by excluding the operating system kernel from the communication path. To our best knowledge, our implementation is the first software DSM protocol on VIA. The DSM protocol we have implemented on VIA is Home-based Lazy Release Consistency (HLRC) that previous studies have shown to exhibit good scalability by reducing the number of messages and memory overhead compared to the homeless counterpart. The experimental results obtained on seven Splash-2 applications show that VIA can be successfully used to support software shared memory on clusters of PCs. The paper is accompanied by a source-code distribution of the software DSM protocol for Linux/VIA clusters.
Multiple-Description Coding by Dithered Delta-Sigma Quantization
Authors: Jan Ostergaard, Ram Zamir
Venue: Proceedings of the 2007 Data Compression Conference (2007)

In this paper we address the connection between the multiple-description (MD) problem and Delta-Sigma quantization. Specifically, we exploit the inherent redundancy due to oversampling in Delta-Sigma quantization, and the simple linear-additive noise model resulting from dithered lattice quantization, in order to construct a symmetric MD coding scheme. We show that the use of feedback by means of a noise shaping filter makes it possible to trade off central distortion for side distortion. Asymptotically as the dimension of the lattice vector quantizer and order of the noise shaping filter approach infinity, we show that the symmetric two-channel MD rate-distortion function for the memoryless Gaussian source and MSE fidelity criterion can be achieved at any resolution. This realization provides a new interesting interpretation for the information theoretic solution. The proposed design is symmetric in rate by construction and there is therefore no need for source splitting.
ATPG based functional test for data paths: application to a floating point unit
Authors: I. Bayraktaroglu, M. d'Abreu
Venue: Proceedings of the High-Level Design Validation and Test Workshop, 2004. Ninth IEEE International (2004)

Application of an ATPG based functional test methodology that is tailored towards data paths to a floating point unit is described. The methodology employs the instruction set of the processor to control the inputs and to observe the outputs of the data path and utilizes an ATPG tool to generate test patterns. The test patterns are then converted to instruction sequences and applied as a functional test. This methodology provides high at-speed coverage without the performance and area overhead of the traditional structural testing. While we target stuck-at faults in this work, the methodology is applicable to other faults models, including delay faults.
Vector Field Editing and Periodic Orbit Extraction Using Morse Decomposition
Authors: Guoning Chen Konstantin Mischaikow Robert S. Laramee, Pawel Pilarczyk Eugene Zhang
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2007)

Design and control of vector fields is critical for many visualization and graphics tasks such as vector field visualization, fluid simulation, and texture synthesis. The fundamental qualitative structures associated with vector fields are fixed points, periodic orbits, and separatrices. In this paper, we provide a new technique that allows for the systematic creation and cancellation of fixed points and periodic orbits. This technique enables vector field design and editing on the plane and surfaces with desired qualitative properties. The technique is based on Conley theory, which provides a unified framework that supports the cancellation of fixed points and periodic orbits. We also introduce a novel periodic orbit extraction and visualization algorithm that detects, for the first time, periodic orbits on surfaces. Furthermore, we describe the application of our periodic orbit detection and vector field simplification algorithms to engine simulation data demonstrating the utility of the approach. We apply our design system to vector field visualization by creating data sets containing periodic orbits. This helps us understand the effectiveness of existing visualization techniques. Finally, we propose a new streamline-based technique that allows vector field topology to be easily identified.