tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87299407260643728132024-02-08T13:32:51.463-05:00[fuzzy state]technology | design | cognition | other things i like... Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01026419671053353785noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8729940726064372813.post-20047214306407908592013-04-19T18:15:00.000-04:002013-05-30T04:04:38.624-04:00The State of the Art: Increasing Network Resiliency by Optimally Assigning Diverse Variants to Routing Nodes (a reflection)<a href="http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~crisn/index.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">Cristina Nita-Rotaru</a>, <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">presented a talk at Depaul University on research efforts currently underway at </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Purdue's</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><a href="http://projects.cerias.purdue.edu/ds2/index.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">Dependable and Secure Distributed Systems Laboratory</a><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The following is a reflection on some of what I took away from the talk. </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A high-level</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> overview of the research, presented visually, can be seen by </span><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/c9szr1w9w0wvvzl/nita-rotaru_et_al.pdf" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">clicking here</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Summary</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Within cloud computing, the Network as a service (NaaS) framework is uniquely suited for deployment within a security model based on intrusion tolerance, yet the majority of NaaS deployments </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">currently </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">rely on intrusion detection mechanisms instead. Defining a protocol to support such a model is a major area of research at the laboratory, and thus is where Nita-Rotaru focused her talk.</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Research Questions: What is the optimal way to maintain the performance and accessibility of distributed networks whose topography may expose critical data to hostile environments?</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hypotheses: Strategic use of diverse variants (e.g., various operating systems) within distributed networks will provide increased performance and greater resiliency than that provided by any model currently in use. </span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Methods: Simulations were used to test various configurations of diverse variants across a wide spectrum of potential environments.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Conclusions: Results showed that by increasing diverse variants, network performance and resiliency could be increased if said variants were optimally configured. They determined that if at most three (3) variants are arranged at nodes across the network in such a way that any given node had equal exposure to more than one (1) variant at any given time, resiliency increased by as much as (approximately) 15%. What was surprising to the team was the discovery that suboptimal configurations could actually degrade network performance and resiliency. Although seemingly counterintuitive, this phenomenon can be explained as follows; for any random assignment of n variants, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the likelihood of reaching an optimal state is far less then the likelihood of reaching a sub-optimal state. </i></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Connections</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There is a degree of inherent robustness afforded by a corresponding degree of natural diversity, which animates all of the dynamic living systems on our planet. What is so fascinating about this research is that the same appears to be true for the non-natural dynamic systems that we humans have artificially created. Perhaps the distinction between such networks is not as firm we perceive it to be.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Further, it could be argued that our human-crafted systems are in fact natural systems in their own right, insofar as they arise </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">from our efforts</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> in an iterative, unfolding process as dynamic and interdependent as any naturally occurring one. Is it not true for example, that the expansive underground networks built by ant colonies arise in a manner not dissimilar to our own? That is, as ant-crafted systems born from the natural action and movement of natural ant bodies as natural solutions to their problems. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What delineating factor exists to separate the formative essence of these two acts of collectivist creation? As humans, our inclination is to suggest that it is our ability to be self-aware, to independently direct the arc of our consciousness, that is the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">delineating factor here. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps, but science has yet to provide us a means to empirically prove the existence of such a delineation, and has even failed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of consciousness. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I propose that similarities between our human-crafted networks and those present in nature far outweigh any differences. The information networks that humans have created thrive on diversity similar to the networks of ant colonies; flocks of birds; schools of fish; and other systems whose formation is driven by the actions of sentient beings and non-sentient processes alike. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is understood that the process of evolution is in part fed by environmental stresses applied over time, causing the system to segment and mutate in a process that sheds weaker segments while providing enhanced functionality to the already more robust segments, which in turn allows them to expand outward to increasingly diverse environments, environments which again stress the system in new ways, and so on. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Indeed what I have described reads much like the ongoing story of the Internet and of the World Wide Web that it supports.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01026419671053353785noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8729940726064372813.post-27293495562674096992012-12-31T03:30:00.001-05:002012-12-31T03:30:45.715-05:00The Neuroscience of CreativityResearch continues to show that our brains are much more adaptive than once thought. The strength and scope of one's creative ability, like all cognitive function, is determined more by application and environment than by innate skill. <br />
Indeed, we are in the age of possibility: <br />
http://blogs.terrapinn.com/happiness/2012/11/22/neuroscience-creativity/Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01026419671053353785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8729940726064372813.post-78002540684646308812012-12-12T15:43:00.001-05:002012-12-12T15:45:09.425-05:00Society for Music Perception and Cognition<div>
The Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC) is an excellent resource for those interested in music cognition: <a href="http://www.musicperception.org/#.UMjpgjeyXko.blogger">http://www.musicperception.org</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01026419671053353785noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8729940726064372813.post-74413545407774656952012-09-11T03:14:00.001-04:002012-09-11T03:15:54.360-04:00Taming Facebook with Wolfram<a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=facebook+report" target="_blank">Personal analytics for Facebook!</a> Another reason why Wolfram Alpha is so very, very awesome.<br />
<br />
Lifehacker wrote an excellent review here:<br />
<a href="http://lifehacker.com/5939392/wolfram-alphas-facebook-report-analyzes-ever-dark-corner-of-your-facebook-activity?popular=true">http://lifehacker.com/5939392/wolfram-alphas-facebook-report-analyzes-ever-dark-corner-of-your-facebook-activity?popular=true</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01026419671053353785noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8729940726064372813.post-55333835012762997912012-02-28T13:52:00.000-05:002012-12-12T15:51:55.289-05:00Data Visualization ToolsExcellent review of 20 + tools and resources for data mining and visualization:<br />
<a href="http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/data-visualization-tools-resources/">http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/data-visualization-tools-resources/</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01026419671053353785noreply@blogger.com