The threat from the net [Internet security]

As it stands today, the Internet is not secure, so the only option is to understand how attacks occur and how best to protect against them. Ways to detect an intrusion and assess what the intruder did must be well thought out. For the most part, they will rely upon the ability of each system on the Internet to keep a log of events. The logs are invaluable for intrusion detection and analysis, indeed, they are basic to all postattack analysis. Authors of the security policy must determine what to log (keeping in mind how the desired level of logging will affect system performance) and how the logs should be analyzed. The logs should note who has entered the system as well as what they have done. Before a detailed examination is made of security methods, the issues affecting security enforcement are reviewed. The detection of intrusion using manual and automatic methods are discussed as are counterattack and damage assessment     

Closing in on the perfect code [turbo codes]

This article presents the history and operating principles of the error correcting codes known as turbo codes. Turbo codes use two encoders at the transmitter and two decoders at the receiver. With this divide-and-conquer approach, turbo codes outperform all previous error correcting codes. They have the ability to send error-free data almost at the theoretical limit.     

Improving the distance properties of turbo codes using a third component code: 3D turbo codes - [transactions letters]

Thanks to the probabilistic message passing performed between its component decoders, a turbo decoder is able to provide strong error correction close to the theoretical limit. However, the minimum Hamming distance (d_min) of a turbo code may not be sufficiently large to ensure large asymptotic gains at very low error rates (the so-called flattening effect). Increasing the d_min of a turbo code may involve using component encoders with a large number of states, devising more sophisticated internal permutations, or increasing the number of component encoders. This paper addresses the latter option and proposes a modified turbo code in which a fraction of the parity bits are encoded by a rate-1, third encoder. The result is a noticeably increased d_min, which improves turbo decoder performance at low error rates. Performance comparisons with turbo codes and serially concatenated convolutional codes are given.     

A perspective on the IEEE landscape: recent changes and future directions [the president's page]

In summary, it is paramount that Societies work together to assure that the management of products and services is satisfactory to them, that decisions made at the corporate level enable them to be financially viable, and that their volunteers continue to be motivated. There is an urgent need for more volunteers who are willing to devote their time to work in partnership with those of other S/Cs to guarantee that IEEE?s overall Technical Activities unit operates successfully from both professional and business perspectives, thus allowing the overall IEEE organization to continue to provide outstanding services to its members, the profession and to humanity.     

Mirror, mirror on the wall: who's the fairest of them all? [equations of modern science]

This paper discusses the greatest scientific equations of all time according to several philosophers and historians.     

Peer-to-peer live video streaming on the internet: issues, existing approaches, and challenges [Peer-to-Peer Multimedia Streaming]

Live video streaming is perhaps the greatest unfulfilled promise of the Internet. There have been tremendous efforts in the design and experimentation of video-streaming systems in the past two decades; there have been no shortage of technical innovations, yet no single system has delivered the scale and service quality. The fundamental problem that throttles the large-scale deployment of Internet video streaming is the dissatisfaction end-users experience with performance. This is caused by a combination of many factors, such as the autonomous nature of the Internet, inherent instability, and lack of a service guarantee. This is further challenged by sustainable bandwidth and the stringent continuity requirements of streaming applications. Recent development of P2P-based streaming technology brings unprecedented new momentum to Internet video streaming, which has been shown to be cost-effective, scalable, and easy to deploy. This article reviews the state-of-the-art P2P live video-streaming technologies and their development from a historic perspective. Based on our earlier success with a large-scale P2P streaming system, Coolstreaming, we summarize the main innovations and discuss the key trade offs in the system design. We present our observations on the future development and offer a few insights for further discussion.     

This Is Your Brain on Google [review of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind (Small, G. and Vorgan, G.; 2008)]

Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Gary Small, of the University of California at Los Angeles, invented the first brain scan that showed physical evidence of brain aging and Alzheimer's disease in living patients. He's since focused his research on young and old brains, revealing that technological overexposure causes significant changes in neural circuitry.