Tools of the Trade: A Survey of Various Agent Based Modeling Platforms

Agent Based Modeling (ABM) toolkits are as diverse as the community of people who use them. With so many toolkits available, the choice of which one is best suited for a project is left to word of mouth, past experiences in using particular toolkits and toolkit publicity. This is especially troublesome for projects that require specialization. Rather than using toolkits that are the most publicized but are designed for general projects, using this paper, one will be able to choose a toolkit that already exists and that may be built especially for one's particular domain and specialized needs. In this paper, we examine the entire continuum of agent based toolkits. We characterize each based on 5 important characteristics users consider when choosing a toolkit, and then we categorize the characteristics into user-friendly taxonomies that aid in rapid indexing and easy reference.Agent Based Modeling, Individual Based Model, Multi Agent Systems

Digital forensics formats: seeking a digital preservation storage format for web archiving

In this paper we discuss archival storage formats from the point of view of digital curation and preservation. Considering established approaches to data management as our jumping off point, we selected seven format attributes which are core to the long term accessibility of digital materials. These we have labeled core preservation attributes. These attributes are then used as evaluation criteria to compare file formats belonging to five common categories: formats for archiving selected content (e.g. tar, WARC), disk image formats that capture data for recovery or installation (partimage, dd raw image), these two types combined with a selected compression algorithm (e.g. tar+gzip), formats that combine packing and compression (e.g. 7-zip), and forensic file formats for data analysis in criminal investigations (e.g. aff, Advanced Forensic File format). We present a general discussion of the file format landscape in terms of the attributes we discuss, and make a direct comparison between the three most promising archival formats: tar, WARC, and aff. We conclude by suggesting the next steps to take the research forward and to validate the observations we have made

Open Source Software: From Open Science to New Marketing Models

-Open source Software; Intellectual Property; Licensing; Business Model.

Secure Configuration tool Suite Initiative

Vulnerability identification, remediation, and compliance verification within the Department of Defense (DOD) are currently inconsistent and non-integrated. The Secure Configuration Tool Suite (SCTS) solution should make significant grounds in resolving the DOD deficiency within an Enterprise-wide Information Assurance Vulnerability Management System. The professional project documented in this paper is a result of a major DOD initiative in support of the SCTS, and is comprised of 2 initiatives: the Secure Configuration Compliance Validation Initiative (SCCVI), which provides vulnerability assessment capability, and the Secure Configuration Remediation Initiative (SCRI), which provides vulnerability remediation capability. As a member of the project installation team the author performed on-site installations as required and directed. The DOD is a large organization and documenting the entire project would be beyond the scope of this professional project. Therefore, this analysis is based on a smaller scale of the initiative above. The installation of an unclassified baseline model at a pre-selected DOD command andall of its subcomponents will be utilized for this thesis. This installation will eventually be available for all DOD components to use as a lessons-learned tool and as a result these tools will be applied across the DOD Enterprise and should fully integrate IA Vulnerability identification, verification, and reporting; thus making a significant contribution to an Enterprise-wide Information Assurance Vulnerability Management System. While this project is based on actual events and efforts, in order to keep within the guidelines of non-disclosure outside of the DOD environment, specific names of commands, agencies and locations have been substituted with generic ones

Automatização de administração e segurança em redes Windows NT

Orientadores: Paulo Licio de Geus, Celio Cardoso GuimarãesDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: A administração, a manutenção da segurança e o gerenciamento de grandes redes de computadores baseados em Windows NT são tarefas desafiadoras e trabalhosas. Algumas tarefas podem se tornar extremamente laboriosas para os administradores dessas redes, como por exemplo: instalação remota de programas, auditoria e modificação de uma configuração de segurança remota ou melhorar o desempenho de cada máquina. Este trabalho tem como objetivo desenvolver técnicas para automatizar as tarefas de administração de redes Windows NT, tornando-as menos complexas. Além disso, este trabalho apresenta e descreve DoIt4Me ("do it for me"), uma ferramenta de gerenciamento remoto capaz de melhorar a segurança, a administração e o desempenho de cada máquina dessas redesAbstract: The administration, the maintenance of the security and the management of large Windows NT networks are challenging tasks. Some tasks can be extremely laborious, such as: software remote install action, auditing and updating the security configurations or to improve the performance of each network machine. The goal of this work is to develop techniques to automate network administra tive tasks, turning them less complexo Besides that, this work presents DoIt4Me ("do it for me"), a network management tool to improve the security, the administration and the performance of each network machineMestradoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

Fat or thin? Is the verdict in?

ABSTRACT Thin client or network computing is a hot topic. The hype claims lower total cost of ownership, faster applications deployment and reduced management pain, compared to traditional computing architectures. Early in 1998 the Flinders University Library installed network computers in the Central and branch libraries for student access to the Internet. This paper is a review of network computers in the light of our experience over the past two years. Do network computers offer all that is claimed in the hype? Are there hidden costs? What are the issues of configuration, server scaling, network performance and fault diagnosis? Do they have a future in the Library arena

Samba Openldap: An Evolution And Insight

Directory services facilitate access to information organized under a variety of frameworks and applications. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is a promising technology that provides access to directory information using a data structure similar to that of the X.500 protocol. IBM Tivoli, Novell, Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, and many other vendor features LDAP-based implementations. The technology’s increasing popularity is due both to its flexibility and its compatibility with existing applications. A directory service is a searchable database repository that lets authorized users and services find information related to people, computers, network devices, and applications. Given the increasing need for information — particularly over the Internet — directory popularity has grown over the last decade and is now a common choice for distributed applications. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) accommodates the need of high level of security, single sign-on, and centralized user management. This protocol offers security services and integrated directory with capability of storage management user information in a directory. Therefore at the same time the user can determine application, service, server to be accessed, and user privileges. It is necessary to realize files sharing between different operating systems in local area network. Samba software package, as the bridge across Windows and Linux, can help us resolve the problem. In this paper, we try to explore previous literature on this topic and also consider current authors work then come out with our views on the subject matter of discussion based on our understanding