Implementing Legba: Fine-Grained Memory Protection

Fine-grained hardware protection could provide a powerful and effective means for isolating untrusted code. However, previous techniques for providing fine-grained protection in hardware have lead to poor performance. Legba has been proposed as a new caching architecture, designed to reduce the granularity of protection, without slowing down the processor. Unfortunately, the designers of Legba have not attempted an implementation. Instead, all of their analysis is based purely on simulations. We present an implementation of the Legba design on a MIPS Core Processor, along with an analysis of our observations and results

A consideration of academic misconduct in the creative disciplines: From inspiration to imitation and acceptable incorporation

When the issue of students obtaining unfair academic advantage is discussed, the focus is, virtually always on text based material concerning inadequate attribution or more blatant, but possibly inadvertent, passing off. A 2008 conference concerning plagiarism held had only two, from over thirty, sessions, keynotes and workshops, focused specifically on issues of plagiarism from within the creative, visual, art and design disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to outline many of the issues of misrepresentation with particular reference to vocational education in creative disciplines and to propose a route that may be followed to clarify matters for specific subject grouping and institutions. It is asserted that this approach, if formalised, can, lead to the establishment of agreed verifiable standards and thus improve the quality of the student work created (Porter 2009). This paper does not focus upon text based misconduct but upon issues of academic misconduct specifically associated with images, ideas and intellectual property within the creative disciplines of art and design

Landscape Biographies

Landscape Biographies explores the long, complex histories of landscapes from personal and social perspectives. Twenty geographers, archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists investigate the diverse ways in which landscapes and monuments have been constructed, transmitted, and transformed from prehistory to the present, from Manhattan to Shanghai, Iceland to Portugal, England to Estonia

Enforcing database security on cloud using a trusted third party based model

Cloud computing offers a considerable number of advantages to clients and organizations that use several capabilities to store sensitive data, interact with applications, or use technology infrastructure to perform daily activities. The development of new models in cloud computing brings with it a series of elements that must be considered by companies, particularly when the sensitive data needs to be protected. There are some concerns related to security that need to be taken into consideration when a service provider manage and store the data in a location outside the company. In this research, a model that uses a trusted third party (TPP) to enforce the database security in the cloud is proposed. The model describes how a client processes a query securely by using encryption mechanisms and partitioning methods. The client establishes the communication with the TPP to retrieve the data from a cloud storage service. The TPP has two primary functions. First, perform a partition process over the data by using an index from one of the attributes in the table. As a result, the TPP sends to the cloud server the records in encrypted format with an index. Second, the TPP analyzes the client query to retrieve a segment of the data from the cloud based on the query conditions. The final result is submitted to the client in which a minimum workload is executed. Some simulations were performed to evaluate the efficiency of the model by using two partition techniques: Histogram based and Mondrian or Bisection Tree based partition. The strategy of the model is to process as much of the work at the TPP site and securely transmit the result. Using encrypted record in the cloud storage service prevents the provider to have any knowledge about the data and enforces the security of the database

A Protection Layer over MapReduce Framework for Big Data Privacy

In many organizations, big data analytics has become a trend in gathering valuable data insights. The framework MapReduce, which is generally used for this purpose, has been accepted by most organizations for its exceptional characteristics. However, because of the availability of significant processing resources, dispersed privacy-sensitive details can be collected quickly, increasing the widespread privacy concerns.  This article reviews some of the existing research articles on the MapReduce framework's privacy issues and proposes an additional layer of privacy protection over the adopted framework. The data is split into bits and processed in the clouds, and two other steps are taken. Hadoop splits the file into bits of a smaller scale. The task tracker then allocates these bits to several mappers. First, the data is split up into key-value pairs, and the intermediate data sets are generated.  The efficiency of the suggested approach may then be effectively interpreted. Overall, the proposed method provides improved scalability. The following figures compare execution time with relation to file size and the number of partitions. As privacy protection technique is used, the loss of data content can be appropriately handled.  It has been demonstrated that MRPL outperforms current methods in terms of CPU optimization, memory usage, and reduced information loss.  Research reveals that the suggested strategy creates significant advantages for Big Data by enhancing privacy and protection. MRPL can considerably solve the privacy issues in Big Data

The Evening is Over, the Beauty Remains : A Semiotic Study of Piet Mondrian's Text "Natural Reality and Abstract Reality"

Abstract This study concentrates on the Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian, as a producer of a Neo-Plastic theory of art. My semiotic reading focuses mainly on one of his article series, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality (Natuurlijke en abstracte realiteit [1919-1920]), and acknowledges also the accompanying writings in the De Stijl periodical where it appeared, and a few photographs of Mondrian’s studio and motifs present in the paintings at the time when Mondrian wrote Natural Reality and Abstract Reality. Mondrian produces his ideas of non-figurative art in a way in which other external cognitive processes from science, certain esoteric streams, modern urban experience and popular culture, are to be taken as integral parts of the theory formation in his own text. This view elucidates the idea of creativity in a new way because it situates the artist’s individual activity within cultural knowledge and memory rather than just taking influences from it. I have reached these findings by relating Mondrian’s little-researched article series to the surrounding international philosophical, esoteric and technologizing cultures of the 1920s. Studying this relation in terms of significations has led to my study reflecting the paradigmatic and related meaning effects in contemporary philosophies and reflections, such as those of Henri Poincaré, Rudolf Steiner, Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud. By reading the text as a fictive dramatic score my study relies on Roman Jakobson’s poetic function. Following in the lines of literary scholar Jørgen Johansen’s subsequent application of Charles Peirce’s semiotics this study reads Mondrian’s article series as the process of iconization; as a flow of images, as diagrammatic enactment and as metaphors of night and a stroll. To stage the route from ‘natural reality’ to ‘abstract, Mondrian gives to Natural Reality and Abstract Reality the flavour of being a form of logical inference applied by means of images. As a flow of images the text shows a stream of consciousness and, thus, the modern insight of perception, which differs from the traditional Kantian dualistic insight and the notion of the stable subject. The form of the text itself also represents meaning, which shows that Mondrian had literary ambitions. The aesthetic effect of the text as a diagram of many thematic oppositions and as the characters’ relations makes it a self-reflective icon of its own theme of modern consciousness. Metaphorically, the text presents the processual character of an artist’s creative thought as a night-time stroll, while developing the idea of Neo-Plasticism. Thus, there are definite Neoplatonic tenets in Mondrian’s text. This study shows that creative activity takes place not only in the processes of an individual mind but also by actively integrating and using cultural signs, such as the idea of evolution or the cultural text of the Euclidean derivative, the ‘point to line to plane’. By these kinds of ‘cultural artefacts’ Mondrian is able to conduct his own activity within and for the modern culture of the 1920s.Abstrakti: Tutkimukseni valottaa hollantilaisen taiteilijan, Piet Mondrianin ajattelua neoplastisen taideteorian tuottajana. Semioottisen näkökulmani keskiössä on yksi hänen artikkelisarjoistaan, Natuurlijke en abstracte realiteit [1919-1920]), unohtamatta kuitenkaan muita, rinnakkaisia artikkeleita De Stijl -lehdessä, missä Mondrianin artikkelisarja alun perin ilmestyi. Näkökulmaani tukee muutamien Mondrianin studiota esittävien valokuvien tarkastelu sekä esimerkki artikkelisarjan kirjoittamisajankohdan maalaustuotannosta. Mondrian tuotti ei-esittävän taiteen ideansa siten, että hän hyödynsi taiteen kentän ulkopuolisia tieteestä, tietyistä esoteerisista virtauksista, modernin urbaanin ihmisen kokemuksesta ja populaarikulttuurista peräisin olevia kognitiivisia prosesseja integroimalla niitä taideteoriansa olennaiseksi osaksi. Näkemykseni valaisee luovuutta uudella tavalla, sijoittamalla taiteilijan luovaa ajattelua pikemminkin kulttuurisen tiedon ja muistin alueelle kuin vain vaikutteita siitä ottavaksi. Tavoitteena on ollut Mondrianin vähän tutkitun artikkelisarjan suhteuttaminen sitä ympäröiviin 1910-luvun filosofisiin ja esoteerisiin virtauksiin sekä teknologisoituvaan kansainväliseen kulttuuriin. Näissä suhteissa välittävinä instrumentteina ovat paradigmaattiset merkitysefektit, jotka Mondrian on jakanut tekstissään esimerkiksi sellaisten reflektoivien käsitysten kanssa, joita ovat edustaneet esimerkiksi Henri Poincaré, Rudolf Steiner, Henri Bergson ja Sigmund Freud. Mondrianin teosta olen tutkinut ikään kuin fiktiivisenä näytelmänä nojautuen poeettisen funktion -käsitteeseen (Roman Jakobson) ja edennyt Jorgen Johansenin sovellusta myötäillen Charles Peircen semioottiseen ikoni-käsitteeseen. Mondrianin määrittämä ’taiteen tie’ figuratiivisesta todellisuudesta (natuurlijke realiteit) kohti abstraktia todellisuutta (abstracte realiteit) luo mahdollisuuden tarkastella hänen ajatteluaan loogisena ja kuviin perustuvana. Kuvien virtana (flow of images) Natuurlijke en abstracte realiteit esittää modernin näkemyksen havainnosta, joka eroaa kantilaisesta stabiilin subjektin ajatuksesta antamalla vaikutelman tietoisuuden virrasta. Tekstin muoto henkilöiden ja temaattisten vastakohtien suhteina (diagrams) kiinnittää huomiota ja saattaa viitata Mondrianilla olleisiin kirjallisiin tavoitteisiin. Muodon tuottama esteettinen vaikutelma tekee tekstistä itseään reflektoivan, oman tietoisuuden -teemansa ikonin. Taiteilijan luovan ajattelun prosessi on esitetty yön, tien ja valaistun kaupungin metaforina (metaphors) – samalla kun se kehittää neoplastista taideteoriaa. Tutkimukseni näyttää, että uutta luova ajattelu ei ole ainoastaan yksittäisen mielen sisäistä toimintaa, vaan uusi luodaan myös integroimalla ja käyttämällä kulttuurisia merkkejä. Mondrianin tapauksessa tämä on merkinnyt evoluution ideaa ja euklidisen geometrian ideaa ’pisteestä viivan kautta tasoon’. Tämän kaltaisten kulttuuristen ’artefaktien’ kautta Mondrian on kyennyt ohjaamaan omaa toimintaansa neoplastisen taideteorian tuottajana ikään kuin 1910-luvun modernista kulttuurista käsin ja sitä varten