Nessus

In computer security, Nessus is a proprietary comprehensive vulnerability scanning software. It is free of charge for personal use in a non-enterprise environment. Its goal is to detect potential vulnerabilities on the tested systems. For example:
Vulnerabilities that allow a remote cracker to control or access sensitive data on a system.
Misconfiguration (e.g. open mail relay, missing patches, etc).
Default passwords, a few common passwords, and blank/absent passwords on some system accounts. Nessus can also call Hydra (an external tool) to launch a dictionary attack.
Denials of service against the TCP/IP stack by using mangled packets

On UNIX (including Mac OS X), it consists of nessusd, the Nessus daemon, which does the scanning, and nessus, the client, which controls scans and presents the vulnerability results to the user. For Windows, Nessus 3 installs as an executable and has a self-contained scanning, reporting and management system.

Nessus is the world's most popular vulnerability scanner, estimated to be used by over 75,000 organizations worldwide. It took first place in the 2000, 2003, and 2006 security tools survey from SecTools.Org

links

• Nessus
• Vulnerability Assessments with Nessus
• Nessus
• Using Nessus and Nmap to Audit Large Networks
• Nessus (software) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• www.nessus.org/
• www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1741

Mobile Computing

Mobile computing is a generic term describing one's ability to use technology while moving, as opposed to portable computers, which are only practical for use while deployed in a stationary configuration.

Many types of mobile computers have been introduced since the 1990s, including the:

    * Wearable computer
    * Personal digital assistant/Enterprise digital assistant
    * Smartphone
    * Carputer
    * UMPC

 

Links:

• Mobile Computing

• Mobile Computing Networks

• Encryption for Mobile Computing

• Mobile Computing and Wireless Communications

• IBM Research | Mobile Computing

• www.citindia.com/September21_2005.htm

Holographic Versatile Disc

The Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) is an optical disc technology that, in the future, may hold up to 3.9 terabytes (TB) of information, although the current maximum is 250GB. It employs a technique known as collinear holography, whereby two lasers, one red and one green, are collimated in a single beam. The green laser reads data encoded as laser interference fringes from a holographic layer near the top of the disc while the red laser is used as the reference beam and to read servo information from a regular CD-style aluminum layer near the bottom. Servo information is used to monitor the position of the read head over the disc, similar to the head, track, and sector information on a conventional hard disk drive. On a CD or DVD this servo information is interspersed amongst the data.

A dichroic mirror layer between the holographic data and the servo data reflects the green laser while letting the red laser pass through. This prevents interference from refraction of the green laser off the servo data pits and is an advance over past holographic storage media, which either experienced too much interference, or lacked the servo data entirely, making them incompatible with current CD and DVD drive technology. These discs have the capacity to hold up to 3.9 terabytes (TB) of information. The HVD also has a transfer rate of 1 Gbit/s (125 MB/s). Optware planned to release a 200 GB disc in early June 2006, and Maxell planned one for September 2006 with a capacity of 300 GB and transfer rate of 20 MB/s -- although HVD standards were approved and published on June 28, 2007, neither company has released an HVD as of March, 2009.

Study material links:

• Holographic Versatile Disc System

• Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD™) System

• Collinear Holography

• Holographic Versatile Disc

• Holographic Versatile Disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• HowStuffWorks "How Holographic Versatile Discs Work"

• Holographic Versatile Disk (HVD) - Express Computer

Satellite radio

A satellite radio or subscription radio (SR) is a digital radio signal that is broadcast by a communications satellite, which covers a much wider geographical range than terrestrial radio signals.

For now, satellite radio offers a meaningful alternative to ground-based radio services in some countries, notably the United States. Mobile services, such as Sirius, XM, and Worldspace, allow listeners to roam across an entire continent, listening to the same audio programming anywhere they go. Other services, such as Music Choice or Muzak's satellite-delivered content, require a fixed-location receiver and a dish antenna. In all cases, the antenna must have a clear view to the satellites. In areas where tall buildings, bridges, or even parking garages obscure the signal, repeaters can be placed to make the signal available to listeners.

Radio services are usually provided by commercial ventures and are subscription-based. The various services are proprietary signals, requiring specialized hardware for decoding and playback. Providers usually carry a variety of news, weather, sports, and music channels, with the music channels generally being commercial-free.

In areas with a relatively high population density, it is easier and less expensive to reach the bulk of the population with terrestrial broadcasts. Thus in the UK and some other countries, the contemporary evolution of radio services is focused on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) services or HD Radio, rather than satellite radio.

 

• Satellite Communications

• Satellite Radio

• Satellite Communication Systems
• HowStuffWorks "How Satellite Radio Works"
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_radio

Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plugin that enables features such as animation, vector graphics and audio-video playback that characterizes rich Internet applications. Version 2.0, released October 2008, brings additional interactivity features and support for .NET languages and development tools. It is compatible with multiple web browser products used on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Mobile devices, starting with Windows Mobile 6 and Symbian (Series 60) phones, will also be supported.A third-party free software implementation named Moonlight is under development to bring compatible functionality to GNU/Linux.

Silverlight provides a retained mode graphics system similar to Windows Presentation Foundation, and integrates multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. It is being designed to work in conjunction with XAML and is scriptable with JavaScript. XAML can be used for marking up the vector graphics and animations. Textual content created with Silverlight is searchable and indexable by search engines as it is not compiled, but represented as text (XAML).Silverlight can also be used to create Windows Sidebar gadgets for Windows Vista.

• Microsoft Silverlight

• Building Rich Web Applications with Microsoft SilverLight

• Introduction to Silverlight

• Silverlight Debugging

• Silverlight for Designers

• Silverlight 2 Unplugged

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverlight

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a wireless protocol for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks (PANs). It was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to RS232 data cables. It can connect several devices, overcoming problems of synchronization.The word "Bluetooth" is an Anglicized version of the name of a tenth-century king, Harald Blaatand, king of Denmark and Norway, who united dissonant Scandinavian tribes into a single kingdom. The implication is that Bluetooth does the same with communications protocols, uniting them into one universal standard.

Bluetooth uses a radio technology called frequency-hopping spread spectrum, which chops up the data being sent and transmits chunks of it on up to 79 frequencies. In its basic mode, the modulation is Gaussian frequency-shift keying (GFSK). It can achieve a gross data rate of 1 Mb/s. Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, telephones, laptops, personal computers, printers, Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, digital cameras, and video game consoles through a secure, globally unlicensed Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) 2.4 GHz short-range radio frequency bandwidth. The Bluetooth specifications are developed and licensed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). The Bluetooth SIG consists of companies in the areas of telecommunication, computing, networking, and consumer electronics.

 

• An Introduction to BLUETOOTH TECHNOLOGY

• Bluetooth / Service Discovery

• Networking over Bluetooth: overview and issues

• BLUETOOTH

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth

• Bluetooth.com

• HowStuffWorks "How Bluetooth Works"

Wearable computers

Wearable computers are computers that are worn on the body. They have been applied to areas such as behavioral modeling, health monitoring systems, information technologies and media development. Wearable computers are especially useful for applications that require computational support while the user's hands, voice, eyes or attention are actively engaged with the physical environment.

"Wearable computing" is an active topic of research, with areas of study including user interface design, augmented reality, pattern recognition, use of wearables for specific applications or disabilities, electronic textiles and fashion design. Many issues are common to the wearables, mobile computing, Pervasive computing, Ambient intelligence and ubiquitous computing research communities, including power management and heat dissipation, software architectures, wireless and personal area networks and bobs.

One of the main features of a wearable computer is consistency. There is a constant interaction between the computer and user, ie. there is no need to turn the device on or off. Another feature is the ability to multi-task. It is not necessary to stop what you are doing to use the device; it is augmented into all other actions. These devices can be incorporated by the user to act like a prosthetic. It can therefore be an extension of the user’s mind and/or body.

Resource links:

• Introduction to Wearable Computers

• Wearable Computing

• The Comfort Assessment of Wearable Computers

• Wireless Interface for Wearable Computers

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wearable_computer
• http://www.redwoodhouse.com/wearable/

• Wearable Computers for Persons with Disabilities

Cluster computing

A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely so that in many respects they form a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks. Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and/or availability over that provided by a single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single computers of comparable speed or availability.

Cluster categorizations:
High-availability (HA) clusters
Load-balancing clusters
Compute clusters
Grid computing

The history of cluster computing is best captured by a footnote in Greg Pfister's In Search of Clusters: “Virtually every press release from DEC mentioning clusters says ‘DEC, who invented clusters…’. IBM did not invent them either. Customers invented clusters, as soon as they could not fit all their work on one computer, or needed a backup. The date of the first is unknown, but it would be surprising if it was not in the 1960s, or even late 1950s.

Content links

• Parallel & Cluster Computing Distributed Cartesian Meshes

• About some OS features related to Cluster Computing

• Introduction to cluster computing and Grid environment

• Cluster Computing with Linux

• Cluster Computing

• Cluster Computing Overview

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cluster

 

Quantum computer

A quantum computer is a device for computation that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. The basic principle behind quantum computation is that quantum properties can be used to represent data and perform operations on these data.

Although quantum computing is still in its infancy, experiments have been carried out in which quantum computational operations were executed on a very small number of qubits (quantum binary digits). Both practical and theoretical research continues with interest, and many national government and military funding agencies support quantum computing research to develop quantum computers for both civilian and national security purposes, such as cryptanalysis.

If large-scale quantum computers can be built, they will be able to solve certain problems much faster than any of our current classical computers (for example Shor's algorithm). Quantum computers are different from other computers such as DNA computers and traditional computers based on transistors. Some computing architectures such as optical computers[3] may use classical superposition of electromagnetic waves. Without some specifically quantum mechanical resources such as entanglement, it is conjectured that an exponential advantage over classical computers is not possible.

Reference links

• How Quantum Computers Work
• Principles of Quantum Computing

• Prospects for Quantum Computing

• Quantum computing

• Introductory lecture on quantum computing

• Detail Quantum-computing

• Centre for Quantum Computer Technology

HVAC

HVAC (pronounced either "H-V-A-C" or "H-vak") is an initialism or acronym that stands for "heating, ventilating, and air conditioning". HVAC is sometimes referred to as climate control and is particularly important in the design of medium to large industrial and office buildings such as skyscrapers and in marine environments such as aquariums, where humidity and temperature must all be closely regulated whilst maintaining safe and healthy conditions within. In certain regions (e.g., UK) the term "Building Services" is also used, but may also include plumbing and electrical systems. Refrigeration is sometimes added to the field's abbreviation as HVAC&R or HVACR, or ventilating is dropped as HACR (such as the designation of HACR-rated circuit breakers).

Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning is based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer, and on inventions and discoveries made by Michael Faraday, Willis Carrier, Reuben Trane, James Joule, William Rankine, Sadi Carnot, and many others. The invention of the components of HVAC systems went hand-in-hand with the industrial revolution, and new methods of modernization, higher efficiency, and system control are constantly introduced by companies and inventors all over the world.

Reference links for seminar:

• HVAC

• Auto HVAC

• HVAC

• Geothermal HVAC for Homes, Farms and Businesses (and schools)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVAC
• What Is HVAC?

Mobile IP

The Mobile IP protocol allows transparent routing of IP datagrams on the Internet. Each mobile node is identified by its home address disregarding its current location in the Internet. While away from home, a mobile node is associated with a care-of address which gives information about its current location. Mobile IP specifies how a mobile node registers with its home agent and how the home agent routes datagrams to the mobile node through a tunnel. Mobile IP provides an efficient, scalable mechanism for roaming within the Internet. Using Mobile IP, nodes may change their point-of-attachment to the Internet without changing their IP address. This allows them to maintain transport and higher-layer connections while moving. Node mobility is realized without the need to propagate host-specific routes throughout the Internet routing fabric.

Reference materials:

• Mobile IP

• Security for Mobile IP in the 3G Networks

• Mobile IP Technology Overview

• Introduction to Mobile IP

• Mobile IPv6 & Cellular Telephony

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_IP

• www.mobilein.com/mobile_IP.htm