Issue 2 (January 17 - January 23, 2006): LOW-COST FAULT TESTING Goutam Kumar Saha discusses techniques for low-cost testing for transient faults. He is with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) in India. Issue 2 (January 17 - January 23, 2006): INFORMATION SECURITY John Peter Jesan discusses technqiues for improving information security. He is a Software Engineer / Infosec Professional working in CitiStreet, a joint venture of State Street and Citigroup companies. Issue 4 (January 31 - February 06, 2006): The MESSENGER Project Zakaria Maamar of Zayed University in Dubai explains the Messenger Project, which aims at managing data between distributed UDDI registries and integrates users and software agents into what is referred to as messengers. Issue 4 (January 31 - February 06, 2006): RACIST ATTACKS ON CALL CENTER WORKERS Bhumika Ghimire writes from Nepal about racist attacks on call center workers in Asia. Issue 5 ( February 7 - February 13, 2006): Thoughteracy for All M.O. Thirunarayanan says that information and communications technologies will slowly but surely initially diminish and then eventually altogether do away with peoples¹ reliance on soon to be obsolete skills such as reading and writing. Issue 5 (February 7 - February 13, 2006): RESOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING AND DATA DISTINCTION * Garth Wolfendale flies a kite to show that way there is no real distinction between data and programs ... they are one entity. The data not only defines itself but also provides the various ways of processing it in the same 'package'. Issue 6 (February 14, 2006 - February 20, 2006) : Taking Software Requirements Creation from Folklore to Analysis Larry Berstein, Industry Research Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology, writes: "The performance of new systems capabilities for government agencies and industry are often examined using simulators. The simulators provide insight into how the new capabilities will perform. The simulators shed little light on reliability, complexity and other software engineering aspects of the proposed changes. The correlation between the complexities of the proposed capabilities with that of an earlier system can be used to bound the trustworthiness, possible schedule and potential costs for implementing the new capability. I call this the Lambda Protocol. It combines software reliability with software sizing theory. With performance, reliability, schedule and cost-estimates in hand, system and software engineers can make essential engineering tradeoffs as they set a course of action." Issue 7 (February 21- February 27, 2006) ANDREAS PFEIFFER ON "THE AGE OF USER EXPERIENCE Consultant Andreas Pfeiffer, author of the highly regarded "Pfeiffer Report," says: "Welcome to the Age of User Experience: As Apple's iPod shows, success in technology has less and less to do with features, and more and more with ease of use. Issue 9 ((March 7 - March 13 2006)) : FAULT TOLERANCE IN WEB SERVICES Goutam Kumar Saha explains how to design a fault tolerant web application that relies on an affordable redundancy in data and function using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The proposed approach relies on a Single-Version fault tolerance model without using multiple versions or the N-Version fault tolerance model. The work aims to design a more dependable and reliable Web Service system at no extra cost on multiple versions. Issue 10 ((March 14 - March 20 2006)) : On The Emerging Future of Complexity Sciences Offering a meta model that roadmaps the future, Kemal A. Delix, a lab scientist with Hewlett-Packard, and Ralph Dum, a physicist with the European Commission, say that complexity research will never become a single, encompassing theory-of-everything, or an independent discipline. It will thrive at the border between disciplines and in particular by interacting with engineering (thus approaching the Œscience of the artificial¹ that Herbert Simon was promoting) and it will surely create several seed technologies. Issue 11 (March 21 - March 27, 2006) : On the Realizability of Quantum Computers When we go from single and entangled pairs of particles to groups of particles as in various methods of quantum computing, the question of the physical realizability of the mathematical model become a serious issue. The issue of realizability is the focus of this paper by Subhash Kak of Louisiana State University. Issue 11 (March 21 - March 27, 2006) : WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE MATH IN HIGH SCHOOL An article by Espen Andersen of the Norwegian School of Management encourages students to choose math as a major subject in high school -- not just in preparation for higher education but because having math up to maximum high school level is important in all walks of life. The article has already appeared in Aftenposten, a large Norwegian newspaper, and has been widely praised in Europe. Issue 13 (April 4, 2006 - April 10, 2006) : AN INTELLIGENT APPROACH TO PARSING TEXT Goutam Saha demonstrates how a proposed parser identifies the part of speech (POS) of lexicons in the sentences of a particular language (in this case Bengali, or Bangla) as well as providing semantic information. A parser is used in machine translation (MT) for identifying the part of speech in a sentence -- and can be considered an intelligent parser if it handles semantics as well as POS identification. The aim of the rule-based intelligent Bangla parser described in this article is to ease the task of handling semantic issues in the subsequent stages in machine translation. Issue 14 (April 11, 2006 - April 17, 2006) : TELECOM PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF LINEAR AND PLANAR ARRAYS There are four basic factors that influence the performances of array patches antennas: spacing between patches, number of patches in the array, amplitude distribution, and excitation phase. This paper, focused on the excitation phase, was prepared by A. Latif and A. Oulad-Said of the Laboratory of Electronics and Instrumentation, Marrakech, Morroco and by A. Ait Ouahman, Royal School of Air, Microwaves and Telecommunications Laboratory, Marrakech, Morocco. Issue 15 (April 18, 2006 - April 24, 2006) : Electronic Scanning in Space of the Planar Array of Four Patch Antennas The rectangular patch antenna is set to play a significant role in the development of the next-generation wireless communication systems. The purpose of this report is to provide the design of the rectangular patch antenna system by studying the performance of patch antenna arrays, and to achieve the electronic scanning in space of the radiation patterns by a four rectangular patch antennas plan array. The paper was prepared by A. Latif and A. Oulad-Said of the Laboratory of Electronics and Instrumentation, Marrakech, Morroco and by A. Ait Ouahman, Royal School of Air, Microwaves and Telecommunications Laboratory, Marrakech, Morocco. Issue 16 (April 25, 2006 - May 1, 2006) : CORPORATE RENEWAL ENGINES Kemal A. Delic writes: "Hypothetical corporate business is organized so that the mature products or services (first wave) are making the bulk of the corporate profit (double digit range) and grows modestly (single digit). Next wave is a growing business (strong double digit growth) while maintaining profitability (single digit). The future may critically depend on the third wave having no revenue objectives nor bringing profit while spawning critical, inventive technologies. Globalization following the spread of Internet is hinting at the several ways of organizing those three waves into orchestrated business whole." Issue 17 (May 2, 2006 - May 8, 2006) : 802.16 2001 MAC Layer QoS This paper focuses on the standard air interface for fixed broadband wireless access systems. It explains the importance of QoS and its parameter set; defines types of services supported by this standard; explores the main entity of the MAC layer used for transportation that is service flow and how the QoS metric is associated with it, as well as the relationship of service class and service flow. It further explains the authorization model and two phase activation. In the end it explains dynamic service flow and dynamic service messages in detail. Bashir Hayat, Raheel Mansoor, and Abdul Nasir, associated with the University of Peshawar in Pakistan. Issue 19 (May 16, 2006 - May 22, 2006) : UBIQUITY ALERT: The Waning Importance of Categorization Espen Andersen of the Norwegian School of Management says: "The Internet is the fastest medium of them all, swarming with updates, links and searchability. Influence is determined by its readers, who, using dialogue and references, feed priorities to the search engines. Media companies who do not shape their product to this evolution will gradually lose their ability to decide what is important." [Andersen's last essay for Ubiquity was the very popular "Why You Should Choose Math in High School" ] Issue 20 (May 23, 2006 - May 29, 2006) : UBIQUITY ALERT: NET NEUTRALITY M.E. Kabay reviews the politics relevant to the "Net Neutrality" debate in Congress, and asks: Is there cause for alarm? Issue 20 (May 23, 2006 - May 29, 2006) : UBIQUITY ALERT: MICROPROCESSORS The second paper, by V.Lalith Kumar and S.T.I.C Garividi, considers embedded microprocessor-based relays for the protection of electrical systems. Issue 21 (May 30, 2006 - June 19, 2006) : UBIQUITY ALERT: CRITICAL THINKING FOR THE GOOGLE GENERATION JOHN STUCKEY of Jefferson & Lee University says: "There are plenty of good reasons to incorporate information technology into teaching and learning, but the fear of being left behind or left out or rejected by demanding techno-proficient applicants is not among them." Issue 21 (May 30, 2006 - June 12, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: A Low-Cost Correction Algorithm for Transient Data Errors AIGUO LI and BINGRONG HONG of Harbin Institute of Technology describe a low-cost correction algorithm for transient data errors. Issue 22 (June 13, 2006 - June 19, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: SEMANTIC DRIVEN ASSERTIONS Goutam Kumar Saha examines how a single-version algorithm can establish software based fault tolerance by designing in thoughtful software based execution-time checks in a computing application. Issue 23 (June 20, 2006 - June 26, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Coping with Innovative Technology Goutam Kumar Saha examines how a single-version algorithm can establish software Arun-Kumar Tripathi writes: "The flood of information today threatens to overflow, suffocate and even obliterate actual reality, says the University of Montana philosophy professor Albert Borgmann. The 'lightness' of technological information seems bent on overcoming the 'moral gravity' and 'material density' that real things naturally possess and that demand our mindful engagement. Albert Borgmann is not asking us to abandon technological information. But he is calling us to link it effectively to 'things and practices' that provide for our material and spiritual well-being." Issue 24 (June 27, 2006 - July 4, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: The Ultimate Technology George Maney shows us why genies are considered clever. Issue 24 (June 27, 2006 - July 4, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: The Fallacy of Premature Optimization Randall Hyde shows us why programmers need to be as clever as genies. Issue 25 (July 5, 2006 - July 10, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Software Based Fault Tolerance This issue of Ubiquity offers a survey by Goutam Saha of the literature on software based fault tolerance. Issue 26 (July 11, 2006 - July 17, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: ELUSIVE PROMISE OF AI In this article, Jeff Riley writes:    "With the ever-increasing speed and computing power of modern computers we may be able to construct smart machines for specific problems (e.g. autonomous vehicle control, credit card fraud detection, etc.), and to be sure the complexity of the problems for which smart machines are deployed is increasing as we progress, but will we ever construct machines that can learn for themselves from scratch ­ machines that can truly reason?"     A technical program manager with Hewlett-Packard, he holds a Master¹s Degree in Applied Science (IT) and a PhD in Computer Science (AI). His main interests in the field of artificial intelligence are in evolutionary computation and machine learning techniques. More information on his research can be found at http://www.rileys.id.au/JeffsResearch.html For "The Elusive Promise of AI" Issue 28 (July 25, 2006 - July 31, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Lunar Solar Power Generation V. Kumar Lalith says we need a power system that is independent of earth¹s biosphere and provides an abundant energy at low cost. "To do this man ­kind must collect dependable solar power in space and reliably send it to receivers on earth. The MOON is the KEY." Issue 29 (August 1, 2006 - August 7, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Reflections on the Philosophy of Technology Arun Kumar Tripathi: "Reflections on the Philosophy of Technology" Issue 29 (August 1, 2006 - August 7, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT:A Low-Cost Correction Algorithm for Transient Data Errors Aiguo Li and Bingrong Hong: "A Low-Cost Correction Algorithm for Transient Data Errors" Issue 30 (August 8, 2006 - August 14, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: BIH ON SOA Joseph Bih analyzes the philosophy of SOA Issue 31 (August 15, 2006 - August 21, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Software Implemented Fault Tolerance - the ESVP Approach Gutam Kumar Saha describes a low cost technique for gaining software implemented fault tolerance without using design diversity based N versions redundancy in both software and hardware. The proposed approach uses an enhanced single-version programming (ESVP) scheme for an application that executes on a single machine. Issue 31 (August 15, 2006 - August 21, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: IT'S A STRUCTURE PROJECT, NOT AN EDUCATION PROJECT" Michael de la Maza believes that the greatest promise of the "One Laptop Per Child" project (OLPC) lies not so much in education per se but in the ability of a $100 laptop to support new social structure. Issue 32 (August 22, 2006 - August 28, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: "New approach to designing GPRS location Update function" A. Aaroud, B. Bounabat and L. Adnane of the Faculty of Sciences El Jadida-Morocco write; "Wireless IP network has attracted significant interest due to their ability to support both voice and data transfer in mobile communication. One of the main issues concerning such network is the analysis and design of mobility function, particularly the location management." In this paper, they focus on modelling location update function in wireless network standard GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) by using an agent. Issue 33 (August 29, 2006 - September 4, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: "Mosquito Attack Optimization" Samir Kumar Bandyopadhyay, Debnath Bhattacharyya, and Poulami Das note that Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Optimization are classical areas of researches in computer science, and that computer scientists have been trying to map the Biological and Natural Solution with the Artificial one for two decades now. They have developed a population-based stochastic optimization technique inspired by the social behavior of the female mosquito. Issue 34 (September 5, 2006 - September 11, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: "Ethical Acts in Roboticsn" Bernhardt Irrgang meditates on the question whether Computers/Robots can act morally. Professor Irrgang is with the Department of Philosophy of Technology, Institute for Philosophy, Dresden University of Technology, Germany. Issue 35 (September 12, 2006 - September 18, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: VLSI Algorithms and Architectures for JPEG2000 Tinku Acharya discusses VLSI Algorithms and Architectures for JPEG2000. Dr. Acharya is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Avisere Inc., Arizona, USA, and the Managing Director of its Indian subsidiary. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Arizona State University. Issue 36 (September 19, 2006 - September 25, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: ARE YOU READY FOR MULTI-MULTI-CORE SYSTEMS? Rob Meyer, CEO of the Numerical Algorithms Group, writes: "However your organization chooses to meet the emerging demands for HPC-compatibility, these emerging multi-multi-core systems underline the importance of having a well-considered software migration strategy. New applications or updates to existing ones need to have portability and quality assurance factored into their design if they are to cope with coming hardware changes. Issue 37 (September 26, 2006 - October 2, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: BOOKS WITHOUT BOUNDARIES Brian F. Lavoie and Roger C. Schonfeld examine the largest single source of cross-institutional bibliographic data available, and offer a framework for future efforts to describe the universe of print-book: How many titles does the system contain? What holding patterns prevail, especially with regard to overlap and the incidence of rare or unique materials? And what are some of the characteristics, such as date of publication and language? Issue 37 (September 26, 2006 - October 2, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: SMART SPACES Ramesh Singh, Preeti Bhargava, and Samta Kain, define smart spaces as ordinary environments equipped with visual and audio sensing systems, pervasive devices, sensors, and networks that can perceive and react to people, sense ongoing human activities and respond to them. Their ubiquity is evident by the fact that various state of the art smart spaces have been incorporated in all situations of our life. These smart space elements require middleware, standards and interfacing technologies to manage complex interactions between them. Here, we present an overview of the technologies integrated to build Smart Spaces, review the various scenarios in which Smart Spaces have been incorporated by researchers, highlight the requirements of software infrastructure for programming and networking them, and mention the contemporary frameworks for interaction with them. Singh is Senior Technical Director, National Informatics Center,New Delhi, India. Bhargava and Kain are students. Issue 38 (October 3, 2006 - October 9, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: AI REEMERGING AS RESEARCH IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS Authors Kemal A. Delic and Umeshwar Dayal explain that the history and the future of Artificial Intelligence could be summarized into three distinctive phases: embryonic, embedded and embodied. They briefly describe early efforts in AI aiming to mimic intelligent behavior, evolving later into a set of the useful, embedded and practical technologies. Then they project the possible future of embodied intelligent systems, able to model and understand the environment and learn from interactions, while learning and evolving in constantly changing circumstances. They conclude with the (heretical) thought that in the future, AI should re-emerge as research in complex systems. One particular embodiment of a complex system is the Intelligent Enterprise. Issue 39 (October 10, 2006 - October 16, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: DISINVESMENT IN PUBLIC ENTERPRISES (PEs) Dr. Vinay K. Srivastava, Department of Management, TMIMT, Moradabad, explains: "There has been phenomenal and tremendous growth of PE¹s in India. They were established to attain the Œcommanding heights¹ of the economy of the country and achieve rapid growth of industrialization and economic development. Some of these PEs later became Œwhite elephant¹ and started incurring losses. Several of them became chronically sick industries. The Govt. declared the disinvestment process, which began in 1991 with the sale of minority stakes in some PE¹s, shifted focus to strategic sales during 1999-2000 to 2003-04. The present UPA Govt. announced that , all disinvestment will be considered on a transparent and consultative case-by-case basis. The Govt. has approved the constitution of a ³National Investment Fund² comprising of proceeds from disinvestment. The present paper is an attempt to discuss same important issues such as restructuring, valuation of equity, Mechanism of disinvestment, Application of disinvestment proceeds, Parliamentary approval and political issues." Issue 40 (October 17, 2006 - October 23, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Secure Delivery of Handwritten Signature Computer scientists Samir Kumar Bandyopadhyay (University of Calcutta), Debnath Bhattacharyya (Heritage Institute of Technology) and Anindya Jvoti Pal (Heritage Institute of Technology) examine digital watermarking, the process that embeds data called a watermark into an object such that the watermark can be detected and extracted later to make an assertion about the object. Watermarking is either ²visible² or ²invisible². Although visible and invisible are visual terms watermarking is not limited to images, it can also be used to protect other types of multimedia objects. The research work of these authors is on watermarking techniques in particular, and they note that many of the proposed techniques share three specific weaknesses: complexity of copy detection, vulnerability to mark removal after revelation for ownership verification, and mark integrity issues due to partial mark removal. Their paper for Ubiquity presents a method for watermarking Handwritten Signature that achieves robustness by responding to these three weaknesses. They say the key techniques involve using secure functions to generate and embed image marks that is more detectable, verifiable, and secure than existing protection and detection techniques. Issue 42 (October 31, 2006 - November 6, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Evolutionary Biclustering of Gene Expressions Haider Banker and Sushmita Mitra are both with the Indian Statistical Institute and Jose L. Salmeron with the University Pablo de Olavide. The Banka-Mitra paper is on "Evolutionary Biclustering of Gene Expressions," and Salmeron shares his thoughts on "Research Outlets for Management Information. Issue 42 (October 31, 2006 - November 6, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS: Thoughts on Research Outlets Haider Banker and Sushmita Mitra are both with the Indian Statistical Institute and Jose L. Salmeron with the University Pablo de Olavide. The Banka-Mitra paper is on "Evolutionary Biclustering of Gene Expressions," and Salmeron shares his thoughts on "Research Outlets for Management Information. Issue 43 (November 7, 2006 - November 13, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: User Experience Research In 2005 and early 2006, Pfeiffer Consulting conducted an extensive research project collecting information about Macintosh and Windows operating systems.... Issue 43 (November 7, 2006 - November 13, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: GLOBALIZATION AND OFFSHORING OF SOFTWARE The 'World is Flat' mantra has become almost clichéd in the business and technology world, thanks in part to the bestseller written by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. Issue 45 (November 21, 2006 - November 27, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: WEBER ON "BIG BROTHER" TECHNOLOGY In "The Next Step: Privacy Invasions by Biometrics and ICT Implants," Karsten Weber argues that both libertarian/liberal and communitarian arguments necessarily will support a kind of ³democratic² Big Brother scenario. Weber is at the University of Opole, Poland / European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Issue 46 (November 28, 2006 - December 4, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Software Fault Avoidance Issues This short article by G. Saha reviews various issues of software fault avoidance, which aims to produce fault free software through various approaches having the common objective of reducing the number of latent defects in software programs. Issue 48 (December 12, 2006 - December 18, 2006): UBIQUITY ALERT: Mobile IP: Enabling User Mobility This review paper gives a brief insight about Mobile IP, its features and entities constituting a Mobile IP environment.

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