The latest computer craze has been to be able to wear wireless computers. The Computer Fashion Wave, “Digital Jewellery” looks to be the next sizzling fashion trend of the technological wave. The combination of shrinking computer devices and increasing computer power has allowed several companies to begin producing fashion jewellery with embedded intelligence. The whole concept behind this is to be able to communicate to others by means of wireless appliances. The other key factor of this concept market is to stay fashionable at the same time.

By the end of the decade, we could be wearing our computers instead of sitting in front of them.

2. WHAT IS DIGITAL JEWELLERY?

Digital jewelry is the fashion jewelry with embedded intelligence. “Digital jewelry” can help you solve problems like forgotten passwords and security badges. “Digital jewelry” is a nascent catchphrase for wearable ID devices that contain personal information like passwords, identification, and account information. They have the potential to be all-in-one replacements for your driver’s license, key chain, business cards, credit cards, health insurance card, corporate security badge, and loose cash. They can also solve a common dilemma of today’s wired world – the forgotten password.

2.1. DIGITAL JEWELLERY AND ITS COMPONENTS

Soon, cell phones will take a totally new form, appearing to have no form at all. Instead of one single device, cell phones will be broken up into their basic components and packaged as various pieces of digital jewellery. Each piece of jewellery will contain a fraction of the components found in a conventional mobile phone.

Together, the digital-jewellery cell phone should work just like a conventional cell phone. The various components that are inside a cell phone: Microphone, Receiver, Touch pad, Display, Circuit board, Antenna, and Battery.

IBM has developed a prototype of a cell phone that consists of several pieces of digital jewellery that will work together wirelessly, possibly with Blue tooth wireless technology, to perform the functions of the above components.

Cell phones may one day be comprised of digital accessories that Work together through wireless connections.

Here are the pieces of computerized-jewelry phone and their functions:

Earrings - Speakers embedded into these earrings will be the phone’s receiver.

Necklace - Users will talk into the necklace’s embedded microphone.

Ring – Perhaps the most interesting piece of the phone, this “magic decoder ring” is equipped with light-emitting diodes

(LEDs) that flash to indicate an incoming call. It can also be programmed to flash different colors to identify a particular caller or indicate the importance of a call

Bracelet – Equipped with a video graphics array (VGA) display, this wrist display could also be used as a caller identifier that flashes the name and phone number of the caller.With a jewellery phone, the keypad and dialing function could be integrated into the bracelet, or else dumped altogether    it’s likely that voice-recognition software will be used to make calls.

IBM’s magic decoder rings will flash when you get a call.

The same ring that flashes for phone calls could also inform you that e-mail is piling up in your inbox. This flashing alert could also indicate the urgency of the e-mail

The mouse-ring that IBM is developing will use the company’s Track Point technology to wirelessly move the cursor on a computer-monitor display. (Track Point is the little button embedded in the keyboard of some laptops). IBM Researchers have transferred TrackPoint technology to a ring, which looks something like a black-pearl ring. On top of the ring is a little black ball that users will swivel to move the cursor, in the same way that the TrackPoint button on a laptop is used.

This Track Point ring will be very valuable when monitors shrink to the size of watch face. In the coming age of ubiquitous computing, displays will no longer be tied to desktops or wall screens. Instead, you’ll wear the display like a pair of sunglasses or a bracelet. Researchers are overcoming several obstacles facing these new wearable displays, the most important of which is the readability of information displayed on these tiny devices.

Prototype bracelet display developed by IBM

2.2. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS OF DIGITAL JEWELLERY

Digital jewelry devices consist of a screen or display for information, most likely consisting of 7-16-segment, or dot matrix LEDs, LCDs, or other technologies such as electroluminescent material (EL) or others, which could become an optional display. So too, an audiovisual or other ‘display’ could consist of a speaker, a single flashing light, a sensor of some kind (such as a temperature driven EL display), or other informational aesthetic. A micro controller that is a surface mounted device (SMD) on a printed circuit board (PCB) with resistors (R) and capacitors (C) are the internal ‘guts’ of the jewelry.

3. DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES

The digital jewelry display, for instance, every alphabet and number system has found representation within the electronics realm and ‘dot-matrix’ (a matrix of single LEDs) is used to display Chinese and Japanese and other character sets, as can the alternative display for LCDs (liquid-crystal-displays) also be used, as often found in watches.

Digital Jewelry can be made in many different sizes and shapes with a variety of materials ranging from plastic and metal to rubber and glass. They utilize electromagnetic properties and electronics to display information through a screen or display of some kind. This could range from LED 7-segment, 16-segment, dot matrix, and other programmable LEDs devices to LCDs, OLEDs, and other displays, which are all driven by the self-contained jewellery devices themselves

3.1. PROTOTYPES OF DIGITAL JEWELLERY

Complete HIOX necklace showing all 26 letters of the Roman alphabet extended in 4-dimensional

4. THE JAVA RING

It seems that everything we access today is under lock and key. Even the devices we use are protected by passwords. It can be frustrating trying to keep with all of the passwords and keys needed to access any door or computer program. Dallas Semiconductor is developing a new Java-based, computerized ring that will automatically unlock doors and log on to computers.

The Java Ring can be programmed to give you access to every door and device

Blue Dot receptor

The Java Ring is snapped into a reader, called a Blue Dot receptor, to allow communication between a host system and the Java Ring. The Java Ring is a stainless-steel ring, 16-millimeters (0.6 inches) in diameter, which houses a 1-million-transistor processor, called an iButton. The ring has 134 KB of RAM, 32 KB of ROM, a real-time clock and a Java virtual machine, which is a piece of software that recognizes the Java language and translates it for the user’s computer system. Digital jewelry, (designed to supplement the personal computer,) will be the evolution in digital technology that makes computer elements entirely compatible with the human form.

Highlights of Java Ring

· Runs Java better (plus portions enhance Java Card 2.0)

· Careful attention to physical security (rapid zeroization)

· Durability to stand up to everyday use

· High memory capacity (up to 134K bytes NV SRAM)

· Retail connectivity to 250 million existing computers (less if designed-in before    manufacturing)

5. CONCLUSION

The basic idea behind the digital jewelry concept is to have the convenience of wireless, wearable computers while remaining fashionably sound. It is hoped to be marketable soon, however, several bugs remain. Charging capabilities and cost are just a sample of the problems that lurk.

Posted in Papers on different topics Tagged: communication, computers, Digital Jwellery, Digital Techniques, Education, Education in Anna university, Electronics, IBM, IEEE Topics, Java Ring, kissmo, microprocessor, Nanotech, Nanotechnology, natwork management, network, network security, new trends, Optical comunication, Paper presentation, Papers, processors, protypes, Recent technologies, Recent Trends in IT ]]> http://oppurtunity.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/digital-jewellery/feed/ 0 kissmo digital-jwellery digital-jwellery-1 digital-jwellery-2 digital-jwellery-3 digital-jwellery-4 digital-jwellery-5 digital-jwellery-6 http://oppurtunity.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/issues-in-telecomm-network-management-systems/ http://oppurtunity.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/issues-in-telecomm-network-management-systems/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:20:53 +0000 kissmo http://oppurtunity.wordpress.com/?p=24 Continue reading →]]> 1.Introduction

Intelligent agents have become fashionable again in the late nineties, not only within the artificial intelligence community and in the popular press but also in traditional computer science communities. Whereas current commercial solutions for distributed processing are mostly centered on the client-server concept, with remote procedure calls as the standard way of interaction, script languages have emerged that explicitly support agent-oriented programming. Especially in telecommunication applications, where the instant provision of new services and the customization of existing services become critical issues, agents will become to an increasing degree an essential aspect in the design of new networks to handle the ever-increasing complexity.

This paper will focus on the “mobility” attribute of intelligent agents and thus uses the term mobile agent to denote an autonomous mobile object to which a user delegates some or all of her decision-making in the respective problem domain, and that is able to move around an electronic network, communicating with other such active objects by means of message passing. First the evolution of TNMS is described followed by the roles of manager and agent. The next section discusses the security issues of the agent-based systems followed by problems and possible attacks in such systems. These sections also discuss the possible solutions offered and the loopholes existing in these techniques leading to a conclusion that it won’t be a wise step to fully open Telecommunications networks for agents at this point.

1.1 Telecommunications Systems

For today’s communication needs, a Telecommunications networks consisting of just wires and mechanical switches, cannot be sufficient.

Today’s systems carry out quite complex functions that are implemented mostly in the form of software. Thus, TNMs are becoming more and more confronted with the challenge of managing a software-based, distributed system of growing complexity.

On the top of it, today’s communication applications are expected to have the following characteristics:

· Highly distributed and heterogeneous: since Telecommunications networks work worldwide, a large number of operators have to interact; many of them use different equipment and transmission techniques (standard cable, fiber optics, radio communication, satellites, etc.).

· Safety critical: since our society depends on the proper functioning of these networks. The most efficient way to paralyze an industrial country is probably to interrupt its information infrastructure. Even short-time breakdowns can be disastrous, for instance when failing to process an emergency call.

· Continuously running: since Telecommunications networks cannot be halted for examination, debugging, or rebooting.

· Fault-tolerant: since faults and malfunctions within the system or at the customer’s site will always happen; such events, however, must not cause the whole network to crash.

· Meets real-time requirements: because setting up a (world-wide) call cannot take arbitrarily long.

Setting up and running such a network is a true technical challenge; it actually is getting harder and harder, since the complexity of services is constantly growing: more and more, mostly software-based features and services are being added—in parallel, the problems involved with running those systems increase. This led to the evolution of networks in the direction of large, high-speed networks, consisting of diverse equipment and supporting mobility. The capability to dynamically place control and management software processes at the most appropriate location will have significant impact on the architecture and the related (signaling) protocols of telecommunication systems. So developed the agent-manager concept, a paradigm leading to TNMS. TNMS makes agent and manager as two separate modules. The ability of agents to handle heterogeneous environments, the potentially adjustable (small) footprint of an agent, and the potential to dispatch and activate agents as necessary during problem resolution are properties useful for network management. Telecom companies, and in particular France Telecom, are building infrastructures to allow software agents to provide more and more sophisticated services to multiple users. This strong interest resulted also into an activity to standardize agent systems: the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA).

1.2 Functions Of Manager And Agent

The TNMS concept of agent-manager relation is similar to Client/Server, but with few clients, and many servers (where the agent acts as a server and the manager acts as a client). It can be viewed as a Manager/Employee relationship in the real world.

The Manager:

· Makes decisions about what the agents are suppose to do.

· Gives orders to the various agents in order to make the network function smoothly.

· Must monitor agents, and administer relational tasks between agents.

Agents are employed in

· The construction of “smart” networks

· Routing or filtering messages sent to a user

· Seeking information or services on the user’s behalf.

All agent-based systems, impressive as their potential benefits may rightly seem, may, however, be jeopardized in a commercial world by the lack of appropriate security mechanisms. Indeed, most agent systems do not address error recovery and auditing, privacy, and various aspects of trust among the participants.

2. Security Issues Of Agent-Based Systems

Network safety, security, and reliability are crucial issues for a Telecomm Network

Manager (TNM). Mobile agents are certainly a potential security threat. TNMs must therefore critically evaluate agent-based scenarios before actually thinking about introducing them for commercial applications. Although many promoters of mobile agent technology acknowledge that security represents a key factor for the successful employment, they tend to ignore it in their work:

Security against mobile agents is a very big issue or a red herring

depending on what one is trying to do (Virdhagriswaran, 1997).

Whereas a first generation of mobile agents has been written in languages such as Telescript and Safe Tcl/Tk, the omni-presence of Java, mainly due to its platform-independent executables fetchable from the network, makes it a prime platform for the implementation of agent systems. Aglets (IBM) (Lange & Oshima, 1998), Concordia (Mitsubishi) (Castillo et al., 1998), Odyssey (General Magic), and Voyager (Open Space), all developed within industry, are examples of recent Java-based agent languages/environments. This means that on the one hand agents have potential access to all Java class files on the host; on the other hand they rely on the security of the Java interpreter for their proper execution. Thus, agent security and Java security go hand in hand. All the security concerns raised about Java also affect the safe execution of agents. A small, local bug in the implementation of the hosting Java interpreter will affect the security of the entire agent system. Even more problematic is the fact that there are also threats that originate in malicious hosts. For example, if there is no mechanism to prevent attacks, a host can implant its own tasks into an agent or modify the agent’s state. This

can lead in turn to theft of the agent’s resources if it has to pay for the execution of tasks or to loss of the agent’s reputation if its state changes from one host to another in ways that alter its behavior in negative ways. Taking together, the problems that arise in an agent-scenario can be divided into three categories:

· Protecting hosts in a network.

· Protecting the agents.

· Protecting the network itself.

The next sections describe and suggest solutions to these three categories of problems.

2.1 Attacks On Hosts By The Visiting Agents

The most important law of system security reads Never, ever run code from un-trusted sources. In most companies this means that employees are not allowed to use software that did not come through the standard channels. A number of new technologies are already contradicting to this principle, for instance Java and ActiveX. The only control such technologies leave over incoming code is that they have to be actively downloaded, but agents can even move by themselves. An agent-based scenario must therefore provide a very convincing solution to the problem of protecting itself from malicious agents.

The suggested remedy for such a problem, currently the most popular one, is the Sandbox Approach. The idea is rather simple: an agent cannot control a machine, if it runs in a “sandbox” that blocks access to the outside (i.e.: the real machine): the sandbox offers as much functionality to a program running inside as one wants to grant. Several approaches like Java, Tele-script or follow this idea, all in somewhat different technical details.

Sandbox approaches aim at protecting a host from foreign code by setting up a restricted execution environment for the incoming code. Although this always trades functionality for security, it is a good approach in principle. It is important that such a sandbox comes with a clear security model and a security policy. This is indispensable for actually judging the risk that is involved with providing the sandbox. The most popular approach today is the Java virtual machine. Thus the efficiency of this approach invariably depends on JVM’s efficiency. While this might be acceptable for settings where the potential damage by abuse is low, for use within a Telecommunications network extra care has to be taken.

2.2 Attacks On Agents By The Hosts They Visit

A point that is often overlooked in the literature is the need for protecting an agent from the host it visits. Assume one sends out an agent searching a particular product for a best bid with some upper limit. It would, in principle, be possible that some host where the agent comes along reads this information out and manipulates the agent such that it not looks further and reports back that there is only one vendor, namely the one controlling the manipulating site. This vendor could then offer the product for just a little bit below the limit. Such a possibility is certainly not acceptable. Even worse scenarios are possible if agents had themselves some authority, for instance by being able to spend money.

Protecting agents is also closely connected to protecting network hosts to be visited by agents: if such host is supposed to run an agent, it will want to make sure that the mobile code has not been manipulated to try to abuse the host – unless the host has a foolproof runtime system for agents.

Cryptographic methods like digital signatures, authentication, and encryption schemes, particularly those based on public keys, seem like what is needed for protecting agents against manipulation. Unfortunately, such techniques sort of contradict to the spirit of agents. The source of the problem is that an agent must instruct the current host to perform any operations, rather than being able to act on it. Thus an agent cannot carry any secrets on its journey because of two reasons:

- the agent must be readable to the host

- for using such a secret it had to be passed to the run time environment of

a visited host.

There is only one possible solution separating an agent into a program part and a data part and use cryptographic techniques to sign the program part. This can be useful only in those scenarios where the data part doesn’t carry any important information.

2.3 Attacks On The Network Itself

It is already very difficult to safely design distributed systems with interacting, concurrent processes; agents make the situation even worse, since processes will also move within the network. As observed by a researcher, as a system becomes more complex and more interconnected, it is more likely to exhibit large-scale behaviors that we would not predict from knowledge of the individual elements. Especially when the elements have a life of their own and the environment is highly real-time like Telecomm we can hardly impart a thorough security. It can be expected that agents running in a large distributed system will cause new problems; little experience in this respect has been gained so far. There is a clear need for basic research in this direction; results from software engineering and formal methods are desperately needed.

3. Conclusion

Agent-based software systems are very problematic with respect to security, since the principle of mobile code brings new problems for system security, reliability, and safety. Not very long ago, there was a widespread belief that an interpreted program is already a safe program. However, over time, mobile agent people became concerned about security and regard it today to be one of the biggest obstacles that have prevented wider employment of mobile agents. There are three basic problems in agent-based systems: firstly, the hosts must be protected from potentially harmful agents, second, the roaming agents must be protected against manipulation from the visited hosts, and third the overall behavior of an agent-based system must be controlled. Although, in principle, it is possible to secure a host against mobile agents, the price might be very high: hardware-based protection, reduced flexibility, and high cost. It is fundamentally impossible to protect an agent against a malicious host if no trusted hardware is available. There is a need for security profiles for agent execution environments to make informed judgments about tradeoffs between security and other desired features. The current state-of-the-art still fails to deliver an acceptable approach to cope with these problems: available technology (like sandbox-approaches, cryptography) can cover only certain aspects, and even fails to solve these aspects sufficiently. A sound overall concept to cope with the problems seems not yet in sight. Mobile agents constitute an active research field and security of mobile code is (still) an area for further research. It seems therefore prohibitive to fully opening Telecommunications networks for agents at this point. Even running only proprietary agents within controlled and isolated networks seems risky, since there is in practice no way to rigorously control a network beyond a certain size. It is not sufficient to come up with attractive applications based on mobile agents. What is also needed is an applicable concept for coping with the inherent security problems. Such an overall concept must meet very strong requirements, otherwise it will not be accepted where real money comes into play.

Clearly, no running system can be 100% secure, and one has to compromise. In companies, however, compromises are governed by economic considerations: the potential earning must (at least in the long run) outweigh the costs, and the risk involved must be assessable. Thus, from a TNM’s perspective, the future of commercial applications of mobile agents is hardly predictable; what is predictable, however, is a promising future for security experts.

This article is to get an answer for these questions:

1. Does Anna University really care about QoS in their Affiliated Colleges ?

2. Are they conducting frequent or 6 months once, an Auditing or Quality Assessments in the colleges which they gave affiliation(just the water, toilets and some basic needs that has to be there for the student who is paying atleast a lakh rupees per year) ?

3. Its all about Money ? Whoever builds a 3 floor building can get Anna University Affiliation ?

4. Why sudden Disaffiliation on colleges which they already Affiliated by their Policies and Conditions ?

5. Why there is not much updates in the syllabus (almost for the past 5 to 6 years) to meet the current trend and technology ?

6. Does colleges really conducting proper interview today to fill the lecturer requirements or just an interview ?, ofcourse anna university have the sole responsibility of setting up certain qualities (not just the B.E or M.E) that helps the student to see some changes after 3 or 4 years from the day they joined under AU Affiliation ?

7. Its a Business now… why students are not asking for the quality of the product ? or is that the marks that are stopping them to ask for their rights ? (If i bought a mobile from ABC Company then i normally look for the customer support and product quality. If they fail to provide the quality, then i will surely sue the concern organization. I hope every customer feel to do the same…) Will Consumer Court accept if i don’t get satisfaction in my Education Product ?

8. Education industry today (especially colleges) are Multi Crore Business Zone where within the Admission period itself college bank accounts filled with Crores of ruppees. (To the College Managements: Are you people ready to deny this statement ?, I must ask this as my father pay’s his Hard Earned Money.)

9. Even though the student spend 2 lakh ruppees and + per year the college is not even providing a water doctor facility in each floor of the building. ( Why is that so ? Shortage of Money ?)

10. No proper bills provided to the students in many colleges for the payments they make in between a semester. I get bills only for the AU Semester Exam Registration. Other than that its tough process to get the bills in hand.

11. Will Anna University interfere in Policies that are in place with the colleges affiliated to Anna University which of course affect the students (Different Formulas in each college for calculating the Internal Marks are ruining the student’s). Its not just mobile phone and jeans Banning. The university which cares much on Mobile and Jeans wear Banning should also look at the basic parameters that lets the buyer (student) of the course package to obtain the degree successfully ?

12. There is a counseling method in the colleges where student have the rights to convey their problems that have with the subjects and academic related stuffs. However if a student complained about a staff then its viewed seriously and the power of concern staff shown in the Internal Marks of the student (Which is more than a Politician..  ) So called rights to speak .. is this the real counseling ? The student really dont know the Escalation Matrix whenever a problem he found in the teaching system of the college.. It will be really effective if AU or concern college Management take care of guiding such complaining procedures..

13. Being strict will never help the students to attain the knowledge between it increases the STRESS and DEPRESSION level in a student mind which affects his health too. Students are not superiors to you (lecturers). Just think for a minute then you will realize that you are shouting and ordering the one who is totally defenseless and vulnerable to the real world life scenario.

14. Parents look at the Percentage of Company recruitment’s in the Brochure to pick the best college to admission their sons/daughters. Listing the BPO Jobrecruitment’s in the placements list should be Banned. The student who studyB.E Professional Course after attending several levels of fixed interview patterns (like Aptitude Test, Technical Assessments, HR and few other) don’t need to work in the area of simply attending the incoming and outgoing calls. Because there is no such syllabus in Anna University to attend Phone Calls.

15. Disaffiliation on Colleges: PMR Engineering College and JA Engineering College students already had their worst time. The Question is Who could be Next ?. This  portraits an absolute careless affiliation policy in Anna University.

16. Is there any team available in Anna University Campus to Audit the Quality in their Affiliated Colleges ? If Yes, what are they doing ? Why cant they visit to the colleges exist in their list to see whether students who paid to Anna University with the sole trust on them are satisfied with the policies, rules and services or not ?

17. My aim is not to say that Anna University provides nothing to me.. It is all about the way of deployment. The process of announcing Workshops, Seminars and Communication Laboratories must be appreciated. At the same time, why they are not effective ?

18. The University that orders the class sessions must be in english is not at all auditing whether the lecturers and students are comfort and capable with it ? Just ordering is meaning less….

19. Its one of the business as i said before.. so its not the matter of staff and student relation ship anymore (i feel bad to say its no more  …  ) where you may feel it and see it in school days.. not in colleges. The high speed track that consumes more money of our parents and when we see it gives nothing in terms of Knowledge and Self Development it must be viewed as Pathetic.

20. The Anna University Campus in Chennai is a culture improved and assures the Attitude, Technical and all other growth that a student can have today. Why not even the 70 %  care even not shown on the people who are paying money in different districts in Tamil Nadu to get the degree?

The management is not checking the Communication strength (which is very important for a lecturer) even while recruiting. This straightly affects the students who are trying to learn some words and sentences from those staffs during their lectures. If they form the sentence in a wrong fashion or mispronounced as per their convenience then the student does the same mistake till he reaches the interview panel with some companies.

Attitude:

I  believe attitude of a person decides everything in his / her life. Even though they get 100 % in their academics its impossible to survive in the companies if they have attitude problems. The Lecturers have to behave in the fashion of bringing an attitude that helps the student to make further steps in their life (Politeness and Peace). Its all about survival in this globe today.. Maximum students are literally unprepared to face the real world challenges which could mislead their path if they dont know how to react in certain tough situations.

Its time for your comments. Lets make this as a Debate and share your ideas. Also send the title and the link of this post to your friends to let them participate in too.

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