Nowadays, with the radical growth of the Internet, worldwide online discussion forums have become a popular social mechanism for people to learn novel information and knowledge. Frequently asked questions (FAQs), which is a collection of questions commonly asked in the newsgroups along with presumably definitive answers, has become an important reference for readers to understand backgrounds of the newsgroup discussions and to locate their desired answers, if any. The construction of FAQs, however, is prone to errors and time-consuming. Approaches to supporting FAQ generation for administrators are desired to develop. In this paper, we propose a four-step approach to supporting the FAQ list generation based on question/answer pairs collected from newsgroup discussions without labor-intensive processes. Texts are processed, and keywords along with synonyms in context are extracted from the answer part. Cluster analysis helps to identify the answer clusters and the corresponding question clusters are formed accordingly. Representative contents of the answer clusters and the question clusters are finally extracted to support administrators to generate FAQs. Our approach is applied in a real-world case where data are collected from the newsgroup in Usenet. FAQ in a primitive form is constructed using our approach. Evaluations are the performed with satisfactory results. The feasibility of our proposed approach is thus justified.

OurFileSystem (OFS) is a peer-to-peer file and metadata sharing program. Peers freely join the network, but must be granted access to groups in which metadata and files are shared. Any peer may create a group and grant others access to the group. Group members have different degrees of authority to grant others access and set their authority. Metadata for files is created by users within the context of a group and distributed to all members of the group in the form of a post. Post templates can be created to set fields of metadata. Templates are distributed to all members of a group, and one can be selected when creating a post or searching for files. Metadata in posts is indexed, and sophisticated search on the metadata can be performed locally to help users find files of interest quickly. Files found during a search may be downloaded from peers upon request. Pieces of files are downloaded from as many different peers as possible to maximize bandwidth. Peers within a group may also be marked as bad locally. If a user marks another peer as bad within the context of a group, posts from that peer to the group are deleted and not shared with others. Furthermore, any peer that was granted access by a peer marked as bad is also marked bad. No further posts or authorizations are ever accepted from any peer marked as bad. OFS also supports small public and private messages, which are distributed to all peers in the network. Private messages are encrypted so only the intended peer can decrypt the message. Lastly OFS integrates well with anonymous overlay networks that support SOCKS proxies, such as TOR. I2P support has also been explicitly added. / text

No description available.

Package managers are a common tool for installing, removing, and updating software on modern computer systems. Unfortunately existingpackage managers have two major problems. First, inadequate security leads to vulnerability to attack. Thereare nine feasible attacks against modern package managers, many of which are enabled by flaws in the underlying security architecture. Second, in Virtual Machine (VM) environments such as Xen, VMWare, and VServers,different VMs on the same physical machine are treated as separate systemsby package managers leading to redundant package downloads and installations.This dissertation focuses on the design, development, and evaluation ofa package manager called Stork that does not have these problems. Stork provides a security architecture that prevents the attacks other package managers are vulnerable to. Stork also is efficient in VM environments and reduces redundant package management actions. Stork is a real system thathas been in use for four years and has managed half a million VM instantiations.

No description available.

In secret sharing we are asked to split a secret into several shares in such a way that a minimum number of shares is necessary and sufficient to reconstruct the secret. Rational secret sharing considers secret sharing in the context of adversarial players who want to learn the secret but, secondarily, want to prevent other players from learning the secret. We present protocols, and bounds on the effectiveness of any protocol, for recombining secret shares in the presence of players who do not want others to learn the secret (rationality), may not want to learn the secret themselves (maliciousness), may be colluding, may have unbounded computational capacity, may be able to synchronize sends (asynchronous/synchronous broadcast), and/or may be able to recognize the secret independently (conspicuousness). We propose four protocols and analyze their security against players and coalitions who are each rational or malicious. We also prove three results that show protocols using only asynchronous broadcast are less secure than what can be achieved by protocols using synchronous broadcast.

No description available.

This thesis details the integration of a common collaboration technique, desktop sharing, into a virtual world environment. Previous literature shows no intersection between these fields. This thesis will illustrate that existing collaboration technology can be integrated into virtual worlds with a minimal amount of effort. Outlined in this thesis are the developmental and procedural challenges encountered in demonstrating seamless desktop sharing in a virtual environment and a stress test of the integrated system revealing that the inclusion of desktop sharing resulted in minor performance loss. The Problem Current virtual world technology has limited capability for collaboration because of a lack of collaboration tools. This thesis proposes that it is feasible to take a common collaboration tool such as desktop sharing and introduce it into a virtual world. / Department of Computer Science

In this thesis the problem of load sharing in distributed computer systems is investigated. Fundamental issues that need to be resolved in order to implement a load sharing scheme in a distributed system are identified and possible solutions suggested. A load sharing scheme has been designed and implemented on an existing Unix United system. The performance of this load sharing scheme is then measured for different types of programs. It is demonstrated that a load sharing scheme can be implemented on the Unix United systems using the existing mechanisms provided by the Newcastle Connection, and without making any significant changes to the existing software. It is concluded that under some circumstances a substantial improvement in the system performance can be obtained by the load sharing scheme.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1957. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-117). Also available via the Internet.