Game design principles have been discussed and developed since the late 1990's and are still created and discussed today. There have been many efforts to collect, identify, and create these principles, yet no effort has been made to test their implementation. This thesis presents an approach to formally analyzing games with game design principles. We gathered 50 game design principles from textbooks, Internet journals, collection efforts, and academic papers. Informal analysis of all 50 were performed, specifically looking at their ability to apply directly to games itself, as well as how much knowledge of things external were required. Of these 50, 5 were selected and a more in depth analysis was done. For each of these 5 principles we present a specification one would use to model their game, and verify that the game design principle at hand applies. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / We present a formal analysis of many Game Design principles, giving formal models for each.

Any model of access control has two fundamental aims: to ensure that resources are protected from inappropriate access and to ensure that access by authorised users is appropriate. Traditionally, approaches to access control have fallen into one of two categories: discretionary access control (DAC) or mandatory access control (MAC). More recently, role-based access control (RBAC) has offered the potential for a more manageable and flexible alternative. Typically, though, whichever model is adopted, any changes in the access control policy will have to be brought about via the intervention of a trusted administrator. In an ever-more connected world, with a drive towards autonomic computing, it is inevitable that a need for systems that support automatic policy updates in response to changes in the environment or user actions will emerge. Indeed, data management guidelines and legislation are often written at such a high level of abstraction that there is almost an implicit assumption that policies should react to contextual changes. Furthermore, as access control policies become more complicated, there is a clear need to express and reason about such entities at a higher level of abstraction for any meaningful analysis to be tractable, especially when consideration of complex state is involved. This thesis describes research conducted in formalising an approach to access control, termed evolving access control (EAC), that can support the automatic evolution of policies based on observed changes in the environment as dictated by high-level requirements embodied in a metapolicy. The contribution of this research is a formal, conceptual model of EAC which supports the construction, analysis and deployment of metapolicies and policies. The formal EAC model provides a framework to construct and describe metapolicies and to reason about how they manage the evolution of policies. Additionally, the model is used to analyse metapolicies for desirable properties, and to verify that policies adhere to the high-level requirements of the metapolicy. Furthermore, the model also allows the translation of verified policies to machine-readable representations, which can then be deployed in a system that supports fine-grained, dynamic access control.

Do campaigns have an effect on the outcome of elections? This question is usually answered using one of two methods. The first method is when political pundits examine the two opposing campaigns and judge which one had a greater impact on the polls. The second method is when political scientists use statistical methods to analyze whether a campaign had an effect on the election outcome. Both methods fail to consider the factors influencing campaign strategies and the effect these campaign strategies have on the election outcome. A third method, which I present in this dissertation, uses a formal model. This formal model treats the presidential election as a game between the two candidates competing for electoral votes in fifty-one locations. The model incorporates the assumption that the two candidates can have different prior probabilities of winning each state and can have different degrees of effectiveness at getting votes. The solution to this model is straightforward, but interesting. Candidate strategies are determined by the effectiveness of the candidates, the competitiveness of the state, and the state's electoral value. Candidates will allocate more resources 1) to states with higher electoral value, 2) to more competitive states, and 3) when they are more effective at getting votes. The structure of the model also provides an answer of when candidates can have an effect on the election outcome. When one candidate is more effective at getting votes, then that candidate will allocate more resources and receive a greater marginal return on each unit of resource than their opponent, resulting in an effect on the election outcome in their favor. To test the model, I examine the historical record of the campaigns and candidate strategies in the nine presidential elections from 1976 to 2008. These historical accounts provide qualitative support for the assumptions and predictions of the model. I also statistically analyze data from five of these presidential elections and show quantitative support for the assumptions and predictions of the model. Finally, I conclude by showing that the model is useful in answering other questions regarding campaigns in general, such as how candidates should allocate resources in governor and senate elections; how third party candidates should allocate resources; what happens if candidate effectiveness varies across state or time; and what happens if the cost varies across state? The model's ability to answer these questions shows that it can have a broad and substantial influence in the study of campaigns and elections.

No description available.

O objetivo desta tese é apresentar um modelo formal para a análise das alianças eleitorais com base na abordagem da teoria da escolha racional. Enfatiza-se as estratégias utilizadas pelos partidos na formação das alianças, e a forma pela qual uma decisão tomada em uma eleição pode afetar nas alianças da eleição seguinte. Por aliança eleitoral entende-se os pares de partidos que compõe uma coligação eleitoral. Considerando uma estrutura simples de três partidos, em que nenhum deles possui, de maneira isolada, número de votos suficientes para ganhar as eleições, constatou-se que o grau de favoritismo e o quanto os partidos valorizam estar no poder são determinantes da decisão do partido menor. Embora apresente hipóteses simplificadoras, acredita-se que este modelo é suficientemente robusto para gerar insights sobre o fenômeno das coligações, em particular no Brasil, onde as abordagens recorrentes nesta literatura parecem não serem suficientes. / This thesis aims to present a rational choice model of electoral alliances. We focus on the strategies used by political parties in their forming of alliances, and how certain decisions may affect the prospects for maintaining or disrupting the alliance in the subsequent election. By party alliance we mean the pair of parties that compose an electoral alliance. Departing from a three-party structure, where no single party holds enough votes to win the election, the model’s main finding is that the degree of favoritism and of a party’s preference for being in power are determined by the decision of the smallest party. Despite its simplifying assumptions, we believe the model is sufficiently robust in terms of its outcomes, providing invaluable insights about electoral alliances, particularly in the Brazilian context, where classical approaches to this phenomenon seem to be insufficient.

O objetivo desta tese é apresentar um modelo formal para a análise das alianças eleitorais com base na abordagem da teoria da escolha racional. Enfatiza-se as estratégias utilizadas pelos partidos na formação das alianças, e a forma pela qual uma decisão tomada em uma eleição pode afetar nas alianças da eleição seguinte. Por aliança eleitoral entende-se os pares de partidos que compõe uma coligação eleitoral. Considerando uma estrutura simples de três partidos, em que nenhum deles possui, de maneira isolada, número de votos suficientes para ganhar as eleições, constatou-se que o grau de favoritismo e o quanto os partidos valorizam estar no poder são determinantes da decisão do partido menor. Embora apresente hipóteses simplificadoras, acredita-se que este modelo é suficientemente robusto para gerar insights sobre o fenômeno das coligações, em particular no Brasil, onde as abordagens recorrentes nesta literatura parecem não serem suficientes. / This thesis aims to present a rational choice model of electoral alliances. We focus on the strategies used by political parties in their forming of alliances, and how certain decisions may affect the prospects for maintaining or disrupting the alliance in the subsequent election. By party alliance we mean the pair of parties that compose an electoral alliance. Departing from a three-party structure, where no single party holds enough votes to win the election, the model’s main finding is that the degree of favoritism and of a party’s preference for being in power are determined by the decision of the smallest party. Despite its simplifying assumptions, we believe the model is sufficiently robust in terms of its outcomes, providing invaluable insights about electoral alliances, particularly in the Brazilian context, where classical approaches to this phenomenon seem to be insufficient.

O objetivo desta tese é apresentar um modelo formal para a análise das alianças eleitorais com base na abordagem da teoria da escolha racional. Enfatiza-se as estratégias utilizadas pelos partidos na formação das alianças, e a forma pela qual uma decisão tomada em uma eleição pode afetar nas alianças da eleição seguinte. Por aliança eleitoral entende-se os pares de partidos que compõe uma coligação eleitoral. Considerando uma estrutura simples de três partidos, em que nenhum deles possui, de maneira isolada, número de votos suficientes para ganhar as eleições, constatou-se que o grau de favoritismo e o quanto os partidos valorizam estar no poder são determinantes da decisão do partido menor. Embora apresente hipóteses simplificadoras, acredita-se que este modelo é suficientemente robusto para gerar insights sobre o fenômeno das coligações, em particular no Brasil, onde as abordagens recorrentes nesta literatura parecem não serem suficientes. / This thesis aims to present a rational choice model of electoral alliances. We focus on the strategies used by political parties in their forming of alliances, and how certain decisions may affect the prospects for maintaining or disrupting the alliance in the subsequent election. By party alliance we mean the pair of parties that compose an electoral alliance. Departing from a three-party structure, where no single party holds enough votes to win the election, the model’s main finding is that the degree of favoritism and of a party’s preference for being in power are determined by the decision of the smallest party. Despite its simplifying assumptions, we believe the model is sufficiently robust in terms of its outcomes, providing invaluable insights about electoral alliances, particularly in the Brazilian context, where classical approaches to this phenomenon seem to be insufficient.

La dernière décennie, la complexité des technologies embarqués a explosé et les flots de conception industrielle habituels ne suffisent plus pour proposer des produits fiables en respectant les exigences du marché. Ainsi, le développement de nouvelles méthodologies de conception est devenu un besoin impératif. La thèse vise l'amélioration des méthodologies de conception des systèmes embarqués. En proposant une approche de conception par niveaux d’abstraction, la nouvelle approche permet de guider et d’assister les concepteurs dans les étapes de conception, précisément de raffiner les composants de communication. Elle offre des garanties de préservation des propriétés fonctionnelles le long du flot de conception. La méthode proposée permet de raisonner sur les différents niveaux de description d'un système en exploitant des techniques de preuve de propriétés associées aux raffinement formel. / In the last decade, the complexity of embedded systems has exploded and the usual industrial design flows do not suffice any more to propose reliable products while respecting time to market constrain. Thus, developing new design methodologies has become an imperative. The thesis aims at the improvement of the methodologies of conception of the embedded systems. It proposes a method for assisting the process of refinement along the design flow. The proposed approach splits the design flow into multiple-levels, in order to guide the designer in the design process, from the most abstract model down to a synthesizable model. Furthermore, by using formal techniques the method allows to check the preservation of functional correctness along the design flow.

Les serveurs Internet sont des logiciels particuliers. Ils doivent répondre aux demandes d'un grand nombre de clients distants, supporter leur évolution et être robustes car ils ne s'arrêtent jamais. Les modèles de concurrence permettent d'entrelacer les traitements d'un grand nombre de clients. Aucun consensus ne se dégage sur un meilleur modèle. Pour s'abstraire du modèle de concurrence, je propose un modèle de développement de serveurs Internet. Les outils de vérification formelle permettent d'accroître la sûreté des logiciels mais il est nécessaire de leur fournir un modèle simple du logiciel. Le modèle de développement que je propose est utilisé pour générer le serveur et son modèle formel. Le décodage d'une requête cliente dépend du modèle de concurrence. Je propose d'utiliser un générateur d'analyseur syntaxique qui s'abstrait de ce problème et automatise le développement du décodage / Internet servers are software with specific features. Indeed, they answer request of wide and distant clients, support the customer evolution and be robust because they never stop. The concurrency models allow to interleave the statements of wide customers. No general agreement frees on a better model. To abstract himself from the concurrency model, I propose a development model of Internet servers. Model checkers allow to increase the software safety. But, it is necessary to provide a simple model of software to check it. I propose to use my development model of servers in order to genrate ther server automatically and its formal model. Finally as the request parsing depends on the concurrency model, I propose to use Tatoo, a parser generator. Tatoo abstracts himself from this dependency and automates the development of parsing

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) provides a way to automate identification and to store information in individual RFID tags. These tags can be attached or embedded in an item to be identified and are read when they enter a RFID reader's antenna field. The Electronic Product Code (EPC) Class 1 Generation 2 (Gen2 for short) is a proper example of passive RFID technology. It represents the key component of an RFID architecture named EPCglobal network. However, if the tag carries more than just an identifier, the privacy of the tag holder may be violated. In this thesis, we deal with privacy issues in two levels of the EPCglobal network to only let authorized entities access private data. Our goal is to ensure that the data exchange from RFID tags to middleware and enterprise applications guarantees the privacy requirements, in environments where privacy control is paramount, e.g., home healthcare monitoring systems. The first part of this dissertation is dedicated to securing data exchange between RFID readers and passive tags. We provide a key establishment and derivation protocol for Gen2 systems, called KEDGEN2, to handle the flawed security model of the Gen2 tag memory access. KEDGEN2 achieves secure data exchange, based on a key generation model adapted to Gen2 tags. To prove the security of our model, we specify the protocol using the High Level Protocol Specification Language (HLPSL) and verify the expected security properties, using the Constraint-Logic based Attack Searcher (CL-AtSe) model checking tool. The current version of the protocol guarantees mutual authentication of participants and forward secrecy of the keys in the presence of active adversaries. It also guarantees backward secrecy with active adversaries bounded by limited communication range, which is consistent with typical RFID environments. As for derived keys, we propose adapting the Solitaire cipher, as a Pseudo-random Number Generator. To complement our approach, an additional filter is added and described in the second part of this dissertation. We focus on the collection of tag information through the RFID middleware component. The middleware is a central point that sits between RFID readers and database applications. It is in charge of collecting, filtering and aggregating the requested events from heterogeneous RFID environments. Thus, the system at this point is likely to suffer from parameter manipulation and eavesdropping, raising privacy concerns. We propose a privacy-enhanced approach as a part of the RFID middleware of the EPCglobal network, which does not interfere with the standard interface. Our approach is policy driven using some enhanced contextual concepts of the extended Role Based Access Control model. We use specifically, the PrivOrBAC privacy-aware model to store and manage privacy preferences, taking the declared purpose, the accuracy and the explicit consent, as privacy requirements. To show the feasibility of our approach, we provide a proof-of-concept prototype that we apply to the Fosstrak plateform, an open-source implementation of the EPCglobal specifications.