In the Land of the LANs, the Ethernet is the King: The heart of the Cloud

◙Cloud◙ Computing

The Metcalfe’s Paradigm or the Heart of the Cloud

In the Land of the LANs, the Ethernet is the King

Introduction

In many networking diagrams, the Internet is depicted with an icon of a cloud, as representing perhaps its complex and dense structure. I really do not know how to put it: A networked cloud or Clouded internetwork, anyways the Internet is made out of many other networks. As we “traveled” into the “cloudnet”, we can see that is made out of other interconnected clouds or units, we have some denominations for them. From Global Area Network [GAN] (internet, in this sense all GANs or internets form the one and only one: Internet) (Panko, 2005), we continue our voyage, passing through: The Wide Area Networks [WANs]; Metropolitan Area Networks [MAN]; Campus Area Networks [CAM]; until we outreach the Personal Area Networks [PANs], or Body Area Networks, [BANs] and Power Line Are Networks [PLANs]. (the object of PANs, or BANs, is to peruse the human body to transmit data from people to people by the simple means of touching each other). (Tomasi, 2005, p. 34-38) Notwithstanding, as soon as we look the Internet’s architecture, we by simply inspection understand that within all its main portions or networks, the Local Area Networks [LAN] are the more numerous structures, and in the “Land of the LANs the Ethernet standard is the king”.

Incidentally, Ethernet the subject of this paper, this is a brief study of the development of Ethernet LANs [E-LANs], a standard which in spite of being more than 30 years used by experts in the networking industry, and consumed by the enterprises and homes, Ethernet still prevalent, but especially for companies that as the Great Catalogues Inc. [GCI], are doing or thinking on doing business over the Web (which is just a part of the Internet perhaps the biggest interactive part of it) and thus participate actively in the eCommerce environment. This paper, which has been prepared for the top management of GCI, documents the conducted researching efforts made by the GCI information systems security [GISS] department, for explaining the importance, shortcomings and prevalence that Ethernet plays for the accomplishment of GCI’s eBusiness goals and objectives (Course, 2008).

The Ethereal Ethernet

The ether is here to state, this concept extracted by Robert “Bob” Metcalfe, from the field of classic theoretical physics, to name his network standard, is still very popular among notable researchers, as its definition is being reformulated, once and again, by investigators of the caliber of such physicists as the Nobel Prize laureate, Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] and by the latest experiments involving Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD and broken symmetries, done at the 2.4 mile Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider [RHIC] of the Brookhaven Laboratory in New York. Nonetheless, Ethernet networks are what we find today in almost every network, whether be at the enterprises or at homes, it is predominantly and extensively utilized. Metcalfe, and his assistant Boggs, were able to develop a system at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center [PARC] to interconnect their computers with those of the then famous, minicomputer manufacturer, Digital Equipment Corporation [DEC] without the use of a mainframe network (Russell, chap. 5 p. 65-73).

Metcalfe & Boggs (1997) published, in 1976, a seminal paper in the journal “Communications” of the Association for Computing Machinery [ACM] with the title “Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computers Networks” in which they defined what really is Ethernet, or the U.S Patent number 4,063,220, “Multipoint data communication with collision detection” issued by Xerox Corporation on December 13, 1976 (TechFest, 1999). Here is part of the original text: “Ethernet is a branching broadcast communication system for carrying digital data packet among locally distributed computing stations. …” (p. 1). Let us how all started …

The Development of the Ethernet

Ethernet networks located itself, at the center of two extremes of the computing spectrum of the late 70’s. On one hand, they had those “big-irons”, enormous mainframes of centralized connections from remote networks of stations, i.e., dumb-terminals (Terminal Teletypes [TTYs]), with the only computability power of a transceiver with a keyboard plus a monochrome screen of lower resolution managed by an Command line Interface, perhaps Multics or MVS. On the other hand, those isolated main frames, with the parallelism offered by its multiprocessing capabilities. However, Ethernet is distributed and for such decentralized (Metcalfe & Boggs, 1976) perhaps, the main ideas behind Ethernet came from the Arpanet’s design which from the beginning was intensively focused on decentralization for resiliency. LAN technology has facilitated our ability to created distributed networks. The figure 1 shows two diagrams that depicts the evolutionary differences between those early time-sharing system of the 60s; and the distributed networks that characterizes most of the currents networks and internetworks of the present time, most of what we owe to the Metcalfe’s paradigm, i.e., the Ethernet.

Figure 1

In fact, as Metcalfe and Boggs (1976) stated, that Ethernet derives from the telecommunications terminal-computer communication era, as depicted in figure 1. The whole point, of these types of networks, was to connect those dumb terminals to a centralized computing facility. The facility consisted of several separated units: The computer, the front-end processor, the file storage unit, et al. So the challenge that Metcalfe faced at the time, and was able to met rather successfully, was the need for computer-to-computer communication. in which computers were used as a packet switches and for resource sharing, all of what of course, and again, was developed by the direct initiative of ARPA, and names like Bob Taylor, Leo Roberts, Vincent Cert, et al.

Figure 2

Metcalfe op. cit., pointed out in his paper how Ethernet was developed since the times of the Aloha networks’ Menehune, (Figure 2) the Hawaiian version of the Arpanet’s central processor called the Interface Message Preprocessor [IMP] (A packet switching appliance that can be considered as the first router ever, it was designed and built by BBN in Boston, Massachusetts, after winning among 140 companies, a Request For Quotation [RFQ] released from the then ARPA’s Director, Bob Taylor, to built the Arpanet). (p.1-2) Tomasi (2005) states that Metcalfe called the first Ethernet the Alto Aloha Network, changing the name later to Ethernet to making a point that his standard could be used by any computer not just the Xerox’s Alto. Tomasi (idem) added that Metcalfe had had chosen “ether” as meaning of air, atmosphere or heavens. (Chap. 18, p. 572) By reading his paper, I think that what he meant by “ether” was the vital force that connects the computers and transports the signal, the cable, he refers constantly to the “ether” whenever and wherever there is the suggestion that should be a cable instead.

In the beginning, Ethernet (See Appendix A – Figure 3) shared many objectives with other local networks prototypes; such as, MITRE’s Mitrex, Bell Telephone Laboratory’s Spider, and the University of California Irvine’s Distributed Computing System [DCS]. (Metcalfe & Boggs, 1976) However, two years after Ethernet was patented, DEC, Intel and Xerox combined efforts with the objective to standardized an “Ethernet system that any company could use.”

The products of this industrious collaboration appeared a year later, in September 1980, under the released of Ethernet version 1.0, the first specification, labeled “Ethernet Blue Book” or DIX (from the initial of the aforementioned corporations). Version 1.0 specified the application of the coaxial cable 10Base5, aka “thick”, 10 Megabits per second Mb/s Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection CSMA/CD protocol, in addition, the networks connected with 10Base5 were called thicknet, the final version of DIX standard was released in 1982, as version 2.0.

From the DIX era, we enter, in 1983, the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers [IEEE] period, with its first release, an Ethernet improved standard developed by the “802.3 Working Group” of the “802 Committee”, titled, “CSMA/CD Access Method and Physical Layer Specifications”. This specification was geared to add hardware interoperability between to different standards and now they are encapsulated and known by the IEEE Standard, Std-802.3 Ethernet.

The IEEE also had continued the improvement of the Ethernet system by creating the standard 802.2, which involved the packetizing of data and the identification of the protocol structure, whereas 802.3 defines the standard used to prevent multiple computers from sending data at the same time with reduces the likelihood of collisions. From 1980 Ethernet standard has been evolving all along in a steady pace and an incremental and significant ways, as presented below by the table 1 (Russell, 2000, TechFest, 1999, Tomasi, 2005, Panko, 2005):

Ethernet’s Milestones
Date	Who	What	Specification	Detail
Early 1970s	Metcalfe & Boggs Xerox PARC	Experimenting	Xerox Alto connected to a printer at 2.94 Mb/s
July 1976	Metcalfe & Boggs ACM’s Communications Journal	Ethernet: Distributed packet Switching for local Computer Networks
12/13/1977	Xerox Corp	Multipoint data communications with collision Detection	U.S. Patent
1979-80	DIX	Ethernet System that anyone could use	Version 1.0 or Ethernet Blue Book	CSMA/CD – 10Base5 – 10Mb/s Thick coaxial cable
1982	DIX	1st Ethernet Controller DIX Final version	Version 2.0
1983	IEEE Working Group of The IEEE 802.3	802.3 CSMA/CD	Access Method and Physical Layer Specification
1985	IEEE	2nd version IEEE Ethernet called “thinnet”	802.3a	Simply cable and cheaper cable
1987	IEEE	Fiber Optic Inter-Repeater Link (FOIRL)	[1] 802.3d [2]802.3e	[1] Extend maximum distance between 10Mb/s Ethernet repeaters [2] Based on 1Mb/s twisted pair wiring.
1990	IEEE	Major advance	802.3i	10-Base-T standard Operated over Category [CAT] 3 Unshielded Twisted Pair. Wired in a Star topology fashion.
Date	Who	What	Specification	Detail
1993	IEEE	Attachments over longer distances, up to 2000 meters	802.3j	10 Base F (FP, FB & FL) expanded the FOIRL
1995	IEEE	Performance Improved ten (10) times.	802.3u	100Base-T aka Fastnet 100Base-Tx 100Base-T4 100Base-Fx
1997	IEEE	Full-duplex Ethernet allows concurrency of transmissions from both stations.	[1] 802.3x [2] 802.3y	[1] 100 Mb/s and beyond [2] 100Base-T2 standard for 100 Mb/s CAT 3
1998	IEEE	Improved 10 times performance	[1] 802.3z [2] 802.3ac	[1] Gigabit Ethernet 1000Base-SX 850mm laser over multi-mode fiber, 2 10000Base-CX – short haul copper “twinax” Shielded Twisted Pair [STP] [2] Support Virtual LAN VLAN tagging on Ethernet networks
1999	IEEE	Operation over four pairs of CAT 5 UTP	802.3ab	1000Base-T I Gb/s
July 2001	IEEE document	1562 pages Long document condensing all 802.3 standards	Std 802.3-2000 [1]802.3ad	[1] Link Aggregation
2002	IEEE		802.3ae	10 Gb/s
2003	IEEE		Std 802.3af	DTE Power via MDI
2004	IEEE		802.3ah	Ethernet in the First Mile
2004	IEEE		802.3ak	10GBASE-CX4.
2006	IEEE		802.3an	10GBASE-T
2006	IEEE	Creation		802.3 Higher Speed Study Group [HSSG]
2006	IEEE		802.3aq
2007	IEEE		802.3ap	Backplane Ethernet
2007	IEEE Project Authorization Request [PAR]		802.3ba PAR status	40 Gb/s & 100 Gb/s

Ethernet Security

Still Ethernet has breaches and is not secure as other technologies; this means that many security features are needed to be set in place for obtaining a decent effective Ethernet security protection. It is curious that Metcalfe itself would prognosticate much of the security issues that we are facing today, and he did it much before he developed the Ethernet, in his RFC 602 “The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care” that he in1973 about weak passwords.

One of the major problems that I have is with IP spoofing. Well, it is TCP/IP embedded in the architecture of Ethernet, since an Ethernet frame in its header contains or encapsulates an IP packet. Even though Ethernet operates at the physical and data link layer, divides this layer in two sub-layers the MAC-Media Access Control and LLC – Logical Link Control, it is at the LLC that many thing could happen and evenly at the MAC level.

At the AT&T Bell labs, Bellovin (1989) wrote a paper on security problems of TCP/IP protocols and IP address spoofing attacks, telling us that IP spoofing were already introduced circa 1980s by attackers for hide their true identities (p. 1-17). The reader might already thinking, “wait a minute” you can only spoofed an IP packet, so these attacks are only activities done at the network and transport layers, but the response could be that the Ethernet address or MAC address (the 48-bits) of the sending machine can be spoofed also. It is a matter of fact, that it is spoofed most often that we can normally think is possible. There many problems and nothing but nothing is 100% completely secure out there in the Internet. Another example of Ethernet security are the Address resolution Protocol [ARP] attacks, heretofore, Ethernet attacks protection is a field by itself in information security.

Conclusion

As Ethernet is being upgraded and reviewed, the case of the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard is becoming more and more fashionable and it is used at homes, as by the enterprises. However, and spite of Wi-Fi’s advantages, for instance, mobility, the experts are talking about already, M-Commerce. They want to define the transactions done over smart wireless phones and Personal Digital Assistants [PDAs]. Moreover, another advantage of Wireless networks is that there is not need of the expensive wiring costs and procedures or as Metcalfe & Boggs (1976) would put it, in a wireless network, you do not need to worry about the “ether in the Ethernet” anymore; because, the connection is, casually, the mere air. Anyways, this type of network juxtaposes serious security challenges as well. At may firm we prefer to use a combination, like some kind of Pareto networking strategy, i.e., 80% Ethernet network at the border and within our perimeter to support the 20% or little more of wireless or mobile secure connections.

Bibliography

Bellovin, S.M. (1989). Security Problems in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite. Murray Hill, New Jersey: AT&T Bell Laboratories. Retrieved January 18, 2008, from http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/ipext.pdf.

Fascinating facts about Robert Metcalfe inventor of Ethernet in 1973. Robert Metcalfe

Ideafinder. Retrieve, January 17, 2008, from http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/metcalfe.htm.

Festa, P. (2003 May 21). 30 years of Ethernet gains. As a key technology behind the Internet hits a milestone birthday, its inventor, Bob Metcalfe, says the protocol faces a new generation of "Godzillas" to conquer. Newsmakers, CNET News.com. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.news.com/30-years-of-Ethernet-gains/2008-1082_3-1008450.html?tag=st.rn.

IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group. Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers.

Retrieved January, 16, 2008, from http://www.ieee802.org/3/.

Metcalfe, R. M. & Boggs, D. R. (1976). Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computers Networks. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center [PARC]. Association for Computing Machinery [ACM]. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs240/readings/ethernet.pdf.

Hassing, K., Kent, A. K., & Johnson, G. (2003). CCNA 1 & 2 Companion Guide, 3^rd Edition. Cisco Networking Academy Program Indianapolis, IN: 2003.

Holbrook, P. & Reynolds, J. Editors. (1991 July). Site Security Handbook, Network Working

Group. Request for Comments, RFC 1244, January 14, 2008, from http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1244.txt.

Panko R. R. (2005). Business Data Networks and Telecommunications, 5^th Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall- Pearson Education, Inc.

Reardon, M. (2007 May 7). Ethernet papa makes Invent Now Hall of Fame Before his induction ceremony, Bob Metcalfe reflected on network tech, patents, Net neutrality and bold predictions. Newsmaker, CNET News.com. Retrieved January 17, 2008, from http://www.news.com/Ethernet-papa-makes-Invent-Now-Hall-of-Fame/2008-1033_3-6181578.html.

Russell, T. (2000). Telecommunications Pocket Reference. New York, NY: McGraw- Hill Companies.

TechFest Ethernet Technical Summary (1999) TechFest.com. Retrieved January 12, 2008, from http://www.techfest.com/networking/lan/ethernet1.htm.

Tomasi, W. (2005). Introduction to Data communications and Networking, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, Inc.

The Planet of the Apes: Cultural behaviors

The scientist Susan Savage-Rumbaugh research with bonobos, apes that are able to write, start start fires and play videogames

A worldwide web of belief and ritual

You can contact me directly by clicking in here

Original Cultures and the Environment could survive
The anthropologist Wade Davis who has stated that have live 30 years with the Chincheros reveals and explain cultures from Peru

AMAZING CLASH - THE GREAT INCA REBELLION

Incas Versus Conquistadors

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part four

Part Five

Part six

The Insecurity in the Systems Intelligence: A Very Brief Study of the Failures of Information Security Projects

“Best is to know and know you know. Next best is to know that you don’t know. Third best is knowing, but not realizing it. Worst is not to know that you don’t know.”

Ancient Proverb (Business, 2002, P xxxi)

Introduction

What do IT projects fail so often? What are the impacts, if any; do these failures have on the confidentiality, integrity and availability [CIA] of our Information Systems? A fundamental and direct relationship between these two processes (security and failure) exists without a doubt; however, being that the impacts of project failure on security is a certainty, as it is obvious and dangerous, for the operational stability of our IT systems; and having in consideration that all along systems project failure is very expensive and has caused so much pain and sorrow: Why then, we are not more careful about developing and implementing these type of crucial projects? These were some of the questions that were explored during our last Xterior’s security team weekly meeting. On this paper, I am briefly documenting my conclusions based on the literature review that I had conducted about the failure of information systems security projects (Courses Material, 2007).

Insecurity Preambles

It is common knowledge what that old saying states: “The necessity is the mother of the invention.” I could not find a better word, with which I could epitomize more accurately the degree of civilization of any given society, and hence innovations are the best of our human manifestations that stems from our lack of having the adequate vital resources, or the insecurity to be free from our most basic physiological needs. The advances of any determined culture or historical period are represented precisely by its tools, as by its knowledge employed to solve their challenges, which typifies the distributed human intelligence expressed through the development of arts, sciences, architecture, engineering, weaponry, and industry and governmental institutions. Thus the history of invention describes and enumerates those technologies used from the Stone Age, throughout the contemporary and pervasive, as seemingly intrusive and insecure, Information age.

However as our inventions, i.e. the ability to create tools, objects and ideas for outreaching our overarching goals and objectives, and creativity have assisted us to become organized as nations with peculiar cultures and philosophies (the east and the west divide). Thus, we have survived and adapted to the inclemency of our environment and we have triumphed over all known beasts in nature with the exception of only one: The Man itself. “Homo Homini Lupus”, i.e., "Man is a wolf to man," is a famous Roman Proverb attributed to Plautus (184 BC) and used it as one of the main ingredients in the authoritarian social contract, in his “De Cive”, by Thomas Hobbes (1651). Thenceforth, it is the beginning of our tribulations, insecurities and project failures; it appears ingrained in our own needs, instincts, self-interested reasons and imperfect souls. It is not any different now that it was then, in the Stone Age, we need to survive. So, If the necessity were the mother of the invention, then the scarcity is the grandmother of all our insecurities and wrong doings. Therefore, information security deals not only with technology; it involves other factors that are more darker, deep-rooted and less understood than any form of attack because it has been, is and will be the source of all our human maladies.
System Project Failure

Failure is lack of success. To fail is to lose in a way, as not being able to provide. If a system were not working as expected, then we state, “the system has failed”, by the same token is a project fails, we can say “the project as the people who were involved in it, have fallen short in meeting the goals” or “they could not grow or develop fast enough to deliver successfully what is was expected or needed at this time.” (Scalability problem) At the end of the day, system project failures have significant costs, not only for the project team’s morale but in terms of dollars, time and other resources, as the loss of critical information, that have proven catastrophic for many business cases. Nowadays, that our lives spin around multiple projects, it will be a good idea to refresh our memories, and figure out what exactly is a project and why projects do fail. As I see it, a project is an organized and systematized activity that employs resources, i.e., people, technology, and processes or operations, within a well-defined start date, milestones or phases, and end date (duration and schedule) with the aim to achieve a relative unique service or product within an organization (Sommerville, 2000).
Learning from Failure

The study of failure could ensure the path to success. What did work some years ago to solve a problem, it might not work today. To investigate why systems projects usually fail, we need to understand how we plan, administer, monitor and evaluate them; in other words, we are asking what Project Management [PM] is. PM is a life cycle based discipline utilized to achieve desired and projected goals within a determined schedule and specific budgetary constrains (Why, 2007). Many experts agree that one of the main reasons why systems or Information Technology [IT] projects failed so often is the lack of knowledge, understanding or experience, of the IT Managers about System Engineering [SE] (Sommerville, 2000, p. 9); and on how to apply effectively the PM Body of Knowledge [PMBOK] for their specific situations. For instance, Wimmel & Wisspeintner (2003) showed the importance for security managers to be familiar with the application of the “Information Technology Security Evaluation Criteria” [ITSEC], AKA “the Orange book” and/or the Common Criteria [CC]; both standards that are usually utilized for designing and modeling trusted ecommerce systems. As it is the case of Plow of the Sea, Inc that now wants to translate its retailing business experience into the Internet.

Sten E. Vesterly (2004) based on surveys, reported that only one quarter of the System projects are almost completed as expected, as they meet just some of their specified deliverables according to schedule and budget. He added that two quarters of the IT projects deliver their final outputs with serious deficiencies in functionality and largely exceeding their price and time tags. In addition, that one quarter of the entire projects deliver anything but yes, they consumed all and evenly more of the money, time and resources that were assigned to them at their inception or during planning process (p. 1-7); No wonder, why IT Systems Project managers are fired with conspicuous frequency.

Vesterly (2004) explained that another cause, for the aforementioned negative and poor system project outcomes, is the overexciting or excessive enthusiasm created by the new features and rapid deployment of powerful emergent technologies. Most IT staff just cannot resist them and become too ambitious in including uncertain devices or software mechanisms; and so become part of what it has been called, the frontlines of the “bleeding edge”. As many new-released hardware, firmware and software off the shelf have not been properly tested or certified, using these products create tremendous stress in supporting their deployment and maintenance. IT Prudence is required in designing and developing system projects. On the other hand, Vesterly (idem), pointed out, that some IT managers usually offer the argument of, “If it works, don’t fix it”, pretending that legacy systems will work in the same way, facing the same attacks as they used to, within new and dangerous environments with threats that in no manner were known or evenly envisioned when they were firstly deployed. It suffices only to recalled the case of zero-day attacks, to understand that upgrading and patching systems is not only necessary, it should be continuous and compulsory goal to be enforced to all IT managers by the top security managers in any organization (p. 1-7). Ted Hendy (2000), the System Security Architect and Engineer at the Pentagon for the Office of the Secretary of Defense [OSD], stressed the importance of human analysis and the use of Security System Engineering Process and Techniques to prevent major problems in planning, implementing and managing IT systems, Hendy (idem) summarized very well why systems fail, “Though the technology exists to do great things in this field, without thoughtful analysis and preparation many of those attempts are doomed to fail.” (p. 1).

Moreover, we know too well, that complexity creates havoc and it is very difficult to manage. The complexity of the Information Systems [IS], which is incremented by the rapid change in the technology available to use; as the level of sophistication, reached by the IS interoperability and components interactions, has created confusion and pressure on security and IT managers. Actually, the system complexity is one of the major causes of the other aforementioned factors. In reality, studying the causes that originate systems project failure is looking for answers as to why systems projects fail and how to do for implementing more trusted IS (Ivory & Alderman, 2005, p. 1-13).

Sommerville (2000) reminded that systems components are just not only about inert parts or soulless machines working as a whole with emergent own characteristics, properties and capabilities; systems also involved people and are built for support them and aid human activity (p. 3). Therefore, we need to zero-in on the users and operators too, and on the risks associated with how these users and operators are aware, trained and educated for perusing the systems infrastructure and access critical information. (Ivory & Alderman, 2005, p. 1-13) This factor is outlined by Beckley (2007) as inadequate training; he presents also other causes for the failure of system projects, such as: Radical and unconventional changes; the lack of enterprise level support and resources or budget; and communication failures (Slide 53). In addition, the figure 1, below, encapsulates the concepts behind the systems project failures and the difference between what the users want and what they finally get:




Conclusion

At the end of the day, some factors of failure appear at the beginning of the project, like the lack of communication among the team members of the project, or understanding over which ones are the system requirements or over roles or responsibilities. Some factors develop on the last phase of the project, like the lack of proper testing or evaluative practices. However, system projects fail at any phase during their development process, whereas for the lack of monitoring, contingency measures, or concurrency, interdependency and tasking issues, or event or people driven deadlocks. Systems project failure poises a great danger given its frequency. It has come to mean for us, as Xterior security managers, prevention, instead of contention; it means alertness instead of lamentations. It also means due-diligence and al lot of work and patience to estimate the process and to not sub estimates nothing; and so it security system projects need to adherence to system security engineering standards, such as SSE-CMM for reaching an adequate level of information assurance, and system reliability for Xterior’s customers.
A successful project not only meets its goals and objectives on time and within budget, but also implements and translates accurately the business model requirements into the security technology controls that squarely satisfy the security policy of the corporation.

Bibliography

Business - The Ultimate Resource. (2002) London, GBR: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Retrieved November 30, 2007, from http://http://wf2dnvr5.webfeat.org:80/dIEzI117/url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/cecybrary/Doc?id=10022156&ppg=1.
Hendy, T. (2000, May 9). The art of security engineering. US Army Information Systems Engineering Command. Retrieved November 30, 2007, from http://www.itoc.usma.edu/Workshop/2000/Abstracts/TM2_1.pdf.
Hobbes, T. (1651). De Cive. Retrieved December 1, 2007 from, http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/hobbes/hobbes1.
Ivory, C. & Alderman N. (2005, September 28). Can Project Management Learn Anything From Studies Of Failure In Complex Systems? Project Management Journal, Vol. 36 Issue 3, p. 5-16, 12p. Retrieved November 30, 2007 from, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&jid=1NR&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live.
Mitchell, A. (2004, December 14). E-Commerce Missing Link: Software Requirement Specifications. E-Commerce Times. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/38919.html.
Sommerville, I. (2000). Critical Systems Engineering: Processes and techniques for developing critical systems. PowerPoint Presentation. Retrieved December 2, 2007 from, http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/resources/IanS/Ian/Courses/CritSys-2004/PDF-notes/Introduction.pdf
Vesterli, S. E. (2004, October 19). Why IT Projects Fail − and how to avoid it. Retrieved on December 2, 2007, from http://vesterli.com/papers/why_it_projects_fail.pdf.
Wimmel, G. & Wisspeintner, A. (2003, June 17). Extended Description Techniques For Security Engineering. Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität: München, D-80290 München, Germany. Retrieved December 2, 2007 from, http://www4.in.tum.de/publ/papers/WW01.pdf.
Why do Projects Fail? (2007). JISC InfoNet. Retrieved December 2, 2007 from, http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/project-management/pm-intro-1.2.

From The Chronicles of The Metasemantic Web III: Thus spoke Seattlle: Metasemantic Webs-Metacultures: Uncrashing the Past into our Future

There is much controversy over the environment nowadays. We do not know for sure what words really spoke, the Chief Seatle or Seattle, but this we know: he has and statue, and it seems that he compromised and survived until his natural death.

Also, he had a friend in Dr. Smith, who translated his words. It appears that the poems or letters attributed to him were embellished at later time, for making movies, money or for other reasons, rather than to try to improve the lives of the first Americans, or Pre-Americans, or Pre-Columbians. They are called Indians due to a mistake, really.

I called them humans, humans that were profoundly degraded, almost exterminated, ripped-off of their lands and brutally and largely dehumanized in the name of many things because they just lost the war. Yes, it is the Spencerian categorization, the survival of the fittest; with less and less animals, less plants and more energy demands, instead of green our planet is becoming gray. I would like to see from where we are going to take more money, or where we are going to look for new Indians or slaves. Oh yes... I am so sorry, there is water in Mars! and oil or something else elsewhere in the galaxies, go get continue with the autopsy...

"Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

Chief Seattle, 1854.

Archaeologists, convinced that there is something more in the past, are looking really intensively in explaining to us how it was done in detail. National Geographic is graphical about one proven instance of the massacre, crash and war of two civilizations.

Again another mistake, it is called "conquista", ["Conquest"], and the winners are called using another euphemism, "Conquistadors", but in reality we all know what it was, don't we? While, we accept many things, we need to think of the consequences of these enterprises, for the whole world, including the world that we build for ourselves. Thousand of immigrants are coming

and continue coming, why is this occurring? We need to recognized that there are a lot of problems that are deeply rooted in another sort of cause that we cannot see, may be greedy, for survival and/or the thirst of put others down, I just do not know. A business is not a business while all what one is doing is taking goodies or labor from others by force, or by misleading contracts, agreements or licenses, and given it to your family or people. Yes, it was a war, but an unfair war, that for these people it would not have never an end. Rarely a war does, it never ends in a way, they stay somehow forever. So the fight continues and in the fighting we seem to be all embedded therein, as Willy Nelson will sing it, "After all these years".

Whether is was done thousand of years or just now. Look at what is happening in the middle east, unfortunately all the world is still kind of paying for something that was started some millenniums ago and far away from us.

Whatever the source of our problems is or would have been, as Polya, would tell us, we need to properly name it, define it that is, and make the necessary arrangements to improve this present for our future for the futures generations.

I do not think, we are doing this, so are we taking for granted the world peace that we have. It is very plausible that we are profiling another war, the third war world, WW version 3.0.
Whereby, we were having WWII.1 in the cold war, the WWII.5 the war for Kuwait and now we have the WWII.6, the holy war against the terrorism and lately we seem to be near to have a WWII.7, a world against our own environment. Some people say that is our nature, the brutish and evil nature of Man defined so well by Hobbes. The law of the Homo Homini Lupus.

I said, that incidentally, and definitely, there are some people that believe in supremacy, slavery, and war as the way of man. At any rage and for any reason under any social structure, epoch and within families, at the schools, at the job places, in the markets, these people appear somehow and evenly flourish as they are well-admired by people that think the same or like to think the same. They are very cohesive in nature, and so they organize.

As they seem to be very concreted up to the point to become binary thinkers at large, so for them is rather easy to make decisions, or it is war or it is peace, or they win or they loose, or you are white and you are not and so you are the rest. Fairness is not a principle for them, it is an issue, winning is all what it counts in the end, so they could utter: "Long live Machiavelli".

The second law of evolution: The survival of the fittest but based in mutual aid should be considered in here. Of course, once when we all are uploaded and saved into the "machine", then as Bill Joy stated and it would be perhaps easy to answer in here, "why the future does not need us"? It is rather obvious, isn't it?

Most likely, we are already an expendable number by now. Never mind, let us continue hunting and fishing and watching TV and playing golf though... Try to see the past ... then you see the
future, as above as below...

The Best Blog of the Web: The Blogger is a 96 year-old

It was selected in Germany and the BBC is going to interview the 96 year-old Blogger: OK you can read it by clicking in here. (It is in Spanish but there is a widget from which it can be read in many languages.)

As the value of Gasoline Increases let us look to "The Amish Way of life"

Einstein, Dirac, Godel, Selberg, and Harish-Chandra Together at Princeton

The Models of Making Decisions

If you will begin with certainties, you shall end in doubts, but if you will content to begin with doubts, you shall end in almost certainties.

Francis Bacon