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Let's say you have two hosts, somewhere out on the Internet: Maybe dedicated servers, maybe Amazon EC2 or Rackspace instances, maybe a mix of the above. Now assume it's your job to provide secure, encrypted connectivity between two services running on those hosts. If those services do not use an encrypted protocol by themselves - such as non-SSL capable SMTP mail servers - then the standard answer has always been: "Use stunnel or OpenVPN!". While both of those are good, cross-platform solutions which can forward unsecure traffic over an encrypted tunnel, I believe that they come not only with administrative overhead, but also introduce a significant performance hit. I believe that there are now solutions that are easier to use, more flexible and most importantly, deliver much better performance. In this article, I will compare stunnel performance  characteristics with vCider's virtual private network solution (sign up for use with up to 8 nodes is free). You will see that vCider not only offers more flexibility and is easier to use, but also provides significantly better network performance and reduced CPU load. For my test, I have created two Ubuntu instances on Rackspace. Please note that both stunnel as well as vCider can work across network and cloud provider boundaries.

Synthesis is a think-tank devoted to using the emerging paradigm of complex networks in the social sciences to tackle social and public policy concerns. Over the past 20 years or so, social scientists have increasingly made use of advances in the natural sciences to make better sense of social systems. Fields such as network theory, non-linear mathematics and systems theory, which we refer to as the study of complex networks, give us much greater insights that help us make sense of social systems. Armed with a greater understanding, this collection of paradigm-changing toolboxes can help us to make better policy decisions, in the public, private, and "third" sectors.

Email27ShareViews 5309 PRESS RELEASE Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast Projects 18-Fold Growth in Global Mobile Internet Data Traffic From 2011 to 2016 Mobile Cloud Traffic to Account for 71 Percent, or 7.6 Exabytes per Month, of Total Mobile Data Traffic by 2016, Compared to 45 Percent, or 269 Petabytes per Month, in 2011

Complexity scientists have made great strides in understanding the behaviour of single networks. Now they want to know what happens when networks become connected to each other

Have you checked all the power strips in your home or office to make sure they're not spying on you? Pwnie Express have an upcoming product called the Power Pwn that could sit unnoticed in a home or work environment and yet be spying on an entire network

"The Open Data Institute, a UK-based incubator and promoter of open-data businesses that was first conceived by Tim Berners-Lee and artificial intelligence pioneer Nigel Shadbolt, is today announcing its first international investment. The Omidyar Network, the investment firm co-founded by eBay's Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, is putting $750,000 towards the ODI. The money comes on top of the £10 million ($16 million) that the UK government, via the Technology Strategy Board, has already committed over the next five years for the project."

Android applications downloaded by as many as 185 million users can expose end users' online banking and social networking credentials, e-mail and instant-messaging contents because the programs use inadequate encryption protections, computer scientists have found. The researchers identified 41 applications in Google's Play Market that leaked sensitive data as it traveled between handsets running the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android and webservers for banks and other online services. By connecting the devices to a local area network that used a variety of well-known exploits, some of them available online, the scientists were able to defeat the secure sockets layer and transport layer security protocols implemented by the apps. Their research paper didn't identify the programs, except to say they have been downloaded from 39.5 million and 185 million times, based on Google statistics.

In our most recent Scientific Reports paper, we show how the visual pattern recognition ability of humans combined with the high processing speed of computers leads to a visual analytics method for discovering groups of nodes characterized by common network properties.

The aim of the Askemos project is to enable reliable and justiciable data processing, with the goal of producing "Software that can last 200 years." The first implementations of an Askemos peer can be obtained from ball.askemos.org. The Askemos web site itself is served from the Askemos/BALL development network. Follow here for more details. Note that Askemos concerns the abstract specification exclusively; including data formats, protocols, service interfaces etc. - not the actual implementations. Askemos combines incorruptible privilege delegation and non-repudiable replication of communicating processes into a trustworthy network. Physical machines under control of their operators execute applications processes under permanent multilateral audit. The network's honest majority of hosts provides users with exclusive control, and thus real ownership of processes. Askemos models a kind of "virtual constitutional state" where physical hosts bear witness to the interactions of virtual agents (akin to citizens). Self verifying identifiers can confirm that original documents have not beentampered with. The real potential for using Askemos is for identity and time stamp services, informationmanagement in public administration and libraries attaching metadata and archives, with the goal of establishing robust systems that can endure for centuries. German tax law, for instance, has storage requirements, which makes Askemos interesting even for private, individual use. Also Activist groups, non-profits and people who desire privacy and reliability in a chaotic and unpredictable world have much to gain from this software.

In On The Brink we discuss the past, present and future of connectivity with a mix of people including David Rowan, chief editor of Wired UK; Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr; and Eric Wahlforss, the co-founder of Soundcloud. Each of the interviewees discusses the emerging opportunities being enabled by technology as we enter the Networked Society. Concepts such as borderless opportunities and creativity, new open business models, and today's 'dumb society' are brought up and discussed.

The Tor Project is considering paying operators to host exit relays in efforts to increase the speed and security of its global anonymity network. Under early consideration is a suggestion by Tor founder Rodger Dingledine that operators receive $100 a month to cover bandwidth costs. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has already donated an undisclosed amount of funds over 12 months to provide for at least 125 fast exit relays which would provide extra capacity for Tor users.

When Jonathan Goldman arrived for work in June 2006 at LinkedIn, the business networking site, the place still felt like a start-up. The company had just under 8 million accounts, and the number was growing quickly as existing members invited their friends and colleagues to join. But users weren't seeking out connections with the people who were already on the site at the rate executives had expected. Something was apparently missing in the social experience. As one LinkedIn manager put it, "It was like arriving at a conference reception and realizing you don't know anyone. So you just stand in the corner sipping your drink-and you probably leave early."

"A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an "encoder" rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli. While the encoder rat performed the task, samples of its cortical activity were transmitted to matching cortical areas of a "decoder" rat using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). The decoder rat learned to make similar behavioral selections, guided solely by the information provided by the encoder rat's brain. These results demonstrated that a complex system was formed by coupling the animals' brains, suggesting that BTBIs can enable dyads or networks of animal's brains to exchange, process, and store information and, hence, serve as the basis for studies of novel types of social interaction and for biological computing devices."

The 2013 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings2013): These conferences will provide a high-profile, leading-edge forum for researchers, engineers and practitioners to present state-of-art advances and innovations in theoretical foundations, systems, infrastructure, tools, testbeds, and applications for the internet of things, cyber, physical and social computing, green communications and computing, as well as to identify emerging research topics and define the future.    This is a good chance which aims at exchanging research experience in such fields. It will bring together experts from the areas of computational intelligence, communications, networks, distributed systems, and computer science. 

It is rather odd how often I hear the expression paradigm shift during contemporary scientific presentations and seminars. The expression was popularized by Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In that book, Kuhn referred to ground-breaking and revolutionary changes in scientific thought as paradigm shifts, but the expression is so over-used today that even minor discoveries are sometimes marketed as paradigm shifts.

AN FRANCISCO -- The first Project Glass products -- Google's network-enabled, computerized glasses -- are set to ship to a select group of enthusiasts early next year, co-founder Sergey Brin said today. "This is not a consumer device," Brin told thousands in an enthusiastically cheering audience at the company's Google I/O show today here. "You have to want to be on the bleeding edge. That's what this is designed for." The glasses will be available only to Google I/O attendees who are in the United States. The geographic restriction is for regulatory reasons, Brin said. (Different countries have different requirements for radio-frequency emissions.)

(Brian- I was as part of the WBI alumni network informed of and asked to submit to the call for papers for this conference. Please review -I think your work would fit in here - let me know what you think- kdv)    Annually organized by Wuhan University of Technology (China), Yamaguchi University (Japan), the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo ( Brazil ) and the Brabant Center of Entrepreneurship (BCE),  the International Conference on Innovation and Management has proven to be a high-profile event for leading international scholars in the area of management and innovation. 

"Academia.edu, a social network for scholars, is unveiling a new feature today that its founder Richard Price hopes will help address part of the "credit gap" for research. Academia.edu allows users to upload and share their research papers, and the site is launching its Analytics Dashboard for Scientists today that Price says will let scholars see the "real-time impact" of their work. Academic publishing has long been a black-box in terms of both who's reading and who's citing. Publishing in journals may be expected (required, even), but the delays in the publishing process can make it challenging to ascertain how much influence work has. "It typically takes about 3 to 5 years for citations to actually appear back in the process," argues Price, pointing to the lengthy time between researching, writing, peer-reviewing, and publishing."

Last week, the Iranian government apparently started a new censorship program that blocks encrypted Internet traffic. Even Iranians who had taken steps to evade government firewalls were being stymied-and the immediate impact can be seen in usage of the Tor network.

Launched by two Stanford professors who left academia to create a new networked vision of education.