Tuesday, December 24, 2019

The Real World Reality in Middlemarch Essay - 691 Words

What makes Middlemarch such a realistic novel is the situations and the characters in the novel are applicable to everyday life. Although the novel is fictitious, many of the characters are not overly inflated into superfluous unrealistic personalities; rather, they are relatable descriptions of everyday people. The situations may sometimes be dramatic, but no more so than in real life. The settings and the surroundings in the town of Middlemarch are also appropriate with those of reality. The aspects of reality and realism throughout Middlemarch provide a much stronger connection and relationship with the reader. The impression given by the community in Middlemarch is similar to that of a small tight-knit community almost anywhere. In†¦show more content†¦The use of meanwhile throughout the novel is interesting because the events are not necessarily sequential; things are going on at the same time, or one character will mention someone else and the novel will pan over to what is happening with them. It is as though the reader is walking through Middlemarch themselves and peering in the windows of the residents. Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something momentous, something which entered actively into the struggle of his longings and terrors. (488). Here the reader is initially being told about Mr Bulstrode, but then Raffles name is slipped into the section and the reader is passed onto finding more out about what is going on with John Raffles. Other elements of reality in Middlemarch are the ways that wealth and poverty are depicted. There does not seem to be as extreme of divisions between the wealthy and the poor as in Wuthering Heights. There are a lot more working class individuals, even many of the wealthier people are still hard workers and land owners. In Emma, the wealthy do very little to earn their money except belong to the right family and inherit wealth through family association, whereas the elite of Middlemarch deserve and earn their money. In brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful man. (637). Upon Lydgates death his family was left with a large insurance payment. He was aShow MoreRelatedA Study Of Provincial Life By George Eliot2656 Words   |  11 PagesIntroduction Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, first published in eight installments during 1871. The novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during 1829–32, and it comprises several distinct stories and a large cast of characters. 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You may select a work from the list below or another novel or play of comparable literary merit. Alias Grace Middlemarch All the King’s Men Moby-Dick Candide Obasan Death of a Salesman Oedipus Rex Doctor Faustus Orlando Don Quixote A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man A GestureRead MoreAmerican Slang Essay 115481 Words   |  62 PagesThe 1920s left its mark with jazz and the rise of the machine, creating such terms as flapper - â€Å"a female dancer in a short skirt† and percolate - â€Å"to run smoothly†. The 1940s was the decade of the military with such coinages as pea-shooter, from World War II Army Air Force pilots to denote a fighter pilot or plane, and the word buddy (meaning â€Å"pal†), which, although created in the 1800s, was heavily used by American GIs1 and took on a particularly sentimental connotation. This term later evolved

Monday, December 16, 2019

Amst 301 Free Essays

AMERICAN STUDIES 301 MIDTERM Please include a title for the midterm, TA name, and staple Description of assignment: Compose an anthology of thirteen quotations drawn from the materials assigned for the first three sections of this course (Parts I, II and III). The anthology will consist of a preface, short commentaries on each quotation, and a conclusion. The anthology should be governed by a theme (or a set of two topics aligned to the concerns of the first four sections of the syllabus) that offer a way to unite together the diverse materials for this course. We will write a custom essay sample on Amst 301 or any similar topic only for you Order Now The best anthologies (those that will receive an A or A- grade) will be ones where the theme enables the student to inquire into the complexities of American culture and where both the structure and content of the midterm manifest democratic thinking (i. e. , examining an issue by looking at it from multiple points of view) and integrative thinking (i. e, finding similarities or making syntheses between separate, diverse voices). Texts for the assignment: Draw one quotation from each of the following texts or set of texts. Present the quotation and cite the text and page number of the quote (if the page number is available). Then provide your analysis of the quotation. Note: You should feel free and encouraged to arrange the quotes and commentaries in whatever order you find most appropriate and compelling. It’s best not to arrange the quotes in the order presented in the list of texts that follows. Compose an arrangement that allows you to create the most interesting and revealing conversation—or dialogue and debate–among the texts. . Carroll, ed. , Letters from a Nation 2. Katz, ed. , Why Freedom Matters 3. Smith, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 4. Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea, chapters 2, 10 or 11 5. O’Hearn, ed. , Half + Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural 6. Essays on Los Angeles by Christopher Isherwood, Sonora McKeller, Wanda Coleman, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Lynell George, or Bill Bradley. 7. Political oratory or writings by John Winthrop, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson or Frederick Douglass 8. Herman Melville, â€Å"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street† or Nathaniel Hawthorne, â€Å"A Gray Champion† 9. Black, Our Constitution: The Myth That Binds Us 10. Political oratory by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr. , Thurgood Marshall, Mario Cuomo, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, or Bernie Sanders. 11. Essays or Speeches by Tony Kushner, James Baldwin, Stanley Crouch or Cornell West 12. Poetry by Pat Mora, Gloria Anzaldua, Ariana Waynes, Beau Sia, Steve Connell, Langston Hughes, or lines from comedy skits and writings by Culture Clash 13. John Leland, Hip: The History, David Brooks, On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense, or any quotation of your own selection drawn from American music, film, literature, history, politics, including lines from movies or lyrics from a song. Analysis of the texts: Write a commentary on each quotation that is between 3-5 sentences in length. The commentary should be more than a paraphrase of the passage: it should seek to illuminate the significance of the passage and connect the passage to other passages through comparisons and contrasts. The commentary should develop the theme or governing idea of the anthology as a whole. It is vital in these commentaries to explicate the passage first and foremost from the point of view of its author rather than to offer your personal opinion of it. Consider the commentary an act of empathic listening and of comparative or contextual analysis. Seek to understand the passage in its own context rather than just declaring its personal significance to you. Comment on the language and specific details of the passage and make both comparisons and contrasts to other texts in the anthology. Preface : Write a 1-2 page Preface to this anthology in which you introduce and explain the orchestrating theme or themes of this anthology—-the topics, concerns, issues, arguments that govern selection of the quotations you use to compose this anthology. The Preface should be similar to a presenting a thesis to a 5-7 page critical essay in Writing 140 or 340. Conclusion: Conclude the anthology with a paragraph in which you briefly explain which text or reading assignment was most important for your education so far. Select the one text or assigned reading that you feel should definitely be included in the syllabus when I teach this course in a future semester. The task of this anthology (beyond revealing that you have studied the wide range of materials assigned so far for this course) is to find sources of unity in the diversity of the materials. Advice for the Midterm When commenting upon texts for the midterm and when choosing a theme or set of themes to orchestrate your midterm anthology, I recommend that you keep in mind the approaches of Anna Deavere Smith and Michael Kammen to American culture as described below. Smith believes that words can be â€Å"the doorway into the soul of a culture,† and in Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines (2000), she writes, â€Å"I set out across America, on a search for American character. My search was specifically to find America in its language. I interview people and communities about the events of our time, in the hope that I will be able to absorb America†¦. This is a country of many tongues, even if we stick to English. Placing myself in other people’s words, as in placing myself in other people’s shoes, has given me the opportunity to get below the surface—to get ‘real. † When you comment upon these texts, try to place yourself â€Å"in other people’s words† as if placing yourself â€Å"in their shoes. † Listen to what is said and what may be hidden between the lines, and comment upon both. Consider also what might be revealed about a text by comparing and contrasting its words with v oices from other texts or by juxtaposing its words against the words of a different text. Compose this anthology, in other words, by â€Å"downloading† and â€Å"mixing† and â€Å"sampling† voices to burn your own CD representing and reflecting upon the â€Å"American sound. And just as in Hendrix’s version of â€Å"The Star Spangled Banner,† your anthology can give us sounds and voices of dissonance as well as harmony. Smith also writes in Talk to Me: â€Å"My pursuit of American character is, basically, a pursuit of difference. Character lives in that which is unique. What is unique about America is the extent to which it does, from time to time, pull off being a merged culture. Finding American character is a process of looking at fragments, of looking at the unmerged. One has to do the footwork, one has to move from place to place, one has to stand outside. Your anthology will be composed of a set of 12 quotations, and each quotation can be c onsidered a fragment. When commenting upon each fragment or text, try to relate the fragment to other fragments. Seek out and explain places of merger or agreement among the fragments. But also be willing to see each fragment as unique, as a different take or look or perspective on your theme. The various quotations will come from different places, different times, and along with noting the specific time and place of each quotation, you should note on occasion how the quotations differ or disagree with each other. The anthology should, in effect, create a conversation and dialogue and debate—or a drama or a jazz performance–among the texts, playing one text off another. Consider each voice a solo or a monologue whose performance you analyze, but let your commentaries and the structure of the anthology as a whole be a jazz orchestra, or a play, or a congress of voices checking and balancing each other. A crucial part of the anthology will be your selection of a theme or themes that will enable you to unite together the different materials for the course. If you conceive of the anthology as part of an attempt to understand some aspect of the â€Å"American character,† you can follow the path of Michael Kammen who advises us to seek out paradoxes and contradictions within American culture. He notes that many have tried to provide a master key to unlock the mystery of the American character, proposing such single explanations as the Puritan sense of mission, the westward movement of the frontier, the desire for opportunity and open land, the effects of immigration, or the story of freedom. But any â€Å"quest for national character, culture, or style,† Kammen cautions, â€Å"plunges one into a tangle of complex historical considerations,† and he draws upon the writings of Erik Erikson to remind us, â€Å"It is commonplace to state that whatever one may come to consider a truly American trait can be shown to have its equally characteristic opposite. † There is no simple answer and no one right answer to the question: â€Å"What is the American character? You might say that America is a place of â€Å"mixed messages† and that it will take some â€Å"hard work† to understand the complexity of the struggle for democracy, freedom, justice, equality, and a more perfect union in America. Godfrey Hodgson in his book, More Equal Than Others: American from Nixon to the New Century (2004) gives us an wonderful update on Kammen’s attempt to see Americans as a â€Å"people of paradox. † Hodgson writes, â€Å"At the beginning of of the twenty-first century, the United States was a mature civilization marked by striking, well-rooted contradictions. It is (and the list of pairs by no means exhausts the difficulties facing anyone who attempts a simplistic analysis) generally pacific but occasionally bellicose; religious yet secular; innovative but conservative; tough but tender; aggressive yet reluctant to incur casualties; egalitarian by instinct but stratified in tiers of wide and growing inequality; puritan yet self-indulgent; conformist but full of independent-minded people; devoted to justice, but in many ways remarkably unfair; idealistic yet given to cynicism. (â€Å"Nice guys finish last† is almost a national motto. At some times it can be self-confident to the verge of complacency, at others self-doubting to the point of neurosis. † When choosing a theme for you anthology, I recommend that you search for a topic that allows you to study America by highlighting at least one or two of the contradictions or paradoxes within its â€Å"character. † You can draw upon the list of contradictions/paradoxes/ te nsions/conflicts as possible topics of themes for your anthology. Freedom vs. Tyranny Liberty vs. Slavery Equality vs. Hierarchy (or Supremacy) Democracy vs. Monarchy/Aristocracy or Imperialism/Empire Democracy vs. Racism/Sexism (or the Tyranny of the Majority) Tradition vs. Revolution/Innovation Purity (or virtue) vs. corruption Exclusion vs. Inclusion Culture clash—culture merger Memory (studying the past) vs. Forgetting (letting go, living in the present) Born to Run/Born to be Wild vs. Stability/Civilization/the Home The Founding Fathers Know Best vs. The Sins of the Fathers Democracy vs. Theocracy Church—State Religion—politics Letter of the law—spirit of the law (or a higher law) Unity—-diversity Melting pot—-mosaic Assimilation—roots Majority–Minority Insiders—outsiders (outcasts) More perfect union—individualism Self-interest vs. fraternity (brotherhood) Care for self vs. Care for others (caritas) Materialism—-spirituality Gold—God Success-failure Happiness—misery Blues–gospel Mobility-fixity Tradition—innovation Conformity—revolt Parents—children (generational conflict) Machismo—feminismo Country—city Civilization—savagery Hope—-fear Privilege—equality Reverence–irreverence Authority—-rebellion Provincialism—cosmopolitanism Country-city Myth vs. history Stories we want to hear vs. stories we need to hear Format: Title Preface 1. Anna Deavere Smith, Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines (2000): I set our across America, on a search for American character. My search was specifically to find America in its language. I interview people and communities about the events of our time, in the hope that I will be able to absorb America†¦. This is a country of many tongues, even if we stick to English. Placing myself in other people’s words, as in placing myself in other people’s shoes, has given me the opportunity to get below the surface—to get ‘real. ’ (p. 12) 3-5 sentences of commentary 2. Author, title quotation: xxxxxxxxxxx 3-5 sentences of commentary Conclusion How to cite Amst 301, Papers

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Critical Review of Australian Tax and Transfer System

Question: Describe about the Report for Critical Review of Australian Tax and Transfer System. Answer: A robust taxation system is considered to be the life blood of the government since it provides the vital revenue which the government requires to dispel its myriad responsibilities. The importance of taxation system in the recent past has increased by leaps and bounds as the responsibilities of the modern state continue to grow. Hence, unlike the past, the governments role is not limited to providing physical security but has to ensure that the citizens are able to enjoy a particular standard of life where certain basic requirements such as food, education, healthcare, shelter are taken care of. For the government to be able to discharge the above responsibilities, it is imperative that the tax system should be driven by four key principles namely equity, effectiveness, simplicity and efficiency (ACOSS, 2015). It is noteworthy that the role of taxation is not limited to being revenue raising measure for the national government but it actually much expansive. Through the taxation system, the government aims to fulfil a host of objectives which can be easily deciphered by conducting a through and critical review of the tax and transfer policy prevalent in Australia. Additionally, this would also serve another purpose i.e. to develop a better understanding of the tax implications and any overburden present in the tax and transfer system (Treasury, 2013). As a result, the various flaws in the current system would be identified and various measures would be suggested so as to ensure that the four principles are better complied with and the policy objectives are better realised. The core purpose of the taxation system is to act as a source of revenue to government for meeting its expenditures. However, tax revenue needs to be raised in a manner that does not penalise indulgence in activities leading to generation of income. This can be done by ensuring that any particular section must not carry a disproportional taxation burden. Therefore, it is required that the taxation laws must undergo a review on periodic basis so as to ensure that the concessions provided are appropriately targeted and not abused while the incidents involving tax evasion need to be minimised (CoA, 2015). However, while maintaining higher compliance from taxpayers, the central principles of a robust tax system must not be deviated from. Yet another objective of the tax system is to enhance the efficiency of allocation of scarce resources so as to generate maximum output. The resource allocation is altered through the application of differential tax rates with regards to consumption and production of specific goods and services. The effectiveness of differential tax at altering the underlying consumption patterns of customers has sufficient empirical evidence to indicate that products and services that have relatively lesser tax burden tend to be consumed in more quantities. Using taxation, it is possible for the government to promote goods associated with positive externality while discouraging usage of those goods which have negative externality associated with their consumption. This process if continued for a sufficient length of time tends to bring variation in the patterns of production and consumption which is skewed towards goods with lesser tax burden. This effectively leads to an increased allocative effici ency since the country produces goods beneficial for the society (Treasury, nd). Also, another objective of the taxation system is to cause income redistribution. The progressive direct taxation system is testimony to this as the rich have to pay tax at higher rates as compared to the poor. As a result, the income collected through tax from rich people is utilised for delivery of vital support services to the downtrodden and poor section which improves their standard of life. Hence, there is no denying the fact that income redistribution is achieved through taxation as the users of the various government schemes are the poor and vulnerable population who otherwise lack the purchasing power to avail the basic amenities (CoA, 2015). The Australian transfer system ensures that no section of the population is deprived from the usage of merit goods due to lack of purchasing power or any disability. Hence, assistance is provided to such people through cash payments which provide them opportunity to lead a normalised and prosperous life. It is estimated that almost 50% of the spending incurred through the transfer system is utilised for individuals who are either retired or disabled. Further, as the population becomes more aged in the near future, the importance of transfer system is poised to enhance which makes a valid case for enhancing their overall efficiency (CoA, 2008). Ever since the beginning of the last decade of 20th century, the tax revenues have surgse as indicated below. The main reason for this trend is the introduction of multitude of tax particularly the GST along with Capital Gains (1985) and rationalisation of tax system through the introduction of ITAA, 1997(ACTU, 2011). On one hand, the increase in revenue was positive news but this came at the cost of enhanced complexity in the tax regulation system. This was caused as the various taxes have their respective provisions with regards to concessions, threshold values. The effect was that that the taxpayers could not decipher the complex regulations which led to a rise in the overall compliance cost. The comparison of complexity Australian tax system in comparison with other prominent nations of both developed and developing world is presented below (ACTU, 2011). The rise in compliance costs causes due to rising complexity of the tax transfer system is highlighted below (CoA, 2015). The rising complexity in the tax system is evident from the above graph and the fact that there is a dip in the compliance costs at the turn of the decade implies that the government is also aware of the extent of the problem and hence taking active measures for simplification of tax system. However, these measures have continued to remain insufficient. Even now, huge sums of taxpayers money is being wasted for complying with tax regulations which instead needs to be used in a productive manner so as to fuel economic growth especially in the current times when the economic growth is lacklustre. Besides, the complexity of the system also provides incentives for specific behaviour on part of the taxpayers which results in inefficient allocation of resources. An apt illustration of the above is in the form of taxation policies towards affordable housing which have fallen short of the stated objectives. Instead these have proved to be counter-productive with a host of concessions and exemptions of payment of taxes and therefore instead of making it easier to buy a house, it has led to a frenzy which has led to the formation of a real estate bubble. This frenzy is led by the wealthy individuals and HNI (High Net Individuals) who tend to use residential property not only as an investment but as a mechanism to minimise their tax liability (ACOSS, 2015). In this regard, the IMF has advocated that the tax rebates must be used sparingly as they are in violation with the principles of equity and efficiency of a robust tax system. Despite this, Australia provides generous tax expenditure as depicted in the graph below which draws a comparison with other developed nations in this regard (Thornbill, 2015). It is apparent from the above discussion that the tax concessions extended to the housing sector is leading to distortions and hence urgent rationalisation is required. This would cause a change in the taxpayers behaviour and thereby ensure that the multiply policy objectives of the tax and transfer system are met. Further, housing tax expenditures leads to a double whammy for the government as on one hand, the revenues are being lost due to concessions while on the other hand, since these concessions are not reaching the poor and vulnerable, hence government needs to provide greater support as rent assistance which is expanding the fiscal deficit (ACOSS, 2015). It is apparent from the arguments listed above that tax and transfer system in place is inefficient and overburdened. As a result, a complete overhaul of the taxation system is required whereby emphasis is on four main taxes namely corporate tax, personal income tax, tax related to private consumption and also rent tax collected on usage of economic resources owned by the state. These four taxes have been selected as a major portion of the tax revenue is earned through these taxes only. Taxes besides the above ones should continue to exist only if a particular social/economic issue is being addressed such as the taxation on cigarettes. Other taxes which do not belong to the above shall be abolished as these lead to an enhancement in the complexity of the taxation system without significant incremental revenue (Treasury, 2013). For attracting more foreign investors, it is required that there must be an reduction in the corporate tax rate to 25% over a period of time. Besides, the imputation policy employed for dividends also needs to be modified so as be in sync with the global practices in this regard (BCA, 2014). To make up for the loss in tax through the decrease in corporate tax rate, rationalisation of tax expenditures is the need of the hour. Additionally, for increasing the female participation rate in labour, there needs to be a marked improvement in the child care services and emphasis should be on making these affordable. Besides, for enhancing the workforce diversity, vulnerable sections should be given support in the form of payments for supporting the income (CoA, 2008). Also, there is a strong case for rationalisation of personal income tax so that there is wider coverage and simple regulations. Further, an increase in the threshold income level to $ 25,000 is also recommended as for lower income, the compliance costs tend to be more substantial than the actual tax collected. Besides, it is imperative that no liabilities must be attached to the various transfer payments (example: allowances and pensions). Additionally, for individuals who belong to the labour force but fail to contribute fully must be given participation allowances. Also, differential threshold levels should be introduced for assistance payments extended to aged, students and the cared. This is because their needs are quite different which must be reflected in the assistance provided. Further, indexing of assistance payments for inflation must be done as currently this is not the case (CoA, 2015). The various allowances and pension payments shall be provided not on the basis of the asset test but on the analysis of comprehensive means which would ensure better targeting. Also, the family assistance program needs to be integrated into a unified program so that the quantum of assistance is driven by the total familys taxable income levels. Further, certain levies that the state enforces are highly inefficient and must pave way for low-rate destination cash flow tax. The revenue raised through this can be utilised by the local and state governments for public welfare. The GST that applies on financial services shall be replaced with a separate financial services tax which could result in gains if the modalities are prudently worked out based on consultations with stakeholders (CoA, 2008). The royalty system in place currently also needs to be discontinued and a 40% resource rent tax shall instead be levied so as to ensure that volatility of prices can be reflected in the governments revenue. Also, the employees superannuation contribution should be made tax free but the contribution from the employer in this regard needs to be brought within the tax net provided there is breach of a reasonable limit (Treasury, 2013). Based on the above discussion and the various arguments, it may be concluded that the current tax and transfer system seems overburdened and complex despite efforts by government in this regard. Also, the transfer system suffers from targeting errors due to which they are utilised by the relatively richer population and hence requires an overhaul based on the central tenets of sound taxation system. References ACTU 2011, Paying our Way: Personal income tax in Australia. Australia Tax Paper No.4 , pp. 4-37 BCA 2014, The future of tax, Business Council of Australia, Available online from www.bca.com.au/.../Future_of_Tax_Australias_Current_Tax_System_FI (Accessed on August 5, 2016)CoA 2008, Architecture of Australias tax and transfer system, Commonwealth of Australia, Available online from https://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/downloads/report/architecture_of_australias_tax_and_transfer_system_revised.pdf (Accessed on August 5, 2016)CoA 2015, Tax Discussion Paper, Commonwealth of Australia, Available online from https://bettertax.gov.au/files/2015/03/TWP_combined-online.pdf (Accessed on August 5, 2016)Treasury nd, 2.4 The objectives of taxation, Australian Government, Available online from https://comparativetaxation.treasury.gov.au/content/report/html/04_Chapter_2-03.asp (Accessed on August 5, 2016)Treasury 2013, 2.10 Administration of the taxà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Ëœtransfer system, Australian Government, Available online from https://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/Paper.aspx?doc=html/publications/papers/report/section_2-10.htm (Accessed on August 5, 2016) ACOSS 2015. Fuel on the Fire, Australian Council of Social Service, Available online from https://www.acoss.org.au/images/uploads/Fuel_on_the_fire.pdf (Accessed on August 5, 2016) Smith, L. 2015. Superannuation tax concessions poorly targeted: ACOSS, SolePurposeTest Blog, Available online from https://www.solepurposetest.com/news/superannuation-tax-concessions-poorly-targeted/ (Accessed on August 5, 2016) Smith, G. 2013. Australian tax reform: Post-Henry, CEDA Council on Economic Policy, Available online from https://adminpanel.ceda.com.au/FOLDERS/Service/Files/Documents/15436~gregsmith_ccep032013_web2.pdf (Accessed on August 5, 2016) Thornbill, A. 2015. Our tax systems not so progressive ACOSS, Private Briefing Website, Available online from https://privatebriefing.com.au/2015/01/24/our-tax-systems-not-so-progressive-acoss/ (Accessed on August 5, 2016)

Saturday, November 30, 2019

The Impact of the Pilkington Report on the British Television in the 1960s

The period of the 1960s can be discussed as the decade of significant changes in the history of the British Television because of the intensive growth and development of television for the society and principles of broadcasting.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Impact of the Pilkington Report on the British Television in the 1960s specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Many changes in the nature of the British Television and in used technologies which were observed and developed during the 1960s are associated with the effects of the Pilkington Report on the government’s vision of the role of broadcasting in the British society. The Pilkington Report was published and presented in 1962 as a result of the Pilkington Committee’s work. The committee was organised in 1960 in order to explore the situation related to the development of the British Television regarding the impact of broadcasting on the socie ty and the television’s possibility to respond to the public’s interests. The chapters of the Pilkington Report presented the range of improvements proposed by the committee to be realised in relation to the most significant aspects of the British Television’s development. In spite of the fact that the main ideas presented in the Pilkington Report were actively criticised by the broadcasters, government, sponsors, and by the public, the effect of the report on the further growth and development of the British Television in the 1960s was significant and rather positive because the necessity of the third television channel was stated and the BBC2, which was launched later in 1964, responded to the new needs of the television audience; because the focus on the development of colour television on 625 lines was stated; because the attempts to reform the independent television were realised and led to the improvement of the television quality; and because the more obv ious focus on the television quality was proclaimed in contrast to the spread of ‘triviality’ on television. The Origin and Main Points of the Pilkington Report The Pilkington Committee is the Committee of Inquiry which was organised in 1960 in order to explore the situation associated with the development of the British Television, to provide the ideas on the future of broadcasting, to advise on the definite television services, and to present important recommendations on improving the quality of television. The committee was headed by Sir Harry Pilkington (Milland 2004, p. 76). Thus, the Pilkington Report included the thoughts on the future of the British Television in relation to the allocation of the third channel, the development and re-organisation of the Independent Television (ITV), and the rejection of the general principles of the commercial television.Advertising Looking for essay on communications media? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first pap er with 15% OFF Learn More Moreover, the Pilkington Report presented the detailed discussion of broadcasting as the important factor for the development of the British society. This factor influenced the development of the British Television significantly because the concepts of the broadcasters’ social and moral responsibility were re-thought. Therefore, the authors of the report state that â€Å"by its nature, broadcasting must be in a constant and sensitive relationship with the moral condition of society. Broadcasters are, and must be, involved; this gives them a responsibility they cannot evade† (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 15). From this point, the purpose of broadcasting which is reflected in the stated principles is in influencing the morality of the British society. Thus, according to Milland, â€Å"Pilkington produced the most cogent, best-argued and best-written statement of the principles† (Milland 2004, p. 77). In this case, the report can be discussed as good in promoting the idea and purpose of broadcasting from the point of the television’s role for the society. The authors of the report also rejected the idea that the future of the British Television was in the development of the commercial principles related to broadcasting because the orientation of the ITV on advertising was actively criticised. As a result, the authors of the report proposed several new approaches to using the advertisements in broadcasting in order to support the idea of the social and moral responsibility, to discuss the audience as citizens, to reject the idea of the audience as consumers, and to provide the new principles of the commercially competitive television. Despite the fact that the ideas on the re-organisation of the ITV were presented in the Pilkington Report, the ideas were not supported with the help of the associated legislation. The authors of the report paid much attention to the issue of expandin g the powers of the Independent Television Authority and connected the discussion of the controversial question with resolving the problem of the commercial television (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962).Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Impact of the Pilkington Report on the British Television in the 1960s specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More It is important to note that the views of the report’s authors were not correlated with the observed social tendencies, and the committee’s proposals related to the principles of advertising on television were not supported with the necessary legislation. That is why, the most important effects on the development of the British Television were observed in relation to the recommendations which were reflected in acts and policies. From this point, Television Acts of 1963 and 1964 supported the proposals developed in the report legally, and BBC2 was la unched at the basis of the new 625-line UHF band (Milland 2004, p. 79). It is also important to focus on the fact that the authors of the report demonstrated the opposite opinions on the role of the BBC and ITV for the society’s progress and for the future of broadcasting in Britain. Therefore, the report provides the critique of many aspects associated with the ITV’s content, idea, principles of organisation. Thus, the content is discussed as poor in spite of its popularity because of the low quality of programmes and promotion of ‘triviality’ and violence. According to the report, the ITV pays much attention to the foreign programmes which can erode the British culture and traditions, and the focus on commercial principles and advertising contributes to the progress of the vulgar materialist culture in the British society (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962). Moreover, the idea of the commercial television can be discussed as not realised compl etely and adequately with references to the ITV resources. In addition, the authors of the report conclude that the role of the ITV as the broadcasting organisation â€Å"seemed to lack that positive and active quality which is essential to good broadcasting. We reject, too, its [ITV] view that television will be shaped by society† (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 67). In spite of the fact that the ITV’s performance was discussed by the authors of the Pilkington report as rather trivial and poor, only few changes were supported by the government to improve the quality of the independent television according to the high aesthetic standards which were actively promoted in the Pilkington Report (Milland 2004, p. 76).Advertising Looking for essay on communications media? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More However, these results should also be mentioned as the important positive effects of the report which are related to the quality of the British Television. On the contrary, the authors of the report demonstrated the significant support regarding the purpose and idea of the BBC, and proposed the development of the third channel which could be discussed as the improved version of the BBC. Thus, the authors of the report stated that they â€Å"found in the BBC an all-round professionalism† Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 48). Moreover, it is noticed in the report that the BBC â€Å"know good broadcasting †¦ they are providing it† (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 48). According to the Pilkington Committee, the notion of ‘good broadcasting’ is closely associated with presenting the high-quality serious programmes which reflect the reality of the British society because, following the principles presented in the report, the broadcasters â€Å"must not only reflect society; they must pick out and focus attention on that which is significant† (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 285). The BBC is discussed as the channel which completes this task effectively. Furthermore, at the same time, the broadcasters â€Å"must care about public tastes and attitudes in all their variety in all kinds of programmes†, and this idea can be discussed as â€Å"the nature of the broadcasters’ responsibility† (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 285). That is why, the BBC’s â€Å"awareness of the nature, the magnitude and the complexity of the task of catering for the needs of the public† respond to the basic principles promoted by the committee in relation to the nature of broadcasting (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 48). From this point, the programmes of the BBC as the channel with the excellent reputation responded to the mentioned pr inciples, and the programmes were described as sound and objective, made with references to the good taste. The Allocation of the BBC2 and the Development of the High-Speed Colour Television as the Significant Effect of the Pilkington Report The allocation of the third channel (BBC2) in 1964 accentuated the active shift in the sphere of broadcasting to the new standards and ideas of the high-quality television which were proclaimed in the Pilkington Report. It is important to pay attention to the fact that the Pilkington Committee achieved the significant results while attempting to propose the new standards for the commercial television when the government agreed to finance the BBC2 by the licence fee instead of referring to the advertising revenues (Milland 2004, p. 76). Thus, the BBC2 was launched in 1964 as a result of the government’s new policies related to broadcasting and as the response to the recommendations provided in the Pilkington Report. Many positive commentar ies on the nature of the BBC and the quality of the proposed programmes were provided in the report. From this perspective, the BBC2 was launched to double the success of the BBC and to present more high-quality programmes oriented to the public’s interests, but contributing to the development of the educated society. Moreover, the decision to launch the BBC2 was important for the broadcasters because the new approach to television was also proposed. Thus, the BBC2 proposed programmes and shows which could be considered not only as alternative to the programmes broadcasted on the BBC but also as experimental in their nature to meet the needs and interests of the audience. Furthermore, according to Caughie, â€Å"the peculiar conjuncture in public service broadcasting produced by the Pilkington Report and the expansion of BBC2 opened a space in television drama in which social responsibility was particularly available for political appropriation and challenging reinterpretati on† (Caughie 2000, p. 104). On the contrary, many television series proposed by the ITV were criticised by the authors of the report because of their ‘triviality’, violent character, and focus on naturalism. With launching the BBC2, broadcasters and directors proposed the new vision of the television show and focused on television drama. These new programmes and dramas were developed according to the principles of social responsibility mentioned in the report, and these programmes and shows were positively accepted by both the political leaders and by the public (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962). The opportunity for the ‘challenging reinterpretation’ of the programmes and dramas’ content also contributed to the reputation of the BBC2 as the alternative channel to meet the tendencies of the changing society. In addition, the BBC2 became the first channel which used the technology of 625 lines and the specific ultra high frequency ba nds. The focus on the use of 625 lines can be discussed as the most remarkable technological improvement related to broadcasting in the 1960s. It was proposed in the report to refer to the colour television depending on 625 lines and with references to the specific ultra high frequency (UHF) bands. This proposal was supported by the broadcasters and government, and the necessary preparation for using the new technologies was started in 1962 (Milland 2004, p. 80-81; Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962). As a result, the quality of broadcasting was increased significantly, and the audience could see the positive result with references to the BBC2 launched in 1964. The Focus on the Quality of Television Programmes and the Avoidance of ‘Triviality’ as the Effects of the Pilkington Report It is stated in the Pilkington Report that the trivial approach to broadcasting is the main problem associated with the quality of the programmes which can influence the society an d its morality. The authors of the report state that the trivial approach can be reflected â€Å"in a failure to respect the potentialities of the subject matter, no matter what it be, or in a too ready reliance on well-tried themes, or in a habit of conforming to established patterns† (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 34). As a result, many programmes broadcasted by the ITV were discussed as trivial in their nature because the broadcasters were oriented to the public’s interests without paying attention to the issues of morality and without following their professional code (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 66). From this perspective, the important effects of the Pilkington Report are the positive changes in the quality of the broadcasted programmes because the broadcasters chose to concentrate on proposing the high-quality programmes and shows where violence and naturalism were replaced with the focus on realism. Thus, the idea of the necessity of high-quality programmes is clearly reflected in criticism of the ITV content presented in the report. It was also stated in the Pilkington Report that the quality of television was closely associated with the quality of drama, programmes, and series broadcasted (Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1962, p. 65). As a result, the demand for the new drama was accentuated. Much attention was paid to the progress from naturalism, which was often associated with ‘triviality’ and as it was discussed by the television critics, to realism. Thus, Caughie states that in the 1960s and after, â€Å"in writing about television drama at every level, naturalism appears simply as bad realism, associated with sordidness, boredom, the kitchen sink† (Caughie 2000, p. 96). That is why, the focuses on the new realistic programmes and shows are necessary in order to promote the high-quality television and respond to the interests of the public. The genre of the realist ic drama documentary developed, and BBC as a ‘serious’ channel and BBC2 as the alternative channel broadcasted the most powerful dramas among which it is necessary to concentrate on Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966). According to Caughie, in Cathy Come Home, the principles of the documentary drama are reflected even more vividly than in Up the Junction. There is the â€Å"journalistic sense of message, a message given an urgency which seems to require a stronger central narrative and a greater authority for the documentary evidence†, and moreover, the documentary voices â€Å"are no longer at odds with the image, as they are in the quite radical juxtaposition of the love scene in the derelict building in Up the Junction† (Caughie 2000, p. 119). Thus, Caughie discusses the fact of the focus on realism typical for the programmes and drama documentaries of the 1960s as important to speak about the positive effects of the shift on the developme nt of the television content’s quality. From this perspective, the Pilkington Report was rather effective to affect the quality of the contents proposed by the broadcasters. Conclusion In spite of the fact that the Pilkington Report published in 1962 was actively criticised by the broadcasters, government, sponsors, and the public, the role of the report in the development of the British Television in the 1960s is significant. The examples of the main positive effects of the Pilkington Report on the progress of the British Television are the allocation of the third channel, the shift to the new colour television on 625 lines, and the improvement of the content quality. Although such proposals as the re-organisation of the ITV and the reformation of the principles related to the commercial television were not supported by the government and reflected in the associated legislation, the Pilkington Report drew the government and public’s attention to the issues. Although t he Pilkington Report is often discussed as ineffective to propose the successful improvements because of the focus on radical discussions ands conclusions, the role of the report is significant because some of its recommendations contributed to discussing the period of the 1960s as the era of the British Television’s progress. The focus on the new technologies such as the 625 lines and UHF bands is closely associated with the report’s recommendations; the increased choice of programmes is the direct result of launching the third channel; and the concentration on the social responsibility of the broadcasters is also the direct effect of presenting the Pilkington Report in 1962. Reference List Caughie, J 2000, ‘The rush of the real’, in J Caughie (ed.), Television drama: Realism, modernism and British culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 88-124. Milland, J 2004, ‘Courting Malvolio: The background to the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, 19 60-62’, Contemporary British History, vol. 18. no. 2, pp. 76-102. Report of the Committee on Broadcasting, 1960 1962, HMS Office, London. This essay on The Impact of the Pilkington Report on the British Television in the 1960s was written and submitted by user Ezra Burch to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

2012 Hurricane Names

2012 Hurricane Names 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 Below you will find the listing of hurricane names for the Atlantic Ocean for the year 2012. For every year, there is a pre-approved list of tropical storm and hurricane names. These lists have been generated by the National Hurricane Center since 1953. At first, the lists consisted of only female names; however, since 1979, the lists alternate between male and female. Hurricanes are named alphabetically from the list in chronological order. Thus the first tropical storm or hurricane of the year has a name that begins with A and the second is given the name that begins with B. The lists contain hurricane names that begin from A to W, but exclude names that begin with a Q or U. There are six lists that continue to rotate. The lists only change when there is a hurricane that is so devastating, the name is retired and another hurricane name replaces it. As there were no significant hurricanes in 2006, the 2012 hurricane name list is the same as the 2006 hurricane name list. 2012 Hurricane Names AlbertoBerylChrisDebbyErnestoFlorenceGordonHeleneIsaacJoyceKirkLeslieMichaelNadineOscarPattyRafaelSandyTonyValerieWilliam Join Me on Facebook | Follow Me on Twitter mrgeog

Friday, November 22, 2019

10 Ways to Turn Writing a Paper into a Drinking Game

10 Ways to Turn Writing a Paper into a Drinking Game College students have long suspected that universities and individual professors must buy stock in paper companies. For some, its the only explanation as to why college seems to be just one paper assignment after another. Conspiracy theories aside, writing papers can be tough. But when the grind wears you down, injecting a bit of fun can help get you over the hump. When it comes to paper writing, its time to turn to the same tactics employed by such literary luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Tennessee Williams and Hunter S. Thompson: Booze. However, college students cant just kick back with a snifter of brandy and mull over their literary choices. Thats way too pedestrian. Of course, the answer is to turn it into a drinking game. After all, its practically a college tradition. Before you begin, be sure to save a copy of your paper in a completely separate file, preferably on a flash drive. Better safe than sorry. Inspiration may strike during your game, but its always good to have a back up. You dont want to have to reconstruct full pages that fell apart because you got off on a tangent about the therapeutic properties of cat videos. Once you have a backup file saved, pick your poison. You can pick a selection of brews and assign each rule a specific brand or type or you can just pick one and stick with it the whole way through. Chances are it wont matter what you drink – the end result will be the same. For extra fun later, turn on Track Changes in your Formatting menu so you can follow along the next morning and see how your editorial decisions changed as the night wore on. Rules of The Paper Writing Drinking Game Every time you run into a 404 tracking down a source, take a drink. If you were tracking it down from Wikipedia, take two drinks. Each time you write yourself into a corner, take a drink. Every time you catch yourself writing in circles, take two. Take a drink for each syllable in any words you have to pronounce out loud in order to spell correctly as you type. If a page has more footnotes than actual text, take two drinks and toast Flann OBrien. Each time you stretch out a single paragraph idea into two or more, take a drink and pat yourself on the back. Take a drink and give yourself a slap for every time you catch yourself on Candy Crush Saga, Farmville or any other pointless FaceBook game. Have another drink each time to catch yourself randomly scrolling down a page and realize you completely forgot what you were looking for. Any time you find yourself in need of a friend with a subscription to JSTOR or LexisNexis, take a drink and hit up any journalism majors who happen to be online. Take another drink every time you catch yourself calculating how many words per minute youll have to write in order to get the paper done tonight. Every time you ask yourself how much bigger you can make the font or contemplating formatting changes to make your paper appear longer, take two drinks. Bonus Shots Any time you re-write a sentence more than 12 times For every set of Block Quotes you use to bulk out a few pages. Every time you say out loud Okay, down to work now. Each time you search around for single words you can stretch into more (i.e. changing it to the field of robotic psychiatry) Every FaceBook status update or Tweet about the progress youve made on your paper. Chances are youll end up with a screen filled with plenty of red squiggly lines and a few good ideas. If you managed to actually finish the paper – or this version of it anyway – during the game, that earns you a bonus round of whatever quality alcohol you have stashed away. Dont forget to save the fruit of your labor before drinking some water and passing out face first on the keyboard. But the fun isnt over yet! In the morning youll be eligible to play the super fun Bonus Morning After Game! Brew a pot of coffee, wipe off the keyboard and open the file from the night before. Re-read what you wrote and edited the night before. Every time something makes you laugh out loud, take a sip of coffee. Take two every time you read something that makes you wince. Finally, take a big gulp for any sections so inspired you leave them nearly intact in the final version of the paper. Heres also a guide on How to Cure Hangover for those who drank too much yesterday. Did you ever write drunk? Tell us your own story in comments!

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Moore's Law Annotated Bibliography Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Moore's Law - Annotated Bibliography Example The author here is Crothers Brooke. The article has been written for the general public to explain them how the increasing cost of materials has forced the information technology (IT) industry to adapt alternative plans to manufacture similar products. The article directed its focus mainly on the statement given by the higher authorities of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency which seemed to be biased. The information sited in the article is current. Yes the site link is appropriate and is also considered to be one of the media site around the globe. The writers here are Ron and Drost. The audience of the book can be considered to be the general public. The book cannot be considered as a biased piece of work, as the information on the book is considered to be a current comparison of the law with the modern fundamental physics. The publisher of the book is considered to be a well-known publisher around the globe. 4. Myslewski, Rik. Intel reveals 14nm PC, declares Moores Law alive and well. The A Register. Web. 22 Sep. 2013. . The author of the article is Rik Myslewski. The targeted primary audience of the article are IT industry and the secondary audiences are considered to be the civilians. The article mainly states argument given by Intel defending that the law has not been out dated. The company i.e. Intel has also introduce 14-nanometer PC which proves that the law is yet acceptable. The information provided in the article is current and also provides a comparison of the law with different statement given by various critics. The site link is valid. The author here is Sami Franssila. The book has been written for academia and people relating to the IT sectors. The book is not biased, as it mainly focus on explaining the different aspects that Moore has considered while constructing the law. The book

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

The Expansion of Human Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Expansion of Human - Essay Example Applying this assumption on the case study, it can be well noted that policy making in the case presented by Thomas Foerster has been a good yet effective adherence example of rational model. The policies including the provision of labor to the people without going door to door shows the county to be a stable society where change can be brought easily because people have great interest in the public policies. Thus, it can be said that the case study does not go against the rational model and justices it as a realistic model to be following in case of formation of public policy (Lewis, 2007). Political Model of Decision Making: It is without doubt, evident that the political representatives are able to introduce and implement a public policy because this is more of a challenge for them to show people that they can perform very well on a public platform. Also, this is directly linked to development of society as well economics. It should be noted that the adherence of the case study to the politics model of policy making is limited and does not evoke a clear defense. Thomas Foerster has acclaimed a number of claims regarding policy making but he does not stands out as a political representative who was able to undergo policy making process without any complications. Thus, it can be associated that the author is against the political model to serve when it comes to decision making for formation of policy making (Lewis, 2007). Process Policy Making: Process policy model undergo a number of steps for policymaking which includes identification of the problem and then demanding the government to take action. Furthermore, formulation of a policy needs proposals and few deals that policy representatives can make. Also to note is the fact that the implementation of a policy is as important as its demand creation in front of the government. Noting these points in the case study, it can be said that the author gives enhancement to undergo a policy in a similar manner. The claims against the model are only visible when the implementation of the chosen policy is not possible since there was incomplete or negligible support from the government as posed in the case of Thomas Foerster. Thus, both defensive yet claims in against the model are present in the case study as stated above. Cobb and Elder Model of Public Policy: It should be noted that the case study under review follows and includes the main aspect of policy making which was raised as a concern by Cobb and Elder. It should be noted that according to Cobb and Elder, there are many issues in a society that can be solved by creating public interest and personal interest as an element to bring change or policy to provide intervention (Stewart, Hedge, & Lester, 2007). This is also the second most imperatives step in the model. Assessing the case study, it becomes fairly evident that firstly, the policy representatives need to identify the issue and then further expand it. This can only be done by co nsidering the issue as personal issues. This is evident in the case study through the context of Thomas Foerster as he was thinking the

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Social Stratification Case Essay Example for Free

Social Stratification Case Essay * Refers to the ranking individuals and groups in any given society * Tends to be transmitted from one generation to another * Is the hierarchical arrangement and establishment of social categories that may evolve into social groups as well as of statuses and their corresponding roles * May be viewed as a social structure, as a social process, or as a social problem Basic Concepts of Inequality 1. Attributions – attributions play a very vital role in social stratification. It assigns to people different attributes as a result of differences 2. Stereotype – one assumes that persons who fall into a particular category on the basis of certain characteristics also have many characteristics that we assume to belong to that category 3. Self-fulfilling prophecies – once we categorize people through assigning a stereotype, our perception of their behavior if filtered through that stereotype 4. Self comparison – social scientist find that people need to compare themselves with others in order to establish for themselves what kind of people they are. 5. A fair world – related to the key of comparison in social life are beliefs about justice or the fair distribution of rewards. 6. Just world hypothesis – according to this, people like to believe that there is justice, that people get what they deserve. Social Stratification System * Differentiation refers to how things or people can be distinguished from one another. * Stratification refers to the ranking of things or people or objects. Dimensions of Stratification 1. Wealth and income – the income of any family depends on what its members earn and what they own. 2. Inequalities of power – sociologists define power as the ability to control one’s life (personal power) and to control or influence the actions of others (social power). 3. Inequalities of prestige – prestige of individuals and groups may be defined as the social recognition that a person or group receives from others. The Theories of Social Stratification * The conflict theory maintains that the result of the struggle among people for scarce rewards and that it persists in society because the â€Å"haves† are determined and equipped to preserve their advantage by dominating and exploiting the â€Å"have nots.† * Conflict theorists consider stratification unjust and unnecessary. Karl Marx – believe that all history has been the story of class conflict over material privilege and power. 4 ways of distributing wealth 1. To each according to need – the basic needs of all the people are satisfied. 2. To each according to want – wealth is distributed according to what people desire and respect. 3. To each according to what is earned – people who live according to this system become themselves the source of their own wealth. 4. To each according to what can be taken – by using whatever means. * The functionalist theory – Kingsley Davis elaborated the idea that stratification serves an important function in society. He was joined by Wilbert Moore. Comparison of the two theories: The Functionalist View The Conflict View * Stratification is universal, necessary, and inevitable * Stratification facilitates the optimal functioning of society and the individual * Stratification is an expression of commonly shared values * Task and reward are equitably allocated * Stratification system generally change through evolutionary processes| * Stratification may be universal without being necessary and inevitable * Stratification impedes the optimal functioning of society and the individual * Stratification is an expression of the values of powerful groups * Tasks and rewards are inequitably allocated * Stratification system often change through revolutionary processes Open and Closed System * Open system – this is also known as a class system. It has a few impediments to social mobility. There is a difference between equality of opportunity and equality of results. * Closed system – this is also known as caste system. In the caste system, ascribed characteristics determine social position, and individuals’ opportunities are limited accordingly. * Estate system – it is a closed system stratification in which a person’s social position is based on ownership of land, birth, military strength. Not included. (pampam lang) Methods of Determining Class Division 1. The subjective method – researchers using this method simply ask a random sample population to name the class they belong to. 2. The reputational method – the researchers select a small town and ask a number of residents to assist them in their study. 3. The objective method – the researchers divide people into social classes according to their income, occupation, education, and type of residence.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

The World at the Time of Sir Isaac Newton Essay -- History, Protestant

When most people hear the name Isaac Newton, they think of various laws of physics and the story of the apple falling from the tree; in addition, some may even think of him as the inventor of calculus. However, there was much more to Newton’s life which was in part molded by the happenings around the world. The seventeenth century was a time of great upheaval and change around the world. The tumultuousness of this era was due mostly to political and religious unrest which in effect had a great impact on the mathematics and science discoveries from the time Newton was born in 1646 until the early 1700’s. Newton’s birth in 1646 came at the tail-end of the 30-years war which was fought in Central Europe. The war began in 1618 in Bohemia over religious differences between Protestants and Catholics; however as time passed, the war became more political and soon most countries in Europe were involved (Ellis & Esler, 1999). The war ended in 1648 by a series of treaties knows as the Pease of Westphalia with France coming out victorious gaining land from both Spain and Germany (Ellis & Esler, 1999). The tension felt between the Protestants and Catholics was mirrored in England where there was a civil war beginning in 1640 and continuing until 1659. Early in the civil war Oliver Cromwell was chosen as leader of Parliament with his staunch Puritan beliefs; he soon became a leader of the Protestant side of the war. During this time, many considered England to be almost in anarchy with groups such as the Ranters, Levellers, and Diggers battling over various religious and political beliefs (Merriman, 1996). In 1649 Charles I, who had been King of England prior to the civil war, was beheaded and England became a Commonwealth and ... ... the true founder of calculus; however, much of the notation used today is courtesy of Leibniz because, according to many mathematicians, his notation is far superior to Newton’s (O'Connor & Robertson, Calculus History, 1996). So, how did the events around the world during the seventeenth century help Newton develop calculus? In England and much of Europe science became a part of public life of the seventeenth century (Merriman, 1996). Charles II created the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge in 1662 where many scientists studied and discussed their theories (Merriman, 1996). The Reformer’s victory in the English civil war gave Newton and other scientists their voice and the courage to study and find many of the scientific discoveries, as this was not the case with Galileo and many other scientists in Catholic countries (Merriman, 1996).

Monday, November 11, 2019

Hybrid Network Security

ACCEPTED FROM OPEN CALL SECURITY ISSUES IN HYBRID NETWORKS WITH A SATELLITE COMPONENT AYAN ROY-CHOWDHURY, JOHN S. BARAS, MICHAEL HADJITHEODOSIOU, AND SPYRO PAPADEMETRIOU, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND AT COLLEGE PARK ABSTRACT Satellites are expected to play an increasingly important role in providing broadband Internet services over long distances in an efficient manner. Most future networks will be hybrid in nature — having terrestrial nodes interconnected by satellite links. Security is an imporSSSL tant concern in such networks, since the session 2 Proxy satellite segment is susceptible to a host of attacks, including eavesdropping, session hijacking and data corruption. In this article we address the issue of securing communication in satellite networks. We discuss various security attacks that are possible in hybrid SSSL session 1 SSSL handshaking and satellite translation at client proxy (RPA) networks, and survey the different solutions proposed to secure data communications in these networks. We look at the perforMost future networks mance problems arising in hybrid networks due to security additions like Internet Security Prowill be hybrid in tocol (IPSec) or Secure Socket Layer (SSL), and suggest solutions to performance-related nature — having problems. We also point out important drawbacks in the proposed solutions, and suggest a terrestrial nodes hierarchical key-management approach for interconnected by adding data security to group communication in hybrid networks. satellite links. Security is an important concern in such networks, since the satellite segment is susceptible to a host of attacks, including eavesdropping, session hijacking and data corruption. INTRODUCTION With the rapid growth of the Internet, satellite networks are increasingly being used to deliver Internet services to large numbers of geographically dispersed users. The primary advantage of satellite networks is their wide broadcast reach — a satellite can reach users in remote areas where terrestrial connectivity is not available. Satellite networks are also easily and quickly deployed, and can be a more cost-effective solution in areas where laying ground fiber networks would be too expensive. Although satellite networks offer great potential, they also present significant challenges that need to be addressed. Security is becoming an increasingly important aspect of all network. In this article we focus on the challenges that need to be addressed in order to make satellite networks more secure while maintaining seamless interoperability with terrestrial networks. These security-related challenges include the following considerations: †¢ Satellite channels are wireless broadcast media, which makes it possible for an unauthorized user to receive the signal and eavesdrop on the communication, if it is not encrypted. †¢ Without proper security mechanisms, any sufficiently well-equipped adversary can send spurious commands to the satellite and jam or disrupt the communication. †¢ Satellite channels can occasionally have high bursty errors (for example, during heavy rain) that result in packet loss. Satellite networks also suffer from long propagation delays (for example, 0. 5 seconds for geostationary satellites). Therefore, security systems should add minimal delays to the communication and have mechanisms to recover from loss in security information. Incorporating security solutions originally designed for terrestrial networks, such as Internet Security Protocol (IPSec) or Secure Socket Layer (SSL), into satellite networks can cause severe performance penalties. In this article we consider some of these issues. We focus on data security for IP-based commercial networks, and discuss the performance problems that arise due to the encryption of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) header and payload when popular unicast security protocols like IPSec or SSL, originally designed for terrestrial connections, are applied to satellite networks without incorporating changes necessitated by the unique characteristics of satellite networks. We also look at the protocols proposed for secure group communication in hybrid satellite networks, and describe a hierarchical approach to group key management that is robust, scalable, and suitable for the characteristic topology of hybrid networks. The rest of the article is organized as follows. We describe the hybrid satellite-network topology and features that make it different from terrestrial networks. We discuss security needs for the hybrid network. We discuss the current approach to provide end-to-end unicast security in hybrid networks, and describe the performance problems arising as a result. We survey 50 1536-1284/05/$20. 00  © 2005 IEEE IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 NOC Internet Gateway Proxy Client Proxy NOC (a) Internet Web server Web server (b) n Figure 1. Commercial direct-to-home network topology: a) case 1; b) case 2. the proposals for key management for secure group communication in satellite networks. We describe a possible solution to secure unicast communication without sacrificing performance and highlight our key-management approach to security for group communication in satellite networks. We conclude the article by pointing to future research directions. highly susceptible to the delay-bandwidth product and exhibits very poor performance in satellite channels. Satellite TCP connections need large transmit windows to fully utilize the available bandwidth. However, due to the TCP slowstart algorithm and large propagation delay in the satellite channel, it takes much longer for satellite TCP connections to reach the target window size, in comparison to terrestrial TCP connections. Also, the window is very vulnerable to congestion due to the multiplicative decrease strategy of TCP. The problem is compounded by the fact that TCP misinterprets link-layer corruption (which is the prevalent source of loss in satellite links) as congestion (which is rare) and consequently reduces the window. The PEP provides an efficient solution to the above problem. In satellite networks, a PEP agent is installed at the satellite gateway between the satellite network and the Internet. The PEP agent inspects every TCP packet that flows through the network. For data packets, the PEP sends back premature acknowledgments to the TCP senders, without waiting for the TCP segments to be actually delivered to the receivers. These premature acknowledgments are specially formatted to be indistinguishable from real acknowledgments and they considerably shorten the perceived round-trip delay. Studies have shown that this technique is critical for the performance improvement of satellite networks [2–4]. Hence, TCP PEPs have been widely deployed in satellite networks today. Commercial networks also employ HTTP proxy servers to improve the speed of responses to Web-browser requests. When a user browses through content on the Internet, the application layer protocol in use is HTTP. A typical HTTP exchange involves a request by the browser for a Web page (â€Å"GET†), and a response from the Web server, which contains the hypertext markup language (HTML) text of the requested Web page. A typical HTML page would also contain multiple embedded â€Å"objects† such as images, embedded media or scripts, and so forth. Each embedded object has to be retrieved with a separate HTTP request-and-response exchange. Therefore, a Web page that contains n – 1 embedded objects takes n * RTT time to load fully, where RTT is one round-trip time. This can be extremely costly in a satellite network, where the RTT is usually high. COMMERCIAL HYBRID SATELLITE NETWORK ARCHITECTURE The network topologies we consider are illustrated in Fig. 1. In both topologies, we assume that there is one geostationary satellite with multiple spot-beams covering a large geographical area. Each spot-beam covers a subset of the total user set. We assume that future satellites will have an IP stack, be capable of onboard processing, and switch the data between supported spotbeams. The satellite therefore acts as an IP router-in-thesky. The Network Operations/Control Center (commonly known as NOC or NCC) connects to the satellite through the hub satellite gateway. The NOC is also connected to the Internet through high-speed terrestrial links. Terrestrial users can be either standalone machines (Fig. 1a), or a cluster of machines at each location, such as a local area network (LAN) (Fig. 1b). Terrestrial LANs can be either wired or wireless. Each user or LAN is connected to a local satellite terminal. The users receive traffic from the satellite via the forward channel (satellite downlink). The users can also communicate with the satellite via the return channel (uplink). There is no terrestrial connectivity between the users or the LANs. Usually, in commercial satellite networks that transfer Internet traffic, a split-connection Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP) is implemented to reduce the negative effects of the satellite link on the Internet connection [1]. Satellite channels provide large bandwidth (which can be as high as 90 Mb/s in the downlink), but also suffer from long propagation delay in comparison to terrestrial links. The delay can be as high as 500 ms (round-trip) for a geostationary satellite link. The propagation delay can have a severe adverse impact on the delivery of Internet traffic. Most of the Internet traffic uses the TCP, which is IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 51 SSSL encryption New IP header ESP Original TCP header IP header header TCP payload (SSL record) IPSEC encryption ESP trailer proxy (user side). There is a hub proxy server located at the NOC with the hub satellite gateway — this proxy server represents the gateway proxy for both TCP and HTTP performance enhancements. SECURITY THREATS Similar security attacks can be launched against different hybrid satellite network topologies, but the impact of attacks would differ depending on the type of network and the applications supported by the network scenario. In the following, we list some of the important security threats in the hybrid network described above, and highlight the importance of the threats for the different network scenarios. Confidentiality of information: For networks that require information privacy, a primary threat is unauthorized access to confidential data or eavesdropping. Since the satellite is a broadcast medium, any entity on the ground with the right equipment can receive the satellite transmission. If the data is broadcast in the clear, then adversaries can be privy to the information that is flowing in the network. Data confidentiality can be achieved by message encryption. This requires that the senders and receivers are concurrently aware of the correct cryptographic keys used in the encryption/ decryption operations. This is a twofold problem: the problem of selecting suitable cryptographic algorithms for doing encryption so that overall network performance is not affected, and the problem of coordinating keys between users, that is, key management. Sending spurious commands: An adversary with the right equipment can send spurious control and command messages to the spacecraft, thus making the spacecraft perform operations different from their intended use. This can disrupt legitimate operations and communication in the network. This attack can be prevented if the sources of the messages are properly authenticated by every receiver. This would require suitable mechanisms for authentication, such as digital signatures [5]. The level of security required would dictate the authentication policy, for example, whether only the end users should authenticate each other, or whether authentication should happen on a per-hop basis. The latter might be necessary for scenarios where the satellite should not broadcast spurious information. If the satellite authenticates the source of every message it receives, it will transmit only those messages for which source authentication occurs correctly. Message modification attack: When the traffic goes over open networks, an adversary who is listening on the path can intercept both control and data messages. The adversary can modify the messages and send them to the destination, which can be the spacecraft, the ground terminals, or the end users. When the message reaches the intended destination, it would think that the corrupt message is coming from the true source, but the message content might be different from that expected or required for normal network operation. Message modification can be prevented by SSL record HTML page n Figure 2. IPSec and SSL encryption on a packet. The HTTP proxy server (also known by various other names, depending on the vendor) is implemented in satellite networks to overcome this problem. In a typical implementation, this requires a local Web proxy server at each user location, and a remote proxy server at the central hub facility of the satellite network (i. e. , the NOC). The Web browser at the user location should be able to recognize the local proxy (which can be either software on the client machine, or a separate hardware connected inbetween the client machine and the local satellite terminal). When the browser makes a request for a Web page, the HTTP GET request is sent to the local Web proxy, which forwards the request to the destination Web server. The Web server responds with the requested base HTML page. This page is intercepted by the proxy server at the network hub facility. The hub proxy server reads the base HTML page and sends multiple GET requests to the destination Web server for all the embedded objects in the base HTML page. This exchange occurs over a high-speed terrestrial connection between the hub and the Internet, thereby saving the time each request would have needed for a round trip over the satellite link. As the objects of the Web page are retrieved by the hub, they are immediately forwarded to the proxy at the user location. As the user browser receives the base HTML documents, it generates appropriate GET requests to fetch the objects corresponding to the links embedded in the document. The browser GET requests are terminated at the Web proxy server, which forwards the prefetched documents to the user browser immediately. The net result is that only a single â€Å"GET† request from the user browser traverses the satellite link, while a set of rapid responses quickly deliver the requested Web page and associated elements to the browser. The need for satellite capacity is also reduced, which is the most costly element of a satellite network. In terms of the user’s experience, the user sees a brief pause after the original Web-page request (corresponding to the round-trip time it takes for the request to the forwarded to the destination server, and the response to be received by the browser, over the satellite link), followed by near-instantaneous delivery of all content residing on the requested page. The trade-off is additional hardware at the user location and the central-hub facility. In Fig. 1a, the proxy server at the user represents both the PEP (user side) and the HTTP 2 IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 appending message-integrity check mechanisms to every message, for example, message authentication codes (MACs) [6] or digital signatures. Security requirements and policies can dictate whether message authentication should happen only at the communication end points, or whether interme diate nodes should also verify the integrity of every message. Denial-of-service attack: Some attacks on security can be facilitated if strong security mechanisms are put in place for performing message-integrity checks or authenticating users. Consider the case where the satellite does authentication and integrity checks on all messages before broadcasting. An adversary can send a large number of spurious messages to the satellite, thus making the satellite spend significant computational cycles processing the spurious messages, which could be better spent broadcasting legitimate messages. Since the satellite has limited processing power, such an attack can be very effective, especially if strong cryptographic mechanisms like digital signatures are used for authentication and message integrity. This is a denial-of-service (DOS) attack. Although this DOS attack can be launched against any node in a network, a satellite network can be particularly susceptible to such an attack, since the satellite is a single point of failure and can be easily overwhelmed if made to perform too much computation. New IP header ESP Original IP TCP header header header TCP payload ESP trailer Encryption with K1 Original IPSEC ESP tunnel mode encryption New IP header ESP Original IP TCP header header header TCP payload ESP trailer Encryption with K2 Encryption with K1 Layered IPSEC ESP tunnel mode incryption n Figure 3. IPSec and layered IPSec encryption. Key K1 is shared between endpoints only. Key K2 is shared between endpoints and TCP PEPs. 1 embedded objects takes n * RTT to be loaded, an increase in delay by a factor of n. IPSEC FOR SECURITY AT THE NETWORK LAYER Several proposals for data confidentiality and authentication in satellite networks call for use of IPSec, which has been widely adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for security at the network layer. IPSec and SSL are used independently of each other. IPSec creates an end-to-end tunnel at the network layer for the secure transfer of traffic. The two end-points in the communication negotiate security parameters known as the security association (SA) before traffic can be encrypted. Once the SA has been established in the handshake phase, the IP packets are encrypted using the algorithms and the keys specified in the SA. This is done when the IP-encrypted security payload (IPSec ESP) [9] is used. The IPSec ESP provides for both data encryption and authentication. IPSec provides strong security for data confidentiality and authentication, but it has a heavy byte overhead — in the ESP mode, IPSec adds 10 bytes of overhead to the header and trailer. In addition, if authentication is used, ESP adds 16 bytes or more for the integrity check value, and another 8 bytes or more of initialization vector (IV) if the encryption algorithm uses an IV. Also, IPSec has been designed primarily to secure point-to-point communication; it s not well suited for group communication, due to the lack of the dynamic key-establishment procedure necessary to for secure communication in groups where the membership changes with time. In addition, IPSec does not allow for authentication at intermediate nodes, but this might be useful in some security situations. A widely researched problem when using IPSec in satellite networks is its inability to coexist with PEPs. The keys used for encryption in the IPSec ESP are known only to the two endpoints and therefore any intermediate node in the network cannot decrypt the traffic. IPSec ESP has two modes of operation — tunnel mode and transport mode. In tunnel mode, the entire IP packet is encrypted and a new IP header and ESP header are generated and attached to the encrypted packet (Fig. 3), which adds an extra SECURING END-TO-END UNICAST COMMUNICATION USING IPSEC OR SSL Research on satellite security has focused on using the existing standardized technology, originally designed for terrestrial networks, to fix well-known security holes in satellite networks. Two such protocols that are widely used for secure unicast communication are IPSec [7] and SSL [8]. Figure 2 illustrates the encryption regions of SSL and IPSec. SECURE SOCKET LAYER FOR SECURE WEB TRAFFIC The SSL protocol secures the Web-browsing connection on an as-needed basis. When the client requests a secure connection or the server demands one, SSL is activated to secure the HTTP connection. The resulting connection is popularly known as secure HTTP (or HTTPS) and it encrypts the application-layer HTTP data end-to-end between the client and the server. In the protocol stack, the SSL layer sits between the application and the transport layers. Therefore, SSL encryption hides the TCP payload from all nodes in the network, except the client and the server. SSL encryption does not allow the HTTP proxy to function correctly. The HTML Web page encrypted into the SSL records is readable only by the client and the server who have the decryption keys. The keys are not available to the proxy, and therefore the proxy cannot read the HTML Web page. Consequently, the hub proxy server cannot send requests to the Web server for the embedded objects in the page and, therefore, HTML object prefetching cannot take place. The net result is that a Web page with n – IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 53 The HTTP proxy also cannot function when the IPSec ESP is used. Since the HTML page is encrypted end-toend, the HTTP proxy cannot read the Web page in order to prefetch the embedded objects. Therefore, use of IPSec leads to a severe degradation in performance for both the TCP PEP and HTTP proxy. SSSL translation at hub proxy (HPA) SSSL session 2 SSL session 3 Proxy Client Internet Gateway NOC SSSL session 1 SSSL handshaking and translation at client proxy (RPA) Proxy Web server Figure 4. The SSL Internet Page Accelerator concept for efficient HTTPS over satellite. 20 bytes of overhead in addition to the overhead mentioned above. Encrypting the original IP header provides very strong security by disabling attacks (such as traffic analysis, etc. ). In transport mode, the payload portion of the IP packet is encrypted and a new ESP header is attached to the packet after the original IP header, which is in the clear. In either mode, the IP packet payload, which includes the TCP header, is encrypted with keys known only to the end points. Therefore, a TCP PEP, which is an intermediate node in the communication path, cannot read or modify the TCP header, since the PEP does not know the keys. Consequently, the PEP cannot function, thus leading to degradation in the performance of the TCP protocol. The HTTP proxy also cannot function when the IPSec ESP is used. Since the HTML page is encrypted end-to-end, the HTTP proxy cannot read the Web page in order to prefetch the embedded objects. Therefore, use of IPSec leads to a severe degradation in performance for both the TCP PEP and HTTP proxy. It is important to note that the problems that arise from the use of the SSL protocol or the IPSec ESP are independent of one another. It is conceivable that both protocols are used simultaneously, for example, when a secure Web page is accessed via a secure VPN tunnel. However, in such cases the performance issues do not change and the effect would be equivalent to using the IPSec ESP alone. On the other hand, if SSL alone is used, then the performance would be better, since the TCP PEP can function correctly in this scenario. [10] and layered IPSec [11], the idea is to encrypt different regions of the IP packet using different keys (Fig. ). The TCP payload is encrypted with key K1, which is shared only between the endpoints. The original IP header and the TCP header are encrypted with key K2, which is shared between the end points and also with intermediate authorized nodes such as the TCP PEP. Therefore, the TCP PEP can decrypt the header portion of the ESP packet with K2 and read the TCP header to do its performance optimizations. But the PEP cannot read the TCP payload and thus cannot access the actual data, since it does not posses the key K1. The layered IPSec approach allows TCP PEPs to function effectively. However, the method does not solve the problem of HTTP proxy servers. The HTML page is encrypted with key K1 as part of the TCP payload, and K1 is not shared with any intermediate node. Therefore, the Web page is not accessible to the HTTP proxy and no object prefetching can be accomplished. Olechna et al. [12] have suggested two solutions to the IPSec problem. In the first approach, the paper proposes moving the TCP PEP gateways to the endpoints. The TCP optimizations are done on the traffic in the clear, and then the traffic is encrypted using IPSec. There is no TCP PEP at the satellite hub. This approach improves the performance, but when a packet is lost or received in error TCP goes into congestionavoidance phase and the transmission is reduced by half. The second proposed approach, which deals effectively with this problem, is to split the secure connection into two at the satellite gateway. One connection is between the client and the gateway, and the second connection is between the gateway and the Internet server. This allows the gateway to decrypt the IPSec packet and read the headers and thereby do performance optimizations. This requires trust in the satellite gateway, which can now read all the traffic. This might be unacceptable to users who require strong end-to-end security. Several modified TCP protocols have been proposed that perform better than the original specification in the event of channel errors or delay, or when IPSec is used. A discussion of PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO MITIGATE PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS WITH SSL OR IPSEC Several proposals have been made in academia and industry to deal with performance problems that arise from using IPSec and SSL in satellite networks. The concept of breaking up IPSec encryption into multiple encryption regions or zones on a single packet has been proposed independently in [10, 11]. Although the finer details in the two approaches are different, the basic idea is the same. Known as multilayer IPSec (ML-IPSec) 54 IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 Group keys (TEK) K1,8 Internal keys (KEK) K1,4 K5,8 Path of keys for M8 K1,2 K3,4 K5,6 K7,8 Leaf keys Members Group key K2 K1,12 Group key K1 K1,8 K9,12 K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 (a) K1K2 K3 K4K5 K6 K7K8 K9 K10K11K12 M1M2M3M4M5M6M7M8 G1 G2 G3 G4 Members Gateways (b) Figure 5. Logical key hierarchy and its extension to satellite networks: a) with eight members; b) ML-IPSec integrated LKH tree with users and gateways. these TCP enhancements can be found in [13]. The problem of HTTP proxy performance when SSL is used has been addressed within the industry by breaking up the end-to-end single SSL connection between client and server into m ultiple SSL connections [14]. In this solution, the client browser creates a secure HTTP connection with the remote page accelerator (RPA) at the client satellite terminal, a second connection is created between the RPA and the hub page accelerator (HPA), and a third connection is between the HPA and the server (Fig. 4). The RPA performs all necessary handshaking with the client browser. The HPA can decrypt the SSL traffic from the server and perform the desired object prefetching. Taken together, this allows delivery of secure Web content with little performance degradation and with little change to the standard protocols. The major drawback to this scheme is that it requires a high level of trust in the intermediate nodes. The HPA, which is a third-party entity, can read all the sensitive Web traffic that passes between the client and the server. This might be unacceptable when absolute end-to-end security is desired. is O(logN) (where N is the number of members in the group), which is less than the O(N) keys required if the GC arranged the members in a flat topology. To allow PEPs to function correctly when network-layer security is used, [15] proposes the use of ML-IPSec. The paper proposes using a single LKH tree to manage the group key K2, used to encrypt the transport layer header (known to end users and trusted gateways), and the group key K1, known only to the end users and used for encrypting the transport layer data. As shown in Fig. b, users M 1 †¦M 8 are leaf nodes in a subtree of degree three, and gateways G 1 †¦G 4 are leaf nodes in a subtree of degree two. The root key of the member node subtree, K 1,8 , is used to encrypt the transport payload. The root of the overall key tree, K1,12, is used to encrypt the transport header. All member nodes know both K1,8 and K1,12, but the gateways know K 1,12 only (apart from the internal keys in the gateway subtree). How the LKH tree would be managed is not stated in [15]. This is important, since the users and the gateways might not be in the same administrative or security domain. The paper also considers all users and gateways as a â€Å"flat† network for key distribution purposes, rather than taking into account the hierarchical nature of the network topology. The use of LKH for key management in satellite links has also been proposed in [18], which suggests algorithms for dynamically managing the LKH tree in case of member joins and leaves. Duquerroy et al. [19] proposed â€Å"SatIPSec,† for key distribution and secure communication for both unicast and multicast in a satellite network. The solution is based on IPSec, with the addition of flat multicast key exchange (FMKE) to support key management for secure group communication. Management of SAs for both unicast and multicast communication is integrated into the FMKE protocol. FMKE also incorporates reliability mechanisms so as to guarantee reliable key distribution in the lossy satellite setting. However, FMKE manages SAs between the satellite terminals or gateways only and does not extend to the end users. Therefore, end-to-end security is not provided when using SatIPSec. The RPA performs all necessary handshaking with the client browser. The HPA can decrypt the SSL traffic from the server and perform the desired object prefetching. Taken together, this allows delivery of secure Web content with little performance degradation and with little change to the standard protocols. KEY MANAGEMENT PROPOSALS FOR SECURE GROUP COMMUNICATION IN HYBRID NETWORKS Some research has been done with individual algorithms that serve as tools in building keymanagement protocols in order to facilitate secure group communication in hybrid satellite networks. Howarth et al. [15] have proposed the use of logical key hierarchy (LKH) [16, 17] for efficient key management for multicast groups in a satellite network. LKH makes use of a centralized key manager or group controller (GC), which constructs a logical key tree with the group members as the leaves of the tree (Fig. 5a). The internal nodes of the tree are the key encrypting keys (KEK), which are used to securely transport key updates to the group. The root of the tree is the session key or traffic-encrypting key (TEK), which is used to encrypt the session traffic. The number of keys that need to be updated when a member node joins or leaves the group IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 55 New IP header ESP Original TCP HTML header IP header header object links Base HTML page Encryption with K2 ESP trailer Encryption with K1 n Figure 6. Layered IPSec with modifications for HTTP optimization. Also, FMKE treats all the satellite terminals it services (which are called SatIPSec clients) in a â€Å"flat† topology, and establishes separate secure channels to all SatIPSec clients. This will not scale when there are a large number of clients. Also, SatIPSec does not consider the dynamic joins and leaves of members in the group communication setting; a client needs to be preauthorized for all the groups it wants to take part in. The protocol also requires complete trust in the group controller and key server (GCKS), which is a third party that is responsible for managing the SAs between the clients. All clients need to have preshared secrets with the GCKS. IPSEC AND SSL IN HYBRID NETWORKS: OUR APPROACH We look at separate solutions to the performance problem arising out of using SSL and IPSec in hybrid networks, and also consider how the two approaches can be combined. HTTP OVER IPSEC TUNNEL One viable method is to break up the end-to-end IPSec tunnel into multiple connections. This is similar to the solution proposed in [12]. But while their approach looks at only the TCP enhancements, we add the use of the HTTP proxy as well. In our approach, the IPSec connection from the client is terminated at the client proxy. The proxy creates its own IPSec connection to the gateway TCP proxy. A third IPSec connection is created from the gateway TCP proxy to the Web server. Schematically, this is similar to Fig. , with IPSec connections replacing the SSL connections in the figure. The IPSec handshaking between the client and the server is spoofed by the client proxy on the client end, and by the TCP hub proxy on the server end. In this model, the Web traffic can be read completely by the client proxy and the hub proxy. The two proxies are able to perform the TCP enhancements because they can read the TCP header. In addition, the hub HTTP proxy can perform HTM L object prefetching from the server because it can read the base HTML page as it is returned to the client on a HTTP request. When the client browser generates staggered requests for the embedded objects upon receiving the base HTML page, the client proxy is responsible for returning local acknowledgments to the requests, and sending all the objects to the client browser at one time. The design is therefore fully able to maintain the functionality of the TCP and HTTP proxies. It also encrypts the traffic so that it can be seen only by the client, the server, and the two intermediate proxy servers. The design also makes minimal changes to existing standard protocols. However, the design also requires that there be full trust in the proxy servers. Also, there is additional overhead in setting up three IPSec connections, as opposed to one (as in the end-to-end case). The overhead in encryption/decryption also increases by a factor of three for every IP packet, since the intermediate proxies need to decrypt the TCP header and the HTML content. When the security requirement is that the traffic be unreadable to intermediate nodes, the above approach will not work. In this situation, we propose extending the layered IPSec approach in order to allow portions of the HTML content to be also accessible to the proxy servers. Assume for layered IPSec that the keys are K1 and K2. K1 is known only to the client and the server, while K2 is known to the client, the Web server, and the intermediate proxy servers at the client and the gateway. When the client makes HTTP requests, the requests are encrypted using K2, so that the client proxy server can read the requests and send local acknowledgments. Additional software at the Web server parses the requested HTML page so as to obtain all the embedded object links. These object links are collated into a new HTML page that contains only the object links, and this new page is encrypted with K2. The base HTML page that contains all the information and the object links is encrypted with K1. Both the encrypted base HTML page and the encrypted object links HTML page are sent in reply. Therefore, the encrypted ESP packet looks as it is depicted in Fig. 6. Upon receiving the IPSec packet from the Web server, the hub proxy is able to read the object links (since it has K2) and therefore do prefetching for the embedded links. In addition, the hub proxy can also read the TCP header and perform TCP enhancements. However, the HTML base-page data cannot be read by the hub proxy, since it does not have K1. The encrypted base HTML page can only be read by the client when the IPSec packet reaches the destination. This design allows the TCP and HTTP proxies to perform effectively while maintaining a high level of end-to-end security. However, the security is not as strong as in traditional IPSec, since the intermediate proxies do get some information insofar as they can read the links of the embedded objects, even though they cannot read the application data. This is the major trade-off necessary to achieve acceptable performance in this design. In addition, the model requires changes to be made to the IPSec protocol so that layered IPSec is supported with the HTTP performance additions. A major issue in the above model is the handshaking mechanism required to set up the layered IPSec connection. To maintain a high level of security, we propose that the connection be set up primarily between the client and the server, who negotiate both K1 and K2, apart from other parameters of the security association. The handshaking mechanism then provides K2 securely to both the client and the hub proxy servers. The client and the hub proxy servers are required to authenticate themselves correctly before they can receive the secondary key or access the IPSec traffic. 56 IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 DSSL main mode (K1) DSSL main mode (K2) Internet Gateway Proxy (K2) Client (K1, K2) NOC DSSL primary and secondary modes Original TCP IP header header Proxy SSL record Primary SSL record Proxy (K2) Web server (K1,K2) Encryption with K2 Encryption with K1 IP packet format for DSSL n Figure 7. Dual-mode SSL for HTTP optimization. HTTP OVER SSL When the HTTP traffic is secured using SSL only, and there is no IPSec tunnel in use, several approaches are possible to ensure acceptable performance. If the security requirement of the client and the Web server allow for trusted intermediate nodes, then the SSL accelerator concept of [14] can be a viable solution. This would require no change to the protocols at the expense of higher overhead in order to set up multiple SSL connections between the client, proxy, and Web server. When the security policy does not allow for trusted third parties, a different approach is needed. We propose the use of a modified SSL protocol, which we term dual-mode SSL (DSSL). As shown in Fig. 7, the secure connection in DSSL has two modes — an end-to-end main mode connection between the client and the Web server, and a secondary mode connection that has the hub HTTP proxy as an intermediate node. When secure HTTP traffic is requested, the DSSL main mode connection is first negotiated between the client and the server. As part of the handshake for the main mode, the client and the Web server also negotiate the parameters for the secondary mode. Let K1 be the encryption key for the main mode, and K2 be the encryption key for the secondary mode. The client transfers the parameters of the secondary mode to the client and hub HTTP proxy servers only after the proxy servers authenticate themselves to the client. When the client makes an HTTP request, the client proxy sends local replies to the client browser, as discussed previously. The Web server, on receiving the request, parses the requested HTML page to obtain the embedded object links, which are collated into a new HTML page. The object links HTML page is then encrypted by DSSL using K2 to create the proxy SSL record. DSSL encrypts the base HTML page using K1 to create the primary SSL record. The two records are appended together and sent to the client in an IP packet (Fig. 7). The hub proxy intercepts the IP packet, extracts the object links from the proxy SSL record using K2, and prefetches the embedded objects. The Web server always encrypts the actual objects using K1, so that the hub proxy cannot read the base HTML page data. The hub proxy transfers all the embedded objects together to the client at one time. Therefore, the HTTP proxy functionality is preserved in DSSL while maintaining the end-to-end security of the HTML page contents. However, the security is less than in the end-to-end SSL connection case, since the HTTP proxy can read the object links. In standard SSL, the proxy servers can read no part of the base HTML page, not even the object links. We believe this slight reduction in security is acceptable, given the considerable improvement in performance using this method. The DSSL design is more complex in comparison to SSL since it requires the creation of an additional connection, and therefore involves a higher overhead. There is also the added overhead of multiple encryptions and decryptions with two different keys, and the complexity of parsing the HTML page for the object links. All these require changes to the base SSL protocol. The DSSL concept is similar to the multiplechannel SSL concept proposed in [20]. However, the authors do not differentiate encryption in primary and secondary SSL records but instead suggest that HTTP traffic with lower security requirements be encrypted entirely with keys known to intermediate nodes. For our security requirements, that approach would not be acceptable. Differential Encryption in Single SSL Record — The use of a proxy SSL record is not necessary if various parts of the HTML page can be encrypted with The DSSL design is more complex in comparison to SSL since it requires the creation of an additional connection, and therefore involves a higher overhead. There is also the added overhead of multiple encryptions and decryptions with two different keys. IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 57 Secondary SSL encryption Primary SSL encryption New IP header ESP Original TCP Proxy SSL header IP header header record Secondary IPSec encryption Primary SSL record ESP trailer Primary IPSec encryption n Figure 8. Packet format for dual-mode SSL with IPSec. different keys. In that case, the Web server can encrypt the object links in the HTML page with key K2 and the rest of the HTML page contents with key K1, thus creating a single SSL record with different encryption. The hub proxy server can parse the SSL record and decrypt only the object links with key K2, before forwarding the IP packet to the client proxy. We assume that the primary and secondary encryption keys K1 and K2 have been set up and distributed as described in the previous sections, with K1 known to the client and the Web server only, while K2 is known to the client, the Web server, and the intermediate proxy servers. A similar technique can be applied when IPSec encryption is used instead of SSL encryption. The advantage here is that the size of the packet does not increase, although there is the overhead of distributing key K2 to the proxy servers to be considered. HTTPS OVER IPSEC For the sake of completeness, we consider the situation where a secure Web page is requested over an IPSec tunnel. This method involves redundancy of resources, since use of SSL when IPSec is being used does not provide any substantially added security. However, our approach can take care of the performance in this scenario as well. In this situation, we propose integrating DSSL with layered IPSec. Then the secondary keys for both the layered IPSec connection and the DSSL connection are shared with the proxy servers. The secondary key for layered IPSec is shared with both the TCP proxy and the HTTP proxy. When layered IPSec encrypts the packet, the secondary key encryption extends up to the proxy SSL record. The TCP proxy servers can therefore decrypt the TCP header of the ESP packet, and the HTTP proxy server can decrypt the proxy SSL record. Consequently, performance optimizations for both TCP and HTTP are allowed without letting the intermediate servers read the HTML page. A schematic of the IPSec packet in this setting is shown in Fig. 8. A HIERARCHICAL APPROACH TO KEY MANAGEMENT FOR DATA SECURITY IN HYBRID NETWORKS In [21], we have proposed a key-management framework for distributing cryptographic keys securely and in a scalable manner to users taking part in group communication in a hybrid satellite network. The objective is to ensure data confidentiality, by encrypting the data traffic with group keys known to all the group members. The key-management framework is built on top of the multicast routing architecture. We have considered the hybrid network topology shown in Fig. 1b and designed a multicast routing architecture to allow users to communicate seamlessly between multiple terrestrial LANs (also referred to as subnetworks) [22]. Our routing design makes specific use of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) point-to-multipoint routing [23] over the satellite links, and Protocol-Independent Multicast Sparse-Mode (PIM-SM) multicast routing [24] in terrestrial LANs. We have extended PIM-SM to allow multiple rendezvous points (RPs) in each multicast group. The satellite gateway in each LAN acts as the local RP for the LAN and creates the local multicast trees for group members within the LAN. The local multicast trees are connected together over the satellite links by using the ATM point-to-multipoint virtual connection, thereby creating one end-to-end multicast tree for each group, encompassing all the LANs with group members in them. The multicast routing architecture is thus adapted closely to the hierarchical network topology, and allows for building efficient multicast trees with low control and data overhead. The design of the key-management protocol is independent of the routing algorithm, although it is based on the same underlying principle, that is, a hierarchical breakup of the network based on the topology. We divide the network into two levels — the lower level, comprised of terrestrial LANs where the users are located, and a higher level consisting of the satellite, the NOC, and the satellite gateways or RPs in each LAN, which together form an overlay (Fig. 9a) interconnecting terrestrial LANs. The RPs act as the â€Å"bridge† between the two levels. Key management is done separately in the two levels. In each LAN we introduce a local group controller (called the â€Å"subnetwork key controller† or SKC) to manage the keys for all groups active in the LAN. The SKC is responsible for access control of all members of all groups that are active in its LAN, generating the group keys for all local groups, and updating the keys on group-member joins and leaves when a group is active. The keys managed by an SKC are entirely local to its LAN, and do not affect the key management in any other LAN in the network. The SKC uses the LKH algorithm to manage keys in its LAN, creating a logical key tree that we term the SN Tree. Each group active in a LAN has its own SN Tree. The leaves of the SN Tree for a group correspond to the longterm shared secrets between the SKC and the local users in the LAN who are active as sources and/or receivers in the group. The root of the SN Tree corresponds to the session key that is used for encrypting the group traffic within the LAN at any particular instant. On member joins and leaves, the session key, and all the keys on the path from the root to the leaf node corresponding to the member joining/leaving, are updated, while all other keys in the SN Tree remain unchanged. The overlay has its own key management, 58 IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 Overlay RP tree root key Level-1 Satellite Overlay network NOC Gateway Gateway Gateway SN tree SKC RP (root) RP (leaf) SKC RP tree RP (leaf) Gateway Level-0 SKC Subnet n Subnet 1 Subnet 2 (a) Subnet 3 Subnetwork Subnetwork (b) Subnetwork n Figure 9. A hierarchical approach to key management in hybrid networks: a) hierarchy in the hybrid network; b) tiered tree key management. also based on the LKH algorithm. At the overlay level, the key management for a particular group is controlled by the satellite gateway/RP (known as the root RP for that group) of the LAN that has group sources active for the longest continuous period in the group. The logical key tree for any group thus formed at the overlay is termed the RP Tree. The root RP is responsible for generating keys for the RPs of the LANs who subscribe to the particular group, that is, have sources and/or receivers active in the LAN. Each group has its own RP Tree. The design ensures that the NOC cannot receive/transmit data to any active group, unless it explicitly subscribes to the group as a member node. However, LANs joining any particular group initially register with the NOC, which maintains a group membership table for all active groups, so that at all times the NOC is aware of the LANs which are participating in all active groups. The NOC is also responsible for selecting the root RP of the RP Tree for each group, which it does based on the earliest-to-join policy. The root RP also might be different for different groups, since the LAN with the longest continuously active sources might be different for different groups. Our algorithm has the provision to allow the root RP for any group to change — this happens if the currently active root RP leaves the group, when all sources/receivers within its local LAN cease to participate in the group. Our algorithm therefore builds a hierarchy of logical key trees that closely follow the hierarchy in the network topology, as shown in Fig. 9b. We term this framework Tiered Tree-based Key Management. In this hierarchy of key trees, the gateway RPs are responsible for performing key translation on all the multicast group traffic as it transmits the data from local sources to receivers in remote LANs, or when it receives group traffic from remote sources for local receivers. This translation is necessary since the data traffic is encrypted with the RP Tree session key in the overlay, and with the SN Tree session ey within the local LAN, with the two session keys being independent of one another. The detailed design of Tiered Tree-based Key Management, analysis of its security, and experimental results can be found in [25]. The primary objective in our design is to minimize the amount of key-management control traffic n Figure 10. Tiered tree framework: total key management traffic vs. RP tree traffic for three groups (Y-axis shows the traffic in bytes per second; X-axis is the simulation duration in minutes). hat flows over the satellite links, due to the long delay involved as well as susceptibility to channel errors. We have attempted to ensure that the security of the data traffic does not add any overhead in terms of delay other than that absolutely unavoidable, and that the security protocol does not contribute to deadlocks in group-data dissemination where some group members in certain LANs cannot read the data due to having wrong keys. From the simulation results, Fig. 10 shows the reduction in key-control traffic over the satellite links using our tiered-tree approach. The graph compares the total key-management IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 59 Our solution is a generic solution aimed specifically at multicast key management and does not deal with an end-to-end security solution for secure communication or give any implementation specifics. information sent in the network for three simultaneous groups (i. e. , sent over the RP trees, sent over the satellite links, and all SN trees limited to local LANs), to the total key information sent on the RP trees (satellite links) only. As the graph shows, the resource savings on the satellite links is substantial when the tiered-tree scheme is used. Even though the group dynamics are high, the amount of message exchanges are very few in the RP tree, that is, over the satellite links. If a flat key-management hierarchy had been used instead, the total key-management traffic would have been sent over the satellite links, thus leading to increased delay and increasing the possibility that the correct keys do not reach all the members at the same time. Our solution is therefore very scalable. It also acknowledges the fact that the group members might be located in different security domains and, therefore, a single network-wide security management might not be possible. This is a more realistic scenario, since terrestrial LANs might be individual company domains, while the satellite overlay infrastructure is usually owned by a separate entity that provides network connectivity to the LANs, and is not responsible for generating the network traffic. This framework addresses the problem that all users might not be visible to a single, centralized security authority, and the dynamics of user joins or leaves in one LAN should not create an overhead to users in other LANs. Also, in widearea satellite networks we consider that the satellite channel conditions at a given point in time might be different in different sections of the network. There might be loss in information due to bad channel conditions in some network segments; however, this should not disrupt communication in network segments where the channel conditions are better. Solutions which treat all users in a single tree will not be able to perform as robustly under such conditions. Our solution is also similar to the ML-IPSec concept in that the satellite terminals are only partially trusted; they are allowed to do partial decryption/encryption of the IP packets for efficient routing. However, it is a generic solution aimed specifically at multicast key management and does not deal with an end-to-end security solution for secure communication or give any implementation specifics. approaches for typical topologies and validating the proposed designs by simulation. Lastly, we have described our hierarchical approach of key management for providing data security in hybrid networks. We are continuing our research in this area and examining designs to integrate our keymanagement protocol with the unicast case. A considerable amount of work needs to be done with regard to secure protocols for hybrid networks, specifically for the case where users are mobile. Here we have touched upon only a small subset of the problems. None of the proposed solutions, including our own, address the question of user authentication or message integrity for group communication. However, we believe the security problems discussed here will receive further treatment from the research community, and this work will be a useful contribution to the field. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. The research reported here is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center under award no. NCC8-235. The views expressed in this article are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not reflect the views or position of NASA or any of its components. REFERENCES [1] J. Border et al. , â€Å"Performance Enhancing Proxies Intended to Mitigate Link-Related Degradations,† IETF RFC 3135, June 2001. [2] V. Arora et al. , â€Å"Effective Extensions of Internet in Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Networks,† University of Maryland, College Park, Tech. Rep. CSHCN TR 96-2, 1996. [3] V. Bharadwaj, â€Å"Improving TCP Performance over HighBandwidth Geostationary Satellite Links,† University of Maryland, College Park, Tech. Rep. ISR TR MS-99-12, 1999. [4] N. Ehsan, M. Liu, and R. Ragland, â€Å"Evaluation of Performance Enhancing Proxies in Internet over Satellite,† Wiley Int’l. J. Commun. Sys. , vol. 16, Aug. 2003, pp. 513–34. [5] NIST, â€Å"Digital Signature Standard (DSS),† May 19, 1994. [6] H. Krawczyk, M. Bellare, and R. Canetti, â€Å"HMAC: KeyedHashing for Message Authentication,† IETF RFC 2104, Feb. 1997. [7] R. Atkinson and S. Kent, â€Å"Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol,† IETF RFC 2401, Nov. 1998. [8] IETF Transport Layer Security Working Group, â€Å"The SSL Protocol Version 3. 0,† Nov. 1996, available at http://wp. netscape. com/eng/ssl3/draft302. txt [9] R. Atkinson and S. Kent, â€Å"IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP),† IETF RFC 2406, Nov. 998. [10] Y. Zhang, â€Å"A Multilayer IP Security Protocol for TCP Performance Enhancement in Wireless Networks,† IEEE JSAC, vol. 22, no. 4, 2004, pp. 767–76. [11] M. Karir and J. Baras, â€Å"LES: Layered Encryption Security,† Proc. ICN’04, Guadeloupe (French Caribbean), Mar. 2004. [12] E. Olechna, P. Feighery, and S. Hryckiewicz, â€Å"Virtual Private Network Issues Using Satellite Based Networks,† MILCOM 2001, vol. 2, 2001, pp. 785–89. [13] P. Chitre, M. Karir, and M. Hadjitheodosiou, â€Å"TCP in the IPSec Environment,† AIAA ICSSC 2004, Monterey, CA, May 2004. 14] SSL Accelerator, Spacenet Inc. , available at http://www. spacenet. com/technology/advantages/ssl. ht ml [15] M. P. Howarth et al. , â€Å"Dynamics of Key Management in Secure Satellite Multicast,† IEEE JSAC, vol. 22, no. 2, 2004, pp. 308–19. [16] C. Wong, M. Gouda, and S. S. Lam, â€Å"Secure Group Communications Using Key Graphs,† IEEE/ACM Trans. Net. , vol. 8, 2000, pp. 16–30. CONCLUSION Security is a critical component in hybrid IPbased satellite networks. In this article we have focused on some of the challenges that lie ahead. We have discussed the unique characteristics of hybrid satellite networks that make the problem of ensuring secure communication different from that of purely terrestrial networks. We have presented a survey of the various security solutions that have been proposed, and discussed their advantages and disadvantages. We have proposed several approaches to solve the performance problems of TCP and HTTP in satellite networks arising from secure communication. However, a lot of further work needs to be done to validate our approaches, and we are in the process of developing specific detailed security 0 IEEE Wireless Communications †¢ December 2005 [17] D. Wallner, E. Harder, and R. Agee, â€Å"Key Management for Multicast: Issues and Architectures,† IETF RFC 2627, June 1999, available at http://www. apps. ietf. org/rfc/ rfc2627. html [18] G. Noubir and L. von Allmen, â€Å"Security Issues in Internet Protocols over Satellite Links,† Proc. IEEE VTC ‘99, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1999. [19] L. Duquerroy et al. , â€Å"SatIPSec: An Optimized Solution for Securing Multicast and Unicast Satellite Transmissions,† 22nd AIAA Int’l. Commun. Sat. Sys. Conf. and Exhibit, Monterey, CA, May 2004. [20] Y. Song, V. Leung, and K. Beznosov, â€Å"Supporting Endto-End Security across Proxies with Multiple-Channel SSL,† Proc. 19th IFIP Info. Sec. Conf. , Toulouse, France, Aug. 2004, pp. 323–37. [21] A. Roy-Chowdhury and J. Baras, â€Å"Key Management for Secure Multicast in Hybrid Satellite Networks,† 19th IFIP Info. Sec. Conf. , Toulouse, France, Aug. 2004. [22] A. Roy-Chowdhury and J. Baras, â€Å"Framework for IP Multicast in Satellite ATM Networks,† AIAA ICSSC 2004, Monterey, CA, May 2004. [23] G. Armitage, â€Å"Support for Multicast over UNI 3. 0/3. 1 Based ATM Networks,† Internet RFC 2022, Nov. 1996. [24] S. Deering et al. , â€Å"The PIM Architecture for Wide-Area Multicast Routing,† IEEE/ACM Trans. Net. , vol. 4, no. 2, 1996, pp. 153–62. [25] A. Roy-Chowdhury, â€Å"IP Routing and Key Management for Secure Multicast in Satellite ATM Networks,† Master’s thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, 2003, available at http://techreports. isr. umd. edu/reports/2004/ MS2004-1. pdf Paper Award, 2004 WiSe Conference. He holds three patents. His research interests include wireless networks and MANET, wireless network security and information assurance, integration of logic programming and nonlinear programming for trade-off analysis, multicriteria optimization, noncooperative and cooperative dynamic games, robust control of nonlinear systems and hybrid automata, mathematical and statistical physics algorithms for control and communication systems, distributed asynchronous control and communication systems, object-oriented modeling of complex engineering systems, satellite and hybrid communication networks, network management, fast Internet services over hybrid wireless networks, stochastic systems, planning and optimization, intelligent control and learning, biologically inspired algorithms for signal processing, and sensor networks. MICHAEL HADJITHEODOSIOU [M] received an M. A. (honours) in electrical and information sciences from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, in 1989, an M. S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Irvine in 1992, and a Ph. D. n engineering (specializing in satellite communications) from the Centre for Satellite Engineering Research (CSER) at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom, in 1995. Among his awards are a scholarship award for studies at the University of Cambridge from the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust (1984–1986); a Fulbright Scholarship for post-graduate work in the United States (1989–1991); a Research Fellowship from the U. K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (1992); and the Canadian National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) post-doctoral fellowship award (1995). He worked as a research fellow in the Communication Systems group of CSER (1991–1995) and spent a year as a visiting fellow at the Canadian Government Communications Research Center (CRC) (1995–1996). In November 1996 he joined the Center for Satellite and Hybrid Communication Networks (CSHCN) at the Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, where he is currently an assistant research scientist. He is an expert on space communications and satellite networks. His research interests include performance optimization of wireless and hybrid networks, security and protocol support issues for satellite systems, and design optimization of next-generation broadband satellite networks and applications. He is currently working on supporting the communication needs of NASA enterprises and the communication architecture enabling space exploration. He is currently serving as secretary of the IEEE Satellite and Space Communications Technical Committee. SPYRO PAPADEMETRIOU received his B. S. in computer science from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. Since then he has been actively involved in Internet research and development within both industry and academia. He was the principal Internet researcher at Synectics Corp. , where he developed network and database software. He worked as a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Systems Research, where he designed and developed their first networking laboratory, which is part of the CSHCN. At Inktomi Corp. he spearheaded client acceleration research and was a member the content-distribution network design team. These resulted in several patent filings, of which he holds one. The latter also resulted in American Online’s Web client accelerator product. Currently he is with Orbital Data Corp. working on network and application optimization. His research interests include network optimization, application optimization, satellite and terrestrial wireless networking, delay-tolerant networks, sensor networks, distributed systems, and network software architecture. We have touched upon only a small subset of the problems. None of the proposed solutions, including our own, address the question of user authentication or message integrity for group communication. BIOGRAPHIES AYAN ROY-CHOWDHURY ([email  protected] umd. edu) received his B. E. in electronics and telecommunications engineering in 1998 from Jadavapur University, India, and his M. S. in electrical engineering in 2003 from the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is currently a Ph. D. student. Between 1998 and 2000 he worked as a senior software engineer at Wipro Technologies, India. His research focuses on the design of protocols and frameworks for secure communication in hybrid networks. He is working on secure protocols for unicast and multicast routing in networks that have wired and wireless terrestrial components interconnected by satellite links. He is also looking into key management techniques for secure data transmission for these network architectures, and efficient user-authentication mechanisms for the same. As part of these topics, he is also investigating performance problems for network communication in satellite networks when security is involved. J OHN S. B ARAS [F] received a B. S. in electrical engineering from National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1970, and M. S. and Ph. D. degrees in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1971 and 1973, respectively. He was founding director of the Institute for Systems Research (one of the first six NSF Engineering Research Centers) from 1985 to 1991. Since August 1973 he has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Applied Mathematics Faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1990 he was appointed to the Lockheed Martin Chair in Systems Engineering. Since 1991 he has been director of the Center for Hybrid and Satellite Communication Networks (a NASA Research Partnership Center). Among his awards are the 1980 Outstanding Paper A