adaptive process management (n.) an element of resource and business process management, adaptive search and event processing. Sometimes referred to as “Level 4” event processing or process refinement.

application concept (n.) a definition of a set of properties that represent the data fields of an application entity. An application concept can describe relationships among themselves. For example, an order concept might have a parent/child relationship with an item concept. A department concept might be related to a purchase requisition concept based on the shared property, department_id. Application concepts can include an application state model.

application state modeler (n.) a UML-compliant application that allows you to model the life cycle of a concept instance — that is, for each instance of a given concept, you can define which states it will pass through and how it will transition from state to state. States have entry actions, exit actions, and conditions, providing precision control over the behavior of an event processing agent. Transitions between states also may have rules. Multiple types of states and transitions maximize the versatility and power of the application state modeler.

derived event (n.) an event that is created as a result of processing one or more other events.

complex event (n.) an event that is a situation-entity abstraction of two or more simple, derived or other complex events.

complex event processing (n.) CEP is a technology for extracting information from message-based systems. CEP is primarily an event processing concept that deals with the task of processing multiple events from an event cloud with the goal of identifying the meaningful events within the event cloud. CEP employs techniques such as detection of complex patterns of many events, event correlation and abstraction, event hierarchies, and relationships between events such as causality, membership, and timing, and event-driven processes.

event (n.) a instance of an event definition. It is an immutable object that represents a business activity that happened at a single point in time. Just as one cannot change the fact that a given activity occurred, one cannot change an event — events are immutable.

event aggregation (n.) the aggregation of simple, derived or complex events into higher levels of event abstractions.

event definition (n.) a set of properties related to a given activity that represents an important or interesting change of state in a human, system or computational activity. An event definition includes event properties such as event priority, event time to live (TTL), and a description of the payload, which is comprehensive information related to the activity that occurred. Events expire when the TTL has elapsed, unless the event processing agent has instructions to consume them prior to that time.

event channel (n.) a communications channel in which events are transmitted from event source to event receivers, typically received as electronic messages. Each channel can have multiple destination and. events can be configured to transmit to a default destination. JMS is an example of an event channel.

event cloud (n.) a partially ordered set of events (poset), either bounded or unbounded, where the partial orderings are imposed by the causal, timing and other relationships between the events. Typically an event cloud is created by the events produced by one or more distributed systems. An event cloud may contain many event types, event streams and event channels. The difference between a cloud and a stream is that there is no event relationship that totally orders the events in a cloud.

event-driven (n.) the behavior of a human, system or computational entity whose execution or actuation is in response to events, typically received as electronic messages.

event-driven architecture (n.) an architectural style for distributed computing applications in which some of the components are event-driven and communicate by means of events.

event processing (n.) computing that performs operations on events, including modifying, creating and destroying events.

event-object (n.) an software object that represents an event, generally for the purpose of computer processing, that exhibits both encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism.

event prediction (n.) computational activity where the impact of events, complex events, and situations caused by events identified, including both opportunity or threat. Sometimes referred to as “Level 2” event processing, impact assessment or predictive analytics.

event pre-processing (n.) computational activity where events are cleansed or normalized to produce semantically understandable data. Sometimes referred to as “Level 0” event processing.

event processing (n.) computational activities on events dealing with the association, correlation, and combination of event data and information from single and multiple event sources to achieve refined identity and situation estimates for observed event objects, and to achieve complete and timely assessments of opportunities, threats, and their significance. Event processing is characterized by continuous refinements of event estimates and assessments and by evaluation of the need for additional sources, or modification of the process itself, to achieve improved results.

event processing agent (n.) an EPA is a computational entity that performs event processing.

event processing network (n.) a set of event processing agents and a set of event channels connecting them.

event properties (n.) data representation of an event, typically by name-value pairs of type string, integer, real, boolean or a complex data type.

event refinement (n.) filter, identify and track events & make initial processing decisions based on association, correlation and state estimation. Sometimes referred to as “Level 1” event, or event-object, track and trace.

event stream (n.) a time-ordered sequence of events. An event stream may be bounded by a certain time interval or other contextual dimension (content, space, source, certainty), or be open ended and unbounded.

event stream processing (n.) a time-ordered sequence of events. An event stream may be bounded by a certain time interval or other contextual dimension (content, space, source, certainty), or be open ended and unbounded.

rule (n.) defines what triggers unusual, suspicious, problematic, or advantageous activity within an event processing agent and what the EPA does when it discovers these types of activities. Rules execute actions based on certain conditions on events, instances, or a combination of both. A rule includes a group of condition-rule statements and action-rule statements. The condition statements instruct the EPA what to look for in events, and action statements instruct the EPA how to respond when conditions are met. If all the conditions in a rule are satisfied by events or instances or both, the EPA fires the actions. The action might be to execute tasks, create an event instance, modify property values in an event instance, create and send an event, or something else.

rules engine (n.) a type of event processing agent that uses a declarative programming model to process events. Formally described as “an abstract structure that describes a formal language precisely, i.e., a set of rules that mathematically delineates a (usually infinite) set of finite-length strings over a (usually finite) alphabet“. Informally, it can be any system that uses rules, in any form, that can be applied to data to produce outcomes.

rule language (n.) is an artificial language that is used to control the behavior of an event processing agent. Rules languages, like human languages, have syntactic and semantic rules to define meaning.

situation refinement (n.) identify situations, or complex events, based on event clustering, event-event relationships and relationship analysis and context. Sometimes referred to as “Level 2” event processing.

simple event (n.) an event that is not an abstraction or composition of other events.

virtual event (n.) an event that is imagined, modeled or simulated.

What's my take on the summary of changes? Most merchants will be pleased to see that these are relatively minor changes...]]> Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:00:00 +0000 payment card industry data security standard release represents version pci dss summary october pdf minor PCI Compliance: Reaction to the Summary of Changes http://securityratty.com/article/3a9d4cea7cf308c71df112b7ea133337 http://securityratty.com/article/3a9d4cea7cf308c71df112b7ea133337 Stratfor. I am addicted. They have a unique way of saying things, an elegant mix of insight, cynicism and humor. How about this one, for instance:

"But in Georgia’s twilight hour, Stratfor’s gaze is not particularly riveted on Tbilisi. Georgia’s fate is more or less sealed. At dawn either the bombs will fall and the tanks will advance and depose the Georgian government by force, or a siege will begin that will depose it in time. Either way, the government of what is currently known as Georgia will evolve into a form that slavishly respects Russian wishes. The only reason Russian officials have not said they will enforce “regime change” is because they feel the term is too American. Whatever the nomenclature, the details of how this change happens pale in comparison to what such a change represents."

1. Person A has position X.

2. Person B ignores X and instead presents position Y.
Y is a distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:

1. Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent’s position and then refuting it, thus giving the appearance that the opponent’s actual position has been refuted.
2. Quoting an opponent’s words out of context — i.e., choosing quotations that are not representative of the opponent’s actual intentions.
3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender and then refuting that person’s arguments, thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated.
4. Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticized, such that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
5. Oversimplifying an opponent’s argument, then attacking the simplified version.

3. Person B attacks position Y.

4. Person B draws a conclusion that X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself.

For example, there has been some lively discussions recently around the notion that CEP is overhyped.

Debate:      “CEP is Overhyped.”

Person A:   “CEP has been overhyped.”

Person B:     “CEP is just hype.”

The point of the discussion by person A was to point out that CEP has been overhyped.  Person B has exaggerated this to a harder to defend position, “CEP is mere hype.” or “CEP is just hype.”

From the customer perspective, I don’t think that fallacies and red-herring arguments are good for CEP.   Believe me, if we could take an “out of the box” stream processing rules-engine and bolt it on to a network and insure a client it would detect complex fraud, or diagnose network faults accurately, and not put my entire professional reputation on the line, I would do it in a heartbeat.

It is not the speed of the an engine which makes a good CEP engine, it is the capability of the analytics to deliver high-quality, high-confidence complex event detection in real-time.

Soldiers were deployed throughout Italy on Monday to embassies, subway and railway stations, as part of broader government measures to fight violent crime here for which illegal immigrants are broadly blamed.

[...]

The conservative government of Silvio Berlusconi won elections in April while promising to crack down on petty crime and illegal immigrants. The new patrols of soldiers, who are not empowered to make arrests, do not seem aimed only at illegal immigrants, though the patrols were deployed to centers where illegal immigrants are housed.

“Security is something concrete,” Mr. La Russa said on Monday. The troops, he said, will be a “deterrent to criminals.”

That reminds me of one of my favorite logical fallacies: "We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do it." It does seem largely to be a demonstration of "doing something" by the Berlusconi government. The legitimate police, of course, think it's a terrible idea.

“You need to be specially trained to carry out some kinds of controls,” Nicola Tanzi, the secretary of a trade union that represents Italian police officers. “Soldiers just aren’t qualified.”

He also questioned whether the $93.6 million that will be spent for the extra deployment, called Operation Safe Streets, might not have been better used to increase the budgets for Italy’s police and military.

This is a critical distinction. Telecoms are covered under the Telecom Act of 1996 that requires non-discriminatory access to utility poles to avoid incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) and utilities from being gatekeepers that prevent competitive service from emerging. There are a series of tests in the law and local qualifications, too, that allow a firm to be a registered telecom. An FCC decision last year ruled that companies that mix telecom and unregulated information services on the same wires aren't disqualified from getting the Telecom Act deal, however.

But E-Path seems to meet none of the criteria except their desire to pay $10 instead of $50 per year per pole. Utility poles have held up many other municipal networks. We're not hearing more about them these days because such networks are now being built on a smaller scale for different purposes, where the number of nodes and their placement is rather different than networks built with the intent of providing indoor coverage.

Cablevision, by the way, qualifies as a telecom, this article states, which helps them in placing nodes for their planned $300m network across their coverage territory. They can also mount nodes in-line with their cable lines, using power from their cable plant on the lines already.

E-Path appears to have a variety of communication problems as well. The article notes, "Tortoretti said his Washington, D.C., attorneys disagree with LIPA's interpretation. But the attorney Tortoretti said represents E-Path, Charles Rohe, said he couldn't speak about the company or the dispute."

Later, E-Path's "chief executive said he hopes the county will help with his LIPA dispute." But an aide to the Suffolk County executive said, "That's not really our issue. That's out of our control."

Correspondent Craig Plunkett, quoted near the end, points out that if the counties were to change their minds and want to buy services on the network, the proposal would have to be rebid (appears as the sound-alike "rebuild" by accident in the online article at this moment).