Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

It would be a public library on the web for engineers and researchers. The target user group is public environmental agencies at the federal, state and local level - and their contractors.

About Time Series Animation :

In an (x,y,z) space with axes of varying length and scale and variable precision color coding on a scale for one axis surface creation for the points along the z axis input from sensors, simulations or both coordinate conversions. The time series animation facility will allow stop frame on a boolean trigger mechanism that sees the raw input data to the time series, the trigger mechanisms are evaluated. if any are true, the animation stops and the user is presented with a stop motion notification. During stop frame, the user would be able to "unhitch" the camera and fly around the frame. While in flight, the mouse can be used to attach "bookmarks" to other files and services to specific objects in the frame. Using the mouse, the viewer can also call up other bookmark indices left previously. This would have a security option.

The VRML facility would share the "bookmark" capability. We want to automate the creation of vrml environments using CAD input. These would be "batch" jobs "submitted" to the scheduler for deferred processing.

Time series animation services will have transcription services available. They will allow users to create, index and catalog mpeg movies from a time series as it runs.

The capacity to broadcast movies on a schedule is also desirable (MBONE).

the user would communicate with the system by interacting with his schedule for using the facilities. all users would be registered with a user id and password. The facility is always entered by "clicking thru" a tag in an e-mail. pretty good privacy with public encription keys and an LDAP directory would secure these e-mails.

Physical design constraints to ensure security, recoverability maintainability and speed include

we want to maximize the use of STABLE FREEWARE from the following sites :

We will be working with source code in JAVA, GNU C/C++, GNU G77 Fortran, tcl/tk.
assembler programmers interested in the creation of interrupt driven relocatable modules
These modules will be used to schedule and dispatch real time and deferred work requests, solve high speed logging problems, and percolated system recovery techniques and procedures are particularly welcome.

Linux platform support on Intel and OS/390 are the focus. Solaris, IRIS, Linux, Win 95/98, NT 4.0 and JAVA Console support are desired on the client side.

When a work request is selected from the queue, the work request is assigned to a node on the cluster. work requests are assigned a thread on some node in the cluster. The number of threads on a particular node will be load limited by a configuration parameter. From the master console, manual changes to this parameter can be done in real time, but, on a warm or cold boot, those changes would be overwritten from the configuration files. Threads have time limitations.

Some experimentation with making these tasks "restartable" will occur at some point.

Firewalls can be "layered" in front of the gatekeeper and between the gatekeeper and any thread visible to the gatekeeper.

Everything can be run on a single processor or a beowulf cluster of 2 or more nodes.

Security goal : services from behind a firewall or over VPN. Dial-up support through a security specific gateway node. master console can access computer without any os running. master console is non-tcp/ip. master console can change configuration file parameters "on the fly".

Basic security service : during normal operation queued service requests are logged each time status is changed. This is the request log-time/date/user id stamped.

Basic security service : during system recovery, request logs are used to rebuild the request queue.

Security goal : unique transaction ids, timestamp, date stamp and userid in all logging records

Security goal : sign on procedure -> logon on to web site with a password and user id ->
receive confirmation e-mail with login id and password -> click thru into service ---session logging

Security goal : user id / password access for individuals and groups - 8 char. alphanumeric passwords. groups have the general authorities any user in that group might normally be given.
From this outline, maybe you could help me find some interested parties ?

Specific questions are welcome.

mike eschman, engima

meschman@engima.com

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