SPICE (protocol)

In computing, SPICE (the Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) is a remote-display system built for virtual environments which allows users to view a computing "desktop" environment - not only on its computer-server machine, but also from anywhere on the Internet and using a wide variety of machine architectures.

Qumranet originally developed SPICE as a closed source codebase in 2007. Red Hat, Inc acquired Qumranet in 2008, and in December 2009 decided to release the code under an open-source license and treat the protocol as an open standard.

Security

A SPICE client connection to a remote desktop server consists of multiple data channels, each of which is run over a separate TCP or UNIX socket connection. A data channel can be designated to operate in either clear-text, or TLS modes, allowing the administrator to tradeoff the security level vs performance. The TLS mode provides strong encryption of all traffic transmitted on the data channel.

In addition to encryption, the SPICE protocol allows for a choice of authentication schemes. The original SPICE protocol defined a ticket based authentication scheme using a shared secret. The server would generate an RSA public/private keypair and send its public key to the client. The client would encrypt the ticket (password) with the public key and send the result back to the server, which would decrypt and verify the ticket. The current SPICE protocol also allows for use of the SASL authentication protocol, thus enabling support for a wide range of admin configurable authentication mechanisms, in particular Kerberos.

Spice

A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, berry, bud or vegetable substance primarily used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are parts of leafy green plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Many spices have antimicrobial properties. This may explain why spices are more commonly used in warmer climates, which have more infectious disease, and why the use of spices is prominent in meat, which is particularly susceptible to spoiling. A spice may have other uses, including medicinal, religious ritual, cosmetics or perfume production, or as a vegetable.

History

Early history

The spice trade developed throughout South Asia and Middle East in around 2000 BCE with cinnamon and pepper, and in East Asia with herbs and pepper. The Egyptians used herbs for embalming and their demand for exotic herbs helped stimulate world trade. The word spice comes from the Old French word espice, which became epice, and which came from the Latin root spec, the noun referring to "appearance, sort, kind": species has the same root. By 1000 BCE, medical systems based upon herbs could be found in China, Korea, and India. Early uses were connected with magic, medicine, religion, tradition, and preservation.

Melange (fictional drug)

Melange (/meɪˈlɑːndʒ/ or /meɪˈlɑːnʒ/), often referred to as simply "the spice", is the name of the fictional drug central to the Dune series of science fiction novels by Frank Herbert, and derivative works.

In the series, the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe is melange, a drug that gives the user a longer life span, greater vitality, and heightened awareness; it can also unlock prescience in some humans, depending upon the dosage and the consumer's physiology. This prescience-enhancing property makes safe and accurate interstellar travel possible. Melange comes with a steep price, however: it is addictive, and withdrawal is fatal.

Carol Hart analyzes the concept in the essay "Melange" in The Science of Dune (2008). According to Paul Stamets, Herbert's creation of the drug was related in part to his own personal experiences with psilocybin mushrooms.

Description

Herbert is vague in describing the appearance of the spice. He hints at its color in Dune Messiah (1969) when he notes that Guild Navigator Edric "swam in a container of orange gas ... His tank's vents emitted a pale orange cloud rich with the smell of the geriatric spice, melange." Later in Heretics of Dune (1984), a discovered hoard of melange appears as "mounds of dark reddish brown." Herbert also indicates fluorescence in God Emperor of Dune (1981) when the character Moneo notes, "Great bins of melange lay all around in a gigantic room cut from native rock and illuminated by glowglobes ... The spice had glowed radiant blue in the dim silver light. And the smell—bitter cinnamon, unmistakable." Herbert writes repeatedly, starting in Dune (1965), that melange possesses the odor of cinnamon.

Spice (Perfume song)

"Spice" (スパイス, Supaisu) is the nineteenth single of Japanese girl group Perfume. It was released on November 2, 2011, as the lead single to the group's third studio album, JPN. It was also the group's last single to be released under Tokuma Japan Communications as the group moved to Universal Music Japan (as announced February 28, 2012) for their future releases.

Background

The B-side song, "Glitter", was first used in the commercial for Kirin. Then on September 5, 2011, the group released information on their website about a new single and album, both slated for release for November. The new single will be released on November 2 and will contain two songs including "Glitter" which was featured as a “Kirin Chu-Hi Hyouketsu” CM song. The group also announced that their third studio album will be released on November 30.

The name of the single was finally announced on September 26. It was also chosen as the theme song for the upcoming TBS drama “Sengyo Shufu Tantei ~Watashi wa Shadow“, starring actress Kyoko Fukada making it the group’s first single to tie-in with a drama series. The group's producer Yasutaka Nakata was heavily influenced by the image of the drama when he wrote “Spice”. It’s also the first time that he produced a soundtrack for them.

Communications protocol

In telecommunications, a communications protocol is a system of rules that allow two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. These are the rules or standard that defines the syntax, semantics and synchronization of communication and possible error recovery methods. Protocols may be implemented by hardware, software, or a combination of both.

Communicating systems use well-defined formats (protocol) for exchanging messages. Each message has an exact meaning intended to elicit a response from a range of possible responses pre-determined for that particular situation. The specified behavior is typically independent of how it is to be implemented. Communications protocols have to be agreed upon by the parties involved. To reach agreement, a protocol may be developed into a technical standard. A programming language describes the same for computations, so there is a close analogy between protocols and programming languages: protocols are to communications as programming languages are to computations.

Medical protocol

Medical protocol can refer to:

Cryptographic protocol

A security protocol (cryptographic protocol or encryption protocol) is an abstract or concrete protocol that performs a security-related function and applies cryptographic methods, often as sequences of cryptographic primitives. A protocol describes how the algorithms should be used. A sufficiently detailed protocol includes details about data structures and representations, at which point it can be used to implement multiple, interoperable versions of a program.

Cryptographic protocols are widely used for secure application-level data transport. A cryptographic protocol usually incorporates at least some of these aspects:

For example, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol that is used to secure web (HTTP/HTTPS) connections. It has an entity authentication mechanism, based on the X.509 system; a key setup phase, where a symmetric encryption key is formed by employing public-key cryptography; and an application-level data transport function. These three aspects have important interconnections. Standard TLS does not have non-repudiation support.