Resource management (i.e., accounting and controlling the consumption of resources, such as CPU and memory) is extremely useful for monitoring deployed software. Run-time monitoring of server systems is important to quickly detect performance problems and to tune the system according to the workload. Resource management also is a prerequisite to prevent malicious or accidental resource overuse, such as denial-of-service attacks, in extensible middleware that allows hosting of foreign, untrusted software components. In commercial application servers, providers may charge their clients for the resources consumed by executed software components; the corresponding contracts should then state the maximal quantities of computing resources that the client is allowed to use, preferably in terms of platform-independent metrics such as the number of executed bytecodes. In emerging agent-oriented, context-aware software systems, self-tuning abilities are expected; these will in turn require awareness of resource availability and usage policies. Lastly, in resource-constrained embedded systems, software has to be aware of resource restrictions in order to prevent abnormal termination.
Currently, predominant programming languages and environments, such as Java [19] and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) [26], lack standardized resource management mechanisms. Whereas some prototypes have been proposed to address this lack (see the related work section), they are unfortunately all dependent on substantial amounts of native code, and thus prevent the deployment of resource-managed or resource-aware systems throughout widely heterogeneous networks. Therefore, we propose portable resource management with the aid of program transformations. We call our approach J-RAF2 (Java Resource Accounting Framework, 2nd edition) [4, 7, 21], which has been implemented in a tool with the same name.1 J-RAF2 is independent of any particular JVM and underlying operating system. It works with standard Java runtime systems and may be integrated into existing server and mobile object environments. Furthermore, this approach enables resource control within embedded systems based on Java processors, which provide a JVM implemented in hardware that cannot be easily modified [8].
The purpose of this report is to examine the operation of Web sites other than the government sanctioned annual credit report.com that offer consumers “free” access to their credit reports. As a result of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003 (FACTA), all consumers now have the right to request and obtain, once a year, a copy of their credit reports from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus Equifax, Experian, and Transunion.
Prior to FACTA, consumers had the right to obtain a free copy of their credit report only under a limited set of conditions: they were denied credit, at least in part, based on the information contained in a credit report? they were unemployed and would apply for unemployment within 60 days? they received public assistance? they had been a victim of identity theft and placed a fraud alert on their file? or believed their file contained inaccurate information due to fraudulent activity (Consumers Union, undated).
In 2007, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision proposed a new measure of market risk known as the incremental risk charge, or IRC; the proposal was updated in January 2009 and is expected to take effect in 2010. The IRC is incremental to the current Basel standard for market risk, which is based on a 99% value-at-risk (VaR) measured over a ten-day horizon. The standard VaR measure was designed to capture the risk in short-term fluctuations of highly liquid securities; but, over time, banks have come to include less liquid assets in their trading books.
The IRC arose in response to this changing composition of bank portfolios and as part of a broader attempt to equalize capital charges for similar risks held in banking and trading books. The proposal is detailed in reports of the Basel Committee ([4, 5]); for perspectives from the industry, see Duncan et al. [16], Sebton et al. [31], and Smillie and Epperlein [32]. For general background on risk capital, see, e.g., Crouhy, Galai, and Mark [11] and McNeil, Frey, and Embrechts [28].
