Archive for November, 2008

M.Sc. (Eng.) result leaves me with more questions

November 29, 2008 at 10:57 am · Filed under M.Sc. Project ·Tagged

Two days ago, I wrote on a kitchen-sink technology that got ratified at an IEEE flagship conference and promised that I would blog my thesis result, as soon as I get it. The result is out and impressive, I think. However, I am left with more unanswered questions than I thought of. One internal and one external examiner vetted the thesis. At first, I wanted to upgrade my M.Sc.(Eng.) to a Ph.D. Unfortunately, mind blowing ideas, which could be convincing enough to scholars, were not forthcoming neither was I getting the needed support. So, I decided to round-off my programme as an M.Sc.

In my mind, I had expected the examiners to make contributions (i.e. other things I could do), alongside the usual need to examine the contents of the thesis. That was not the case, on going through the reports. Nonetheless, the paper, which got accepted at the IEEE flagship now indicates that the idea is worthwhile. At present, I am thinking of other areas that a SIP-integrated web browser could find use, though I mentioned some in my thesis.

For those interested in the outcome of the review, below are scanned copies of the reports.

Summarily, the external examiner succinctly read the thesis, most notably his brief summary of the thesis, and made no request for corrections in it. And for the internal examiner, although he also thoroughly read the thesis, he only asked that some sentences be added to one or two chapters. The corrections made are included in the gallery above.

Although the thesis review indicates an impressive work done by the candidate (me), I am more worried than before on a probable Ph.D topic that I could work on. My resolution, at present, is to keep reading literature and extending my web browser extension to do other new things. At the end of the day, I might discover something that contributes to the body of knowledge, which is what a Ph.D is all about.

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A kitchen-sink technology that gets ratified at an IEEE flagship conference

November 27, 2008 at 4:16 am · Filed under M.Sc. Project ·Tagged , , ,

Here comes the first result. Getting a paper accepted in one of the IEEE flagship conferences is a dream come true. An excerpt from the conference website is this : “IEEE WCNC is the premier wireless event for wireless communications researchers, industry professionals, and academics interested in the latest development and design of wireless systems and networks. Sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society, IEEE WCNC has a long history of bringing together industry, academia, and regulatory bodies.“

It’s not about my paper that has just been accepted; rather, it’s about the idea. The paper, titled “Mapping Third Party Call Control and Session Hand-off in SIP Mobility to Content Sharing and Session Hand-off in the Web Browsing Context,” presented an idea, which was earlier referred to as a “Kitchen-sink technology.” A developer, who I interacted with on one of the Mozilla IRC Channels, called the idea of migrating web sessions using SIP a Kitchen-sink technology. In the academic world, it seems feasible, and the paper got accepted, after giving two use case scenarios to illustrate the problems. I must say that not all scholars bought the idea though. One of these people, who I often interact with, did not like the idea of migrating stateful web sessions between web browsers, though I said session data were encrypted in transit. In a nutshell, content sharing is a cool idea, but he is not too pleased with session handoff, based on one of replies to my mail. This work is my M.Sc. research work, and I have been blogging it for sometime. See one of my previous posts.

And for the paper, I managed to make the reviewers (researchers) buy the idea. I was skeptical about the paper’s acceptance, so also my supervisor, most notably, because we submitted it to one of the IEEE flagship conferences. The paper title is long, and making them buy the idea of mapping SIP mobility types to session handoff and content sharing in the Web browsing context is awesome.

Below is a screenshot of the review.

IEEE WCNC Review Screenshot

IEEE WCNC Review Screenshot

And what lessons or inspirations have I got from here? Don’t throw up the towel on what you are doing, some people will appreciate it, sooner or later. In addition, I feel I could leverage this result to pursue my Ph.D. I am also waiting for my thesis result and will blog it as soon as I get it. The ideas on what I could do for my Ph.D keep coming, and here is a confirmation.

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