text:
CIS economies are in uncertainty – expert
YEREVAN, March 24. / ARKA /. Professor Ashot Tavadyan, head of a department at the State Economic University of Armenia, said the economies of several former Soviet republics making the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are experiencing a period of uncertainty with extending intervals.
Speaking at a video news conference between Yerevan and Moscow on modern Russia's economic policy, Tavadyan said their major problem is the gap between monetary and fiscal policies with domination of the monetary policy.
According to him, the CIS countries tacitly adhere to the Maastricht Treaty, according to which inflation should not exceed 3 %.
"And why not 5 %?. Who said that 3% is the best figure?" he asked.
In this regard, he noted that the Maastricht agreements were designed for European countries and can not be applied by transitional economies.
He argued that CIS countries need to dramatically increase their exports and take also dominant position within domestic markets and reduce imports.
The Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 in Maastricht (Netherlands), laying the foundations of the European Union. Member countries approved a number of criteria that must be fulfilled by countries which join the European Monetary Union. In particular, according to the document, government deficit must not exceed 3% of GDP, while public debt should be less than 60% of GDP. -
15:13 24.03.2014


text:
High school project now in design phase
State to share cost; local votes due in fall
Plans for a new Concord-Carlisle Regional High School are moving on to a more detailed design phase, and officials are preparing to bring the plan before voters for final approval in November.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority's board of directors voted to move into the schematic design phase on July 27, the next major step in the process, officials said.
"This is a very exciting stage in the MSBA process,'' state Treasurer Steven Grossman, the chairman of the authority's board, said in a statement. "The schematic designs that will be produced will give us our first look at the improved Concord-Carlisle Regional High School. They will help us narrow the scope and budget of the project so that we can be sure the final product is efficient, sustainable, and affordable.''
A specific estimate is still in the works, but construction is expected to cost about $75 million. The district's reimbursement rate from the state is 31 percent, but could be higher if it meets certain environmental goals.
Officials in Concord and Carlisle said they are pleased with the progress, and are working to put together the final documents before residents vote on the construction funds in separate Town Meeting sessions.
"We're on schedule, moving forward with it,'' said Elise Woodward, chairwoman of Concord's Board of Selectmen. "It's exciting - it's a big project.''
The MSBA and the regional district will now collaborate to produce detailed renderings to determine the exact scope and budget of the project.
In a letter to the Concord-Carlisle district's superintendent, Diana Rigby, the executive director of the MSBA said the district needs to move quickly in order to meet the November time line. MSBA executive director Katherine Craven said the district must work with the project manager and designer to submit the new information, along with the anticipated design and construction schedule.
Karla Johnson, cochairwoman of the Concord-Carlisle Regional High School Building Committee, said officials plan to submit updated information by Friday. The state agency is expected to vote on the project at its meeting next month, paving the way for the November votes in Concord and Carlisle. Both towns need to approve the funding in order for the long-awaited project to move forward.
Johnson, a resident of Carlisle, said she thinks residents support the idea of a new high school but are worried about the price tag.
"I think there's a lot of concern about the cost being affordable,'' she said.
Woodward said her town also wants to make sure the costs are kept under control.
"I think residents are convinced we need a new high school and are cautious about the cost of that high school,'' Woodward said. "I think we're on a good path. If we can balance a budget with our design aspirations, that would be wonderful.''
According to the MSBA, the agreed-upon design calls for a building that can accommodate 1,225 students in grades 9 through 12.
Johnson said the new school will be four stories tall and be built behind the existing school on Walden Street. The lower two floors will house the auditorium, gym, cafeteria, and library, while the upper two floors will have classrooms.
The committee considered several options, including renovations to the existing school, but new construction made the most sense, Johnson said.
She said cost and educational needs played a key role in deciding to move forward with new construction over renovation. She said renovation is more costly and the current building has many design flaws that make it difficult to meet the desired educational goals.
"To renovate the existing building, it would not have met the educational programming,'' Johnson said.
According to the district's statement of interest to the Mass. School Building Authority, the space is a particular problem for the school's science, arts, and special education programs.
The school has 17 sections of chemistry divided among four classrooms while sharing two labs; teachers improvise by using mobile carts to move demonstration materials from classroom to classroom. Physics lab experiments are conducted in the hallways because only two classrooms are equipped to handle them. Also, the high school does not have a biology lab due to inadequate space.
The building is also 50 years old and is in need of a new roof, windows, and lights.
Renovating the building also would have meant a longer construction time, and a need to provide space for students while the work was being done with classes in session, Johnson said.
Jennifer Fenn Lefferts can be reached at email@example.com.

subset: commoncrawl


text: On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 04:48:36PM +0000, Neil Mitchell wrote: > > "I propose that this module is added to the set of modules which is > guaranteed to be available in every Haskell implementation, and can be > used by programs with a simple import statement." > > Currently that means "is in base". For GHC that means "is a core lib"; I'm not sure of the policy for the other implementations. Perhaps we should rename that "is a GHC core lib" and define a list of global "core libs" (of which "GHC core libs" would be a superset) somewhere? I haven't looked at the particular library, but have no problem with some sort of file path manipulating library to be used by cabal Setup.hs's being in the core libs set. Thanks Ian


text:
Review this product!
Angel Playing Triangle
Christmas OrnamentSKU: COWN11004
Known to have been used in Medieval religious ceremonies, the triangle is a member of the percussion family. Our triangle playing cherub joins her other angelic band mates in a heavenly symphony. She's handcrafted of wood in Germany.
Dimensions: 1 3/4" x 3"
Material: German Wood
Material: German Wood


text:
|N�mero de publicaci�n
|Tipo de publicaci�n
|N�mero de solicitud
|Fecha de publicaci�n
|7 Sep 2010
|Fecha de presentaci�n
|21 Feb 2001
|Fecha de prioridad
|25 Feb 2000
|Tambi�n publicado como
|N�mero de publicaci�n
|Jay Farhat, Alla Rozenfeld, Singam Sunder, Jeff Edgett, Can Vu
|Cesionario original
|Ipass Inc.
|Exportar cita
|BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
|Citas de patentes (104), Otras citas (49), Citada por (2), Clasificaciones (33), Eventos legales (4)
|Enlaces externos: USPTO, Cesi�n de USPTO, Espacenet
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/185,180, filed Feb. 25, 2000.
The present invention relates generally to the field of multi-party service access and, more specifically, to the brokering and settlement of service access transactions in a multi-party environment, involving multiple service providers and multiple service customers, such as a roaming service access environment.
Due to the increasing globalization of economies, the need to provide communications between geographically dispersed persons and facilities has increased. For example, a particular business may have facilities located across multiple countries and continents. A further result of increased globalization has been an increase in business travel. The increasing dependence of corporations and persons on Internet-based communications has furthermore made it desirable that mobile workers (so-called "road warriors") be able to access Internet-based and wireless communications as they travel worldwide. Services that facilitate communications to such mobile persons are commonly referred to as "roaming services". Considering Internet-based communications as an example, in order to meet the needs of mobile customers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have begun to offer local-call access to the Internet from various locations world-wide, such a service being termed a "roaming" Internet access solution. The requirement for a roaming solution arises primarily because ISPs tend to specialize by geographic area, causing gaps in service coverage. The expansion of network infrastructure, network management and continuous upgrades to meet required reliability and performance standards all place tremendous capital and time burdens on ISPs. For these reason, many ISPs only locate Points of Presence (POPs) in a limited geographic area.
For the reasons set out above, the ability for ISPs to offer Internet roaming solutions, especially to business customers, is becoming increasingly important as many businesses utilize Internet-based communications to replace traditional remote access solutions for their telecommuters and mobile work forces.
In order to provide Internet roaming solutions, some ISPs have begun to share network infrastructure to gain additional geographic reach. This infrastructure sharing might take the form of an agreement to allow users of one ISP to gain Internet access through another ISP's network.
The bilateral agreement between the ISPs 10 and 18 illustrated in
To summarize, a number of problems are encountered when ISPs attempt to share network infrastructure. Firstly, the creation of a secure authentication scheme over a public access network may be difficult. Secondly, managing accounting information and sharing costs may be complex. Thirdly, providing sufficient scalability may be challenging. These problems become exasperated as ISPs attempt to provide global coverage, requiring that a particular ISP enter into relationships with a large number of other ISPs. This arrangement does not scale well, and the complexity of managing these relationships significantly increase each time a new partnership is established.
The present invention provides a method to facilitate financial settlement of service access transactions between multiple parties. Data concerning a plurality of transactions is automatically collected from respective service providers of a plurality of service providers, the plurality of transactions being between the plurality of service providers and a plurality of service customers to facilitate service access by the plurality of service customers. A respective transaction values are automatically determined for each of the plurality of transactions. Account payable balances for a plurality of service providers and account receivable balances for the plurality of service customers and service users are automatically updated based on the respective transaction values for each of the plurality of transactions.
Other features of the present invention will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description that follows.
The present invention is illustrated by way of example and not limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings, in which like references indicate similar elements and in which:
A method and system to facilitate financial settlement of service access transactions between multiple parties are described. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. It will be evident, however, to one skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details.
For the purposes of the present specification, the term "service access transaction" should be taken to include a transaction between a service customer and a service provider for access to a service. An example of such a service may be access to any communications network via any medium or protocol. For example, the communications networks may comprise packet-switched networks, circuit-switched networks, cable networks, satellite networks, terrestrial networks, wired networks, or wireless networks. The term "service access transaction", however, is not limited to a network access transaction, and encompasses a transaction pertaining to access to any one of a number of other services such as content, commerce and communications services.
For the purposes of the present specification, the term "customer" shall be taken to include any entity involved in the purchase and/or consumption of service access, regardless of whether the service access is performed by the customer or not. For example, a "customer" may be an end-user consumer that actually utilizes the service access, or a corporate entity to which such an end-user belongs, an Internet service provider, an Internet carrier, a reseller, or a channel.
The present invention discloses a third-party access broker and settlement system for service access (e.g., Internet access, content access, commerce access, or communications access) services that enable a service provider (e.g., an ISP, a wireless service provider, a VPN service provider, a content distribution service provider, an e-commerce service provider or an application service provider) to offer provider independent service access to multiple services in a geographically dispersed manner. One embodiment of the present invention provides a method for service providers to exchange authentication, usage and accounting information in a secure, standardized manner without the need to establish multiple bilateral relationships with other service providers, as described above with reference to
The access broker system 34, according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, is shown to include a number of components. A connection application 46 is a client application, typically installed on a service access device (e.g., a computer system) of a customer 36 that facilitates convenient access to a communications network. In one embodiment, the connection application 46 comprises a dialer that provides a simple point-and-click interface for dialing into a worldwide connection network of the access broker system 34. To this end, the connection application 46 may store multiple phone numbers for multiple ISPs worldwide with potentially different setup and dial-up scripting information.
Transaction servers 48 provide trusted third-party functionality of routing and logging user identification information, authorization responses and usage and accounting information, as will be described in detail below.
Network servers 50 are installed on a "remote" ISP allowing its POPs to be utilized by roaming users. Roaming servers 52 reside at a "home" ISP to allow users access to a roaming network. It should be noted that the transaction servers 48 operate to route messages between the network and roaming servers 50 and 52.
A settlement system 53, according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, performs financial settlement of service access transactions between the service providers 32 and the customers 36.
The access broker system 34 is also shown to include Service Quality Monitor 55 (SQM) that facilitates the collection and analysis of quality of service (QoS) information for services provided to customers 36 and a phonebook management system 56 that facilitates management of multiple connection applications 46 utilized by customers 36.
The settlement system 53, the SQM 55 and the phonebook management system 56 interface directly with central settlement database.
The network and roaming servers 50 and 52 do not interface with the central settlement database. The transaction servers 48 are accessed by the settlement system 53 to load transaction data. Functioning of the settlement system 53, and an included flexible pricing engine 58, are described in detail below. The settlement system 53 may be viewed as including the following high-level components:
Turning now to the customers 36,
A customer 36 may also comprise an ISP customer 64 that purchases roaming Internet access for resale to its customers (e.g., end-users 60 and corporate customers 62). A customer 36 may also operate as a solution partner or reseller 64 that markets and resells roaming Internet access brokered by the access broker system 34 to end-users 60, corporate customers 62 or ISP customers 64.
The customers 36 may also include parties regarded as Internet Carriers 66 (e.g., IXCs, RBOs, CLECs, ILECs and ISPs). It will be appreciated that any of the entities comprising the customers 36, as discussed above, may operate to purchase service access from the access broker system 34 either for use or resale.
Roaming Service Access
Referring specifically to
This authentication information is collected by a terminal server or a network authorization server (NAS) 15 and is sent to an authorization server 20 of the remote ISP 10. In the normal course of operations, a network authorization server (NAS) 15 at the remote ISP 10 would reject the supplied authentication information. However, as illustrated in
The authorization server 20, in conjunction with the network server 54, parses the received authentication information to determine a roaming domain name and prefix associated with the roaming user. Should such a domain name or prefix be present, the user's authentication information is encrypted using an algorithm from RSA Data Securities, and sent from the network server 54 to a transaction server 48 via secure socket layer (SSL).
The transaction server 48 performs an Internet Protocol (IP) look-up and routes the authentication request to an appropriate home ISP 18. More specifically, the transaction server 48 receives an encrypted authentication request from the network server 54 at the remote ISP 10, and decrypts this request. The transaction server 48 then determines the "home" ISP 18 by matching the roaming domain name of the desired home ISP 18 against a current list of participant domain names and IP addresses. If the match is successful, the authentication request is encrypted and sent via SSL to a roaming server 52 that resides at the home ISP 18. In the event that the identified roaming server 52 does not respond within a specific period, the transaction server 48 will attempt to contact an alternative roaming server 52 at the ISP of the relevant domain.
The roaming server 52 at the "home" ISP 18 then decrypts the authentication request sent from the transaction server 48, and submits the authentication request to the "home" ISP's regular authorization server 22 as if it were a terminal server or NAS 15 owned by the home ISP 18. The "home" ISP 18 authorization server 22 responds to the request by providing an "access permitted" or an "access denied" response based on the validity of the user name and password included within the authentication request. The response from the authorization server 22 is received by the roaming server 52, encrypted, and sent back to the transaction server 48.
The transaction server 48 receives the encrypted response, identifies the remote ISP 10, encrypts the response, and returns the authorization message to the remote ISP 10.
When a roaming user 16 connects and disconnects from remote ISP 10, the terminal server (or NAS) 15 managing the session generates the accounting information and sends this information to the authorization server 20. The authorization server 20, in conjunction with the network server 54, parses the accounting information to determine a roaming domain name and prefix associated with the roaming user. Should such a domain name or prefix be present, the user's accounting information is encrypted using an algorithm from RSA Data Securities, and sent from the network server 54 to a transaction server 48 via secure socket layer (SSL). The network server 54 ensures the accounting records are generated for the roaming user 16.
An accounting record is then communicated, in near real-time, to the transaction server 48 utilizing SSL, where the accounting records are stored in the database. These accounting records are further processed by the settlement system 53 to produce Call Detail Records (CDRs). Each call detail record provides detailed usage reporting regarding the identity of the roaming user 16, when the relevant service access occurred, the location of the service access, the length and cost of each service access session, and the time of the service access (e.g., local or GMT time).
Multiple transaction servers 48 provide accounting records to the settlement system 53, which utilizes these records to generate bills (or invoices) to customers 36, and also to make payments to service providers 32.
In summary, the settlement system 53 generates bills and distributes them among customers 36 so that they can make payments to the settlement system 53, and in turn bill their customers if appropriate. Similarly, the settlement system 53 makes payments to the remote (or visitor) ISPs or other service providers 32 for accrued access time used by roaming users. The settlement system 53 may further guarantee payment for authorized use by a roaming user. An operator of the settlement system 53 thus acts as a secure, trusted entity providing a mechanism for facilitating financial settlement of service access transactions between multiple parties. The settlement system 53 implements numerous automatic functions and operations so as to enable the settlement in a timely, automated and convenient manner. Further details regarding the operation of the settlement system to facilitate such settlement or service access transactions will be described in detail below.
Physical Architecture
The settlement system 53, and a collection of internal users 88 are shown to reside behind a firewall 90. Specifically, the settlement system 53 is hosted on one or more server machines 92 that have access to a central database 94.
Overview—Settlement System
The back-end (or server-side) applications 100 are shown to include a settlement application 108 that determines a transaction price, updates account balances for all parties involved in a transaction, and verifies credit limits, a billing application 110 that closes an accounting cycle, applies periodical fees, generates billing reports, including invoices and call detail records (CDRs), and publishes billing reports to the web, and an auditing application 112 that verifies business rules and structural integrity of the central database 94. The settlement application 108 is shown to embody the flexible pricing engine 58.
The settlement application 108 is responsible for normalization, summarization and verification functions. The normalization function includes converting accounting data received from multiple transaction servers 48 into a single format CDR to be used for billing, identifying parties involved in a service access transaction, and defining the price that the access broker system 34 owes to a provider 32 and the price that a customer 36 owes to the access broker system 34 for a particular service access transaction.
The summarization function involves applying buy and sell prices to account balances for all parties involved in a service access transaction, and updating appropriate account balances. The verification function includes the verification of credit limits.
The settlement system 53 operates to provide near real-time settlement of service access transactions to allow for the near real-time revenue and account tracking by both providers 32 and customers 36.
As mentioned above, the settlement system 53 includes the flexible pricing engine 58 that supports a flexible pricing model, which has the following features:
The flexible pricing engine 58 is database-driven, thus allowing implementation of new pricing models by loading the appropriate plan into pricing tables (not shown) maintained within the central database 94.
More specifically, the flexible pricing engine 58 facilitates a multi-tiered pricing model, whereby rates for a single service access transaction may be applied across multiple tiers of consumer (or customer) according to multiple criteria. These criteria may include, inter alia, any combination of usage (e.g., accumulated usage time or value total) pricing and transactional (e.g., an accumulated total number of transactions) pricing.
Exemplary criteria that may be embodied within a pricing model 65 applicable to a particular consumer may be any combination of usage and transaction pricing. For example, when an accumulated usage or transaction total for a particular reseller 64, which may provide access to any number of further levels of customer, reaches a predetermined threshold, the pricing applied for service access may change. Specifically, volume discounts based on usage or transaction totals may apply. In this way, a customer on a particular tier of a multi-tiered customer structure may obtain the benefit of service accesses by customers below the relevant customer, and obtain favorable pricing based on, for example, volumes of service access usage or service access transactions that the reseller customer purchases from the access broker system 34.
Similarly, usage and transaction totals may be maintained for the corporate customer 62 for accesses to the network by all end users 60 (e.g., employees) associated with the corporate customer 62, so as to enable the corporate customer 62 to obtain pricing benefits associated with the amount of service access usage, and a number of service access transactions, by employees of the relevant corporate consumer 62.
Other pricing criteria that may be included within a pricing model 65 applicable to a specific customer include:
A respective pricing model 65 may also specify certain subscription, or flat rate pricing to be applied to an appropriate customer.
In summary, by providing a multi-tiered, flexible pricing model, the pricing engine 58 allows a single service access transaction, by any customer within a multi-tiered customer structure, to be reflected in the account balances for multiple customers according to a dedicated pricing model 65 for each of those respective customers.
Returning now to
An order processing application 116 provides user interfaces to customers 36 (e.g., solution partners 64 or resellers) to place orders for new corporate customers.
The data aggregation and reporting applications 104 include several processes that summarize data on a daily or monthly basis to enable operational, functional and network load reporting.
The system interfaces 106 have a loader application that includes a transaction server loader 118, a provider loader 120 and accounting system interfaces (not shown). Dealing first with the transaction server loader 118, a "data loader" component pulls accounting records from the databases 82 of the respective transaction servers 48 to the central database 94 for processing. Multiple transaction server loaders 118 may be implemented as distributed database links, and the accounting records are pulled via the loaders 118 in near real-time.
A provider loader 120 receives call detail records (CDRs) from providers 32 in a batch form. This CDR data is pre-processed by a provider loader 120, which may retrieve the data from an appropriate FTP site and convert it into the same format as the data received from the transaction servers 48.
Overview—Data Model
A normalization process 172 then converts the raw call detail records retrieved from the raw CDR table 170 into normalized call detail records to be stored in a CDR table 174, while a summarization process 176 summarizes the normalized call detail records into summarized records for storage in an account cycle table 178 and a user account cycle table 179.
It should be noted that the load, normalization and summarization operations are performed in near real-time, which is facilitated by multithreaded processes. Specifically, each thread makes a connection to an appropriate database 82. Accordingly, the transaction server loaders 118, the provider loaders 120, and normalization process 172 are shown to include multiple threads to provide the near real-time capabilities.
Methodology—Load, Normalization and Summarization
The method 180 commences with the loading of accounting records from the respective databases 82 of the transaction servers 48, in the manner described above. Specifically, each server 48 may, in one embodiment, generate three types of records for each roaming user session, namely: (1) an authentication record; (2) a session start accounting record; and (3) a session end accounting record. In one embodiment, only the session end accounting record is retrieved via the transaction server loaders 118, and utilized by the settlement system 53, as such records contain all required information concerning the duration of a particular service access session.
At block 184, the provider loaders 120 similarly retrieve call detail records from relevant service providers 32. The provider loaders 120 load and pre-process call detail records received from the providers 32, including decrypting such records, parsing and loading the records into appropriate tables, and converting the records into a standard format for inclusion within the raw CDR table 170.
A normalization operation is performed at block 186 by a normalization process 172, as illustrated in
At block 202, a filtering process eliminates call detail records that are considered to be invalid from further processing and billing. For example, the following call detail records may be considered invalid:
At block 204, a duplicate detection function identifies duplicate accounting records, and eliminates them from further processing. Such duplicate records may be included within the raw CDR table 170 as network authorization servers (NAS's) 15 may resend accounting records if the response from a destination is not received within a predetermined time interval.
At block 206, a transaction normalization function is performed, followed by a transaction summarization function at block 208. Further details regarding the transaction normalization and transaction summarization functions are described below with reference to
At block 210, a credit limit verification function retrieves credit limit and credit limit threshold information for a given customer from the central database 94, verifies customer account balances against the credit limit and credit threshold information, and sends an e-mail to an accounting contact if the credit limit or credit threshold is exceeded.
Returning to the transaction normalization at block 206,
At block 214, the relevant customer identity for a specific call detail record is resolved. Specifically, a stored procedure "resolve_customer" parses user login string to extract a domain name. The domain name may then be validated against a "customer_domain" table, which results in a "customer_id". If a domain cannot be resolved, an exception is generated.
At block 216, the call location is resolved. Call locations are represented in accounting records in a variety of ways, and specific business rules are defined to determine the location type for a given call detail record. Specifically, the resolution of the call location, at block 218, may determine a location type based on a provider identifier that identifies which field in a call detail record contains a location value. At block 220, records are selected from a "location" table 221 based on a provider identifier, location type and location value, and the location identifier and location group identifier are determined.
At block 222, a contract and pricing plan are resolved. Specifically, this involves the three operations indicated at blocks 224-228. At block 224, a determination is made as to whether a specific customer has a reseller (or parent), for which the service access is purchased. At block 226, product is determined based on the type of transaction (e.g., for example, roaming, telephony, e-commerce). At block 228, a contract and pricing plan are selected from a "contract" table 229 based on a customer identifier, a location identifier, a reseller identifier (if any) and a product identifier.
At block 230, a buy rate and a sell rate are resolved. Further details regarding this operation are described below with respect to
At block 234, the normalization is completed. Specifically, the normalization process 172 stores the results of the process in the normalized call detail records (CDR) table 174. The status of a call detail record within the raw CDR table 170 may be changed to "normalized", billing event records may be included within a "billing event" table (not shown), one billing event record being for the relevant customer 36 and the other being for the relevant provider 32. The normalized call detail record is then stored in the CDR table 174.
Further details regarding the resolution of the buy and sell rates at block 230 will now be described.
At block 242, a determination is made as to whether there is an active promotion for a given contract identifier.
At block 244, a usage rate is selected from a rate usage table 245 of the pricing tables 136 based on a pricing plan identifier, a location group identifier, a transaction date and total usage for a customer (e.g., an end-user, corporation or reseller) for a current accounting cycle. The total usage parameter may, in one embodiment, only be used where usage-based rating conditions are included within a rate.
At block 246, a promotional usage discount, from a promotion record, is applied if it is determined at block 242 that a promotion is active.
At block 248, a reseller usage discount may be applied from a contract record, if the customer is determined to be a customer of a reseller to which such a discount is provided.
At block 250, a transaction rate is determined from a rate transaction table 251 of the pricing tables 136 utilizing the same criteria that were utilized at block 244 to select the usage rate.
At block 252, a promotion transaction discount is applied from the promotion record, where it is determined at block 242 that there is active promotion.
Accordingly, from blocks 244-252, a usage rate, less a usage discount and a transaction rate, less a transaction discount are determined. At block 254, a sell rate may be computed by adding the discounted usage and transaction rates, whereafter the computed sell rate may be rounded to the nearest cent.
At block 256, if it is determined that the sell rate is less than the buy rate, an exception may be raised and accounting may be notified.
It should furthermore be noted that the selections of the usage and transactional rates at blocks 244 and 250 include verification of the following conditions:
In one exemplary embodiment, a rate stored and a rate record of the rate usage or rate transaction table may include three components, namely:
Further details shall now be provided regarding the transaction summarization operation of block 208, shown in
At block 264, a customer account cycle record within the customer account cycle table 179 is updated by incrementing the following account cycle balances maintained within an appropriate record:
An account balance is further calculated utilizing a formula based on a value of several balances from a customer account cycle. The account balance is recalculated every time an account cycle record is updated.
At block 266, an end-user customer transaction is updated by incrementing usage accumulated/value, usage accumulated/time and user counters that support end-user customer level usage pricing conditions.
At block 268, a provider account cycle is updated by incrementing usage provided/value and usage provided/time balances, and by decrementing a current services charge balance and an account balance.
It should furthermore be noted that, for different customer types (e.g., resellers, ISPs, consumers and end-users), different balance types may be maintained to support a pricing model 65 applicable to the particular consumer. Examples of such balances for a corporate consumer 62 and an end-user are listed below:
Returning to the method 180 illustrated in
At block 190, a cycle summary (or cycle close) is run at the end of a predetermined time period (e.g., daily, weekly or monthly). Specifically, the billing application 110 supports customer specific billing schedules, which facilitates the billing of different customers on different dates. A specified customer cycle close time and/or day may be stored in a customer_billing_information table (not shown). A cycle close summarizes customer and user account cycle and closes customer account cycle.
At block 452, monthly flat fees may be summarized.
This involves the selection of all records from a flat fee table 243, included within the pricing tables 136, for a particular plan identifier associated with the relevant customer.
At block 454, if the plan includes a start-up fee, and the current cycle is the first cycle for a given customer, the start-up fee is calculated by resolving the rate identifier from the flat fee table 243 to the dollar amount, applying a fee discount from the flat fee table 243, and a reseller start-up fee discount (if any) from the contract table 229 to the fee amount. Thereafter, a billing record is inserted into a billing event table (not shown). Start-up fee and service charge balances are incremented.
At block 456, if the plan includes cycle (or monthly) fees, the cycle fee is calculated by resolving the rate identifier from the flat fee table 243 to the dollar amount and applying a fee discount from the flat fee table 243 to the fee amount. A billing record is then inserted into the billing event table (not shown) and cycle fee and service charge balances are incremented.
At block 458, if the plan includes user cycle fees, a number of end users for the cycle is calculated by calculating the number of records of the user account cycle for the relevant customer. A fee is calculated by resolving the rate identifier from the flat fee table 243 to the dollar amount, applying a fee discount from the flat fee table 243 to the fee amount, and multiplying it by the number of users, as previously calculated. A billing event record is then inserted into the billing event table (now shown), and user cycle fee and service charge balances are incremented.
At block 460, if the plan includes a flat rate plan user penalty fee, a number of end users for the cycle is calculated by calculating the number of records in the user account cycle for the relevant customer. A delta is calculated between an active amount of users and a number of users contained in the contract record. A fee is calculated by resolving a rate identifier from the flat fee table 243, applying a fee discount from the flat fee table 243 to the fee amount, and multiplying this amount by the delta, as previously calculated. A billing event record is then inserted into the billing event table (not shown) and user cycle fee and service charge balances are incremented.
If a fee contained in the flat fee table 243 is not one of the fee types discussed above, an exception is raised.
Having then summarized the monthly flat fees at block 252, the process 190 progresses to block 462, where monthly commitments are summarized. Specifically, if a contract record is determined to contain a monthly commitment, a number of operations are performed. Specifically, if the monthly commitment is specified as a dollar amount, a verification operation is performed to determine whether total usage charges for the cycle are lower than the committed amount and, if so, a commitment penalty is set to the difference between the total usage charges and the committed amount.
If the commitment is specified as time, a verification operation is performed to determine whether total usage time for the cycle is lower than the committed time period. If so, a commitment penalty is calculated as the delta between the total usage time for the cycle and the commitment time, this delta being multiplied by the commitment penalty rate contained in the contract.
A billing event record is then inserted into the billing event table (not shown), and commitment penalty and service charge balances are incremented.
At block 464, the account cycle is closed.
Returning to
At block 194, a system audit process is performed. At block 196, a financial summary generation process is run periodically (e.g., daily) to support daily and monthly operational and finance reporting. The financial summary generation process aggregates revenue by customer or provider, time of service access transaction occurrence, time within which the service access transaction is settled, country and region called. A number of summary tables may then be generated.
At block 198, a network data aggregation process summarizes the service access transaction data to support network load reporting, which includes information on total users, total number of connections, maximum simultaneous users and average session duration by country, city, state, transaction date and hour.
At block 200, a certificate management process manages certificates for the network servers 54 and the roaming servers 52 installed at various remote sites.
Settlement Classes
Exemplary classes that implement the settlement and billing functionality described above will now be described. Exemplary settlement classes may implement the following processes:
The load, normalization and summarization processes are, in one embodiment, implemented in near real-time utilizing multi-threaded processes. Specifically, each thread makes an independent connection to a database. In one embodiment, the load and normalization processes are controlled by a "dispatcher thread" 271.
As described above, and as will be apparent from
Specifically, the transaction server loader threads 118 are implemented by a transaction server loader class 117, shown in
If data is available for processing at a specific transaction server 48, the respective loader thread 118 retrieves the raw data from the remote location, and loads the retrieved data into a transaction history table. The loader thread 118 loads a "STOP" accounting record in the raw CDR table 170, and notifies the normalize dispatcher thread 271 by generating an appropriate normalize message. The transaction server loader thread 118 then suspends further processing by "going to sleep" for a specified amount of time.
The provider loader threads 120 are implemented by a provider loader class 121 to poll remote provider servers (e.g., FTP servers) for data files. If data is available for processing from a specific provider, a respective provider loader thread 120 retrieves the data from the remote server via, for example, PGP. Again, a separate and dedicated provider loader thread 120 is instantiated for each service provider 32 from which data is retrieved. The loader thread 120 then loads the retrieved data into a history table, and loads a "STOP" accounting record into the raw CDR table 170, and notifies the normalize dispatcher thread 271 by generating a normalized message. A provider loader thread 120 then suspends further processing by going to sleep for a specific amount of time.
Turning specifically to the normalize dispatcher thread 271, this thread is responsible for polling the raw CDR table 170 for data. When a raw row is available for processing, the dispatcher thread 271 attempts to locate a normalizer thread (of the normalization process 172 shown in
The normalizer thread class 274 operates to process raw CDR records and determines parties involved in a service access transaction (i.e., the customer and the provider), defines the price that the access broker system 34 owes to the provider 32 for a specific network transaction (i.e., the buy price) and the price that the customer owes to the access broker system 34 (i.e., the sell price). The normalizer thread class 274 further creates a CDR record, two billing event records and updates account_cycle records associated with a provider 32 and a customer 36 for a specific network transaction. The normalizer thread class 274 further resets the status of a raw CDR record to "normalize" and suspends further operation until the dispatcher thread 271 sends another raw CDR record for processing.
The Purge Raw CDR class 276 invokes the purge thread 272 to prune raw CDR table 170 at predetermined intervals. Specifically, the purge thread 272 purges raw CDR records from the table 170 that are older than a predetermined threshold (e.g., two hours), and that have the status of "normalized", "filtered", "duplicate" and "exception".
Upon receiving the "data loaded" message from the loader thread 118, the dispatcher thread 271 starts filtering the loaded records. The status of the raw CDR records that should be filtered out is changed to "filtered".
After filtering the raw CDR records, the dispatcher thread 271 detects and removes duplicates from the loaded records. The status of the duplicate raw CDR records is changed to "duplicate".
Records that are not filtered or removed as duplicate are marked as "RAW". The dispatcher thread 271 then retrieves the list of "RAW" records from the raw CDR table 170 and attempts to locate an available normalizer thread 273 for processing of each record.
In the event that the dispatcher thread 271 locates a normalizer thread 273, it sends a "normalize" message to that thread 273. If the dispatcher thread 271 cannot locate a normalizer thread 273 to process the "RAW" record, it suspends further operation by sleeping for a specific amount of time. The dispatcher thread 271 loops in the dispatching state until all "RAW" records in the raw CDR table 170 are dispatched for processing. After all the "RAW" records in the raw CDR table 170 are processed, the dispatcher thread 271 suspends further operation while sleeping for a specified amount of time.
A normalizer thread 273 receives the "normalize" message and processes the "RAW" record. The normalizer thread 273 then resets the status of the raw CDR record to "normalized" and suspends further operation until the dispatcher thread sends another raw CDR record for processing.
The purge thread 272 purges raw CDR rows older than two hours and with a status of "normalized", filtered, "duplicate", and "exception".
User Interfaces
Computer System
The computer system 400 includes a processor 402, a main memory 404 and a static memory 406, which communicate with each other via a bus 408. The computer system 400 may further include a video display unit 310 (e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a cathode ray tube (CRT)). The computer system 400 also includes an alphanumeric input device 412 (e.g., a keyboard), a cursor control device 414 (e.g., a mouse), a disk drive unit 416, a signal generation device 418 (e.g., a speaker) and a network interface device 420.
The disk drive unit 416 includes a machine-readable medium 422 on which is stored a set of instructions (i.e., software) 424 embodying any one, or all, of the methodologies described above. The software 424 is also shown to reside, completely or at least partially, within the main memory 404 and/or within the processor 402. The software 424 may further be transmitted or received via the network interface device 420. For the purposes of this specification, the term "machine-readable medium" shall be taken to include any medium which is capable of storing or encoding a sequence of instructions for execution by the machine and that cause the machine to perform any one of the methodologies of the present invention. The term "machine-readable medium" shall accordingly be taken to included, but not be limited to, solid-state memories, optical and magnetic disks, and carrier wave signals.
Thus, a method and system to facilitate financial settlement of service access transactions between multiple parties have been described. Although the present invention has been described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments, it will be evident that various modifications and changes may be made to these embodiments without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
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text:
The Eye of the Beholder
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum's new Triennial examines beauty through lots of new lenses.
Seven is considered a notorious number in the world of storytelling: Snow White had seven dwarves; there are seven deadly sins; seven colors in the rainbow. So it was somewhat fortuitous when the curators of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum arrived at seven themes for this year's Triennial exhibition, Beauty. The fifth installment of the museum's series, the show departs from past projects, which focused on social and environmental issues. "We were excited to explore the sensual side of design," says curator Ellen Lupton. "We wanted to change direction and look at how design creates feelings of joy, surprise, wonder, and awe in the minds and bodies of individual viewers.
"We wanted to look at how design creates feelings of joy, surprise, wonder, and awe" - Ellen Lupton, curator.
Turning to how we experience design, Lupton and her fellow curators looked at works like a forehead tiara by Israeli jeweler Noa Zilberman that resembles wrinkles and avant-garde makeup by Pat McGrath and identified seven categories through which to examine beauty: Extravagant, Intricate, Ethereal, Transgressive, Emergent, Elemental, and Transformative. "It was like studying Tarot cards, laying out the work we'd found in search of patterns," says Lupton. They arrived at a show featuring 63 designers spanning fashion, art, and architecture around the globe. Here, we pick our seven highlights from the show.
1. Extravagant
The first theme in the show, Extravagant, explores how designers seduce the eye with rich materials and deceptive surfaces. Case in point, this dramatic haircut by iconic stylist Guido Palau. Other artists in this section include fashion designer Giambattista Valli, makeup artist Pat McGrath, and nail artist Naomi Yasuda.
2. Intricate
The Intricate section looks at ornate and complex craftsmanship—from the stylized typography of Scandinavian-American design firm Non-Format to the elaborate wallpaper installation by Dutch design duo Studio Job. Here, we see a tapestry from Colombian textile atelier Hechizoo, which is woven with fish scales, porcupine quills, copper, and polymetal to represent the Amazon.
3. Ethereal
This section examines designers who work in the ephemeral space where time, light, or air affect the permanence of the work. The museum has commissioned scent artist Sissel Tolaas, who has preserved molecules from Central Park and created a unique smell that's been captured in a microencapsulated paint (visitors rub the paint to release the aroma). One of the more visual works is this one by jeweler Maiko Takeda in her "Atmospheric Reentry" headpiece that is influenced by shadows, wind, and gravity.
4. Transgressive
The designers in the Transgressive section challenge established notions of beauty and gender. Works include unisex clothing by Rad Hourani, the Haas Brothers' beaded creatures made in collaboration with the Khayelitsha settlement outside Cape Town, South Africa, and this headpiece by Ana Rajcevic—the wearable sculpture blurs the lines between humans and animals.
5. Emergent
The Emergent theme presents works that utilize code and mathematics. On view are Neri Oxman's 3-D printed wearable objects and Jenny Sabin's walk-in, knitted structure, commissioned for the exhibition, that can store and transmit light. Here, Daniel Brown's digital blossoms, taken from his "On Growth and Form" flower animation.
6. Elemental
Elemental looks at designers who use basic materials to create clean, geometric forms. Works like FormaFantasma's mirror, made from lava rock and obsidian, and this series of silicone containers by Industrial Facility will be on view.
7. Transformative
Transformative features designers who use familiar materials in an unexpected way. Designers featured include Brynjar Sigurðarson, who makes furniture from materials of Icelandic fisherman and Jantje Fleishhut's precious jewelry that resembles asteroids and interstellar debris.
Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial is open now through August 21, 2016. For more information, visit cooperhewitt.org.


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Stephanie Stiavetti (@sstiavetti) writes The Culinary Life blog. Her first book, Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese, will be available October 22 from Little, Brown, and it's superb, the best one I've seen, in fact—accept no imitations! Her last guest post was something of a rant, which I'm always in favor of! This is a lovely primer on something we do often but tend to ignore the finer points of, boiling pasta, and to me, the finer points are what make cooking fun Take it away, Steph! —M.R. A few weeks ago I talked about the demerits of cheap pasta and left you with the notion that artisan-made dry pasta is leagues ahead of its tasteless, texture-less, mass-produced cousins. It's also worth noting that cooking dry pasta is an art in and of itself; while it's a Read On »
Posts Categorized: Rant
The NPR blog Salt started a small #chickenshitstorm Monday when Maria Godoy wrote about a Drexel University study and campaign (a campaign!) to end the dangerous practice of washing chicken in your sink at home. The story was picked up by Slate editor L.V. Anderson and spread from there. Reaching many, including television star and renowned post-it artist, Alton Brown, whose 5-post-it editorial sums up the feelings of many cooks and chefs. When I wrote to him asking to use the image here, he added a header to the email: "We all need to calm the fuck down!" I love that about Alton. He's right. And he's right to shout. This shit is getting out of hand. Why are so many people so fucking afraid of their food? Wash your chicken or don't wash it. Read On »
Stephanie Stiavetti (@sstiavetti) writes The Culinary Life blog. Her first book, Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese, will be available October 22 from Little, Brown, and it's superb, the best one I've seen, in fact, accept no imitations! I'm always game for a rant, especially first thing in Monday morning. Take it away, Steph! —M.R. You've heard Michael's spiel on Americans being trained to believe they're too stupid to cook. It's an unfortunate reality that people in this country place a higher priority on time than they do nearly everything else, which greatly affects what we eat. Which affects our health. Which, in the end, affects EVERYTHING. When you eat poorly, guess what? You feel poorly too. You don't have the energy to do the things you want to do: hitting the gym, playing ball with the kids, actually getting Read On »
Sinful Confessionsby Emilia |
Diane shares her 5 guilty junk food pleasures. So what are yours? via White on Rice Couple.
It made so much sense the second I read it. One of those "of course!" moments. It was, not atypically, while reading Michael Pollan in his NYTimes magazine story a few years ago about how no one cooks anymore (really?). Certainly in the 1980s and 1990s most of the country relied on reheating already-cooked food for their meals. And perhaps as a result, at least in part, we became a grossly obese country where seemingly the only people who dieted were the people who were already thin, and the rest made increasingly bizarre, unsustainable stabs at it. A physically sick country, a confused country—don't get me started. The "of course" moment. It didn't come from Pollan, but rather from a researcher he interviewed, Harry Balzer, who works for the market research behemoth NPD, and studies all kinds of Read On »


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|29 Oct 2009
Win 7 RAM usage at 46% idle?
My Win 7 Acer RAM (3GB) is running at 46% idle? This seems to be alot?
Though it does not increase that much with windows open, even when I open WMP and play music it only goes up to 49-50%.
I use the gadget on screen and double check it with task manager, they are the same.
This is more than the previous Vista Basic machine, which I returned, it ran at 40%?
Is there a way to adjust or sort this?
Oh, this morning it went up 99% and I could not switch it off, I had to hold the button to switch off?
Any help.
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
Open Task Manager > Processes tab > click on "Memory". There you will see which processes eat your RAM - ordered by size. Maybe you have too many startup programs. Have a look in msconfig and disable those that you do not need (which are probably all). On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with the system using all the RAM. I assume it's all paid for - LOL.
But when you have excessive usage (like the 99%), you can also kill the culprit process in task manager. No need to shut off the whole system.
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
OK thanks, but not sure what should or should n ot be running?
As for the 99% I could not even open task manager!!
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
Hi here is a screen print??
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
1. when you have 99% usage, it will take a long time for the task manager to open. You'll have to be patient.
2. your screenshot looks generally ok (although there are some processes you can probably live without - check the startups) , but it does not show all the processes (you'll have to enlarge the window a little - pull it down). And click on (working set(memory)). Then it will show the big RAM eaters on top.
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
here is the second shot.
So is 50% average usage?
thanks again.
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
AVG...I bet it is AVG. Tho I could be wrong, however, a lt of people are having problems with AVG and this sort of thing.
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
Hi logicearth,
So you think its AVG?
But it does not show it is using much, but hey what do I know
Could you recommend something else? And is it free?
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
Mileage will vary, but I use Microsoft Security Essentials.
Amazingly Tiny, without the annoyingness, and free.
I don't normally run an antivirus solution, but MSE was like made for me...*shrugs*
|My System Specs
|29 Oct 2009
So,, should I change AVG for MSE? Will this cover all virus protection?
I have Malwarebytes installed, can I keep this with MSE?
Also I have the Firefox browser, it seems to be using loads of resources, so is there something lighter out there?
I am looking for a mail client as Win 7 does not have Windows Mail (Vista), only Windows LIVE Mail, I am used to Outlook Express, simple for me to use and I could save mails for multiple sendings, ie CV-job applications. Outlook does not allow for saving a mail for multiple sendings, only once.
I only had the Vista machine for a short time, returned it as it did not work correctly, now I have Win 7 I need to learn what magic it has.
|My System Specs
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Hey guys, I was wondering if this amount of RAM usage was normal, for just idling after startup: http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f177/SS_Ozzy/TskManAfterStartup.png To me, this seems pretty high and it can go anywhere between what you see here and 1.70GB at times! I notice many...
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text: After reading about how unhealthy it is to sit for much of the day, Jacobs put his laptop on top of a box and his treadmill behind the box so he could walk and type. Jacobs said he's enjoying the strategy, although it felt odd at first. "Now I found walking while working actually helps hone my focus," he wrote. "When I'm sitting, I'm fidgety.... With my treadmill desk, I'm getting rid of all my nervous energy."


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I am the proud mother of a...
hello.. just stopping by to say hi
We would like to invite you to a new group, Extra Special Angels, for kids with special needs. From ADHD to Cerebral Palsy and everything inbetween this is the group for moms to get support. We are looking for moms who want a place to go and talk about their trials and victories in our journey. We dont critisize and will always understand the extra steps you take to give your child a happy healthy life! See you soon!
Hi & welcome! I'd like to invite you to check out The Classic Rock Mommas Group. We may be a small group but keep pretty active by discussing our favorite bands and then some! Won't you stop by today? Looking forward to getting to know you. Vicky http://www.cafemom.com/group/42556
Join us at Tween to Teen Girls –http://www.cafemom.com/group/112031 - the place to be for all moms with tween or teen aged daughters. We are just two months old and have already been rated as a top group on CafeMom for over a month!
Welcome to healthy moms, we are glad you joined! Feel free to join right in! http://www.cafemom.com/group/110703
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MADRID, April 11 (UPI) -- A Spanish court ruled in favor of a father who argued men should be entitled to share leave during an infants' first weeks with the mothers.
Spanish news agency Europa Press said the Central Dispute Tribunal Court 11 ruled in favor of a public servant who works for the police, giving parents the ability to split the leave between them, The Local.es reported Thursday.
A judge upheld the decision, saying the current rules were "restrictive."
The judge said the need for leave was "not exclusive to mothers" and applied to "both parents."
The ruling cited Spain's Equality Law and the Public Service Statute, which the judge said helps people balance work and family life.
The judge ordered Spain's Public Administration to pay the cost of the appeal.
The case stemmed from the case of a female judge who asked for five weeks leave after the first of her infant and attempted to give the last three weeks to her husband, who works for the police. However, officials said the leave must be taken by one parent or the other, and cannot be split between the two.