benfrog writes "Tridium's Niagra framework is a 'marvel of connectivity,' allowing everything from power plants to gas pumps to be monitored online. Many installations are frighteningly insecure, though, according to an investigation by the Washington Post, leaving both public and private infrastructure potentially open to simple hacks (as simple as a directory traversal attack)."

An anonymous reader writes "Hot on the heels of the $25 ARM computer, Google is to offer a $20 per month package for students, which includes a Chrome OS laptop (like the Cr-48) and an online component, which will likely include a storage bump for a user's Google Docs, Gmail, Picasa Web, and Google Music files. This would serve two purposes for Google: first, Google will be able to expand its existing user base for Chrome OS. For half the price of a typical cell phone contract, students will be able to pick up a netbook with 3G connectivity. Second, Google will be able to test the package offering publicly prior to eventually adding an enterprise version for Google Apps users."

jbrodkin writes "VMware's new Cloud Foundry service was online for just two weeks when it suffered its first outage, caused by a power failure. Things got really interesting the next day, when a VMware employee accidentally caused a second, more serious outage while a VMware team was writing up a plan of action to recover from future power loss incidents. An inadvertent press of a key on a keyboard led to 'a full outage of the network infrastructure [that] took out all load balancers, routers, and firewalls... and resulted in a complete external loss of connectivity to Cloud Foundry.' Clearly, human error is still a major factor in cloud networks."

itwbennett writes "Nothing is official and Nintendo isn't talking, but 'industry sources' runneth over with new information about the company's new gaming console. IGN on Thursday said that Nintendo is ditching 'Wii' and will call the new console 'Stream'. And nothing connotes Internet connectivity like the word stream. 'That's an area Nintendo has really been lax on in the past,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Pure speculation on my part but I just wonder what, if anything, will be streaming to this new console? Video? Gameplay? A strong online multiplayer component?'" Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has indirectly confirmed that the new console is in development.

Orome1 writes "The EU's cyber security agency, ENISA, has issued its final report (PDF) on the first Pan-European cyber security exercise for public bodies, Cyber Europe 2010. The exercise was conducted on the 4th of November, 2010. Its objective was to trigger communication and collaboration between countries in the event of large-scale cyber-attacks. Over 70 experts from the participating public bodies worked together to counter over 300 simulated hacking attacks aimed at paralyzing the Internet and critical online services across Europe. During the exercise, a simulated loss of Internet connectivity between the countries took place, requiring cross-border cooperation to avoid a (simulated) total network crash."

davidwr writes "Japanese internet outages mostly healed themselves within hours. While some cables remain out, most computers that lost connectivity have it again. From James Cowie's blog: 'The engineers who built Japan's Internet created a dense web of domestic and international connectivity that is among the richest and most diverse on earth, as befits a critical gateway for global connectivity in and out of East Asia. At this point, it looks like their work may have allowed the Internet to do what it does best: route around catastrophic damage and keep the packets flowing, despite terrible chaos and uncertainty.' Let's hear it for redundancy and good planning." Reader Spy Handler points out another article about how redundancy and good planning are preventing disaster at Japan's troubled nuclear reactors, despite media-fueled speculation and panic to the contrary.

schliz writes "Judging by the time it took for Egypt to go offline and back online, the Internet Society speculates that the country's connectivity is controlled by a 'series of phone calls', rather than a 'kill switch'. The Government-imposed internet blackout lasted five days, beginning last Friday, and ending on Wednesday."

FrankNFurter sends word of an internal Microsoft presentation leaked online today that contains details about Windows 8. The slides mention support for 3-D displays, connectivity upgrades, rapid startup times, and an integrated application store. Quoting Neowin: "Consumers will be able to search on the web or locally on a Windows 8 machine to access applications from the store. Microsoft also details plans for application developers to help reach millions of users. One of the goals is to ensure licensing and monetization for developers is flexible with a transparent on-boarding process. It's clear that the 'Windows Store' will be a software service Microsoft provides and hosts fully in the cloud. The company will likely build the distribution model on Windows Azure to lure application developers."

An anonymous reader lets us know of an experiment conducted in Norway to determine real-world problems in using IPv6 today (Google translation; Norwegian original). "According to a Norwegian article in digi.no, Redpill Linpro did an experiment with regard to IPv6 on one of the largest online newspapers there (www.vg.no). They added a hidden iframe that pointed to an IPv6-enabled domain to test real-life problems about the reported IPv6 holes. The result was that mainly Mac OS X, older versions of Opera, and a few Linux distributions exhibited problems. For Mac OS X it took 75 seconds to time out before failing back to IPv4." From the consultant's report: "Mac OS X has a problem in that it will prefer 6to4-based IPv6 over IPv4-based connectivity, at least if its local IPv4 address is an RFC 1918-based private address as commonly found in NAT-ed home network environments. This is unfortunate, as 6to4 has shown itself to be much less reliable than IPv4."

identity0 writes "A recent Slashdot discussion about heart-rate monitors in schools got me thinking about getting one for my own exercise. It turns out that the available models have a wide range of features: calorie rate, pedometers, GPS, PC connectivity, etc. Being a geek, I want one that will let me look at my exercise data, and I'm curious what experiences Slashdotters have had with them. Some download data to a proprietary application — are open source alternatives available or is the data format easily readable? Others upload data to an online app — can the data be pulled off the site or is it forever trapped on their servers? While I'm not an open source zealot or a paranoid about my data being shared, I would like to know that I can access my data in the future. Whatever method you guys use to monitor your exercise, I'd love to hear about it."

Yesterday morning at GDC Austin, Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce took to the stage to finally give a peek inside the inner workings of World of Warcraft. Tipping the scales at around 4,600 people utilizing 20,000 computer systems and 1.3 petabytes of storage, Blizzard has created a raging behemoth. The Online Network services group alone has "data centers from Texas to Seoul, and monitor over 13,250 server blades, 75,000 cpu cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM. [Pearce] points out the picture of the GNOC (Global Network Operations Center) in their slideshow, a data core that even has televisions tuned to the weather stations. They use those to ensure that conditions of the data center are up to their standards; with only a staff of 68 people they ensure connectivity across the globe for the numerous WoW servers."

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes with his take on the recent Time Warner Cable fiasco: "Net Neutrality crusaders at FreePress.net recently called attention to Time Warner's plan (later rescinded) to impose fines on users for going over bandwidth limits. I agree generally, but I think this is easily confused with the reasoning in favor of Net Neutrality, and it's important to keep the arguments separate." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.

foxxo writes "I'm a library worker, so I get lots of questions about our collection when I'm out in the stacks. I'd love to be able to access our online catalog and give patrons more comprehensive guidance without directing them to the reference desk. What options are available for a portable device with Wi-Fi connectivity, full-featured Web browsing, and (most importantly) no cellphone-style activation and service fees? Size is important, too; I need something I can carry in my pocket, not a micro-notebook with full keyboard. (And I am a library worker, so low cost is key!)" One device that sounds interesting in this category is the GiiNii Movit (not yet released, but shown off at CES). What can you recommend that's out there now?

Ian Lamont writes "The recent news that China will run out of IPv4 addresses in a few years points to slow adoption of IPv6 in some developed countries. Now it turns out that the largest number of networks displaying new IPv6 address blocks are registered through AfriNIC, which services networks in Africa and the Indian Ocean. While AfriNIC has a smaller installed base than other regions, many countries in Africa are showing rapid growth in terms of online connectivity."

rm writes "Internet search and mail provider Yandex, which many view to be Google's main competitor in Russia, has recently added an instant messaging capability to its mail notifier application Ya.Online. As it turns out, the IM service is based on the open XMPP protocol, with connectivity to all other public Jabber servers available from day one. MacOS X and GNU/Linux versions of the app were also released (complete with sources under the GPL) and are determined to be based on the Psi IM client. Yandex looks to be a firm believer in open-source, also running a mirror site for FOSS and actively promoting its branded version of Firefox. Here's hoping that its affair with XMPP will help eliminate ICQ's enormous foothold in Russia."

Michael J. Ross writes "Web 2.0 applications and sites commonly employ a number of technologies: PHP, MySQL, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript/Ajax, microformats (standard formats for HTML data), tags (keywords for categorizing site content), and Web feeds (formatted and streamed Web content, usually in XML, such as an RSS feed). Because learning and using most of these technologies can be rather challenging to a Web developer, perhaps the best way to get started doing so is by using all of them to create a single Web-based application, with no pretense at mastering any one of them. This is the approach taken in Quentin Zervaas's book, Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP." Read on for the rest of Michael's review.

deleuth writes "The de facto online connectivity software sold along with many Apple computers, .Mac, has a Web interface through which users can check their 'iDisk' while away from their own computer. However, there is no Log-Out button in this Web interface, so most users just close the browser and walk away... not realizing that their iDisk has been cached by the browser and that anyone who wants to can open up the browser, go back to the link in History, and get into their iDisk completely logged in. From here, files can be downloaded and/or deleted. This seems like a minor security flaw via bad interface design, and podcaster Klaatu (of thebadapples.info) posted this on the discussion.apple.com site, only to have his post removed by Apple. Furthermore, feedback at apple.com/feedback has gone unanswered. The problem remains: there is no way for the average computer user to log-out of their iDisk on public computers. A quick review of any public terminal's browser history could bring up all kinds of interesting things."

An anonymous reader writes "The experience of getting online in North America and Europe is years behind the internet connectivity options in Japan, the New York Times reports. While here in the US cable and DSL options are still struggling to reach rural areas, eight million Japanese consumers are now enjoying fiber optic speeds at home for comparable prices. The article explores the fiber-to-the-doorstep approach the country's telecoms are taking, with examination of both the ups and downs of such an ambitious project. 'The heavy spending on fiber networks, analysts say, is typical in Japan, where big companies disregard short-term profit and plow billions into projects in the belief that something good will necessarily follow. Matteo Bortesi, a technology consultant at Accenture in Tokyo, compared the fiber efforts to the push for the Shinkansen bullet-train network in the 1960s, when profit was secondary to the need for faster travel. "They want to be the first country to have a full national fiber network, not unlike the Shinkansen years ago, even though the return on investment is unclear."'"

Gamasutra is reporting on information from a new research firm called Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, which has recently released a number of papers looking into trends in the gaming industry. One (perhaps surprising) finding: M-rated titles sell better than any other rating group. "The study, titled 'Console Intelligence Brief 2007' examines the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 since each consoles' release through June 1, 2007, and comprises some 219 retail and 187 downloadable games made available on the new platforms, examined by genre, ESRB rating, gross sales in the United States, MetaCritic scores, online functionalities, multiplayer capability and other core game features. Among the sample results made available, the study found that critics' favorite list and the blockbuster charts have a lot in common, with highly-rated titles selling up to five times better than titles with lower scoring reviews. Despite online connectivity being a marketing cornerstone for all new consoles, the study concluded that 45 percent of retail games are not utilizing it in any way -- 98 percent of Nintendo Wii games have no online functionality at all."

IO ERROR writes "An internet-draft published this month calls for an IPv6 transition plan which would require all Internet-facing servers to have IPv6 connectivity on or before January 1, 2011. 'Engineer and author John Curran proposes that migration to IPv6 happen in three stages. The first stage, which would happen between now and the end of 2008, would be a preparatory stage in which organizations would start to run IPv6 servers, though these servers would not be considered by outside parties as production servers. The second stage, which would take place in 2009 and 2010, would require organizations to offer IPv6 for Internet-facing servers, which could be used as production servers by outside parties. Finally, in the third stage, starting in 2011, IPv6 must be in use by public-facing servers.' Then IPv4 can go away."