From what I have seen, All plants Power/Water/ Oil & Gas use a handful of the exact same Control systems products (Honeywell, Allen Bradley) and software ... with minor configuration changes across plants. These control systems are just more specialized computer systems, if an exploit were found for any one ... that would render any of them with a link to the outside vulnerable. And yes some people are stupid enough to hookup a Process control network to the internet ... lukcily in that particular case it was caught and rectified by the manager.

has nothing to do with retaliations for rockets fired. It is all due to Internal israeli politics .. the upcoming elections in Febraury is the prime motivator for the offensive. The leader that can kill the most Palestinians and can rectify the embarrassment of Lebanon in 2006 .. will come up ahead in the elections. The Israeli presidency is what is at stake here and The currency is the Palestinian body count.

this might sound a bit stupid .. but isn't storage of energy completely independent of its source be it wind, hydro etc. or is there something special or uniquely challenging about storing wind energy i am not aware of ?

Issues like version history to track changes .. and auditing capability already built into file servers should make this easy to deal with. In my company we use Live link externally and share point internally .. seems to work for us. of course it cannot track what a person who has 'access to the document will do with it ' i.e print or share with someone els.

This Issue is not black and white as most people think. This piracy has been going on for more than a 15 years off the coast of Somalia. In the past the targets were usually Japanese boats illegally tuna fishing a few miles off the north-eastern coast. back home these men are not looked upon as pirates they were a de facto navy for so long. believe it or not they have certain code they follow which is largely based on our nomadic culture .. they have not hurt a single hostage nor are they interested in doing so ... their hostages are treated with respect and food and water are shared equally among capture and captured... they are not locked up or anything like that. I admit the last few months what they are doing is beyond the pale .. but I cannot help admiring the the courage to take on a vessels of that size with dingy motor boats. contrary to what many articles report they are nowhere near as organized as they would have you believe .. the whole hi-tech thieves things is BS ... granted the last 'pirate' boat i've seen was about 13 years ago .. but the only thing these guys have got going for them is the 2 steel spheres in their shorts

you do realize that Ethiopia who is currently occupying Somalia and has been for the last 2 years was given the go ahead by the states department and directly financed by the EU. far stretch from virtually zero influence don't you think ?