A big solar storm could cost $2 trillion, could be a global Katrina

The impact of a big geomagnetic storm has been estimated to be $2 trillion. Good thing the solar storm last week didn’t cause that much disruption to our technology infrastructure and communication network. However, there were some reports that the blast of electrically charged gas traveling at five million miles an hour did cause minor ground communication disruption.

During the AAAS press briefing, University of Colorado Boulder professor Daniel Baker said:

The sun is coming back to life. For the past several years the sun has been in its most quiescent state since early in the 20th century.

We live in a different world now, it’s more connected than ever. GPS is ubiquitous. When the last solar storm hit, we weren’t as wired and hooked to the grid. But our ability to predict space weather is where weather forecasts were in the 1960s…pretty crappy.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory helps scientists understand the solar cycle. The sun has a cycle of about 11 years, and scientists can track it based on the number of sun spots on the sun. Any magnetic changes can impact our life on Earth and our use of technology. Think about it. We didn’t depend on cell phones as much when the last solar cycle maximum occurred a decade ago.

A big solar storm might hit soon, so we better be prepared for it. A big solar storm could disrupt our communication network by damaging the power grid, messing up airline communication and damaging satellites in orbit. Fortunately, the scientists say we are getting better at predicting large solar storms, thanks to real-time data from NASA satellites.

The European Space Agency set up the Space Situation Awareness Preparatory Programme in 2009 to monitor geomagnetic disturbances on power lines and pipelines.

However, Stephan Lechner of the European Commission said:

it will be extremely difficult to predict the potential implications of “bad space weather” on our earth-based hightech infrastructures: Even if we can calculate signal strength - would we be able to predict the consequences if GPS or other systems had to be shut down completely to protect themselves from damage? Even our technical standards do not always help: The need for accurate timing in telecommunications can serve as an example, where only the accuracy is standardized but not the way to get there.

After the briefing, I spoke with William J. Murtagh, program coordinator National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Prediction Center. Check back for the video interview to see what Murtagh told me about solar storms.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7: When bad things happen to good phones

Windows Phone 7 devices began shipping last October to largely positive reviews. I had a chance to check one out and saw enough to like that I seriously considered making WP7 my first smartphone — and my first Windows phone.

But in the four months since, I’ve begun to waver. And the latest back-and-forth over the first update for WP7 has made me increasingly WP7-shy.

Here’s the back story: Microsoft announced on February 21 that it planned to push out to WP7 users a first “minor” update — something that seemed to be an updater for the real first update due in early March. As soon as some users began receiving notifications that the update was available, reports of “bricked” WP7 devices began appearing around the Web.

Microsoft issued a vague statement, saying the company was investigating reports of problems caused by the first update. But company officials said nothing about plans to halt or fix the first update.

On February 23, Microsoft issued a new statement, claiming that the company had pulled the first update for Samsung WP7s. Here’s the statement from a spokesperson (which I received hours after some European outlets did, and only after I requested any updates on the situation):

“We have identified a technical issue with the Windows Phone update process that impacts a small number of phones. In response to this emerging issue, we have temporarily taken down the latest software update for Samsung phones in order to correct the issue and as soon as possible will redistribute the update.”

However, contrary to the official statement, the first update still seems to be available. According to at least two blogs, the update had not been pulled, as of Wednesday morning, and is still available for download. Makram Daou, who runs MobileTechWorld.com, just checked again for me a few minutes ago.

Google launches Apps certification program for IT pros

Google has launched a program to certify that staffers at Google Apps resellers have specific expertise, knowledge and experience working with the company's hosted collaboration and communication suite.

The Google Apps Certification Program will offer badges for various areas of expertise, including Apps deployment, sales, software development and technical support.

At launch on Wednesday, the program will offer globally its first certification, Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialist, for IT professionals who know how to configure and implement the suite.

The materials, including study guides, are only in English, but Google plans to translate them into other languages. Certifications for other areas, like sales and application development are in the works.

Demand for a certification program came both from channel partners and from Apps customers, said Stephen Cho, director of Google Apps Channels.

"Customers have been asking for a way to identify partners who have expertise on staff, to make sure they have successful deployments," he said. "And partners have been asking for a way to differentiate themselves by showing the depth of their expertise."

The ideal candidates for the deployment certification should have several years of IT services experience in general and be very knowledgeable about Google Apps through study and online seminars, as well as through at least three hands-on deployments, he said.

Channel partners interested in having staffers certified need to buy a special, $45 webcam from Google and pay $100 per person who takes the test.

The tests, which last several hours and consist of multiple-choice questions, are monitored live by a Google representative through the webcam. Results are computed as soon as the test is over. Those who pass, receive via e-mail a diploma and access to an official badge graphic. Those who fail are told which areas they need to improve upon.

IT professionals who pass the test are understood to be qualified for deployments of all Google Apps versions: Apps for Business, Apps for Education, Apps for Government, as well as the standard edition of the suite.

After obtaining the certification, IT professionals will have to attend a minimum number of Google Apps webinars. Google will keep tabs on this. The certification has to be renewed every year by taking the test.

While the certification is primarily aimed at channel partner staffers, it is also available for Apps customer organizations that want to make sure that their IT employees are qualified to deal with their Apps implementations.

Until now, Google only had a certification program for channel partner organizations, called Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program. This new program is aimed at individuals within those channel partners.

Church Website knocked offline: Was Anonymous involved?

Hacker collective had previously denied that its members were seeking to attack site over Westboro Baptist Church's controversial views

The main Web site of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) in Topeka was unavailable yesterday morning, just days after the Anonymous hacking collective had denied reports that its members were seeking to attack the site over disagreements with the church's practices.

Also unavailable yesterday morning were several 'sister sites' affiliated with the church. Members of the WBC church are known for their strident anti-gay views and for protests at funerals of slain military personnel and others.

A letter released last week claiming to be from the Anonymous group had warned WBC members that the church's web site would be attacked if members did not 'cease and desist' their protest activities(your link to that post). The open letter was posted on AnonNews, a site used by Anonymous members to upload news on the group's activities.

However, a note posted on the site earlier this week said the initial warning was not posted by Anonymous members, and that the threat was a hoax.

It was not immediately clear whether Anonymous caused the denial of service attack on the church Web site this morning.

The WBC also didn't immediately return a request for comment.

However, in an open letter posted by the church earlier this week challenged Anonymous to "Bring It."

"Anonymous is warring with God; very stupid for little boys claiming to be so smart," the letter noted.

Anonymous, which prefers being referred to as a collective rather than as a group, is comprised of an unknown number of volunteer hackers operating largely without a central command or leader.

The collective has been in the news quite a bit recently, most notably for its attacks against HBGary after the security firm's CEO, Aaron Barr, said he had discovered the identities of several Anonymous members and planned to disclose them at RSA Conference in San Francisco earlier this month.

Prior to those attacks, Anonymous members have been associated with several distributed denial of service attacks most recently in connection with the WikiLeaks disclosures and the civil unrest in Egypt and elsewhere.

In the case of WBC, it remains unclear whether Anonymous caused the shutdown of the church site, or if it was simply a coincidence.

The original open letter to WBC dated Feb. 16 had warned church members to cease and desist in their protests and the "inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism" they represented. A failure to comply would result in attacks against the church's Web site causing damage that "neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover," the letter had warned.

However, the news release from earlier this week downplayed the open letter and claimed it was a hoax. "Just because it was posted on AnonNews doesn't mean every single Anon is in agreement."

Update: Firefox update will patch CSRF bug, Mozilla says

Delayed Firefox 3.6.14, 3.5.17 to ship March 1, fix cross-site request forgery bug that can be exploited via Flash

Mozilla said late Wednesday that it will ship security updates to Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 next week that will include a patch for a bug that can be exploited using a malicious Adobe Flash file.

Firefox 3.5.17 and Firefox 3.6.14 will now appear Tuesday, March 1, Mozilla disclosed in meeting notes published today.

Originally slated for release Feb. 14, the security updates were held while Mozilla developers investigated a bug that affected some, though not all, users of the betas. According to Mozilla, the bug caused some copies of the updates to repeatedly crash. Mozilla then backed out a recent fix to retest the betas.

Around the same time, another problem -- a separate cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability -- surfaced that Mozilla needed to patch. "Adobe is pressing for a release due to a public CSRF issue," Mozilla said last week.

The vulnerability is in Firefox, but Adobe's involved because the vulnerability can be exploited using a malformed Flash file.

According to patch information posted Feb. 8 by the open-source Ruby on Rails Web development framework, and a follow-up message two days later on a security mailing list, the CSRF bug can be exploited by "Certain combinations of browser plug-ins and HTTP redirects."

An attacker could exploit the vulnerability to bypass the built-in CSRF protections of Ruby on Rails -- and that of Django, another Web development platform, which also patched its products earlier this month -- and successfully attack a Web application built with those tools.

The security mailing list message posted Feb. 10 spelled out several affected browsers, including Firefox -- including an earlier beta of Firefox 4 -- as well as Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari on both Windows and Mac OS.

That same message also said that a Google security researcher had first reported the CSRF vulnerability.

Last week, an Adobe spokeswoman said she knew nothing about a potential zero-day that would impact its software and/or Firefox.

Mozilla will patch the CSRF flaw in both Firefox 2.5.17 and Firefox 3.6.14 when they ship next week, a spokeswoman for that company confirmed late Wednesday.

The timing of the update may help Firefox survive the Pwn2Own, the hacking contest that kicks off March 9 at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Firefox will be one of four browsers -- the others are Chrome, Safari and Microsoft's Internet Explorer -- that will be targeted by attackers hoping to walk off with $15,000 or $20,000 in cash. Pwn2Own's rules state that the targeted browsers will be "the latest release candidate at the time of the contest," meaning that researchers will have to tackle Firefox 3.6.14.

Last year, Mozilla confirmed a critical vulnerability in Firefox less than a week before 2010's Pwn2Own, but said it wouldn't fix the flaw until after the contest. Pwn2Own organizers then ruled that hackers would not be allowed to use the vulnerability to exploit Firefox.

Apple slates iPad launch event for March 2

Analyst expects iPad 2 to 'steal the show' next week
Apple will hold an event next Wednesday, March 2, where it will likely launch the next iPad, analysts said today.

Several media outlets, including IDG News Service, the wire service that contributes content to Computerworld, have received Apple's invitation to a press-only event on March 2. The invitation included the grammatically-questionable teaser line, "Come see what 2011 will be the year of."

Apple will hold the event in San Francisco, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, starting at 10 a.m. PT. The company last hosted a product launch at the center in September 2010, when it debuted the revamped Apple TV.

As is Apple's practice, the invitation lacked any information about what Apple will announce or tout, although the artwork appeared to show an iPad's distinctive volume controls at the upper right of the device.

An iPad 2 launch next week would fit with analysts' expectations that Apple will start selling a new tablet in early April, around the first-year anniversary of the original model's on-sale date.

"The iPad 2 will steal the show," said Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co. "But Apple has a lot of stuff in the hopper, and I expect they'll put several things into this one event. The iPad 2 could be the 'One more thing' [that Apple's famous for]."

Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research also saw the invitation as confirmation that Apple will start selling the new iPad within a month of next week's launch. "Apple typically announces new products as close to availability as possible," said Gottheil.

Most speculation on changes to the iPad have centered on the addition of one or more cameras to the tablet, which would let users run Apple's FaceTime video calling software. Teardowns of the original model released in 2010 revealed that Apple left room inside the iPad for a front-facing camera.

Last month, Apple said it sold 14.8 million iPads in 2010.

Although the iPad will probably be the focus of next week's event, the teaser may hint at additional news. Apple has said almost nothing, for instance, about Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion, since it previewed the next edition of its operating system last October.

At the time, CEO Steve Jobs said that Lion would launch "summer 2011," a deadline that would require the OS upgrade to ship by Sept. 21.

Marshall said that talk of Lion next week would "make sense."

But he also went against the grain by saying Apple will trot out a new line of MacBook Pro notebooks on March 2 rather than debut them tomorrow, as many others have bet.

"I think they'll want to maximize the coverage on everything," said Marshall. "They want to continue to drive Mac sales, and give the MacBook Pro its due."

Intel expected to show off the Light Peak connection technology

Intel expected to show off the faster Light Peak connection with Apple jumping on the bandwagon for next-generation Macbook Pro'

Light Peak module close-up with laser light added for illustration (actual infrared light is invisible to the eye).

Intel is expected to show off its new Light Peak on Thursday. The Light Peak is a high-speed connection technology that several industry insiders have hinted that Apple is likely to adopt in future products. While nothing is confirmed at this point Intel set a statement to media outlets today stating that on Thursday in San Francisco the company will host a press briefing to discuss, "a new technology that is about to appear on the market."

No word has been given yet as to whether or not this is related to another press event that Intel is holding at its campus in Santa Clara, Calif., where the company is going to be conducting product demonstrations.

Intel has been working on the Light Peak for several years now. It is expected to be significantly faster than a USB 3.0, carrying, and able to carry data at a rate of 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously. The Light Peak may also be able to scale up to a rate of 100 gigabits per second, according to Intel.

The connection to Apple is only made stronger by the fact that Apple is also expected to make a big product announcement on Thursday, which may include both its new line of MacBook Pros, and possibly an update to its line of iMac desktop computers. Though no solid word has been give on the iMac update at this time.

Intel Research has released an overview of the Light Peak technology online that can be found at http://techresearch.intel.com/ProjectDetails.aspx?Id=143, for anyone who is interested in learning more about the optical-based device.

Samsung releases 1-Gbit DRAM chip with 512-pin wide I/O interface

Samsung Electronics announced the development of a 1-Gbit DRAM chip. It features a 512-pin wide I/O interface that is designed for a variety of mobile applications including smartphones and tablet PC's.

In order to boost the data transmission the chip uses 512 pins for the data input and output. When we compare this to the previous generation of mobile DRAMs, which used a maximum of 32 pins, we can see that a significant improvement in the processing power of mobile devices is expected.

In case you do not have an active imagination the I/O 1-Gbit WIO DRAM can transmit data at a rate of 12.8-Gbytes per second, while reducing the power consumption by approximately 87 percent. The bandwidth that this chip is expected to handle is estimated be about four times that of LPDDR2 DRAM, which runs at approximately 3.2-Gigabytes per second according to Samsung. If you include the pins for the commands, the power supply and its regulation the WIO DRAM, it is designed to have ip to 1,200 pins.

Samsung was a bit sketchy on the details, with no indications give as to whether or when the company intends to offer the 1-Gbit WIO DRAM as a packaged part or for commercial use or as part of a bare die in multi-chip packages. They were also not giving a great deal of information about when engineering samples of the 1-Gbit WIO DRAM would be made available or when the chip will be in volume production for use in devces.

As a follow up to this WIO DRAM launch Samsung has released plans for a 20-nm class 4-Gbit WIO mobile DRAM which will become available at some point in 2013.

More information: Samsung PR: http://www.samsung … news_id=1236

Chandra finds superfluid in neutron star's core

This image presents a beautiful composite of X-rays from Chandra (red, green, and blue) and optical data from Hubble (gold) of Cassiopeia A, the remains of a massive star that exploded in a supernova. Evidence for a bizarre state of matter has been found in the dense core of the star left behind, a so-called neutron star, based on cooling observed over a decade of Chandra observations. The artist's illustration in the inset shows a cutout of the interior of the neutron star where densities increase from the crust (orange) to the core (red) and finally to the region where the "superfluid" exists (inner red ball.) Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNAM/Ioffe/D.Page,P. Shternin et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered the first direct evidence for a superfluid, a bizarre, friction-free state of matter, at the core of a neutron star. Superfluids created in laboratories on Earth exhibit remarkable properties, such as the ability to climb upward and escape airtight containers. The finding has important implications for understanding nuclear interactions in matter at the highest known densities.

Neutron stars contain the densest known matter that is directly observable. One teaspoon of neutron star material weighs six billion tons. The pressure in the star's core is so high that most of the charged particles, electrons and protons, merge resulting in a star composed mostly of uncharged particles called neutrons.

Two independent research teams studied the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, the remains of a massive star 11,000 light years away that would have appeared to explode about 330 years ago as observed from Earth. Chandra data found a rapid decline in the temperature of the ultra-dense neutron star that remained after the supernova, showing that it had cooled by about four percent over a 10-year period.

"This drop in temperature, although it sounds small, was really dramatic and surprising to see," said Dany Page of the National Autonomous University in Mexico, leader of a team with a paper published in the February 25, 2011 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. "This means that something unusual is happening within this neutron star."

Superfluids containing charged particles are also superconductors, meaning they act as perfect electrical conductors and never lose energy. The new results strongly suggest that the remaining protons in the star's core are in a superfluid state and, because they carry a charge, also form a superconductor.

"The rapid cooling in Cas A's neutron star, seen with Chandra, is the first direct evidence that the cores of these neutron stars are, in fact, made of superfluid and superconducting material," said Peter Shternin of the Ioffe Institute in St Petersburg, Russia, leader of a team with a paper accepted in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Both teams show that this rapid cooling is explained by the formation of a neutron superfluid in the core of the neutron star within about the last 100 years as seen from Earth. The rapid cooling is expected to continue for a few decades and then it should slow down.

"It turns out that Cas A may be a gift from the Universe because we would have to catch a very young neutron star at just the right point in time," said Page's co-author Madappa Prakash, from Ohio University. "Sometimes a little good fortune can go a long way in science."

The onset of superfluidity in materials on Earth occurs at extremely low temperatures near absolute zero, but in neutron stars, it can occur at temperatures near a billion degrees Celsius. Until now there was a very large uncertainty in estimates of this critical temperature. This new research constrains the critical temperature to between one half a billion to just under a billion degrees.

Cas A will allow researchers to test models of how the strong nuclear force, which binds subatomic particles, behaves in ultradense matter. These results are also important for understanding a range of behavior in neutron stars, including "glitches," neutron star precession and pulsation, magnetar outbursts and the evolution of neutron star magnetic fields.

Small sudden changes in the spin rate of rotating neutron stars, called glitches, have previously given evidence for superfluid neutrons in the crust of a neutron star, where densities are much lower than seen in the core of the star. This latest news from Cas A unveils new information about the ultra-dense inner region of the neutron star.

"Previously we had no idea how extended superconductivity of protons was in a neutron star," said Shternin's co-author Dmitry Yakovlev, also from the Ioffe Institute.

The cooling in the Cas A neutron star was first discovered by co-author Craig Heinke, from the University of Alberta, Canada, and Wynn Ho from the University of Southampton, UK, in 2010. It was the first time that astronomers have measured the rate of cooling of a young neutron star.

Provided by Chandra X-ray Center (news : web)