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GE and Bosch Software Innovations this week announced a partnership to jump-start the development of an open source Internet of Things platform.

Open source will encourage greater interoperability and application development, the companies said. Both firms have sought help from the Eclipse Foundation to speed up the process.

Under the agreement, the companies will create a core IoT stack comprised of open source software. The stack will provide interoperability between GE's Predix operating system and the Bosch IoT Suite.

GE Digital and Bosch Software Innovations will develop complementary software services for each other's cloud platforms to improve services for a wider customer base.

"This is a high-value initiative that should be of great interest to the Java, IoT and embedded developer community," said Azul Systems CEO Scott Sellers.

"The Eclipse Foundation has been at the forefront of helping to improve the IoT developer ecosystem for some time, and this is a continuation of that trend," he told LinuxInsider.

Exploratory Venture

The goal is more to test the waters than push for leadership in creating an open source IoT standard, said Matt Jennings, regional president of the Americas for Bosch's Software Innovations division.

"Creating an open source standard from this partnership will have to be determined," he told LinuxInsider." We have to study the progress of the industrial Internet and make a determination if we can come up with a common form that will make sense in those environments."

That exploratory attitude led to the partnership. The companies approached the common effort as two large industrial firms aspiring to support the IoT, Jennings said.

"It started to make sense, since we are both contributing to the Open Source Alliance, that we should start working together to eliminate redundancy," he explained. "We could then do better work and work faster."

The Fine Print

The software development includes enhancing work on several existing open source projects under the Eclipse Foundation. The software involves creating code for messaging, user authentication, access control and device descriptions, according to GE.

Not all of the software associated with the existing platforms at GE and Bosch may be open-sourced, however. Both companies probably will retain some parts of their existing software.

"We will have to determine where those areas of proprietary software are. I suspect that we will each retain certain properties," said Jennings.

The Eclipse Foundation may come into play more prominently on connectivity issues. The foundation's projects that focus on device connectivity include Eclipse Hono, Eclipse Vorto and Eclipse Leshan. Other Eclipse projects are GE-enhanced User Account and Authentication and Eclipse Access Control Service.

The GE and Bosch partnership is an interesting development, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

If the Internet of Things is going to work as envisioned, it needs to be based on open technologies supporting collaborations like the one announced by GE and Bosch, he suggested.

"In essence, the companies have agreed to pool their software resources to enable the integration of their own platforms and devices," King told LinuxInsider, and they "will leverage Eclipse Foundation technologies to keep things on the up and up. In contrast, IoT solutions based on proprietary technologies or a single vendor's platforms are virtually guaranteed to be limiting and prone to locking in customers."

A Desperate Need

The need surrounding this IoT initiative is clear, noted Azul Systems' Sellers. It responds to a need for more high-quality tools and developer platforms backed by innovation.

That only helps "accelerate the development of new devices and new gateways throughout the IoT," he said.

Both GE and Bosch have developed Cloud Foundry and microservices-centric platforms, so the level of interoperability should be very strong, Sellers added.

Success Not Guaranteed

Companies like GE, Bosch and others have a great deal to win or lose based on how they deliver IoT to the market, according to Don DeLoach, CEO of Infobright.

That enables them to deploy IoT solutions that can facilitate leveraging the underlying utility value of their IoT data to maximize leverage and insight, he pointed out.

"While the idea of controlling relationships by locking in customers with proprietary platforms may have short-term appeal, the major players in IoT who see the long view of the market recognize the imperative for organizations using IoT solutions to interoperate," DeLoach told LinuxInsider.

"I applaud the initiative and direction of GE and Bosch shown by this initiative," he said.

The partnership gives GE and Bosch reach across global markets and industries. The resulting efforts should be both powerful and flexible, noted Pund-IT's King.

"That should be particularly welcome among manufacturers and companies that wish to adopt an IoT platform and strategy that extends across all of their markets and areas of interest. The fact that GE and Bosch's platform is not dependent on any specific IT platform will also appeal to companies that hope to avoid being locked into relationships with specific vendors," he said.

Limiting Factors

As with all open source initiatives, the balance is between free downloads and an ability to secure long-term support as needed, either from the Eclipse -- and Bosch/GE -- developer community or direct from the vendors themselves, Sellers said.

The project is in very early days. Any number of barriers may spring up during the development process, noted King.

"It will also be interesting to see which, if any, vendors actively support or resist the collaboration," he said. "The more the merrier, as they say, but some may consider what GE and Bosch propose as a threat to their own IoT hope and ambitions."

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Social media has sharpened humans' age-old appetite for public shaming, providing a stage and unlimited seating for a seemingly unending stream of immorality plays. Those who share even the simplest identifying details about themselves are vulnerable to being pushed into the glare of the spotlight.

The anonymity the Internet provides frees many individuals of the consequences they might face offline for being abusive to other people. Perhaps appearing to their friends, family and connections as ordinary people in the real world, these Jekyll-and-Hyde netizens transform into trolls to carry out their online assaults.

Anonymity has been a hot button issue for just about the entire life of the Internet, and although there is no 100 percent solution in sight, the situation is not entirely hopeless, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

"So long as public sites enable user anonymity, pathological behavior will continue, because it thrives in the shadows," he told TechNewsWorld. "Forcing abusers into the sunlight may be difficult or impossible -- but changes in rules, laws and enforcement practices could make their lives more complicated and less comfortable."

Deep Dive Into Dirt

We know what the problem looks like, thanks to big data and analytics.

A recent analysis identified more than17,000 tweets related to body shaming, for example, and ranked the most common terms Twitter users lobbed at others to shame them for their weight.

Artificial intelligence soon might be able to catch and moderate cruel posts mere moments after publication, suggested a University of Lisbon team of researchers who have leveraged machine learning to teach AI to suss out sarcasm.

For now, the moderation and reporting tools available aren't set up to prevent or discourage online abuse, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"Reputation protection services can be used, but that doesn't scale well -- they target one person at a time -- and it can be really expensive if you have to litigate and your attacker has no money," he told TechNewsWorld.

What to Do?

It appears Reddit currently has the best system in place, in Enderle's view, as its shadow-blocking tools shield users from whomever they wish to block, while allowing offenders to keep their accounts. Offenders are none the wiser, barring some detective work.

"Of course, publicizing shamers so they lose their jobs, gym memberships, and get attacked themselves does work," he acknowledged, "and if it is done enough, that should change behavior."

However, that approach so far hasn't been used enough to make a difference, Enderle said.

That could change if social media sites and other forums were willing to make some changes.

They could take proactive steps that might make a difference, noted King, who pointed to a list of suggestions for Twitter, posted online by Randi Lee Harper, founder of the Online Abuse Prevention Initiative.

Those changes might result in a significant decrease in the prevalence of abuse on Twitter, but what will it take to inspire websites and their parent companies to intercede?

"Many, if not most, technology vendors bend over backward to avoid favoritism and maintain level playing fields for users of all stripes," King pointed out. "I respect that attitude, but it's often subject to being gamed by some users -- and in some circumstances has resulted in online environments that amplify abusive behavior."

Societal Shift

Machine learning tools one day might be capable of rejecting abusive comments before their intended targets ever see them. However, even if the companies running social networks work strenuously to stomp out online abuse, it's ultimately up to humans to ensure that humanity prevails.

The best line of defense against social shaming starts at home, suggested counselor Scott A. Spackey.

"Family validation and bonding, and personal achievement with sports, school work and personal goals is the antidote to ANY source of social shaming," he told TechNewsWorld.

People are more immune to criticism from outsiders when they have evidence to the contrary, provided by self knowledge and by those in their inner circles, Spackey said. For example, it's easier to brush off being called "stupid" when one's grades indicate otherwise.

"We all need to remember there's no law against unfriending a social network contact at any time," he noted. "Virtual life has same rules as non-virtual life: You get to have the final say on who you interact with and what you are exposed to."

While it's ideal to teach those lessons in the home, it's never too late to improve oneself with education and re-education.

Pity the Fool?

When Playboy Playmate Dani Mathers snapchatted an image of an older woman nude in a locker room, that was an opportunity for education, according to relationship and etiquette expert April Masini.

"It was a moment to talk about what happens, naturally, to our bodies," she told TechNewsWorld.

"There is a lesson for Ms. Mathers to learn that bodies age and they don't look the same at 20 as they do at 60 or 70 or 80, and that it's important to celebrate the changes of a healthy and aging human being," Masini said, "instead of mocking the change that is often difficult to endure because it's a signal life is slipping away -- as it should."

Mathers undoubtedly was "afraid of what she saw" to some degree, she suggested, and might not even be conscious of the aging of her own body.

"The impetus for body shamers and bullies is usually fear," Masini said. "We see bravado and mean-spirited posts -- we don't acknowledge the fear behind the person posting."

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Early hands-on previews of Civilization VI came out Thursday, and those who had a chance to partake in the turn-based PC game found that it successfully built on the foundation of the past versions, while bringing some fresh changes to the experience.

It has been 25 years since the Sid Meier classic debuted to great acclaim, and after 2010's Civilization V raised the bar, it seemed that developer Firaxis would have to pull out all the stops with the next iteration.

The initial hands-on reports strongly suggest that the development team has managed to stay true to the concept of exploring, expanding and building -- while offering a fresh take on the game play.

Civilization VI is more than just fresh new visuals, by all accounts. It features new diplomatic options, new ways for the computer-controlled powers to react with players and one another, and greater worker management to streamline the turn-to-turn running of a growing nation state.

Civilization VI will arrive at retail on Oct. 21, and gamers who have enjoyed the past versions -- notably Civilization V -- may have their hands full this fall trying to live up to the original title's tag line to "build a civilization that endures the test of time."

Early Reactions

The game reviewers who had a chance to play the preview build of Civilization VI were quick to highlight its new features -- both good and bad. The most notable change might be in the game's visuals.

"While Civ VI retains the functional hex-grid structure introduced in Civ V, developer Firaxis has dropped the more realistic look, redesigning everything with brighter colours and cartoonish characters more similar to those in Civilization Revolution," wrote Sam White for Ars Technica.

Gamers may have to do more micromanagement in some cases, noted Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch.

"Workers are no longer automated, meaning you have to direct them to improve the lands around your city manually, to gain access to key strategic resources like horses, niter (for gunpowder) and oil," wrote Etherington.

Yet the change in workers to "builders" -- a consumable unit -- also means that it can be purchased via gold, do its job, and be consumed to rush to completion.

The upside is that "no longer will you have workers sitting idle on tiles in the late game, especially as Civilization VI alleviates one of that unit's key functions," wrote Mashable's Mike Futter.

Building a Better Civilization

Creating a new version of a beloved classic often is tricky, but it seems that Civilization VI builds on what fans love about the series while addressing previous shortcomings.

"There appear to be huge improvements in computer-generated opponents adding more randomness and intelligence so that repetitive game play doesn't become boring," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"More flexibility in the build-out process would allow the player to use creativity more effectively to progress through the game," he told TechNewsWorld, "while reducing the pain of figuring out specific programmed [obstacles] in paths to success."

Going the Distance

The biggest challenge for Civilization VI could be ensuring that it has the same re-playability and lasting game play appeal as past versions. That requires a careful balance of remaining true to the past while adding improvements and enhancements.

"The depth of the franchise is its strongest appeal," said Joost van Dreunen, principal analyst at SuperData Research.

"Increasing the complexity of some of the game's aspects, like breaking the cities out into component pieces rather than stacking them, allows players to make better use of the landscape and its resources, which adds to the game's overall appeal," he told TechNewsWorld.

"The graphical updates are a really nice touch for a franchise that continues to do well," van Dreunen added.

The new game play options also make "the game less frustrating for those buying into it for the first time, and a better standalone experience," said Enderle. "Granted, convincing new players that this is the case will be critical if this benefit is to be realized."

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Research at Google on Tuesday launched Google Neural Machine Translation system, now in production with Chinese to English -- "a notoriously difficult language pair," according to Quoc V. Le and Mike Schuster, research scientists on the Google Brain Team.

GNMT already is powering the Google Translate mobile and Web apps for 18 million or so Chinese to English translations daily.

Google will roll out GNMT to the rest of the 10,000 language translation pairs its Google Translate service supports in the coming months.

For English to French or German translations, GNMT achieves "competitive results" to the state of the art, Le and Schuster noted in a blog post.

A human side-by-side evaluation on a set of isolated simple sentences found GNMT reduces translation errors by an average of 60 percent compared to Google's phrase-based translation system.

GNMT "can still make significant errors that a human translator would never make, like dropping words and mistranslating proper names or rare terms, and translating sentences in isolation rather than considering the context of the paragraph or page," Le and Schuster acknowledged.

GNMT's Inner Workings

The GNMT model consists of a deep long short-term memory network with eight encoder and eight decoder layers using attention and residual connections.

Its attention mechanism connects the bottom layer of the decoder to the top layer of the encoder to reduce training time and improve parallelism. Neural networks are inherent parallel algorithms, which can be leveraged by multicore CPUs, graphical processing units and computer clusters with multiple CPUs and GPUs

During inference computations, GNMT uses low-precision arithmetic, which helps in the design of very power-efficient hardware for deep learning, to accelerate the final translation speed.

It divides words into a limited set of common sub-word units Google calls "wordpieces" for both input and output. That provides a good balance between the flexibility of character-delimited models and the efficiency of word-delimited models. It also naturally handles rare word translation and improves the system's overall accuracy.

The Mechanics of Translation

When translating a sentence from Chinese to English, the GNMT considers an entire sentence as a single unit for translation, encoding the words in it as a list of vectors with contextual meaning. Each vector represents the meaning of all words read so far, instead of being considered on its own.

The system then decodes the sentence, generating it in English, one word at a time in context. The decoder refers to a weighted distribution over the encoded Chinese vectors that are most relevant to generate the appropriate English word.

"This is more scale than just accuracy, but it's a very impressive showcase of applied artificial intelligence," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"While it's a pale shadow of what's coming, it's a huge step forward in this area," he TechNewsWorld.

"The processing power to translate context between these vastly different languages at Internet scale has only existed for a very short time," Enderle noted. GNMT "not only showcases the impressive amount of performance now available, but also how quickly we're now able to apply it to both interesting and critical problems."

Google researchers have not been the only ones tackling translation problems, noted Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

GNMT "is an advance in natural language translation, but not a real breakthrough," he told TechNewsWorld. "IBM has been doing this for a while."

On the Horizon

The goal is perfect translation at scale, and "we should be closer to that goal in the 5-to-10-year time frame," Enderle said. Processing power is the main hitch, and "we'll likely need a 10x improvement to get this system where it needs to be."

Human translators occasionally make mistakes, and emotional freighting and sometimes nonverbal contexts may impact translation, he noted.

That said, "a system that looks deeply at context should be able to exceed the performance of two people talking natively, because it'll always consider context while we often don't hear it," Enderle suggested. "To get there, however, there will likely need to be a visual element, so that nonverbal communications are captured as well."

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The Black Panther OS is a bare-bones Linux distribution built around the KDE desktop. The KDE environment itself is not a minimal component, but how it is integrated within Black Panther gives you an almost-nothing-there installation until you painstakingly install system tools and applications, literally piece by piece.

Black Panther OS, originally forked from Mandriva Linux, is now under independent development in Hungary. Last month's version 16.1 release, dubbed "Silent Killer," marks the project's first use of the KDE Plasma 5 desktop.

This is its only desktop environment. Black Panther OS combines features from other major projects. For instance, it uses Mandriva's graphical configuration tools, Fedora's graphical user interface and Ubuntu's driver management.

Charles Barcza, who started developing Black Panther OS in 2002, released the first public version 1.0 (code name: "Shadow") the following year. He has maintained an annual development cycle.

Black Panther Linux is a general purpose OS designed for use at school, home and work. It focuses on performing everyday tasks, such as time management, office work and media playback. However, it is far from user-friendly, and its time-consuming setup will be an instant turnoff to most users.

Both new and veteran Linux users have far too many better solutions to run the KDE desktop with out-of-the-box convenience.

First Impressions

The latest release has a look and feel that is considerably different from the KDE Plasma 5 desktops other Linux distros use. It does a nice job of disguising the KDE plasma until you start clicking around. The bottom panel is transparent and has a much different configuration than I expected.

The desktop design and themes leave much to be desired in terms of attractiveness. Perhaps that is in keeping with the design and code name implications. for the most part, you will look at a very flat display that is mostly white on black. The Black Panther integration of KDE Plasma seems to have muted much of the animation and pizazz I have come to admire about the KDE desktop.

The developer is intent on adopting best practices from other major GNU/Linux communities, but the way the execution tends to give the release a patchwork feel. The website gives this impression. The patchwork mentality follows through to the OS itself.

Black Panther OS is one of the few Linux distros that still manages to pack itself onto a CD rather than a DVD. Credit efficient optimizations for keeping the entire release on a 700 MB CD-R(W), provided you enable the overburn feature before writing the ISO image to the disc.

Silent Killer's major components include Linux kernel 4.7.0, Qt 5.6.1., Plasma 5.7.1, Python 3.5.1 and the Calamares installer. The dual-architecture ISO supports both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. This eliminates the need to select a 32-bit or 64-bit ISO file when downloading the distro. You can burn the ISO to DVD or USB storage of 1GB as well.

Getting It Going

I found the entire process involved with Black Panther OS to be a bumpy experience. The saga began with searching for the ISO download. The website lacks any clearly identified download path. Instead, the download page and download buttons link to other page views that have multiple download links with added dates many years earlier.

All of this masks the actual current download location and contributes to confusion. So does loading the live session ISO or even installing Black Panther OS to a physical hard drive or a virtual storage drive.

Typically, live session ISOs boot into the Linux desktop with little or no user interaction required. Black Panther OS, however, puts you through a similar configuration routine as you would experience doing an actual installation.

This is where the language barrier gets in the way. When you run the CD/DVD, you must select your language. Then you click the button on the bottom of the screen to continue. The problem is, unless you can read Hungarian, you do not know what the labels mean.

The left button is labeled "megsem," which roughly means "nevermind." The right button is labeled "kovetkezo," which roughly means "next." I only know that because I had to swivel in my chair to another computer to run a dictionary search on the Internet for those two words.

From this point, you proceed through a series of accept/decline windows to configure your time zone, accept the open source license, select a time zone and keyboard layout, set a root (system administrator) password, or add a user. Most of these questions are unnecessary for a live session trial peak at how any Linux distro runs on your hardware. If you decide to install Black Panther OS, you have to repeat the same process again anyway.

Using It

I found getting ready to use Black Panther OS a time-consuming task. It installed in less than 10 minutes -- but that was just the core components. I knew I had some work waiting when I browsed the menu. I saw dozens of application titles listed in gray. Clicking on any one of them loaded the software package installer. That held true for system tools as well as all the other application categories.

The menu held numerous surprises. For instance, earlier versions of Black Panther OS bundled the KDE Calligra suite. The current Silent Killer, however, has its own in-house office suite called "Black Panther Office." Once I installed the RPM packages for the office suite, it was obvious why I'd never heard of it -- it is actually LibreOffice version 5.1.4.2.

That office suite has six integrated components that usually install as one product. Each time I clicked on one of the components -- word processor, spreadsheet, etc -- I had to wade through yet another full product installation and configuration.

Very few of the software titles in the menu actually are installed with the OS. Any title grayed out needs to be installed and set up. This clearly makes Black Panther OS not a ready-to-use OS right out of the box. This is a very tedious and time-consuming process. Almost no applications and system tools are prepackaged with the hard disk installation. One exception is the default Web browser, Vivaldi.

Bottom Line

Installation requires at least 10 GB of hard drive space and 1.5 GB memory. Normally, those requirements are not an issue. It becomes one, however, when installing to a virtual machine.

Avoid two annoyances with installing Black Panther OS. The cancel/next buttons on the bottom of the screen did not show until I narrowed the height of the panel bar.

Make sure the first thing you do after rebooting into the full installation is check for alternative video drivers in the settings panel. The default KDE Plasma drivers loaded fine on reboot, but then failed when I tried to load Black Panther. I did not have that problem with the virtual machine installation.

When I tried loading the OS in recover mode, a text-based console appeared instead of a graphical interface. You guessed it -- all the text was Hungarian.

The overall look and feel of this distro is very unappealing. It is mostly black backgrounds with white borders on the window boxes. The flat design and lack of much color makes for a very dull user experience.

Want to Suggest a Review?

Is there a Linux software application or distro you'd like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?

Please email your ideas to me, and I'll consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.

And use the Talkback feature below to add your comments!

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Cisco has swung into action to combat a hacker group's exploitation of vulnerabilities in its firmware. The group, known as the "Shadow Brokers," released online malware and other exploits it claimed to have stolen from the Equation Group, which is believed to have ties to the United States National Security Agency.

Cisco earlier this month disclosed the vulnerability, along with intrusion prevention system signatures and SNORT rules, "even though the patches are still under development," said Cisco spokesperson Yvonne Malmgren, "because we learned that there may be public awareness of the vulnerability."

This will let customers "actively monitor and protect their networks," she told the E-Commerce Times, and it ensures that they "have the same level of information and awareness that we do."

Customers can check Cisco's Events Response Page for updates about its investigation into the issue.

The vulnerability affects products running Cisco IOS XR 4.3.x to 5.2.x, as well as Cisco IOS XE 3.1S and up.

The Cisco IOS Software Checker identifies any Cisco security advisories that impact a specific IOS Software release, as well as the earliest patch for the vulnerabilities in each advisory.

Bracing for Breaches

The vulnerability is in the Internet Key Exchange version 1 packet processing code in Cisco IOS, Cisco IO XE and Cisco IOS XR software.

It's due to insufficient condition checks in the part of the code that handles IKEv1 security negotiation requests.

Attackers could exploit it by sending a crafted IKEv1 packet to an affected device that's configured to accept IKEv1 security requests, Cisco said. Exploiting the flaw lets attackers retrieve memory contents, which could lead to the disclosure of confidential information.

The flaw could have a "possibly substantial" impact, said Giovani Vigna, CTO of Lastline.

"Many devices out there are not managed well," he told the E-Commerce Times. "They are installed and left to cyber-rot." These mismanaged devices "are going to be vulnerable, and used as the first point of compromise in enterprise networks."

When exploited, the vulnerability discloses information such as virtual private network configuration details and RSA private and public keys, said Thomas Pore, director of IT and services for Plixer.

They "cover a range of equipment that, in some cases, will likely never be patched," he told the E-Commerce Times

Customers using Cisco products and others that are affected by this revelation "are bracing themselves for potential data breaches -- or, even worse, finding out that some hidden resident malware has been lurking on their systems for an unknown period of time," remarked Chenxi Wang, chief strategy officer for Twistlock.

"Cisco seems to be moving fairly fast to release fixes for the vulnerabilities disclosed by the Shadow Brokers," she told the E-Commerce Times, but "the industry would love to see more publicized information on how Cisco achieves secure development lifecycle practices -- and possibly a bug bounty program to boot."

The NSA Connection

If it's true that the Equation Group does have ties to the NSA, then "if the NSA has zero-day vulnerability information on all the top firewall brands, what other kinds of information do they have at their disposal to conduct surveillance on civilians and organizations at their discretion?" Wang asked.

Those ties could be why the NSA didn't notify Cisco of the vulnerabilities, suggested Plixer's Pore, and "the problem with not disclosing vulnerabilities for the sake of national security is that now many U.S. private and government organizations are vulnerable to potential nation-state attacks."

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The website of prominent security blogger Brian Krebs is back online this week after sustaining one of the largest distributed denial of service attacks in Internet history.

DDoS attacks typically disrupt service at a website by flooding it with junk traffic. In this case, garbage traffic assaulted Krebs' site at 620 gigabits per second. By comparison, consumer bandwidth is in the 10-15 megabit per second range; businesses, 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps.

The attack may have been even larger than reported so far, maintained Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare.

"There was evidence that a lot of the upstream providers were getting congested and dropping packets upstream," he told TechNewsWorld.

When that's taken into account, "this attack could have been close to a terabit attack," Prince said.

Akamai's Exit

The attack was so large that Akamai, the company that had been protecting Krebs' site from DDoS attacks for years, had to withdraw its support from the blogger.

"Let me be clear: I do not fault Akamai for their decision," Krebs wrote in a Sunday post.

"I was a pro bono customer from the start, and Akamai and its sister company Prolexic have stood by me through countless attacks over the past four years. It just so happened that this last siege was nearly twice the size of the next-largest attack they had ever seen before," he explained.

"Once it became evident that the assault was beginning to cause problems for the company's paying customers, they explained that the choice to let my site go was a business decision, pure and simple," said Krebs.

Akamai had to assess what the attack was costing it in manpower and network overages, said Martin McKeay, a senior security advocate at the company.

"An attack of this size has serious financial costs," he told TechNewsWorld.

Google to the Rescue

Krebs had to pull the plug on his website until he could find a new safe harbor. He found one behind Google's Project Shield, which uses the search giant's massive infrastructure to protect independent news sites from DDoS attacks.

Although it isn't known who launched the attack on Krebs' website, Akamai's McKeay doesn't believe it was a nation-state actor because it exposed a valuable asset to discovery.

"It's very unlikely a state-actor because it's burning this botnet," he said.

"There's enough people looking at this that this botnet will not last very long," McKeay observed. "It's somebody who doesn't care if this botnet is useless in a week or two."

It may be someone with a short tenure on freedom.

"When large attacks like this happen, the people behind them aren't long for walking around freely," Cloudflare's Prince suggested.

"When you look at the history of attacks like this, in almost every case, the individuals behind them are tracked down and prosecuted," he added. "It's hard to generate this much traffic and create this much pain without leaving fingerprints."

IoT Culprit

A botnet of hijacked Internet of Things devices -- routers, IP cameras and digital video recorders that are exposed to the Internet and protected with weak or hard-coded passwords -- mounted the attack on Krebs' site.

"There are hundreds of thousands of cameras connected to the Internet that have a vulnerability that allows an attacker to abuse them and start sending attack traffic at a victim," Prince pointed out.

An attacker sends a message to an IoT device and spoofs the return address, explained Slawek Ligier, vice president of engineering for security at Barracuda Networks.

"Those responses are directed at the victim, so the victim receives a flood of data from IoT devices from around the world," he told TechNewsWorld.

The IoT is opening the floodgates for DDoS hackers, said Akamai's McKeay. "When people create IoT devices, unless they're secured properly, you're opening up the possibility of it being used for just about any malicious purpose that you want."

While the attack on Krebs' site appears abnormal now, it may not be in the future, he said. "Within two years, this will probably be the new norm."

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Federal authorities last week launched a probe of a suspected cyberattack that targeted the private Gmail account of a White House staffer.

The employee's correspondence turned up on the DCleaks hacktivist site, which earlier this month posted the private emails of former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The latest dump involves the private account of White House staffer Ian Mellul, whose personal emails were published on the DCleaks Twitter account and website, along with the claim that they represented just part of a trove of correspondence from February 2015 through June of this year.

Mellul's job entails coordination with the U.S. Secret Service and local law enforcement regarding the official travel of First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, according to DCleaks.

He reportedly also does work for the presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose operations repeatedly have been targeted in recent months.

First Lady's Passport

The posted emails include a range of mundane correspondence involving White House tours, various official trips, invoices and other discussions with the Clinton campaign and government officials.

More troubling is the site's posting of what it claims is the first lady's open passport. It is not clear why that image would be in the staffer's Gmail account.

"The Secret Service is aware of the alleged email hacking of a White House staffer," spokesperson Cathy Milhoan told TechNewsWorld. "The Secret Service is concerned any time unauthorized information that might pertain to one of the individuals we protect, or our operation, is allegedly disclosed."

However, the agency does not disclose information on investigations as a matter of policy, she added.

Powell Leak

DCleaks earlier this month published a highly publicized trove of email correspondence from Powell, including some colorful commentary about Hillary Clinton and her presidential rival Donald Trump. It also includes some of Powell's remarks about his advice to Clinton concerning email practices after she became secretary of state in 2009.

In the latest breach, the targeting of a low-level staffer is not by happenstance. It's likely a targeted move to access proprietary government information through a back door.

This shouldn't be considered a breach, but rather an attack," said Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend Micro.

"The information around this indicates that this is a single, personal email account that has been compromised," he told TechNewsWorld.

The fact that the hackers targeted the personal account of the White House staffer may be an indication that they were unable to penetrate the official government email accounts at the White House, Budd argued.

Targeting private accounts is a classic tactic used by cyberespionage groups in "island-hopping attacks," he pointed out. The tactic involves going after private emails in order to breach government accounts and systems through "well-crafted spear phishing campaigns."

Influence Peddling?

DCleaks is a Russian-based influence outlet, according to ThreatConnect.

Guccifer 2.0 used DCleaks as a vehicle to dump emails obtained from the hacked Hillary Clinton campaign staffer, according to the firm.

Further, DCLeaks hosted a group of compromised emails from the account of Billy Rinehart Jr., a former United Nations Foundation official and regional director of the DNC, whose email was compromised in a similar fashion using tactics associated with Fancy Bear, ThreatConnect said.

Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike previously linked Fancy bear and Cozy Bear to the hacker networks that targeted the Democratic National Committee earlier this year. Russian officials repeatedly hav edenied any connection to cyberattacks on the DNC, Clinton campaign or other agencies related to the election.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Apple are very different companies this decade, having shifted their models from a strategic customer/innovation focus to one that's more tactical -- and tied far more closely to quarterly profit. They are hardly alone, and this speaks to why Michael Dell and Joe Tucci worked so hard to take their companies private, because this unfortunate trend is not tied to any one industry or any one country.

Both HPE and Apple increasingly are defined not by creative products but by complaining customers. Given their goals, their financial performance by most measures is worse than it was under the prior model, at least long term -- though profitable spikes have allowed insider investors to realize nice returns.

Since I've been through this several times before with a variety of companies, I'll share my thoughts on what's going on and why.

As always, I'll close with my product of the week, and I'm bringing back an old favorite: The Echo Dot, always the highest-value Echo, now sells for less than US$50.

HPE's Changes

The HPE changes became evident to me through my involvement in a long-term project interviewing IT managers who have switched vendors. A common theme has come up in the reports from HPE accounts post-split: HPE largely is not responsive to their problems; it fields relatively inexperienced support staff; and is a huge pain to work with.

This shouldn't be a surprise:

• HPE has been laying off huge numbers of people. That tends to result in folks not wanting to take responsibility, because related problems might get them on a layoff list.
• HPE is being sued for discrimination because of a policy that replaces experienced older staff with inexperienced younger staff.
• HPE is massively siloed, which passes solution responsibility for projects that cross siloes to the customer.

Regardless of the competitor, HPE now is defined negatively, in large part, in areas critical to execution, and customers are upset with the outcome, understandably. However, many HPE accounts seem still to be locked into the firm.

That is likely for two reasons: 1) They don't realize that other companies don't engage in the same behavior -- because they are tied to HPE they can't see the difference in customer care between firms; and 2) When you are dedicated to one vendor, it is a real pain to switch.

I saw this play out right before IBM collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I'd reported similar issues to my management -- only to have them laugh at me and point out that IBM sold air, so the customers had to deal with whatever IBM dished out.

I left shortly afterward, thinking they were idiots. They got fired shortly after that, and IBM had to undertake a massive change direction or cease to exist, and it is a very different company today. However -- and this was before the Internet -- about five years elapsed between the time the problematic behavior was covered up inside the company and the beginning of the huge mass of customers jumping ship. I expect that with HPE, we are talking months.

Apple's Shift

Apple's shift started with Steve Jobs' passing. Tim Cook moved from what was a heavily innovation- and customer-focused marketing strategy to one that was focused more tightly on top and bottom line growth. The last truly "magical" product was the iPad, and that magic, along with related sales, started going south shortly after Steve's death.

The Apple Watch remains largely an expensive and relatively unpopular offering (compared to products like the iPod, iPad and iPhone), and the new iPhone currently is being defined by a screwy hiss and the lack of a headphone jack.

Sadly, this iPhone is arguably the best in market -- thanks to the Samsung Galaxy Note7's new feature of becoming a mini-weapon of minor destruction.

Customer complaints seem to define the products more than any messaging from Apple, and this is all due to a similar source -- a focus on cost containment rather than customer excitement.

I saw this with Apple once before: In the 1990s, long after Steve Jobs was fired, Apple kept plugging away until Windows 95 launched, and it started to become clear the company was months away from going under. It took a very similar marketing and product approach to what Apple once had to cause Microsoft to flip so that customers saw it differently.

The Overriding Problem

Behind all of this is a bigger problem that goes beyond Apple and HPE: We have shifted corporate ownership form folks like you and me to large hedge funds that operate on a razor edge of legality -- often drifting into insider trading) -- and drive executive compensation to favor their needs over our needs as customers or investors.

These people don't care if the company survives, or if customers or employees are happy. Their focus is on spiking the stock, up or down, in a fashion that they can anticipate in order to make profits. In effect, they are gaming the system to the detriment of pretty much everyone except the executives who, increasingly, work for them. We the consumers are getting screwed in the process.

Wells Fargo's Scandal

You saw this at the heart of the Wells Fargo scandal. Incentives were created to create false records of success in order to make the firm look more successful than it was. The folks who got shot weren't the ones who set up the system -- they were poor saps who got tricked into playing by the rules they were given.

This eventually could end up killing Wells Fargo, but those really responsible took their profits, and most of them likely are long gone. This is the world we live in now -- where the criminals run the companies. When scandals break, their unwitting minions get shot, while they simply move on to the next victim. I'm not just seeing this unfortunate behavior nationally but internationally, and its potential adverse impact on the market, jobs, customer satisfaction and the world economy is massive.

I continue to be concerned that we look at events like Wells Fargo's fraud and act as if they are isolated. It's kind of like looking at the Zika virus and assuming each patent is unique, and pretending it didn't have the potential to become a pandemic. Oh wait...

Wrapping Up: So What Do You Do?

As an employee, you need to watch for this behavior in your management -- and if you see it, look for a job elsewhere before you become a victim. Every time I've left a company in trouble, I've found I should have left earlier.

I've spoken to a ton of ex-HPE staffers who can't believe they waited so long to leave, referring to their employment at the firm as the most painful time of their lives. As a customer, don't lock in to any one vendor. I'd favor private firms over public at the moment, or until we solve the hedge fund ownership problem. That lets you more accurately see when your care is degrading, so you can respond accordingly.

As an Apple customer, I'm not yet suggesting you switch. Samsung showcases that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Still, you don't have to buy every new product, and sometimes the product you have will be better for you -- and certainly cheaper -- than that brand new product.

This is ironic for me, because if I were an iPhone 6 owner, I would get the iPhone 7 -- that waterproof feature alone is worth the price of admission.

Make your own choices, though, and realize that eventually -- as it did in the 1990s -- Apple likely will lose you as a customer. So, favor third-party apps over Apple's, so you aren't locked in and can move when it becomes more obvious that you need to.

In short, avoid lock-in like the plague, both in consumer and enterprise products. Things change, and you want to be able to take the best path -- not the only path available to you -- when that happens.

Amazon is well on the way to owning IoT for the consumer market, thanks largely to its Echo family of offerings. I was an early Echo adopter, and my favorite Echo is the Dot. It gives you speaker choice, and you can add a battery (you now can buy a nested battery for it).

Its hands-free voice features make it ideal for the pool or beach, and it is the least expensive way to get into the Echo line.

Well, it just got a ton cheaper, because Amazon has dropped the price of the second-generation Echo to $49.95. Oh, and the built-in speaker isn't bad. I take mine and wirelessly connect it to a Bluetooth boombox, and it makes a great outdoor solution. I connect it to a Sonos bridge to allow it to control music inside my home.

Amazon has added considerable IoT functionality to the Echo, so you now can use your voice to control lights and other connected devices, and you increasingly can have conversations with it as it drifts to becoming more of a digital assistant.

At $49, the Echo Dot now makes sense for more rooms of your house, and it becomes a far more viable Christmas gift for your technology-challenged relatives.

I've always loved the Dot and bargains. Connect the two, and suddenly you have a great product of the week.

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Lenovo, which owns Motorola, last week released the kernel source code for the Moto Z Droid smartphone on Github.

The move follows the company's posting of the Moto Z Droid Moto Mods Development Kit and Moto Mods on Github this summer.

This is the first kernel source code made available for the Moto Z family of devices.

Releasing the kernel source code seems to be another step in Lenovo's attempt to get devs to build an iPhone-like ecosystem around the Moto Z family.

Mod Happy

The Z family is modular. Lenovo's Moto Mods Developer Program lets devs buy the Mod development kit, which offers the same hardware and software used internally at Motorola.

The kit snaps onto the back of a Moto Z and makes it easy for devs to add custom electronics and software to support their Moto Mod concept.

Mod possibilities are endless, ranging from infrared cameras to e-ink displays to game controllers to metal detectors and air pollution sensors. All devs have to do is ensure they follow Motorola's developer guidelines.

Moto Z phones are designed to be compatible with any Moto Mod created and certified through Motorola.

The release of the kernel source code on Github is meant "to expedite modifications of this system for that chunk of the ecosystem," said Al Hilwa, a research program director at IDC.

Deep Insights

Motorola has been working on the Moto Z family and Moto Mods for more than two years.

Mods connect to the frame with very strong magnets and there's an automatic connection process so the phone doesn't have to be rebooted.

Developers can do "just about anything," observed Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan. "Github has everything from NoSQL databases to source code for open devices."

Devs can use the Motorola source code to "reprogram the device to do things that it doesn't come from the factory capable of doing," he told LinuxInsider. "Think app stores and the various applications that utilize deep insight into the phone's OS to perform lots of functions."

On the negative side, however, "you could theoretically exploit [the code] to compromise the security of the device," Jude noted, and end users could "kill their smartphones in newer and more creative ways."

Lenovo and Motorola could benefit because, "like with any open source community, they could leverage other people's creativity to improve their product," he said.

$1M Carrot

The code release is really "an attempt to win over power users and their influential endorsement," Hilwas told LinuxInsider.

While the code release could benefit devs and Lenovo/Motorola, "to the extent that it leads to further fragmentation of a specific device, developers will have a hard time testing and assuring the quality of their apps on this particular device," Hilwa suggested.

The companies' efforts to attract devs are limited, given that the Moto Z Droid is offered exclusively on Verizon Wireless' network. Verizon likes to keep its systems closed, as a rule, so that customers can't root or ROM their devices.

Devs might not think there's a large enough user base on just one carrier's network to make it worth their while. Still, Lenovo has set aside up to US$1 million to help bring the best Moto Mod ideas to market, and that might spur action.

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Welcome, dear readers, to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that's gotten over its disappointment from the latest Apple event just long enough to deliver the lowdown on the latest in gadget announcements.

On the whiteboard this time around are a device that grants vehicles a self-driving function, a wearable to monitor your hydration level, and a drone with arms.

As always, these are not reviews, and the ratings relate only to how much I'd like to try each item.

Wheel Wonder

After a bad experience when I was first behind the wheel as a teenager, I'm only just now learning to drive, more than a decade later. My partner and I are going through the school together, and when asked about our dream vehicles in class, she replied that she'd love a self-driving RV. Her wish eventually might turn true with a device that grants vehicles more autonomy.

The Comma One which is somewhat analogous to Tesla's Autopilot, is shipping this year, according to its maker.

It isn't a device that will give a car full self-driving powers -- you'd need to add sensors everywhere, for starters -- nor does it work with every model. However, in the right car, it will take you along the highway without you needing to touch the controls at all.

It uses front radar units and a camera to judge its speed and distance from the car ahead, and it costs US$999, plus a $24 monthly subscription. That seems like a fair price for someone who does a lot of highway driving.

My concerns are the same for every other automated driving feature -- that it'd be all too easy for a driver to tune out and start watching a movie instead of keeping an active eye on the road. I'm also worried about how systems like this can handle inclement weather, especially since I live in a part of the world where there's snow and ice on the ground constantly for five months of the year.

Of course, this isn't something I'm likely to try any time soon, thanks to local requirements that put me at least six months away from getting my license. What's more, I live in a city with many narrow streets, and I won't be likely to drive out of town all that often, so Comma One's usefulness is limited for me.

That said, I'd like to try it. It seems a compelling way to test semi-autonomous driving without having to buy a custom-built car. Sadly, that self-driving RV seems a little further away.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Feelings of Safety When Changing the Radio

H2No Thanks

Thanks to modern technology, we have another way of monitoring hydration beyond assessing how dry our mouths feel and paying close attention to the color of the liquids we expel.

LVL measures your dehydration level, and it will vibrate when you need to take more H2O on board. In a move that feels like the complete antithesis of adorable anthropomorphic technology, an accompanying app displays a happy face when you're sufficiently hydrated, and a frown when you are not.

It apparently can guide you on exactly how much water you need to drink at a certain time to optimize your body. Of course, it also bears typical fitness wearable functions like activity tracking, heart rate monitoring, sleep cycle tracking, and calorie intake counting.

It has a nicer design than most fitness trackers, too.

LVL is expected to retail for $199, but as of this writing, there were still a few discount offers available through its very successful crowdfunding campaign.

I suspect many of us are underhydrated, though this device seems wholly unnecessary. Drink if you're thirsty. And then you should probably drink some more. Done. I can't imagine I'd ever need this, given the volume of tea I ingest every day.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Glasses of Water

Airborne Grabber

The horror movie genre seems to be in a resurgence after a successful summer at the box office, followed by the not-half-bad Blair Witch. Now, I want to see a remake of The Birds, with these drones with arms clawing at some poor actor's scalp.

The latest drone from ProDrone has a meaningless string of numbers and letters for a name -- so annoying that I was tempted to omit it from this column. I decided to include it, though, because you should be prepared when the ruling class uses it to assert control in our impending dystopia. It's "PD6B-AW-ARM."

This beast can use its twin arms to carry a 44-pound payload and balance itself on surfaces on which it otherwise might not be able to land. It's terrifying. I'm not sure I'd ever want to trust a machine that probably could tear off my head before I even saw it sneaking up on me. This is not a horror movie I want to be a part of.

Still, I suppose it could prove useful in extreme situations, like accurately dropping a float in the sea for someone who's fallen overboard, or dumping water onto a small roof fire.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Real-Life Horror Movies

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The Commission on Presidential Debates, which has run them since 1988, last week announced initiatives with social media, academics, and media organizations to engage the American public in substantive conversations before, during and after this year's debates.

The first debate between presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is scheduled for Monday at Hofstra University in New York.

A single vice presidential debate, between Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Mike Pence, is set for Oct. 4.

The second presidential debate will take place on Oct. 9, and the third and final Clinton-Trump face-off is scheduled for Oct. 19.

Nuts and Bolts

Facebook and Google will provide the debate moderators with data about online searches and comments pertaining to the election, the candidates and the issues.

Facebook, Google, CollegeDebate16, and other social media grassroots organizations will work with moderators to help source questions for the candidates.

Facebook is the exclusive social media sponsor for the first and third debates, and members of the media, students, and the campus community will use Facebook Live to broadcast the events worldwide.

Facebook users will be able to ask questions and post comments.

Snapchat will run a Live Story from each debate site, offering a variety of perspectives.

Twitter, Yahoo and YouTube also will live-stream the debates.

MIT Media Lab's Electome Project will analyze Twitter conversations about the election. It also will offer journalists a Web-based dashboard at the debate site media centers.

Illinois State University researchers will analyze comments about the debates on social media, websites and major blogs from eight states, and display visualizations of their findings on their website and social media accounts.

A graduate research seminar at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will monitor social media discourse during the debates and on election day from the university's Adam Brown Social Media Command Center.

The Importance of Social Media

"We now have more robust social media applications, and many people now have multiple social media accounts, so they're more engaged than ever across social media," noted Stuart Brotman, Howard Distinguished Endowed Professor of Media Management and Law and Beaman Professor of Communication and Information at the University of Tennessee. Brotman is running the University of Tennessee seminar.

Fact-checking could become a major factor in the debates, he said.

"If thousands of people on social media point out a statement is wrong, and that's made known to the moderator, will the moderator make that known to candidates? We had that issue with the commander-in-chief interview with Matt Lauer," he told TechNewsWorld.

Minor Party Candidates Excluded

Social media involvement is "largely a hoax," remarked Jeff Cohen, cofounder of RootsAction, which has launched a petition to open the presidential debates to minor party candidates.

Social media sites can't be trusted to deliver tough questions to the major party candidates, because they don't want to jeopardize their access to them, he told TechNewsWorld.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, which is a nonprofit corporation, is controlled by the Republican and Democratic parties, Cohen asserted, adding that "it says something about the lack of democracy in our country and the lack of a free press that the major networks are going along with a debate that excludes all alternatives except the two unpopular major parties."

The CPD maintains that it is nonpartisan as well as nonprofit, and that its mission is to ensure that the debates provide the best possible information to the public.

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It appears that the Senate is poised to quash a government shutdown threat from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in spite of presidential candidate Donald Trump lending his support to his former primary opponent's cause.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Thursday filed a continuing resolution to fund the government without any language geared toward blocking the administration's IANA transition, which Cruz had attempted to include in the bill. The Democrats still have to sign on, but the measure is expected to pass the chamber on Monday.

The IANA stewardship transition, set to take effect on Sept. 30, is the U.S. government's final step in a years-long process to transfer management of the Internet's domain name system to the private sector. The U.S. National Telecommunications & Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce, will relinquish its stewardship of IANA to the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

Efforts to block the #IANAtransition defy all logic. #IANA pic.twitter.com/XyvVlm0eTy

— Senator Brian Schatz (@SenBrianSchatz) September 22, 2016

McConnell's action followed Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump's Wednesday announcement that he would back the efforts of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to prevent the planned transition of control.

Cruz had threatened to block passage of the spending bill, effectively shutting down the government, if the IANA transition should go forward. The Trump campaign jumped into the fray with a call for the Republican party to unite in an effort to prevent the transition, sounding an alarm over potential censorship of the Internet.

Supporters of the transition, including World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, have insisted that the move would have no impact whatsoever on online censorship.

The inventor of the Web says @SenTedCruz is dead wrong about online censorship: https://t.co/p2BnHlcenx #IANA

— Free Press (@freepress) September 22, 2016

ICANN only supervises domain names, explained Berners-Lee and Daniel Weitzner, director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative, in an editorial published in The Washington Post. The actual flow of traffic, and with it speech, would remain up to the individual network and platform operators.

The Global Internet

One of Cruz's objections to the IANA transition is that it would give foreign governments, as well as global corporations, more power within ICANN, which they might use to enforce restrictive policies that could undermine Internet freedom.

"Currently, through ICANN, the Internet is largely under the light control of the U.S.," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"Given it is a world network, it would be logical to turn it over to world control," he told TechNewsWorld.

That said, there are "major concerns that the next war will be a cyberwar," Enderle cautioned, and there is no strong world government to ensure against the misuse of Internet control.

"This seemingly little thing could make the difference between winning and losing, and it is potentially a huge advantage that the U.S. is getting nothing for giving up," he said.

"In many ways, this is like the Panama Canal, which was a huge asset," Enderle suggested.

"It should be in world control, but giving it up reduces the country's ability to defend itself," he said, adding that "this control also has revenue advantages."

Pointless Exercise

Had Cruz succeeded in bringing the government to a grinding halt, it likely would not have prevented the IANA transition anyway.

"The Obama administration's announcement that it would transfer control of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions from the U.S. Commerce Department to ICANN, a California-based nonprofit, simply completes a process that began 20 year ago, and has been supported by previous presidents and administrations from both political parties," explained Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

"Like many forms of bureaucracy, the transition has been in the works for a long time, and Senator Cruz is observing something which is just about a done deal," noted Jim Purtilo, associate professor for computer science at the University of Maryland.

"The time to fight this battle was back when policy was being formulated -- not when it is largely being implemented," he told TechNewsWorld.

"It is probably good politics for the senator to have something to talk about -- and I agree with many of his points -- but it will probably end up just talking points about how he lost for all the right reasons," Purtilo said.

Ignorance or Willful Lie?

One big takeaway from the recent political theater is that the discussion often strays from the facts and issues at the heart of the matter.

"Giving up control is good -- but not great -- tactical PR," said Enderle.

"Keeping it is likely better strategically for the country, particularly in the face of a cyberwar, where that control potentially gives you the power to lock an attacker out of the Internet," he pointed out.

That ability "could be a decisive advantage, if only to buy you some time to address the exploit the attacker was using," said Enderle. "I don't agree with Ted Cruz often and wonder about his motives, but this time his position -- though perhaps not his method -- can be defended as good governance."

There are reasons to question the transfer, "including past judgments by ICANN and the organization's lack of accountability," Pund-IT's King told TechNewsWorld.

However, "Cruz's attempt to co-opt the transition by claiming it would allow authoritarian regimes, including China and Russia, to censor Internet content in the U.S. is either a willful lie or evidence of the Senator's woeful ignorance," he said.

"Plus, his attempt to tie the issue to continued federal government funding is pure grandstanding by a failed presidential candidate attempting to prove that he remains relevant," King remarked.

End of the Internet

The rumor that the transition will bring about the end of the Internet may be greatly exaggerated -- or maybe not.

"The impact of this change could turn out to be great," warned the University of Maryland's Purtilo.

"Control the rules implementation, and you control much of the economy around the Internet," he explained.

"People can't shop at your store, rally to your cause, or even communicate with you if they can't find you on the Net," Purtilo pointed out. "Soon, bureaucrats from places that love liberty less will be making those calls."

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Opera earlier this week released a new version of its browser, Opera 40, which comes with a free virtual private network service built in. The official rollout follows five months of user experimentation with a beta version.

The company evaluated beta users' feedback and subsequently brought on additional servers, added options for global or private browsing, and created versions that would run on iOS and Android, noted company spokesperson Yvonne Gonzalez.

When the VPN is turned on, it creates a secure connection to one of Opera's five servers around the world, letting users spoof their IP address. Options now include two new virtual locations: Singapore and the Netherlands.

"We strongly believe that if more people knew how the Internet truly works, they would use a VPN," Gonzalez told LinuxInsider.

Many Hurdles to Clear

Only half of the people responding to a recent Opera global survey knew what a VPN was. As for the other half -- more than 70 percent of those who were familiar with VPN technology chose not to use a service, citing as reasons difficulty in using them and unwillingness to pay.

Users can enable the Opera VPN in the privacy and security subsetting, found either in the settings or preferences menu, depending on the OS the browser is running in.

The VPN can be toggled on and off after being set up, and users can select their virtual location. Alternatively, the browser can be set to select the optimal server location automatically. In automatic mode, browsing through the VPN always proceeds at the maximum available speed, according to Opera.

Users also can choose whether to have the VPN on for a global setting or only in private browsing mode.

Opera supports Windows 7 through 10, any recent Linux distribution, Mac OS 10.9 or later, iOS and Android, Gonzalez said.

Why Use a VPN?

The chief purpose of a VPN is to protect user privacy online. Opera's VPN lets users serve up one of its IP addresses instead of their own to mask the user's identity.

"VPNs let you reflect the IP address of the VPN termination point rather than your origination point," said Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

However, "Other than for secure transmissions, which can be accomplished using https, why even bother with a VPN? It's just more complexity," he told LinuxInsider.

Further, VPNs "are finicky and don't play well with some applications," Jude said. "It used to be the case they didn't do well with streaming video or mobile data devices. Those problems have been addressed, but you can still have issues with different applications -- usually anything that's timing-dependent."

In general, it's hard to connect with a VPN, and they tend to be slow because they simulate a dedicated secure pipe by encoding IP packets within a secure wrapper, he added. "The wrapper consumes bandwidth -- so you really don't want to use a VPN on a slow connection."

VPNs can add overhead to a connection, and a VPN that's on all the time may burn up a lot of data on a user's data plan, Jude pointed out.

Netflix reportedly blocked the Opera VPN from accessing its library in Europe, likely due to licensing issues.

More trouble may be in store, because "many commercial services and even online commerce sites work hard to geofence their offerings," noted Al Hilwa, a research program director at IDC.

Getting More Subscribers

Opera's share of the global browser market is minuscule.

"We are proud of having more than 50 million users on the desktop and 350 million total users on our Opera products," Opera's Gonzalez said. "We're going to carry on bringing innovation and interesting features to our product."

Still, using the VPN "will be the purview of power users," IDC's Hilwa told LinuxInsider.

If it does take off, other browsers may follow Opera's lead.

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