Ofwat's chief engineer, Bill Emery, insisted there was no crisis in the sewerage network but said a monitoring system had been put in place to forewarn of collapsing sewers.

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Motorola's new Home Monitoring and Control System HMEZ1000, a system of wireless network cameras and sensors that let's you keep tabs on your home from anywhere, and will automatically email or text message you when a door or window is opened, or when the temperature or humidity hits a certain level.

ENGADGET: An evening with Motorola

In the absence of a monitoring system, they then can make their way undetected through the network of wholesalers and distributors that furnish medicines to doctors and conventional pharmacies.

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The NYPD also maintains a "Ring of Steel, " a network of 4, 000 sophisticated security cameras that feed information into a central monitoring system to detect questionable or unlawful activity.

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These include the international seismic monitoring network, the international array of sea level measuring stations (the Global Sea Level Observing System, the Global Telecommunication System of the World Meteorological Organization and associated public geostationary satellites) and the internet.

UNESCO: & CTBTO: Working together to issue timely alerts

Shaw has since put Cantaloupe's system into 800 of its 2, 600 machines, and he hopes to be monitoring nearly the entire network by the end of next year.

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In January 2003 the Microsoft SQL Server worm, known as Slammer, infected a private computer network at David-Besse nuclear power plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio, disabling a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours, says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

FORBES: On The Cover/Top Stories