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DDoS attack hobbles sites, including Amazon
Dec 28th
An attack directed at the DNS provider for some of the Internet’s larger e-commerce companies — including Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Expedia — took several Internet shopping sites offline Wednesday evening, two days before Christmas.
Neustar, the company that provides DNS services under the UltraDNS brand name, confirmed an attack took place Wednesday afternoon, taking out sites or rendering them extremely sluggish for about an hour. A representative who answered the customer support line said the attacks were directed against Neustar facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose, California, and Allen Goldberg, vice president of corporate communications for Neustar, confirmed that at about 4:45 p.m. PST, “our alarms went off.”
Goldberg said the company received a disproportionately high number of queries coming into the system, and analyzed it as an attack. Neustar deployed “a mitigation response” within minutes of the attack, he said, and brought matters under control within an hour. The response limited the problems to Northern California, he said.
In addition to the high-profile sites, dozens of smaller sites that rely upon Amazon for Web-hosting services were also taken down by the attack. Amazon’s S3 and EC2 services were affected by the problems, according to Jeff Barr, Amazon’s lead Web Evangelist, who retweeted a report to that effect without clarification and confirmed it in later tweets.
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Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins split
Dec 28th
Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins
One of Hollywood’s most enduring relationships has ended – Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have broken up after more than two decades together, PEOPLE has learned exclusively.
“Actress Susan Sarandon and her partner of 23 years, actor Tim Robbins have announced that they separated over the summer,” her rep Teal Cannaday tells PEOPLE in a statement. “No further comments will be made.”
The couple met on the set of Bull Durham, and they have two sons together, Jack, 20, and Miles, 17.
Sarandon, 63, was previously married to Chris Sarandon, whom she met in college. The actress also dated director Franco Amurri in the mid ’80s. The two had a daughter, Eva Amurri, in 1985. (Amurri is also an actress; she most recently appeared in Showtime’s Californication).
Sarandon and Robbins, 51, were admired for their long relationship in the face of the pressures of show business, their much-discussed age difference – he’s 12 years younger – and that they never married.
“I won’t marry because I am too afraid of taking him for granted or him taking me for granted – maybe it will be a good excuse for a party when I am 80,” Sarandon has said in the past.
( Courtesy : People.com)
Fine for Google over French books
Dec 27th
A Paris court has found Google guilty of copyright infringement in a ruling which could have ramifications for its plans to digitise the world’s books. The search giant must pay 300,000 euros (£266,000) in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere.
It was one of many to take Google to court for digitising its books without explicit permission. Google was also ordered to pay 10,000 euros a day until it removes extracts of the books from its database. Google expressed disappointment at the ruling.
“French readers now face the threat of losing access to a significant body of knowledge and falling behind the rest of internet users,” said a spokesman for the firm. Serge Eyrolles, head of the French publisher’s union Syndicat National de l’Edition, said he was “completely satisfied with the verdict”. “It shows Google that they are not the kings of the world and they can’t do whatever they want,” he said. Google wants to scan millions of books to make them available online.
This court case will be seen as a victory for critics of the plan who fear Google is creating a monopoly over information. Publisher Herve de La Martiniere launched his court case three years ago but Google continued to scan books during this period.
Nicolas Cage Faces Lawsuit
Dec 25th
Here’s something Nicolas Cage didn’t want for Christmas: Another multimillion dollar lawsuit.
Cage, 45, who says he’s facing financial ruin after allegedly being duped by his former accountant, is being sued by a real estate company who says he failed to repay more than $5 million in loans. Read the rest of this entry »
Google’s Admob plans scrutinised by US regulator
Dec 24th
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has asked for more information about Google’s plans to buy Admob, a company specialising in ads for small screens.
The search engine giant said last month that it hoped to buy the Silicon Valley start-up for $750m (£449m) in stocks. Google’s group product manager Paul Feng wrote in a blog post that the company “doesn’t see any regulatory issues” with the proposed deal.He admitted that the scrutiny meant the deal would not be closed immediately. It took months for the FTC to approve Google’s earlier purchase of another internet advert company, DoubleClick.
“Closer scrutiny has been one consequence of Google’s success,” added Mr Feng.
Admob was founded four years ago and sells adverts designed to run on mobile phones.
(Courtesy: bbc.co.uk)