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Posts tagged news
Forecasters put UK on alert for another ‘significant snowfall’
Dec 29th
FREEZING conditions were set to return to the region today as a new blast of icy weather threatened to bring what forecasters described as “significant snowfall” to some parts of Britain.Commuters were expected to face fresh trouble on the roads and railways on the first day back after the Christmas break, with the worst of the disruption expected in Wales and the West Midlands.
Rob Hutchinson, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, said around 40 to 50cms (16 to 19 inches) of snow could fall in Wales in a 48- hour period beginning last night.He said it was unlikely that Yorkshire would see that level of downfall, but could not rule out the potential of more snow tomorrow, particularly over the Pennines, South Yorkshire and the north Midlands.
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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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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.
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)
Google Living Stories
Dec 14th
Google Living Stories provide a new, experimental way to consume news, developed by a partnership between Google, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. In Living Stories, you can read the same reporting and analysis that you expect from the Times and the Post, delivered on a highly interactive platform.