It did not accuse Beijing directly, but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine – google.cn.

This could result in closing the site, and its Chinese offices, Google said.

Chinese rival Baidu called the move “hypocritical” and financially driven. In US trade on Wednesday Baidu’s shares were up 10%, and Google’s down 1.5%.

Google said the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the primary target of the attack, which occurred in December.

The search engine has now said it will hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering had yet been made.

Google launched google.cn in 2006, agreeing to some censorship of the search results, as required by the Chinese government.

It currently holds around a third of the Chinese search market, far behind Baidu with more than 60%.

Email targeted
In a blog post announcing its decision, Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond said: “A primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.”

The company said its investigation into the attack found two accounts of its online mail service – Gmail – appeared to have been accessed.

However, the attack was limited to accessing account information such as the date the account was created and subject line, rather than e-mail content, it said.

It said it had also discovered that the accounts of dozens of US, China and Europe-based Gmail users, who are “advocates of human rights in China”, appeared to have been “routinely accessed by third parties”.

It said these accounts had not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but “most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on users’ computers”.

At least 20 other large companies from a wide range of businesses were similarly targeted, it added.

‘Makes me sick’
In a blog, the chief architect of Baidu said Google’s decision to quit was for financial reasons, rather than a human rights issue, as Google had failed to dominate the Chinese search market.

“What Google said makes me sick,” he said. “If you are to quit for the sake of financial interest, then just say it.”

Google’s decision to concede to China’s demands on censorship in 2006 led to accusations it had betrayed its company motto – “don’t be evil” – but Google argued it would be more damaging for civil liberties if it pulled out of China entirely.

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan Jones said Google had also seen a significant amount of internal dissent over its decision to operate under censorship.

In 2008, it signed the Global Network Initiative agreement with rivals Microsoft and Yahoo, pledging better protection of online privacy and freedom of speech against government interference.

Those commitments, however, are weighed against the commercial opportunities that China provides as a fast growing market.

Nearly 340 million Chinese people now online, compared with 10 million only a decade ago.

Last year, the search engine market in China was worth an estimated $1bn and analysts previously expected Google to make about $600m from China in 2010.

But unlike most markets, Google comes second in search in China.

It has 31% of the market compared with about 60% controlled by market leader Baidu, which has a close relationship with the Chinese government. Yahoo has less than 10%.

Microsoft has a tiny share of the Chinese market with its new Bing search engine, but in December the technology giant said it was committed to China, calling it “the most important strategic market”.

Courtesy : BBC.co.uk

Microsoft Word

A ban on Microsoft selling certain versions of its flagship products Word and Office has begun.

The software firm was made to change elements of the software by US courts after a patent dispute with Canadian firm i4i. Microsoft said that it had complied with the court’s ruling and would now offer “revised software” in the US. The court ruling means that Microsoft must also pay i4i damages of $290m (£182m).

However, the firm said on 8 January that it had filed another appeal against the injunction. The firm wants a panel of 11 judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to review the case in the hope of overturning the original judgment.

Microsoft has already challenged the ruling once. But in December last year, a panel of three judges rejected its arguments and upheld the original decision of a Texas court that ruled that Microsoft had infringed a patent belonging to i4i.

The disputed patent relates to the use of XML, a language that allows formatting of text and makes files readable across different programs. XML is used in recent versions of Microsoft’s word-processor Word.

Microsoft has now removed the disputed feature from all available versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office on sale in the US from today. “This process will be imperceptible to the vast majority of customers,” the firm said in a statement.

Despite the firms compliance, Microsoft has said it will still challenge the case.

Kevin Kutz, director of public affairs at Microsoft, said the latest appeal had been filed because the firm believed the decision in December conflicted with “established precedents governing trial procedure and the determination of damages”.

“We are concerned that the decision weakens judges’ authority to apply appropriate safeguards in future patent trials,” he added.

Courtesy : BBC.co.uk

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.

Forecasters warned of widespread icy roads until late this morning in north east England, and Yorkshire and the Humber .Mr Hutchinson said last night: “Initially we will see rain and sleet falling, but that will increasingly turn to snow overnight and the worst hit area of Britain is going to be Wales, particularly on the high ground. “Higher parts of the West Midlands will also suffer, and this is looking like a significant snowfall event, which will set in late on Monday night and continue well into Wednesday or even later in the week.

“There are still some question marks over how far this weather band will progress northwards and it looks like a large part of Yorkshire may just about escape the worst of it, but we are not certain.”A roaring easterly wind is expected which will bring scattered sleet and snow showers in many parts of Yorkshire for the next few days so it is going to be pretty nasty out there.” Temperatures are expected to plunge to minus 3C in many areas of the region on Thursday night, New Year’s Eve, and minus 8C in Scotland, with widespread snow showers predicted.

New Year’s Day will also be chilly, with most parts of Yorkshire struggling to get above freezing during the day, and forecasters predicting London will do well to reach 4C. Several football matches were postponed yesterday and inspections revealed that pitches at the Keepmoat Stadium in Doncaster and Chesterfield’s b2net stadium were frozen. Sheffield Wednesday’s clash at Blackpool was called off because of the freezing conditions, and racing at Catterick was also abandoned owing to snow. A New Year’s Day fun run has also been cancelled because of wintry conditions.

The Beverley Lions’ Club called off the run round the streets of Beverley for health and safety reasons.Last night, the Welsh Assembly government said contingency plans were ready to keep main roads open in extreme weather and added its stock of salt for motorways was available as a reserve supply to help local councils grit roads.Passengers due to fly from Cardiff Airport were advised to check flights were on schedule if there was snow. (Courtesy : yorkshirepost.co.uk)

An appeal from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales

Twitter : When it was hacked

A very famous social networking site,Twitter.com, was down Thursday evening. The site was not accessible for approximately 1 hour starting around 10 p.m. PST. While accessing the twitter.com, the page was coming like….

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?

WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST

Take Care.

A Twitter said the site was “working to recovery from an unplanned downtime” and indicated that the incident was indeed a hijacking of Twitter’s DNS records.

The Met Office, which is contributing on the Climate changes, said “We intend that as soon as possible we will publish the specific computer code that aggregates the individual station temperatures into the global land temperature record.” The Met Office today responded to criticisms about lack of transparency by releasing land temperature records gathered from more than 1,500 stations around the world.

The general said that killing or capturing Bin Laden would not spell the end of al-Qaeda, but that the movement could not be eradicated while Bin Laden remained at large. The militant leader is believed to be living in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said last week that officials have had no reliable information on Bin Laden’s whereabouts for “years”. ( Courtesy: BBC.com)

While South Africans learned that the host nation’s Opening Match on 11 June would be played against Mexico at Soccer City, it was the Group D line-up which caused arguably the biggest stir. Germany, Australia, Serbia and Ghana will battle it out for two qualifying places for the Round of 16, meaning two nations with passionate support will depart the tournament early. There could be a high-profile casualty from Group G too, after Brazil, Korea DPR, Côte d’Ivoire, Portugal were drawn together.

An estimated global television audience of 200 million joined the 2,000 invited guests in the Draw Hall in watching the colourful and entertaining ceremony unfold. With African sporting stars such as athlete Haile Gebreselassie, rugby player John Smit, cricketer Makhaya Ntini, and footballers Matthew Booth and Simphiwe Dludlu assisting with the draw, along with England’s David Beckham, it was always going to be an exhilarating occasion, but the undoubted centrepiece came when the eight groups were revealed.

An early highlight of the draw was the eye-catching encounter between England and USA, scheduled for 12 June, which evokes the Americans’ famous 1-0 win over their transatlantic cousins at Brazil 1950. Argentina, Nigeria and Greece will get the chance to revive their group rivalry from 1994, while the heavyweight collision between Portugal and Brazil on 25 June also has the feel of a derby.

Group A: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France
Group B: Argentina, Nigeria, Korea Republic, Greece
Group C: England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia
Group D: Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana,
Group E: Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon
Group F: Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia
Group G: Brazil, Korea DPR, Côte d’Ivoire, Portugal
Group H: Spain, Switzerland, Honduras, Chile

A night to remember
With such an array of stars, the event dazzled from start to finish. After a welcome sequence from Lions Head, the mountain that provides Cape Town with such a dramatic backdrop, award-winning musician Johnny Clegg performed ‘Scatterlings of Africa’, a song made famous by the Academy Award-winning film Rain Main.

Fittingly, the first speech of the night came from the man without whom a FIFA World Cup in South Africa would never have been possible: the country’s former president Nelson Mandela. The 91-year-old, speaking in a special video message, urged his nation to make the most of their opportunity as tournament hosts. “We must strive for excellence in our hosting of the World Cup, while at the same time ensuring the event leaves a lasting benefit to all our people,” he said.

Next it was time for two special presidents to take to the stage. FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter and South African President Jacob Zuma showed their excitement at both the Final Draw and the 2010 FIFA World Cup itself in an entertaining dialogue lasting several minutes. Giancarlo Abete, President of the Italian Football Federation, then handed over the holders’ FIFA World Cup Trophy to Mr Blatter, confirmation that sport’s holy grail is in South Africa and ready to be contested next year.

Legendary Portugal striker Eusebio, born in neighbouring Mozambique, was introduced to the crowd before examples of the ‘Win in Africa, With Africa’ campaign were showcased before an expectant audience. Beninese singer-songwriter Angelique Kidjo duly took to the stage to perform her Grammy-nominated song ‘Agolo’.

The first duty of the show’s guest presenter, Academy Award-winning actress, Hollywood producer and proud South African Charlize Theron, was to show off the official 2010 Match Ball, adidas’s Jabulani, a name meaning ‘to celebrate’ in Zulu. Soweto’s Gospel Choir continued the theme of happiness with a lively rendition of Pata Pata before the arrival of Draw Master and FIFA Secretary General, Jerome Valcke, signalled the moment of truth.

Some of the assembled coaches will have headed away feeling confident, others concerned by the task presented here, yet at least all now know what lies in store as they begin their planning and preparation for next year’s showpiece. – courtesy – fifa.com

Conducted by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), it says that warming seas are accelerating melting in the west of the continent.Ozone loss has cooled the region, it says, shielding it from global warming.Rising temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula are making life suitable for invasive species on land and sea.The report – Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment – was written using contributions from 100 leading scientists in various disciplines, and reviewed by a further 200.

SCAR’s executive director Dr Colin Summerhayes said it painted a picture of “the creeping global catastrophe that we face”.”The temperature of the air is increasing, the temperature of the ocean is increasing, sea levels are rising – and the Sun appears to have very little influence on what we see,” he said. SCAR’s report comes 50 years to the day after the Antarctic Treaty, the international agreement regulating use of the territory, was opened for signing, and a week before the opening of the potentially seminal UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

High rise

Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that the global average sea level would probably rise by 28-43 cm (11-16in) by the end of the century.But it acknowledged this figure was almost certainly too low, because it was impossible to model “ice dynamics” – the acceleration in ice melting projected to occur as air and water temperatures rise.Launching the SCAR report in London, lead editor John Turner from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) suggested that observations on the ground had changed that picture, especially in parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet.”Warmer water is getting under the edges of the West Antarctic ice sheet and accelerating the flow of ice into the ocean,” he said.

Courtesy : bbc.co.uk

The UN is aiming for a political agreement at the climate talks that would cover tougher emissions targets, climate financing for poor nations and the transfer of clean-energy technology.

The meeting of the Commonwealth, made up mostly of former British colonies, attracted an unusual level of attention this year because of climate change. The gathering, held every two years, brought together some of the key countries in the global debate, including India, Canada and Australia, amid debate over cutting carbon emissions and the economic effects of those cuts.

Courtesy: CBN news