Google dismisses terrorist concerns

Google has dismissed concerns that terrorists are using its free mapping technology to help them carry out attacks, reports Times Online.

The head of Google Earth said the program, which allows users to get a detailed bird's eye of practically any location on the planet, was not "tipping the balance in favour of the bad guys".

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, John Hanke said: "The evilness is in the philosophies and the desires of those that want to do evil. They will use the tools at hand to do that, whether it's throwing a Molotov cocktail, or shooting a rifle or using some piece of technology as part of the process."

After littering inboxes with presidential inauguration spam e-mails last week, the cyber-criminals behind the Waledac worm have reportedly shifted its focus from politics to the upcoming holiday Valentine's Day, says MX Logic.

Though the holiday is a little less than three weeks away, spam e-mails with the subject line "love before Saint Valentine's day" have been steadily increasing.

Contained in the e-mail is a malicious link that, if clicked on, takes users to a page with a picture of 12 different hearts. Users are told to "Guess which one is for you". If any of the pictures are clicked, a worm is downloaded onto the user's machine.

Joining forces with some close friends, Google has given the world an online lab for testing the behaviour of its Internet connections, according to The Register.

Yesterday, in tandem with the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and the PlanetLab Consortium, the search giant unveiled Measurement Lab - a distributed server platform where online researchers can set up their very own net tests.

"Researchers are already developing tools that allow users to, among other things, measure the speed of their connection, run diagnostics, and attempt to discern if their ISP is blocking or throttling particular applications," reads a Googlicious blog post.

Sony says it sold 4.46 million PlayStation 3 game consoles in the Christmas quarter (October-December), which was down 9% from 4.9 million units in the same period last year. That's pretty unusual or, I suspect, totally unknown for a successful games machine, says the guardian.co.uk.

But Sony scored a hat-trick of declines. PSP sales of 5.08 million units were down by 68 000, while sales of the old faithful PS2 more than halved: they were down by 2.88 million units, to 2.52 million.

PSP game sales fell by 2.8 million units, to 15.5 million, while sales of PS2 games plunged by 31.2 million, to 29.7 million units. The only bright spot was that sales of PS3 games climbed by 14.8 million units, to 40.8 million.