Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesCompanies Slowly Join Cloud-ComputingBy BRAD STONE and ASHLEE VANCE  Cloud providers aim to convince companies to give up their own data centers and use their computer capacity instead. Above Netflix is using Amazon’s cloud services.  Read Article      

  Huffington hits out at Murdoch speechHuffington Post founder says aggregation is 'part of the web's DNA' and tells old media organisations to 'get real'
 Read Arianna Huffington's speech in fullComments (31)  Mercedes Bunz guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 December 2009 Article history Arianna Huffington. Photograph: Anna GordonHuffington Post founder Arianna Huffington has accused Rupert Murdoch of confusing aggregation with misappropriation following his Federal Trade Commission speech claiming "There's no such thing as a free news story".Huffington began in a humorous vein: "First of all, I would like to quote my great grandmother who likes to say: 'Never bet on a company that takes itself out of Google.'" Then she introduced the audience to the three topics of her speech: "One, desperate times lead to desperate metaphors; two, desperate times lead to desperate revenue models; three, desperate times desperately call for better journalism."She added: "I've talked about how the future of journalism will be a hybrid future where traditional media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism)."And with so many traditional media companies adapting to the new realities, it was ridiculous to engage in an us vs them, old media vs new media argument. Either/or was the wrong way to look at things."But playing nice has increasingly become a one-way street – suddenly the air is filled with shrill, nonsensical, and misplaced verbal assaults on those in the new media."Huffington said she was disappointed by the insults used by the old media: "Sites that aggregate the news have become, in the words of Rupert Murdoch and his team, 'parasites', 'content kleptomaniacs', 'vampires', 'tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internets, and, of course, thieves who 'steal all our copyright'."It's the news industry equivalent of 'your mama wears army boots!' Although, not quite as persuasive."In most industries, if your customers were leaving in droves, you would try to figure out what to do to get them back. Not in the media. They'd rather accuse aggregators of stealing their content." And she offered a solution to the News Corp chief: "Any site can shut down the indexing of its content by Google any time it wants with a simple 'disallow' in its robots.txt file. But be careful what you wish for because as soon as you do that, and start denying your content to other sites that aggregate and link back to the original source, you stand to lose a large part of your traffic overnight. But as they say in Australia: 'Good on ya.' Of course as someone who cares deeply about the future of this country, I'd say that having Glenn Beck not searchable by Google is an entirely good thing. But a good business move? Not so much."Huffington said…

 Special forces assassins infiltrate Taliban stronghold American and British troops poised for a major assault on Marjah in Helmand have begun targeting insurgent leaders  Read Article   

 Batman-like plan: Brother of 'Dark Knight' director planned escape from a Chicago jail, officials sayMatthew Nolan, of Chicago, allegedly had a homemade rope, harness, razor and a clip to pick a lock in his cell "The scam allegedly unfolded in 2007 when his brother was in Chicago filming "The Dark Knight," the source said. Nolan allegedly used the connection to the blockbuster movie to cozy up to Chicago banks, sometimes bringing champagne to meetings about loans, the source said. He also allegedly promised rides or pictures in the Batmobile."