So hereis the article:

Just before midnight ET, Blue Security posted a notice on its home page that it was bowing out of the anti-spam business due to concerted attacks against its Web site that took millions of other sites and blogs with it. Within minutes of that online posting, bluesecurity.com went down and remains inaccessible at the time of this writing.

According to information obtained by Security Fix, the reason is that the attackers were hellbent on taking down Blue Security’s site again, but had trouble because the company had signed up with Prolexic, which specializes in protecting Web sites from “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS) attacks.

These massive assaults harness the power of thousands of hacked PCs to swamp sites with so much bogus traffic that they can no longer accommodate legitimate visitors. Prolexic built its business catering to the sites most frequently targeted by DDoS extortion attacks — chiefly, online gambling and betting houses. But the company also serves thousands of other businesses, including banks, insurance companies and online payment processors.

For the past nine hours, however, most of Prolexic’s customers have been knocked offline by an attack that flanked its defenses. Turns out the attackers decided not to attack Prolexic, but rather UltraDNS, its main provider of domain name system (DNS) services. (DNS is what helps direct Internet traffic to its destination by translating human-readable domain names like “www.example.com” into numeric Internet addresses that are easier for computers to understand.)

So here goes an article I read here:

The system, scheduled to launch in the U.S. in the third quarter, offers enhanced ease of use, advanced testing features, geo-targeting and automated analytics, Tim Cadogan, vice president of search, said during the company’s analyst day in San Francisco on Wednesday.

“We’re exposing more data about the quality of advertisers’ listings than any other competitor,” Cadogan said. The system “shows on a five-point scale how well an ad is performing,” as well as which user queries indicate explicit or implied intent to shop, he added.

Yahoo faces stiff competition from Microsoft, which launched its new AdCenter system in the United States a few weeks ago, and Google, which has the largest share of the search ad market.

“There are areas where we needed to catch up; that is well-known,” Cadogan said.

Yahoo can leverage its registered users and broad network of services and sites–which make it the top media Web site on the Web–to improve its advertising sales, he said.

“On the Yahoo network we can find 300,000 consumers who are very likely to be buying a car within the next 30 days,” said Usama Fayyad, chief data officer at Yahoo.

Niall is “Seeking New Horizons“: I am leaving Technorati to pursue new opportunities. I submitted my resignation letter this morning and I will be a free agent on March 1. I joined Technorati in February 2005 excited about changing the world of weblogs and introducing people to a new kind of search. Almost a year later my passions at work have eroded and it’s time to find new horizons. Valentines Day is the perfect time to rekindle lost flames.

…or flee from the flaming wreckage…

Jeremy writes about a plane running out of gas and landing at Tully Road. I witnessed this event! Remarkable. We coders take for granted that you can get stale on your knowledge and just Google it back later. Pilots need to always be in top form.

Eric Meyer (who else?) has the answer: The property line-height can accept unitless number values. You can also give line-height united values, though generally you shouldn’t. But unitless numbers are just fine for this property. So what’s the difference? When you define a united value, like 1em, you’re setting things up to pass along the computed result to any descendants. … This is why it’s always strongly recommended that you use unitless numbers if you’re going to set a line-height on something like the html or body elements, or indeed on any element that is going to have descendant elements.

Says Michael: If you haven’t heard of Ajax yet, you will and I don’t mean the bathroom cleaner. Ajax is a new style of programming which makes it possible to have the advantages of web services with a responsive interface like traditional software. In the past web based tools have been handy because they load quickly, are free and are always up to date. But web interfaces are limited and operation can be slow as the slightest changes forces the entire screen to redraw. Ajax makes it possible to have full featured software like the applications you are familiar with on your desktop, but that load over the internet. Early examples are Gmail and Google Maps, but they have just scratched the surface of what is possible. A new venture I’ve been working on for awhile will change what people think is possible with Ajax.

Says Charles: Ever wonder how virtualization works and how (and where) it can be applied today and in the future? What role could virtualization play in the future of Windows, for example? How ans where is it used today? We recently met with some of the Microsoft virtualization people to find some answers to these questions and learn a whole lot about virtualization, hypervisor, and the future of this super cool technology, generally.

Retired Virginia banker John Q. Brrreeeport came forward today as the second accidental shooting victim involving Vice President Dick Cheney. In a Tuesday morning press conference Breeeport said … (ok, have I successfully grabbed your attention? Good.)

News.com reports today that Oracle said Sleepycat’s open-source Berkeley DB database will complement Oracle’s existing line of closed-source databases for embedding within applications. The products differ from Oracle’s flagship enterprise database software used for general business systems.

Also, the purchase of Sleepycat, which has been rumored for weeks, gives Oracle another open-source product to accompany its proprietary database offerings. At an investor conference last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison reiterated the company’s strategy to generate revenue from a combination of open-source and proprietary software.

More from Technorati, this time a new authority weighting mechanism. Says Scoble: I’m not sure how useful it is, but if you search on a general term like, say, “photography” it does seem to bring back results with less noise. But, maybe you want more noise. Well, it’s up to you now! You’re the gatekeeper! I’ll play more with it later. What do you think?

Later, more from Mike Arrington who says “the slider is a bit buggy but works. This is another good way for people to sort results to find what they are looking for.”