Tiger Woods' playoff performance at the U.S. Open drew traffic big enough to look like a massive denial-of-service attack to Internet service providers.
According to Internet security company Arbor Networks, the playoff between Woods and Rocco Mediate "generated one of the larger Internet-wide flash crowds this year." The country's golf fans who were at work, turned to Web video to watch the duel at Torrey Pines.
The security firm reported that several ISP's saw between 15 and 25 percent spikes in traffic. One ISP reported that traffic nearly doubled. Engineers at the ISPs stopped worrying when they saw the ballooning Internet usage wasn't directed at any individual customer.
"Traffic dipped and peaked corresponding to Tiger's initial misses and subsequent spectacular comeback as millions of office-bound fans tuned in to the live NBC and ESPN coverage," Arbor Networks wrote.
NBC said that Monday's playoff drew the biggest audience the Web site has ever seen, with 2 million users generating 9 million page views. The United States Golf Association and ESPN also covered the game but their numbers weren't available.
File photo: This is a tiger. Do not taunt.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)
A California judge has said the San Francisco Zoo may inspect the mobile phones of two brothers involved in a deadly tiger attack on Christmas Day.
Superior Court Judge Socrates Peter Manoukian in Santa Clara County ruled late Friday that the city and the zoo can review the devices for photographs that might provide clues about what happened that day, and for logs of conversations near the time of the 911 call.
He wrote: "Under the maxim that a picture is worth a thousand words the Court believes that the allegation of existence or nonexistence of any photographs is specific enough to justify an attempt to perpetuate them."
The defendants in the civil lawsuit are brothers Kulbir Dhaliwal and Amritpal Dhaliwal. They were mauled during the tiger attack and their friend, Carlos Sousa Jr., was killed. The tiger pen's wall was only 12.5 feet high, 4 feet below generally accepted safety standards. The Siberian tiger, Tatiana, was shot dead by police that day.
Manoukian said, however, that the city and the zoo could not inspect the contents of the car. (There have been reports that a bottle of alcohol was present.) Their attorney has called these efforts a fishing expedition.
It's unclear what the real impact of this ruling will be--that's because the San Francisco Police Department has obtained a search warrant allowing them to examine the car and mobile phones in conjunction with a separate criminal investigation.
Leopard is right around the corner, should you update?
(Credit: CNET)With all of this week's hype surrounding Mac OS X Leopard, some can't wait for the upgrade. In fact, some people are claiming that the follow-up to Tiger will become the most popular and user-friendly operating system ever created. And while I have a hard time accepting that notion before the operating system is even released, I believe Leopard will change the operating system landscape for quite some time. Unfortunately, it won't change things in the way I had hoped.
In a New York Times article over the weekend, CEO Steve Jobs was quoted as saying that he was excited for the release of Leopard and is quite happy with the current timeline Apple operating systems are on. Most notably, Jobs mentioned that he likes releasing new operating systems "every 12 to 18 months" so Apple can "polish and polish and improve and improve."
But it is here that I must disagree with Jobs. Why do we need a new operating system ever year or so? If my current operating system works quite well, do I really need another new operating system just to add some new features or capabilities? I certainly don't think so.
Through the cover of improvements, Jobs is pointing out one important fact about operating system updates--it's all about the money. Apple is a public company that relies on maximizing shareholder value. Can it do that if it leaves Tiger in place and upgrades it every so often to make it even better? Not a chance. Operating system upgrades have nothing to do with improvements and everything to do with revenue.
Regardless, Leopard is on its way and unfortunately, it will be replaced by Apple just when we get comfortable using it. Operating system upgrades are usually quite problematic for most people. More often than not, some of your favorite programs won't work and peripherals will be relegated to the junk bin until a new update is released to work with the new operating system. Of course, Apple claims the transition will be relatively painless, but can we be so sure? If you ask me, you may want to update any and all products now and make sure you have a backup in place--you never know what might happen.
But alas, we are here to discuss whether a Leopard upgrade is worth it. Of course, the mileage on my opinion may vary and some may definitely find use in some of the new features, while others will scoff and hold on to Tiger. Besides that, I obviously can't discuss the 300 new features in Leopard, but wanted to share some of my thoughts on the most important new upgrades. And in the end, offer my thoughts on whether you should upgrade. As for me? I've already ordered Leopard and will install it on just one of my Macs. The others will run Tiger until they die.
... Read moreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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