Hackers aligned with the global cyber-collective known as Anonymous have claimed responsibility for taking down at least six prominent websites, including those of the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group, in retaliation for charges levied earlier Thursday against content-sharing site Megaupload.com.

Both Universalmusic.com and Justice.gov crashed Thursday afternoon and remained down as of 6:50pm ET.

The group also said it brought down the websites of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the US Copyright Office and the Utah Chiefs of Police Association.

I was just surfing net when the news hit me that the file sharing website megaupload.com is shut down and 7 from the staff have been arrested! Some of them are Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz, and Kim Tim Jim Vesto.

The indictment is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States, according to the FBI. It accuses seven individuals and two corporations — Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited — of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. The indictment, which was unsealed on Thursday, says that at one point Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.

The indictment comes the day after a 24-hour “blackout” of Wikipedia, a protest doodle on the homepage of Google, and numerous other protests across the Internet against proposed anti-piracy legislation that many leading websites — including Reddit, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others — contend will make it challenging if not impossible for them to operate.

The Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House are bills backed by the motion picture and recording industries intended to eliminate theft online once and for all. S. 968 and H.R. 3261 would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights.

• http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website/#ixzz1jwKnBmqM
• http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shut-down-120119/

A 2012 Windows 8 rollout may be problematic, according to the investment bank. “Moreover, our contacts suggest that Windows 8 beta has already slipped and we believe it will be a challenging product transition. In addition, this is likely to be the biggest rewrite to the Windows OS since Windows 3.0 when Microsoft moved from DOS to a graphical user interface,” he wrote.

“At a minimum, we believe Windows 8 will create a significant demand pause for multiple quarters, significantly impacting PC growth in CY12,” Richard said.

Original and Complete Article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57360385-64/windows-8-will-not-be-kind-to-intel-this-year-says-analyst/

Hey folks,

this is to inform you that Web Jassi will not be available on 18 Jan 2012 08:00 HRS to 20:00 HRS EST TIME as we are also on strike against SOPA / PIPA.

For more information Please check these links out!

http://sopastrike.com/

http://www.blackoutsopa.org/