Servers

With the advent of Google Drive, we talk about cloud computing as if the bits and bytes of our lives are stored somewhere up in the air, but, really, the "clouds" are very terrestrial. What's more up in the air are the laws that govern who can access your stuff and how. Originally a way for geeks to explain to the rest of us the notion of remote servers storing and serving up content, cloud computing can be defined several different ways, depending on whom you ask. In some ways, even email is a form of cloud computing.

Mario Batali, the pony-tailed celebrity chef and Los Angeles restaurant owner, has agreed to pay $5.25 million to settle the class-action lawsuit in which he was accused of bilking servers out of part of their tips, according to a Bloomberg News report . Batali, who is frequently seen on television and touts a line of products including cookbooks and kitchenware, was sued in a New York federal court along with his business partner Joseph Bastianich,...

It's the new iPhone's signature feature: a female virtual assistant named Siri who can take dictation for a text message, check your calendar or look up nearby restaurants, all using voice commands and with no need to lay a finger on a keyboard. But in real life, Siri isn't always as smart as she comes off in Apple's TV ads. Richard Stern of Pittsburgh recently asked Siri where the movie "Moneyball" was playing, hoping to find a showtime. Siri responded: "I do not understand moneyball.

With a labor dispute threatening to kill the 2011-12 NBA basketball season, restaurant owners, barkeepers and vendors near Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles are bracing for a big loss in revenue from fans who would normally crowd into the area several times a week. The deadlocked contract talks have hit particularly hard on a new Hooters restaurant that opened in July on Figueroa Street across from Staples Center to draw big-spending Lakers and Clippers fans. "We definitely opened this restaurant to be event-driven," said Hooters general manager Laura Acton, who complained that she doesn't have enough work for all of the waitresses she hired to serve NBA fans.

While most of Southern California's office rental market remains as anemic as the economy, one niche is experiencing robust growth: heavily secured offices where businesses house their all-important computer servers. Nearly all of us send and receive signals through data centers every day. Simple tasks like browsing a website, paying a restaurant bill with a credit card or making a phone call may require their services. In Los Angeles County, there are only about a dozen of these specialized buildings that protect the precious data of banks, oil companies, stores and all manner of other firms.

At the top of the mountain, where an attendant will take your $46 ticket, foot traffic is steady and cellphone reception is excellent. At the bottom of the same mountain, the town teems with pizzerias, tourists chatter in half a dozen languages and a school band director is herding his traditionally costumed students into formation. "Roki! Roki!" he seems to be hollering. And then, as darkness falls, his young trumpeters and drummers launch into the rousing theme from Sylvester Stallone's first hit movie.

The cyber-security industry is on Defcon 1 high alert. The recent rash of attacks on dozens of websites including those of the CIA, the FBI and even PBS is roiling the security industry and increasing demand for cyber-defense experts. "Every time one of these breaches makes the news, I will tell you, my phone rings off the hook," said Chris Novak, a manager of Verizon Communications Inc.'s Investigative Response Team, which now has nearly 100 members, more than double from a year ago. With the surge in attacks in recent months, Novak sees the team tripling in size this year.

As hackers continue their rampage against the world's largest banks, defense contractors and technology companies, executives and government officials are confronting a sobering truth: The bad guys are winning. The seemingly unending string of high-profile attacks, most recently against Citigroup Inc. and Sony Corp., have shown that nearly every organization is vulnerable to a growing contingent of well-trained and agile attackers who are finding security holes faster than they can be plugged.

Google Inc. is proceeding with plans for a digital music service despite not having secured licensing agreements with record labels or music publishers. Google unveiled the free service, dubbed Music Beta, at a company event in San Francisco. It would let users upload their music library to Google's computers so they can stream their songs from any Web browser or Internet-connected cellphone running Google's Android operating system. The service is currently by invitation only and is not yet widely available to the public, the Mountain View, Calif., search giant said.

Amazon.com Inc. issued an apology Friday for a glitch that shut down its servers and knocked out access to a slew of websites for several days. The outages, which struck April 21 and ran through Sunday, affected widely used websites and Web-based services such as Foursquare, HootSuite, Reddit and Quora. In addition to its retail business, Amazon provides Web services for companies. Amazon's apology came at the end of a 5,679-word letter that explained what caused the temporary failure and said affected customers would have a 10-day service credit automatically added to their accounts.