World biggest DDoS attack that almost broke Internet

The last week has seen probably the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever. A massive 300Gbps was thrown against Internet blacklist maintainer Spamhaus' website but the anti-spam organisation , CloudFlare was able to recover from the attack and get its core services back up and running. 

Spamhaus, a group based in both London and Geneva, is a non-profit organisation that aims to help email providers filter out spam and other unwanted content. Spamhaus is pretty resilient, as its own network is distributed across many countries, but the attack was still enough to knock its site offline on March 18.

Five national cyber-police-forces are investigating the attacks.  A group calling itself STOPhaus, an alliance of hactivists and cyber criminals is believed to responsible for bombarding Spamhaus with up to 300Gbps.

The attacks on Spamhaus illustrate a larger problem with the vulnerability of systems fundamental to the architecture of the Internet, the Domain Name Servers (DNS). The high attack bandwidth is made possible because attackers are using misconfigured domain-name service (DNS) servers known as open recursive resolvers or open recursors to amplify a much smaller attack into a larger data flood.

Known as DNS reflection, the technique uses requests for a relatively large zone file that appear to be sent from the intended victim's network. According to CloudFlare, it initially recorded over 30,000 DNS resolvers that were tricked into participating in the attack. There are as many as 25 million of these open recursive resolvers at the disposal of attackers

"In the Spamhaus case, the attacker was sending requests for the DNS zone file for ripe.net to open DNS resolvers. The attacker spoofed the CloudFlare IPs we'd issued for Spamhaus as the source in their DNS requests. The open resolvers responded with DNS zone file, generating collectively approximately 75Gbps of attack traffic. The requests were likely approximately 36 bytes long (e.g. dig ANY ripe.net @X.X.X.X +edns=0 +bufsize=4096, where X.X.X.X is replaced with the IP address of an open DNS resolver) and the response was approximately 3,000 bytes, translating to a 100x amplification factor."

It now seems that the attack is being orchestrated by a Dutch hosting company called CyberBunker. As long as it's not child porn and anything related to terrorism, CyberBunker will host it, including sending spam.  Spamhaus blacklisted CyberBunker earlier in the month.

However, the DDoS attacks have raised concerns that further escalations of the retaliatory attacks could affect banking and email systems. DDoS attacks are typically carried out to extort money from targeted organisations or as a weapon to disrupt organisations or companies in pursuit of ideological, political or personal interests.

Android's popularity growing, iPhone drops a bit

According to new numbers just released by Nielsen Research, the launch of the new Verizon iPhone hasn't visibly slowed the popularity of Google's Android operating system in the U.S., at least not yet.
In three monthly surveys conducted from January to March of this year, about 30.9 percent of all U.S. respondents planning to buy a new smartphone in the next year said they wanted an Android phone. The number is up 25.8 percent from July's 2010 figures
Only 30 percent of respondents said they wanted an iPhone, down from 32.7 percent last year. Research in Motion (RIM), Microsoft and Palm also lost some market share. Residents in the U.S. who plan to buy Nokia smartphones didn't even figure on the report.

For now, it's not exactly clear how much additional ad revenue Android generates for the search giant, but it couldn't be that much, according to Nielsen.

Although the Android gains are impressive, they aren't surprising. It looks like we're headed to a smartphone only world, and Google has produced a rather good operating system and it's open source, ie: free.

Apple sold $10.45 billion worth of iPhones in the last quarter alone, well overtaking Nokia -- the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones -- for the first time. Nokia is still suffering a lot in the U.S., and the situation appears to be getting worse lately, as sales continue to drop in North America, but are still relatively stable in Europe and Asia, however.

But Apple's iOS drop in popularity is likely within a margin of error, nevertheless.

But still unexplained is the rather large difference between purchase intent going forward and recent purchases of smartphones. Apple isn't even closing all the people who want an iphone let alone its share of the "don't cares".
As a company, Apple certainly isn't marketing very hard simply because it's making and selling all the phones that it can, and without spending much on advertising. So, can you blame them?

iPhones are high end devices and Apple customers like to spend money on the company's innovative products. Nevertheless, Androids are still good phones as well. As long as high end means more revenue to app developers, the iPhone is going to continue to do well, since many app developers still prefer to work with iOS as their number one choice, and with Android as their close second.

Let's look at last quarter in more detail

In December 2010, overall smartphone adoption about reached 29.7 percent of all mobile subscribers in the U.S. Apple's iPhone iOS and RIM's BlackBerry OS 6.0 managed a close tie for U.S. market share, with each mobile operating system taking about 27 percent of the share of the market, while Android lagged slightly at 22 percent.

But nevertheless, Android and iOS are still the most desired operating systems says Nielsen. The research firm found that of all users planning to get a new smartphone in 2011, 35 percent of current smartphone owners showed a preference for the Apple iPhone, while about 28.2 percent of those upgrading from a smarpthone or feature phone indicated they wanted a device with an Android operating system as their next mobile phone.

These numbers were largely expected by most wireless industry observers, however.

Apple’s iPhone iOS and mobile devices with the Android OS were the most desired among likely smartphone upgraders as well according to Nielsen, with Apple showing a slight lead among those age 55+, 18 to 24 and 25 to 34.

Feature phone owners planning to get a smartphone were less likely to have made up their mind about the OS they will choose, Nielsen warned. About 25.1 percent still weren't sure what their next desired OS might be compared to 13 percent of smartphone owners.

Overall, women planning to get a smartphone are more likely to want an iPhone as their next device, with slightly more males preferring Android, the Nielsen survey revealed.

But on Oct. 1st, the numbers that were released had suggested that Google's Android mobile OS was rapidly gaining market share in the enterprise smartphone market segment. And there are numerous signs that suggest the wireless industry is getting more and more competitive as each day goes by.
Based on Android's improved security and multitasking user features, Android has a very good chance in being a strong competitor to Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry and the Motorola Droid in the coming 6 to 12 months.

RIM's share of the enterprise smartphone market dropped from 76 percent in November 2008 to less than 67 percent in August of this year, according to ChangeWave.

Meanwhile, Android's enterprise market share grew from 10 percent to almost 17 percent during the same period.

But RIM's share of the global mobile phone industry should reach close to 4 percent in 2010, up from almost 2.8 percent last year. Now some expect that growth to continue in coming years, reaching about 8.2 percent by the end 2013.

And according to market research firm Gartner, Android-based mobile handsets accounted for almost 4 percent of the global mobile phone market in 2009. Nevertheless, Gartner still expects Android to power about 28 to 30 percent of all mobile phones sold in 2014.

More numbers, this time from Canalys

Wireless industry research firm Canalys said in November that while Apple's iPhone is now the top-selling mobile handset in the U.S., the combined sales of Android handsets from HTC, Motorola and others now account for about 45 percent of the total U.S. wireless market.

"Google's Android operating system is now becoming extremely popular in the mobile market and in some countries it is now a consumer product that is in high demand, and the trend appears to be increasing rapidly.

Canalys senior analyst Pete Cunningham says "Android's popularity is helping mobile app developers to build mobile applications on an operating system that is now proven stable, rich in the features that wireless subscribers ask for, and it also offers them access to an increasingly rich mobile content."

And competing market analyst firm Nielsen fully agrees with Canalys. Early last month, Nielsen & Co. released its own research brief of Android, saying that Google’s Android operating system has become the most popular OS in the U.S. among new smartphone buyers, eclipssing the iPhone and BlackBerry platforms.

Overall, Android was the number one choice for wireless users in the United States who acquired a smartphone since March 2010 with Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone both tied for second place, Nielsen added.
So far this year, Android grew a lot in popularity simply because the OS is free to any company that wants to build smartphones using it and a wider range of manufacturers have adopted it, including Motorola and HTC.

And while the BlackBerry retained the top spot among all U.S. smartphone owners with a 31 percent share, its lead over Apple is declining, Nielsen said. The iPhone accounted for about 28 percent of users and Android, 19 percent.

In August, Nielsen said that Android had passed Apple’s iPhone in sales among new U.S. smartphone buyers in the second quarter, though it still trailed the BlackBerry a bit. Now Android is clearly the leader in operating systems for smartphones, Nielsen says. And comScore agrees with that as well.

Based on Android's improved security and multitasking user features, Android has a very good chance in being a strong competitor to Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry and the Motorola Droid in the coming 6 to 12 months.

However, Android isn't the only winner here. Both Apple's and Google's gains have come at the expense of Research In Motion (RIM), Canalys said in its report. For many years now, RIM led the North American market with its line of BlackBerry smartphones that have appealed mostly to the enterprise segment of the market.

But today, the iPhone and Android smartphones are rapidly surpassing RIM's BlackBerries and now some are expecting that RIM is rapidly becoming a weaker player, although some still disagree.

But when you closely analyze operating systems on their own instead of just mobile handsets, Android is rapidly gaining market share and Apple is either going to have to license its venerable iOS, or will be forced to sign a lot more wireless carrier deals to keep up with Android.

Source: Nielsen Market Research.

Banned AdSense Publisher Gets His Money Back from Google

It’s not uncommon to hear stories of disgruntled AdSense publishers whose accounts have been permanently banned by Google either due to "non-compliance with AdSense policies" or for "posing a significant risk to AdWords advertisers."

The compliance issue is almost always related to content. For instance, if any particular website is centered around banned topics (like gambling or pornography), Google can disable AdSense serving for that website.

The next issue is more serious as it relates to "click fraud". No one obviously has a clear understanding of how Google determines "invalid clicks" but such an activity can invite an AdSense ban for life. There’s an appeal process at Google but again it doesn’t guarantee that your AdSense account will be reinstated even if you provide all the required details (like web server logs).

Aaron Greenspan was another happy AdSense user until he received an email from Google saying that his account has been cancelled.

" While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your AdSense account."

Aaron writes in Huffington Post that his AdSense account was disabled without warning and he literally ran from pillar to post at Google trying to reach everyone from the AdSense Customer Service to the Legal Team to Google forums but with no success.

If an AdSense publisher’s account is disabled for invalid clicks, he is not entitled to any further payment from Google and all the current earnings are returned to the corresponding AdWords advertisers. The same happened to Aaron as he had made around $721 from AdSense but the payment was stopped after the account was disabled.

With literally no options left, Aaron made a final attempt and filed a civil lawsuit for $721.00 (the amount Google owed to him) saying that Google could not prove any wrongdoing and that Google’s fraud detection algorithm was imperfect. All he had to pay was $40 as the court fees for this lawsuit.

The AdSense account was disabled on December 9, 2008, he filed the lawsuit against Google on January 15, 2009 and on March 2, 2009, the judge delivered the following verdict:

"I don’t think I have the power here in Palo Alto small claims court to make you reinstate his account, but I think you owe this young man $721. I think there might be money in Google’s treasury for that."

Google paid him all the "due" AdSense earnings along with the court fees though his account still stands cancelled.

I think a big reason why Google lost this case is because their lawyer couldn’t convince the judge about how "click fraud" was detected in first place. Google has good reasons to not disclose their fraud detection algorithms in public court cases but the fact that this decision went against Google could probably convince many more ex-AdSense users to follow the footsteps of Aaron.

Telecom tariffs may fall 25% this year

The mobile tariffs in the world’s cheapest telecom market are set to fall further by at least 20-25 per cent during the year, more so due to increasing number of telecom operators and infrastructure overcapacity.
With local call rates at 33 paise (BSNL) and STD rates at 50 paise per minute (most mobile operators), the country has the lowest telecom tariffs in the world.

To begin with, the industry is expecting the new licensees (including Loop Telecom, Datacom Solutions and Unitech Wireless) to commence operations in this year itself. This coupled with the expected expansion of operations of existing players like Aircel Cellular, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications (RCom) will have an impact on the mobile tariffs.

“Whenever new entrants commence operations in the country, there is a high chance of reduction in tariffs as they come in with innovative strategies and prices, including freebies. This will increase competitive pressure on other players who will have to launch similar products to compete in the market. Moreover, apart from tariffs, the price reduction would also be extended to handsets,” European handset major Meridian India CEO Rajiv Khanna told Business Standard.

Another reason is an expected overcapacity in towers. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) estimates that the country needs around 300,000 towers by 2010 to support the massive 10 million monthly subscriber additions.

At present, the sector has around 2,75,000 towers. Operators like Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone and independent tower companies like GTL Infrastructure and Indus Towers are increasing capacity and the 300,000-mark will be crossed much before the deadline, if not this year itself.

“The increase in the number of players will benefit the consumers in terms of newer enriched applications, choice and affordability. The on-ground traffic is increasing, but quality of traffic is not, clearly indicating that there is a need for more capacity. The tower infrastructure availability is going at comfortable speed. The industry will have to now think of ways and means of handling the increasing capacity proportionately, but more resource effectively,” GTL Chief Operating Officer and director Charudatta Naik said.

The recent slash in termination charges from 30 to 20 paise for domestic calls, which the operators have begun passing on to the subscribers, is also pulling tariffs down. Termination charges are the charges paid by one operator to another for terminating the calls on the latter’s network.

Moreover, the expected allocation of additional 2G spectrum and auction of 3G spectrum will also lead to a further rate cut. “The new government will have to allocate 2G spectrum to operators for additional expansion plans, while 3G auction will also take place immediately after the government coming into power. While some players would get 3G spectrum, others will slash prices to thwart competition,” a Mumbai-based analyst said.

However, the price reduction is not all that good. According to Idea Cellular Managing Director Sanjeev Aga: “Indian companies are rolling our predatory prices without conducting proper studies, unlike in the US or developed countries. Price reductions coming in from desperate companies are anti-competition and these are not based on economic sense, and in the long run this would be anti-consumer and anti-industry.”

In the short-term, it is the customer who will reap the benefits of the tariff fall.

courtesy:Buissness Standard 4.05.09

Oracle Buys Sun Microsystems

Tuesday, April 21, 2009: Oracle Corporation has agreed to buy California-headquartered Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion (or $9.50 per share) deal. Sun's acquisition by Oracle caught many in the industry by surprise as the deal came just two weeks after IBM abandoned its bid to buy Sun. According to analysts, the deal strengthens Oracle's position against IBM and HP for dominance of the server and storage markets.
Kapil Dev Singh, country manager, IDC India, said, "The Oracle-Sun merger brings together two strong brands with strengths in software and hardware space with the combined entity aspiring to make a mark in the enterprise IT space. Sun's strong computing platform and Oracle's middleware and database platforms will make Oracle's IT infrastructure offering stronger. What brings added value is their consolidated face as part of the bigger IT infrastructure offering in an environment where individually these components are a commodity."

"Oracle-Sun's competitive positioning in telecom and BFSI space will strengthen as individually both players have a strong presence in these segments that contribute about one-third of India's domestic IT market. The challenge for the merged entity lies in how well it can convince CIOs keen on leveraging their IT investments that is completely a services play. With applications, middleware and hardware piece in place, the services capability seems to be missing. This is important considering that the IT consolidation wave in enterprise space in general, and telecom and BFSI segments in particular, is slowly giving way to IT leverage wave. This deal seems to be little late from that perspective," he added.

There are substantial long-term customer advantages to Oracle owning two key Sun software assets: Java and Solaris. Java is one of the most widely deployed technologies, and it is the most important software Oracle has ever acquired. Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing business, is built on top of Sun’s Java language and software. Oracle can now ensure continued investment in Java technology for the benefit of customers and the Java community.

The Sun Solaris operating system is claimed to be the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business, and has been for a long time. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimise the Oracle database for some of the high-end features of Solaris. Oracle says it is as committed as ever to Linux and other open platforms and will continue to support and enhance our strong industry partnerships.

“We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle’s earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle’s non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,” said Safra Catz, president, Oracle.

“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle. “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”

“Oracle and Sun have been industry pioneers and close partners for more than 20 years,” said Sun Chairman Scott McNealy. “This combination is a natural evolution of our relationship and will be an industry-defining event.”

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO, Sun, “From the Java platform touching nearly every business system on earth, powering billions of consumers on mobile handsets and consumer electronics, to the convergence of storage, networking and computing driven by the Solaris operating system and Sun’s SPARC and x64 systems. Together with Oracle, we’ll drive the innovation pipeline to create compelling value to our customer base and the marketplace.”

The board of directors of Sun Microsystems has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer, subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Game Over: No IMEI, No Mobile Connection

About 250 lakh handsets are expected to be out of service from April 15, as GSM service providers, including Airtel and Vodafone, gear
up to deny connectivity to cell phones without International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number.

Concerned over the national security, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked operators to disconnect services to handset that does not have an IMEI number. IMEI is a 15-digit code which appears on the operator's network whenever a call is made.

If all service providers adhere to the deadline given by DoT, nearly 250 lakh handsets, which are almost 10 per cent of the total GSM mobile phones in use in the country and mostly China-made, are likely to go out of service, industry sources said.

Analysts feels that the move is also likely to hit the revenue of telecom firms as phones which have no IMEI numbers are usually low-cost and unbranded and used by low-end subscribers.

How to Watch YouTube Videos While Working on other Tasks

You plan to watch a lengthy video clip on YouTube but the problem is that you have lot of other stuff to do and therefore can’t focus all the attention on just one video. You need to browse web pages, check emails in Outlook and maybe complete that presentation while the video plays on your screen.

Fortunately, this is possible with a simple hack - just decide where that video should be placed.

You can either watch the YouTube video from the Firefox sidebar or, if you are working with other application or don’t use Firefox, create a standalone YouTube player window and move it anywhere on the desktop in Always on Top mode. See screenshots.
Case 1. YouTube Player inside the Firefox Sidebar

Case 2. YouTube Player on top of other Windows

Here are the steps involved for either of the methods discussed above.

1. Get the full screen mode address of the YouTube video clip. It is something like www.youtube.com/v/ABC where ABC is the YouTube video ID.

For instance, if the YouTube video is located at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZ9z6BBMVY, the full screen player will be available at www.youtube.com/v/8bZ9z6BBMVY

2a. To watch the video in Firefox sidebar, bookmark that new YouTube address and check the "Load in Sidebar" property of the bookmark as shown in the screenshot.


2b: To watch the video in a standalone player, open a new browser window and copy-paste the YouTube address THAT you generated in step 1. Now resize the browser window to fit the player, activate the Always on Top program (download link) and press Ctrl + Spacebar to make sure that YouTube player stays in the foreground. That’s it.

Notes: While you may also use the regular YouTube video URL in either of these cases, the experience won’t be so great.

ऐसा था hotel Taj !

58 घंटे तक शर्मनाक और दरिंदगी भरी आतंककारी गतिविधियों को अपने सीने पर झेलने वाले होटल ताज के आंसू भी आम देशवासी की तरह ही नहीं थम रहे हैं। भले ही उसे आतंककारियों से मुक्त करा लिया गया हो, लेकिन वह अब भी खून के आंसू रो रहा है। आज सुबह टेलीविजन पर जब उसके ग्राउंड और फर्स्ट फ्लोर की नौ-दस खिड़कियों से आग की लपटें उठती देखीं तो कौतुहल जगा कि आखिर यह होटल अंदर से कैसा दिखता होगा। इंटरनेट पर खंगाला को होटल ताज की वेबसाइट पर इसके वर्चुअल टुअर (वीडियो) की सुविधा दिखी।

वीडियो देखा तो लगा कि मैं इस होटल के अंदर ही खड़ा हूं। आप भी देखिए कि यह होटल अंदर से कैसा दिखता था (पता नहीं अभी कैसा होगा??), इस उम्मीद के साथ कि यह होटल जल्द ही अपनी पुरानी शान पा लेगा और दुनिया को दिखा देगा कि लाख चाहकर भी आतंककारी इसका सिर एक इंच भी नहीं झुका पाए हैं।


यहां पर आप इस होटल के रेस्टोरेंट, बार, सुइट, रूम्स, बाथरूम आदि सभी सुविधाओं को देख सकते हैं।

काश पिछले 59 घंटों को हिंदुस्तान के इतिहास से मिटा दिया जा सकता!!!!!

Obama makes history, elected US President

Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama , by retaining all of John Kerry's 2004 electoral votes and winning seven states that voted for GWB in 2004, won the 2008 US Presidential Election to become the 44th President Elect of the United States of America. He will be the first African American to hold the post, and at 47 years old, one of the youngest.

CNN's most recent projection has Obama with 338 electoral votes. McCain has only 163. Obama, with 52% of the popular vote (60.5 million) soundly trounced McCain's 47% (54.1 million).

The Republican states that Obama managed to flip were: Virginia, Ohio, Florida [Images], Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.

Most impressive were Obama's wins in Virginia, which had voted Republican for president 44 years in a row, and Ohio, the state that secured George W Bush's second term in 2004.

In Ohio, heading into the election, polls showed Obama with a 3-5 point lead there, but many commentators speculated that the so-called Bradley Effect -- which posits that white votres are afraid to admit they will not vote for a black candidate and thus skew poll numbers -- would deliver victory to McCain.

But it turns out that predominantly white states such as Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and many others had no problem electing Obama, in a clear refutation of the Bradley Effect's purported influence.

Only the Deep South and Bible Belt areas, America's most socially conservative and highly religious regions, resoundingly rejected Obama. He was trounced in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas an others, but this was expected.

In addition to the historic presidential contest, which shares similarities with the 1860 election of Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, US voters were also at the polls to determine the make-up of Congress, the bi-cameral legislative body much like India's Parliament. Thus far, it appears that a number of races will go to the Democrats, with voters giving a clear mandate to the Democratic Party, who will now enjoy sizeable majorities in both houses of Congress to go along with control of the Executive Branch. It's the first time Democrats have controlled both Congress and the Presidency since Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.

These are the latest projections from the US presidential election, updated minute by minute.
Click here to refresh the page.

The winner needs 270 electoral votes to win the White House.

States won by Barack Obama

Pennsylvania, 21 votes

The one state the McCain campaign had hoped to wrest from the Democrats, owing to John Kerry's razor-thin victory in 2004. But soon after the polls closed, all major outlets projected Pennsylvania to Obama by a comfortable margin.

New Hampshire, 4 votes

McCain has enjoyed success here in the past, in the Republican primaries of 2000 and 2008. And the state, in 2000, was the only state in the Northeast to vote Republican. But Obama ruled the day

Maine, 4 votes

No surprise here. Though polls had tightened in recent weeks, Obama maintained a comfortable lead up through election day, resulting in a relatively easy win.

Vermont, 3 votes

This was never in doubt, another decidedly liberal Northeast state

Massachusetts, 12 votes

Again, one of the centres of the Democratic Party, and was never in doubt.

Connecticut, 7 votes

McCain polled slightly better here than in other Northeast states, but an Obama win was assured.

New Jersey, 15 votes

A diverse, Democratic state through and through. Was always going to go for Obama.

Maryland, 10 votes

Like New Jersey, a very reliable Democratic state that is one of the most ethnically diverse in the nation.

Delaware, 3 votes

Joe Biden, Obama's running mate, surely helped wrap up this tiny mid-Atlantic state for the Democrats.

Illinois, 21 votes

Barack Obama, a US Senator from Chicago, Illinois, was never going to lose his home state

Washington DC, 3 votes

The District of Columbia, like Delhi, is its own autonomous territory, rather than part of a state. It is the most consistently Democratic area in the country.

Rhode Island, 4 votes

Another Northeast solidly liberal state where Obama's enjoyed great polling numbers.

Michigan, 17 votes

When McCain pulled his staff and advertisements from Michigan a few weeks back, most political pundits knew this race was over.

Wisconsin, 10 votes

Like Iowa, a predominantly white state that depends on agriculture but still votes Democrat. A McCain victory here would have been incredibly unlikely.

New York, 31 votes

A solid Democrat stronghold that was always going to vote blue.

Minnesota, 10 votes

There was hope among Republicans that this Northern state could be turned Red, as the 2004 election was a close victory for John Kerry. The Republicans even held their National Convention here in early September, but to no avail. Obama coasted to victory.

Ohio, 20 votes

The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Bush carried Ohio in 2000 and 2004, but McCain's been losing ground in light of a floundering state economy. When the networks began to declare Ohio for Obama, the McCain camp started sending off e-mails that basically conceded victory to Obama.

New Mexico, 5 votes

More evidence that Hispanic voters are increasingly aligning themselves with Democrats. This state went Red in 2004, but an Obama victory was projected early on, soon after the polls closed.

Iowa, 7 votes

The state where Obama began his brilliant campaign with a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the Democratic Primary. Though there are very few minorities in Iowa, and the state voted for George W Bush [Images] in 2004, Obama has led here throughout. This was not a surprise.

California, 55 votes

This one was never in doubt. The nation's most populace state was always in the bag for Obama, putting McCain at a big disadvantage from the start.

Oregon, 7 votes

The Pacific Northwest has become increasingly reliable for the Democrats. Oregon didn't disappoint.

Washington, 11 votes

Neither did Washington.

Colorado, 7 votes

One of the big bellweather states for this election was Colorado, a traditionally Republican and fiercely independent state that has recently lurched leftward. The Democrats, by hosting their National Convention in Denver, confirmed their commitment to the state, for which it was rewarded handsomely, by a sizable Obama victory. Obama's lead sits at around 20% at the moment, a total blow-out.

Nevada, 5 votes

The McCain campaign seemed confident about Nevada throughout the campaign, though polls increasingly showed him slipping to a double digit deficit. Ultimately, this race wasn't close.

Virginia, 13 votes

The final nail in the coffin for McCain were the polling results from Virginia's urban counties, which propelled Obama to an insurmountable lead in a state that McCain absolutely had to have. Virginia's demographics have changed recently, as high-tech jobs have reshaped the state's economy and allowed Democrats to make in-roads. It's the first time Virginia has voted a Democrat for President since 1964.



JOHN McCAIN

Oklahoma, 7 votes

Part of the famed Bible Belt, Oklahoma is one of America's most socially conservative states. A McCain victory here was guaranteed.

Kentucky, 8 votes

Obama fared well in the urban areas of the state, but rural counties that voted at a 3 to 1 margin for McCain spelled defeat for the Democrats.

Tennessee, 11 votes

If Al Gore , a Democrat, couldn't care his home state of Tennessee in 2000, Obama enjoyed little chance of knocking off McCain.

South Carolina, 8 votes

A very socially conservative state with one of the most painful legacies of the slave trade, where race relations still have a long way to go. An Obama win here would have been practically a miracle.

West Virginia, 5 votes

One of America's most impoverished and least educated states, West Virginia voters present an interesting case: depressed economically but incredibly socially conservative. An Obama victory would have been stunning.

Arkansas, 6 votes

Part of the Bible Belt, and choc-o-bloc with deeply conservative evangelical Christians, this state was never going to vote for Obama.

Alabama, 9 votes

Part of the so-called 'Deep South', the only area of the country that voted McCain in a landslide.

North Dakota, 3 votes

A rural, fiercely independent state that values gun rights and religion. It was tailor made for McCain.

Wyoming, 3 votes

Dick Cheney's home state, much like North Dakota

Georgia, 15 votes

Part of the Deep South. There had been hope that Obama could make inroads here, but in the end the state delivered McCain a solid victory, as expected

Texas, 34 votes

The state of George W Bush was never going to elect Barack Obama. But changing demographics mean Texas could one day soon be in play for the Democrats, as whites have recently become a minority.

Kansas, 6 votes

Part of the Bible Belt

Louisiana, 9 votes

The Deepest of the Deep South. The fact that Bobby Jindal, an Indian-American, serves as governor is remarkable. However, a minority who is also a Democrat � Barack Obama -- never had a chance.

Utah, 5 votes

The most religious state in America, home to the Mormom religion. Reliably Republican.

Interestingly, McCain thus far has not managed to flip a single Democratic state from the 2004 election, while Obama has already flipped Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico, thus all but assuring his victory.

Mississippi, 6 votes

Another Deep South state that emphatically rejected Obama; it's one of America's most impoverished states.

Nebraska, 5 votes

Part of the so-called heartland, or Bible Belt, Nebraska is an agricultural state based on conservative values.

Arizona, 10 votes

McCain's home state, which he only managed to win by 9%. Had McCain come from somewhere else, Obama would have likely taken Arizona, which is one of America's fastest growing states.

South Dakota, 3 votes

Like North Dakota, Obama never entertained delusions that he would win in this sparsely populated, fiercely indepedenent state.

Alaska, 3 votes

The home of Sarah Palin and a Republican bastion. Obama had no chance and McCain cruised to a comfortable victory.

Montana, 3 votes

Obama polled surprisingly well here, but election day saw him slip. He only lost in single digits, however, which is noteworthy in this traditionally Republican state

Idaho, 4 votes

Very similar to Montana and Wyoming. Obama had little chance here.