billso.com

From Yahoo: The Wal-Mart web site was down for 10 hours today as thousands of Internet users overwhelmed the site. Analysts have ranked Walmart.com as the 21st largest web site in terms of user volume.

Wal-Mart’s problems started around 4:30 AM ET, and continued throughout the morning.

Amazon offered 1000 Xbox 360s for $100 each, among other items. Amazon.com management said their site experienced about 15 minutes of problems.

From Yahoo: According to an report by a European Union (EU) panel, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) broke EU protection laws when the group agreed to provide transaction information to the US Treasury, starting in late 2001. As revealed in June 2006, the Treasury used this information to identify and track suspected international terrorists.If you have transferred money between accounts in different countries in the last ten years, information about the transaction, yourself and your accounts probably went through a SWIFT network. SWIFT handles 11 million international financial transactions a day. These transactions are XML messages exchanged between banks across the Internet, using SWIFT’s messaging systems.

SWIFT management claims that it is trapped in a “legal black hole”, as Belgian, EU and US laws each have different requirements. SWIFT responded to the original US subpoenas to avoid fines and jail time. The EU panel recommended an investigation of Belgian regulators, as SWIFT is subject to Belgian law. US legislators and citizens have called for investigations and new laws.