Flaming rocks are hurtling toward the Earth upon the arrival of the annual Geminid meteor shower, one of the biggest of the year. The peak of the week-long shower will come just before dawn Tuesday, but the shooting stars were visible across the world late this past weekend, says Rebecca Johnson, editor of StarDate magazine, which is published by the McDonald Observatory, the University of Texas research unit near Fort Davis, Texas. Where skies are clear, the viewing will be best before dawn Tuesday. "It starts to get light an hour before sunrise, so any time before that is going to be a good time to look," Johnson says.ugg outlet sale Those who'd rather stay up late than get up early might want to wait until the moon sets around midnight on each night during the shower. "You can still see meteors when the moon is up, but it will be better when the moon has set," Johnson says.ugg boots sale uk The peak will hit at 6 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Johnson says. "If you're brave enough to brave the frigid, arctic cold that's prevailing in most of the Eastern part of the country, that's when you'll see them," says Bill Cooke, an astronomer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Ala. Meteor showers can be unpredictable in the number of fiery paths sketched across the sky, but the Geminids are among the most consistent. They're expected to generate between 60 to 80 meteors an hour, "about one a minute," Cooke says. Meteors aren't really falling stars. In the case of the Geminid shower, they're tiny pieces of debris breaking off an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon as it orbits the sun. Although the shower was first seen in the 1860s, the asteroid wasn't discovered until 1983. The Geminids carry a whiff of mystery. Most well-known meteor showers, such as the Perseids and the Leonids, come from comets, which are "big, dirty snowballs," in Cooke's words.uggs free shipping store When comets get near the sun, the heat turns the ice into gas, freeing some of that dirt, which is then pulled into Earth's orbit and falls through the atmosphere. As the debris burns up, it creates the brilliant streaks we see as meteors. The Geminids come not from a comet but an asteroid, "a big hunk of rock," Cooke says. Exactly why 3200 Phaethon has so much material trailing behind it to burn up in our atmosphere is unclear. Even if 3200 Phaethon is a clump of rock bits, which is one kind of asteroid, the Geminids are many hundreds of years old, so those bits should have long since been lost, "and yet (they are) still throwing stuff off. It's a weird meteor shower," Cooke says. For those who can't make it out Tuesday morning, the meteors will be visible tonight and a day or two after the peak, just not as plentiful.ugg boots for sale It's "a great shower that many people never see" because they come during cold weather, Cooke says. "The Perseids get all the press. It's much nicer to be out on a warm August night than to be freezing your rear in December." Popular online retailer Amazon went down in several countries Sunday night, in what was believed to be a cyber attack by WikiLeaks supporters, London's The Daily Telegraph reported. Amazon’s U.K., French, German and Italian sites reported problems, with users saying they were unable to access the webpages. "We can't confirm anything because we'll lose our accounts again. Be alert and you will realize," said a message tweeted from the activists’ Twitter account, Anonops. The tweet was deleted minutes later. All the sites were operating early Monday.cheap uggs sale Anonymous, a group of hacktivists from around the world, claimed responsibility for the Distributed Denial of Service attacks in the past week that disrupted the websites of Visa, MasterCard, Paypal and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The group -- which apparently failed in an earlier bid to attack Amazon -- lost its Twitter account and was kicked off Facebook as a result of the trouble-making. The WikiLeaks site has also come under sustained cyber attack since it began dumping some 250,000 confidential US diplomatic memos on Nov. 28. Its Australian founder Julian Assange is in a British prison as he awaits an extradition hearing Dec. 14 over rape allegations made in Sweden.uggs outlet online Billionaire investor Paul Allen's patent lawsuit against some of the biggest names in high technology ran into a stumbling block as a federal judge in Seattle dismissed the complaint for not describing its allegations specifically enough. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman on Friday set a Dec. 28 deadline for the plaintiff, a company controlled by Mr. Allen called Interval Licensing LLC, to file an amended complaint. A spokesman for Mr. Allen said it plans to do so soon, calling the judge's order a "procedural issue" that won't halt the case. The suit filed by Paul Allen, shown in September at a football game of his Seattle Seahawks, cites some of the biggest names in technology. .The suit, filed in August, names tech companies Google Inc., its YouTube subsidiary, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Yahoo Inc., AOL Inc., eBay Inc. and Netflix Inc., as well as OfficeMax Inc. and Staples Inc., as defendants. The complaint accuses them of infringing four patents covering technology developed at Interval Research Corp., a Palo Alto, Calif., lab and technology incubator that Mr. Allen financed but that closed down about a decade ago. Mr. Allen is a co-founder of Microsoft Corp.ugg sales online The suit attracted attention for the defendants' high profiles as well as because the patents relate to features used by many e-commerce and Internet-search services. One patent, for example, covers technology that allows a website to offer suggestions for items related to what a user is viewing. Another covers the way readers can quickly locate stories related to a particular subject. The defendants vowed to fight the suit. Google and Apple filed motions to dismiss the complaint because it doesn't specify which of the defendants' goods or services infringe the Interval patents. "The allegations in the complaint are spartan," Judge Pechman wrote, siding with the defendants. Standards for specificity of allegations in civil cases have been tightened in recent years as a result of a Supreme Court ruling, said Alan Fisch, a partner at the law firm Kaye Scholer LLP in Washington. He doesn't expect Mr. Allen's attorneys to have trouble rewriting the complaint to meet those standards. "I would see this as a temporary setback or speed bump on the road that will be this litigation," said Mr. Fisch, who isn't involved in the case.uggs on sale online Apple and eBay declined to comment on Judge Pechman's ruling and the other defendants couldn't be reached. A spokesman for Mr. Allen, David Postman, said a scheduling conference in the case will take place as planned Monday. "The case is staying on track," he said. Judge Pechman's ruling was reported earlier by the website Groklaw. The Minnesota Vikings' soap opera of a season just got crazier. Their home game against the New York Giants, already moved 31 hours later to tonight when the Giants couldn't get to Minneapolis because of the weather, now will be played in Detroit after the Metrodome's inflated roof collapsed in a snowstorm early Sunday morning. The delay has given Vikings quarterback Brett Favre more time to heal his sprained right shoulder, with his NFL-record streak of 297 regular-season starts in jeopardy.ugg boots cheap for sale NFL.com reported that Favre has told teammates and associates that he doesn't believe he can play. The NFL said Detroit was the best logistical fit given that Fox camera crews were already in town for the Lions' game against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. The league also had discussions with New Orleans, St. Louis and Indianapolis and briefly considered the University of Minnesota's outdoor stadium before deciding on Ford Field. The Vikings are refunding the cost of the tickets for the game for any fans who can't make it to Detroit. Those who do will be given priority seating along the 50-yard line. Also, those who had a ticket for the Packers-Lions game will be admitted and the Lions will distribute additional free general-admission tickets. The game will be aired in both local markets on Fox affiliates and also will be available as part of DirectTV's "Sunday Ticket" package.uggs online stores The roof collapse is a fitting metaphor in a trying season for the Vikings that has included: the firing of coach Brad Childress; the investigation of Favre for allegedly sending inappropriate messages to a Jets hostess in 2008; the play of a 5-7 team that had Super Bowl aspirations. "I think this is officially the craziest season ever; now the roof collapses at the Metrodome," Vikings defensive end Brian Robison tweeted. "Can't wait to see what happens now. Let's make it even crazier and just take the roof off and play outside." The only previous time a Metrodome game has been postponed because of roof failure was April 14, 1983, when a baseball game between the California Angels and Minnesota Twins had to be rescheduled. Games that have been moved to another city include the Oct. 22, 1989 meeting between New England and the 49ers that was switched from Candlestick Park to Stanford Stadium because of the Loma Prieta earthquake; a Monday nighter on Oct. 27, 2003, switched from San Diego to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., because of Southern California wildfires; and the Saints' 2005 home schedule because of Hurricane Katrina.ugg boots A powerful, gusty storm dumps mounds of snow across the upper Midwest, creating travel havoc. A8