Hoffenheim Wins

Hoffenheim back on top with new home win

Hoffenheim players celebrate victory in their new stadium to go back on top.

Hoffenheim celebrated the first match in their new Rhein-Neckar Arena stadium with a 2-0 win over struggling Energie Cottbus to go back to the top of the Bundesliga.


* Hoffenheim reclaim leadership of Bundesliga with 2-0 win over Energie Cottbus.
* Demba Ba and fellow striker Boubacar Sanogo scored the goals.
* Hertha Berlin up to second after 2-1 home win over Eintracht Frankfurt.

Hoffenheim went into the six-week midwinter break as leaders, but were temporarily replaced by SV Hamburg after their 1-0 win over champions Bayern Munich on Friday.

But the minnows, who were only promoted last season, showed their quality again as Senagal's Demba Ba and fellow striker Boubacar Sanogo scored their goals in each half.

Hoffenheim were originally based in a small village in the suburbs of Baden Wurttemberg, but with the backing of software mogul Dietmar Hopp have moved into new surroundings and mounting an unlikely title challenge.

In other action on Saturday, Hertha Berlin moved into second in the standings with a 2-1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the Olympic stadium.

Striker Marko Pantelic scored their goals with Benjamin Koehler replying for Frankfurt in the second half.

Hoffenheim have 38 points after 18 rounds, two clear of Hertha who head Hamburg on goal difference. Bayern are in fourth a further point adrift.

Bayer Leverkusen, held 1-1 by sixth-placed Borussia Dortmund are on 33 points in a close title race.

Hannover pulled clear of the relegation battle with a 1-0 win over Schalke 04 while Cologne and Wolfsburg shared two goals to stay in mid table.

Stuttgart hit back from their 5-1 midweek humbling by Bayern in the German Cup with a 2-0 victory over Borussia Monchengladbach to continue their climb up the Bundesliga standings.

Sunday's fixtures see Werder Bremen host Arminia Bielefeld with VfL Bochum taking on Karlsruhe.

Federer talks

Federer dismisses talk of 'worn out' Nadal

Federer is contemplating another epic encounter against Nadal in the final on Sunday.

Roger Federer will go in search of his 14th grand slam title on Sunday without a hint of complacency despite opponent Rafael Nadal's marathon effort in the semifinals.

Many expect Federer will have an easy ride after the world number one was detained on court for a record five hours and 14 minutes by fellow Spaniard Fernando Verdasco, but he is not fooled.

Roger Federer bids for record-equaling 14th grand slam win in Sunday's final
Federer dismisses notion Rafael Nadal will be too tired after his marathon semifinal win
Australian Open clash is rematch of epic 2008 Wimbledon final won by Spain's Nadal

"I don't think Rafa will struggle too much to get over this kind of a match," Federer told the official tournament Web site www.australianopen.com.

"He's had an easy tournament so far. This was the tough one. I'm sure he's going to get over it," said Federer who had a relatively easy straight sets win over Andy Roddick on Thursday night.

Instead Swiss maestro Federer is focused on matching Pete Sampras' all-time record for grand slam wins and avenging his defeat to Nadal in last year's Wimbledon final.

"It's an unbelievable opportunity for me, of course, not being number one anymore, trying to beat the number one in the world and getting the 14th grand slam," he said.

"This is where I won the grand slam to become number one in the world back in 2004, so I've always had a special liaison with this tournament.

"The stage is set for a great match. I hope we can live up to them like we did in Wimbledon."

World number two Federer has enjoyed an easy passage to his 18th grand slam final, apart from a scare against Tomas Berdych where he had to come from two sets behind to win in five, but knows it will be tight against Nadal.

"I think it's going to be a close match. I think he's playing well, so I'm looking forward to a great match and then hopefully equal Pete's record."

Nadal will become the first player since Andre Agassi to win grand slams on all three surfaces if he can beat Federer, but aware his match against Verdasco which finished in the early hours of Saturday morning may take its toll.

"I'm a little bit unlucky in that I don't know how I'm gonna be for the final," he said.

"But for sure, for me it is amazing to play another final of a grand slam. Here in Australia the first one."

Serena claim Aussie crown

Serena thrashes Safina to claim Aussie crown

Serena Williams took the Australian Open title after thrashing Russia's Dinara Safina.

Serena Williams claimed her fourth Australian Open title with an emphatic 6-0 6-3 victory over Russian Dinara Safina in Saturday's final in Melbourne.

The second-seeded American was winning her 10th grand slam crown and takes over from Serbia's Jelena Jankovic as the women's world number one after the one-sided win.

* Williams needs only 59 minutes to beat Safina in Australian Open final.
* Williams drops only 3 games in one-sided final on way to her 10th grand slam title.
* Victory sees Williams move to top of WTA world rankings deposing Jelena Jankovic.


"I definitely think it was one of my most dominant performances, especially considering it was a final. I was able to just lift the level of my game," Williams was quoted on the official tournament Web site www.australianopen.com

Safina could also have claimed the top spot in the global rankings, but from the moment she produced three double faults in her opening service game was on the backfoot.

Williams swept through the first set in just 22 minutes as she produced a string of clubbing winners against a nervous and outclassed opponent.

Third seed Safina gained a measure of respectability as she broke Williams at the start of the second set, but was immediately broken back to snuff out any hopes of a revival.

The 27-year-old Williams produced a further break to eventually wrap up victory in just 59 minutes.

She becomes the seventh woman in tennis history to win 10 or more grand slam singles titles.
It also completed a triumphant tournament after wrapping up the doubles title with sister Venus on Friday, their eighth grand slam success.

Safina, the sister of men's star Marat Safin, was left to contemplate a comprehensive defeat for the second time in a grand slam final, having lost to Ana Ivanovic for the French Open last year.
She admitted that nerves had played a part in her below-par display.

"Well, I would say so. You know, it was first time for me to play not only for the Grand Slam, but it's also for No. 1 spot.

"And I never been through this situation, you know, and she was already," Safina said.

Sunday sees the eagerly-awaited men's final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer who is bidding to tie Pete Sampras' record of 14 grand slam titles.

Van der Sar Record lead

United stretch lead after Van der Sar record

Van der Sar was left to celebrate a United win and a new goalkeeping record.

Manchester United went five points clear at the top of the Premier League as goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar set a new English record for minutes in not conceding a goal in the 1-0 victory over Everton.

Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed the winning goal with a 44th minute penalty but once again it was United's rock-solid defense and keeper that made sure of the vital three points.

* Record breaker Edwin van der Sar has now kept 12 clean sheets for United.
* 1-0 win over sixth-placed Everton sees United go five points clear in Premier League.
* Closest rivals Chelsea and Liverpool play each other in title showdown on Sunday.

Everton's failure to score by the 73rd minute at Old Trafford left van der Sar unbeaten for 1,104 minutes.

The Dutch international was breaking the previous record set by Reading's Steve Death 30 years ago.

He had taken Petr Cech's Premier League record in the 5-0 win at West Bromwich Albion last week and has now had 12 straight clean sheets.

With title rivals Chelsea and Liverpool playing each other on Sunday and Aston Villa being held 0-0 at home by Wigan, the record was the icing on the cake for Alex Ferguson's defending champions.

World footballer of the year Ronaldo had hit the post in the first half before converting from the spot after Michael Carrick was tripped by Mikel Arteta.

In truth, Everton, missing three strikers through injury, rarely troubled van der Sar with most of the action at the other end.

Carrick had appeals for a second penalty turned down after appearing to be brought down by Joleon Lescott, but referee Mark Halsey ignored his pleas.

Carlos Tevez shot wide from Park ji-Sung's right wing cross and Tim Howard later had to save smartly from a deflected free kick from the Argentine star.

United manager Alex Ferguson was delighted with yet another clean sheet and the three points.

"It's a fantastic performance from the boys. I couldn't believe it when I read that the last goal we conceded was against Arsenal in October," he told Setanta Sports.

"Van der Sar brings calmness and assurance. Over the last 12 games we have changed the back four I don't know how many times so you have to give great credit to them."

Japan for Asian aid

Japan unveils $17B Asian aid package

Aso said the U.S. needed to curb overconsumption.

Japan will hand out $17 billion in development aid to other Asian countries to help them face the global financial crisis, Prime Minister Taro Aso said Saturday at the World Economic Forum.

Announcing the three-year aid package, Aso said Asian countries could lead the world out of recession through closer economic cooperation.

* Japan to hand out $17B over three years to other Asian countries.
* Japanese PM Aso says Asia can lead world out of recession.
* Aso says U.S. must curb overconsumption to help get economy back on track.
* Aso calls on leaders to push for new agreement on fighting climate change.

"We will support Asian countries by mobilising funds," said Aso told delegates in Davos. "I'm convinced that deepening cooperation within the Asian region would lead to a recovery in the global economy."

But Aso warned that stable economic growth could only be achieved if the U.S. curbed overconsumption and urged countries to reduce their dependency on overseas exports.

"To get the world economy on a stable growth path again, it is necessary to correct excessive consumption in the United States, as well as global imbalance coming from insufficient domestic demand of various countries, especially those with trade surpluses," Aso said.

"In order to put the world economy back onto a stable growth trajectory, one imperative is correcting the global imbalance that has arisen from overconsumption in the United States and insufficient internal demand in other countries," Aso said.

Aso also called on leaders to work together on agreeing urgent new measures to tackle global warming, warning that November's environment summit in Copenhagen would be "make or break."

"We are at a crossroads of a very, very historical nature," Aso said. "Let's put strong pressure on each other for the completion of the Copenhagen process."

Aso also pledged to announce details in the summer of how Japan planned to reach its target of cutting carbon emissions by up to 80 percent by 2050 and said the country could play a leading role in the development of greener technologies.

"We are in an age of pessimism. Some will go on to say that with the economy going downhill, it will be difficult for the international community to tackle climate change as it will generate little money," Aso said.

"Nothing could be further from the truth... I am a big believed that we can both grow and emit less with the help of the technologies new and still untapped."

Bratain, Oil refinery Dispute

Oil refinery dispute spreads across Britain

Protesters gather outside the Total Lindsey oil refinery in north-east England on January 30.

Hundreds of energy workers across the UK have taken strike action Friday in protest over the use of foreign workers on a multimillion-dollar oil refinery project on the northeast coast of England.

* Dispute over Total's decision to award oil refinery contract to Italian company.
* IREM will supply their own permanent workers from Italy and Portugal.
* Striking workers at Lincolnshire site joined by energy workers across UK.
* Total: There will be no direct redundancies as a result of this contract.

The dispute surrounds the decision by oil giant Total to award Italian company IREM a contract to build a new hydro desulphurization facility at its Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire.

The British Press Association reported that several hundred demonstrators had gathered for a third day outside the plant, following a walk-out by contractors on Wednesday, but the unofficial action has now spread to other parts of the UK, including Scotland and Wales.

In Scotland, hundreds of workers at the giant Grangemouth oil refinery walked out following an early morning meeting Friday. According to PA, the mechanical contractors, who work for BP and INEOS, said they were supporting their colleagues in Lincolnshire.

Elsewhere, PA reported that police were called to the Aberthaw power station near Barry in South Wales after workers staged a protest, while around 400 workers staged a demonstration at the Wilton oil refinery in Teesside, north-east England.

In a statement released Friday, Total said: "We recognize the concerns of contractors but we want to stress that there will be no direct redundancies as a result of this contract being awarded to IREM and that all IREM staff will be paid the same as the existing contractors working on the project.

"It is important to note that we have been a major local employer for 40 years with 550 permanent staff employed at the refinery. There are also between 200 and 1000 contractors working at the refinery, the vast majority of which work for UK companies employing local people.

"On this one specific occasion, IREM was selected, through a fair and competitive tender process, as the most appropriate company to complete this work. We will continue to put contracts out to tender in the future and we are confident we will award further contracts to UK companies."

But Bernard McAuley, a representative of Britain's Unite union, was quoted by the BBC telling demonstrators in Lincolnshire that there was "sufficient unemployed skilled labor wanting the right to work on that site and they are demanding the right to work on that site."

Five British companies and two European contractors bid for the work before it was awarded to the Italian firm on the basis that it was supplying its own permanent workforce, PA said.

The news agency added that 100 Italian and Portuguese workers are currently on site, with a further 300 expected to arrive next month. The workers are being accommodated in large, gray housing barges moored at nearby Grimsby.

Meanwhile, The Guardian newspaper reported Friday that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was quizzed about the strikes during a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He said: "I understand people's worries about their jobs. I understand people's anxieties about employment across the country. But we are doing everything we can both to get economic growth moving in our country and to help people who are unemployed, to help them into new jobs."

Obama Economy Environment

Energy, economy create balancing act for Obama

President Barack Obama with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Environmentalists are encouraged by President Barack Obama's focus this week on renewable energy and stricter emissions standards, although some economists are skeptical he can pull the country out of the recession while cleaning up the planet.

* Environmentalists are encouraged by President Obama's focus on renewable energy.
* Some economists are skeptical he can fix the economy and the planet at once.
* Scholar: Obama can push new policies, but they must be economically competitive.
* President announced a plan for "a new energy economy" that will build jobs.

Obama must strike a careful balance between stimulating the economy in the coming months and investing in the long-term future of the environment, said Raj Chetty, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

"If you spend money too quickly, you lose site of the long-term vision," Chetty told CNN. "If you focus too much on the long term, you may not act on spending money."

Framing his remarks with an eye on the recession, the president on Monday announced a plan for "a new energy economy that will build millions of jobs." Obama proposes to put 460,000 Americans to work through clean energy investments, increasing fuel efficiency in vehicles and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

By 2025, the Obama administration hopes one-fourth of the nation's energy will come from renewable sources. Over the long term, the president hopes to create millions of new jobs by investing $150 billion in taxpayer money to help private companies develop new sources of clean energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal power.

It's about time, say scientists who often clashed with former President George W. Bush on environmental policy.

"By repowering our nation with clean energy, we will create millions of jobs that can't be sent overseas. By harnessing the energy of the sun and wind, we can refuel our nation and end our addiction to oil," said Wesley Warren, director of programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Environmental scholars, however, say the changes Obama seeks are not easy.

"These technologies are not new. They have been around for 10 to 15 years," said Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of Environment at Duke University. "Government can push new policies, but it has to prove to be economically competitive or else it will not happen."

"It is going to require massive investments," said Joseph Romm, former acting assistant secretary of energy under the Clinton administration and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "The only question is, are we going to be the leader and export our technologies or a follower and continue importing our resources?"

Some economists question whether spending government money on new energy technologies is the best way to stimulate the economy in the short term.

Opponents of Obama's proposals say renewable energy would be expensive, take up large amounts of land, and might not even be able to generate sufficient energy given the aging infrastructure of the nation's electric grid.

"If the private sector will not invest in these technologies, it will not be efficient," said Alan Reynolds, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

"Creating jobs by switching from one form of energy to another is a bad idea," he added. "You don't need subsidies for anything that is free. Getting a $7,000 rebate on a $100,000 plug-in electrical hybrid that gets its power from a coal plant doesn't make a lot of sense."

Several events in Washington this week underscored the Obama administration's commitment to environmental issues. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday named a special envoy to pursue global agreements combating global warming. On Wednesday, former Vice President Al Gore urged Congress to approve Obama's stimulus package and said the United States needs to join international talks on a climate-change treaty.

"For years our efforts to address the climate crisis have been undermined by the idea that we must chose between our planet and our way of life, between our moral duty and economic well-being these are false choices," Gore told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"In fact, the solutions to the climate crisis are the same solutions that will address our economic and national crisis as well."

Obama may have science on his side. By overwhelming consensus, scientists agree that our warming planet poses a greater global threat with every passing day.

The replacement of current technology with energy generated from natural resources, such as sunlight and wind, could help reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.

"Frankly the science is screaming at us," said Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at Wednesday's hearing. "Carbon dioxide emissions grew at a rate of four times faster in the Bush administration than they did in the 1990s."

Even so, experts agree the faltering economy will complicate any discussion about investment in clean energy.

"The country is running two deficits," said David Orr, a professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College, "the economy in the short term, which will take one to five years to figure out [and] the environment in the long term, which if we don't do anything about it will see catastrophic effects."

Alaska Volcano

Alaska volcano 'more energetic,' scientists say

Dark areas show a mudflow from the peak of Mount Redoubt earlier this week.

Mount Redoubt, the Alaskan volcano expected to erupt at any time, is getting a bit more edgy.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory said in a statement Friday "volcanic tremor" has increased in "amplitude."

* "Volcanic tremor" increasing in "amplitude," observatory says
* The 10,200-foot Mount Redoubt is about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska
* Volcano last erupted in December 1989
* Eruption could spawn huge mudflows, disrupt flights with ash

The activity on the 10,197-foot peak is "more energetic than that of the previous several days. However, it is still less vigorous than that observed last weekend," the observatory said.

Peter Cervelli, a research geophysicist with the observatory, told CNN that "every indication is that we're heading toward an eruption."

Cervelli said scientists don't know exactly when it will happen, but if it does happen, it could be days or weeks -- or even hours.

"I would not be surprised to see it erupt at anytime," Cervelli said. "We're going to know it when we see it."

Scientists raised the alert status Sunday to a "watch" level, the second-highest, based on seismic activity detected January 23.

The peak is about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, the state's most populous city.

Mount Redoubt last erupted nearly 20 years ago, in December 1989, and that eruption lasted until April 1990. Geologists think there could be an eruption "similar to or smaller than the one that occurred in 1989-90." PopSci.com: Predicting eruptions

That eruption spread ash in Kenai and Anchorage, where it disrupted air traffic operations. Cervelli said the ash plumes caused engine failure on a jet.

The 1989-90 eruption also spurred volcanic mudflows, or lahars, that flowed east down the Drift River. The ash fall was seen as far away as Fairbanks and the Yukon Territory border.

PopSci.com: Prehistoric explosions wiped out ocean life -- and created petroleum
The observatory has set up a Web camera near the summit of the volcano and another within Cook Inlet. It plans to do continuous visual surveillance, measure gas output and analyze satellite and weather-radar data.

Humor in 'Stuff White People Like'

Finding humor in 'Stuff White People Like'

Blogger-turned-author Christian Lander is the force behind "Stuff White People Like."

* Popular "Stuff White People Like" blog now a book
* Blog and book have its fans and detractors
* Author says, "It's playing off stereotypes"

The blog "Stuff White People Like" is wildly popular with fans who've embraced the hilarious, satirical sendup of the white middle class that -- according to the list -- have an ongoing love affair with things such as coffee (No. 1), organic food (No. 6), yoga (15) and the Toyota Prius (60).

The site also has spurred an outpouring from those who view it as offensive and racist.

Now devotees and detractors alike have more to discuss with the release of the book "Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions" by the blog's creator, Christian Lander.

Filled with photos and some content from the blog, the guide includes new entries exclusive to the book.

Lander also worked with a designer to create things such as flow charts on "How to Name a White Child" and "White Career Trajectories" as well as a test of the reader's "whiteness."

As befitting the genius behind such a site and book, Lander is a bit of a ham (actually, make that Canadian bacon since he hails from Toronto, Ontario).

The origins of "Stuff" date from January 2008, he said, because of an instant messenger conversation between him and his friend Miles about the HBO drama "The Wire." Miles, who is Filipino, tossed off that he didn't trust any white person who didn't watch the series.

That exchange started a back-and-forth between the two about what white people were doing instead of watching the show.

"We said, 'Oh, they are going to plays, they're doing yoga, they're getting divorced,' " recalled Lander, who couldn't pass up the gold mine of ideas and started blogging. "The goal was to literally make Miles and a few of my friends laugh, and it just took off."

Within six weeks, Random House came calling, and a book deal was finalized.

Talking to the blogger-turned-author about his "whiteness," whether he is like Stephen Colbert but instead mocks earnest, left-wing types, and why "Stuff White People Like" will never make the list of "Stuff White People Like."

Amy Winehouse

Burglars target home of Amy Winehouse

Winehouse is currently vacationing in the Caribbean.

Burglars broke into Amy Winehouse's London home early Thursday and took away several valuable guitars, recording equipment and a flat-screen TV, according to her spokesman.

It was an easy mark for intruders who may have known Winehouse has been away for weeks on a Caribbean vacation, spokesman Chris Goodman said.

"It's one of life's little ironies," he said. "Usually, hundreds of paparazzi are outside her home."

When the Grammy-winning singer is in town, "it's the safest street in London," he said.

Winehouse, who is on the island of St. Lucia, is "writing music with another guitar that didn't get burgled," Goodman said.

"She's doing very well and is enjoying her time away," he said, but she is thinking about returning to London soon.

London police have already recovered some of the electronics taken from Winehouse's home, according to a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman.

A neighbor called police to the home after two men kicked in the front door at 4 a.m. Thursday, the spokeswoman said. No arrests have been made, she said.

The burglary wasn't the only bad news for Winehouse during her vacation.

Husband Blake Fielder-Civil earlier this month asked his lawyer "to commence divorce proceedings on the grounds of Amy's adultery," said his lawyer, Henri Brandman.

That came after Fielder-Civil saw photos of her cavorting with another man in the Caribbean while he sat in a British jail.

'Slumdog' director defends.

'Slumdog' director defends pay arrangement for child actors

Director Danny Boyle says the youngest actors in his film will get "substantial" money if they stay in school.

The two youngest stars in "Slumdog Millionaire" will get "a substantial sum of money" that would "change their lives for the better" when they turn 18, but only if they stay in school, director Danny Boyle said.

Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, both 8, have been temporarily forced to stay away from school by the crush of journalists who have converged on the campus in Mumbai, Boyle said.

"The press attention that's been focused on them is really sad at the moment and they've had to leave school temporarily because the press outside the school is disrupting the school," Boyle said. "So, we've withdrawn them from the school for a short while."

Boyle, in a CNN interview Thursday, said the boys were paid "way over and above what you could pay," despite media reports to the contrary.

The success of the moderately budgeted film, about an orphan seeking fame and love through the "Millionaire" game show, drew a spotlight to the slums of Mumbai, India, where it was filmed.

A controversy erupted this week when the children's parents told reporters they felt they were exploited and underpaid for their work.

The Telegraph newspaper of London reported the children and their families still live in the same "tangle of makeshift shacks" in Mumbai where they lived when the casting director found them.

Azharuddin's situation has gotten worse, the paper said, because "his family's illegal hut was demolished by the local authorities and he now sleeps under a sheet of plastic tarpaulin with his father, who suffers from tuberculosis."

This public relations challenge began just as Oscar ballots were mailed to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "Slumdog Millionaire" is nominated for 10 Oscars, including best picture and best director for Boyle.

Boyle defended how his production company has treated the boys.

"We thought long and hard about how best can we benefit them and we decided to put in place an education plan for them," Boyle said. "We put them in school, a very good school, which they're paid for to stay in until they're 18."

"If they stay in school until they're 18, a substantial sum of money is released to them then, which will effectively change their lives for the better," Boyle said.

The Telegraph quoted their parents saying Azharuddin was paid less than $2,500, and that Rubina got about $700.

"The children were paid well," Boyle said. "The families were paid well for their work, over and above what you could pay, way over and above what you could pay."

"Some of the figures that have been quoted have been very inaccurate," Boyle said. He said he would not quote the real numbers "because to do so makes them vulnerable within their own community. There are people who would take advantage of them immediately."

Even the trust fund is a target of "gangsters," he said.

"The money that would be released to them when they are older, that is the kind of thing that can be mortgaged off by gangsters," he said.

Boyle said the film's financial backers have agreed that charitable groups that help children of the slums will also see "a slice of the profits."

"We've all agreed that we will sit down and dedicate a slice of the profits of the film to be distributed amongst people like those who run the school and other organizations who make a big difference to children's lives there," he said.

"We gained from the city, both from these two children and from the city, in general, and we'll make sure the film gives back some of the enormous success it's had," he said.

Turner with Beatles

The Beatles were a 'spiritual force'

John Lennon appears with wife Yoko Ono in 1968, two years after he made his "more popular than Jesus" comments.

When John Lennon remarked in 1966 that the Beatles were then "more popular than Jesus" his comments prompted outrage in the United States. But this weekend the Vatican's newspaper paid tribute to the band on the 40th anniversary of the release of the "White Album" in an article interpreted by some as a papal pardon for Lennon.

CNN's Alessio Vinci spoke to Steve Turner, author "The Gospel According To The Beatles," about the controversy that helped to end the Beatles' touring career.

Q: Was Lennon surprised by the storm his comment generated?

A: I think John Lennon was surprised because it had been said in a casual way to a journalist who was a personal friend of his and he had no idea it would cause that sort of controversy. When it did happen he was actually quite frightened because they were about to go off on tour and there were these threats to their lives and a clairvoyant made some predictions that their plane would crash. It was really quite frightening and they wanted to cancel the tour but they knew they couldn't. They were under obligation to the tour promoters. And when he made his apology in Chicago, (the band's) press officer told me that John was actually in tears before he went in to make the apology.

Q: Was his apology sincere?

A: His apology was very carefully worded. He never said "I didn't mean that;" he kind of said, "if it was taken that way, that's not what I meant," but he never actually retracted it. The reason it happened that way, in America particularly, is that people thought the Beatles were getting too big, too proud and it was a way of putting them down and I think people grabbed that opportunity.

Q: Did they care at all what the Vatican newspaper had to say at the time?

A: I don't know that the Beatles had any particular concern about what the Vatican said. I know the Vatican did say something at the time. But by that time, everybody was pitching in with their opinion, and it just kind of gathered pace.

Q: If he were alive, what would he say about his "rehabilitation?"

A: It's very hard to say what John Lennon would say now if he knew that the pope had forgiven him or the Catholic Church had forgiven him because on the one hand he wrote to an American evangelist called Oral Roberts and said he had been very sorry. But in a book he said he was very glad that it had happened because it effectively ended the Beatles. Because that tour was so bad that it became the last tour the Beatles ever did. So he thought, "Thank you Jesus for causing this to happen -- because you gave me a solo career."

Q: How spiritual were the Beatles?

A: The Beatles started out as atheists and agnostics and I think as everybody knows they became more interested in spiritual things. They went out to India in 1968 and I think in a way the Beatles became a spiritual force themselves. And I think that John actually saw that. He saw Christianity and rock 'n' roll as competitors. Only three years later, after 1966, you had the Woodstock festival and you get rock music almost performing a religious function. So I think in a way he was aware of what was happening. The Beatles were almost becoming a religion and exerting a spiritual force over people.

"The Class" runs 128 minutes.

Review: 'The Class' has grace to spare

Francois Begaudeau stars as a high school teacher in "The Class."

"The Class," the new film from director Laurent Cantet ("Time Out," "Heading South") comes garlanded with the top prize from the Cannes film festival and an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film.

Such honors might set up misleading expectations. On the surface, at least, this is a small, modest, observational film that refrains from grand gestures and sweeping statements. That it actually cuts to the core of so many issues around identity, education and multiculturalism is testament to its powerful and uncompromising authenticity.

It is a new school year. At a staff meeting veteran teachers introduce themselves to fresh-faced new colleagues, wish them luck and give them friendly pointers on the problem kids.

Francois Marin is already familiar with most of the 11th-grade students in his French class. They are a mixed bunch, girls and boys reflecting the multicultural make up of their working-class Parisian neighborhood: native French are just one clique among immigrant children from North Africa, China and the Caribbean.

We're used to going back to school at the movies, and quite familiar with the problem of engaging kids who have more pressing things on their minds than old books and the imperfect subjunctive.

If American movies have taught us anything, we know how this will go: an idealistic, if unconventional teacher meets the kids halfway. Keep John Keats in your back pocket; start off with Kanye and Lil Wayne and hope the school board doesn't find out.

At first, Marin seems to fit the bill. He's patient, firm but fair and recognizes that digression can impart more valuable learning than any lesson plan. Over the course of the school year we see how he reaches out to the most reticent and challenging kids -- in particular Souleymanne (Franck Keita), a boy from Mali who has been written off by most of his teachers, but who produces a remarkable, touching self-portrait when Francois allows him to use photographs in place of words.

Still, things don't turn out quite how you might think. In this case, good intentions are not enough.

All too often in American movies these days high school students are impersonated by young actors in their late teens and twenties. Cantet's approach is more exacting, much closer to documentary realism. The filmmaker went to a school in the 20th arrondisement of Paris and devoted nearly a year to weekly three-hour workshops with students, half of whom ended up in the movie, along with their real-life parents and teachers.

Francois Marin is played by Francois Begaudeau, a former teacher whose autobiographical novel "Entre les murs" ("Between the Walls") was a primary source for the film. Even so, much of the script came out of improvisations developed with the children in the workshops. Shooting took place in the school over the summer, Cantet following the dialogue with three video cameras that supplied him with 150 hours of raw footage.

Scarcely straying from the school premises, and for the most part focused squarely on the interaction between teacher and students, Cantet's film feels so real French-speaking audiences might be tempted to join in the raucous classroom debates (or, I suppose, to slump sullenly in the corner).

"The Class" offers an incisive, challenging microcosm of a 21st-century western democracy struggling to assimilate diverse ethnicities and cultures while validating its own heritage. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that in the end it becomes a study of power and privilege, even if Hollywood has failed to condition us for such an outcome.

Of course, if you're looking for a happy ending, be assured that in movie-making terms Cantet's kids graduate with honors. So does his film.

Pianist Peter Cincotti

Pianist Peter Cincotti takes new direction

Peter Cincotti rose to fame as a jazz pianist. His new album features pop songs.

When singer-pianist Peter Cincotti showed up to speak to CNN in 2004, he was fresh-faced and impeccably dressed in a suit and shiny shoes.

Seated at a piano, and under the watchful eye of his very sweet mother Cynthia, Cincotti performed the standard "How High the Moon," showing off piano skills you'd expect from someone far beyond his 21 years.

His debut album had just topped the Billboard traditional jazz chart -- the youngest artist to claim such a feat.

Now 25, Cincotti is still fresh-faced, but he sings to a very different tune. Looking trendy in a fitted sweater, his hair a little looser, his personality more playful -- mom didn't come to this interview -- Peter has gone pop.

"He's this great jazz pianist," says producer David Foster, who worked on Cincotti's new album. "And he just turned the whole thing 180 and wrote these incredible pop songs."

To Cincotti, whose pop debut "East of Angel Town" was released last week on Warner Bros. Records, the switch isn't that big a deal.

"I'm a musician," he says. "I was just playing what I love then, and I'm playing what I love now."

Enlisting Foster to help navigate the transition was crafty: Foster is a 15-time Grammy winner with an undeniable knack for generating pop hits. He also has a reputation for getting his way in the studio. But Cincotti, a native New Yorker, didn't make things easy.

"He's a control freak, too, so we butted heads a lot," says Foster. "And he actually made me come to New York to make the record. And I don't like New York because I'm claustrophobic and I don't dig elevators. But he made me come here for three months. That's how much I loved his music."

Cincotti smiles when he recalls the expletive-ridden voicemail message Foster left him expressing his displeasure over having to vacate his Los Angeles base to work on the project.

"I saved that message," Cincotti says. "It's great."

Neil Diamond World Tour

Neil Diamond Once again

Neil Diamond is riding high with a huge world tour, a successful album and a humanitarian award.

The day I interviewed Neil Diamond, he was sitting in a little room to the side of a studio, and a makeup artist was smacking him in the face with a powder puff. He was wearing a white wife-beater T-shirt and looked like he wanted to flee.

It was November, and Diamond had just come off the first two legs of his biggest world tour yet -- with 64 shows in 50 cities and nine countries already under his belt. In a moment, he would step in front of a camera to begin a round of 70 or so interviews -- beamed via satellite to local television stations -- to talk up the remaining 20 dates, where he'd thrill diehard fans with such nuggets as "Cherry Cherry," "Song Sung Blue" and "Sweet Caroline."

Ours was the only in-person interview he -- or someone in his camp -- had agreed to do. The singer-songwriter (who turned 68 on January 24) stepped into the studio, a man ready for his close-up. He had slipped a black button-down shirt over his T-shirt, and suddenly he looked like Neil Diamond -- the same Neil Diamond who next week will be feted by The Recording Academy as its "2009 MusiCares Person of the Year," joining an elite club that includes Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Sting, Bono and Quincy Jones.

He's working on a follow-up to last year's CD, the Rick Rubin-produced "Home Before Dark" -- which earned Diamond his first-ever No. 1 debut on the Billboard Top 200 album chart. That album came after 2005's "12 Songs," also produced by Rubin, which re-invigorated his recording career. As for live performance, he's rarely had problems filling arenas -- but he remembers when he did

Threatens Gaza

Continued violence threatens Gaza truce, US envoy meets Abbas

US envoy George Mitchell met with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday as spiraling Gaza violence threatened to shatter ceasefires that ended a war in the Hamas run enclave.

Mitchell arrived in the occupied West Bank’s political capital of Ramallah shortly after 1100 GMT a day after holding talks with senior Israeli leaders in Jerusalem.

He went immediately into talks with the 75-year old former US senator, who helped broker peace in Northern Ireland in 1998.

Mitchell, making his maiden tour of the region, has said it is vital that the Gaza ceasefire be consolidated.

The former senator was appointed Middle East envoy by US President Barack Obama, tasked with vigorously resuscitating the lifeless Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Abbas has angrily hit out at the Jewish state in the wake of its deadliest ever war in Gaza that ended with Israel and the enclave’s Hamas rulers declaring mutual ceasefires on January 18.

“Today we are convinced more than ever, especially after the aggression against Gaza, that Israel does not want peace and we are going to say so to all those who come to see us,” Abbas said late Tuesday.

In Gaza, violence kept spiraling on Thursday with 18 Palestinians, including 11 schoolchildren and a pregnant woman, wounded in an Israeli air strike the targeted a Hamas policeman in the southern town of Khan Yunis, medics said.

UN makes $613m appeal

DAVOS: The United Nations will launch a 613 million dollar appeal to meet the “massive” needs of those hit by Israel’s 22-day war in Gaza, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Thursday.

The money is needed to provided to provide food, water, shelter, health care and other assistance after the conflict which left at least 1,300 dead and caused widespread destruction in the Palestinian territory, UN officials said.

“These needs are massive an multi-faceted,” Ban told a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, adding that the money could “help overcome at least some measures of this hardship.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-winder tipped to become Israel’s prime minister in a looming election, was also at Davos and accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of pursuing “terror efforts” despite a fragile ceasefire. “We’ll deal with it,” the Likud party leader told reporters on the sidelines of the forum when asked about the latest Israeli air attacks against Gaza and new rocket attacks into Israel.

“Regrettably we see that Hamas continues its terror efforts,” said Netanyahu, whose party has a wide lead in opinion pools ahead of the February 10 parliamentary election.

News

Obama mulls tough decisions

President Barack Obama said he had “difficult decisions” to make on Ira an Afghanistan after his first meeting as commander-in-chief at the Pentagon with military brass.

No decisions were made at the more than 90-minutes session with the military chiefs, officials said, and Obama gave no clue whether he intends to stick with a 16 months timetable for the with drawal of US combat troops from Iraq.

“We’re going to have some difficult decisions we’re going to have to make surrounding Iraq and Afghanistan, most immediately,” he said after speaking with the heads of joint chiefs of staff and he military eservices.

“Obviously our efforts to go after extremist organizations that do harm to our homeland is uppermost on our minds,” he added.

Obama must balance the risk of a rapid drawdown in Iraq against commanders’ requirements for up to 30,000 more US troops in Afghanistan, which would nearly double the US military presence there, in response to worsening security conditions.

The president emerged from the meeting is a secure conference room known as “the Tank” with Vice President Joe Biden.

New Intelligence chief.

The US Senate confirmed retired admiral Dennis Blair as new US director of national intelligence.

The Senate approved Blair by voice vote. Late Wednesday.

Blair Last week flatly rejected torture – which he branded “not moral.. not legal.. not effective” – and promised to end special interrogation regimes and refuse the unlawful surveillance of Americans. Blair indicated major changes are in store for US intelligence agencies, which have been embroiled in controversy over secret prisons, interrogation practices, and warrantless wire tapping of Americans.

Health Vaccine

Japanese develop all-round flue vaccine

Researchers in Japan said Thursday they had developed a flu vaccine that works against multiple viruses and could prevent a deadly pandemic of bird flu mutations.

The research team has tested the vaccine on mice implanted with human genes, confirming that it works even if flu viruses mutate, according to Tetsuya Uchida, researcher at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Currently flu vaccines use a protein covering the surface of viruses but the protein frequently mutates to make the vaccines ineffective.

The newly developed vaccine is based on common types of protein inside the bodies of flu viruses as they rarely change, Uchida told AFP. The viruses used are the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

“We expect this will also be effective on new variations” of the much-feared H5N1 strain in addition to conventional flu viruses, he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that millions of people could die worldwide if the avian influenza virus mutates into a form easily transmissible among humans.

Uchida said it would likely take several years to put the vaccine to practical use as the research team needs to confirm the vaccine’s safety with further experiments on mice and possible larger animals before testes on humans.

Environment

A global responsibility

We must in the year ahead make our global commitment to tackle the problem of climate change a reality.

The start of 2009 is a crossroads moment on climate change: does the world look at the financial events unfolding, the complexity of the issue, the challenge of financing and say it’s too hard to act and act quickly? Or do we resolve from here to affirm our aim of a broad and inclusive agreement and keep on the road to a global deal in Copenhagen in December 2009?

To stay on the path to a deal, 2009 must be a year of negotiation not discussion and we all need to raise our game. Morally, we know the scale of the threat of a changing climate. Economically, we know the costs of not acting outweigh the costs of acting and the costs grow the longer we wait.

And so to up the pace, we need to do three things.

First, each country must show clear intent, guided by the science. Many developing countries are setting out national plans to show how they want to tackle climate change. In Nepal this is starting with the development of the National Adaptation Plan of Action and plans for a regional climate change event to be hosted here in Nepal. We in the UK have adopted a target to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, we will adopt challenging targets for 2020 and we have enshrined national carbon budgets in law. All of this is driven by our under standing of what the science tells us about the impact of dangerous climate change.

Secondly, we need to be ambitious about what we can achieve. Of course circumstances are hard, we are not in times of economic difficulty and the pressure of this can be felt across the globe. But we now have a framework to guide our effort: the aim of at least 50% cut in emissions by 2050 compared to 1990. Developed countries will have to so more – which is why the UK has set an 80 per cent in law, and why we should all welcome the fat that President Obama has done the same. But if we have targets for 2050, we also need interim targets for the emerging economies and that is something we will have to resolve together in the coming year. Nepal is well placed to help South Asia make the shift to low carbon energy and expand access to power for the poor with its rich hydropower resources as well as solar and wind potential.

And this takes me to my third point: we need to remember that we are all in this together. Climate change is an issue which transcends all others in they way it show we are interdependent: in how it affects us and whether we can tackle it.

And if we are all in this together, we know the basis of an agreement if likely to be: major reductions from developed countries, substantial deviation from business as usual by developing countries and significantly increased and reliable flow of finance for adaptation and mitigation, for developing countries. None of this will be easy.

At the UN climate conference in Poznan, a number of developing and developed countries came together around principles we should apply to deforestation an agreed statement. This is important for Nepal where 40% of land is classified as forest and where the model of community forestry can offer lessons to the rest of the world on how to increase sustainable forest management and reduce poverty. In support of the huge efforts made at the conference to get the adaptation fund up and running, the UK also committed more money on urgent adaptation needs through the UN funds and contributed another 100m to forestry, reflecting the importance of capacity building and the obligations we acknowledge to forested nations. We know this is only a contribution to what is required, but it is a sign of intent. It reflects the spirit of being in it together.

In Poznan, we reaffirmed our determination to up the pace on the road to Copenhagen. And we should recognize the since it must be done, it can be done and therefore it can be done by us together. We have come a long way forward in the recognition of the problem of climate change and the need to tackle it. We must in the year ahead make our global commitment to act a reality. We are ready to work with Nepal to achieve this.

Science Planet

Planet with “bizarre” attributes

Astronomers have found a planet with a galactic case of hot flashes. In just six hours, this planet four times the size of Jupiter heats up by more than 1,200 degrees, according to study published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature . “It’s the first observation of changing weather” on a planet outside our solar system, said study author Gregory Laughlin, an astronomy professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to study the planes.

Change is a mild way o put it for the lifeless world, called HD80606b, where the world “mildA” would never enter a weather forecast.

Normally, the planet is a toasty 980 degrees or so. But in the few hours it ships around its sun the planet gets zapped with mega-heat, pushing the thermometer closer to 2,240 degrees.

During its brief close pass to its sun, the planet is 10 times nearer its star than Mercury is to our sun. when it comes closest to its star, it becomes one giant “brewing storm” complete with shock waves, Laughlin said. The radiation bombarding the planet is 800 times stronger that when it is farthest away.

Then just as quickly, the planet slingshots away and radiates the heat to the cool vacuum of space. It glows cherry red and the temperature plummets, Laughlin said.

“Utterly bizarre,” he said. “It is thoroughly completely uninhabitable. In a galaxy of uninhabitable planets, this one stands out as being completely inhospitable to life.”

The planet circles its star –the larger of two stars in a binary system – in a comet like orbit in just 111 days.

The star is visible from Earth near the Big Dipper. On Feb. 14, HD80606b will travel between the Earth and its star. There’s a 15 percent chance that amateur astronomers using small telescopes could see it swing by, obscuring a tiny part of that star, Laughlin said.

Security 2009

Security spending 2009: The good and bad news

Recent Enterprise Strategy Group data indicates that security spending should maintain its current pace in 2009. There will be spending increases in some vertical sectors, like the U.S. federal government, but overall, things should remain relatively flat.

As they say on Wall Street these days, "flat is the new up." Large organizations will continue to bolster network defenses and focus on protecting confidential and private data. Given the frightening security threat landscape, this is good news.

Unfortunately, there is a caveat here. Under constant pressure to "do more with less," some chief security officers I speak with are abandoning strategic security initiatives and replacing these projects with tactical Band-Aid solutions--the old check box mentality at work. Yes, these folks recognize that they will have to "rip and replace" point tools when the economy improves, but they are willing to face that future expense to "do something" in the short term.

Ay, ay, ay! One of the reasons why the state of information security is so bad is that it is built on a foundation of islands of point tools for protection against tactical threats. Managing these systems is an operational nightmare. What's more, most of these tools aren't integrated together, so getting a true picture of the security posture of the whole business is next to impossible, which may actually lead to additional security risks. Ironic, isn't it?

My suggestion is this: Buy tactically but think strategically. Users should look to work with vendors who can address short-term tactical needs and provide a road map to integrate these products into a more strategic enterprise security architecture over time. At the other end of the spectrum, vendors must clearly articulate this value to users and help them phase in products, determine success metrics, and provide a final strategic destination.

Perhaps this is a stretch, but I hope that users and vendors can strive for this type of harmony. Otherwise, I'm afraid both groups will suffer more than necessary.

Data Stolen from Job site

User data stolen from job site Monster

User information, including passwords, has been stolen from job site Monster, the company has announced.

Monster's database of user account information--which includes user IDs, passwords, e-mail addresses, names, phone numbers, and some demographic data--was illegally accessed and information was taken, the company said on Friday.

The information that was stolen did not include resumes or sensitive information like Social Security numbers and financial data. But someone could use the data that was breached to contact Monster users and use social engineering to trick them out of their information.

Monster is urging its users to visit the site and change their password. As a matter of policy, Monster does not send unsolicited e-mail asking users to confirm usernames and passwords or to download anything.

Job sites are a likely target during an economic downturn, security firm AppRiver said in a recent report on spam and other Internet security threats.

More information on security tips is available on the Monster security Web page.

MP3 Player Data

New Zealand man buys MP3 player with U.S. troop data

A New Zealand man who bought a used MP3 player from an Oklahoma thrift store found names, cell phone numbers, and Social Security numbers of American soldiers on the device, according to news site TVNZ.

Chris Ogle, who paid $18 for the device, also found lists of soldiers based in Afghanistan, personnel who fought in Iraq, and equipment deployments, as well as private information about soldiers, including which ones are pregnant.

The US Army and the American embassy declined to comment to TVNZ's ONE News.
Last year, a British labor agency had to shut a Web site after a flash drive containing confidential passwords was found in the parking lot of a pub.

Security Policy

N.Y. considers software security policy

Earlier this month, I predicted that large companies may soon adopt policies mandating that technology vendors adhere to best practices for security in product design and development.

I also suggested that government agencies may be on the cutting edge of adopting these types of policies.

On Monday, I read a preliminary report that New York state may be the first government to move forward with this type of policy.

Apparently, New York will use the Common Weakness Enumeration/SANS Institute list of the Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors as a baseline for software security. Under the proposal, vendors selling software to New York state must document how their software developers design and test code in order to prevent problems.

Kudos to the Empire State for taking the lead on this critical issue. Given the recent news at Heartland Payment Systems and Monster, New York's action is timely and a sign of things to come.

Game

YouTube launches TV-friendly site for consoles

YouTube on your PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii looks a little sexier with a new portal site designed specifically for video game console browsers.

Don't have an Apple TV or a TiVo box, and have been lusting after watching YouTube videos from your couch? If you've got a Nintendo Wii or a Sony PlayStation 3 video game console, the Google property has just released an overhauled version of its living room-friendly console interface that puts it about on par with those two offerings.

By visiting Youtube.com/TV in your Opera or PS3 browser, you get a new layout that lets you browse and search through videos. Additionally, videos can be set to go full-screen by default, including large, remote control-friendly buttons that don't make you squint. There's also an option to autoplay the next video in a playlist or from search results after the current one is over.
One thing to note is that the special TV version of the site cannot be accessed in your PC's browser without using a special browser add-on like User Agent Switcher, which can trick YouTube into thinking that you're visiting the site from your console. If you've got a Mac Mini hooked up to your TV, this might be your best bet.

Apple Rif off the iphone

Apple serves notice: Don't rip off the iPhone

Does Apple think the Palm Pre, shown here, rips off the iPhone? We might find out later this year.

Like most people who paid attention to Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, Apple noticed the Palm Pre.

In response to a question from a financial analyst about Palm's new smartphone and its multitouch interface, Apple COO Tim Cook, without addressing the Pre directly, made sure that everyone on Apple's quarterly earnings call Wednesday knew how Apple feels about intellectual property.

"We will not stand for having our IP ripped off," Cook declared, perhaps firing a shot across the bow of Palm and executive chairman Jon Rubinstein, a former Apple employee. To be clear, Cook did not accuse Palm of such an act, explicitly saying "I don't want to talk about any specific company."

But the context--in which Cook was being questioned about the rising threat to the iPhone from competitors like Research In Motion, Google, and Palm--was clear. Palm showed off some some remarkably iPhone-like traits on the Pre earlier this month, such as swiping the screen to move between windows and using multitouch gestures to zoom in and out of Web pages.

Palm--full of ex-Apple engineers brought over by Rubinstein--has not announced a launch date for the Pre yet, but Apple is clearly watching developments closely. Cook promised to use "every weapon at our disposal" if the company felt the iPhone's intellectual property was at risk, and I'd bet a house in Puerto Vallarta that he's talking about Apple chief legal officer Daniel Cooperman.

iphone

Papermaster settles with IBM, sets Apple start date


















Apple announced on Tuesday that former IBM executive Mark Papermaster has resolved his dispute with IBM over a noncompete agreement and will start leading Apple's iPhone group on April 24.

IBM had sued Papermaster for allegedly violating the terms of a noncompete agreement in agreeing to join Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, claiming that Papermaster would be in a position to divulge important IBM trade secrets. The two parties exchanged briefing papers for a few months but apparently found a way to settle their differences.

Bruce Meyer, Papermaster's lead attorney at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, declined to comment on the settlement and referred all inquiries to Apple, which did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

IBM issued a statement concerning the Papermaster suit.

IBM and Mr. Papermaster have now agreed on a resolution of the lawsuit under which Mr. Papermaster may not begin employment with Apple until April 24, 2009, six months after leaving IBM, and will remain subject thereafter to all of his contractual and other legal duties to IBM, including the obligation not to use or disclose IBM's confidential information.

Following commencement of his employment with Apple, Mr. Papermaster will be required to certify, in July 2009 and again in October 2009, that he has complied with his legal obligations not to use or disclose IBM's confidential or proprietary information.

The preliminary injunction will be replaced by a court order (PDF) under which the court will have continuing jurisdiction over this matter, including compliance enforcement powers, until October 24, 2009, one year after Mr. Papermaster's departure from IBM.

The settlement frees Papermaster to replace Tony Fadell, who stepped into a senior adviser role last year, and report directly to CEO Steve Jobs in heading up iPhone and iPod hardware development. The leadership transition has been a bit thornier than Apple would have likely preferred.

After a brief courtship early in 2008 for a different position, Apple identified Papermaster as the right candidate to head up perhaps their most cutting-edge development team in September, and he left IBM a month later to pursue what he called "the opportunity of a lifetime."

But IBM, in what was viewed in part as a message to its employees, sued Papermaster for violating a 2006 noncompete agreement on the basis that Apple and IBM competed in the server and chip markets, even though Papermaster would not have been working in either of those capacities for Apple.

The problem for both IBM, in this case, was that to argue that Papermaster would be in a position to spill its trade secrets, the company would have had to discuss those secrets in front of a judge. And likewise for Apple, in order to prove that Papermaster wouldn't be leading an effort to get the company immersed in chip development for game consoles, it would have had to shed some light on its future plans. Neither company was likely thrilled about that prospect.

A settlement always looked like the most obvious outcome, and that's where Papermaster, IBM, and Apple find themselves Tuesday. As noted above, Papermaster will have to recertify that he will not divulge IBM secrets to Apple as part of the initial agreement, and then do so again in three-month increments until October 24th, the first anniversary of his departure from IBM, when the noncompete agreement expires.

Papermaster will have to get started while Jobs is on medical leave, though Apple has said Jobs, due to return in June, remains involved in "major strategic decisions," and the endgame of this particular dispute probably qualified.

Papermaster's primary background is in chip development, and he spent the last several years involved with IBM's blade server design group. But Apple was most impressed by his leadership skills, noting in a court filing that it "hired Mark Papermaster because he has strong general engineering skills, is an outstanding leader, and because we believe he will be a good cultural match at Apple."

Mac Apple

Are today's Macs related to the Mac Daddy?

The MacBook Air seems a long way off from the original Macintosh. But according to some, there remains some hereditary DNA from its 1984-era ancestor.

What is a Macintosh?

After 25 years on the market, it's a good question, since someone with no knowledge of computers looking at, say, today's MacBook Pro, would not necessarily know that it evolved from 1984's original 128K Mac.

But evolve it did, and on the 25th anniversary of the release of that original machine (which is this Saturday), one might indeed wonder what hereditary DNA, if any, today's Macs retain from their much more humble ancestors.

The answer is some, but not that much, at least not when it comes to specific identifiable hardware features, according to two experts interviewed for this article.

"Very little, in terms of the hardware, remains," said Bruce Damer, co-founder of the Digibarn Computer Museum, "except for the fine-quality industrial design of the cases."

But there must be something linking the earliest Macs with today's models besides the name and company that produces them. Otherwise, the famous Macintosh community known by names like the "cult of Mac" or "MacHeads" wouldn't be such a powerful force.

"At its essence, you look at it where it (is) relative to what it was before," said Raines Cohen, the founder of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, and "there's a sense that it's still a machine that you turn on and you do things (easily) with it. It's an interface that stays out of your way."

Basically, Cohen said, the Mac is all about ease of use and simplicity--as well as the continuity of a low-maintenance user experience.

"Recently, I had a chance to go back and use the old Mac," Cohen said. "The essential consistency was still the same. You could take a Mac user who has been on ice for the last quarter century and put them on a modern Mac, and they'd be up and using it within a matter of moments."
Perhaps that's because of a few software elements that today's Macs have that first appeared in the first versions of the computer.

"On the software side, the primary elements left from the original Mac OS come through in the user interface," said Damer. "The single menu stripe--File, Special, etc.--is a vestige of the original limited screen real estate of the 128K Mac."

Damer said there are a few other recognizable holdovers as well. For one, the arrow-cursor remains almost identical today to its origins, and window-handling also has stayed the same. In other words, he said, today, as in 1984, you can only resize a window from the lower right corner.
Today's Mac OS X got its beginnings at NeXT, the company Steve Jobs built during his years in exile from Apple. When Apple bought NeXT and brought Jobs back, first to consult and then run the company, the NeXT OS came along with him and formed the basis for the future generations of Macs.

But Apple knew that its fans had an idea of what the Mac OS was supposed to look like, Damer suggested, and as a result, it found a way to maintain some of the consistency to which Cohen referred.

"In some sense, to try to keep some of the original look and feel of the old Mac OS, the Apple team 'dumbed down' the NeXT GUI," Damer said, "which was in some ways more powerful and flexible."

But all along, Cohen said, the Mac operating system has kept the basic elements of menu navigation and windowing more or less the same.

And that, aside from the much more abstract notion that a computer built by what is seen by many to be a company obsessed with design and a somewhat pirate-like mentality, may be what really makes a Mac a Mac.

"Apple's UI guidelines have been there all along," Cohen said, "so that programs have to be consistent and have that (high) level of consistency in order to be successful on the platform."

Hacking

Hacking programmable road signs

This road sign has been hacked to read 'Zombies Ahead.' According to i-hacked.com, it is fairly easy to break into the programmable digital signs' electronics and re-program the text on them.

We see them everywhere these days, digital signs by the side of the road telling us about road conditions or that we should prepare to stop or that our local bridge might be closed next Tuesday from noon to midnight. And if you're like me, you've always just assumed that the message on the signs is legitimate and properly authorized.

But what if the sign, instead of reading something like "Ice Ahead" was flashing the message, "Zombies Ahead"?

It's true that in San Francisco or a few other cities, such a sign could be put up by local transportation officials to warn people of an impending zombie march, but even in those places, the more likely explanation would be that the sign was hacked.

And if you're in the Boston area and saw signs hacked in this way, there's always a decent chance it was done by students from MIT.

According to the blog i-hacked.com, some programmable road signs are easily messed with, largely because they often have unlocked instrument panels, a text-entry system that is easily accessed, and are often protected with uncomplicated, or unchanged default passwords.

This is the internal display system of an Addco sign, according to i-hacked.com.

"Programming is as simple as scrolling down the menu selection to 'Instant Text,'" i-hacked reported. "Type whatever you want to display, (and) hit 'enter' to submit. You can now either throw it up on the sign by selecting 'Run w/out save' or you can add more pages to it by selecting 'Add page.'"

Of course, you probably don't want to do this in plain view of any law enforcement officials, and i-hacked led its post with a disclaimer warning against ever performing this hack. So here at Geek Gestalt, we'll just say that it's interesting that this could be such an easy thing to do and leave it at that.

Gmail grows up with offline e-mail access

In coming days, Google will let Gmail users test the Web-based e-mail service even when there's no network.







Significantly increasing the utility and competitiveness of its Web-based e-mail service, Google is enabling an experimental ability to read, write, and search Gmail messages even while not connected to the network.

Google believes almost religiously in cloud computing, the idea that computer applications and data live on the Internet rather than on PCs. But there are times when the network is inaccessible, and generally Web-based applications like today's Gmail effectively seize up under those circumstances.

Offline sidesteps that problem, the classic example being a busy executive traveling on a plane. And offline Gmail access begins a new chapter for Google's ambition to appeal to business customers for services such as Google Apps, of which Gmail is a component.

"This is a feature we've heard loud and clear the enterprise wants," said Todd Jackson, Gmail's product manager.

Trying to sign up business customers generally means wooing them away from the dominant e-mail products, Microsoft's Exchange server software and Outlook PC software. Google and Microsoft began in separate spheres, but are ever-closer competitive rivals, each with a strong cash-generating business that can be used to subsidize forays into other markets.

There's more, too. Google Apps customers will get another major offline option "soon," too: Google Calendar access, though not initially the ability to create new entries. If the organization's administrator enables the "New Features" option, each person within that organization will get access to the calendar, Google said.

New features help make Gmail more compelling for business customers, but for many, a bigger problem is the fact that Gmail still sports its beta tag, said Gartner analyst David Smith.

"That's one of the biggest stumbling blocks for businesses," Smith said. "You're hard-pressed to find any businesses who decide to go into production with anything that a vendor calls beta, no matter how good it is." Google promises customers will get 99.9 percent availability through a service level agreement for Google Apps, which includes Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs.

Cloud vs. PC

And Microsoft, while not turning on a dime, isn't counting on a future that consists exclusively of PC-based Office. It already has a product, Office Live Workspace that lets users share and view--but not edit--Office documents online, and the next version of Office will run in a browser.

Philosophically, though, Microsoft remains firmly tethered to the PC, while Google wants to move as fast as possible to Web-based applications.

"We think the browser is the ideal platform for deploying all kinds of applications. That's where Google is placing its bet," Jackson said. "But people are traditionally limited by the speed and connectivity of the Internet. We want to fill in those gaps."

Google already developed open-source technology called Gears that helps further this cloud computing agenda by storing Web data on PC, and Gmail, used by millions, could help coax more people to install Gears. That, in turn, could help solve the chicken-and-egg problem that currently means it's not worthwhile for most Web application programmers to build in Gears support.

Greater Gears support could help other cloud-computing companies, including Zoho, which already has offline access for its Web-based e-mail application.

It's not as if offline Gmail were completely impossible. People can set up software such as Outlook or Thunderbird to read and write e-mails, for example. But offline Gmail means people won't have to learn a new interface.

Offline Gmail has been in testing for months, though Jackson wouldn't share specifics about exactly how long.

What can offline Gmail do?"We wanted the user experience to be almost identical to the experience you get when you're online," Jackson said.

Offline Gmail stores a copy of a user's inbox on a personal computer. Most people will have to install it, a process Google walks you through, but it's built into Google's Chrome browser.

Once Gears is installed and offline access is enabled, the software automatically detects when a person's network connection is working. If the network is good, Gmail works as usual. If it's bad, it goes into offline mode, sending unsent messages and retrieving new ones when the connection is restored.

And if the network is dodgy, a person can use the intermediate "flaky connection mode," which for example queues a message to be sent immediately by storing it to the hard drive then actually sends it as soon as it can. Google positions this as useful for coffee shops and poaching a neighbor's weak-signal wireless network, but I think of this as "tech conference mode."

When enabled, offline Gmail begins by downloading, in the background, a copy of a user's archive to the user's personal computer. But the software stores about 10,000 e-mails, so heavy users won't get a complete archive.

Gmail automatically updates the local cache of messages with new and recently read items and with messages associated with a particular label on which a person has clicked, Jackson said.
ImperfectNot everything works, though.

One big missing piece is the ability to add attachments to new messages, though attachments are visible with existing messages.

Another is the contacts tab, so forget about managing e-mail lists or adding new addresses while offline. The autocomplete option works, though, so there's no need to start remembering e-mail addresses.

English-speaking Gmail users will be able to enable offline access as Google gradually adds the ability over the next "couple" of days, said Gmail engineer Andy Palay in a blog post. "Offline Gmail is still an early experimental feature, so don't be surprised if you run into some kinks that haven't been completely ironed out yet," Palay said.

What kinds of problems occur?

"We've seen issues with the local cache getting out of sync. You have to refresh the browser, and that gets you going again," Jackson said. "In some rare circumstance, it has to be fully flushed, so we ask to disable and re-enable the feature."

But these should be unusual problems, he said: "It's been in testing for awhile on all 20,000 Googlers, so it's gotten some good testing."