Web child fight videos criticised

Many of the attacks are worse because the cameras are there

Police chiefs have urged websites to remove violent video footage of children fighting, following an investigation by the BBC.

Panorama found that films showing brutal fights between children are regularly uploaded to sharing websites.

Police say the companies should monitor what is posted on their sites and remove any violent or criminal content.

But YouTube, one of the sites found with footage, says it relies on users to "flag up" inappropriate films.

The investigation found films showing children as young as 11 and 12 punching and kicking other youngsters.

Brandishing handgun

One showed a youth brandishing a handgun and smashing it against a police car.

Another shows a laughing teenager jumping on a police car and shattering its windscreen.

Deputy Chief Constable Brian Moore, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said it was the responsibility of internet companies to search their sites for videos of violence and crime.

Look all this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we're going to show it Hayden Hewitt Liveleak

They should then pass the details to police.

He said: "They are responsible for what is on their products - they are making a profit from this.

"We would question who is in a financially better position to police the likes of YouTube - those in the private sector, who are earning huge amounts of money, or police forces which are currently having to stretch budgets."

But YouTube, said it did not employ anyone to police what is posted. The site, which is owned by Google, claims pre-screening content is a form of censorship which is not the role of a private company.

A spokesman said the website takes down videos but only if they are flagged by users and subsequently found to breach their guidelines.

Rule breakers

"Sadly as with any form of communication, there is a tiny minority of people who try to break the rules," the spokesman said.

"On YouTube these rules prohibit content like pornography or gratuitous violence. We don't want that sort of material on our site, and nor does our community."

HAVE YOUR SAY Videos should not be policed by the website itself, it is a collective issue and we should all be involved Mark, Basingstoke

The YouTube spokesman added the website would help police if they were approached for information.

Another website which features in the programme, Liveleak, said it checks all videos before hosting them.

Hayden Hewitt, co-founder of the website, defended the inclusion of such fights including one in which a girl had to go to hospital with a detached retina.

He said: "Of course it's horrible. It's not about me morally defending anything here.

"We have to take a stance of saying 'look all this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we're going to show it."'

Panorama: Children's Fight Club will be shown on BBC One on Monday, 30 July at 2030 BST.

Gates Plans His Leave Amid Great Change

Kevin P. Casey for The New York Times

Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, flanked by his designated successors: Craig Mundie, left, head of research and strategy, and Ray Ozzie, top software architect.

y JOHN MARKOFF

Published: July 30, 2007

REDMOND, Wash., July 27 — Microsoft is beset with competition from all sides, unlike any it has seen in decades, and Bill Gates, who co-founded the company 32 years ago, still intends to step away next year as planned.

Multimedia

Kevin P. Casey for The New York Times

Ray Ozzie, right, and Craig Mundie, center, will take over two of Bill Gates’s roles at Microsoft.

But so far, Mr. Gates, Microsoft’s 51-year-old chairman, shows no sign of fading away.

One year into a planned two-year transition, there are few visible cues that Mr. Gates is ready to leave the world’s technology stage to devote his energies principally to the $33 billion foundation he established seven years ago with his wife.

Indeed at the company’s annual financial meeting last week Mr. Gates spoke first, outlining a decade-long agenda, not a mere 12-month outlook.

He described a world in which the widespread availability of broadband networks would reshape computing, giving rise to what he said would be “natural user interfaces” like pen, voice and touch, replacing many functions of keyboards and mice.

Mr. Gates has stayed deeply engaged in the company’s technology strategy. He still frequently participates in high-level strategy planning sessions with Microsoft’s closest partners, like Intel, according to executives who have attended the meetings.

During a wide-ranging interview last week exploring his diminished role at Microsoft, the company’s challenge and its competitors, Mr. Gates insisted that he really has begun stepping back.

“I am in a lucky situation of having way more things that seem interesting to do and very exciting and important, and working with smart people, and highly impactful, way more than a 24-hour day will fit,” Mr. Gates said. To be sure, there is widespread skepticism in the industry about the possibility of Mr. Gates genuinely disengaging. Microsoft’s dominance is being challenged as never before by Google in particular, and Wall Street refuses to believe the company will regain its edge. The company’s stock has largely remained flat since the end of the dot-com era.

“It’s very hard for someone at his age, who has built a company with that much success and with continuing challenges to really walk away,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard’s business school. “He will never be a titular leader.”

As he spoke in his office, Mr. Gates was joined by the two Microsoft executives, both veteran technologists, who are succeeding him. Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer, and Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, agreed with Mr. Gates that despite significant industry challenges from all directions, Microsoft is at a perfect historic juncture for Mr. Gates’s departure and the first stage of his withdrawal from Microsoft has been reasonably seamless.

“The weaning process inside the company is inevitable,” said Mr. Mundie, a computer scientist who began his career developing minicomputers and supercomputers before joining Microsoft in 1992.

The greatest danger, according to all three executives, would be if Mr. Gates continues to make decisions while not staying deeply involved. He will remain chairman.

“It can’t be a situation where he’s expected to suddenly, magically come up to speed,” said Mr. Ozzie, a software designer who developed a software collaboration tool called Notes for Lotus and then started Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2005. “You know, did you see the 20 announcements last week that Google did, Yahoo did, Cisco did?”

For his part, Mr. Gates said he planned to remain deeply involved in a few areas indefinitely.

“Other than board meetings, there’s not much in terms of regular meetings,” he said. “It’s much more sitting down a couple hours a month with Craig, sitting down a couple of hours a month with Ray.”

On Thursday, Steven A. Ballmer, who took over the chief executive role from Mr. Gates seven years ago, said the company’s overall performance had never been stronger. Microsoft, he noted, has doubled its revenue and almost doubled its profits in the half decade that he has been at the helm. Despite that growth, the stock price has remained vexingly flat in the period.

Although smooth leadership transitions are infrequent among high tech firms, it appears that Mr. Gates has had the freedom to begin stepping away gracefully because Mr. Ballmer has been largely successful in shouldering the burden of running Microsoft.

Mr. Gates no longer attends senior leadership team meetings, and earlier this month he made what company executives described as a farewell appearance at the annual Microsoft sales force meeting in Orlando, Fla. When Mr. Gates finished his speech to the thousands of sales people at the meeting, they gave him a five-minute standing ovation, underscoring the bond the company still retains with its co-founder, according to a person who attended the event.

But as he cedes Microsoft’s technology leadership to Mr. Mundie and Mr. Ozzie, the company is struggling with a radical transition in the computer industry. Six months ago, Microsoft shipped its long-delayed Windows Vista operating system, and there is widespread belief within the industry that the era of such unwieldy and vast software development projects is coming to an end.

Ubiquitous broadband networks and high speed wireless networks have for the first time given rise to meaningful alternatives to bulky and costly personal computers. In their place are a proliferating collection of smart connected devices that are tied together by a vast array of Internet-based information services based in centralized data centers.

Multimedia

The industry is rushing to “software as a service” models ranging from Salesforce.com, a San Francisco company that sells business contact software delivered via Web browsers, to Apple’s iPhone, which is designed as a classic “thin client,” a computer that requires the Internet for many of its capabilities.

It is a vision that Microsoft itself has at least partially embraced. Microsoft, in contrast, is calling its strategy “software plus services,” an approach that is intended to protect the company’s existing installed base.

During the interview, all three executives indicated that Microsoft is now moving quickly to offer new Internet services for personal computer users. Centralized data storage will make it possible for PC users to gain access to most or all of their information from all of the different types of computers they use, whether they are desktops, laptops or smartphones, and wherever they are located.

During the transition, Mr. Gates has also stayed closely involved in shaping Microsoft’s strategy in the search market where it has been assiduously attempting to catch Google and Yahoo.

“We made all the structural changes we were going to make, and we rode in tandem last year,” said Mr. Mundie. “In the last few months Bill has transitioned to what I start to think of as special project mode.”

If he is stepping away from Microsoft, Mr. Gates has shed none of his trademark combativeness. He rejected the Silicon Valley view that Microsoft has begun to exhibit the same sclerotic signs of middle age that I.B.M. did when it dominated the computer industry, but failed to respond effectively to the challenge of the personal computer.

I.B.M. is no longer at the center of the computer industry, he asserted, for two reasons. First, the industry is now centered on personal computing. “As much as I.B.M. created the I.B.M. PC, it was never their culture, their excellence,” he said. “Their skill sets were never about personal computing.”

Second, the center of gravity in the computer industry has dramatically shifted toward software, he said. “Why do you like your iPod, your iPhone, your Xbox 360, your Google Search?” he said. “The real magic sauce is not the parts that we buy for the Xbox, or the parts that Apple buys for iPhones, it’s the software that goes into it.”

During the interview Mr. Gates rejected the notion that Google could become a successful competitor in the smartphone software market, where Microsoft has about 10 percent market share. The Silicon valley search engine provider has been widely reported to be preparing to enter the cellphone market with its own software and a host of services springing from that software.

Microsoft’s chairman said it was unlikely that Google would be able to make inroads into the Microsoft’s share of market for mobile phone software.

“How many products, of all the Google products that have been introduced, how many of them are profit-making products?” he asked. “They’ve introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So, you’re now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they’re going to have the world’s best phone and it’s going to be free?”

Again, the ability to create compelling software will determine the winners. “The phone is becoming way more software intensive,” he said. “And to be able to say that there’s some challenge for us in the phone market when its becoming software intensive, I don’t see that.”

The new, less central role for Mr. Gates was first formulated more than a year ago at a June 2006 meeting in which the three men worked out how they would divide responsibilities for guiding the technology direction of the $51 billion company, according to Mr. Ozzie, who was a longtime rival of Mr. Gates at companies like Lotus and I.B.M. before joining Microsoft two years ago.

They decided at that meeting that Mr. Mundie and Mr. Ozzie would divide Mr. Gates’s role at the company along three axes. Along one of these lines, Mr. Mundie, who has been described as Microsoft’s “secretary of state” and who is deeply involved in federal government and international policy issues, would take a more public-facing role, while Mr. Ozzie would focus more closely on internal company matters.

In another, Mr. Mundie has tackled the company’s long-range strategic decisions, while Mr. Ozzie has taken over the near-term challenges of weaving together the product development issues. Finally, Mr. Mundie has taken responsibility for software that sits closer to the computer hardware, like the Windows operating system, while Mr. Ozzie has shaped Microsoft’s response to the growing challenge of network software.

“There’s been a very natural shift in the past year where I will engage with a particular software team and Bill will disengage,” said Mr. Ozzie. Mr. Gates insists that his new world of philanthropy will be just as compelling as software has been. “I’ll have also malaria vaccine or tuberculosis vaccine or curriculum in American high schools, which are also things that, at least the way my mind works, I sit there and say, ‘Oh, God! This is so important; this is so solvable,’ ” he said, “You’ve just got to get the guy who understands this, and this new technology will bring these things together.”

A Social-Networking Service With a Velvet Rope

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Alex Albrecht, left, and Kevin Rose are hosts of “Diggnation,” a Web show on which they discuss the news, lounge and drink beer.

JUST now, the hottest startup in Silicon Valley — minutely examined by bloggers, panted after by investors — is Pownce, but only a chosen few can try out its Web site.

This week: turmoil in the stock and bond markets, Ford and the environment of a New Jersey community, and how asset allocation can cushion a portfolio.

Kevin Rose, the co-founder and chief architect of Digg, a hugely popular news site, announced in late June the introduction of Pownce, a social-networking service that combines messaging with file-sharing. Mr. Rose immediately endowed his latest venture with some mystique by declaring that, for the time being, only those with invitations would be permitted to test his new site.

Within days, invitations were selling on eBay for as much as $10. Mr. Rose has declined all requests to be interviewed about the service, including my own. But as a consolation, he sent me a coveted invitation. I enjoyed the rare thrill of cyberhipness — and got to experiment with the site.

I learned you can send text messages to individual friends or groups of friends on Pownce as well as post microblogs, or short announcements, to the larger Pownce community. This function is very similar to messaging services like Twitter or Jaiku, and is found on social networks like Facebook and MySpace (although Pownce’s messages cannot, at least for now, be sent to mobile phones). You can also send your friends links, invitations to events, or files like photos, music or videos. Of course, you can already do that on a multitude of file-sharing Web sites. It is the combination of private messaging and file-sharing that makes Pownce so novel.

Om Malik, the author of the technology blog GigaOm, is an enthusiast. “I love it and use it constantly, ” he said in a message sent to me on Pownce. “I like it because it lets me share a lot of different things with the networks of people I really care about.”

Pownce was initially conceived by another founder, Leah Culver, a 24-year-old programmer who developed the site as an experiment. But its glamour derives from Mr. Rose’s reputation for creating digital-media companies that evoke passionate fandom among their youthful audiences. In addition to Digg, he co-founded Revision3, a video production and hosting company opened last September.

“He is super-smart, friendly, humble and a team-builder — a perfect combination for a great entrepreneur,” said Ron Conway, who has invested in Digg and Revision3 and was an early investor in Google. (A disclosure: Mr. Conway also invested in Red Herring Communications, a magazine and Web site I once edited.)

Mr. Rose, 30, dropped out of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he was studying computer science, to pursue his fortune in San Francisco during the dot-com boom. Fortune eluded him then, but he achieved minor fame when, following the collapse of the technology market in 2002, he became a nerdy host on TechTV’s “The Screen Savers.”

The audience Mr. Rose attracted at TechTV was then drawn to Digg, which he began promoting on his show and in his blog when the site was introduced in December 2004. Digg combines social networking, blogging and online syndication to create a site where news stories are ranked by popularity. Today, 17 million people visit Digg every month, according to the company.

After Mr. Rose’s contract with G4, the successor to TechTV, expired, he started Revision3. Each week, 250,000 people go to the company’s Web site to view its most popular show, “Diggnation,” where Mr. Rose and his pal Alex Albrecht lounge on couches, drink beer and discuss the most popular stories on Digg.

Something of Mr. Rose’s concept of his latest venture can be discerned in how he described Digg to me in a recent interview. “For us, it’s really about creating the platform for people to share things with their friends,” he said.

Owen Thomas, the managing editor of the Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag, has chronicled the excitement Pownce aroused over the last month, but doesn’t like the service himself. At 35, “I’m kind of old; I’m habituated to e-mail,” Mr. Owen wrote in just such a message.

MY own experiences with Pownce were ambiguous. As with Twitter, I felt mildly repulsed by the banality and exhibitionism of microblogs. On the other hand, I enjoyed the privacy of the closed messaging system and the ease with which I could share things with nicely calibrated groups.

What struck me most was the site’s potential to be powerfully disruptive. Most file-sharing occurs on public sites, which can be monitored by media companies; if the users violate copyrights, the sites or the users themselves can be threatened into compliance or litigated out of existence (as happened with the original Napster). File-sharing on Pownce would be difficult to police.

If I were a media executive concerned about protecting my intellectual property, I would pounce on Pownce. It’s possibly no coincidence that the name Mr. Rose chose for his new venture suggests the Internet gamer’s jargon “pwn,” which means to take control of a system by exploiting some vulnerability.

NASA probes sabotage

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA is investigating sabotage of a noncritical computer due to be flown to the International Space Station aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, which was cleared to lift off on August 7, the U.S. space agency said on Thursday.

NASA revealed the sabotage a day ahead of releasing studies that the publication Aviation Week reported had found astronauts were allowed to fly on at least two occasions despite warnings they were so drunk they posed a flight risk.

The damage to wiring in an electronics box was intentional and obvious, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA found cut cables inside the electronics box, which was being prepared to be loaded into Endeavour's crew cabin for transport to the $100 billion space station.

NASA was told of the sabotage by a subcontractor, which Gerstenmaier declined to identify, citing an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General.

"It was disclosed to us as soon as the event occurred, about a week and a half ago," Gerstenmaier said. "The damage is very obvious, easy to detect. It's not a mystery to us."

NASA managers believe there is ample time to repair the computer before Endeavour's liftoff on August 7. The shuttle is scheduled to spend up to 10 days at the space station to install a new structural beam and deliver supplies.

COULD FLY WITHOUT IT

The computer, which is to be located in the U.S. laboratory Destiny, is designed to collect and relay data from sensors on the station's external trusses. The sensors detect vibrations and forces, such as micrometeoroid impacts. Currently, the data is stored in the sensors and not immediately accessible.

"If we don't get it repaired in time, we'll fly without it," said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring. "It's not an issue."

The same manufacturer also builds gauges for the shuttle's wings and other station computer components, Gerstenmaier said. No other damage was detected.

The damage is believed to be the first act of sabotage of flight equipment NASA has discovered, Gerstenmaier and shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said.

The NASA officials declined to discuss Aviation Week's report that a panel had found that astronauts were allowed to fly drunk at least twice, despite objections from colleagues and flight surgeons.

The publication said the panel, set up by NASA to study astronaut health issues after the arrest in February of former astronaut Lisa Nowak on assault charges, also reported "heavy use of alcohol" by astronauts within 12 hours of launch, which is against NASA rules.

A spokeswoman at Johnson Space Center, where the astronaut corps is based, would not comment but the space agency said it would release the findings of "two reviews regarding astronaut medical and behavioral health assessments" at a news conference on Friday in Washington.

Endeavour, fresh from a complete overhaul and the last of NASA's three remaining shuttles to return to flight following the 2003 Columbia disaster, is due to carry out a construction mission to the space station.

It will be NASA's second shuttle flight of the year.

Endeavour was almost totally rebuilt during its overhaul and was like a new space shuttle, Hale said.

"It's like driving a new car off the showroom floor," he said.

Endeavour's seven crew members include teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who trained 22 years ago as the backup to teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe, one of the astronauts who died when Challenger blew up at liftoff in January 1986.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Franks in Houston)

Huge dust storm threatens NASA rovers on Mars

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A dust storm raging on Mars presents the worst threat to date to the continued operation of NASA's two rovers, threatening to starve the solar-powered robots by blocking out sunlight, NASA said on Friday.

The little, six-wheeled rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, are operating at two distant sites just south of the Martian equator. The large regional dust storm that has lasted almost a month has been worse at Opportunity's locale, NASA said.

In an effort to protect the rovers from power loss that has the potential to leave one or both permanently disabled, the U.S. space agency has been scaling back their functions to the bare minimum, leaving them in near-dormant states.

"What we have the rovers do is wake up in the morning briefly, configure some necessary parameters for the day and then go back to sleep," John Callas, rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a telephone interview.

"And that's all they're doing. We do have them communicating (with Earth) about every three days," he added.

The rovers are not being buffeted by winds, but high-altitude fine particle dust has blocked 99 percent of direct sunlight needed to energize the rovers, officials said.

"The threat to the rover is that it doesn't have the energy to stay warm and that its sensitive electronics would become too cold. Things would get so cold that something would break inside the electronics," Callas said.

The rovers have electric heaters to prevent vital core electronics from getting too cold. One concern is that absence of sunlight could make the rovers drain their batteries.

That worst-case scenario is still weeks off at a minimum, Callas added. He said that because it was now Martian summer for the rovers, there was a chance temperatures would not fall low enough to ruin the electronics even if the rovers were starved of power.

'WE'RE ROOTING'

The dust storm is the biggest threat to the resilient rovers since they arrived on Mars in January 2004 for what was supposed to be a three-month mission, Callas said. It is the worst dust storm since their arrival, he added.

"We're rooting for our rovers to survive these storms, but they were never designed for conditions this intense," said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's science office.

The rovers have gathered data about the geology of Mars, including evidence it once was a far wetter place that some scientists suspect may have been habitable by microbes.

Opportunity is about 130 feet from an entry point into Victoria Crater, which is about half a mile (800 meters) wide and was formed by a long-ago impact by a space rock on Martian surface.

The storm prompted NASA to put on hold plans to send the rover into the crater to examine rocks in its exposed walls.

"Not until the skies clear sufficiently and we have generous power margins would we consider driving the rover again and then entering the crater," Callas said.

U.S. telco results expected to prove video growth

By Ritsuko Ando

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. report quarterly results later this month, investors will be looking for proof that their expensive video strategies are starting to pay off.

The top two U.S. phone companies had worried Wall Street by investing billions of dollars in building advanced high-speed networks to compete with cable companies' all-in-one packages of video, Internet and phone services.

But if Verizon can show that subscriber growth to its FiOS video service is picking up, and if AT&T can report the same for its U-Verse service, that would help remove overhang on their share prices, analysts said.

"As they begin delivering on the metrics and people can see the product out there in the market, there will be less of a concern about the spending," said Atlantic Equity analyst Chris Watts, adding that positive consumer reaction to FiOS over the past year was already helping Verizon shares.

AT&T shares have risen less than 1 percent in the past 3 months to trade on Friday around $39.30. Verizon shares have risen 13 percent over the same period to around $42.45.

Investors on average expect AT&T to report on July 24 second-quarter earnings excluding special items of 66 cents per share, compared to 58 cents in the year-ago quarter, according to Reuters Estimates.

Verizon is expected to report on July 30 adjusted earnings per share of 58 cents, compared to 64 cents a year earlier. Spending in the FiOS network, due to total $18 billion from 2004 through 2010, hurt earnings by 11 cents in the first quarter and the company has said this dilution will decrease in coming quarters.

Investors are also likely to focus on any details from AT&T on how it expects to benefit from being the sole service provider for Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

Some also said they look forward to any comments by Verizon on its mobile partnership with Vodafone. Verizon has said it wants full ownership of their joint venture, Verizon Wireless.

While wireless service is seen as the key growth engine for both companies in the near term, analysts said expansion of their new video businesses is crucial for the longer term.

Both AT&T and Verizon face declining fixed-line phone sales and increasing competition from cable and online services, a trend likely to be underscored in the quarterly reports.

Raymond James analyst Todd Koffman, who has been monitoring Verizon's FiOS roll-out, expects video subscribers to total 500,000 in the second quarter, up from 348,000 in the previous quarter.

Analysts said they were looking forward to AT&T's update of its expansion plans for U-Verse. The company is expected to give an outlook including the territory of BellSouth, which it acquired late last year.

For the traditional 13-state territory of AT&T, the company has said it plans to connect the network to around 18 million homes by the end of 2008.

Analysts also said they would particularly focus on any change in spending plans, which would affect equipment vendors like Cisco Systems, Alcatel-Lucent, and Tellabs, which supply equipment for the services.

Although investors are likely to be wary of any increased spending, some analysts said a higher-than-planned dilution by Verizon's FiOS would not necessarily be bad news.

"Even if it trends up, that's not necessarily bad, because it could indicate subscriber growth is ahead of schedule," said A.G. Edwards analyst Kent Custer.

Google to bid for U.S. airwaves if condition added

By Peter Kaplan and Sinead Carew

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Google Inc said on Friday it would take part in a major auction of wireless spectrum airwaves, meeting a minimum required bid of $4.6 billion, if U.S. regulators added a sale condition that Google said would promote an open wireless market.

The prospect of Google's participation in the auction escalates the debate over how the valuable airwaves should be used.

Ten days after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin floated a proposed set of rules for the auction, Google said it wants the FCC to require the winning bidder to offer to resell access to some of the airwaves to competitors on a wholesale basis.

"When Americans can use the software and handsets of their choice, over open and competitive networks, they win," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a letter to Martin.

Martin's plan would require support for any wireless device or software application, but it did not include the so-called "wholesale" requirement.

"While these all are positive steps, unfortunately the current draft order falls short of including (all of the) tailored and enforceable conditions, with meaningful implementation deadlines, that consumer groups, other companies, and Google have sought," Schmidt wrote.

Google also called for another provision which would require other companies to be allowed to interconnect "at any technically feasible point" with the winning bidder's network.

Schmidt has said an open telecommunications network drives Internet usage and directly benefits Google's business strategy of selling advertising over the Internet. Some analysts have also speculated that Google could have plans to develop and sell mobile devices.

Google's position is at odds with existing major wireless carriers that say a requirement to resell the airwaves would reduce the value of the airwaves.

Google's offer was denounced by most existing wireless carriers, who accused the company of trying to rig the auction in its favor.

"This is an attempt to pressure the U.S. government to turn the auction process on its head by ensuring only a few, if any, bidders will compete with Google," AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi said in a statement.

AT&T is supporting Martin's proposed auction rules, while the No. 2 wireless service provider, Verizon Wireless, has staunchly opposed any conditions on the auction as "corporate welfare" for Google. Verizon Wireless is owned by Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.

Currently, wireless carriers restrict the models of cell phones that can be used on their networks and the software that can be downloaded onto them, such as ring tones, music or Web browser software.

Martin and the other four FCC commissioners are mulling different scenarios for how the auction should be conducted amid intense lobbying by existing wireless carriers, consumer groups and potential new bidders such as Google.

The airwaves to be sold in the 700-megahertz band are considered valuable because they can travel long distances and penetrate thick walls. The auction, to be held later this year, is seen as the last opportunity for a new player to enter the wireless market.

Later on Friday, a key House committee announced it had asked all five FCC commissioners to testify at an oversight hearing on Tuesday.

In a letter to the FCC, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell asked a series of questions about how Martin's proposed open-access rules would be enforced and whether they would increase costs to wireless carriers and consumers.

Google and some consumer advocates have pushed for a list of open-access conditions for a large piece of the airwaves and argue that the wholesale requirement should be among them to promote more competition for wireless service.

A source familiar with Martin's auction plan said the minimum bid requirement was set at $4.6 billion. If no bidders met the minimum amount, the auction would be run without the open-access conditions.

Blair Levin, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus, said Google's offer "is a way to take that (money) issue off the table."

"It certainly helps those who are supportive of Google's position to be able to say the treasury is going to make at least as much as the treasury thought it was going to make," Levin said.

Levin said he did not think there was enough support currently among the five FCC commissioners to pass the wholesale requirement sought by Google. But, he said, "The odds have gone up."

The 700-mHZ airwaves are being returned by broadcasters as they move from analog to digital signals early in 2009.

The move to bid on the wireless airwaves was overshadowed on Wall Street by disappointment over Google's second quarter results, issued Thursday, which were hurt by a costly hiring spree that saw its shares close Friday down 5.2 percent to $520.12.

PluggedIn: Vista's growing pains leave room for XP

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - David Daoud ran into trouble when he started using Vista, the new version of Windows that Microsoft Corp. and PC makers have spent millions of dollars advertising since it came out six months ago.

He said it short-circuited key software programs he counts on: Quicken for balancing his checkbook, Lotus Notes e-mail and a networking program that connects his home to the office. His Sony camcorder also doesn't communicate with the PC properly.

"Basically they don't work," said Daoud, a computer industry analyst with market research firm IDC.

Such problems are part of the normal growing pains that come with every major upgrade to the Windows operating system.

To ease those pains, some consumers are seeking out machines equipped with the more compatible Windows XP. That's prompted some PC makers and retailers to give the older operating system more room in their product lines.

Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. recently started selling XP machines on their Web sites. Lenovo Group Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. also offer similarly equipped machines.

Microsoft has done its best to get Vista off to a strong start, making it compatible with more than 2 million different types of hardware.

The effort seems to be paying off. The company late on Thursday reported quarterly revenue of $13.4 billion, up 13 percent from last year, citing help from strong Vista sales.

Microsoft says most people using Vista are pleased with it and that nearly all software and hardware is compatible.

Still, some companies have been slow to respond to Microsoft's call for upgrades. Consumers have taken note.

Craig Rabe, owner of the Computer Cafe, an independent computer store in Arlington, Massachusetts, says he received so many complaints about Vista after it was launched in February that he stopped selling machines loaded with the software.

"People came back and said, 'Please, will you take this off and replace it with XP," he said.

ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE?

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is advising incoming freshmen to buy PCs loaded with Windows XP.

"XP is still fully functional. It's what people are familiar with," said Jon Hunt, who made the decision for MIT. But he expects MIT will soon start supporting Vista.

Among retailers, CompUSA says it has the widest selection of XP machines, something it plans to tout during the busy back-to-school sales season.

Circuit City Stores Inc. offers nine XP models on its Web site. Best Buy Co. does not carry XP machines.

The Windows User Group says Vista is an "awesome" system and all of its employees use it. But the company, which provides technical advice on Windows and runs online communities, cautions that the switch can be uncomfortable.

"My father-in-law, my niece, my accountant -- they all have computers running XP now. If they put Vista on top, not everything is going to work," said vice president Joel Diamond.

Microsoft says it has put a lot of effort into working with other companies to solve any problems.

"There are some products that don't work with it," said Windows group product manager Justin Jed. "But ... the data shows louder than the anecdotes that people are having a great experience with Windows Vista."

He says 72 percent of users have a "favorable" view of Vista, 8 percent "unfavorable," with the rest neutral.

What's more, about 96 percent of all printers, keyboards, mice, scanners and other devices in use are compatible with Vista, as are about 2,000 software programs, including 49 of the current 50 best-selling retail titles, he says.

But while Adobe recently introduced a version of Photoshop professional that works with Vista, customers with the previous edition have to pay $199 for an upgrade.

Norton SystemWorks, a $70 security program, has yet to be made Vista compatible though the company says it is in the works. TiVo software for linking to PCs is also incompatible.

Microsoft declined to comment on specific problems.

"We are going after the ones that impact the most customers," Jed said. "Obviously you cannot be all things to all people."

Hope for new Parkinson's therapy

Nerve cell death leads to Parkinson's

Scientists have discovered a protein which may help to slow, or even reverse symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's destroys nerve cells that produce the brain chemical dopamine, causing movement and balance problems.

Finnish researchers found the new molecule can prevent degeneration of these cells - and help damaged cells start to recover.

Their paper, featured in Nature, showed symptoms eased in rats given injections of the protein.

Our new protein has great potential to be developed as drug for Parkinson's disease Dr Mart Saarma University of Helsinki

Current anti-Parkinson's drugs do not stop nerve cells from degenerating and dying, and their effects can be patchy and short-lived.

The researchers, from the University of Helsinki, believe the new molecule - dubbed conserved dopamine neurotrophic factor (CDNF) - has great potential as a treatment.

Previous research has centred on another protein - GDNF - which some research had suggested could improve symptoms in Parkinson's patients.

However, other studies have thrown doubt over the effect of the protein - and raised serious safety issues.

The Helsinki team decided to search for related proteins - known as growth factors - which worked in a similar way, but were likely to be better tolerated.

They found that CDNF, unlike other similar growth factors, was specific to brain nerve cells.

Experiments were carried out on rats bred to show symptoms similar to Parkinson's.

In tests, CDNF protected 96% of nerve cells in the brains of the animals from degeneration.

Delay in treatment

To test whether the protein could also help repair damage in nerve cells the researchers also waited a month before treating some of the animals to allow Parkinson's symptoms to really take hold.

This was designed to mimic the situation in human patients, who may already have lost 70% of their dopamine-producing nerve cells by the time they seek treatment.

Following treatment 58% of the dopamine-producing nerve cells were left alive, compared with just 26% in animals who did not receive the protein.

Lead researcher Dr Mart Saarma said: "Our new protein has great potential to be developed as drug for Parkinson's disease, but we need to do more animal experiments and also toxicology studies before we can start clinical trials."

Dr Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said the research was still at a very early stage.

"What is interesting is that the protein shows similar neuro-protective actions to GDNF which indicates that this general type of drug may be useful in the future for developing new therapies for treating Parkinson's.

"However, while GDNF showed some benefits in early clinical trials, larger trials showed side effects, which led to it being withdrawn. It is therefore too early to predict the therapeutic potential of CDNF."

'Jules Vernes' set for sea voyage

By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News

A segment of the ship prepares to leave Estec on Friday

The Jules Vernes cargo ship has been packed up ready for despatch to the European spaceport in French Guiana.

The vehicle - the biggest, most complex spacecraft ever built in Europe - will launch in January with up to 7.5 tonnes of supplies for the space station.

The ship has been under test for three years at the European Space Agency's technical centre in the Netherlands.

Late on Friday it began the transfer by road and canal to Rotterdam, from where it will go by sea to South America.

The Jules Vernes - or Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to give it its generic name - has been split into three parts and put in containers for the journey.

The ATV is a premiere in many respects Daniel Sacotte, Esa

The craft heads to the Kourou spaceport as part of a 400-tonne, 50-case shipment that incorporates all the associated parts, apparatus and tools needed to reassemble it and check it prior to launch.

"One of the major issues has been getting the customs paperwork in order," explained Stefan Brosze, ATV transportation manager. "There are members of our team who know exactly where to find everything, right down to the very smallest items."

Test programme

The Jules Verne is the first of at least five ATVs that will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) over the coming years.

Developed at a cost of 1.3bn euros (£0.9bn), the ship incorporates sophisticated automated rendezvous and docking systems. Once launched on an Ariane 5 rocket, the craft can find its own way to the ISS, to deliver air, water, fuel, scientific equipment, food, clothing and even personal items to the platform.

It will also reboost the station, which has a tendency to drift back to Earth over time.

SPACE STATION CARGO TRUCKS Mission Guide: Jules Verne ATV (left) will resupply the ISS with up to 7,500kg of cargo Capacity is three times that of the Russian Progress craft (right) Deliveries will include science equipment, food and clothing Large tanks can transport vital air, water and fuel supplies ATV project's estimated cost is about 1.3bn euros (£0.9bn) At least four craft will follow the maiden ATV - Jules Verne Named after the author who wrote about fantastic journeys

Esa's research and technology centre, Estec, in Noordwijk has put the space ship through an exhaustive series of tests.

The ATV was placed in an acoustic chamber and blasted with sound to ensure it could withstand the noise and vibration of launch; and in a giant vacuum chamber to see that components would function properly in the extreme conditions of the space environment.

The Jules Vernes was also checked to make sure it met rigorous electromagnetic interference standards; its electronic systems cannot be allowed to interfere with those of its rocket launcher or the space station.

"This is like if you had an old car with the radio on and then you switched the windscreen wipers on, you used to get noise on the radio," explained John Ellwood Esa's ATV Project Manager. "We cannot let that happen with the ATV."

The Jules Verne is scheduled to set sail from Rotterdam on Tuesday onboard the French cargo ship MN Toucan. It will take about 11 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Once in Kourou, an 18-week launch preparation campaign will begin. The ATV will be put back together, fuelled and loaded with its dry and wet cargoes. Finally, it will be placed atop its Ariane 5-ES launcher.

"We could be ready to go in December but we still have many complicated things to do and we need some margin to take into account unforeseen items; but we'll definitely be ready to launch in early 2008," Mr Ellwood said.

Future craft

Europe has a lot riding on the ATV. Its advanced systems will be incorporated into other missions, possibly even a new manned capsule that could take astronauts to the Moon.

The potential for such a vehicle is currently being investigated by Russian and European industrialists.

"The ATV is a premiere in many respects," commented Daniel Sacotte, Esa's director of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration.

"We have developed a lot of new technologies for the ATV and these will allow us to do many other things in future in the field of space exploration.

"Also, it helps us fulfil our obligations to our space station partners in terms of cost," he told BBC News.

The latter point refers to the fact that the ATVs are a payment in kind to the $100bn ISS project. Instead of having to pay cash to cover station running costs, Europe has bartered for itself the important re-supply responsibility for the orbiting platform.

The Jules Vernes will have a launch mass of nearly 20 tonnes. Its great bulk means its launcher will have to be specially modified for the task.

Mission planners will use a scheduled Ariane flight in September of unrelated commercial satellites to test the upper-stage manoeuvres needed to put the cargo ship on the right course to the space station.

ATV capacities: Maximum total load is 7,667kg 1,500-5,500kg - dry cargo; 0-100kg - air (oxygen/nitrogen) 0-840kg - drinking water; 0-860kg - refuelling propellant

Robot unravels mystery of walking

Runbot can adapt to changes in the terrain (Credit: Manoonpong et al)

Roboticists are using the lessons of a 1930s human physiologist to build the world's fastest walking robot.

Runbot is a self-learning, dynamic robot, which has been built around the theories of Nikolai Bernstein.

"Getting a robot to walk like a human requires a dynamic machine," said Professor Florentin Woergoetter.

Runbot is a small, biped robot which can move at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second, slightly slower than the fastest walking human.

Bernstein said that animal movement was not under the total control of the brain but rather, "local circuits" did most of the command and control work.

The brain was involved in the process of walking, he said, only when the understood parameters were altered, such as moving from one type of terrain to another, or dealing with uneven surfaces.

The basic walking steps of Runbot, which has been built by scientists co-operating across Europe, are controlled by reflex information received by peripheral sensors on the joints and feet of the robot, as well as an accelerometer which monitors the pitch of the machine.

These sensors pass data on to local neural loops - the equivalent of local circuits - which analyse the information and make adjustments to the gait of the robot in real time.

Information from sensors is constantly created by the interaction of the robot with the terrain so that Runbot can adjust its step if there is a change in the environment.

As the robot takes each step, control circuits ensure that the joints are not overstretched and that the next step begins.

But if the robot encounters an obstacle, or a dramatic change in the terrain, such as a slope, then the higher level functions of the robot - the learning circuitries - are used.

About half of the time during a gait cycle we are not doing anything, just falling forward Prof Florentin Worgotter

The latest findings of the robot research study are presented in the Public Library of Science Computational Biology journal.

Four other scientists - Poramate Manoonpong, Tao Geng, Tomas Kulvicius and Bernd Porr - are also involved in the project, which has been running for the last four years.

Professor Woergoetter, of the University of Gottingen, in Germany, said: "When Runbot first encounters a slope these low level control circuits 'believe' they can continue to walk up the slope without having to change anything.

"But this is misguided and as a consequence the machine falls backwards. This triggers the other sensors and the highest loop we have built into Runbot - the learning circuitry - and from that experience of falling the machine knows that something needs to be changed."

Dynamic process

He said human walking was a dynamic process.

"About half of the time during a gait cycle we are not doing anything, just falling forward. We are propelling ourselves over and over again - like releasing a spring.

"In a robot, the difficulty lies in releasing the spring-like movement at the right moment in time - calculated in milliseconds - and to get the dampening right so that the robot does not fall forward and crash.

"These parameters are very difficult to handle," he said.

All these big machines stomp around like robots Prof Florentin Worgotter

Runbot walks in a very different way from robots like Asimo, star of the Honda TV adverts, said Prof Woergoetter.

"They are kinematic walkers - they walk step by step and calculate every single angle, every millisecond.

"That can be handled through engineering but it is very clumsy. No human would walk like that. All these big machines stomp around like robots - we want our robot to walk like a human."

The first step in building Runbot was creating a biomechanical frame that could support passive walking patterns.

Passive walkers can walk down a slope unaided, propelled by gravity and kept upright and moving through the correct mechanical physiology.

Prof Woergoetter said: "Passive walking looks pretty realistic - but that's level one. On top of this we have local circuits, nested neural loops, which operate between the muscles (the joints of the robot) and the spinal cord (the spinal reflex of Runbot)."

He said Runbot learned from its mistakes, much in the same way as a human baby.

"Babies use a lot of their brains to train local circuits but once they are trained they are fairly autonomous.

"Only when it comes to more difficult things - such as a change of terrain - that's when the brain steps in and says 'now we are moving from ice to sand and I have to change something'.

"This is a good model because you are easing the load of control - if your brain had to think all the time about walking, it's doubtful you could have a conversation at the same time."

Nervous system

The principle was first discussed in the human nervous system by Russian physiologist Nikolai Bernstein.

Prof Woergoetter said: "He said it made sense that local agents, local networks, do the basic job, but the brain exerted control whenever necessary."

So using the information from its local circuits Runbot can walk on flat surfaces at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second.

Prof Woergoetter said Runbot was able to learn new walking patterns after only a few trials.

"If walking uphill, the gait becomes shorter, the robot's upper body weight shifts forward," he said.

The key lesson from the study, he said, was that the nested loop design first proposed by Bernstein more than 70 years ago "worked and was efficient".

He said the challenge was now to make Runbot bigger, more adaptive and to better anticipate situations like change of terrain.

Frames 1 - 3: The robot's momentum causes the robot to rise on its standing leg and a motor moves the swinging leg into position

Frame 3: The stretch sensor of the swinging leg is activated, which triggers the knee joint to straighten

Frames 3-6: The robot falls forward naturally, with no motor functions being used, and catches itself on the next standing leg

Frame 6: As the swinging leg touches the ground, the ground contact sensor in the foot triggers the hip extensor and the knee joint of the standing leg and the hip and knee joints of the swinging leg to swap roles