Saturday, December 31, 2011

Stanford archives offer window into Apple origins

In this photo taken Oct. 18, 2011, processor Dennis Sparhawk checks items on shelves at a Stanford University Silicon Valley Archives storage facility in an undisclosed location in California. Historians and entrepreneurs who want to understand the rise of Apple Inc. and its founder Steve Jobs will find a treasure trove of clues in Stanford University's Silicon Valley Archives. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this photo taken Oct. 18, 2011, processor Dennis Sparhawk checks items on shelves at a Stanford University Silicon Valley Archives storage facility in an undisclosed location in California. Historians and entrepreneurs who want to understand the rise of Apple Inc. and its founder Steve Jobs will find a treasure trove of clues in Stanford University's Silicon Valley Archives. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this photo taken Oct. 25, 2011, curator Henry Lowood is shown looking at an old photograph of Steve Jobs at Stanford's Green Library in Stanford, Calif. Historians and entrepreneurs who want to understand the rise of Apple Inc. and its founder Steve Jobs will find a treasure trove of clues in Stanford University's Silicon Valley Archives. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this photo taken Oct. 25, 2011, a photo of an old keyboard is shown next to a letter written about Steve Jobs at Stanford's Green Library in Stanford, Calif. Historians and entrepreneurs who want to understand the rise of Apple Inc. and its founder Steve Jobs will find a treasure trove of clues in Stanford University's Silicon Valley Archives. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this photo taken Oct. 25, 2011, curator Henry Lowood holds up an old Apple 1 operation manual at Stanford's Green Library in Stanford, Calif. Historians and entrepreneurs who want to understand the rise of Apple Inc. and its founder Steve Jobs will find a treasure trove of clues in Stanford University's Silicon Valley Archives. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

(AP) ? In the interview, Steve Wozniak and the late Steve Jobs recall a seminal moment in Silicon Valley history ? how they named their upstart computer company some 35 years ago.

"I remember driving down Highway 85," Wozniak says. "We're on the freeway, and Steve mentions, 'I've got a name: Apple Computer.' We kept thinking of other alternatives to that name, and we couldn't think of anything better."

Adds Jobs: "And also remember that I worked at Atari, and it got us ahead of Atari in the phonebook."

The interview, recorded for an in-house video for company employees in the mid-1980s, was among a storehouse of materials Apple had been collecting for a company museum. But in 1997, soon after Jobs returned to the company, Apple officials contacted Stanford University and offered to donate the collection to the school's Silicon Valley Archives.

Within a few days, Stanford curators were at Apple headquarters in nearby Cupertino, packing two moving trucks full of documents, books, software, videotapes and marketing materials that now make up the core of Stanford's Apple Collection.

The collection, the largest assembly of Apple historical materials, can help historians, entrepreneurs and policymakers understand how a startup launched in a Silicon Valley garage became a global technology giant.

"Through this one collection you can trace out the evolution of the personal computer," said Stanford historian Leslie Berlin. "These sorts of documents are as close as you get to the unmediated story of what really happened."

The collection is stored in hundreds of boxes taking up more than 600 feet of shelf space at the Stanford's off-campus storage facility. The Associated Press visited the climate-controlled warehouse on the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay area, but agreed not to disclose its location.

Interest in Apple and its founder has grown dramatically since Jobs died in October at age 56, just weeks after he stepped down as CEO and handed the reins to Tim Cook. Jobs' death sparked an international outpouring and marked the end of an era for Apple and Silicon Valley.

"Apple as a company is in a very, very select group," said Stanford curator Henry Lowood. "It survived through multiple generations of technology. To the credit of Steve Jobs, it meant reinventing the company at several points."

Apple scrapped its own plans for a corporate museum after Jobs returned as CEO and began restructuring the financially struggling firm, Lowood said.

Job's return, more than a decade after he was forced out of the company he co-founded, marked the beginning of one of the great comebacks in business history. It led to a long string of blockbuster products ? including the iPod, iPhone and iPad ? that have made Apple one of the world's most profitable brands.

After Stanford received the Apple donation, former company executives, early employees, business partners and Mac enthusiasts have come forward and added their own items to the archives.

The collection includes early photos of young Jobs and Wozniak, blueprints for the first Apple computer, user manuals, magazine ads, TV commercials, company t-shirts and drafts of Jobs' speeches.

In one company video, Wozniak talks about how he had always wanted his own computer, but couldn't get his hands on one at a time when few computers were found outside corporations or government agencies.

"All of a sudden I realized, 'Hey microprocessors all of a sudden are affordable. I can actually build my own,'" Wozniak says. "And Steve went a little further. He saw it as a product you could actually deliver, sell and someone else could use."

The pair also talk about the company's first product, the Apple I computer, which went on sale in July 1976 for $666.66.

"Remember an Apple I was not particularly useable for too much, but it was so incredible to have your own computer," Jobs says. "It was kind of an embarkation point from the way computers had been going in these big steel boxes with switches and lights."

Among the other items in the Apple Collection:

? Thousands of photos by photographer Douglas Menuez, who documented Jobs' years at NeXT Computer, which he founded in 1985 after he was pushed out of Apple.

? A company video spoofing the 1984 movie "Ghost Busters," with Jobs and other executives playing "Blue Busters," a reference to rival IBM.

? Handwritten financial records showing early sales of Apple II, one of the first mass-market computers.

? An April 1976 agreement for a $5,000 loan to Apple Computer and its three co-founders: Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, who pulled out of the company less than two weeks after its founding.

? A 1976 letter written by a printer who had just met Jobs and Wozniak and warns his colleagues about the young entrepreneurs: "This joker (Jobs) is going to be calling you ... They are two guys, they build kits, operate out of a garage."

The archive shows the Apple founders were far ahead of their time, Lowood said.

"What they were doing was spectacularly new," he said. "The idea of building computers out of your garage and marketing them and thereby creating a successful business ? it just didn't compute for a lot of people."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-12-29-Apple%20Archives/id-643d7370f13f4ec2bdbfbc9af681c508

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Visitor numbers up at Aberdeen?s Union Square

ABERDEEN?S Union Square shopping mall drew 21% more people than a year ago for the three days following Christmas.

Property firm Hammerson said 190,000 shoppers visited Aberdeen?s Union Square centre, compared to 157,000 for the same three days last year.

December 27 was the busiest day both this year and in 2010, with visitor numbers up 15% to 59,000 at the Union Square shopping centre in Aberdeen.

For the full story, pick up a copy of today?s Evening Express or read our digital edition now

Click here to read the digital edition.

Source: http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/2578070

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Friday, December 30, 2011

Observers fan out across Syria after controversial start

AFP - Getty Images

Syrian army tanks in the background as a group of Arab League observers tour the flashpoint central city of Homs on December 27, 2011.

By msnbc.com staff and news services

Teams of Arab League observers begin visiting?three more Syrian cities on Thursday, following controversy when their leader said he had seen "nothing frightening" during an initial trip to the heavily-attacked hotspot of Homs.

The mission, the first international involvement on the ground in Syria since the revolt began last March, is checking?whether government forces are complying with a peace plan following the nine-month uprising against President Bashar Assad.


The observers briefly visited Homs on Tuesday then returned to Wednesday with a Syrian government escort, to the dismay of demonstrators who mobbed their car.

The observers' leader, Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, initially told Reuters they had seen "nothing frightening" during their visit -- a comment decried by activists who said Homs had been the epicenter of deadly clashes between the Syrian army and rebels.

Human rights campaigners say Dabi is an inappropriate choice to lead the mission, as he?has been?linked to genocide in Sudan for which that country's president is sought by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

Dabi later said he needed more time to make an assessment of the city, which was bombarded by government forces in the days before the visit.

His teams went back to Baba Amr district, one of the worst-hit, to see shattered houses and hear from people who have lost friends and relatives. One family showed them a dead boy, putting his body on the hood of the mission's car.

Images obtained by The Associated Press from the city in the days leading up to the monitors' visit show army defectors inside a bombed-out building, firing machine guns through gaping holes in a wall.

In another, a huge crowd fills the street for a night-time rally behind a giant banner of the uprising's revolutionary flag. A row of women wear the flags and a large sign overhead reads: "All the doors are closed except your door, God."

There are also photos of wounded civilians lying on a floor in pools of blood, and being treated with crude medical equipment. Another shows an alleyway with blood smeared on a wall and pooled on the ground.

The observers on Thursday will visit Deraa, Hama and Idlib, all cities where anti-Assad demonstrations have been violently repressed.

Opposition activists say the government will play for time and bend the mission to its own ends. But Washington urged them to give Dabi a chance.

"We need let this mission get up and running, let them do their job and then let them give their judgment," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in Washington.

Sniper bullets
Unless it can establish its credibility by proving it has unobstructed access to all areas and is able to hear uncensored accounts, the Arab League mission may not be able to satisfy all sides that it can make an objective assessment of the crisis.

Most of the 5,000 or more people estimated by the United Nations to have been killed in Syria since March have lost their lives in Homs, to machine gun fire, sniper bullets, mortar blasts and tank shelling, or torture.

What began with peaceful mass protests against Assad has turned into an armed insurrection as thousands of army defectors formed the Syrian Free Army and attacked military and police convoys, bases and checkpoints.

A video shot by rebels showed the ambush of a security forces convoy on Wednesday by eight gunmen who opened fire from a rootfop.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four soldiers were killed in the attack by rebel troops on a road near the southern village of Dael in Deraa province, cradle of the revolt.

Assad says he is combating Islamic terrorism steered from abroad. He says more than 2,000 security personnel have been killed.

Syria resisted outside involvement for months but yielded to pressure from fellow members of the 22-state Arab League last month, agreeing to let the monitors in to witness a withdrawal of forces from the turbulent cities.

But the killing did not stop, before and during the first two days of the monitoring mission, and opposition activists predict it will not cease after the observers are gone in a month. About 200 observers will deploy to witness and interview victims of violence scattered across the country of 23 million.

Amateur video appears to show government trucks leaving Homs, Syria following several days of violence. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.

The West has demanded that Assad step down but Russia and China oppose intervention. Syria also has the backing of Iran.

Assad, increasingly isolated, has lost the trust of his neighbor Turkey, which has called for him to quit and which allows the rebel army to launch attacks from its territory.

On Wednesday, the government released 755 prisoners following a report by Human Rights Watch accusing authorities of hiding hundreds of detainees from the monitors. It was the second concession in two days.

Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff?contributed to this report.

Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/29/9792641-arab-league-observers-fan-out-across-syria-after-controversial-start

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Church Bombing Kills 39 In Nigeria

Terror attacks across Nigeria by a radical Muslim sect killed at least 39 people Sunday, with the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion.

Authorities acknowledged they could not bring enough emergency medical personnel to care for the wounded outside St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla near Nigeria's capital. Elsewhere, a bomb exploded amid gunfire in the central Nigeria city of Jos and a suicide car bomber attacked the military in the nation's northeast as part of an apparently coordinated assault by the sect known as Boko Haram.

The Christmas Day violence, denounced by world leaders and the Vatican, shows the threat of the widening insurrection posed by Boko Haram against Nigeria's weak central government. Despite a recent paramilitary crackdown against the sect in the oil-rich nation, it appears that Africa's most populous nation remains unable to stop the threat.

The White House condemned what it called a "senseless" attack, offered its condolences to the Nigerian people and pledged to assist authorities in bringing those responsible to justice.

In a statement, Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said, "These are cowardly attacks on families gathered in peace and prayer to celebrate a day which symbolises harmony and goodwill towards others.".

The first explosion on Sunday struck St. Theresa Catholic Church just after 8 a.m. The attack killed 35 people and wounded another 52, said Slaku Luguard, a coordinator with Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.

Though billions of dollars of oil money flow into the nation's budget yearly, Luguard's agency could only send text messages to journalists asking for their help in getting more ambulances.

Those wounded filled the cement floors of a nearby government hospital, with television images showing them crying in pools of their own blood. Corpses lined an open-air morgue.

The bombing and the delayed response drew anger from those gathering around the church after the blast. The crowd initially blocked emergency workers from the blast site, only allowing them in after soldiers arrived.

"We're trying to calm the situation," Luguard said. "There are some angry people around trying to cause problems."

In Jos, a second explosion struck near the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church, state government spokesman Pam Ayuba said. Gunmen later opened fire on police guarding the area, killing one officer, he said. Two other locally made explosives were found in a nearby building and disarmed.

By noon Sunday, explosions echoed through the streets of Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state where fighting between security forces and the sect already had killed at least 61 people in recent days. The most serious attack on Sunday came when a suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with explosives at the state headquarters of Nigeria's secret police, the State Security Service.

The bomber killed three people in the blast, though the senior military commander apparently targeted survived the attack, the State Security Service said in a statement.

After the bombings, a Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in an interview with The Daily Trust, the newspaper of record across Nigeria's Muslim north. The sect has used the newspaper in the past to communicate with public.

Boko Haram has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. The group, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, is responsible for at least 504 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count.

This Christmas attack comes a year after a series of Christmas Eve bombings in Jos claimed by the militants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded. The group also claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria's capital Abuja that killed 24 people and wounded 116 others.

The sect came to national prominence in 2009, when its members rioted and burned police stations near its base of Maiduguri, a dusty northeastern city on the cusp of the Sahara Desert. Nigeria's military violently put down the attack, crushing the sect's mosque into shards as its leader was arrested and died in police custody. About 700 people died during the violence.

While initially targeting enemies via hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes after the 2009 riot, violence by Boko Haram now has a new sophistication and apparent planning that includes high-profile attacks with greater casualties. That has fueled speculation about the group's ties as it has splintered into at least three different factions, diplomats and security sources say. They say the more extreme wing of the sect maintains contact with terror groups in North Africa and Somalia.

Targeting the group has remained difficult, as sect members are scattered throughout northern Nigeria and nearby Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Analysts say political considerations also likely play a part in the country's thus-far muted response: President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the south, may be hesitant to use force in the nation's predominantly Muslim north.

In a statement, Jonathan condemned the blasts as a "unwarranted affront on our collective safety and freedom."

"I want to reassure all Nigerians that government will not relent in its determination to bring to justice all the perpetrators of today's acts of violence and all others before now," Jonathan said.

However, Jonathan has made the same promises after a series of spiraling attacks by the group. His spokesman, Reuben Abati, defended the president by saying the country planned to spend more on security and had made arrests targeting the group.

"The administration is very determined to address this new threat of terrorism that seems to have slipped into our environment," Abati told the AP.

But anger continues to grow over the sect's apparent ability to strike at will - anger that could be seen at St. Theresa Catholic Church. After the blast, someone picked up a burnt piece of wood to scrawl: "Revolution now in the country" on its cement walls. (AP)


You should follow us on twitter @thechurcheport


Source: http://www.thechurchreport.com/index.cfm?objectID=145610

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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Lauren Foo commented on article Answers to Google Interview Questions

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