Particle physicists detect neutrinos travelling faster than light, a feat forbidden by Einstein’s theory of special relativity It is a concept that forms a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe and the concept of time – nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But now it seems that researchers working in one of the world’s largest physics laboratories, under a mountain in central Italy, have recorded particles travelling at a speed that is supposedly forbidden by Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Scientists at the Gran Sasso facility will unveil evidence on Friday that raises the troubling possibility of a way to send information back in time, blurring the line between past and present and wreaking havoc with the fundamental principle of cause and effect. They will announce the result at a special seminar at Cern – the European particle physics laboratory – timed to coincide with the publication of a research paper describing the experiment. Researchers on the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment recorded the arrival times of ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos sent from Cern on a 730km journey through the Earth to the Gran Sasso lab. The trip would take a beam of light 2.4 milliseconds to complete, but after running the experiment for three years and timing the arrival of 15,000 neutrinos, the scientists discovered that the particles arrived at Gran Sasso sixty billionths of a second earlier, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 billionths of a second. The measurement amounts to the neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light by a fraction of 20 parts per million. Since the speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second, the neutrinos were evidently travelling at 299,798,454 metres per second. The result is so unlikely that even the research team is being cautious with its interpretation. Physicists said they would be sceptical of the finding until other laboratories confirmed the result. Antonio Ereditato, coordinator of the Opera collaboration, told the Guardian: “We are very much astonished by this result, but a result is never a discovery until other people confirm it. “When you get such a result you want to make sure you made no mistakes, that there are no nasty things going on you didn’t think of. We spent months and months doing checks and we have not been able to find any errors. “If there is a problem, it must be a tough, nasty effect, because trivial things we are clever enough to rule out.” The Opera group said it hoped the physics community would scrutinise the result and help uncover any flaws in the measurement, or verify it with their own experiments. Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University, said: “If this is proved to be true it would be a massive, massive event. It is something nobody was expecting. “The constancy of the speed of light essentially underpins our understanding of space and time and causality, which is the fact that cause comes before effect. “Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered.” The Opera experiment detects neutrinos as they strike 150,000 “bricks” of photographic emulsion films interleaved with lead plates. The detector weighs a total of 1300 tonnes. Despite the marginal increase on the speed of light observed by Ereditato’s team, the result is intriguing because its statistical significance, the measure by which particle physics discoveries stand and fall, is so strong. Physicists can claim a discovery if the chances of their result being a fluke of statistics are greater than five standard deviations, or less than one in a few million. The Gran Sasso team’s result is six standard deviations. Ereditato said the team would not claim a discovery because the result was so radical. “Whenever you touch something so fundamental, you have to be much more prudent,” he said. Alan Kostelecky, an expert in the possibility of faster-than-light processes at Indiana University, said that while physicists would await confirmation of the result, it was none the less exciting. “It’s such a dramatic result it would be difficult to accept without others replicating it, but there will be enormous interest in this,” he told the Guardian. One theory Kostelecky and his colleagues put forward in 1985 predicted that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light by interacting with an unknown field that lurks in the vacuum. “With this kind of background, it is not necessarily the case that the limiting speed in nature is the speed of light,” he said. “It might actually be the speed of neutrinos and light goes more slowly.” Neutrinos are mysterious particles. They have a minuscule mass, no electric charge, and pass through almost any material as though it was not there. Kostelecky said that if the result was verified – a big if – it might pave the way to a grand theory that marries gravity with quantum mechanics, a puzzle that has defied physicists for nearly a century. “If this is confirmed, this is the first evidence for a crack in the structure of physics as we know it that could provide a clue to constructing such a unified theory,” Kostelecky said. Heinrich Paes, a physicist at Dortmund University, has developed another theory that could explain the result. The neutrinos may be taking a shortcut through space-time, by travelling from Cern to Gran Sasso through extra dimensions. “That can make it look like a particle has gone faster than the speed of light when it hasn’t,” he said. But Susan Cartwright, senior lecturer in particle astrophysics at Sheffield University, said: “Neutrino experimental results are not historically all that reliable, so the words ‘don’t hold your breath’ do spring to mind when you hear very counter-intuitive results like this.” Teams at two experiments known as T2K in Japan and MINOS near Chicago in the US will now attempt to replicate the finding. The MINOS experiment saw hints of neutrinos moving at faster than the speed of light in 2007 but has yet to confirm them. Particle physics Cern Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Particle physicists detect neutrinos travelling faster than light, a feat forbidden by Einstein’s theory of special relativity It is a concept that forms a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe and the concept of time – nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But now it seems that researchers working in one of the world’s largest physics laboratories, under a mountain in central Italy, have recorded particles travelling at a speed that is supposedly forbidden by Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Scientists at the Gran Sasso facility will unveil evidence on Friday that raises the troubling possibility of a way to send information back in time, blurring the line between past and present and wreaking havoc with the fundamental principle of cause and effect. They will announce the result at a special seminar at Cern – the European particle physics laboratory – timed to coincide with the publication of a research paper describing the experiment. Researchers on the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment recorded the arrival times of ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos sent from Cern on a 730km journey through the Earth to the Gran Sasso lab. The trip would take a beam of light 2.4 milliseconds to complete, but after running the experiment for three years and timing the arrival of 15,000 neutrinos, the scientists discovered that the particles arrived at Gran Sasso sixty billionths of a second earlier, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 billionths of a second. The measurement amounts to the neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light by a fraction of 20 parts per million. Since the speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second, the neutrinos were evidently travelling at 299,798,454 metres per second. The result is so unlikely that even the research team is being cautious with its interpretation. Physicists said they would be sceptical of the finding until other laboratories confirmed the result. Antonio Ereditato, coordinator of the Opera collaboration, told the Guardian: “We are very much astonished by this result, but a result is never a discovery until other people confirm it. “When you get such a result you want to make sure you made no mistakes, that there are no nasty things going on you didn’t think of. We spent months and months doing checks and we have not been able to find any errors. “If there is a problem, it must be a tough, nasty effect, because trivial things we are clever enough to rule out.” The Opera group said it hoped the physics community would scrutinise the result and help uncover any flaws in the measurement, or verify it with their own experiments. Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University, said: “If this is proved to be true it would be a massive, massive event. It is something nobody was expecting. “The constancy of the speed of light essentially underpins our understanding of space and time and causality, which is the fact that cause comes before effect. “Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered.” The Opera experiment detects neutrinos as they strike 150,000 “bricks” of photographic emulsion films interleaved with lead plates. The detector weighs a total of 1300 tonnes. Despite the marginal increase on the speed of light observed by Ereditato’s team, the result is intriguing because its statistical significance, the measure by which particle physics discoveries stand and fall, is so strong. Physicists can claim a discovery if the chances of their result being a fluke of statistics are greater than five standard deviations, or less than one in a few million. The Gran Sasso team’s result is six standard deviations. Ereditato said the team would not claim a discovery because the result was so radical. “Whenever you touch something so fundamental, you have to be much more prudent,” he said. Alan Kostelecky, an expert in the possibility of faster-than-light processes at Indiana University, said that while physicists would await confirmation of the result, it was none the less exciting. “It’s such a dramatic result it would be difficult to accept without others replicating it, but there will be enormous interest in this,” he told the Guardian. One theory Kostelecky and his colleagues put forward in 1985 predicted that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light by interacting with an unknown field that lurks in the vacuum. “With this kind of background, it is not necessarily the case that the limiting speed in nature is the speed of light,” he said. “It might actually be the speed of neutrinos and light goes more slowly.” Neutrinos are mysterious particles. They have a minuscule mass, no electric charge, and pass through almost any material as though it was not there. Kostelecky said that if the result was verified – a big if – it might pave the way to a grand theory that marries gravity with quantum mechanics, a puzzle that has defied physicists for nearly a century. “If this is confirmed, this is the first evidence for a crack in the structure of physics as we know it that could provide a clue to constructing such a unified theory,” Kostelecky said. Heinrich Paes, a physicist at Dortmund University, has developed another theory that could explain the result. The neutrinos may be taking a shortcut through space-time, by travelling from Cern to Gran Sasso through extra dimensions. “That can make it look like a particle has gone faster than the speed of light when it hasn’t,” he said. But Susan Cartwright, senior lecturer in particle astrophysics at Sheffield University, said: “Neutrino experimental results are not historically all that reliable, so the words ‘don’t hold your breath’ do spring to mind when you hear very counter-intuitive results like this.” Teams at two experiments known as T2K in Japan and MINOS near Chicago in the US will now attempt to replicate the finding. The MINOS experiment saw hints of neutrinos moving at faster than the speed of light in 2007 but has yet to confirm them. Particle physics Cern Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Particle physicists detect neutrinos travelling faster than light, a feat forbidden by Einstein’s theory of special relativity It is a concept that forms a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe and the concept of time – nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But now it seems that researchers working in one of the world’s largest physics laboratories, under a mountain in central Italy, have recorded particles travelling at a speed that is supposedly forbidden by Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Scientists at the Gran Sasso facility will unveil evidence on Friday that raises the troubling possibility of a way to send information back in time, blurring the line between past and present and wreaking havoc with the fundamental principle of cause and effect. They will announce the result at a special seminar at Cern – the European particle physics laboratory – timed to coincide with the publication of a research paper describing the experiment. Researchers on the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment recorded the arrival times of ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos sent from Cern on a 730km journey through the Earth to the Gran Sasso lab. The trip would take a beam of light 2.4 milliseconds to complete, but after running the experiment for three years and timing the arrival of 15,000 neutrinos, the scientists discovered that the particles arrived at Gran Sasso sixty billionths of a second earlier, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 billionths of a second. The measurement amounts to the neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light by a fraction of 20 parts per million. Since the speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second, the neutrinos were evidently travelling at 299,798,454 metres per second. The result is so unlikely that even the research team is being cautious with its interpretation. Physicists said they would be sceptical of the finding until other laboratories confirmed the result. Antonio Ereditato, coordinator of the Opera collaboration, told the Guardian: “We are very much astonished by this result, but a result is never a discovery until other people confirm it. “When you get such a result you want to make sure you made no mistakes, that there are no nasty things going on you didn’t think of. We spent months and months doing checks and we have not been able to find any errors. “If there is a problem, it must be a tough, nasty effect, because trivial things we are clever enough to rule out.” The Opera group said it hoped the physics community would scrutinise the result and help uncover any flaws in the measurement, or verify it with their own experiments. Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University, said: “If this is proved to be true it would be a massive, massive event. It is something nobody was expecting. “The constancy of the speed of light essentially underpins our understanding of space and time and causality, which is the fact that cause comes before effect. “Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered.” The Opera experiment detects neutrinos as they strike 150,000 “bricks” of photographic emulsion films interleaved with lead plates. The detector weighs a total of 1300 tonnes. Despite the marginal increase on the speed of light observed by Ereditato’s team, the result is intriguing because its statistical significance, the measure by which particle physics discoveries stand and fall, is so strong. Physicists can claim a discovery if the chances of their result being a fluke of statistics are greater than five standard deviations, or less than one in a few million. The Gran Sasso team’s result is six standard deviations. Ereditato said the team would not claim a discovery because the result was so radical. “Whenever you touch something so fundamental, you have to be much more prudent,” he said. Alan Kostelecky, an expert in the possibility of faster-than-light processes at Indiana University, said that while physicists would await confirmation of the result, it was none the less exciting. “It’s such a dramatic result it would be difficult to accept without others replicating it, but there will be enormous interest in this,” he told the Guardian. One theory Kostelecky and his colleagues put forward in 1985 predicted that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light by interacting with an unknown field that lurks in the vacuum. “With this kind of background, it is not necessarily the case that the limiting speed in nature is the speed of light,” he said. “It might actually be the speed of neutrinos and light goes more slowly.” Neutrinos are mysterious particles. They have a minuscule mass, no electric charge, and pass through almost any material as though it was not there. Kostelecky said that if the result was verified – a big if – it might pave the way to a grand theory that marries gravity with quantum mechanics, a puzzle that has defied physicists for nearly a century. “If this is confirmed, this is the first evidence for a crack in the structure of physics as we know it that could provide a clue to constructing such a unified theory,” Kostelecky said. Heinrich Paes, a physicist at Dortmund University, has developed another theory that could explain the result. The neutrinos may be taking a shortcut through space-time, by travelling from Cern to Gran Sasso through extra dimensions. “That can make it look like a particle has gone faster than the speed of light when it hasn’t,” he said. But Susan Cartwright, senior lecturer in particle astrophysics at Sheffield University, said: “Neutrino experimental results are not historically all that reliable, so the words ‘don’t hold your breath’ do spring to mind when you hear very counter-intuitive results like this.” Teams at two experiments known as T2K in Japan and MINOS near Chicago in the US will now attempt to replicate the finding. The MINOS experiment saw hints of neutrinos moving at faster than the speed of light in 2007 but has yet to confirm them. Particle physics Cern Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
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• Former eBay boss chosen to replace Léo Apotheker at HP • Lawyers will be studying small print in Autonomy offer Léo Apotheker has been fired as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and replaced with Meg Whitman, the giant technology company announced on Thursday evening. Whitman, 55, the former chief executive of eBay and candidate for California governor, and a member of the HP board since January, was confirmed as the replacement following a board meeting yesterday. Apothekerhad been at the helm at HP for only 11 months. Rumours about Apotheker’s replacement began swirling on Wednesday and came to a head in the meeting, the outcome of which was announced after stock markets had closed. The stock was down by about 1% in after-hours trading. Ray Lane, who has moved from non-executive chairman to executive chairman of HP’s board, said: “We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead.” Lane said the board believes “the job of the HP CEO now requires additional attributes”. The board also plans to appoint an independent director. HP is one of the world’s biggest technology companies, with more than 320,000 staff, annual revenues of $120bn (£78bn) – mainly from large “enterprise” customers – and profits of about $5.5bn. The management shake-up represents yet another turnaround strategy at one of Silicon Valley’s oldest – but most publicly dysfunctional – firms. Since joining HP in November, Apotheker’s strategic decisions had been a drastic reversal of the company’s self-image as an inventor of hardware: he announced that it would spin off its PC business, the world’s biggest, closed down its TouchPad tablet and webOS division, and announced a move into services, including the purchase of the British company Autonomy for $11.7bn. It is unclear whether the latter purchase will go ahead under Whitman. HP has four main divisions: Services; Storage & Networking; Personal Systems Group; and Imaging & Printing. Of those, PSG, which is the world’s largest supplier of PCs, is the biggest by revenue – but its 6% profit margin is the lowest within the company by some way. The Guardian’s own analysis shows that if the PSG division could be spun off without harming other divisions, HP’s overall profitability would rise from 7.7% to 12%. But investors were not pleased by the prospect held out by Apotheker, who got terrible ratings from his own staff. The abrupt dismissal follows the revelation that some members of the board did not even meet Apotheker before approving his hiring in late November because they were “tired of all the infighting” that had led up to the dismissal of the previous incumbent, Mark Hurd, in August 2010. That in turn is almost certain to lead to lawsuits from disgruntled stockholders who have seen the value of their holdings fall by nearly 50% in Apotheker’s time in charge of the company. It already faces such a lawsuit filed earlier this week, over the closure of the webOS division, on the basis that it had previously suggested the $1.2bn acquisition of webOS with Palm in July 2010 would play a vital part in the company’s future. Instead Apotheker shut it within 48 days of the TouchPad going on sale. Whitman has been a member of the HP board since January, and so is not tainted by the decision last year to hire Apotheker. But members of the tech community were doubtful that she was the right person for the job. Charles House, a veteran HP engineer, told the New York Times that she would be “an unmitigated disaster”, while Roger McNamee, managing director of Elevation Partners – which sold an interest in Palm when it was acquired by HP in 2009 for more than $1bn – said that “the notion that HP can be fixed by adding a celebrity chief executive is laughable.” Wall Street should react favourably to a new leader, even if it would be HP’s third in six years, after Carly Fiorina (fired in 2005) and Mark Hurd (fired in 2010). But not all analysts were convinced. Although Whitman, 55, grew eBay from a 30-strong company with $86m revenues to one with 15,000 people and almost $8bn revenues, she also oversaw the ineffective $2.8bn purchase of Skype, and left in 2008. Her strengths are consumer-facing, not in the enterprise. Carter Lusher, chief analyst at Ovum, said: “Whitman would do little for the confidence of HP’s enterprise customers. Whitman’s expertise lies primarily in the consumer market, and an interim leader will just prolong the sense of uncertainty.” Apotheker, who joined from the customer management software company SAP in early November, was unable to even turn to his employees for support: his approval rating among them was just 25%, according to the recruitment site Glassdoor. Hewlett-Packard Autonomy Technology sector Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …• Former eBay boss chosen to replace Léo Apotheker at HP • Lawyers will be studying small print in Autonomy offer Léo Apotheker has been fired as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and replaced with Meg Whitman, the giant technology company announced on Thursday evening. Whitman, 55, the former chief executive of eBay and candidate for California governor, and a member of the HP board since January, was confirmed as the replacement following a board meeting yesterday. Apothekerhad been at the helm at HP for only 11 months. Rumours about Apotheker’s replacement began swirling on Wednesday and came to a head in the meeting, the outcome of which was announced after stock markets had closed. The stock was down by about 1% in after-hours trading. Ray Lane, who has moved from non-executive chairman to executive chairman of HP’s board, said: “We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead.” Lane said the board believes “the job of the HP CEO now requires additional attributes”. The board also plans to appoint an independent director. HP is one of the world’s biggest technology companies, with more than 320,000 staff, annual revenues of $120bn (£78bn) – mainly from large “enterprise” customers – and profits of about $5.5bn. The management shake-up represents yet another turnaround strategy at one of Silicon Valley’s oldest – but most publicly dysfunctional – firms. Since joining HP in November, Apotheker’s strategic decisions had been a drastic reversal of the company’s self-image as an inventor of hardware: he announced that it would spin off its PC business, the world’s biggest, closed down its TouchPad tablet and webOS division, and announced a move into services, including the purchase of the British company Autonomy for $11.7bn. It is unclear whether the latter purchase will go ahead under Whitman. HP has four main divisions: Services; Storage & Networking; Personal Systems Group; and Imaging & Printing. Of those, PSG, which is the world’s largest supplier of PCs, is the biggest by revenue – but its 6% profit margin is the lowest within the company by some way. The Guardian’s own analysis shows that if the PSG division could be spun off without harming other divisions, HP’s overall profitability would rise from 7.7% to 12%. But investors were not pleased by the prospect held out by Apotheker, who got terrible ratings from his own staff. The abrupt dismissal follows the revelation that some members of the board did not even meet Apotheker before approving his hiring in late November because they were “tired of all the infighting” that had led up to the dismissal of the previous incumbent, Mark Hurd, in August 2010. That in turn is almost certain to lead to lawsuits from disgruntled stockholders who have seen the value of their holdings fall by nearly 50% in Apotheker’s time in charge of the company. It already faces such a lawsuit filed earlier this week, over the closure of the webOS division, on the basis that it had previously suggested the $1.2bn acquisition of webOS with Palm in July 2010 would play a vital part in the company’s future. Instead Apotheker shut it within 48 days of the TouchPad going on sale. Whitman has been a member of the HP board since January, and so is not tainted by the decision last year to hire Apotheker. But members of the tech community were doubtful that she was the right person for the job. Charles House, a veteran HP engineer, told the New York Times that she would be “an unmitigated disaster”, while Roger McNamee, managing director of Elevation Partners – which sold an interest in Palm when it was acquired by HP in 2009 for more than $1bn – said that “the notion that HP can be fixed by adding a celebrity chief executive is laughable.” Wall Street should react favourably to a new leader, even if it would be HP’s third in six years, after Carly Fiorina (fired in 2005) and Mark Hurd (fired in 2010). But not all analysts were convinced. Although Whitman, 55, grew eBay from a 30-strong company with $86m revenues to one with 15,000 people and almost $8bn revenues, she also oversaw the ineffective $2.8bn purchase of Skype, and left in 2008. Her strengths are consumer-facing, not in the enterprise. Carter Lusher, chief analyst at Ovum, said: “Whitman would do little for the confidence of HP’s enterprise customers. Whitman’s expertise lies primarily in the consumer market, and an interim leader will just prolong the sense of uncertainty.” Apotheker, who joined from the customer management software company SAP in early November, was unable to even turn to his employees for support: his approval rating among them was just 25%, according to the recruitment site Glassdoor. Hewlett-Packard Autonomy Technology sector Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …• Former eBay boss chosen to replace Léo Apotheker at HP • Lawyers will be studying small print in Autonomy offer Léo Apotheker has been fired as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and replaced with Meg Whitman, the giant technology company announced on Thursday evening. Whitman, 55, the former chief executive of eBay and candidate for California governor, and a member of the HP board since January, was confirmed as the replacement following a board meeting yesterday. Apothekerhad been at the helm at HP for only 11 months. Rumours about Apotheker’s replacement began swirling on Wednesday and came to a head in the meeting, the outcome of which was announced after stock markets had closed. The stock was down by about 1% in after-hours trading. Ray Lane, who has moved from non-executive chairman to executive chairman of HP’s board, said: “We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead.” Lane said the board believes “the job of the HP CEO now requires additional attributes”. The board also plans to appoint an independent director. HP is one of the world’s biggest technology companies, with more than 320,000 staff, annual revenues of $120bn (£78bn) – mainly from large “enterprise” customers – and profits of about $5.5bn. The management shake-up represents yet another turnaround strategy at one of Silicon Valley’s oldest – but most publicly dysfunctional – firms. Since joining HP in November, Apotheker’s strategic decisions had been a drastic reversal of the company’s self-image as an inventor of hardware: he announced that it would spin off its PC business, the world’s biggest, closed down its TouchPad tablet and webOS division, and announced a move into services, including the purchase of the British company Autonomy for $11.7bn. It is unclear whether the latter purchase will go ahead under Whitman. HP has four main divisions: Services; Storage & Networking; Personal Systems Group; and Imaging & Printing. Of those, PSG, which is the world’s largest supplier of PCs, is the biggest by revenue – but its 6% profit margin is the lowest within the company by some way. The Guardian’s own analysis shows that if the PSG division could be spun off without harming other divisions, HP’s overall profitability would rise from 7.7% to 12%. But investors were not pleased by the prospect held out by Apotheker, who got terrible ratings from his own staff. The abrupt dismissal follows the revelation that some members of the board did not even meet Apotheker before approving his hiring in late November because they were “tired of all the infighting” that had led up to the dismissal of the previous incumbent, Mark Hurd, in August 2010. That in turn is almost certain to lead to lawsuits from disgruntled stockholders who have seen the value of their holdings fall by nearly 50% in Apotheker’s time in charge of the company. It already faces such a lawsuit filed earlier this week, over the closure of the webOS division, on the basis that it had previously suggested the $1.2bn acquisition of webOS with Palm in July 2010 would play a vital part in the company’s future. Instead Apotheker shut it within 48 days of the TouchPad going on sale. Whitman has been a member of the HP board since January, and so is not tainted by the decision last year to hire Apotheker. But members of the tech community were doubtful that she was the right person for the job. Charles House, a veteran HP engineer, told the New York Times that she would be “an unmitigated disaster”, while Roger McNamee, managing director of Elevation Partners – which sold an interest in Palm when it was acquired by HP in 2009 for more than $1bn – said that “the notion that HP can be fixed by adding a celebrity chief executive is laughable.” Wall Street should react favourably to a new leader, even if it would be HP’s third in six years, after Carly Fiorina (fired in 2005) and Mark Hurd (fired in 2010). But not all analysts were convinced. Although Whitman, 55, grew eBay from a 30-strong company with $86m revenues to one with 15,000 people and almost $8bn revenues, she also oversaw the ineffective $2.8bn purchase of Skype, and left in 2008. Her strengths are consumer-facing, not in the enterprise. Carter Lusher, chief analyst at Ovum, said: “Whitman would do little for the confidence of HP’s enterprise customers. Whitman’s expertise lies primarily in the consumer market, and an interim leader will just prolong the sense of uncertainty.” Apotheker, who joined from the customer management software company SAP in early November, was unable to even turn to his employees for support: his approval rating among them was just 25%, according to the recruitment site Glassdoor. Hewlett-Packard Autonomy Technology sector Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media It looks like Texas Gov. Rick Perry has decided those remarks on secession might not go over so well now that he’s running for president. From Sean Hannity’s show on Fox Wednesday night: HANNITY: All right. But some people said, while you used the term once succession, is that something you believe? PERRY: No, I never used that term at all. As a matter of fact — HANNITY: Why was it reported? PERRY: I have no idea to be real honest with you, because it was never a factual bit of reporting. It was shouted out by an individual at an event at a Tea Party actually. And I said listen, America is a great country. We have no reason that we would ever dissolve this union. But I said I get it about why people are frustrated, because they are seeing Washington spend this massive amount of money, we’ve got a huge debt being created. And people are really frustrated with what they see in Washington, D.C. I understand that, didn’t agree with it, but I understood it. As ThinkProgress reported, among Perry’s other lies he’s been telling lately, although he did not use the term “secession” himself, anyone who listened to what he said knew exactly what he was talking about: Perry is technically correct that he never uttered the word “secession,” but he did say that “when we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again .” Just in case Perry doesn’t remember saying that he is “thinking about” seceding, he can listen to himself saying it here. They’ve got the recording of Perry’s remarks for anyone that wants to listen to it. I’m fairly sure Hannity knows full well what he said about secession as well, but you’re not going to see anything but softball interviews from him when he’s got Republicans on his show.
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Click here to view this media It looks like Texas Gov. Rick Perry has decided those remarks on secession might not go over so well now that he’s running for president. From Sean Hannity’s show on Fox Wednesday night: HANNITY: All right. But some people said, while you used the term once succession, is that something you believe? PERRY: No, I never used that term at all. As a matter of fact — HANNITY: Why was it reported? PERRY: I have no idea to be real honest with you, because it was never a factual bit of reporting. It was shouted out by an individual at an event at a Tea Party actually. And I said listen, America is a great country. We have no reason that we would ever dissolve this union. But I said I get it about why people are frustrated, because they are seeing Washington spend this massive amount of money, we’ve got a huge debt being created. And people are really frustrated with what they see in Washington, D.C. I understand that, didn’t agree with it, but I understood it. As ThinkProgress reported, among Perry’s other lies he’s been telling lately, although he did not use the term “secession” himself, anyone who listened to what he said knew exactly what he was talking about: Perry is technically correct that he never uttered the word “secession,” but he did say that “when we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again .” Just in case Perry doesn’t remember saying that he is “thinking about” seceding, he can listen to himself saying it here. They’ve got the recording of Perry’s remarks for anyone that wants to listen to it. I’m fairly sure Hannity knows full well what he said about secession as well, but you’re not going to see anything but softball interviews from him when he’s got Republicans on his show.
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Click here to view this media It looks like Texas Gov. Rick Perry has decided those remarks on secession might not go over so well now that he’s running for president. From Sean Hannity’s show on Fox Wednesday night: HANNITY: All right. But some people said, while you used the term once succession, is that something you believe? PERRY: No, I never used that term at all. As a matter of fact — HANNITY: Why was it reported? PERRY: I have no idea to be real honest with you, because it was never a factual bit of reporting. It was shouted out by an individual at an event at a Tea Party actually. And I said listen, America is a great country. We have no reason that we would ever dissolve this union. But I said I get it about why people are frustrated, because they are seeing Washington spend this massive amount of money, we’ve got a huge debt being created. And people are really frustrated with what they see in Washington, D.C. I understand that, didn’t agree with it, but I understood it. As ThinkProgress reported, among Perry’s other lies he’s been telling lately, although he did not use the term “secession” himself, anyone who listened to what he said knew exactly what he was talking about: Perry is technically correct that he never uttered the word “secession,” but he did say that “when we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again .” Just in case Perry doesn’t remember saying that he is “thinking about” seceding, he can listen to himself saying it here. They’ve got the recording of Perry’s remarks for anyone that wants to listen to it. I’m fairly sure Hannity knows full well what he said about secession as well, but you’re not going to see anything but softball interviews from him when he’s got Republicans on his show.
Continue reading …Over-Paid Flea Bite, Rush Limbaugh Calls Elizabeth Warren a ‘Parasite’
September 22, 2011 No CommentAnd so the Conservative assault on Elizabeth Warren begins. Limbaugh: You know who the real parasite here is. It’s Elizabeth Warren. I’m familiar with being called a parasite by the likes of Glenn Beck. I wear as badge of honor. Beck: Most Democrats still love America, they love the founders and they love the Constitution and believe in this country. But then there’s another group and they have infiltrated not just the Democratic party, but the Republican party… Speak softly and carry a big stick. blah, blah, blah…We got this from an insider. Wait until you hear this story. The co-chair of the CPC… How many times have I said they are like a virus feeding on the host of republic. The progressives are parasites inside the democrat…. The California progressives weren’t the only ones upset. John Amato of CrooksandLiars wrote on Huffington Post. “for Woolsey to holding a fundraising events for a known Blue Dog should be a firing offense for the CPC.” Progressives Democrats for America joined in, They started an online petition asking her to withdraw from the event. Woolsey said no. I don’t know how this story ends quite frankly it’s California and it’s all going to end in a mudslide right into the bottom of the ocean eventually anyway, but let me tell you something. The last time the progressives were in this position and they started gobbling power and they exposed themselves people caught on and hated them. It’s still an odious thing to say about somebody. And that type of language speaks to the “eliminationist” rhetoric and ideas that conservatives use to attack progressives all the time. They don’t want to defeat us, they want us wiped off the map. Deleted from existence with no room for cache recovery. Glenn Beck hopes California will be lost in a mudslide and all its people will be extinguished with it. Rush goes on to worry about Warren’s pension benefits. How much money does Rush make a year for calling Liberals “parasites ?” Rush Limbaugh just agreed to an eight-year, $400-million-plus extension with Clear Channel to stay on the air. Limbaugh’s deal includes an upfront $100-million signing bonus, which means the annualized average salary will be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $37 million through to 2016. Limbaugh: She’s a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it. Anyway, the attacks have begun. T he Politico and Mark Halperin have also entered the fray. You can donate to our Blue America Senate page where E. Warren is listed along with Bernie because the right wing will do anything to stop her.
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