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Madonna

If That Is Your Real Name…

Those born with a thirst for fame as well as an unfortunate (or boring) moniker face a tougher road to the A-list. So it’s no wonder that many celebs choose to drop their given name for something a bit more… catchy.

Of course, the gawking public isn’t dumb. They know the odds are slim that Sting was born with such an evocative handle. Each week we see an avalanche of searches for celebrity “real names.” Folks look up the obvious stage names (Larry the Cable Guy) as well as some that are a tad more subtle (John Wayne). Some of the lookups are met with disappointment. Madonna‘s real name is, in fact, Madonna. Same deal with Prince.

Below we list the 20 top “real name” searches from the past week. Madonna and Tiger top the list, but you’ll find all sorts of actors, athletes, and musicians in the mix. Most people stick with the name they’re given. Celebrities are not “most people.”

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A “spine” of wires and pipes supplies power, cooling and other vital resources throughout Microsoft’s Chicago data center, which is under construction.
(click for image gallery)

Though the building alone covers a whopping 11 acres, you can’t even see Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s new $550 million data center in the hills west of San Antonio until you’re practically on top of it. But by that point, you can hardly see anything else.

These days, the massive data center is a bustling construction zone where visitors have to wear hardhats, helmets, orange safety vests, goggles and gloves. By September, it’ll be the newest star in Microsoft’s rapidly expanding collection of massive data centers, powering Microsoft’s forays into cloud computing like Live Mesh and Exchange Online, among plenty of other as-yet-unannounced services. Pulling in, visitors are stopped by Securitas guards who check IDs and ask if they work for Microsoft. An incomplete gate marks the way. Microsoft’s general manager of data center services, Mike Manos, won’t say exactly what security measures will be in place when the data center opens, but won’t rule anything out. “Will the gates be able to stop a speeding Mack truck?” I ask. “Or more,” he responds. “Will you have biometrics?” “We have just about everything.”

As the car rounds the bend beyond the gate, the building sweeps into full view. The San Antonio data center building itself is 475,000 square feet, or about 11 acres. It’s a 1.3 mile walk to circumnavigate the building. To get a perspective on that, it’s one building that’s the size of almost 10 football fields laid out side-by-side, or 1/10th the floor space of the entire Sears Tower, covered with servers and electrical equipment. “I thought I understood what scale looked like,” Manos says.

When the San Antonio data center was under peak construction, 965 people were working full time to build it, with more than 15 trucks of material coming and going each day in order to get the job done in 18 months from scouting the site to opening up. The facilities were built with continuous workflow of materials in mind, even after the site’s completion.

As one walks toward the data center’s main entrance, a feature that stands out is a row of several truck bays much like would be seen in an industrial park. Trucks pull up and leave servers or other materials inside the bays or “truck tracks,” to be picked up and inventoried in the next room and then moved to storage or deployment.

Most everything in the data center is functional. On the small scale, wainscoting-like pieces of plywood cover the bottom of hallway walls to protect both the walls and servers and other equipment moving back and forth. On the large scale, San Antonio is actually two data centers side by side to separate business risk. “One side could burn down and the other one could continue to operate,” Manos says.

The components inside are just as gargantuan as those on the outside. Seven massive battery rooms contain hundreds of batteries and 2.7 mW of back-up power apiece. Very few industrial sites, among them aluminum smelters, silicon manufacturers and automobile factories, consume as much energy as mega data centers of the order Microsoft is building.

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It’s been a while since we stopped by Planet Britney, mostly because there are only so many ways you can poke fun at the mentally unwell.

However, it seems as if Britney Spears might actually be getting better in leaps and bounds, because she’s just been granted that most valuable of parenting rights – the overnight visit.

Sean Preston and Jayden James being able to sleep at their mother’s house isn’t just good news for Britney Spears – Kevin Federline will also benefit from the ruling – it means he’ll now get to wake up some mornings without the hassle of dealing with crap and piss-covered bedsheets. Seriously, sneaking them into the washing machine before the kids woke up and wondered why daddy’s room smelt funny was such a chore.

It’s been a long, hard, harrowing journey so far – sometimes it felt like being trapped in a tunnel with no beginning and no end. There have been tears, there have been tantrums, but finally the clouds are starting to lift – Britney Spears might be getting well enough for us not to feel like monsters for taking the piss out of her. Hooray!

Ever since she locked herself in a bathroom topless with one of her kids and didn’t come out until the brain doctors turned up, we’ve had to say goodbye to comically unaware Britney Spears, and had to make do with a Britney Spears who was such an unfit liability that she wasn’t even allowed to go to the toilet by herself for fear that she’d wind up trying to strangle herself with her own piss-stream in a traumatic cry for help.

However, with the help of her parents, Britney Spears has been fighting to get better. And this has been for one reason only – to get her kids back. Sure, Britney might have behaved slightly irresponsibly with them in the past but – spurred on by the knowledge that her sons probably lose two or three of their already meagre IQ points for every hour they spend in direct contact with Kevin Federline – she’s made winning them back her absolute goal.

And yesterday Britney Spears took a very definite step forward. That’s right – Britney Spears has now been granted permission to lie unconscious in an entirely separate room to her equally unconscious children. Happy days! E! Online reports:

The court session, attended by both Spears and Kevin Federline, resulted in “a change of visitation status” for the new aunt, Los Angeles Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini told reporters at a brief posthearing press conference. Sources told E! News that Court Commissioner Scott Gordon granted Spears overnight visits with her sons, beginning as soon as this weekend.

It’s a proud moment for Britney Spears’ recovery, that’s for sure. In effect the Court Commissioner has said that Britney Spears isn’t as likely to stay up all night letting off an unrelenting stream of harrowing animal yowls as she was before. Or that she is as likely to do that but it’ll sound like a beautiful lullaby to the kids after six months of hearing Popozao all the poxy time. We haven’t quite worked that one out yet.

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Posted by John Foley, Jun 25, 2008 01:30 PM

I’ve had occasion to chat with Bill Gates a number of times over the years, and there’s often a point when something unexpected happens. He’s been brutally honest, occasionally evasive, and surreptitiously a nice guy. As Gates gets ready to ride off into the software sunset, here are a few anecdotes that stand out.

Bill Gates is retiring five years earlier than planned. It’s an obscure fact, but true. Back in August of 2003, in a luncheon speech at the Detroit Economic Club, Gates said he had “a little more than 10 years” left in his software “career.” The math is simple–that would be 2013. A mere three years after that speech, however, Gates surprised the business world with his announcement of a 2008 retirement, five years earlier than indicated. New York Times reporter John Markoff caught this discrepancy. It was the first question out of Markoff’s mouth at Gates’ retirement news conference, but Gates said he didn’t recall his earlier statement, and the subject was dropped. See my blog, “Bill Gates Waves Goodbye Earlier Than Planned,” for all the details.

Bill Gates and Scott McNealy weren’t really archenemies. In January of 1996, I was on Sun’s campus for a day of interviews. This was at the height of the Sun v. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) wars, and speculation was that Sun was negotiating to acquire Apple. McNealy, however, was relaxed and eating frozen yogurt during our interview. His first son, Maverick, had been born a few months earlier, and McNealy excitedly went to a corner of his office to show me something. It was a hand-written note from Bill Gates congratulating him the new arrival.

Bill Gates dodged only one question. In 2003, IT departments were spending hours patching buggy Windows PCs. One CIO I know crunched the numbers and said he was going to bill Microsoft for the work put in by his staff. So I asked Gates whether other business customers were making their own demands for reimbursement. “Is this something you’re talking to business customers about—somehow taking some of the financial responsibility for the work they’re having to do?” After a very long pause, Gates answered: “We’re very focused on doing our best to avoid these problems. That’s our focus.” It’s the only time he completely sidestepped a question during one of our interviews.

Bill Gates has a calculator in his head. OK, so that’s not a revelation, but I saw it in action when Gates walked me through the evolution from 16-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit computing. The occasion was the launch of 64-bit Windows, and Gates was walking me through the advances in microprocessor design over the years. He started with the premise that the IT industry had been gobbling up about 1 bit of memory address space per year, resulting in a need for ever more address space. During the interview, Gates came to the realization that the industry was consuming address space at nearly double the rate of the past. For more on this, see “A Trip Down ‘Memory Lane’ With Bill Gates.”

Bill Gates once gave his own software the lowest possible rating. In May of 2002, just a few weeks after Gates’ famous memo on Trustworthy Computing, my colleague Chris Murphy and I interviewed Gates for more than an hour in New York. I mention the length of the interview to make the point that Gates can be generous with his time. It’s usually the PR people who cut off an interview or try to keep the discussion “on topic.” Gates himself tends to be freewheeling. Towards the end of the interview, we asked him to rate Microsoft’s overall software quality on a scale of one to 10, where one was unsatisfactory and 10 was high satisfaction. His answer: “Is it as good as people want? One.” It was a blunt self-assessment, and the right one at the time. For the full Q&A, see “Bill Gates On Trustworthy Computing.”

Bill Gates drinks, or sips, double fisted. The scene was an invitation-only dinner for about 15 journalists in Las Vegas a few years ago. Jeff Raikes was the host of my table, and Gates was at the next table. After dinner they got up and switched tables in order to spend a little time with all the guests. Red and white wines had been served with dinner, and Gates carried a glass of each with him. Managing two drinks at once may be politically incorrect in some circles, but not in this one and not on this occasion. Windows Longhorn was in the throes of development. We all understood.

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LimitNone, a small software development company, is seeking nearly $1 billion in damages in a lawsuit that accuses Google of reneging on a partnership with the small company and misappropriating its trade secrets for its Google Apps online service.

Specifically, the suit concerns LimitNone software called gMove designed to let people move e-mail, contacts, and calendar information stored in Microsoft Outlook to Google’s online service. Google initially helped LimitNone develop, promote, and sell the product, assuring LimitNone it wouldn’t offer a competing product, but then reversed course by giving away its own tool, Google E-mail Uploader, to premier-level Google Apps customers, the lawsuit said.

“With gMove priced at $19 per copy and Google’s prediction that there were potentially 50 million users, Google deprived LimitNone of a $950 million opportunity by offering Google’s competitive product for free as a part of its ‘premier’ Google Apps package,” the lawsuit, filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois.

Google didn’t immediately comment for this story.

LimitNone had shared confidential technical and sales forecast details with Google, the lawsuit said.

“Without Google’s knowledge and use of the gMove trade secrets and confidential information, Google would not have been able to solve its longstanding Microsoft Outlook to Gmail conversion problem,” the lawsuit said. “At a minimum, Google’s access to the internal workings of gMove allowed it to gain a significant head start on designing the inner workings for a competing application.”

Google’s product “copied gMove’s look, feel, functionality, and distribution model, including several unique and proprietary operations,” the suit said.

Source

Yahoo’s Yang: On the hot seat

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

And you thought a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo was over and done with?

Not so fast.

Microsoft has signaled that it is willing to sweeten its previous offer for a partial buyout of Yahoo’s search business, according to one major investor who has been in contact with both parties.

Neither Microsoft nor Yahoo had immediate comment.

After the termination of discussions with Microsoft less than two weeks ago, Yahoo’s board said in a statement that a sale leaving the company without an independent search business “would not be in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders.”

But the source noted that several of Yahoo’s nine board members, including its chairman, Roy Bostock, have since indicated a willingness to hold further discussions with Microsoft on a possible deal to sell the search operations.

“When Microsoft made its offer to acquire Yahoo’s search business, Yahoo rejected the offer outright. There was no negotiating beyond the ($9 billion offer) Microsoft was offering,” the source said.

Steve Ballmer: It ain’t over `till it’s over?

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

After the Microsoft negotiations collapsed, Yahoo struck a search advertising outsourcing deal with Google. But that hasn’t impressed shareholders. Shares of Yahoo, which traded at $23.52 the day of the Google announcement, closed at $21.45 on Monday.

Meanwhile, rumors of an impending Yahoo reorganization–a big one that could come as early as this week–continue to swirl.

Investors clamoring for change have pointed to the approximately 35 percent decline in Yahoo’s share price since Microsoft’s $33 per share offer to acquire all of Yahoo. Microsoft withdrew that offer in May after failing to get a “yes” from Yahoo. Shares of Yahoo are now within hailing distance of the $19 per share trading level they hovered at prior to Microsoft’s unsolicited bid in February.

Meanwhile, the future of Yahoo’s CEO and co-founder, Jerry Yang, as well as a number of the company’s other directors, remains undecided. Yahoo has been stunned by a run of high-profile resignations in the last couple of weeks. But Yang has remained out of public since announcing the Google arrangement, feeding speculation about his future. The company’s annual shareholders meeting takes place on August 1.

The source questioned whether unrest about the stock price would force a change at the top as well. “A lot of Yahoo directors are fed up with the process of what’s been happening,” the source said.

Should Microsoft increase its buyout bid for just Yahoo’s search assets, and if the company’s investors find it appealing enough–even if Yahoo’s board does not–investor activist Carl Icahn may consider keeping with his initial game plan of running a dissident slate to win control the board.

But according to an institutional investor advisory services source, Icahn would still likely stand a better chance just running a partial slate of dissident directors for minority representation on the board–even if Microsoft makes a public statement of a sweetened offer to buy only Yahoo’s search business.

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The weepy countdown to Bill Gates’ last day on the job as a full-timer must be getting to Steve Ballmer. Always full of surprises, the big galoot is at it again.

Eric who?

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

In a revealing interview with The Financial Times, Ballmer distanced Microsoft from any criticism that it’s lost a step over the years. In fact, he added, why not point fingers at some other software behemoth? (Any guesses who that might be?)

I haven’t seen speed out of Google really. I mean, come on. They have one product. It’s been the same for five years–and they have Gmail now, but they have one product that makes all their money, and it hasn’t changed in five years.

Yes, but as his erstwhile comrade in arms is wont to say, doesn’t that speak to the magic of software? Ballmer can try and call out Google for being a one-trick pony. Still that’s one heckuva pony. Truth be told, if Microsoft enjoyed that sort of technology prowess in search, I very much doubt Ballmer would have wasted four months wooing a unenthusiastic Jerry Yang.

But what’s with the nonstop trash talk from the CEO–especially in the countdown to Gates’ upcoming “Going Away Day?” He ought to watch his words. Over the next week, Ballmer is going to be all over the media, reaffirming that Microsoft is finished with its Yahoo crush and as relevant as ever. Inevitably, reporters will pop the “What about Google?” question. And the more Ballmer insists on convincing interlocutors about chinks in Google’s armor, the less people will believe him. In the same FT interview, for instance, Ballmer says the following:

I mean, (Google has) a gestalt, but gestalt is gestalt. Let’s talk about the reality. The reality is one product makes 98 percent of all of their money, search. Oh, they have two products, AdWords and AdSense. They have two products, both search-based, that make all of their money, and it hasn’t changed a lot in five years. I’m not giving them a hard time, but we’ve got to learn–if you say, what have you learned, we try to learn from people’s successes, not from people’s gestalt. The gestalt is yet to be proven.

Gestalt? If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to diagnose this as a severe case of Google envy (which may be the flip side of Microsoft’s ongoing search for respect as a technology innovator.)

“We’re trained in Silicon Valley to believe that Microsoft steals other peoples’ innovations,” says Microsoft’s Stephen Elop, who replaced the retiring Jeff Raikes as president of the company’s Business Division. “We just don’t give Microsoft credit. I don’t know whether that’s because of arrogance or hubris.”

I spoke with Elop a few weeks ago. As I reviewed my notes, his comments as a former outsider shed a different light on Ballmer’s ongoing eruptions of “Google-itis.”

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Out of pure curiosity we started tracking Yahoo execs who’ve left the company since January 2007. It’s hard to believe, but at least fifty of them have bailed out in the last year and a half.

Some went to work for Google. Others went to startups. Many just left without saying what’s next.

We aren’t able to track the thousands of non-execs who’ve quit or were laid off, there are just too many of them. Many of these ex Yahoo’ers have congregated on this Yahoo Alumni Page on Facebook, with over 1,500 members. This picture above was taken from the group photos in that group.

We’re keeping an active spreadsheet of as many as we can track down, and have copied it below. If you know of ones we missed, please let us know in the comments.

And it appears that the exodus is just really getting started. We’ll keep this up to date in the future as well.

Update: 6/21/08 There were 50 people on our original list. We are now up to 114.

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CrunchBase Information

Yahoo!

Website:	yahoo.com
Location:	Sunnyvale, California, United States
Founded:	1994
IPO:	April 12, 1996

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Learn More

Information provided by CrunchBase

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Wanted Exclusive Trailer HD

On Monday MySpace and TechCrunch will be showing a special free screening of the new Angelina Jolie movie Wanted at the AMC Metreon in San Francisco. We gave out 200 tickets earlier this week (they were gone in 15 minutes, the wait list was full right after).

We have a few more seats in reserve, and we want to make sure that anyone who really wants to see the movie a full four days before the official release has a shot at it. Tell us why you want to attend in the comments below. The best five answers get two tickets each. The movie starts at 7:30 p.m. (you can arrive as early as 6:30).

Answers will be judged on comedic content, originality and sarcasm. In particular, if anyone can prove that bullets can actually be curved, they get in. Video comments get bonus points.

Details:

AMC Loews Metreon
Monday, June 23
101 4th St
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 369-6201

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European air force bases that store U.S. nuclear bombs are failing to meet basic security requirements to safeguard the weapons, according to a report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The U.S. keeps an estimated 350 thermonuclear bombs in six NATO countries. In four of those — Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands — the weapons are stored at the host nation’s air bases, where they are guarded by specially trained U.S. military personnel.

But according to an internal U.S. Air Force report, the sites are falling short of Department of Defense requirements, with fencing and security systems in need of repair, thin rotations that often lead to staffing shortages, and responsibilities falling to inadequately trained foreign security personnel.

The report, titled “The Blue Ribbon Review of Nuclear Weapons Policies and Procedures,” caused a stir in February after a summary of its findings identified an overall slip in nuclear weapons safety that allowed a B-52 bomber to carry six live nuclear warheads across the U.S. last year. The report led U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to force the resignations of the Air Force’s top civilian and military leaders earlier this month.

But the full text of the document, obtained by Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and posted on his blog, shows the extent to which U.S. Air Force inspectors worry about the safety of weapons in Europe.

While it deemed the teams guarding U.S. weapons as well trained, the report found “inconsistencies in personnel, facilities and equipment provided to the security mission by the host nation.” In particular, it said that areas in need of repair at several of the sites include “support buildings, fencing, lighting and security systems.”

“In some cases,” the report said, “conscripts, whose total active duty commitment is nine months, provide security manpower, while other locations have the challenge of working with unionized security personnel.”

The report concluded: “A consistently noted theme throughout the visits was that most sites require significant additional resources to meet DoD security requirements.”

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