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WASHINGTON/PORT FOURCHON, La., May 12 (Reuters) - Top oil executives face a second day of grilling by U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday over a deadly well rupture that unleashed a huge oil slick and the specter of environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP Plc (BP.L), Transocean Ltd (RIG.N) and Halliburton Co (HAL.N) are all in the hot seat for their roles in what could be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. A desperate race is on to contain the catastrophe, with BP readying a potential subsea fix and troops ad prisoners rushing to limit damage to the coast, where crude has started to reach shorelines.
Investors have driven the value of BP shares down more than $30 billion, far exceeding even the worst estimates of the spill's cost, reflecting uncertainty about how the calamity will play out, with an unprecedented and shifting situation.
With oil gushing unchecked from the sea floor at an estimated daily rate of least 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 litres), and the expanding slick oozing across the surface, Wednesday was shaping up to be another rough one for the oil industry and its soiled reputation.
The scheduled U.S. House of Representatives hearing and a series of panels in coming weeks could spawn new legislation on offshore drilling, an issue which has been thrust onto the crowded domestic agenda of President Barack Obama.
If Tuesday's hearings are anything to go by, Wednesday's congressional grilling is likely to be harsh.
In hearings before two Senate committees, lawmakers accused executives from BP America Inc, Transocean, and Halliburton of trying to shift the blame to each other, and subjected them to tough questions about safety and how the well was sealed.
Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, at one point interrupted BP America's president, saying, "The culture of this company has been one accident after another." BP had been trying to repair its image since a 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery killed 15.
Also on Wednesday, an activist group called Seize BP plans protests at the company's offices and other sites across the United States to demand the government freeze its assets to ensure payment for the cleanup and compensation for those hurt by the spill.
Eleven workers were killed in the April 20 explosion that sank the rig. Fisheries and tourism, two of the Gulf's economic mainstays, and birds, sea turtles and other wildlife, are all threatened by the unfolding fiasco that could next month exceed the Titanic-sized Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.
Cathy Norman of the Edward Wisner Donation, a land trust that owns the property that makes up the Port of Fourchon, the principal supply harbor for the Gulf's deepwater oil and gas industry, said the area's shoreline already is "disappearing at an astronomical rate."
"The land is holding on by its fingernails. If oil gets in there and the plants all die off, we're going to have just all water," she said.BP spokesman Daren Beaudo, who took reporterson a boat tour, said oil had already washed ashore at three locations: Dauphin Island, Alabama; the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana; and the South Pass-Port Eads area on a remote stretch of Louisiana's mainland.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on Tuesday urged the National Guard to expand efforts to reinforce the state's storm-battered shoreline as a buffer against the slick.
Jindal's call for additional helicopter sand-bagging operations along stretches of beach, and crews to fill in other shoreline breaches with sand hauled in with dump trucks, came just as the state ran short of oil containment booms for newly menaced coastal areas west of the Mississippi River.
The Unified Command for spill response operations said the U.S. Air Force was flying in additional boom to Louisiana from Alaska. But Jindal said time was growing short.
Besides an expansion of emergency coastal restoration work, Jindal sought approval from federal authorities for plans to dredge sand from the Gulf floor to build artificial barrier islands in three zones off southeastern Louisiana. He said such an operation could start to produce new land within 10 days.
The U.S. government is also concerned about whether enough protective booms are being provided to adequately defend the U.S. Gulf Coast shoreline, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Tuesday.
"We have some concerns about getting adequate boom," she told reporters duing a visit to Mobile, Alabama, referring to the plastic barriers that are being strung along the coast to keep the oil off the shore.
BP will try covering the leak with a much smaller funnel than the 98-tonne dome it tried in vain to put in place over the weekend. The so-called "top hat" dome is expected to be placed over the relentless leak on Thursday.
In Port Fourchon, Louisiana, fatigue-clad Army National Guard troops from the 769th Engineer Battalion of Louisiana sweated alongside prisoners in scarlet red pants and white T-shirts with "Inmate Labor" on the back as they filled giant 1,000-pound (450-kg) sandbags.
Black Hawk helicopters dropped the sandbags to plug gaps in coastal beaches through which the oil could seep.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu were to meet with scientists and engineers from both industry and the federal government at the BP Command Center in Houston to discuss ways to stem the disaster. (Additional reporting by Tom Doggett in Washington, Greg Savoy in Venice, Louisiana, Verna Gates in Mobile, Alabama, and Tom Bergin in London; Writing by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Eric Walsh) give me your song
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Microsoft Predicts Fastest-Ever Adoption of New Office Software
Microsoft Corp. expects customers to adopt the new version of Office at the fastest pace in the software’s 20-year history, helping reverse a sales slump and fend off competition from Google Inc.’s Web-based programs.
The software has been tested by 7.5 million users, three times as many as any previous version, signaling that adoption will be quick, said Chris Capossela, a senior vice president in the Office group. Users are also likely to upgrade to the new package of business software at the same time they install Windows 7, released last year, he said.
“This version will be the best ever in terms of adoption speed, both because of the interest we are seeing and the Windows 7 adoption curve,” Capossela said in an interview last week. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, will hold an event in New York today to mark the official release of Office 2010 to businesses.
Microsoft’s $19 billion business division, which gets most of its revenue from Office, could use the boost. Its sales will drop 3 percent in the fiscal year ending in June, estimates UBS AG analyst Brent Thill. While the new software will spur orders in the coming year, the comeback will hinge on whether businesses recommit to technology spending -- something they’ve been slow to do in the wake of the recession.
‘Precarious Recovery’
“It’s still a precarious recovery,” said Sarah Friar, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in San Francisco, who recommends buying Microsoft shares. “We’re in the camp of expecting a more moderate migration. It’s kind of, ‘steady as she goes.’ It’s not a raging rush to upgrade.”
Microsoft said last month that a recovery in corporate spending on personal computers and software was just beginning. Multiyear contracts, which account for 60 percent of the Office unit’s sales, are still taking longer to close because businesses are keeping a lid on expenses.
Home-computer shoppers have fueled the PC industry’s rebound so far, snapping up laptops and netbooks.
“I wish I could predict what business PC adoption is going to be,” Microsoft’s Capossela said. “It’s wonderful to see consumers buying PCs in such numbers. That sets us up for a great consumer uptake. The business uptake will also be excellent, but businesses are certainly slower to start spending money again.”
Aging Software
More than half of Office customers now use a version of the program that’s at least seven years old, giving Microsoft an opportunity to get them to switch, Thill said. For the year starting July 1, the new Office will spur an increase of 12 percent for the business division, he predicts.
For the first time, Office will include Web-based versions of popular programs like Word and Excel. The company already has 40 million users of Internet-delivered versions of its Exchange e-mail server and SharePoint server programs, which let customers’ employees create internal company websites and collaborate on projects.
Office 2010 also adds the ability to edit photos and videos in PowerPoint presentations, and co-authoring features let different people work on one file at the same time. Users can select an option to save documents on the Internet, so they can be retrieved when employees are away from the office.
Customers also can broadcast PowerPoint slide shows over the Internet to any user with a Web browser. The Outlook Social Connector turns the e-mail program into a central repository for data from sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.
Google Apps
Adding Internet features gives Microsoft fresh ammunition against Google, which has targeted Office customers with its Internet-based Google Apps.
Businesses that already have Office 2007 should just update it with Google Apps to add Internet and collaboration features, Google says. Many workers don’t need a new version of Office, or any version at all, said Chris Vander Mey, a product manager at Mountain View, California-based Google.
“Office is a really good product and every company should have two or three copies,” he said. “But there’s a significant number of employees that don’t need it.”
Google says 3,000 businesses sign up each day for its apps. The company lands a large corporate customer every few weeks, mostly for the Gmail e-mail service, said Andrew Kovacs, a Google spokesman. Recent new customers include packaging company MeadWestvaco Corp. and Air France-KLM Group’s KLM unit, which will have its 11,200 crew members use Gmail.
Capossela said Office programs like Outlook and Word are used by the bulk of workers at Microsoft’s corporate customers. Most employees don’t want to switch to Google, he said. Uploading a file to Google Apps often doesn’t preserve details and formatting, Capossela said.
Microsoft’s push into Web-based programs is motivated more by customer demand than competition with Google, said Goldman Sachs’s Friar. Growth in software delivered as an Internet service is going to outpace standard programs by 5-to-1, she said.
“It’s a must for them to have done it -- the world is moving to software as service,” she said. “It’s the biggest shift in the software market.”a famous violinist
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The software has been tested by 7.5 million users, three times as many as any previous version, signaling that adoption will be quick, said Chris Capossela, a senior vice president in the Office group. Users are also likely to upgrade to the new package of business software at the same time they install Windows 7, released last year, he said.
“This version will be the best ever in terms of adoption speed, both because of the interest we are seeing and the Windows 7 adoption curve,” Capossela said in an interview last week. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, will hold an event in New York today to mark the official release of Office 2010 to businesses.
Microsoft’s $19 billion business division, which gets most of its revenue from Office, could use the boost. Its sales will drop 3 percent in the fiscal year ending in June, estimates UBS AG analyst Brent Thill. While the new software will spur orders in the coming year, the comeback will hinge on whether businesses recommit to technology spending -- something they’ve been slow to do in the wake of the recession.
‘Precarious Recovery’
“It’s still a precarious recovery,” said Sarah Friar, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in San Francisco, who recommends buying Microsoft shares. “We’re in the camp of expecting a more moderate migration. It’s kind of, ‘steady as she goes.’ It’s not a raging rush to upgrade.”
Microsoft said last month that a recovery in corporate spending on personal computers and software was just beginning. Multiyear contracts, which account for 60 percent of the Office unit’s sales, are still taking longer to close because businesses are keeping a lid on expenses.
Home-computer shoppers have fueled the PC industry’s rebound so far, snapping up laptops and netbooks.
“I wish I could predict what business PC adoption is going to be,” Microsoft’s Capossela said. “It’s wonderful to see consumers buying PCs in such numbers. That sets us up for a great consumer uptake. The business uptake will also be excellent, but businesses are certainly slower to start spending money again.”
Aging Software
More than half of Office customers now use a version of the program that’s at least seven years old, giving Microsoft an opportunity to get them to switch, Thill said. For the year starting July 1, the new Office will spur an increase of 12 percent for the business division, he predicts.
For the first time, Office will include Web-based versions of popular programs like Word and Excel. The company already has 40 million users of Internet-delivered versions of its Exchange e-mail server and SharePoint server programs, which let customers’ employees create internal company websites and collaborate on projects.
Office 2010 also adds the ability to edit photos and videos in PowerPoint presentations, and co-authoring features let different people work on one file at the same time. Users can select an option to save documents on the Internet, so they can be retrieved when employees are away from the office.
Customers also can broadcast PowerPoint slide shows over the Internet to any user with a Web browser. The Outlook Social Connector turns the e-mail program into a central repository for data from sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.
Google Apps
Adding Internet features gives Microsoft fresh ammunition against Google, which has targeted Office customers with its Internet-based Google Apps.
Businesses that already have Office 2007 should just update it with Google Apps to add Internet and collaboration features, Google says. Many workers don’t need a new version of Office, or any version at all, said Chris Vander Mey, a product manager at Mountain View, California-based Google.
“Office is a really good product and every company should have two or three copies,” he said. “But there’s a significant number of employees that don’t need it.”
Google says 3,000 businesses sign up each day for its apps. The company lands a large corporate customer every few weeks, mostly for the Gmail e-mail service, said Andrew Kovacs, a Google spokesman. Recent new customers include packaging company MeadWestvaco Corp. and Air France-KLM Group’s KLM unit, which will have its 11,200 crew members use Gmail.
Capossela said Office programs like Outlook and Word are used by the bulk of workers at Microsoft’s corporate customers. Most employees don’t want to switch to Google, he said. Uploading a file to Google Apps often doesn’t preserve details and formatting, Capossela said.
Microsoft’s push into Web-based programs is motivated more by customer demand than competition with Google, said Goldman Sachs’s Friar. Growth in software delivered as an Internet service is going to outpace standard programs by 5-to-1, she said.
“It’s a must for them to have done it -- the world is moving to software as service,” she said. “It’s the biggest shift in the software market.”a famous violinist
A Midsummer Night's Dream
the fifth floor
A Different Story
love code
http://www.richardbey.org/forums
http://www.sfrsh.biz
http://www.bearmania.net/forums
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