FCC acts to expand in-flight Internet service

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski addresses the media at the agency's headquarters in 2010. (Alex Wong/Getty Images / December 28, 2012)

Reuters

3:04 p.m. CST, December 28, 2012

The Federal Communications Commission has cleared the way for wider adoption of in-flight Internet services, aiming to cut by as much as 50 percent the time needed for regulatory approval.

Newly adopted rules should boost competition in this part of the U.S. mobile telecommunications market and promote "the widespread availability of Internet access to aircraft passengers," the FCC said in a statement Friday.

Since 2001, the commission has cleared companies case-by-case to market in-flight broadband services via a satellite antenna fixed to an aircraft's exterior.

Under a new framework, the licensing procedures will be simpler, the commission said.

Airlines will be able to test systems that meet the commission's standards, establish that they do not interfere with aircraft systems and then get approval of the Federal Aviation Administration, the FCC statement said.

The FAA, a Labor Department arm responsible for operating the nation's air traffic control system, said in response that the FCC's effort to establish standards "will help to streamline the process" for airlines to install Internet hookups on planes.

The goal is to speed the processing of applications by up to 50 percent, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a separate statement.

The FCC drive to promote broadband aboard planes does not change a ban on the in-flight use of cell phones, which is tied to concerns about interference with ground stations.

Genachowski earlier this month urged the Federal Aviation Administration to allow more electronics on aircraft.

The FAA announced in August that it was forming a government-industry group to study aircraft operators' policies to determine when portable electronic devices may be used safely during flight.

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Gulf War General Schwarzkopf dies

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., the hard-charging U.S. Army general whose forces smashed the Iraqi army in the 1991 Gulf War, has died at the age of 78, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

The highly decorated four-star general died at 2:22 p.m. EST (1922 GMT) at his home in Tampa, Florida, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Schwarzkopf, a burly Vietnam War veteran known to his troops as Stormin' Norman, commanded more than 540,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 allied forces in a six-week war that routed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait in 1991, capping his 34-year military career.

Some experts hailed Schwarzkopf's plan to trick and outflank Hussein's forces with a sweeping armored movement as one of the great accomplishments in military history. The maneuver ended the ground war in only 100 hours.

Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who built the international coalition against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait, said he and his wife "mourn the loss of a true American patriot and one of the great military leaders of his generation," according to a statement released by his spokesman.

Bush has been hospitalized in Houston since late November.

In a statement, the White House called Schwarzkopf "an American original" whose "legacy will endure in a nation that is more secure because of his patriotic service."

PHYSICAL PRESENCE

Schwarzkopf was a familiar sight on international television during the war, clad in camouflage fatigues and a cap. He conducted fast-paced briefings and reviewed his troops with a purposeful stride and a physical presence of the sort that clears bar rooms.

Little known before Iraqi forces invaded neighboring Kuwait, Schwarzkopf made a splash with quotable comments. At one briefing he addressed Saddam's military reputation.

"As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist," he said, "he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man, I want you to know that."

Schwarzkopf returned from the war a hero and there was talk of him running for public office. Instead, he wrote an autobiography - "It Doesn't Take a Hero" - and served as a military analyst.

He also acted as a spokesman for the fight against prostate cancer, with which he was diagnosed in 1993.

Schwarzkopf was born August 22, 1934, in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf Sr., the head of the New Jersey State Police. At the time, the older Schwarzkopf was leading the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of aviator Charles Lindbergh's infant son, one of the most infamous crimes of the 20th century.

The younger Schwarzkopf graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1956. He earned a masters degree in guided-missile engineering from the University of Southern California and later taught engineering at West Point.

Schwarzkopf saw combat twice - in Vietnam and Grenada - in a career that included command of units from platoon to theater size, training as a paratrooper and stints at Army staff colleges.

CHESTFUL OF MEDALS

He led his men in firefights in two tours of Vietnam and commanded all U.S. ground forces in the 1983 Grenada invasion. His chestful of medals included three Silver and three Bronze Stars for valor and two Purple Hearts for Vietnam wounds.

In Vietnam, he won a reputation as an officer who would put his life on the line to protect his troops. In one particularly deadly fight on the Batangan Peninsula, Schwarzkopf led his men through a minefield, in part by having the mines marked with shaving cream.

In 1988, Schwarzkopf was put in charge of the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, with responsibility for the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. In that role, he prepared a plan to protect the Gulf's oil fields from a hypothetical invasion by Iraq. Within months, the plan was in use.

A soldier's soldier in an era of polished, politically conscious military technocrats, Schwarzkopf's mouth sometimes got him in trouble. In one interview, he said he had recommended to Bush that allied forces destroy Iraq's military instead of stopping the war after a clear victory.

Schwarzkopf later apologized after both Bush and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney fired back that there was no contradiction among military leaders to Bush's decision to leave some of Saddam's military intact.

After retirement, Schwarzkopf spoke his mind on military matters. In 2003, when the United States was on the verge of invading Iraq under President George W. Bush, Schwarzkopf said he was unsure whether there was sufficient evidence that Iraq had nuclear weapons.

He also criticized Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense at the time, telling the Washington Post that during war-time television appearances "he almost sometimes seems to be enjoying it."

Schwarzkopf and his wife, Brenda, who he married in 1968, had two daughters and one son.

In a statement, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta praised Schwarzkopf as "one of the great military giants of the 20th century."

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he "embodied the warrior spirit," and called the victory over Hussein's forces the hallmark of his career.

(Reporting by David Alexander, Ian Simpson and Roberta Rampton; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Stacey Joyce and Todd Eastham)

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Apple CEO's pay takes big hit vs. record 2011 package

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook's 2012 compensation package of $4.17 million is a huge cut on paper for the top executive of the most valuable U.S. corporation, after a 2011 package fattened by more than $376 million in long-term stock awards.

Cook received the largest single pay package awarded to a company CEO in about a decade when he replaced Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in August last year, shortly before the Silicon Valley legend's death in October 2011.

The maker of the iPhone and iPad made the 2012 compensation disclosures in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Cook, 52, has been with Apple since 1998.

Virtually all of Cook's $376 million stock bonus in 2011 was in awards that vest in two chunks - one in 2016 and the other in 2021. This structure was intended to keep Jobs' longtime lieutenant at the helm for many years, as the value of the stock will depend on how well the company is doing in 2016 and 2021.

Cook, who is credited with masterminding a sprawling but efficient Asian supply chain, has generally received high marks for his first year for shepherding several successful gadget launches, including the iPhone 5.

But he was forced to make a public apology in September after the company launched a mapping service application riddled with glaring geographical errors. The Maps app fiasco contributed to the departure of fellow Apple veteran and software chief Scott Forstall.

In addition, some analysts questioned whether Cook, whose only major new product since taking the helm was a smaller version of the iPad that Jobs propelled into the mainstream in 2010, has the vision to produce the next big product category and sustain historically stellar growth for Apple as global mobile competition intensifies.

"The jury is still out in terms of the job he is doing," said fund manager Tim Ghriskey, whose Solaris Group counts Apple stock as the biggest holding among the approximately $2 billion it manages.

But he added that the company's long-term prospects look strong, particularly if it rolls out oft-rumored television products in the next few years.

As of Thursday's close, Apple shares were almost 37 percent higher than when Cook became CEO 16 months ago. However, since a record-high close of $702.10 on September 19, the stock has fallen almost 27 percent.

Ghriskey said Wall Street remained nervous about the growing popularity of Google Inc's Android phone software, used by global smartphone leader Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, and potential margin pressure from that intensifying competition.

BY THE NUMBERS

In terms of base salary, Cook actually received a 50 percent increase to $1.4 million for 2012, and the same 200 percent non-equity bonus other top Apple executives like CFO Peter Oppenheimer earned, Apple said in the Thursday filing ahead of a February 27 shareholders' meeting.

Cook's 2012 package includes a nonequity bonus of $2.8 million.

Despite the increase, Apple said Cook's target annual cash compensation is "significantly below the median annual cash compensation level for CEOs at peer companies." It also said that Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012.

Cook's latest compensation package also pales in comparison to his package in 2010, when he was chief operating officer. That package was 14 times higher.

A company spokesman would not comment beyond the filing.

Jobs famously received $1 a year in salary in the three years before he stepped down, though in 2000 he too received a stock option that analysts say was valued at almost $600 million at the time.

Looking beyond Apple, Yahoo Inc's CEO, Marissa Mayer, a former Google Inc high-flyer hired this year to try to turn around the struggling Internet icon, won a pay package worth more than $70 million. [ID:nL1E8LJJB5] Despite her lack of a track record as CEO and Yahoo's tiny size in comparison, her basic pay is comparable to Cook's, with about $1 million in annual salary and up to $2 million in an annual bonus.

Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison, one of the most highly paid U.S. chief executives - and also the world's sixth-richest man, according to Forbes - received total compensation for the year ended May 31, 2012, of $96.2 million - almost all of it in stock options. That compared with $77.6 million in 2011.

According to a study of the Fortune 500 conducted by Forbes this year, CEOs were paid a base salary of $1.1 million in 2011 on average, with the mean annual bonus at $2.4 million and average total compensation - including stock awards - at around $17 million.

Apple shares closed up 0.4 percent at $515.06 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker in New York, Jim Finkle and Tim McLaughlin in Boston and Edwin Chan in San Francisco; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)

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Net loss: Brooklyn fires coach Avery Johnson

NEW YORK (AP) — Coach of the month in November, out of a job by New Year's.

The Brooklyn Nets have elevated expectations this season, and a .500 record wasn't good enough. Coach Avery Johnson was fired Thursday, his team having lost 10 of 13 games after a strong start to its first season in Brooklyn.

"We don't have the same fire now than we did when we were 11-4," general manager Billy King said at a news conference in East Rutherford, N.J. "I tried to talk to Avery about it and we just can't figure it out. The same pattern kept on happening."

Assistant P.J. Carlesimo will coach the Nets on an interim basis, starting Friday night with a home game against Charlotte. King said the Nets might reach out to other candidates, but for now the job was Carlesimo's. The GM wouldn't comment on a report that the team planned to get in touch with former Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

King said the decision to dismiss Johnson was made by ownership after a phone discussion Thursday morning. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov had expressed faith in Johnson before the season.

"With the direction we were going we felt we had to make a change," King said.

Johnson was in the final year of a three-year, $12 million contract.

"It's a really disappointing day for me and my family. It's my wife's birthday. It's not a great birthday gift," Johnson said. "I didn't see this coming. But this is ownership's decision. It's part of the business. Fair or unfair, it's time for a new voice and hopefully they'll get back on track."

The Nets have fallen well behind the first-place New York Knicks, the team they so badly want to compete with in their new home. But after beating the Knicks in their first meeting Nov. 26, probably the high point of Johnson's tenure, the Nets went 5-10 and frustrations have been mounting.

"Our goal is to get to the conference finals," King said. "We started out good and then we stumbled. We have to get back to playing winning basketball. It's the entire team. It's not like golf, where Tiger Woods can blame the caddie. It takes five guys on the court and they're all struggling. We have to figure out the ways to get back to winning. I don't know what happened. I'm not sure. But unfortunately, it did happen."

The Nets were embarrassed by Boston on national TV on Christmas, then were routed by Milwaukee 108-93 on Wednesday night for their fifth loss in six games.

Star guard Deron Williams recently complained about Johnson's offense, and Nets CEO Brett Yormark took to Twitter after the loss to Celtics to voice his displeasure with the performance.

King said the change was not made because Williams was unhappy, and he added the point guard himself has to play better.

Johnson also stood by Williams.

"From Day One, I always had a really good relationship with him. I don't think it's fair for anyone to hang this on Deron," Johnson said. "We were just going through a bad streak, a bad spell. It's not time for me to be down on one player. That would be the easy way."

Brooklyn started the season 11-4, winning five in a row to end November, when Johnson was Eastern Conference coach of the month. But he couldn't do anything to stop this slump, one the Nets never anticipated after a $350 million summer spending spree they believed would take them toward the top of their conference.

Johnson has been the Nets' coach for a little more than two seasons. He went 60-116 with the Nets, who moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn to start the season. Johnson coached the Dallas Mavericks to a spot in the NBA Finals in 2006.

"You don't always get a fair shake as a coach," Johnson said. "I'm not the owner. If I were the owner, I wouldn't have fired myself today. But life is not always necessary fair. It's a business and in this business, the coach always gets blamed."

This is the NBA's second coaching change this season following the dismissal of Mike Brown by the Los Angeles Lakers.

Johnson arrived in New Jersey with a 194-70 record, a .735 winning percentage that was the highest in NBA history, but had little chance of success in his first two seasons while the Nets focused all their planning on the move to Brooklyn.

They looked to make a splash this summer when they re-signed Williams and fellow starters Gerald Wallace, Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries, traded for Atlanta All-Star Joe Johnson, and added veteran depth with players such as Reggie Evans, C.J. Watson and Andray Blatche.

Johnson didn't have a contract beyond this season but seemed to have the confidence of Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire who before the season said he had faith in "the Avery defense system."

Some thought the Nets would finish as high as second in the East behind defending champion Miami, and the predictions seemed warranted when the Nets started quickly amid much fanfare. But all the good publicity faded in recent weeks once the losing started.

Williams, who has struggled this season, stirred the waters when he expressed his preference for the offense he ran under Jerry Sloan in Utah before a loss to the Jazz. Williams and Johnson, nicknamed "Brooklyn's Backcourt" and expected to be one of the best in the NBA, have shot poorly and rarely meshed.

The Nets were embarrassed near the end of their 93-76 loss to Boston, when fans exited early amid a chant of "Let's go Celtics!"

"Nets fans deserved better," Yormark tweeted after the game. "The entire organization needs to work harder to find a solution. We will get there."

Not under Johnson, though.

The Nets should be able to entice a big-name coach with Prokhorov's billions and the chance to play in a major market at Barclays Center, the $1 billion arena that has drawn praise in the city and from visiting teams.

Carlesimo has previous NBA head coaching experience in Portland, Golden State and Seattle/Oklahoma City. He has a career coaching record of 204-296 in the regular season and 3-9 in the playoffs.

"Right now, P.J. is our coach and I told him to coach the team like he'll be here for the next 10 years," King said.

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AP Sports Writer Tom Canavan in East Rutherford and AP freelancer Jim Hague contributed to this report.

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Elvis Presley, The Beatles top list of most-forged autographs

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Elvis Presley and The Beatles top the list of most-forged celebrity signatures in 2012, with less than half of their autographs for sale certified as genuine, memorabilia authenticators PSA/DNA said on Thursday.

The King and The Fab Four British rockers, who topped the list two years ago when it was last released, joined notable figures such as former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and late pop star Michael Jackson on the list of most-forged celebrity signatures.

Late American astronaut Neil Armstrong landed at No. 3 on the list, after fake Armstrong signatures rose significantly after his death in July.

One reason forgeries of Armstrong’s autograph soared was that he rarely signed for fans during his life, Joe Orlando, president of Newport Beach-based PSA/DNA, told Reuters.

“Armstrong is someone who is very conscious of the value of his own autograph,” Orlando said. “Even before he passed away he was very tough to get…It really heightens the level of his market.”

Secretaries and assistants responding to huge volumes of fan mail are one reason for fake signatures floating through the marketplace, said Margaret Barrett, director of entertainment and music memorabilia at Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles.

“Back in the day, the kids would write to the movie studios,” Barrett said.

“There was absolutely no financial gain 50 years ago and secretaries and assistants just wanted to make them happy. A lot of times people stumble upon an old box of signed photographs in grandma’s attic and don’t know they’re forged.”

Barrett, whose specialty is late Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe’s autographs, said that official documents such as contracts and checks are reliable sources to verify whether or not a signature is forged.

“A good rule of thumb is to compare it a signed contract,” she said. “Sometimes (celebrities) would have secretaries or other sign photos and letters but they couldn’t have a contract signed by a proxy.”

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Cynthia Osterman)

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

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Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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Katie Holmes' Broadway play 'Dead Accounts' closes

NEW YORK (AP) — Katie Holmes' return to Broadway will be much shorter than she would have liked.

The former Mrs. Cruise's play "Dead Accounts" will close within a week of the new year. Producers said Thursday that Theresa Rebeck's drama will close on Jan. 6 after 27 previews and 44 performances.

The show, which opened to poor reviews on Nov. 29, stars Norbert Leo Butz as Holmes' onstage brother who returns to his Midwest home with a secret. Rebeck created the first season of NBC's "Smash" and several well-received plays including "Seminar" and "Mauritius."

Holmes, who became a star in the teen soap opera "Dawson's Creek," made her Broadway debut in the 2008 production of "All My Sons." She was married to Tom Cruise from 2006 until this year.

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Online: http://www.deadaccountsonbroadway.com

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McCormick Place development fight held over to 2013

The lengthy battle for control over property slated for hotel development adjacent to McCormick Place will extend into 2013 after a federal bankruptcy judge on Thursday gave the long-time property owners more time to show their plans have financial viability.

Judge Jack Schmetterer this month had given Olde Prairie Block Owner LLC until Thursday to show him it had plausible plans to repay its lenders, chief among them CenterPoint Properties Trust.

Olde Prairie, whose principals include Pamela Gleichman, her husband, Karl Norberg, and Gunnar Falk, have proposed selling portions of the properties for hotel development, with two deals projected to bring in $180 million. The developers said this would be sufficient to pay back lenders in full and develop the properties.

The lender, CenterPoint Properties Trust, contends the plan is not financially viable, in part because the sales agreements contained contingencies. As well, it argued that the structure of the deals would not provide sufficient funds to fully repay lenders.

Schmetterer gave Olde Prairie until Jan. 10 to show the potential buyer of the larger parcel had a firm financing commitment. He also is seeking greater clarity in the sales contract language.

The case has been closely watched because it involves parcels long eyed for development linked to McCormick Place. Speculation has swirled around possibilities,from hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues, including a possible casino, to an arena that could host the DePaul men's basketball team as well as corporate and religious assemblies.

The properties include a 3.67-acre parcel at 330 E. Cermak Rd., directly north of the administrative offices of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place, and a 1.23-acre parcel directly west of it at 230 E. Cermak, across the street from the center's West Building.

The authority, known as McPier, this month purchased a separate parcel on the 230 E. Cermak block, with an eye toward gathering enough property to expand hotel, restaurant and entertainment amenities near the convention campus.

kbergen@tribune.com

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Parking meter rates to rise again

In an annual ritual that has become as predictable if not as joyous as a New Year’s Eve countdown to midnight, Chicago drivers again will have to dig a little deeper to pay to park at meters in 2013.

Loop rates will go up 75 cents to $6.50 an hour as part of scheduled fee increases included in Mayor Richard Daley’s much-criticized 2008 lease of the city’s meters to Chicago Parking Meters LLC.

Paid street parking in neighborhoods near the Loop will rise 25 cents and reach $4 an hour. Metered spaces in the rest of Chicago also will increase by a quarter per hour, to $2, according to the company.

Come the new year, workers will begin adjusting the now-familiar pay boxes to reflect the new rates in the Loop, from there working outward into the neighborhoods, the company said in a news release Wednesday.

Chicago Parking Meters hopes to have all the meters set to the new rates by the end of February, and drivers won’t have to pay the steeper rate until the box they’re using has been changed.

This is the last of the explicitly defined yearly meter jumps included in the company’s 75-year, $1.15 billion lease. But Chicago drivers shouldn’t expect the cost of parking to level out — starting in 2014, prices can be adjusted annually using a formula tied to the rate of inflation.

Daley’s parking meter deal has become something of a political boogeyman in Chicago over the years.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has opted to bash it, talking occasionally about the bad deal reached by his predecessor and saying he won’t simply pay up when the company hands the city invoices for lost meter revenue due to street closures and other reasons.

The city's unpaid tab for lost parking meter revenue now tops $61 million as Emanuel disputes bills the company has sent. It’s unclear how much the city will be able to knock off that total.

Some aldermen, stung by constituents’ criticism of their overwhelming support of the meter lease barely two days after Daley handed them the proposal, have called on Emanuel to give them more time to consider far-reaching deals. Still, Emanuel’s digital billboard agreement quickly sailed through the council 43-6 this month despite opponents drawing comparisons to the parking meter deal.

Most parking meters in Chicago neighborhoods cost 25 cents an hour after the City Council approved the meter lease by a  40-5 vote in December 2008.

Neighborhood meters went up to $1 an hour in January 2009 and have increased each year since, along with those downtown.

jebyrne@tribune.com
Twitter @_johnbyrne

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Analysis: Amazon's Christmas faux pas shows risks in the cloud

(Reuters) - A Christmas Eve glitch traced to Amazon.com Inc that shuttered Netflix for users from Canada to South America highlights the risks that companies take when they move their datacenter operations to the cloud.

While the high-profile failure - at least the third this year - may cause some Amazon Web Services customers to consider alternatives, it is unlikely to severely hurt a fast-growing business for the cloud-computing pioneer that got into the sector in 2006 and has historically experienced few outages.

"The benefits still outweigh the risks," said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

"When it comes to the cloud, Amazon has got it right."

The latest service failure comes at a critical time for Amazon, which is betting that AWS can become a significant profit generator even if the economy continues to stagnate. Moreover, it is increasingly targeting larger corporate clients that have traditionally shied away from moving critical applications onto AWS.

AWS, which Amazon started more than six years ago, provides data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations that group thousands of servers across areas than can span whole football fields. Their early investment made it a pioneer in what is now known as cloud computing.

Executives said last month at an Amazon conference in Las Vegas they could envision the division, which lists Pinterest, Shazam and Spotify among its fast-growing clients, becoming its biggest business, outpacing even its online retail juggernaut. Evercore analyst Ken Sena expects AWS revenue to jump 45 percent a year, from about $2 billion this year to $20 billion in 2018.

The service has boomed because it is cheap, relatively easy to use, and can be shut off, scaled back or ramped up quickly depending on companies' needs. As the longest-running player in the game, Amazon now boasts the widest array of datacenter products and services, plus a broader stable of clients than rivals like Google Inc, Rackspace Inc and Salesforce.com Inc.

Outages such as the one that took down Netflix and other websites on the eve of one of the biggest U.S. holidays are part and parcel of the nascent business, analysts say. Moreover, outages have been a problem long before the age of cloud computing, with glitches within corporate datacenters and telecommunications hubs triggering myriad service disruptions.

COMING SOON: POST-MORTEM

Amazon's latest service failure comes months after two high-profile outages that hit Netflix and other popular websites such as photo-sharing service Instagram and Pinterest. Industry executives, however, say its downtimes tend to attract more attention because of its outsized market footprint.

Netflix - which CEO Reed Hastings said relies on AWS for 95 percent of its datacenter needs - would not comment on whether they were pondering alternatives. Analysts say the video streaming giant is unlikely to try a large-scale switch, partly because all cloud providers experience outages.

"Despite a steady stream of these service outages, the demand for cloud services offered by AWS, Google, etc. continues to escalate because these services are still reliable enough to satisfy customer expectations," said Jeff Kaplan, managing director of consultancy ThinkStrategies Inc.

"They offer cost-savings and elasticities that are too attractive for companies to ignore."

But "Netflix and other organizations which rely on AWS will have to reexamine how they configure their services and allocate their service requirements across multiple providers to mitigate over-dependency and risks."

AWS spokeswoman Rena Lunak said the outage was traced to a problem affecting customers at its oldest data center, run out of northern Virginia, which was linked also to the June failure.

The latest glitch involved a service known as Elastic Load Balancing, which automatically allocates incoming Web traffic across multiple servers in order to boost the performance of a website. She declined to provide further details about the outage, saying the company would be publishing a full post-mortem within days.

AWS has traditionally been used by start-up tech companies and smaller businesses that anticipate rapid growth in online traffic but are unwilling or unable to shell out on IT equipment and management upfront.

The company has more recently started winning more and more business from larger corporations. It has also set up a unit that caters to government agencies.

Regardless, Amazon's clientele would do well not to put all their eggs in one basket, analysts say.

"Service outages do occur, but they are not common enough to cause users of these services to abandon today's Cloud service providers at significant rates. In fact, every major Cloud service provider has experienced outages," Kaplan said.

"Therefore, organizations that rely on these services are putting backup and recovery systems and protocols in place to mitigate the risks of future outages."

(Additional reporting; editing by Edwin Chan and Richard Chang)

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