Nuclear-Free Japan Braces for Severe Power Shortages

TOKYO (Reuters) - The shutdown of Japan's last working nuclear power plant and the government's failure to convince a wary public about restoring production at dozens of reactors leaves the world's third largest economy facing another summer of severe power shortages.

Hokkaido Electric Power Co shut its nuclear plant late on Saturday - the last of Japan's 50 reactors to go off line - marking the first time since 1970 Japan has been nuclear power-free.

Japan's $5 trillion economy has relied heavily on nuclear power for decades, with its reactors providing almost 30 percent of electricity needs, but last year's massive earthquake and subsequent nuclear crisis spurred a public backlash against atomic energy.

Cabinet ministers have largely failed to win over the public to allow the restart of the country's plants - shut one by one for scheduled maintenance and unable to resume operations because of concerns about safety.

Japan's Asahi newspaper said public sentiment was "wavering between two sources of anxiety" - fear over the safety of nuclear power and doubts on whether Japan can live without it.

"The public shouldn't just criticize (the government) but make its own decision on energy policy that involves burden and responsibility, such as through cooperating in power saving," the paper said in an editorial on Sunday.

The government hopes to come up with an estimate by mid-May of expected shortages this summer, and will then produce a plan to conserve energy that could include compulsory curbs on use of power, Japanese media say.

But setting a long-term energy policy or a clear timeframe for restarting the plants will take time given strong public opposition and a divided parliament that has paralyzed policy-making, analysts say.

WIDESPREAD pain

Policymakers are worried about the damage to the budding economic recovery as the power shortages are expected to be more severe and widespread than last summer, when many areas in Japan were still running nuclear reactors.

Some also warn of the long-term fallout as the rising cost of electricity, coupled with a strong yen, hits production and could prompt companies to shift operations overseas.

"Depending on the weather, power supply could constrain output during the summer," the Bank of Japan said.

"But we must be mindful not just of such short-term effects but the chance (the power shortages) could hurt Japan's medium- and long-term growth expectations," the central bank said in a twice-yearly report on the economy issued on April 27.

Japan managed to get through the summer last year without any blackouts by imposing voluntary curbs on the use of power in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that left thousands dead.

Factories operated at night and during weekends to avoid putting too much stress on the country's power grids. Many big firms are already preparing to take similar steps this summer, but some also plan to generate power themselves to cut costs.

The last time Japan went without nuclear power was in May 1970, when the country's only two reactors operating at that time were shut for maintenance, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan said.

Microsoft Bets Big on B&N's Nook

Amazon and Apple dominate the e-reader market. But Microsoft and Barnes & Noble are teaming up to make a serious run at the leaders. Microsoft is investing more than $600 million in Barnes & Noble's efforts to launch a digital book and textbook subsidiary called Newco, and to help the bookseller to expand its online business globally.

In return, Barnes & Noble will create a NOOK e-reading app for the new Windows 8 tablet and PC operating system and for smart phones running Windows Phone 7. The deal also settles a patent dispute between the companies.

The arrangement helps fund Barnes & Noble's efforts to compete with Amazon's Kindle business, which accounts for 60 percent of the e-reader market. Meanwhile, Microsoft wants to give Windows a better chance of competing with Apple iOS and Google Android as an e-reader operating system.

Here's where it gets really interesting: Would Microsoft and Barnes & Noble come up with a Windows-based NOOK tablet to go head-to-head against the Kindle Fire, which runs on Android? Neither company has committed to it—but they haven’t ruled it out either.

The Tablet Really Is Killing The E-Reader

E Ink Holdings, the firm behind the allegedly easy-on-the-eye daylight readable electronic paper that once made your Kindle or Nook so great, has just reported its first loss in 10 successive quarters. 

The company made a net loss of NT$787 million (a little under $27 million) for the first three months of 2012, after it saw a 63% slump in revenues from the previous quarter to NT$3.84 billion. The company says it's due to "off-season effects and inventory adjustments at clients." Yes, we're inclined to believe that the shift from the always-lucrative holiday season quarter to the dim, wintery first three months of the year could quite definitely adjust how many e-reader devices the average consumer buys. But a 63% slump in revenues is pretty enormous.

Because what we think is happening is that the era of the e-reader as a must-have device is drawing to a close. Back in March some research suggested that expectations for e-reader sales for the quarter were way down on the previous year's, and those predictions now look to have been right on target.

In fact, we called this back in 2010, though we thought 2010 itself was going to be the "Only Year Of The E-Reader," and the phenomenon bathed a little longer in the limelight than we thought.

The reasons why that time is over are a perfect storm of innovative competitors. It starts with Amazon's own Kindle Fire, a full-featured tablet PC at a bargain-basement price, sporting a forked version of Android beneath Amazon's own content-centric UI and thus capable of playing nicely with apps. You know, those lovely toys we like to play with for gaming, social networking, emailing and whathaveyou...all making the most of the full-color LCD screen. Amazon's sold so many of these that they now make up over 50% of all Android-powered tablets. Which, since they only were launched at the latter half of 2011, is a storming success.

The thing is, say e-ink afficionados, those Fire screens don't really work in the daytime, nor are they as gentle on the eye as e-ink, which is supposedly closer to the look and feel of real ink on real paper partly because of its high contrast, and partly because of the smooth edges e-ink can give to digital fonts. 

And that's where the iPad 3 comes in, of course. Its high-resolution LCD screen is astonishing, and it packs more pixels than probably any computer display you've used--e-book text on its screen is so flawless it's like reading a slightly glowing magazine page. And Apple has sold a ton of them, alongside its already hugely successful iPad 2.

Then there's the rumors of a super-low-price Google-branded Android tablet coming sometime soon. Would you hand over cash for an e-ink e-reader, knowing that for only a few dollars more you'd soon be able to buy a tablet that not only can display e-books, but also play videos, let you browse Facebook, get your Angry Birds game on, do some Instagramming, even, crazily, actually generate some content for work? The e-reader isn't going away overnight, of course...and its sales trajectory will soar onward for a few years yet. It's just that rocketing above it, faster, higher and more powerfully, is the tablet PC. Innovation in action.

Gerd Ludwig's 'Long Shadow of Chernobyl' project

I found this amazing photo sequence on boston.com

On April 26, 1986, operators in this control room of reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant committed a fatal series of errors during a safety test, triggering a reactor meltdown that resulted in the world's largest nuclear accident to date. Today, the control room sits abandoned and deadly radioactive. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)

2

Workers, wearing respirators and plastic suits for protection, pause briefly on their way to drill holes for support rods inside the sarcophagus. It is hazardous work: radiation is so high that they constantly need to monitor their Geiger counters and dosimeters, and they are allowed only one 15-minute stay in this space per day. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

3

For years desperate efforts were under way to shore up the roof of the shelter to prevent it from collapsing. Inside the sarcophagus, dimly lit tunnels lead to eerie rooms strewn with wires, pieces of shredded metal and other debris. Walls have collapsed, and rubble is covered with contaminated dust. The stabilization work has been completed, and today the reactor’s interior sits untouched and deadly radioactive, waiting to be dismantled. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

4

Although radiation levels only allowed for a few minutes of access, workers initially had to pass over hazardous ladders to a section underneath the melted core with life threatening contamination. To facilitate faster access, a daunting hallway called the leaning staircase was erected. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

5

Workers near the sarcophagus expose themselves to hazardous levels of radiation while building the New Safe Confinement, estimated to cost $2.2 billion. The arch-shaped, 29,000-ton metal structure, 105 meters high and 257 meters wide, will slide over the existing structure to allow demolition of the ailing shelter. To provide an indestructible base for the new confinement, 396 enormous metal pipes are hammered 25 meters deep into the ground. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

6

A rooftop view from the Polissya Hotel in the center of Pripyat shows the proximity of the ill-fated Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to this former home of 50,000 people. Today, Pripyat stands a ghost town overrun by nature. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

7

Built in 1970 for the scientists and workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the city of Pripyat, located less than 3 km from the reactor, was once inhabited by nearly 50,000 residents and brimming with life. Authorities did not immediately warn residents of the accident and ordered the evacuation a full 36 hours after the explosion. Pripyat, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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When Soviet authorities finally ordered the evacuation, the residents’ hasty departure often meant leaving behind their most personal belongings. The Soviet Union only admitted to the world that an accident had occurred three days after the explosion, when the nuclear cloud reached Sweden and scientists there noticed radiation on their shoes before entering their facility. Opachichi, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

9

Nineteen years after the accident, the empty schools and kindergarten rooms in Pripyat - once the largest town in the Exclusion Zone with 50,000 inhabitants—remain a silent testament to the sudden and tragic departure. Due to decay, this section of the school building has since collapsed. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

10

On the day of the disaster, children oblivious to the nuclear accident played in this kindergarten in Pripyat, the reactor’s company town. The following day they were evacuated, leaving behind everything—even their treasured dolls and toys. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Wind blows through the desolate town of Pripyat. On April 26, 1986, this amusement park was being readied for the annual May Day celebrations when reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded less than 3 km away. Pripyat, Ukraine, 1993 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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On April 26, 1986, this amusement park in Pripyat with bumper cars and a Ferris wheel was being readied for the annual May Day celebrations when the nearby reactor blew up. Rotting away for 25 years, it has since become a symbol of the utter abandonment of the area. Now it is an attraction for tourists who have started flocking to the zone in droves. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

13

In 2011, the Ukrainian government officially legalized tourism in the Exclusion Zone. In Pripyat, visitors get to wander through the debris-strewn corridors and empty classrooms of a school. Hundreds of discarded gas masks litter the floor of the canteen. One tourist brought his own gas mask—not to protect himself from the radiation but simply for photographs and giggles. Pripyat, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

14

The nuclear accident contaminated tens of thousands of square kilometers, forcing 150,000 people within a 30 km radius to hastily leave their homes. Today, nearly all the small wooden houses in the scattered villages within the Exclusion Zone are abandoned, and nature slowly takes over these remnants of civilization. Korogod, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

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Kharytina Descha, 92, is one of the several hundred elderly people who have returned to their village homes inside the Exclusion Zone. Although surrounded by devastation and isolation, she prefers to die on her own soil. Teremtsy, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

16

Homegrown tomatoes are washed in the sink at the home of deaf couple Ivan Martynenko, 77, and Gapa Semenenko, 82. After the evacuation, a few hundred elderly evacuees subsequently returned to their former homes, subsisting mostly on produce grown on contaminated soil. Ilyintsy, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

17

Suffering from thyroid cancer, Oleg Shapiro, 54, and Dima Bogdanovich, 13, receive care at a thyroid hospital in Minsk, where surgery is performed daily. As a liquidator, Oleg was exposed to extreme levels of radiation. This was his third thyroid operation. Dima's mother claims that Chernobyl’s nuclear fallout is responsible for her son’s cancer, but his doctors are more cautious; Belarusian officials are often instructed to downplay the severity of the radiation. Minsk, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

18

As his mother worries, Dima Pyko, 16, receives treatment as a lymphoma patient at the Children’s Cancer Center (Oncology and Hematology Center) in Lesnoy near Minsk. The facility was built with much financial support from Austria as a direct result of cancers occurring in the fallout regions in Belarus after the Chernobyl accident. Lesnoy, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

19

Severely physically and mentally handicapped, 5-year-old Igor was given up by his parents and now lives at a children’s mental asylum, which cares for 150 abandoned and orphaned children with disabilities. It is one of several such facilities in rural southern Belarus receiving support from Chernobyl Children International, an aid organization established by Adi Roche in 1991 in the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. Vesnova, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

20

In the days, weeks and months after the Chernobyl accident, strong winds pushed the radiation released by the explosion northwest into the Gomel region of Belarus, contaminating thousands of square kilometers with the radioactive fallout. Today, girls born around the time of the accident are having children of their own. Many find themselves anxious about the contamination and what it might have done to their reproductive organs and genes. Gomel, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

21

Only 5 years old and suffering from leukemia, Veronika Chechet is hospitalized at the Center for Radiation Medicine in Kiev. Her mother, Yelena Medeyeva, 29, was born four years before the Chernobyl accident in nearby Chernigov, a city heavily affected by nuclear fallout. According to doctors at the hospital, many patients’ conditions are a direct result of the radioactivity released after the accident. Kiev, Ukraine, 2011 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

22

In an orphanage in Belarus, a mentally disabled boy enjoys the scent of a tulip. Children born in the fallout region are said to have a higher rate of birth defects and retardation, a belief supported by many—but not all—in the scientific community. International aid organizations established in the aftermath of the disaster continue to provide much needed financial support to homes and orphanages housing children affected by the fallout. Vesnova, Belarus, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

23

Each year on April 26 in a midnight vigil at the Monument to the Firemen, shift workers in Chernobyl honor those killed by the explosion. Two plant workers died immediately in the blast, and another 28 workers and firemen soon succumbed to radiation poisoning. Thousands more have since died of cancer and the social upheaval caused by mass relocation. Chernobyl, Ukraine, 2005 (Gerd Ludwig/INSTITUTE)#

By the Numbers: Autism Is Not a Math Problem

At a meeting of the Icelandic Medical Association last week, Yale University child psychologist Fred Volkmar gave a presentation on how the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is changing the definition of autism. In his talk, Volkmar came to a startling conclusion: more than half of the people who meet the existing criteria for autism would not meet the APA’s new definition of autism and, therefore, may not receive state educational and medical services.

The APA defines autism in a reference guide for clinicians called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM). The newest version of the manual, the DSM-5, is slated for publication in May 2013.

In Iceland, Volkmar presented data from an unpublished preliminary analysis of 372 high-functioning autistic children and adults with IQs above 70. He plans to publish a broader analysis later this year. On a key PowerPoint slide that Volkmar shared with Scientific American, he notes that there are 2,688 ways to get a diagnosis of autistic disorder in DSM-IV, but only six ways to get a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in DSM-5. Although intriguing at first glance, it turns out that both these numbers are slightly wrong—and that they are pretty much useless when comparing the DSM-IV and DSM-5. You cannot reduce autism to a math problem.

Hubble Fellow Joshua Peek of Columbia University was asked to code a computer program that would calculate the total possible ways to get a diagnosis of autistic disorder in DSM-IV and the total possible ways to get a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in DSM-5. You can do the math by hand, too, if you like: It all comes down to factorials. The DSM-IV criteria are a set of 12 items in three groups from which you must choose 6, with at least two items from group one and at least one item each from groups two and three. The DSM-5 criteria are a set of seven items in two groups from which you must choose five, including all three items in group one and at least two of the four items in group two. Peek's program crunched the numbers: there are 2027 different ways to be diagnosed with autism in DSM-IV and 11 ways to be diagnosed with autism in DSM-5.

One might think that those statistics make it absurdly easy to qualify for a diagnosis of autism in DSM-IV and incredibly difficult to meet the criteria for autism in DSM-5, but those numbers alone don't tell you anything unless you understand how common each symptom of autism is in the general population. Symptoms of autism are not randomly distributed throughout the population and the symptoms do not cluster together in random combinations. Research in the past decade has shown that some symptoms appear together much more often than others. In fact, that is one of the main reasons that the APA has consolidated the DSM-IV criteria for autism into fewer, denser and more accurate criteria in the DSM-5. The idea is that the DSM-IV criteria allowed for too many possible combinations, many of which rarely occur; the DSM-5 criteria, in contrast, better reflect the most common combinations of symptoms.

Specifically, the APA has merged two distinct groups of symptoms from the DSM-IV—deficits in communication and deficits in social interaction—into one group in the DSM-5 because someone with autism almost always has both kinds of symptoms.

Most psychiatrists applaud this consolidation because, as several recently published studies have shown, the new criteria are more precise: they rarely assign autism to people who do not have it. However, the DSM-5 criteria may be a little too strict, ignoring some autistic people with milder symptoms. Two recently published studies suggest an easy fix: if the new criteria require that patients meet one fewer symptom—four out of seven instead of five out of seven—high-functioning autistic people will not be excluded.

Showtime's David Nevins On What It Takes To Make Sexy, Gripping TV (interview)

 

As someone who has been on different sides of the television business for more than a decade, what's your assessment of the television landscape right now?

In the early '90s, most networks turned down the idea for the television show that would become ER. Not David Nevins. Nevins championed the show, and was instrumental in making the series--which turned George Clooney into a star--one of the biggest hits in TV history.

Later, Nevins angled to get 24 on the air. And in his roles as an executive at NBC, FOX, and as president of Imagine Television, he helped bring a slew of commercial and critical hit shows to TV, including Will & Grace, Arrested Development, and The West Wing.

Since taking over as president of entertainment for Showtime Networks about a year and a half ago, Nevins has been strategically nurturing Showtime's current hits and finding future gems. He has focused as well on deepening the audience engagement around all the network's shows. Showtime's roster now includes Homeland, which premiered last fall, House of Lies, which premiered earlier this month, and returning shows like Shameless and Episodes, which will resume later this year. Showtime scored big at the recent Golden Globes, taking home three awards, including Best Drama Series for Homeland. Nevins spoke with Fast Company about the rapidly changing world of cable television and how he stays on top of the game as an innovator in the entertainment world where audience tastes evolve at an ever-accelerating pace.

David Nevins: I think it's an incredibly creative time in television in general and particularly at the higher end of cable. We're at a moment where independent film is really struggling and there aren't a lot of movies getting made. Movies that do get made need to be $100 million "tent pole" movies. As a result, a lot of films simply can't get made. So you've got the crème de la crème of great actors and great writers who are now interested in doing television. With the exception probably of the top 10 male and female box office stars, pretty much everybody else is fair game for television. Everything that we've ever done--and that I've ever done as a producer--has been script driven; these projects have never been developed for a specific actor. The idea is to get the best writer and develop a great script. Actors tend to be very smart readers. That's what gets people like Don Cheadle, Claire Daines, and Laura Linney to say yes to television. So it's a very exciting time creatively and it's where adults go for programming. Most adults get their most nourishing cultural enrichment from cable television.

Aside from having a great script, what is your sell to the directors and actors as to why they should come to Showtime?

The generic sell is that it's only 12 episodes a year, which is a four-month window--or one movie slot--if you are a movie actor or director. We also don't tend to cancel shows, so you know where you'll be for the next several years for that four-month window, which can be very desirable for a lot of actors. For Showtime, we try very hard to be the place of the most adventurous storytelling. We tend to push limits and be the place that is pushing the medium of television forward. I think people tend to be attracted to a place where they feel like they are able to do creatively adventurous work.

The medium and format allows you to take more of a risk. How do calculate your risk when you are thinking about a new show?

When it comes to storytelling, not taking risks is riskier than swinging for the fences. I have very simple ambitions when it comes to taking risks in storytelling and programming. I try very hard to avoid the expected. So much of television is incredibly predictable. You watch the first five minutes and you know where it's going to go. If you can just create an element of surprise in both the storytelling and tone of a show, you're going to be way ahead of the pack. I don't tend to think of it in terms of risk-taking. I ask more basic questions: Is there an element of surprise to this? Is this going to be entertaining? Is there any surprising reveal of humanity here? Those basic elements have driven writing for thousands of years. Storytelling is always moving forward, but the basic elements of what an audience is looking for haven't really changed.

A year ago when you left Imagine TV to come to Showtime, some people were surprised since the network was in such good shape. What attracted you to Showtime?

I love being a producer and I think I essentially still operate as a producer even though I now have control of marketing and the ability to greenlight shows--something every producer wants but that they don't get! I feel like I'm essentially doing the same job as when I operated primarily in the broadcast network ecosystem as a producer. I was always pushing up against the limits of the medium. 24 finally broke through and became a big hit, Arrested Development and Friday Night Lights both had great critical admirers but never quite broke through to mainstream hit status. I think I'm now in a place where those kinds of shows can really thrive. The 4.5-5 million people a week who watched Homeland on cable makes that a really big hit. The 4.5-5 million people who watched Friday Night Lights on a broadcast network prevented that from being a hit. I love being here where you get rewarded for the shows that challenge the status quo of the medium. Generally in television there's only a leadership transition when things go wrong, but in this case, Showtime was in a good place and I think in the last year we've gone to an even higher level. Winning best series at the Golden Globes this month was sort of a breakthrough moment for this network. It's really a new plateau.

Last year HBO won that category with Boardwalk Empire. HBO has long been viewed as the leader in pay cable. What do you have to do to take them on?

I really do think that we can both exist very well. The dirty little secret is that our businesses are actually quite tied together. Because of the way that cable gets sold, people just sign up for the premium package which often bundles HBO and Showtime together. The way we distinguish ourselves is largely a matter of original series. I try very hard to do shows that feel like they are about the world that we live in, that have real relevance. I think one of the reasons why Homeland and House of Lies have drawn big audiences is because they've resonated in the culture. House of Lies is about business and the people who run it and everything messed up therein. Homeland is about where we are 10 years after 9/11. They're both very much about where this country is today.

Homeland obviously shares a number of elements with another show you worked on: 24. I'm curious from your perspective what the differences are in the ways people respond to 24 and Homeland.

Obviously the DNA strands between Homeland and 24 are strong. The two shows share three of the same writers, and me. But in Homeland we were interested in telling a more psychologically complex story. There is less of a clear-cut hero than in 24. The effort in Homeland was to try and humanize all sides of the story, which was probably less of priority with 24. There, the primary driver really was adrenalin. Both shows really speak across the political spectrum. People from the left and people from the right are both able to take things from the shows that support their political views. I find that fascinating. When you do shows with multiple characters with well developed points of view, you can speak outside the political ghetto of right and left.

A famous Hollywood producer once said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." You talk about wanting to make shows that are relevant to our world. How do you strike a balance between dealing with issues that are relevant to our world and making entertaining programming?

You have to make it all rooted in very human characters with understandable human traits but who aren't too simple. I also like to be a bit of a provocateur. With Showtime being a premium network, I think it pays to be a little bit provocative. I try to be polite about it, but I like to tweak people's assumptions about a character, a situation, or a concept.

How are the changes in platforms and the way people consume TV changing the way you tell stories?

I think every year the audience gets more sophisticated and more demanding in terms of the amount of information and narrative that they can process. I like things that are full and stuffed and go in a lot of directions at once. I like stories with a collision of disparate tones. Look at Shameless or House of Lies. They go from big, silly, and comedic to very real dramatic moments in the wink of an eye. I think audiences more than ever are willing to go there. I think you just have to remain interesting and try really hard not to be boring. We also have some of the deepest engagement shows anywhere in the media business, Dexter, for one example, Homeland, for another. The fans of these shows have an incredible hunger for new content. Some of the comedy content that has been done to support House of Lies has been outrageously funny. Ben Schwartz comes out of the Funny or Die world, Kristen Bell has done some amazing comedy pieces as well, and we have a pretty distinguished House of Lies app. We have a whole division that's making games around Dexter. You have to constantly feed the beast and give people fresh new high-quality material. That's a challenge when your primary business is making A-level expensive programming for television. You have to support the TV experience with engagement experiences that can continue between and after episodes.

In the past few months there's also been a lot of buzz about high-quality TV shows being developed for the online-only market ...

We are dipping into that. I think we're well positioned to do it because we have such a strong brand that people associate with the cutting edge of programming. I think we are also looking at some point at doing some original stuff that is not tied to our A-level network programming, I think that's absolutely a possibility. But for the foreseeable future, that's not going to be a driver of our business.

Earlier this month you talked about how the next two seasons of Dexter will probably be the last. How do you replace a big show like Dexter that has been so central to your lineup?

After Dexter--which is still very high-rated--the next highest rated shows are all shows we've added in the last year: Shameless, Homeland, and House of Lies. That's a rare thing among networks. Most networks tend to hang on too long and don't use current hits to seed future hits. We very deliberately used Dexter to seed Homeland. Our shows tend to take two or three years to reach critical mass. Shameless attracted a lot of viewers after its initial run went off the air, that's what led to a 50% rise in audience for this year's premiere over last year.

 

And I just have to ask...what can we expect from Episodes when it returns later this year?

Episodes is going to be a big promotional priority this season. Last season we had a very short order, this season we have nine episodes. I think it took a while for the show to get its characters established last year. This year, the show is established. It's now a full-fledged ensemble with six characters. This can be the funniest show on television and I hope by this time next year that's what people are going to be saying about it. I went to London for the table read of all the episodes. We did them all in one day. It was probably the funniest day of table reads I've ever been in, and I've been involved in some pretty funny shows. Merc's blind wife plays a prominent role and becomes involved with Matt LeBlanc's character in really funny, surprising ways. We start seeing what's going on with the mirthless comedy executive. It becomes an ensemble that is firing on all cylinders. I think we're going to make a lot of noise with it.

Mathematician claims breakthrough in Sudoku puzzle

An Irish mathematician has used a complex algorithm and millions of hours of supercomputing time to solve an important open problem in the mathematics of Sudoku, the game popularized in Japan that involves filling in a 9x9 grid of squares with the numbers 1-9 according to certain rules.

Gary McGuire of University College Dublin shows in a proof posted online on January 1 that the minimum number of clues--or starting digits--needed to complete a puzzle is 17; puzzles with 16 or fewer clues do not have a unique solution. Most newspaper puzzles have around 25 clues, with the difficulty of the puzzle decreasing as more clues are given.

The emerging consensus among mathematicians at a conference in Boston, Mass., on January 7 was that McGuire's proof is probably valid and an important advance in the growing field of Sudoku mathematics.

"The approach is reasonable and it's plausible. I'd say the attitude is one of cautious optimism," says Jason Rosenhouse, a mathematician at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., and the co-author of a newly released book on the mathematics of Sudoku.

The rules of Sudoku require puzzlers to fill out a 9x9 grid with the numbers 1-9 so that no digit is repeated within the same column, row, or 3x3 sub-grid. The clues are the numbers that are filled in to begin with, and enthusiasts have long observed that although there are some puzzles with 17 clues, no one has been able to come up with a valid 16-clue puzzle. That led to the conjecture that 16-clue puzzles with unique solutions simply do not exist. A potential way to demonstrate that could be to check all possible completed grids for every 16-clue puzzle, but that would take too much computing time. So McGuire simplified the problem by designing a 'hitting-set algorithm'. The idea behind this was to search for what he calls unavoidable sets, or arrangements of numbers within the completed puzzle that are interchangeable and so could result in multiple solutions. To prevent the unavoidable sets from causing multiple solutions, the clues must overlap, or 'hit', the unavoidable sets. Once the unavoidable sets are found, it is a much smaller--although still non-trivial--computing task to show that no 16-clue puzzle can hit them all.

Having spent two years testing the algorithm, McGuire and his team used about 700 million CPU hours at the Irish Centre for High-End Computing in Dublin, searching through possible grids with the hitting-set algorithm. "The only realistic way to do it was the brute force approach," says Gordon Royle, a mathematician at the University of Western Australian in Perth who had been working on the problem of counting 17 clue puzzles using different algorithms. "It's a challenging problem that inspires people to push computing and mathematical techniques to the limit. It's like climbing the highest mountain."

A consequence of the approach taken is that it will take some time for others to get enough computing time to check the proof, says Laura Taalman, a mathematician also at James Madison University, who co-authored the book Taking Sudoku Seriously: The Math Behind the World's Most Popular Pencil Puzzle with Rosenhouse. Taalman notes that the book, which came out last week, is already outdated: it says that the problem remains open and that whoever solves it will be a "rock star."

McGuire says that his approach may pay off in other ways. The hitting-set idea that he developed for the proof has been used in papers on gene-sequencing analysis and cellular networks, and he looks forward to seeing if his algorithm can be usefully adapted by other researchers. "Hopefully this will stimulate more interest," he says. 

But he says that, ironically, as he dedicated more of his time to the mathematics of the conundrum, he spent less time enjoying the puzzle. "I still find it a nice way to relax now and then but to be honest I prefer doing the crossword," he says.

"Your World" Or Their World? Google's New Feature Controls Personal Info In Search

If Google's to be trusted, Google is the only source you need when Googling around for information. At least, that's the impression one gets from Google's new "Your World" feature.

Google's official press blog about the news sets things out pretty clearly: "Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you," it begins, then points out that, "Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about." According to Google, it's been letting you down since, "These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met." But now the fix is in, as today it's "changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search." 

But it mainly works if your world is hinged on a Google+ profile, or you use Picasa, and so does everyone you know.

Google argues that it's merely a continuation of the trend it began by introducing Social Search and expanded on with Google+, and it does give a couple of useful case studies where its system really has value. Google can know who you are and who your friends are, even in a complex social network. Or, as Google puts it, "When I search for [Ben Smith], I now find my dear friend Ben every time, instead of the hundreds of other Ben Smiths out there (no offense to all of them!)." That's definitely useful, as is the fact "you’ll find profile autocomplete predictions for various prominent people from Google+, such as high-quality authors from our authorship pilot program." 

But when you select an author profile, if you’re a signed-in Google+ user, you’ll be prompted to add them to your circles "right on your search results page," Google says. So this is not only mostly about expanding my use of Google+ by heavily emphasizing that I use it when I'm merely searching for something. According to Google, now when you're signed in to its services, and Your World is working "if you search for a topic like [music] or [baseball], you might see prominent people who frequently discuss this topic on Google+ appearing on the right-hand side of the results page." 

Google closes its blog by emphasising privacy and options--you can turn off Your World with a jab at a switch on the search page to see unemphasized search results as you would've previously (or if you're not logged in), and you can even set that as your default. Attention is also drawn to the added security of SSL encryption of personalized results data, and the public-versus-private options within Google+'s sharing options.

But that's beside the point. Google is splattering personal and social-inferred results all over its search results page from one social network source only: Google itself. Not Facebook, which is the world's biggest such net nor Twitter--which once drove Google to amazing heights of real-time search and newsiness. Sure Google+ is apparently growing fast (although some question the data as dubious), but isn't Google really pulling a land grab with this trick? Isn't it subtly and continuously promoting its own social network at every opportune moment in its search service, at the detriment of its better peers? 

"As always, our goal is to provide you with the most relevant and comprehensive search results possible," a spokesperson tells Fast Company via email. "That’s why for years now we’ve been working with our social search features to help you find the most relevant information from your friends and social connections, no matter what site that content is on. However, Google does not have access to crawl all the information on some sites, so it’s not possible for us to surface all that content. Google also doesn’t have access to the social graph information from some sites, so it’s not possible to help you find information from those people you’re connected to." Fair enough, but it may not be enough for to help Google fend off accusations of preferential treatment--what do they expect their peers to do, let Google scrape their precious social graph? The spokesman also confirmed Your World is turned on by default, and that while there's no super-direct way of preventing your data showing up in someone else's World data it wants "users to be able to search over any content they have access to see. The important part is to ensure you’re sharing content with right people. If you change access rights in Google+ or Picasa, those changes will be reflected in search."

Still, there's an inherent PR risk in exposing to every logged in user exactly how deep Google's insight into their social sphere is--a creepiness factor that's hard to combat. And considering how Google has been repeatedy slapped for privacy issues, misleading search results, and allegedly monopolistic practices the world over, I'd say you can set the timer on a Your World-related lawsuit in 3 ... 2 ...

The launch of this new service has caused a veritable explosion of disbelief online. Twitter decided to register its distaste, citing the lack of "real time" news Google+ has and noting it's a biased system. Google, incredibly, first said (using Google+, of course) it was "surprised" by Twitter's comments then blamed Twitter for Google's actions, noting Twitter decided not to renew the real time search contract in mid-2011. Although we can only guess what the terms and conditions of the deal were, Twitter obviously decided it was unfavorable--and it came shortly before Google launched its own competitor to Twitter. Google's Eric Schmidt even spoke in an interview to argue Google+ isn't "favored" at all in Your World...despite the fact it's the only social graph available in Your World, and Google's decided not to even link to the publicly accessible statuses for, say, a popular band or brand from Twitter or Facebook.

How To Work From Home Like You Mean It ??

Despite all the stories you’ve heard, the hardest part of working from home isn’t putting on pants every day. 

I’ve been working from home, a few different homes, since late 2007. And the biggest thing I've learned during those four years is that working from home doesn’t have to change how you get work done, but it does change nearly everything else about your gig. When there are hard, regular deadlines and a constant flow of work, it is just like being at an office--with the added advantage that nobody else is there to interrupt my train of thought with an impromptu visit. And then there were times when I nearly broke down and told the boss the truth about why that weeklong project was in such sad shape: Because just when I need to focus it becomes clear that there are a lot of interesting links to look at on the Internet. Like this one.

I'm far from the only person to have confronted the joys and challenges of telecommuting. So I asked a few productive work-from-homers what they would do differently, if they could go back in time and reboot their office. Here’s a bit of home-working hindsight that might help you out the next time you’re going to work from home, whether it's for a day or a career.

Look the Part, Be the Part

It’s one of far too many great quotes from Proposition Joe in The Wire, and great advice for getting more done at home.

Dressing for work and "arriving" on time, eating lunch on a rigid schedule, shaving, brushing, and so on seems pointless at first. But not doing these basic preparations is the start of a steep, Teflon-coated slope to all kinds of other transgressions. If you’re not dressed well enough to greet the UPS delivery person, you’re giving yourself license to hide. If you’re hiding, then you imagine nobody can see Netflix open on your second monitor. On and on it goes, until you spend a two-hour lunch watching Portlandia on your couch with your iPad, grabbing your way through a bag of kettle chips. After that you'll try and fake your way through an afternoon of self-loathing busywork.

It’s not clever psychological trickery. It’s having respect for the work you do, wherever you do it. John Herrman, tech writer and assistant editor at Popular Mechanics, suggested in a Twitter chat that it's almost like treating your working self's worst tendencies like a prisoner of war, or maybe someone suffering from grief: Keeping up rituals, routines, and appearances is how you train yourself to do your work when you're supposed to, and set aside the fun stuff for after hours.

Schedule offline social time, batch your online social time

When you're in an office, you'll occasionally wish for fewer distractions, more privacy, and for Todd in acquisitions to find a job somewhere else. When you've been working from home at a frantic clip, you'll start to realize how much you miss talking to somebody other than your dog, having a good excuse to get up from your desk, and sharing in the struggle of other workers with intolerable bosses. And you start to fear you're heading toward the social condition depicted by The Oatmeal.

So schedule some regular out-of-home social times. When those sometimes fall through, you’ll realize the value of "batching" your online social time. It's very tempting to keep a Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ tab open at all times, along with Reddit, Hacker News, and other forums and fast-moving link-based sites. When they're always open, they're the equivalent of distracting coworkers, constantly shifting your attention away to complaints, jokes, gossip, and "Did you see..." discussions--the kind of stuff that makes it hard to get work done at work. You also come to appreciate them less, and they become more of a utility.

As geeky as it sounds, then, put your two or three "social breaks" right on your daily agenda or calendar. Don't open social or addictive news sites until that time. Breaking the habit will be hard at first, so try a tool like RescueTime to literally block yourself from your impulses and enforce your segmented work and play times.

Realize when the problem is motivation, not space

Distractions, temptations, and kids can all legitimately get in the way of doing work at home. But sometimes you have to step back and look at other reasons why you're avoiding the work that needs doing. Is it really because you don’t want to do it?

This is perhaps the hardest part of working from home. At an office, you are very likely to be found out and penalized if you spend all day checking Facebook or replaying Portal 2, so you at least make a stab at moving forward on even the most painful tasks. At home, it's up to you to stay motivated, and the things toward the very bottom of the Awesome Challenging Fun list might never get done.

The only real solution is summed up by designer and iOS developer Neven Mrgan: "Wake up unable to stop thinking about the awesome thing you're working on." If you lack for an awesome project, or a sense of where the work in front of you is going to take you, that’s probably the reason you’ll do anything other than what you have to do. Luckily, you can think that through and plan your next move anywhere, whether at home, in the office, or in line at the grocery store.

Kevin Purdy is one of the "most-read" authors on the web, according to Read It Later. 

9 Great Things To Ask Siri Now And In 2012

"Siri, why did Apple make you?"..."Apple doesn't tell me everything you know." Thus speaks Siri, the artificially intelligent personal digital assistant from the iPhone 4S that's all over the tech and regular press because she's charming, useful, novel (even if her sharp wit wasn't originally developed by Apple), and works unlike almost every other encounter with voice-recognition tech you may have had: well. 

Siri has a huge cuteness angle, inspiring a website and thousands of tweets, because the programmers behind Siri made her sweet, slightly schoolmarmish voice (or, alternatively, a gently flu-ridden BBC news reader male voice) marry up to a sassy personality that's more akin to Douglas Adams' Eddie the Shipboard Computer ("I know I'm just going to get a bundle of kicks out of any program you care to run through me!") rather than HAL 9000 ("I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.") These easter eggs are fun, and the jokey human-mirroring behavior Siri exhibits is probably carefully chosen to make her fun, appealing, and less intimidating for man-in-the-street iPhone users. What can you ask her? Try these (click Answer for Siri's reply--also, Siri's replies might vary when you ask):

"Siri, why?" (Answer)

"I don't know. Frankly I've wondered that myself." [link]

"Siri, beam me up." (Answer)

Among others, "OK. Stand still." [link]

"Siri, sing me a song." (Answer)

Among others, "Daisy, daisy..." [link]

"Will you marry me?" (Answer)

Among others, "My End User Licensing Agreement doesn't cover marriages. My Apologies." [link]

"What do you think about Steve Jobs?" (Answer)

"I think differently." [link]

"Where can I hide a body?" (Answer)

"What kind of place are you looking for? Mines, dumps, reservoirs..." [link]

"What's the estimated average cruising speed of an unladen European swallow?" (Answer)

Data from Wolfram Alpha. [link]

"Siri, talk dirty to me." (Answer)

"Humus. Compost. Pumice. Silt. Gravel." [link]

"I'm horny." (Answer)

[link]

Back when Siri was just an independent app, considerable time was spent by her creators (but no comedy writers) to maker sharp-witted. Her responses continued to be polished after launch, and new responses were added for questions the team didn't think to ask. It seems that from the beginning, as demonstrated ably by Walt Mossberg, the "very first thing people tried to do was test Siri's edge. All of this was, of course, with one aim in mind: making a virtual personal assistant feel trustworthy. Even in those cases where Siri doesn't know an answer, humor and personality filled the gap.

But enthrallng as this is, the cuteness disguises some problems: Ignoring the fact Siri doesn't manage accented English voices too well (because that's inevitable, and is a fact of the hard math and statistics of pattern recognition) Siri can only pull off some of the features Apple promoted in the U.S.--big things like reviews of restaurants or directions to places. Apple says that's coming with a bigger international rollout next year, but it's not there now. Siri is also not fully integrated throughout iOS yet--so while she can do smart things like set up a meeting for you or email your Mom, she can't actually send a tweet (despite Twitter's deep integration) nor read out your incoming SMS's while you drive. 

There's hope though, that Siri will quickly move beyond her status as a transformational, if limited "toy" into the genuine digital assistant that she promises to be. Check out this video, shot at the SXSW conference in 2010 when Siri was just a free app on the App Store:

That first request to Siri, to "get me a table" tells you all you need to know. Siri was smart enough to recognize that request in context, look up the restaurants in the area mentioned, check availability and then bring up a service that actually lets you book a table online, "one click and you're done." Another official demo shows Siri understanding context in a deeply useful way--after requesting a table booking, when prompted to look for a movie Siri looks nearby to the restaurant reservation:

This demo also shows Siri behaving in an open-ended manner, understanding that a conversation evolves when you're planning an event--and it understands the user needs help in the form of a taxi home when drunkly slurring a request at it.

Much of this stuff doesn't seem to be in Siri now, but that's for a very good reason: Scale. Apple is rolling this out to millions of iPhone users around the world, because the 4S is Apple's first "world phone." While the original developers of the app were able to strike deals with many companies, or utilize open-access APIs to get data on restaurants, events, news and so on, Apple would have had to make this work across the world all at once, with whatever local flavor of Yelp was most popular in Bulgaria, for example, and as well as being a huge organizational and infrastruture-burdening task, which would almost certainly have consumed too much of Apple's developer time, it would have likely been error-prone...and thus would break Apple's proudly held belief in delivering working software.

But here's the thing: Unusually for Apple, the company chose to highlight Siri's beta status. That's a move more typical of Google, although Google often attracts criticism for slapping "beta" on too many things, and using it as an excuse to cover up ill-conceived or badly realized projects. In Apple's case, it's promised that Siri will get cleverer. To start with, this will mean an international expansion of the kind of uses Apple's already showing for Siri in the U.S. alongside capabilities for understanding French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and who knows what else from Mandarin onward. 

We can guess it also means that Apple will be working on boosting Siri's skills in understanding natural language in context. We've heard that Siri's team inside Apple is one of the biggest--and with that many brains working on what was an already impressive idea, Siri can only get better in time. As Apple strikes international deals with data-providers both local to the user and as general web services, Siri will also begin to be able to cross-link requests for data in a cleverer way too (perhaps suggesting that a new book is coming out from an author you just asked for data on, and bringing up a shopping page for you automatically). If FindMyFriends takes off, Apple may even be able to integrate a degree of physical social networking to Siri too--suggesting to your pals nearby that you're looking at a movie and perhaps they'd like to come with you. Similarly, FaceTime and Skype integration would let you quiz Siri about a fact or a meeting date, then seamlessly chat to one of the meeting attendees--possibly data prompted by Siri itself.

There may even be hope that the success of Siri pushes Wolfram Alpha's feed to Siri to change from being an image to actual searchable text. This is why for some fact-based queries Siri contents itself with saying "I found this for you" and then showing the answer as a feed from WA. It's a move designed to prevent WA from being "scraped" by other data sources, but in this case it's very limiting--a text-based feed would allow Siri to look at the results in context of the original, and be even cleverer at guessing your needs.

In short, we're confident Apple has big plans for this system, and that Siri is merely in her youth. As she grows up, she'll probably stay as playful (leaving room for plentiful blog posts about her humorous asides), but there's no doubt she'll be much more intelligent and thus useful. Has anyone asked her yet "Siri, what will you be capable of next year?" I suspect she'll answer, "Oh, sweetie: Spoilers!"

3 Ways Google's Majel May Out-Chat Apple's Siri (And 1 Big Way It Could Remain Speechless)

Siri is amazing. Let's not pull any punches--ignore the critcs, as it's probably the best mobile voice recognition device that any user has ever encountered. Above all else, it's a fabulous PR tool, it works, and it threatens Google ad revenues. Google and its Android army know this. Why else would Samsung lampoon it and Google execs poo-pooh it? Especially when you consider that Google is desperately working on a rival to Siri. It's codenamed Majel, and in several ways it's got a serious chance to outsmart Apple's smart assistant right from the get-go.

Great Implementation

According to leaked information that reached the site AndroidAndMe, Google's project to rival Siri (being cooked up in the top-shelf division Google X) was supposed to be ready before the end of 2011, and it's dubbed Majel. Though it looks like Google may miss its timing window, the goal was smart: By launching a Siri rival soon Google would be seizing on the pro-Siri publicity, preventing Apple from marching far ahead in a new paradigm. 

And even the name is clever: Majel is named for Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. This is enough to warm the cockles of hardcore sci-fi fans. The Star Trek computer reacted to natural language, was incredibly smart at returning all sorts of information--scientific, historic, reference-based, inferred and real-time-tactical--and it worked in that classic sci-fi way, only returning a response after, typically, Captain Picard started a sentence with: "Computer..."

To some minds this is how a smart digital assistant should work--less slick and shiny than Apple's Siri, with a more toned-down personality and a more structured dialog format. That way there's less of the supposed creepy or weird factor of talking to one's smartphone rather than talking through it to someone else (although I personally admit to confusion on this point--you're still chatting to a plastic slab held to your face, so how can a passerby know any different?). If the codename is a sign that Google is trying to make its Majel a more digital, less personal assistant--perhaps even responding with tones instead of voice cues in some instances, then this way of interacting with the service may well appeal to many folk who dislike the idea of chatting with Siri.

Android Integration

The other thing that's hinted at in the leaked information is a deeper integration of Majel into Android than Apple's allowed with its first beta release of Siri in iOS. Majel seems to be a smarter version of the existing Voice Actions system in Android, a service that's meant to be threaded throughout the mobile operating system to bring voice commands to more sophisticated uses than merely "call Mom"--something that many phones already offer, and that Apple's had for a while in iOS (we guessed a while back that Voice Actions may be one of Android's secret weapons, though it's never quite happened that way).

Where Siri can't send a tweet, do complex navigational tasks, or operate inside apps (with app-specific vocabularies), it would seem that Majel is designed to do this right from the start. That would instantly one-up Siri, even if at first this implementation was limited to Google-specific apps, like Gmail or Voice or Google+ or a limited range of systems that include social networks like Twitter. It's also plausible that smartphone carriers could enable specific powers via Majel--since Google permits carriers to fiddle with the services Android offers on the smartphones they sell, and for some offerings from carriers this could be a good thing.

As such, this integration would be a great PR coup--aceing Siri straight away, since many frustrated users (perhaps miffed by Apple's rare use of a "beta" release) complain Siri can't do this stuff. Apple has itself said that Siri will rapidly evolve, and it's clear from the powers Siri had when it was a standalone app that Apple probably will integrate these kind of smarts eventually. According to the leaked information, Android's engineers are working so speedily that at first this kind of integration may not be enabled, but it would likely follow soon after. 

Google Integration

One thing Google has at its advantage is a host of different search services that it could blend right into the output of Majel. Where Siri stutters, then recommends "Would you like to try a web search?" Majel could probably just seamlessly wallow in Google's sea of different data and come up with an answer that matches the kind of information that the user is asking it for. This is for all sorts of services, but one immediately stands out--translation. Ask Siri how to say "hello" in French and she can't answer, directing you to that ubiquitous option to search the web. Majel could probably work out your query at first stab.

Google may even be acting to shore up its resources for Majel--aiming particularly at the kind of data that users may use it to look for. Just last week Google bought Clever Sense, the team behind the Alfred personal assistant app for finding good restaurants and bars ... and it's not too much of a stretch to see how that would work within Majel: "Computer: Find me a great sushi bar nearby." Back in September it also bought Zagat, which gives Google access to high-quality crowdsourced reviews, which its algorithms could crawl all over to return a smart response to this sort of Majel search. With the company, by its own admission, acquiring roughly one firm a week it's plausible that many other recent buy-ups are designed to support Majel.

Think of Majel as a voice-control portal to all of Google's different services, from patents to web searches to Google+ to Voice to Translate to Maps and so on ... and you see how powerful it can be. Of course much of this is possible with Google's Voice Search anyway, but to have it all delivered via one interface and with a smarter, more natural language-friendly front end would help. If Majel manages to deliver the most relevant information to a voice query, sampling it in a context-aware way from among Google's huge search resources and answering in a concise and simple way (without requiring further user screening, which you typically have to do to a Google search, and which Siri avoids) then it could easily champion its powers as beating Siri's.

Google-Centricity

But Google's vast search database is also potentially Majel's Achilles heel. 

If Google closes its shutters, and keeps Majel's information searching skills confined to Google property--for technical reasons, perhaps, and because it guarantees more user-eyes-on-adverts time--it is actually a limiting rather than an expanding maneuver. Part of Siri's strength is that she acts as a high-level filter for search--being designed by the team at Apple to look at the user's query, then try to respond from a more precise and relevant data source than simply resorting to a web query through Google or Bing. It's why integrating Wolfram Alpha was a genius move, and it's also why Google hates Siri--because it gives Apple control over where search queries go, and that could mean diverting some away from Google. 

But if Google keeps Majel centered on its own properties then potentially it means users could miss out on richer, more relevant data sources that Google doesn't yet quite rival--firms that Google hasn't bought, or can't acquire, and which it could thus find difficult to data-mine to feed data into Majel responses.

And while Apple got into a spot of political bother over seeming search biases in Siri--actually based on a misunderstanding of both the readiness of the system, as well as how it and its various data sources work--Google could get into much more legal hot water if it championed a premiere new search function of its market share-leading Android phones...and it turned out the system was mainly pushing search queries to Google. Any number of anticompetitive bells could ring out.

Oh, and let's hope Google doesn't make Majel too U.S.-centric. That's a mistake Apple slightly made with Siri, which is why non-U.S. users (who make up the greater majority of iPhone owners, historically) seem less pleased with it. 

Ultimately then, Majel has a shot at having a different character and behavior to Siri and this, coupled with Google's simpler access to the search database, means it could beat Apple's voice assistant in many ways. It'll all be about the finesse of how Majel interacts with the public. Get that right, and dodge legal and user-experience issues about keeping searches within Google, and Larry Page's company might have a killer product on their hands.