Judge may lower Apple's award in Samsung patent case

By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times

December 6, 2012, 8:42 p.m.

SAN JOSE — A federal judge signaled Thursday that she might reduce Apple Inc.'s $1-billion jury award in its patent infringement case with Samsung Electronics Co.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh did not specify by how much she might shave the award, but during a marathon afternoon hearing in federal court in San Jose she said it did appear that the jury had miscalculated damages.

In August, after three days of deliberations in the complex patent case, a jury awarded Apple more than $1 billion.

In the months since the verdict, Samsung has mounted an aggressive campaign to overturn the verdict, raising a host of legal issues including juror misconduct. Apple hotly contested those issues during the hearing Thursday and sought to increase the damage award.

Lawyers for the world's two largest smartphone makers sparred for more than three hours over a bevy of legal issues in the dispute that produced one of the largest damage awards in an intellectual property case. Koh said she would issue rulings in the coming weeks.

Samsung argued that the damage award should be reduced because the jury incorrectly calculated the amount. Apple asked the court to award $535 million more in damages because the jury found that Samsung had willfully infringed Apple's patents.

Both sides seemed to be gearing up for years of legal appeals despite the judge's plea for "global peace." The case is likely to go before the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the Washington court that decides patent disputes, and perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court.

Apple also asked the judge to ban some Samsung products. The judge did not rule on whether the infringing Samsung products should be taken off store shelves.

The products are older models and would not dent Samsung sales, but the ban would give Apple a win in its high-stakes patent war against the South Korean company that is playing out around the globe.

ALSO:

NASA releases breathtaking images of the Earth at night

Samsung lawyers file copy of Apple patent settlement with HTC

Facebook voters: Everything you need to know to cast your ballot

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

Read More..

Minecraft sells almost 4.5 million copies on Xbox 360 as other indie games continue to struggle

Big-budget games such as Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II might brag about how they rule the Xbox 360 in terms of sales, but indie games can also compete – if they’re addictive enough and offer enough value. Take Minecraft, an indie game developed by Markus “Notch” Persson’s company Mojang. According to Mojang, Minecraft, an indie game originally made for PC and ported to the Xbox 360 seven months ago has sold 4,476,904 copies as of the end of November with 40,000 to 60,000 copies sold every week. Minecraft is an anomaly because it doesn’t boast high-definition graphics that ooze of detailed lighting effects and didn’t cost millions of dollars to make, and yet it is the third-most played game on Xbox LIVE.

According to Gamasutra’s analysis and breakdown of November’s Xbox Live Arcade sales, only three other indie games managed to break 1 million copies downloaded last month. See below for the chart.

As you can see, every other game on Xbox Live Arcade other than Castle Crashers, Fruit Ninja Kinect, Happy Wars and Counter Strike: GO isn’t seeing the same type of success Minecraft is.

The lesson here is developers should always focus on the product and the users. If the gameplay mechanics are solid, the experience is fluid and bug-free, the gamers will come.

Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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George Zimmerman sues NBC and reporters

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — George Zimmerman sued NBC on Thursday, claiming he was defamed when the network edited his 911 call to police after the shooting of Trayvon Martin to make it sound like he was racist.

The former neighborhood watch volunteer filed the lawsuit seeking an undisclosed amount of money in Seminole County, outside Orlando. Also named in the complaint were three reporters covering the story for NBC or an NBC-owned television station.

The complaint said the airing of the edited call has inflicted emotional distress on Zimmerman, making him fear for his life and causing him to suffer nausea, insomnia and anxiety.

The lawsuit claims NBC edited his phone call to a dispatcher in February. In the call, Zimmerman describes following Martin in the gated community where he lived, just moments before he fatally shot the 17-year-old teen during a confrontation.

"NBC saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create a myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain," the lawsuit claims.

NBC spokeswoman Kathy Kelly-Brown said the network strongly disagreed with the accusations made in the complaint.

"There was no intent to portray Mr. Zimmerman unfairly," she said. "We intend to vigorously defend our position in court."

Three employees of the network or its Miami affiliate lost their jobs because of the changes.

Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder but has pleaded not guilty, claiming self-defense under Florida's "stand your ground law."

The call viewers heard was trimmed to suggest that Zimmerman volunteered to police, with no prompting, that Martin was black: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black."

But the portion of the tape that was deleted had the 911 dispatcher asking Zimmerman if the person who had raised his suspicion was "black, white or Hispanic," to which Zimmerman responded, "He looks black."

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Judge may lower Apple's award in Samsung patent case

By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times

December 6, 2012, 8:42 p.m.

SAN JOSE — A federal judge signaled Thursday that she might reduce Apple Inc.'s $1-billion jury award in its patent infringement case with Samsung Electronics Co.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh did not specify by how much she might shave the award, but during a marathon afternoon hearing in federal court in San Jose she said it did appear that the jury had miscalculated damages.

In August, after three days of deliberations in the complex patent case, a jury awarded Apple more than $1 billion.

In the months since the verdict, Samsung has mounted an aggressive campaign to overturn the verdict, raising a host of legal issues including juror misconduct. Apple hotly contested those issues during the hearing Thursday and sought to increase the damage award.

Lawyers for the world's two largest smartphone makers sparred for more than three hours over a bevy of legal issues in the dispute that produced one of the largest damage awards in an intellectual property case. Koh said she would issue rulings in the coming weeks.

Samsung argued that the damage award should be reduced because the jury incorrectly calculated the amount. Apple asked the court to award $535 million more in damages because the jury found that Samsung had willfully infringed Apple's patents.

Both sides seemed to be gearing up for years of legal appeals despite the judge's plea for "global peace." The case is likely to go before the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the Washington court that decides patent disputes, and perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court.

Apple also asked the judge to ban some Samsung products. The judge did not rule on whether the infringing Samsung products should be taken off store shelves.

The products are older models and would not dent Samsung sales, but the ban would give Apple a win in its high-stakes patent war against the South Korean company that is playing out around the globe.

ALSO:

NASA releases breathtaking images of the Earth at night

Samsung lawyers file copy of Apple patent settlement with HTC

Facebook voters: Everything you need to know to cast your ballot

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

Read More..

Oscar Niemeyer dies at 104; modernist Brazilian architect

Oscar Niemeyer, the architect whose soaring buildings form the heart of Brasilia, the instant modernist capital built in the wilds of Brazil in the late 1950s, has died. He was 104.

Niemeyer, who had outlived his contemporaries to become the world's oldest practicing architect of international stature, died Wednesday at a Rio de Janeiro hospital. The cause was a respiratory infection, a hospital spokeswoman told the Associated Press.

During his long and productive life, Niemeyer was revered as well as ridiculed for his daring designs, but the creativity and sheer volume of his works ultimately spoke for him. In 1988, at 80, he shared architecture's biggest prize, the Pritzker.

Niemeyer, a diminutive, soft-spoken man, worked well into his 90s in a Rio de Janeiro penthouse office with a stunning view of Sugar Loaf Mountain and overlooking Copacabana Beach. Hundreds of projects came into being kindled by this view.

Many of his designs began with a quick sketch that embodied his love of the curve — from Einstein's universe, to the sinewy white beach that he gazed at nearly every day, to the voluptuous women he so loved to watch walking along that beach.

These women, he often said, were his inspiration.

"Curves are the essence of my work because they are the essence of Brazil, pure and simple," Niemeyer told the Washington Post in 2002. "I am a Brazilian before I am an architect. I cannot separate the two."

A passionate man, he lived in protest of the right angle "and buildings designed with the ruler and the square." His politics were also those of protest — he became a communist in the 1940s because of his anger over the inequality he saw around him, and he was a longtime friend of Cuba's revolutionary, Fidel Castro. His designs — especially of Brasilia — were partly an attempt to push his country toward egalitarianism, bringing rich and poor together through housing projects and public spaces.

A few years after Brasilia was completed, when a rightist military coup in 1964 not only destroyed Niemeyer's dreams of a just society in Brazil but also took away his sponsors, he fled to Algiers and then Paris. In the city, he had an office on the Champs Elysees and met Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre and many other notables and, he later recounted, lived a hedonistic life far away from his wife, Annita. He returned to Rio in the late 1970s.

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida de Niemeyer Soares was a Carioca — a native of Rio — whose heritage was Portuguese, Arab and German. Born Dec. 15, 1907, he was the son of a businessman and his wife who lived in Laranjeiras, a quaint, hilly neighborhood within the city.

While at the National School of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1934, Niemeyer worked with architect and urban planner Lucio Costa, who would lead Niemeyer to projects that would make his name in international architecture.

Costa, the master planner of Brasilia and an early proponent of Brazilian modernism, at first was unimpressed when the young draftsman joined his firm. Before long, they were working with Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier — who was in Brazil as a design consultant to the government — on the defiantly modern design for the Ministry of Education and Health Building in Rio. The building, which incorporated Le Corbusier's signature "brise-soleil" louvers to shield it from Brazil's intense sunlight, became a symbol of the new architecture in Brazil.

Le Corbusier would greatly influence Niemeyer, instilling in him a sense of fluidity, spontaneity and what David Underwood, writing in "Oscar Niemeyer and Brazilian Free-form Modernism" (1994), called jeito — "the lightness of touch, the graceful elegance of form and the movement inherent in the sauntering 'Girl from Ipanema' celebrated in the best of Brazilian modernism."

While Le Corbusier opened doors to creativity, however, Niemeyer saw his work as very distinct from his mentor's. As he told The Times: "He posited the right angle. I posit the curve."

In bringing to life his sensuous designs, he relied on what was then a new and versatile material — reinforced concrete — which he pushed to its limits, especially at load-bearing points, he wrote in a 2003 essay for Deutsches Architektur Museum, "which I wanted to be as delicate as possible so that it would seem as if [they] barely touched the ground."

The first Niemeyer structure built was a maternity clinic in Rio in 1937. His first major project, commissioned in 1940, were buildings for Pampulha, a then-new suburb of the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte, including a yacht club, casino and a church so avant-garde in design that church officials refused to consecrate it for 16 years.

With Costa, Niemeyer also designed the Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1939, and Niemeyer influenced the ultimate design of the United Nations headquarters while serving as Brazil's design consultant in 1947.

In time, his portfolio would include a postwar housing project in Berlin; the universities of Constantine and Algiers in Algeria; the French Communist Party headquarters in Paris; the Cultural Center of Le Havre, France; and the Mondadori headquarters in Milan.

He also designed the Strick House in Santa Monica— thought to be his only residential commission in the United States.

He will perhaps be best remembered for Brasilia, the bold project launched by Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek in 1956 in an effort to unify his vast country and move it forward half a century in a mere five years.

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In brewing rivalry, Instagram trims ties to Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web’s dominant social media companies.

Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter “cards” in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram’s own website. Twitter “cards” are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.

The move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world’s no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $ 1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $ 715 million, reflecting Facebook’s recent stock drop.

The companies’ ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.

Beginning earlier this week, Twitter’s users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter’s website.

Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided its users should view photos on Instagram’s own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.

“We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram’s website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal Web presence,” Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and “like” photos directly on Instagram’s website.

The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users.

“They’re both competing for slices of the same pie, the pie being users’ attention,” said Ray Valdes, an analyst with research firm Gartner.

If Facebook decides to offer advertising on Instagram, it’s important that the users visit Instagram’s own website, said Valdes. “If the eyeballs are elsewhere, you have less to work with in terms of monetization,” he said.

Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram’s meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter’s executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, was an early investor in Instagram and had hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a successful bid.

When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he highlighted Instagram’s inter-connectivity with other social networks.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.”

A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter’s website confirmed that users are “experiencing issues,” such as “cropped images” when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Grammys spread the love with 6 top nominees

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Grammy Awards celebrated the diversity of music as six different artists tied for lead nominee — Kanye West, Jay-Z, Frank Ocean, Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons and fun.

Auerbach received five nominations as a member of the Keys and also is up for producer of the year, earning a spot with the others at the top of the list as the Grammy's primetime television special came to his hometown Wednesday night.

"We're speechless," Auerbach said in a statement to The Associated Press from Germany, where he's on tour with drummer Patrick Carney.

The rockers little resemble any of the other acts at the top of the list. The top nominations for Jay-Z and West, two of hip-hop's most important figures, is a familiar refrain. Each has routinely been at or near the top of the nominations list for the last several years.

Indie pop band fun., a featured performer during the show, aired live from Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on CBS, rode the success of its anthemic hit "We Are Young" featuring Janelle Monae to sweep of the major categories, earning nods for best new artist, song and record for "We Are Young" and album of the year for "Some Nights." The band's producer Jeff Bhasker is up for four nominations.

"When you call your band fun. with a period at the end of the sentence, you set a very high standard for yourself and for fun itself," Taylor Swift, the concert's co-host, said in introducing them. "Fortunately this band from New York has lived up to the name in the best possible way."

R&B singer Ocean, whose mother was in attendance, made a bold social statement earlier this year when he noted he had a same-sex relationship in the liner notes of his new album "channel ORANGE," and The Recording Academy rewarded him with the major nominations best new artist, record for "Thinkin Bout You" and album of the year.

And British folk-rock band Mumford & Sons, which made an auspicious debut in front of an international audience during the 2011 Grammys, is up for album of the year for "Babel," one of 2012's best-selling releases.

Miguel, who helped Ocean shake up the R&B world this year, and jazz great Chick Corea join the Keys with five nominations apiece. Nas and recording engineer Bob Ludwig join Bhasker at four apiece.

There were no major snubs. Most of 2012's inescapable hits are represented in some way — Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" is up for record of the year and Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" garnered a song of the year nod. Drake, Rihanna and Nashville residents Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Jack White and best new artist nominee Hunter Hayes were among 16 nominees with three nods.

In many ways the nominations reflect a singles-driven year when no album rose to the level of acclaim as Adele's "21" or West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," which dominated the Grammys last February.

Rock, relegated to second stage in the era of electronic dance music, made something of a comeback, and young bands are peppered in with the nominees we've come to expect each year.

The best new artist category is a great example of this year's diversity. From the minimalist R&B of Ocean, the pop-influenced sounds of fun. and Hayes, the soulful rock of Alabama Shakes and the Americana swing of The Lumineers, there's little resemblance between the acts.

"I think people listen to a lot of types of music and Spotify has proven that, and iPod has proven that," Lumineers member Wes Schultz said. "Radio stations don't prove that. ... Every person in that audience tonight, I saw them freaking out about various artists that have no relationship to each other."

Alabama Shakes drummer Steve Johnson noted the diversity in the category, then made a surprising statement after the show: "If I were on the other side of the fence, I'd vote Frank Ocean personally."

The 55th annual Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 10 in Los Angeles. Trophies will be handed out in 81 categories.

The 5-year-old nominations show was held outside Los Angeles for the first time and showcased Music City for its growing role in the music industry. The Bridgestone Arena marked the largest venue the show has been held in and it may have been a dress rehearsal for a chance to host the main awards show sometime in the future.

LL Cool J returned as host, sharing duties with Swift, whose hit song "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" earned a nod in the jam-packed record of the year category. She was joined by fun., Gotye, Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)," The Black Keys' "Lonely Boy" and Ocean's "Thinkin Bout You."

Swift and LL Cool J opened the show by putting together a beat-box version of Swift's hit "Mean." Hayes displayed his versatility while announcing the best pop vocal album by singing snippets of each star's hit song. Maroon 5 played headliner, singing three songs mid-show before finishing off the live broadcast. The group stuck around for an hourlong performance afterward for the crowd in attendance.

Assisted by Monae, fun. reimagined "We Are Young" with orchestral strings as the crowd sang along, Ne-Yo, in wine-colored bowler, kicked things up with a cadre of dancers on his new club-infused song "Let Me Love You." And the show tipped its hat to Nashville with a salute to Johnny Cash by Dierks Bentley and The Band Perry.

The Black Keys' "El Camino" was nominated for album of the year along with fun.'s "Some Nights," Mumford & Sons' "Babel," Ocean's "channel ORANGE" and White's "Blunderbuss." For best new artist, fun. and Ocean were joined by Alabama Shakes, Hayes, The Lumineers.

Song of the year nominees were Ed Sheeran's "The A Team," Miguel's "Adorn," Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" and fun.'s "We Are Young."

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Online:

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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Netflix buys exclusive rights to Disney movies

Netflix Inc. has acquired exclusive U.S. rights to movies from Walt Disney Studios in a deal that catapults the Internet video-on-demand service into direct competition with pay TV giants such as HBO and Showtime.

The three-year agreement takes effect in 2016 and is a blow to the pay channel Starz, which currently has the rights to broadcast Disney movies, including its Pixar animated films and Marvel superhero pictures, about eight months after they are released in theaters.

Starz's sole remaining movie provider is now Sony Pictures. That partnership ends in 2016.

VIDEO: Disney buys Lucasfilm - Mickey meet Darth Maul

Disney has also agreed to give Netflix nonexclusive streaming rights to more of its older titles — including "Dumbo," "Pocahontas" and "Alice in Wonderland" — starting immediately.

Netflix's chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, called the deal "a bold leap forward for Internet television."

"We are incredibly pleased and proud this iconic family brand is teaming with Netflix to make it happen," he said.

Netflix stock soared on the news, rising $10.65, or 14%, to $85.65.

Shares in Starz's parent company, Liberty Media Corp., fell $5.49, or 5%, to $105.56.

Currently, Netflix has nonexclusive rights to movies from Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via a deal with pay channel Epix, as well as an array of library titles from other studios. Its only exclusive movie rights come from independent studios such as Relativity Media and DreamWorks Animation. It also has a wide variety of television reruns.

Sarandos and Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings have long said the company wanted to get exclusive pay TV rights to films from one of Hollywood's six major studios to boost its online entertainment service.

PHOTOS: Disney without Pixar

However, Hastings has also at times downplayed the importance of new movies. Netflix previously had streaming rights to Disney and Sony movies via a deal with Starz. In January, investors expressed their concerns that the pending disappearance of those movies would hurt the service. Hastings said in a letter to investors that Disney films accounted for only 2% of domestic streaming and the loss would not be felt.

Since then, though, the Disney movie slate has become more attractive. At that time, Netflix did not have access to movies from Disney's Marvel superhero unit or the "Star Wars" titles from its pending acquisition of Lucasfilm Ltd.

The end of the Starz agreement accelerated a trend that has seen Netflix evolve into a television company, with reruns of shows such as "Mad Men" accounting for about two-thirds of the content streamed by users.

With several original programs launching next year, including the Kevin Spacey political drama "House of Cards," and a direct connection to a growing number of Internet-enabled televisions, Netflix is on the verge of standing on par with many TV networks.

Netflix charges $8 a month for its streaming service, while premium cable networks such as HBO cost $13 to $18 a month, and that's on top of a monthly bill for other channels that typically exceeds $50. It remains to be seen whether the addition of Disney products and more original programming could lead Netflix to increase its price.

PHOTOS: Hollywood back lot moments

The Netflix spending spree could continue, with Sarandos telling Bloomberg News on Monday that his company would bid for rights to Sony movies when its Starz deal expires.

Netflix might have a tougher time wresting away the rights to Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox or Universal Pictures releases from their current deals with HBO, which like Warner is part of Time Warner Inc. Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM are almost certain to stick with Epix, of which the trio are co-owners.

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L.A. fire chief blames slower response times on budget cuts

Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings turned the tables on City Council members Tuesday, blaming increased 911 response times on budget cuts approved by lawmakers.

"You gave us a budget," Cummings said during a nearly two-hour City Hall hearing. "We're giving you the most effective Fire Department that we can within that budget."

Cummings was summoned to appear before the council after he failed to produce a plan to improve service and response times, which have grown longer since budget cuts were ordered three years ago after the economic downturn.

The council asked for the blueprint in April. On Tuesday, Cummings was given an additional 60 days to submit the plan.

Cummings blamed the delay on the department's data problems, which have been the subject of multiple investigations by city auditors and outside experts. Years of response time data were found to be flawed and the LAFD has accurate data only for the last two to three months, Cummings said.

Reliable performance data from a longer period is needed before changes in the department deployment plan can be recommended, he said. Improvements will require more funding, he added.

"The simple answer is money," Cummings said. "The way we improve response times is by putting more resources in the field."

The department's performance has been under scrutiny since March when fire officials acknowledged producing inaccurate response time data that made it appear rescuers were getting to emergencies faster than they actually were.

Fire officials are dealing with other embarrassments. Federal officials are investigating whether confidential information was obtained illegally on hundreds of patients who rode in Fire Department ambulances, according to a city lawyer. The department also has been criticized by the city's top budget officials for going over its budget by millions of dollars.

On Tuesday morning, The Times reported on a YouTube video titled "Firehouse Burlesque Hula Hooping" showing a woman in high-heels and tight shorts dancing with a hoop at a Venice fire station. The video was a promotion for Hoopnotica, a fitness company. The firm's chief executive said the shoot was unplanned, lasted no more than 30 minutes and that no money changed hands.

Last year, firefighters from the same Venice firehouse and another station were investigated for allowing fire engines to be used in porn shoots. Shortly after those videos surfaced, the controversy spread to Cummings when the chief acknowledged that he once posed for racy photos with a bikini-clad woman when he was stationed in Venice as a captain.

Cummings said the department was investigating the hula hoop video. Councilman Mitchell Englander, who chairs the council's Public Safety Committee, said firehouse antics are "another part of the culture we have to change."

At the council meeting, Cummings and other fire officials reviewed the recent findings of a task force formed to examine the department's various data management troubles.

Councilman Eric Garcetti said he was happy the data problems were being addressed, but said he wanted a detailed plan for service improvements.

He also said the department needs stronger leadership. "I want somebody fighting for this department," he said. "Talk to your firefighters out there. They don't feel that is happening."

After the economic downturn, the council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cut the LAFD's annual budget by $88 million — from $561 million in 2008 to $473 million in 2011.

The cuts led to service "brownouts," which took units out of service on a rotating basis, and which were eventually replaced by a new deployment plan. Cummings, an assistant chief at the time who oversaw development of the redeployment, predicted response times would match pre-recession levels following the changes. But investigations by The Times and City Controller Wendy Greuel found response times for medical emergencies have increased over the last four years.

Councilman Richard Alarcon admonished his colleagues, saying they should have known their budget cuts would lead to slower response times.

"Even Barry Bonds can't hit home runs with a plastic bat," said Alarcon, who voted against the cuts.

This spring, responding to concerns about the department's performance and the controversy over the accuracy of its data, lawmakers added back $40 million to the department budget. Cummings has requested an additional $50 million in next year's budget.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

ben.welsh@latimes.com

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David Mamet, Kathie Lee Gifford suffer losses

NEW YORK (AP) — David Mamet's new play "The Anarchist" and Katie Lee Gifford's "Scandalous" will both end their Broadway runs much earlier than their creators wanted.

Producers said Tuesday night that Mamet's play starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger portraying an inmate and warden respectively will close Dec. 16 after just 23 previews and 17 performances.

Producers of "Scandalous," a musical about the life of preacher Aimee Semple McPherson, said it will quit even earlier, after the matinee on Dec. 9 following 60 shows. Both shows got dreadful reviews and struggled at the box office.

Those two shows join "The Performers," a play set in the porn industry, with quick exits in the past few months on Broadway. "The Performers" opened and closed in November after just 23 previews and seven regular performances.

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