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Cisco to acquire smart grid metering co. Arch Rock

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Cisco Systems said Thursday that it plans to acquire Arch Rock Corp., a maker of wireless network equipment for smart grids, for an undisclosed amount.

Cisco said Arch Rock will help Cisco with its smart grid applications for utilities. Arch Rock's technology is designed to allow utilities to connect smart meters and other devices over a secure, multi-way wireless mesh network. The deal complements Cisco's recent partnership with Itron to develop services that enhance smart-metering technology.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year.

Cisco shares rose 36 cents to $20.62 in morning trading.

LA artists fight to save city's legacy of murals

LOS ANGELES – Every so often, Ernesto de la Loza drives around the city to check on the state of his murals. It's a short tour these days. Out of 42 swirling, vivid pieces he's painted, only seven remain, the rest lost to graffiti, whitewash and withering sun.

"It's really painful," said the 61-year-old artist whose works depict Angeleno life from Mexican heritage to the dangers of drugs. "People say 'don't take it personal,' but it's totally personal. They're my babies."

At one time hosting an estimated 1,500 pieces of wall art, Los Angeles is the nation's mural capital, but that's a fading distinction thanks to prolific graffiti taggers, a legal morass over classifying the artworks as illegal signs, and neglect.

"I never thought 30 years ago that I would have to save works from being destroyed," said muralist Judith Baca, an art professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and founder-artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, which promotes and protects murals. "We've had to defend one piece after another."

Spawned in the '70s on the city's eastside, LA's murals form a kaleidoscope of color and imagery in a city known for bland urban sprawl. Decorating unlikely swaths of concrete ranging from housing projects to freeway underpasses, some are so massive they are best viewed blocks away, while others are easily digested in a drive-by glance.

They pay homage to celebrities — Anthony Quinn as "Zorba the Greek" towers over a downtown parking lot, Steve McQueen stares out from the side of a house. Some celebrate civic milestones such as the 1984 Olympics or institutions like the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. The mother of all, Baca's "The Great Wall of Los Angeles," is a half-mile stretch of California history along a San Fernando Valley drainage canal.

Others are displays of immigrant pride and ethnic history or abstract visions and palettes of pop art blanketing the sides of corner stores and businesses in blue-collar neighborhoods. "They're a reflection of us and who we are as a city," said Pat Gomez, the city's murals manager.

Most of the murals — some 1,100 — are located on private property, while 400, created as part of the city's mural program that ended in 2006 in a municipal budget crunch, are mostly on public land.

The exact number of lost murals is hard to determine. Baca's group inventoried a sample of 105 city-sponsored works, and found 60 percent had vanished. Baca said they're disappearing with increasing frequency since the mural program, which included maintenance, died. The city plans to do its own survey, Gomez said.

Graffiti is blamed as the biggest culprit. Murals are often targeted by vandals because the city does not regularly remove tags from murals so the spray-paint scrawls remain indefinitely. Blank walls are easier to clean and are whitewashed by city workers within days.

In the case of private property, the city requires the owner to remove the graffiti or face a fine. Sometimes, the owner removes the mural, too, to avoid repeated citations.

For freeway murals, the state Transportation Department requires artists or others to pick up the $3,000 tab to erect barricades for the cleanup work, money which artists don't often have.

"When is it the job of the individual artist to maintain a public work?" Baca asked rhetorically.

De la Loza has fought numerous battles to save his murals.

After his favorite work celebrating Latino diversity, "City of Passion," was painted over by the city because it was deemed "too ethnic," he sued. He won a $52,000 settlement and the right to restore the mural, which had been saved under a protective coat beneath the whitewash.

But only months later, hieroglyphic markings denoting gang turf were choking the brilliant colors of the work. The city whitewashed the wall and planted vines to prevent more graffiti.

De la Loza, who has painted murals amid gang shootouts and triple-digit temperatures, was devastated. "This is brutal, physical work," he said. "There's no appreciation of that."

In rare instances, gangs have left murals alone. One South Los Angeles community center managed to get local gangs to agree not to tag its mural, largely because gang members use the center.

Baca has been pressuring the city to address the graffiti problem for years. She advocates setting aside 1 percent of the roughly $40 million a year the city and county spend to remove graffiti for mural-cleaning, making vandals remove their work, and giving taggers their own wall space to paint.

So far, her proposals have fallen on deaf ears. The city is moving ahead with a proposed ordinance to preserve murals, but it does not address removing graffiti from the art, which is more time consuming and costly because the artist must be present and the original artwork touched up.

It would, however, save murals targeted by city building inspectors as "illegal signs" because they were either painted during a citywide billboard ban or do not conform to size and location rules governing signage. The issue is that current city rules do not differentiate between commercial signs and fine art murals.

Some 60 murals face removal or daily fines under signage violations. Some, like "Under the Moon" on the side of an eastside retail store, have already been whitewashed. The property owner painted over the piece, which depicted a Mexican immigrant's journey to the United States, rather than go through a costly appeal process, said mural designer Stash Maleski.

The proposed ordinance would resolve that issue by treating murals apart from billboards, issuing mural permits and requiring works to be protected with an anti-graffiti coating, a type of wax that allows spray paint to be cleaned off with a pressure hose, Gomez said.

But it would also classify any digitally made wall art as billboards. Baca said digital technology is the answer to saving murals. The works can be scanned into a computer and printed on large vinyl sheets that are adhered to walls, allowing for easy removal and wipe-off cleaning.

"It's indistinguishable from paint," she said, pointing to her latest works: two indoor digital murals of the namesake of the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Los Angeles.

Until the city better protects outdoor murals, Baca said she's not doing further projects in Los Angeles.

De la Loza presses on. Although his work is increasingly a heartbreak, he loves painting the monumental works that carry symbolic meaning for the masses. His latest work is a 130-foot-long piece called "Faces of the Americas" recently mounted on a South Los Angeles library.

"Murals are the voice of the people. They teach history, they give hope," he said. "It's just a constant struggle."

Web embraces JetBlue flight attendant in NY ruckus

NEW YORK – A folk hero in digital times, JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater has been thoroughly embraced by the Web.

Not only have news stories about his meltdown on a plane from Pittsburgh to New York City been exceptionally popular on the Internet, but he's been feted in all manner of online tribute. Even JetBlue Airways Corp. wryly noted on its blog post Wednesday that many people reacted: "Like, the entire Internet."

Slater has consistently ranked as one of the most popular topics on Twitter and has birthed a small cottage industry of Facebook pages, with titles such as "Free Steven Slater" and "I Support Steven Slater."

One group, dubbed the "Steven Slater Legal Defense Fund," is seeking to raise money for the airline veteran. More than 650 people are members of the group, which was founded by Gary Baumgardner, a pilot who pledges transparency in donating all the collections to Slater. He said he had raised more than $1,500 as of early Wednesday.

After his plane landed Monday at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Slater, 38, is accused of cursing at a passenger over the intercom, grabbing some beer and exiting on the plane's emergency slide. He was arrested and jailed before being freed on bail. A defense attorney says Slater didn't put anyone in danger.

The website Free Steve Slater has been launched in support of Slater. It introduces itself: "Steve! This page is for you! Get in touch and let us know what you want to do with it!"

One of the trends on Twitter has been to imagine T-shirts dedicated to Slater's audacious escape. Film critic Roger Ebert was among those churning out ideas, including: "Front: `I may be under arrest...' Back: `But I got two free beers out of it.'"

Actual T-shirts were already for sale online, though with the more simple "Free Steven Slater" printed on them. On eBay, luggage tags reading "Steve Slater: An American hero" were for sale, as was a painting of Slater holding a prison number, which was going for $355 as of Wednesday afternoon.

Other designs took the easy bait of parodying flight manuals. One that quickly went viral — designed by Aurich Lawson, creative director of the technology news website Ars Technica — is labeled the "proper technique for exiting aircraft" and shows a generic figure descending an inflatable slide with two beers in hand.

"Watching people root for him ... is half the fun," Lawson said in an e-mail. "The reaction makes the event larger than life, kind of catapulting it into myth status overnight."

Response in song has been common, too. On Wednesday's "Late Night," Jimmy Fallon said Slater "inspired me," and the host then performed a country-style "The Ballad of Steven Slater." The oft-repeated chorus goes: "You gotta get two beers and jump."

Similar odes were popping up on YouTube, including one from Jonathan Mann, whose project of writing a song every day has already brought him online fame. His song about the flight attendant, also titled "The Ballad of Steven Slater," takes a folk approach with mature language.

Mann sings: "Steve Slater I wrote this song for you/ Because you said what we've been dying to say/ I'm sick of feeling powerless/ To affect any kind of meaningful change."

On Tuesday, Slater was led into a state court in the New York City borough of Queens to be arraigned on charges of criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and trespassing, counts that carry a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.

After posting bail, he told reporters, "It seems like something here has resonated with a few people. And that's kind of neat."

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Online:

The Saliva Commandos

Builders race to finish first S.Korea F1 track

YEONGAM, South Korea (AFP) – Organisers of South Korea's first Formula One event say they are confident they can complete the brand-new circuit before a final inspection from the sport's world governing body.

India's Karun Chandhok on Saturday became the first F1 driver to test out the 5.6-kilometre (3.5-mile) track, which boasts Asia's longest straight stretch, and declared it basically in good shape.

"We have done more than 90 percent of work on the track," said Chung Yung-Cho, chief of the Korea Auto Valley Operation (KAVO), at a lavish weekend event to mark the 50-day countdown to the race on October 24.

"The F1 championship here will be successful. You will see a historic moment 50 days from now."

About 1,500 fans and guests watched a motorcycle stunt, a parade of 100 sports cars and Chandhok's demonstration run in a Red Bull F1 machine.

With work behind schedule, organisers said the weekend event was staged to dispel worries that the track at Yeongam, 320 kilometres (200 miles) south of Seoul, may not be ready in time.

The circuit has been constructed on reclaimed land alongside an artificial lake by KAVO, a joint venture between a private firm and the provincial government.

Many seats in the main stand are yet to be installed, while parking lots, roads and some facilities such as mobile stands are still in the final phase of construction.

"We are under enormous pressure and are trying really hard to complete work, but time is running short," a construction company chief told AFP on condition of anonymity.

But organisers insisted the circuit would be ready in three weeks when the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) conducts its final inspection.

"This track satisfies strict safety standards required by the FIA," Chung said.

His confidence in the event got a boost after signing an agreement Saturday with Barry Bland, director of British race management and insurance firm Motor Race Consultants, to host an international F3 race in November.

KAVO officials described the F3 agreement as the first positive sign that their circuit would be competitive.

Bland said the track was generally in good shape, although "a lot of work" still had to be done.

"The top layer of surface still has to be done and sides of the track have to be finished... I think that if there is enough manpower, it could be finished in time," he told AFP.

Bland said the circuit was "very different" from others with its unusually fast corners and a very long stretch. "I think drivers will really like it."

Chandhok, who completed 15 laps in his F1 car, said the track -- with a combination of fast and slow corners as well as places to overtake -- was "very interesting".

"High-speed corners will be a real challenge for drivers. I think this is a little bit like Malaysia, which has a combination of many different corners," he said.

"It's not completely finished... but generally it's pretty good."

Chung said Yeongam would be the country's biggest sports facility capable of accommodating more than 120,000 spectators at a time, including 16,000 in the main stand.

The Korean Grand Prix will be the 17th event of this year's 19-race season. KAVO will host the race once a year for seven years with an option to extend for five years if arrangements with the FIA are satisfactory.

It has designated some 5,000 hotel rooms near the circuit with 600 shuttle buses delegated to transport visitors.

Organisers say the race at Yeongam could be decisive in this year's world championship. Britain's Lewis Hamilton of McLaren is currently leading after winning the Belgian Grand Prix a week ago.