. . walt mossberg how is the average

person supposed to understand what that is about. >> hopefully, the average person will understand it because i tried to write them in english and to write them conversationally. on a more technology oriented web site, i am stopping to explain terms and pretending i am talking to a smart person, but somebody who is not a techie. >> what motivated you to write about fire fox and what is it? >> fire fox is the second most popular web browser the world. obviously, but browsing is an enormously important activity engaged in by all layers of society. there needs to be a competition, just like there needs to be a competition in television sets

or any other gateway into a media. a web browser is a gateway into a medium. i have also gone into great detail with the internet explorer. there is a new browser were going on. about 10 years ago, microsoft won decisively against a small outfit called netscape. now there is a new browser war and there are four principal combatants in that war. fireboxes one of them. when any of them bring out a new web browser, there is a lot of interest by my readers. they ask if they should switch to it, is it slow work, is it faster? is a good topic for me to write about. >> after 18 years of writing, how have you become a personality? >> i am a personality in certain

worlds. i can walk down the street here in washington and most people have no idea who i am, but it is different if i am at a computer trade show where a lot more people know who i am. my reaction is that it comes with the territory. you certainly understand that as well. >> you had a new yorker profile another magazine stories and one of the things but you have been called is a curmudgeon. >> that is commonly used to refer to me. it is because i do not always give everything a good review. fire fox is a beloved product. i use it myself. i thought that this particular new release was not quite as good in advancing their position

as some of their previous releases. somewhere along the line, i picked up that title of commerce curmudgeon. i have a web woman working for meaning catherine brett -- named catherine brett. i write two columns and at one every week. when the spirit moves me, i do a blog post on the website that i co-managed. >> back in 1995, we did an interview over at the bureau and i want to show you what you sounded like, looked like, and what we were talking about. >> it sounds frightening. >> let's take somebody like me. i happen to have bought my first computer not more than three months ago.

it is one of those little laptop jobs that you can take along with you. c-span on line and i can plug in and find out the c-span schedule. what about somebody like me? what would you tell me, if i had never touched a computer, how would i get started and why should i have one? >> the first thing i tell everybody is to figure out what you want to do with it. the idea that i just want to become computer literate is good for the hype and ad campaign but it is not good for you. you are busy. you are smart about what you know. you do not necessarily want to take up a new career list that is your copy. the first thing is what you want to do with it. you want to log on to america online because they aren't on-

line service with a lot of information including a section for c-span. you are probably traveling to and you want something portable. and watch you get that -- once you get that, he looked up price and power -- you look at price and power. one thing people do not think about is the ease of use. how quickly after you turn it on can you get into productive work without having to learn a lot of technobabble. >> reaction? >> ha1 ! those glasses were pretty big. i think that both of us would have the same point of view today. you bought a computer at that time. i would point out that the personal computer really went mass market in 1977. that was in 1994. it took you a while to buy it.

you probably bought a number of them since then and you still want to do a lot of the same things. from my part, i say the same things to people. what do you want to do with the computer. it there are different kinds of computers now, including things like this iphone, which is actually a computer, not really a phone. it is a computer that actually makes phone calls. it has more power than that laptop you bought back in 1994 and 1995. >> i was obsessed with the fact that we could get our schedule helped. that was all that mattered at that time. there is another clip that i wanted to show you. it uses the language of products and tell us what has happened. >> america online is the most

economical. for $9.95 a month, you get five hours and those five hours can be used for whatever. >> they can get our schedule. >> they can do that. once you have used two hours, certain parts of the service like the bulletin board start costing extra and there are other things that cost more than that. compuserve is a $95 cents. it could cost you $8 an hour after that. if you have a high spot -- high- speed modem, it could cost to $16 an hour. what happened to aol, prodigy and compuserve? >> prodigy died. that was a deserve the death because they were more of a one way broadcast service, not very to mcginty users wanting to contribute.

compuserve was acquired by aol. aol was the upstart around that time. prodigy and compuserve was the leader. aol bought time warner and the merger kind of fell apart. now, time warner is spinning it off again and it will be reborn in some other way. it certainly has no where near the power that it had in those days. one of the interesting things, you noticed i was explaining the pricing and the pricing was metered pricing. you got so many hours for so many dollars. just a few years after that, the world wide web became open to people and came into existence. except for the fee that you have to pay every month for access,

which could be $40 or $50 a month, it is not cheap, the actual use of the content is not metered by time or by what you are doing for the most part. this is right at the heart of a gigantic debate and a gigantic business issue. >> switches? >> if you are producing a service like c-span or nbc or cbs or a big blob or whatever, can you charge people for it? can you sell enough advertising to make your profit cover your costs? there is a big debate. we are almost alone. we are almost alone in doing a

mixed model. some things that we have are free and some things require subscriptions. >> why does it cost to subscribe on-line to the wall street journal? >> i do not know. i am not in the sales side of it. my sense is it somewhere around $100 a year, but it could be less than a combination with offers. i think it is somewhere in the quarter of $100. >> i saw there were 80,000 subscribers? >> 0, and now it is 1 million. >> what has changed in your life besides the fact that richard murdoch owns the wall street journal. >> i have been very lucky. both in my work and in my personal life. my kids are grown up. one is getting married next year. >> how old are they?

>> what is 31 is 27. >> -- one is 30. one is 27. i do have an excellent colleague that works for me and gives me a female and a younger perspective which is really helpful. like everyone else, i went through various health claims that i have come through. that is a good thing. probably the most interesting thing that i have done is about seven years ago, another wall street journal columnist started a conference. that brings together the leaders in the media industry to

talk about these issues like making money, does it have to be free? what are the technologies of the future? that has been very successful. it spawned a web site that i produced with my colleague. i still write my columns in the journal. they are still my main job and i still enjoy doing them but i am also a little bit of an entrepreneur. although the journal owns the website, we run it at autonomously. >> all things digital was conducted win? >> it is always conducted right after memorial day. it was right at the end of may. " i think this was from the may

2009 conference. also, in the new yorker, he talks about a personal relationship. >> on my way down here, i drove down here in my minivan type of car. my mom, who has come here every year, i interviewed her about the wawitter. this is the movie that i may. >> here it is her mom on twitter. >> do you twitter? >> no. >> why not? >> are you crazy?

why would i want people to know what i'm doing? i am sorry, it is nobody's business. >> what would you tweet? >> what are you talking about? why would i want to do that? >> thanks, mom. [laughter] [applause] >> you know, -- >> some people think we are really is. there are the people. -- some people think we are petalliillitists. >> was that a camera? >> yes. we gave one to everyone at the

conference. >>she is feisty and smart but se is not techie. she does not use a computer. >> how much have you heard responses like this? >> one of the fun things about technology is that there is something new all the time. some of these are new gimmicks and some of them stick. social networking is something that i think is one to stick, but it has different forms and people try their hands at different ways of doing it. twitter is the flavor did yo. you are sending out bursts of information. 140 characters is all you can type.

the biographies of the founders of water were limited to 140 characters. people talk about what they had for breakfast. personally, i do not care about that. other people have actually been the first to report news or make interesting comments about things going on. some of them maybe your c-span viewers that saw something on here and tweeted. >> when did twitter start? >> maybe a couple of years ago. some people have heard of myspace and facebook. going back to that tape where we

were talking about a oilwell, they had a chat rooms. on twitter, you do not develop friends, you develop followers. if they think your messages are interesting enough, they can follow you and they see all your messages. it is tough for them to figure out a way to make money. they have been given a lot of money by investors and they have plenty of it to build it and to hire people, but they have not started running ads were charging anything for it. we questioned them quite a bit at our conference. our conference is a journalistic conference were no one is allowed to make a speech. no one is allowed to show slides. we just interview them on stage. we mentioned many times how they would make money. they said that they have a lot

of data about their users. maybe they could, with permission, find some way to make money using that. they were kind of vague about that. >> they did not say they knew how to make money on it. do you think they do? >> no, i do not think they know how they are going to make money. i think that they have more ideas than they were willing to say. >> they said they had only 43 people working for them? >> yes. >> how do you do something so global with 43 people? >> the users do all the work. it is user generated content. it is just like you to. the thing people are sitting around making cats on skateboards? those are done by regular people. it is expensive and it does take some work. it is not simple to operate the

servers and keep the system going. i do not mean they do nothing. they certainly do a lot of under the hood stuff, but the content is done by users. >> i want to read this paragraph. walt mossberg is not shy about expressing his opinions. he helped recruit cara switcher from the washington post in late 1996. >where is silicon valley? >> in california. >> what is there? >> it is the biggest concentration of companies in the internet and technology. >> i know that one of your bosses wanted to to move there and you said no way. >> that is a different story. >> you stay here because?

>> i want that focus to always be on my mind. i am there six or seven times a year. i know how to drive for those streets almost as well as i know how to drive around here in washington. i was extremely concerned that if i lived among the industry, i would become somewhat confused with the industry mind set. it is not that there is anything evil about that, but i want to state and used with the consumer mind-set, so i stayed here. >> it goes on to say that when she and meaghan smith decided to marry, she told her mother but she was troubled by the idea of a gay wedding. she and smith have two children and she recalls that when she came home with the first baby, walt mossberg was there and so was her mother. she said we were having dinner and she was being difficult. she was arguing with me.

walt mossberg took her down like i'm never saw him take anybody down. he said this is an important issue and you have to be supportive but no matter what as a parent. my mother was just shocked. he was relentless in not letting her off the hook. >>explain that. >> i wish she had not told what to the new yorker. i like her mom. we are on good terms today. we were on good terms before that. it was just one of those moments when i came to the defense of a friend. these things happen in families when the babies are involved. she is crazy about the kids, by the way. she takes care of them quite a lot because both karen and i work many hours. she is a wonderful grandmother. i guess that is all i want to say about it.

>> the reason i ask is because here you are and your personal life is being written about and you're just a technology writer. although, they say that you make a lot of money. >> i have just a technology writer. you're just a television guy, but everyone knows you. people are interested in the things that c-span covers and a lot of people know who i am because they're interested in what i write about. >> give us an example of where companies have really come at you, desperately wanting your endorsement is that where the curmudgeon thing comes in? what i do not endorse in the sense of putting a blurb on a box of something.

people can run quotes from my reviews because that is fair use some of the copyright laws and the first amendment, but i don't ever agree to endorse a product. i do not do that. that would be unethical, journalistically. it would be unethical under the rules of the wall street journal and my own personal ethics. it is just like being a movie reviewer. i am not a reporter. i used to be a reporter at one time. i am a columnist that is paid to write opinions and is paid to be subjective. i test these products and then i tell people what i think about them. which one should you buy? which one should do not buy? what are the strengths and weaknesses? i have a big audience, so people put their product in front of me and i spend the rest of this day, once we are done

here, meeting with companies and looking at their products. some of them i will write about and some of the limelight. some of them i will give a good review to read some of them i will give a middle of the road review. once in a while, i will give a really bad review. companies pitch me. there is nothing nefarious. it they just pitch me. they say that here is this new gadget or computer digital camera and i will take a look at it. >> they do say you make or break products. " i never said that. >> i didn't say you did, they do. >> it is perfectly obvious that if you are someone whose name is well-known, such as a movie reviewer, a movie shows up in the brightly read publication.

if you like a movie, that will help ticket sales. if you do not like the movie, it will probably hurt them. that is the analogy here. obviously, if i say that firebox is the best browser and i remind you -- i recommend you use it, some percentage of people who would not have done so otherwise will go out and get it. if i said this is the worst web browser, some people might not use it. that is not the same thing as a make or break. >> if you go back to prodigy, compuserve, they're gone. aol has not succeeded the way they intended to. looking out what you see in front of you today -- looking at what you see in front of you today, what the fed will not make it? what indication to you have that some of these companies will not make it financially?

>> i do not cover the finances of these companies. i think it is important to understand that when they are thinking about investments, and that just because you love the product or just because all of your friends are using it, it does not mean that the man -- the company is managing it correctly for doing all of the boring, non techie management things. maybe they made a bad deal for memory chips and their competitor is paying less and they can underprice them. there are millions of these factors, which is why i have never given any investment advice and why i am not going to start here today. i would say that most of the tech products that are out there will fail in the sense that they will not become

megahits and there will be replaced by something else and a few of them are landmark products that are game changers and change the industry. like the original i.b.m. and apple computers were big deals, the original web browser, things like that. those to not come along all the time. >> i want to show you a clip from our 1995 interview. you'll see what the computers look like. >> right here, in order to do the column, i have the two most common kinds of computers. this happens to be a compaq. it runs microsoft windows. this is an apple macintosh which runs apple software. i use both of them.

i write the column and alternate from one platform to the other and i'll write software for both types of computers. >> for someone who has never had a compaq or an apple? >> these will not use compatible software. there are a lot of plain english lists of commands and that has been adopted widely on the pc through microsoft windows. what you wind up with are very similar looking computers. even though a program is made for one and will not run on the other, many companies make to almost identical versions for

each program. if i am running microsoft word on a pc or on a macintosh, that look identical. >> one thing that is still absolutely true today is the two most prominent operating systems and the two rivals are apple and microsoft. that is in terms of their operating systems. apple is a vertically integrated company that makes the macintosh and their software and operating system. third-party programs can write programs for them, but they make the hardware and software. microsoft, which is a much bigger company, makes no

hardware. no computers, i should say. they make some hardware. they produce microsoft windows which is still the dominant operating system and they make microsoft office which i mentioned which includes a word and excel -- word and excel. compaq, you can still buy those computers but they are owned by hewlett-packard. apple, in the time but when that tape and today, suffered a near death experience. some people say they were within 90 days of chapter 11. that was around 1997 or so. steve jobs had been thrown out.

he has revived that company pretty spectacularly if you were an investor and produced a series of landmark products in 12 years or so since he has been back. >> your paper has covered a lot of steve jobs and his business. -- his illness. if steve jobs was not there, what impact would it have on the company? >> it is hard to say. he is one of these unusual chief executive officers who tends to be very detail oriented and he is a product guy. he had his hands and a lot of things. obviously, it would not be a simple matter of replacing a non assertive c.e.o.. on the other hand, he is not

personally designing the next iphone or the next macintosh. they happen to have a brilliant designer and a design team. they have a c.o.o. who seems, by all outside accounts, to have done very well. i think that the company will change because he is such a strong personality and a strong presence. i do not know that you could say that the company would fail. it just might be a little different. i don't know. >> if you have to live with just what you wanted to use and you were not in this business anymore, what would you have right now your possession? >> i am not going to sit here and endorse a bunch of products. i am just not want to do that. -- i am just not going to do that. i use a windows computer and a mac.

i personally own probably eight or nine computers, roughly split between windows and mac. some are laptops and a diminishing number our desktops. desktops are pretty much going away. i use all of them. in terms of the device, my phone has changed over the years and i do carry an iphone. i have carry other brands in the past. >> what about a net book? what is that? >> and net book is a marketing tool. it may someday be a real kind of animal, but right now it is a marketing term for an especially small and inexpensive laptop. that is really all it is. if you go to best buy and you say you want to buy a net book,

they will sell you a small laptop for somewhere between three go$300.500 dollars, runnig windows saxby which is like any other laptop except it is very small and light and did not cost you very much money. >> we are inand we are in a tere economy and people want things smaller and lighter. the appeal of something that is only a few hundred dollars and is half the weight of what you might have had before is strong and so that is what they're doing. >> on your web site, you give some advice and recommendations. tell us what you do and when you do this. >> this week, i thought i would talk about a handful of the ones that i find myself on my iphone and recommended to you.

let me just tick off some of them in this video. the first one i want to mention is tweedy like i dtie. this is the one that i like the best. does a great job of letting you make your own posts and read other people's posts. you can do searches and other functions within twitter. another closely related application is, another social networking application is face book. this is officially produced by facebook itself. it has all of the core functions of the web based service. you know, updating your photos

and your news and doing other photos and dealing with internal face book e-mail an internal chat. another application i find using mice self all lot is a free application that performs the basic functions of kindle software that amazon sells. it has the same ability to read like he could on that kindle device. >> working people see those things? >> that was a week were i chose to write a column recommending some iphone applications. the most important hardware

technology and software technology going on right now is the rise of the hand-held computer, the super smart phone. unlike the net book that we just talked about which is more of a price play, this is really a new kind of computer. i have a few of them here. the most famous one is the apple iphone which i do carry which any of these have more power than the computers in my office in 1995. one of the cool things about all of these, this is a competitor to the iphone that came out recently. this is another relatively new competitor called the nokia n- 97. it has a flip screen. here is the first really good

smart phone, the palm trio from 10 years ago. these smart phones are essentially hand-held computers that happened to make phone calls. one of the cool things about them is that they are also platforms for people to write software for, useful software that can get things done and can entertain you, whether it is a spreadsheet or a game. i am sure the c-span schedule is somewhere on this iphone. after one year of allowing people to write and sell for the phonapplications for the cell

phone, after one year of allowing that on their iphone product, they now have 65,000 applications available. that is an astonishing thing. they have been downloaded by people about 1.5 billion times. some are free and some cost a dollar and some cost as much as $40. it is quite astonishing. what you saw was me talking about some of the applications that i find most useful. >> where you find out where those 65,000 applications are and what they do? >> apple has an application store. it can be reached right on the phone by touching an icon. in that video, you saw screen shots.

those are in the catalog and get a chance to read about it and body can do. you can either choose to buy it or not buy it. >> you can do that also on your windows or mac computer. there is a section where it if you click on that, it has applications for your iphone. >> how did you do that video? >> did you think the production values were fabulous? >> i am not sure the production values matter when you're looking for permission. >> what i did on that video, and this is another change, i write my column and then when i finished writing my column and filing it in new york to the editors, i then go and sit down in front of one of the computers at my house that has a built-in camera. most computers built today have

a built-in camera. i talked into that little camera, as you saw me do there and then i send a rock video to new york. at the wall street journal in new york, there is a video production unit that takes that video and puts in an be role -- and puts in the rob-role. i could do that on the computer myself, but in my case, i send it to them in new york and they do all those things. they then send it back to me, i looked at to make sure it seems right and we publish it on the web. >> let's go over your

permission. what days can read your column? >> if they are a prep reader, by two columns appear on the thursdays. they appear are be whether starting the night before. they will appear on either the wall street journal website for the website that the wall street journal clove's but i've run with carrokara. they can also read an article that i do not right but is written by catherine. her column is on the web. she does a video every week. her column is on the web on tuesday night. >> we have some video of her. let's see katie.

>> this is katie. it can be frustrating to type in a search online only to receive hundreds of results that you have to comb through to find exactly what you want. this week, i tried to free tools that you can use to improve your searches online. one is from the search drive google. it is called search with twiki. it is something that appears on screen when you conduct their regular google search. it includes air as by each search results. there is a little tiny icon that represents notes or comments that you can add to a search results. what is the point? arrows can be clicked and a search result shoots to the top of the screen.

that means that you value that result and you think that is important for you. >> order to find her? >>where did you find her? >> she came to me from the university of delaware. she started as my reporting assistant which is just a job title at the journal. she turned out to be terrific and she is now a full-fledged reporter at the wall street journal and an employee of mine and she is great. >> where was the conference held? >> that conference is held in carlsbad california. just outside san diego, at a hotel there. there is no law that it will always be held there, but it has

been held there for the past seven years. >> who can come? >> anybody can come. it is a $5,000 a ticket to attend the conference. we tend to have a lot of repeat attendees to enjoy it because like any good conference, it is a combination of what is on stage? what might learn from the speakers? there have been a lot of business deals done in the hallways of that conference that sometimes karen and i do not find out about until years later. they tell us they conducted this billion dollar merger. >> how many days is it? >> it stretches over three

days, but it is not three full days. it starts in the evening of the first day with a dinner and a single interview and then an entire long day the next day and then half or two-thirds of a day the next day. >> does anybody dare say no to you? >> of th>> sure. >> does that impact you or your coverage? >> we have not had a case where somebody has agreed to come and unveiled on us. we certainly have had cases where people have said no thanks, i would rather not be a speaker, but we are pe persistent. this year, we had the ceo of nokia. that was about a for your effort to get the ceo of the key of to

come. rupert murdoch, he declined to be a speaker a couple of times and even after he bought the wall street journal, it took me three months to get him to come. >> why do you think you have become so valuable to the newspaper? >> you have to ask the people who read the newspaper. i try to do a good job. i have a following. i think most of the readers find what i like to be useful -- what i write to be useful. you are asking the wrong guy. >> taking yourself out of it, but put the call in theire. why has this become such an important subject.

>> we are living through one of the greatest arms attack off to change in modern history and maybe in all history. it is confusing to people. a lot of the aspects of their lives is getting their news and entertainment and making phone calls and taking pictures. all of these things are changing. these are changing rapidly and dramatically. it is useful to have some of this explain to them. i consider myself a subcontractor with the task to test of much of this stuff and from a normal person's perspective, give them a perspective of what it's like to use this and is it what is promised? this kind of journalism is popular across many publications and not only in technology but in other fields. we have been very successful with columns on health and

columns on investment and other topics. people are looking for advice. >> from your own experience, is there a printed newspaper in 10 years? >> you know, i do not know the answer to that. it is certainly changing faster than i would have said for years ago. part of that is hastened by the overall economic climate, but the point is not to save newspapers or to save television stations, the point is that we need to have journalism and journalists. it doesn't matter to me of people are reading me on a screen or on a dead tree. it just doesn't matter. >> what is the difference in the number of visitors you get all the newspaper of the website? >> i do not know the number on the newspaper.

it is about 2 million. the traffic is quite respectable on the web. it is much more easily measurable as well. partly because i am writing about technology, i probably get a higher percentage of people and some other journalists might reading me on the web opposed to reading me in the paper. >columns that touch on brand new, much anticipated products, i would have to say a specially brands that have tremendous loyalty. a new blackberry, anything new from apple, they tend to have

tremendous interest because they have passionate customers and i am sure i am leaving out several other companies. >> from reading it, i crewmembe can remember sangfilm. the you know how they have done? what i got a e-mail from them today. they feel like they're doing pretty well. i do not know if they're making money or what their financials are, but i think they managed to distribute hundreds of films in the past year. but i notice they have advertising there. >> i can feel your excitement

when you do something like the iphone 3gs. you get a sense -- are you as excited about it as she right? >> i am very excited when technology produces something new and useful for average people. i think that the iphone falls in that category, but not only the iphone. i was a spot -- excited about other devices. this changes the way people live and work. that always gets me excited. i thoroughly enjoyed writing about it. >> if you could have your way and technology and science and technology, where you want this to go?

>> well wanted to remain human focus. like i said to you a long time ago, when i was wearing a bigger glasses, i still think that ease of use is the important thing. i think it has to be human centered and i think that having people's opinions, whose opinions we might not have been able to read in the old days or watch in the old days is really a privilege. there are loads of smart people out there that do not happen to have a job at the wall street journal or on c-span, and those people have a lot to contribute. one of the reasons i used water is because i interested in what they have to say. >> here is a brief clip showing a little bit of your personality. >> the story is a little

interesting because -- we were sowishowing -- what are you $32 million now? >> we do not release those numbers. >> but is growing rapidly. >> i were to say it is $32 million. >> what was your exasperation about? >> i think that they should be i could see no reason why they should say how many people follow them. they should disclose as much as is reasonable. that was a reasonable thing to disclose. >> are you worried about google microsoft? >> we have a lot of power centers in our society. i worry about companies that have a lot of products that have

a lot of control over our lives. i also worry about world hunger and the economy in the planet. i worry about politicians and bankers and people in the media having outside influence sometimes. just mean, personally, i worry about a lot of things. >> how long hurt -- how much longer the plan on doing this? >> i have no plans on stopping. unless the journal decides that i should stop doing it, and i have had no indication that they feel that way. i am going to keep doing it as long as people keep reading it and at the moment, they are. >> to you have any idea what your next column will be about? i have some idea, but i am not want to tell you. >> why is that?

>> because i tend not to broadcast information. >> what is the worst kickback you have gotten from any manufacturer. >> a couple of tried to get me fired. it happit has not happened recently, but in the beginning there were a couple that tried to get me fired. i actually did not even find out about those cases until much later because editors in new york just, you know, refused and did not tell me about it until later. >> walt mossberg of "the wall street journal." thank you very much. >> the key. >thank you. >> for a dvd copy of this

program, call 1-877-662-7726. 43 transcripts or to comment on this program, visit us at . programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> you are watching c-span. up next, on prime minister's questions, british prime minister gordon brown on military operations in afghanistan. and then president obama at the naacp's founding. did was aldrich on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing in the current space program and then later, on "q&a, personal

technology. >> tomorrow, on c-span2, republican national committee chairman michael steele. that is live beginning at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. >> we cannot allow the taliban or al qaeda related activities to flourish in afghanistan and we cannot allow the pakistan government to be overrun by people who are operating through al qaeda and the pakistan a taliban. ♪ >> and now, from london, the prime minister's questions from the british house of commons. british prime minister gordon brown are