Hack

This staging of Dion Boucicault's "The Shaughraun" may look like a college production, but it's not. The fresh-faced ensemble troops gamely through this sprawling late 19th-Century Irish epic on the Tamarind's too small stage. But even if they were better actors, they couldn't make up for the lack of directorial vision that reduces the play to museum-piece hack work. The text isn't an irredeemable clunker. Yet given its share of star-crossed sweethearts, picaresque swashbuckling romps and quaint adventure intrigues, it takes a strong hand at the helm to justify the revival.

I read Robert Hilburn's article detailing comments made by record executives ("Pop's Power Elite," July 24). It's a joke. Usher as a sure thing? Where were these same geniuses when Usher's records released in 2000 and 2001 immediately went to the used bin? Alicia Keys as the next Stevie Wonder or Prince? I'll grant that she has more talent than a producer-driven hack such as Usher, but I can't even name one of her songs. None of these guys knows what they're talking about. If they spent a lot less on expense accounts, million-dollar videos (that eMpTyV doesn't even play)

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Bank of America customers will no longer have to go to their bank's ATMs to deposit checks. They can now do it from their iPhones or iPads. The company updated its iPhone app Wednesday to include the feature, which earlier this year it announced would arrive on its mobile devices. The feature was introduced to the iPad late last month. The new feature can be accessed by signing into your account through the app. Once signed in, you will see three new buttons near the top. The one on the right reads "Deposits," which you click to get to the feature.

As a member of Congress, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) is proud to stand up for the principles of limited government and individual responsibility. The first-term congressman expresses skepticism about such safety-net programs as food stamps, regarding them as the handiwork of an "oppressive" government that snatches wages from the hands of working people. Helping the poor is better left to individuals and churches, he said at a recent committee hearing in Washington, because then "it comes from the heart, not from a badge or from a mandate.

WASHINGTON - As head of the FBI's cyber crimes division, Shawn Henry often had to deal with exasperated company executives after his agents informed them that their networks had been hacked and their secrets pilfered. "By whom?" the company officials would ask. "What have they taken? Where did it go?" "Sorry," Henry's agents had to reply, "that's classified. " Even though the FBI in many cases had evidence the attacker had been backed by a foreign intelligence agency, agents couldn't disclose it because the U.S. government believed doing so could compromise top-secret sources and methods.

BEIRUT - He sits on a couch in an inconspicuous building in a southern suburb of Beirut. A baseball cap pulled down low, his eyes twitching, Hassan, a Hezbollah squad leader, describes killing more than 20 men in three weeks in the Syrian town of Qusair. "It was a street war. We went from room to room, from house to house, from window to window," said Hassan, who is in his late 30s and sports a light beard. "It was guerrilla warfare with gangs, not a war with a traditional army....

REMEMBERING HER DAYS AS A young girl--"No one would have accused me of being a happy child"--Leslie Abramson has an enduring memory of her favorite means of escape. After school, at the corner luncheonette, she'd buy button candies and chocolate marshmallow twists (two for a nickel) and spend hours at the comic-book racks, reading. Mad magazine was good for a giggle. But it was the spooky stuff, the horror comics like "Tales From the Crypt," that she really loved. And hated, too.

Until the afternoon of Jan. 29, the thought of George McQuarn retiring from coaching was like Tommy Lasorda saying he didn't want to manage the Dodgers . . . or was too full for another egg roll. McQuarn, 44, is in his sixth season as Cal State Fullerton basketball coach, and in every season it has been obvious that he was a coach because he was destined to be. He was drill sergeant, father figure and supreme motivator. He exuded an air of intensity, discipline and dedication.