Since the dawn of time, or so it seems, Steve Jobs and the major labels have been at war on two fronts: digital rights management and pricing. According to CNET, negotiations between Apple and the world's three largest record labels may finally have produced an agreement that would give each party its wish.

Join us Tuesday morning as we report live from Apple's final Macworld Expo keynote in San Francisco.

Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman plans to run for governor of California, a person with knowledge of her political aspirations tells the AP.

A federal judge is keeping alive a lawsuit testing the Bush administration's warrantless-surveillance program adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. President Bush is leaving office in three weeks, but the case tests the power of the nation's chief executive — whether the president can bypass Congress.

Scientists weigh in on Steve Jobs' recent statement that he has a hormonal imbalance that has caused him to lose weight. What little detail is in the statement is contradictory, they say, and could indicate anything from hyperthyroidism to multiple myeloma.

1912: French social critic Jacques Ellul is born. He will become a thoughtful skeptic who worries about the negative impact of technology on the human condition.

Jacques Ellul wore many hats: sociologist, philosopher, humanist, theologian, law professor. He studied the work of Karl Marx and embraced a good deal of Marxist theory, which he did not consider in conflict with his religious beliefs. The son of an atheist father and Christian mother (.pdf), he was raised without religious training. He became a Christian at 22, and his strong faith — Ellul defined himself as a Christian universalist — underpinned all his work.

In his cosmopolitan family, Ellul grew up with a distrust of statism, which partially explains his attraction to Marx. His dislike of the state did not prevent him, however, from taking an active role in the French Resistance during World War II.

He was the rare French intellectual who remained a provincial all his life. He did not beeline it for Paris, as most of his contemporaries did, choosing instead to remain in the seaport town of Bordeaux, where he was born. He was a professor at the university there for most of his career.

Ellul's ambivalence toward technology was grounded in large part in his religious and social convictions. He believed that "technological tyranny," represented by the increasing encroachment of modern technology into our private lives, posed a threat to both human freedom and faith.

He wrote widely on the subject, including the 1964 book, The Technological Society, which is considered his most important work. Ellul was not critical of technology per se, but with the ways it is used by some to impose their will on others. He was especially critical of the mass media, which he believed is completely manipulated by powerful and generally antagonistic special interests.

He wrote:

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed, precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.

One has to wonder what Ellul, who died in 1994, would have made of the internet's long reach.

Source: Various

A Happy Meal lunch spread in 2013 is complete with a personal McFryer and assorted dipping sauces from Honey Mustard to BrainSpike and Endorphin Rush.

More than half of America's air traffic control centers have exceeded their useful lifespan and many have "obvious structural deficiencies and maintenance-related issues," the government says.

.wide_img {display:block;clear:both;}

Most wars last just a few years. But the unexploded mines, shells, and bombs they leave behind can last decades. Getting rid of these lurking killers can be painfully slow and prohibitively expensive. That's why Joe Trocino established the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation with the mission of helping locals dispose of ordnance using inexpensive, easy-to-find materials. Here are three of its ingenious techniques.

Mr. BIP (Blow in Place)
Cost: $20

Sometimes explosives are close to people or buildings. That's where Mr. BIP comes in. Just place an inverted tire rim over the bomb, secure it with rebar stakes, surround with sandbags, drop in an explosive charge, and detonate.

Bullet Barbecue
Cost: $245

Construct a steel box, fill with small-arms rounds, and seal shut. Apply heat to the container using a propane, coal, or wood fire. Rather than exploding, the gunpowder slowly "cooks off"—leaving only inert metals, which can be recycled.

Kinetic Extractor
Cost: $15 per pipe

Unexploded tank rounds and scrap metal pipe are common in conflict zones. Luckily, they can be a disarming combo: Drop the explosive round down the proper diameter pipe and the lip of the shell catches, separating the projectile from the explosive primer.

Illustrations: Nate Van Dyke, Photos: Swiss Foundation for Mine Action

New, more precise measurements of the Milky Way indicate that it's 50 percent more massive and spinning 100,000 miles an hour faster than previously thought. Scientists presented the discovery at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

Stem cells, nanotubes and Martian ice -- these are just a few of Wired Science choices for the top 2008 scientific breakthroughs.

The Transportation Security Administration and JetBlue Airways are paying $240,000 to a District of Columbia man who, as a condition of flying, was forced to cover his Arabic-language shirt. In both English and Arabic, the shirt said: "We Will Not Be Silent."

Steve Jobs won't be delivering a keynote at Macworld, but a 14-year-old is camping out for the event anyway.

Google has released a version of its popular free photo management application for Macintosh computers just ahead of the annual Macworld Expo. Picasa has been available for Windows and Linux for years, and the Mac version is eagerly awaited by those looking for an alternative to Apple's iPhoto.

The company that helped Tesla Motors and Chrysler build their electric cars is working on a battery-electric that will work just like the Chevrolet Volt but be a whole lot sportier.

A pink iguana overlooked by Charles Darwin turns up on the Galapagos Islands. The iguana's color isn't the only thing that distinguishes it from other iguana species: New research shows that it separated from the others genetically 5 million years ago, much earlier than most Galapagos species.

Has the Recording Industry Association of America reached any deals with leading U.S. internet service providers that would terminate service to online file sharers of copyrighted music? Not a single major ISP contacted by Wired.com admitted to going along. And Verizon, with 8.5 million internet subscribers, balked at the proposal.

The Apple rumor mill has been churning furiously with Macworld Expo just a day away. Here's a roundup of everything we've heard, along with our probability estimation for what's true and what isn't.

Asteroids circling dead stars in the galaxy are made of the same stuff as Earth, raising the likelihood of more habitable, rocky planets. Astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to study six dead "white dwarf" stars, and announced their findings at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

Steve Jobs breaks a deafening silence on his health to tell the "Apple Community" that it is not a recurrence of his pancreatic cancer but a treatable hormone imbalance that is the cause for his noticeable weight loss.