January 30, 2006

''Hero'' is one of those overused accolades that diminishes as it ennobles: it separates its bearer from the rest of us and puts him on a distant pedestal. ''Flight 93,'' on A&E tonight, is a made-for-television movie about the final hours of the men and women aboard the fourth airplane hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001. It restores the passengers' humanity without skimping on their bravery. Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett and others are depicted as they must have been: ordinary people, clammy and terrified, who by storming the plane's cockpit, acted rationally and unselfishly at a moment when instinct might have led them to wait passively, clinging to irrational hope.

It sounds like a project that just about any technology-minded executive could get behind: distributing durable, cheap laptop computers in the developing world to help education. But in the year since Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, unveiled his prototype for a $100 laptop, he has found himself wrestling with Microsoft and the politics of software. Mr. Negroponte has made significant progress, but he has also catalyzed the debate over the role of computing in poor nations -- and ruffled a few feathers. He failed to reach an agreement with Microsoft on including its Windows software in the laptop, leading Microsoft executives to start discussing what they say is a less expensive alternative: turning a specially configured cellular phone into a computer by connecting it to a TV and a keyboard.

Tiger Woods wins Buick Invitational; photos (M)

San Diego Padres sign catcher Mike Piazza to one-year contract; photo (M)9

FOOL millions, make millions. Fool Oprah, lord help you. James Frey, the author of ''A Million Little Pieces'' -- which could yet become the first book ever to lead both the fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists -- reported to the set of ''Oprah'' on Thursday to complete his public abasement. Ms. Winfrey turned on him with calculated efficiency, using him to mop up the floor and clean up her reputation at the same time.