VERY,VERY HOT READS, I Would Read The News In This Thread This Thead Is To post Any Thing Ye Want About The News,,NEWS WAS MOVED,READ MY FIRST POST..CHEERS
p2p news / p2pnet: A former Apple fan is suing the company, alleging iPods can cause hearing loss.
The iPod players are "inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss," according to the complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., on behalf of John Kiel Patterson of Louisiana," says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Patterson wants his suit certified as a class-action and is claiming compensation for unspecified damages, and upgrades that will make iPods safer.
"Patterson does not know if the device has damaged his hearing, said his attorney, Steve W. Berman, of Seattle," says the story.
"He's bought a product which is not safe to use as currently sold on the market," Berman said. "He's paying for a product that's defective, and the law is pretty clear that if someone sold you a defective product they have a duty to repair it."
Apple ships a warning with each iPod that cautions "permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume," sais the the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, adding:
"Apple was forced to pull the iPod from store shelves in France and upgrade software on the device to limit sound to 100 decibels, but has not followed suit in the United States, according to the complaint."
Recently, The Who guitarist Pete Townshend blogged that headphones can be dangerous - really dangerous.
Also See:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer - Man sues Apple over potential hearing loss, February 1, 2006
really dangerous - Pete Townshend on hearing loss, January 4, 2006
p2p news / p2pnet: "These people who download music, trade music and share it, are people who love music. I think the labels have forgotten that. They keep pushing people away."
This doesn't come from someone who shares music through the p2p networks. Rather, it's from Terry McBride who runs one of North America's largest record labels and production companies.
He's also picking up the tab for a Texas family that's being sued by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) which has just announced it's fired another 750 subpoenas at its owners' customers, bringing the total to more than 18,000.
Owned by Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI, the RIAA is one of the numerous 'trade' organizations which are victimizing men, women and childen around the world in a hopeless sue 'em all campaign purpose-designed to terrorize them into buying more 'product'.
The number of people using the networks continues to rise.
Meanwhile, RIAA president Cary 'Scary' Sherman has come up with a new phrase he hopes will titillate the increasingly jaded mainstream media.
'Songlifting'.
Under attack this time around are corporate music industry consumers in: Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California; Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce, Miami, and Pensacola, Florida; Atlanta and Newnan, Georgia; Council Bluffs, Des Moines, and Rock Island, Iowa; Evansville, Indianapolis, and Terre Haute, Indiana; Boston and Worchester, Massachusetts; Baltimore and Greenbelt, Maryland; Ann Arbor, Bay City, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Marquette, Michigan; Brooklyn, Central Islip, New York, and White Plains, New York; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Columbia, Florence, Greenville, and Spartanburg, South Carolina; Abilene, Corpus Christi, Fort Worth, Galveston, Houston, Midland, San Angelo, San Antonio, and Waco, Texas; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
picking up the tab - Suing music fans is crazy, January 31, 2006
p2p news / p2pnet: Marie Lindor, a Brooklyn, New York, home health aide, has never bought, used, or turned on a computer in her life.
But she's still being sued by the Big Four Organized Music cartel's RIAA in Brooklyn federal court.
Lindor literally doesn't know one end of a computer from another but according to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) she's said to have been using an "online distribution system" to "download, distribute, and/or make available for distribution" copyrighted music.
She's requested a pre-motion conference pending a request for summary judgment to have the complaint thrown out, and to have her attorneys' fees paid.
p2p news / p2pnet: America's largest telephone and cable companies, "are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online," says the Center for Digital Democracy's Jeff Chester on The Nation.
Certainly, Dick and George and the people over at the Pentagon would like it that way. Then they'd be able to bring bottom-line pressure to bear against the Net, seen by the US military as an enemy to be grappled with in the fight against tourism, as George W calls it.
Meanwhile, "Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency," says Chester in The Nation. "According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets - corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers - would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
"Under the plans they are considering, all of us - from content providers to individual users - would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing 'platinum,' 'gold' and 'silver' levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received."
"To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communications policy laws. They want the federal government to permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have far-reaching impact on the Internet's future. Ten years after passage of the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996, telephone and cable companies are using the same political snake oil to convince compromised or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet into a turbo-charged digital retail machine."
And there's more, Chester warns.
At the core of the "new power held by phone and cable companies" is "deep packet inspection" through which the likes of AT&T can mine the data you're receiving online.
Deep packet inspection technologies are partly designed to make the Net pipeline open, but they're, " also being used to limit some peer-to-peer downloading, especially for music".
"But these tools are also being promoted as ways that companies, such as Comcast and Bell South, can simply grab greater control over the Internet," says The Nation. "For example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet technology giant Cisco urges these companies to 'meter individual subscriber usage by application,' as individuals' online travels are 'tracked' and 'integrated with billing systems.'
"Such tracking and billing is made possible because they will know 'the identity and profile of the individual subscriber,' 'what the subscriber is doing' and 'where the subscriber resides'."
Chester believes a national debate is vital to make sure the corporatios don't wind up as all-powerful overseers.
"We must insure that phone and cable companies operate their Internet services in the public interest -as stewards for a vital medium for free expression," he says.
(Thanks, Justine)
Also See:
The Nation - The End of the Internet?, February, 2006
fight against tourism - The Pentagon vs the Net, February 1, 2006
p2p news / p2pnet: The latest mass-mailing horror is due to strike live tomorrow when millions of computers around may become infected to turn the F-Secure map virtually red.
If you're worried, F-Secure has a disinfectant free tool available for free. Go here for a download.
http://download.f-secure.com/latest/latest.zip ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/updates/latest/latest.zip
Meanwhile, F-Secure says it's been working with RCN, "the company running the counter site that is used by the Nyxem.E worm" and, "Last night we got the web access statistics, listing all the IP addresses that have accessed the Nyxem counter."
After filtering out the addresses of bots that had been hammering the F-Secure counter, the company used its WORLDMAP technology to map the addresses of machines it believes will run into trouble unless they're disinfected before tomorrow.
Nyxem.E will begin to overwrite files half an hour after infected machines start on the 3rd of the month, adds F-Secure.
Also See:
mass-mailing horror - Nyxem.E goes live Feb 3, February 1, 2006
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Music fans say CD's are too expensive and content is poor
Posted by Dan Bell on 02 February 2006 - 21:21 - Source: AP News MyWay
A nationwide poll conducted for the Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine has found that those questioned, are dissatisfied with the product being offered from the music industry. Those polled also overwhelming feel that CD's are simply too expensive. Oddly though, they were split when asked as to why sales are in decline.
Eighty percent of the respondents consider it stealing to download music for free without the copyright holder's permission, and 92 percent say they've never done it, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine.
Meanwhile, three-quarters of music fans say compact discs are too expensive, and 58 percent say music in general is getting worse.
"Less talented people are able to get a song out there and make a quick million and you never hear from them again," said Kate Simkins, 30, of Cape Cod, Mass.
Ipsos' telephone poll of 1,000 adults, including 963 music listeners, from all states except Alaska and Hawaii was conducted Jan. 23-25 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The very same fans, when specifically asked why music sales have declined during the last five years were divided. About a third felt it was because of illegal downloads, 29 percent pointed to all the other choices out there for entertainment, 21 percent thought the music was just plain getting worse, whereas only 13 percent pointed to high prices.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13023
Fan Memo to Music Industry: Lower Prices
Email this Story
Feb 2, 4:45 AM (ET)
By DAVID BAUDER
NEW YORK (AP) - Music executives love to blame illegal downloading for their industry's woes. But, based on the results of a new nationwide poll, they might want to look in the mirror.
Eighty percent of the respondents consider it stealing to download music for free without the copyright holder's permission, and 92 percent say they've never done it, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine.
Meanwhile, three-quarters of music fans say compact discs are too expensive, and 58 percent say music in general is getting worse.
"Less talented people are able to get a song out there and make a quick million and you never hear from them again," said Kate Simkins, 30, of Cape Cod, Mass.
Ipsos' telephone poll of 1,000 adults, including 963 music listeners, from all states except Alaska and Hawaii was conducted Jan. 23-25 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The music industry has spent several years in turmoil, as downloading and the popularity of iPods upend its traditional business model. A total of 618.9 million CD albums were sold during 2005, sharply down from the 762.8 million sold in 2001, according to Nielsen Soundscan.
At the same time, 352.7 million tracks were sold digitally in 2005, a category that wasn't even measured five years ago. Digital sales of music and ring tones offer new revenue opportunities, but often at the expense of more lucrative CD sales.
Although buying music digitally hasn't exactly become widespread - only 15 percent of poll respondents said they have done it - there appears to be a growing acceptance of this type of transaction. The poll found that 71 percent of music fans believe that a 99-cent download of a song is a fair price or outright bargain.
Even though millions of tracks are downloaded for free each week on peer-to-peer networks, a sense of queasiness remains.
"Somebody is putting their art out there. They should be compensated for it," said Mickey Johnson, 41, from Charleston, Tenn.
The industry would be wise to embrace downloading, said Greg Hoerger, 42, of Minneapolis, who suggested that customers could receive five or six free downloads from an artist when they buy a CD.
For fans like Hoerger and Simkins, buying a CD for about $20 is no bargain. They'd rather download one or two favorite songs to their iPods. The digital music revolution also has other benefits, Simkins said: with the iPod, she no longer has to have cassettes or CDs cluttering her car.
The last CD she bought, a few months ago, was by the Killers. "It was on sale," she said.
Many fans also say they just don't like what they're hearing. It may not be surprising to hear older fans say music just isn't what it used to be when they were growing up. But the poll also found that 49 percent of music fans ages 18-to-34 - the target audience for the music business - say music is getting worse.
"Even if our parents didn't like how loud rock 'n' roll was, or that it was revolutionary, at least they could listen to some of it," said Christina Tjoelker, 49, from Snohomish, Wash. "It wasn't gross. It wasn't disgusting. It wasn't about beating up women or shooting the police."
The last CD she bought was Neil Diamond's new one, "because Oprah was raving about it," she said.
Overall, music fans were split on why music sales have been declining for the past five years: 33 percent said it was because of illegal downloads, 29 percent said it was because of competition from other forms of entertainment, 21 percent blamed it on the quality of music getting worse and 13 percent said it was because CDs are too expensive.
FM radio is still the main way most fans find out about new music, according to the poll. Television shows are a distant second.
Rock 'n' roll is the most popular style of music, cited by 26 percent of the fans. It runs neck-and-neck with country among fans ages 35 or over.
Rap music is the source of the biggest generation gap. Among fans under age 35, 18 percent called rap or hip-hop their favorite style of music, the poll found. Only 2 percent of people ages 35 and over said the same thing. http://apnews.myway.com//article/20060202/D8FGT9KO0.html
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http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4652.html
Copyright bill has some wondering if fair use is over?
2/3/2006 12:15:52 PM, by Nate Anderson
Don Stewart, an Alabama graphic artist, has been drawing "visual puns" for many years, including this picture of a VW Beetle composed entirely of insects. This particular image was created in 1992, so Don was surprised to hear quite recently from Volkswagen's lawyers. They demanded that he stop circulating the image in any way, shape, or form, and suggested that he tear the images out of the coffee table book he sells and send those images to Volkswagen.
But Don did not want to rip pages from his book and mail them to a group of attorneys. Instead, he contacted (PDF) his Senator. Why? Because Don believes that he was targeted by Volkswagen under a new bill passed by the House and currently in committee in the Senate. In his letter, he argues that Volkswagen and other large companies want to use the pedning legislation to prevent journalists and artists from exercising their long-standing rights to the "non-commerical" use of trademarked images.
The law is H.R. 683, the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2005, and it's been working up more people than just Don Stewart. An essay on stockphotographer.com (via Boing Boing) argues against the proposed law in violent terms, believing that the legislation would give nearly total control of trademarked words, symbols, and images to corporations, who could then prevent anyone they wish from using them, for whatever reason. How bad is the law?
"It will serve to eliminate the current protection for non-commercial speech currently contained in the Lanham Act. It will prevent businesses (artists)and consumers from invoking famous trademarks to explain or illustrate their discussion of public issues...
Exceptions for fair use, non-commercial use, reportage, commentary, etc. currently existing could disappear and would be no defense to claims of infringement of a registered or unregistered mark."
Yikes! Any law that would destroy fair use protections would certainly be a terrible piece of legislation, one whose effects would be far reaching and disastrous for consumers. To understand if this is indeed happening, let's compare the copyright law (the Lanham Act from 1946) as it currently stands to the new proposals set out in H.R. 863. Here are the types of fair use allowed for trademarks under section 43 of the Lanham Act.
(A) Fair use of a famous mark by another person in comparative commercial advertising or promotion to identify the competing goods or services of the owner of the famous mark.
(B) Noncommercial use of a mark.
(C) All forms of news reporting and news commentary.
Note especially item B, the "non-commercial use" exception. This is a particular point of concern to Mr. Stewart, who points out in his letter that it has "been generally understood to protect artistic expression, even when the art is sold in a book, drawing, song or movie." Under the new law, however, the "non-commercial use" exception has been rewritten.
(A) Fair use of a famous mark by another person in comparative commercial advertising or promotion to identify the competing goods or services of the owner of the famous mark.
(B) Fair use of a famous mark by another person, other than as a designation of source for the person's goods or services, including for purposes of identifying and parodying, criticizing, or commenting upon the famous mark owner or the goods or services of the famous mark owner.
(C) All forms of news reporting and news commentary.
Clearly, then, the wild claims made above about eliminating "fair use... reportage, commentary, etc." don't hold up when you examine the bill. Fair use of trademarks in several different forms is explicitly allowed, as is all news reporting and commentary that feature such marks. On the other hand, Mr. Stewart is correct to point out that the "non-commercial use" exemption has been removed, which could indeed make it more difficult for an artist to paint a picture of flowers standing in a Coke bottle (an example he uses in his letter).
Lawyers for Volkswagen apparently assume the law will pass, and their interpretation of it seems to be that while criticism and parody of their brand is allowed, a positive and humorous representation of a Beetle is not. As Mr. Stewart asks rhetorically, "What is our country coming to when someone is liable for a lawsuit because they are being nice?" If the bill is passed, it will no doubt take several such court cases to figure out exactly where the boundaries lie. Though the bill is nowhere near as bad as the alarmists are suggesting, a first reading does suggest that it represents another small shift of power in the direction of corporate interests.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060203-6112.html
Meet the New Media, same as the Old Media: blogging and the problem of access
2/3/2006 12:29:17 PM, by Hannibal
Steve Clemons' blog, The Washington Note, has been part of my daily reading routine for a little over a year. Clemons is a well-connected, fair-minded journalist and policy wonk who uses his blog for the kind of original reporting that's all too rare in the blogosphere. In a recent post, Clemons calls attention to the growing phenomenon of blogger conference calls. Clemons' post is worth reading in full, because it outlines some of the thorny ethical problems surrounding the now routine practice of Democratic Senators and Representatives holding conference calls with prominent liberal bloggers.
Ideally, these blogger conference calls should provide opportunities for a give-and-take between congresspeople and the bloggers who're out there in the trenches interacting directly with the party's base. The Senators and Representatives have a chance to pitch their message to a sympathetic audience, and in return they can get valuable critical feedback on things like issue framing and even policymaking. The bloggers can get the inside scoop on what's happening in the halls of Congress, and the varied causes they're advocating can benefit directly from some amount of message coordination between elected representatives and the blogger/activist community. Unfortunately, though, things don't seem to be working out this way.
According to Clemons, a large and growing number of the bloggers participating in these calls seem to be little more than eager mouthpieces for the Senator on the other end of the line.
The bigger issue for me with the Blogger conference calls is the sycophancy that seems to be developing in these meetings -- and the unwritten norm that those bloggers on the call are the running dogs for that particular Senator. There is clearly a 'community' of interests where the line between the journalistic and reporting objectives of the blogger and the interests of the Senator or Representative are becoming practically invisible.
Again, I think it's OK for like-minded journalists and politicians to share views, even share objectives for the country and world -- but the implied norm of the call feels as if there is an obligation of the bloggers to watch the Senator's or Rep's back -- to write not necessarily truthfully about the call, but to "frame" or "shape" the call in such a way that fits a politically acceptable groove.
Clearly, these bloggers are totally flattered by the fact that Ted Kennedy wants to talk to them, and this makes them quite happy to go forth and spread the Gospel According to Ted once the call is over.
Of course, as Clemons himself is at pains to point out, what's going on here isn't by any means new to the world of journalism. Furthermore, we at Ars can vouch for the fact that it's not new to the world of online journalism, either. In fact, the corrupting force that Clemons describes is at work any number of areas, and it has a name: access.
Access corrupts
Access is what turned Bob Woodward from the iconic outsider journalist who brought down a president into the "court stenographer" for the Bush administration. In the world of so-called "new media," access to conference calls and closed-door meetings and prerelease review units very quickly turned large swaths of the online tech and gaming scenes into venues for regurgitated corporate PR. (We at Ars watched this one happen first-hand, in accelerated "Internet time.") To bring it even closer to home for me personally, over the past few years I've watched some leaders in my evangelical Christian denomination publicly betray most of the principles on which I was raised in exchange for nothing more than a few periodic phone calls from DC and the flattering attentions of the state GOP leadership. I throw in this last example to illustrate the point that the corrupting influence of access is a bipartisan problem, and it's by no means limited to journalism or private industry.
I'd feel better somehow if the aforementioned bloggers, journalists, ministers, etc. were being paid off. But it takes a unique mix of self-confidence and ambition to be the kind of person who can stand up to The Powers That Be and demand some quid pro quo. Most folks don't even have that going for them, much less the even rarer blend of gumption and integrity that it takes to ignore the Powers' interests and one's own self-interest in order to work toward the common good of a larger community.
Some questions for blog readers and bloggers
To bring the discussion back to the specific issue of left-wing blogger coordination, I was a bit surprised to learn from some journalist friends of mine that there's actually a lefty blogger email list. The list includes the top Progressive bloggers and many journalists, and it's used to coordinate coverage of different issues throughout the left-wing blogosphere.
The e-mail list and the conference calls raise some questions for me that I'd like to put to everyone, especially those who rely heavily on political blogs for most of their news, are as follows:
* What level of blogger coordination do you feel comfortable with?
* Is coordination on issues coverage acceptable?
* What about the more narrowly partisan levels of coordination that Steve Clemons points out?
* Can you identify any aspects of the blogosphere (i.e. the presence of user comments, the fact that blog reporting is tied to a specific personality that regular readers come to "know," the average blogger's physical separation from geographic centers of power, etc.) that may help immunize New Media from some of the access-specific maladies that have corrupted Old Media, or is it hopeless?
By way of conclusion, I want to point out that I don't have any information on how things work on the right-wing side of the blogosphere. The documentary Outfoxed pretty thoroughly documented the message coordination that goes on between the RNC and Fox News, and I have no doubt that there's even greater level of coordination that goes on between the RNC and many of the right-wing blogs. (Please, before you flame me for suggesting this, be prepared to convince me that nothing beyond some innocuous glad-handing goes on at the annual White House Hanukkah Party, where the leading lights of the right-wing blogosphere are cordially invited to hobnob with the President and his inner circle.) If you have any information on how messaging is coordinated on the righty side of the spectrum, I'd love to hear from you either via e-mail or in the comments thread.
Earlier this week we reported on Sony's pans to take on Xbox Live with a new online gaming service aimed at the PlayStation 3. Now it appears that Sony has even more in store for the PS3, including "DVR capabilities," media center-like functionality, and commercial content tie-ins.
First, let's start with what's shipping today: the PSP. Sony's PSP has video entertainment device written all over it, but you didn't need a report to tell you that. With its UMD and Memory Stick Duo storage capabilities, the device was designed to do more than play games. Witness Sony's own PSP Media Manager, and TiVo's upcoming support for the device?both ways to get video entertainment content on to the PSP's glorious screen from a variety of sources. Now add to this the PS3, and you can already see where this is going. The devices were made for each other.
"Right now Sony CEA is focused entirely on PS3... basically on auto-pilot from [Sony's] standpoint. They have big plans for it down the road, but mainly as more of an accessory for the PS3," a source told print-only magazine PSM.
An "accessory" for the PSP is going to be a device that can connect to the PS3 for interactive gaming, video sharing, and probably music synchronization. Think about it: you're Sony, and you have the PSP. The device is in the same price league as the iPod (although storage is more expensive), and the screen is better. You're also a content owner with fingers in movies, music, and television. Sony's efforts to-date with UMD offerings are only the opening salvos for the company. How do you go after iPod-like success? Like the iPod that is tethered to a computer, the PSP will be tethered to a PS3.
"DVR functionality is going to be a big push for this thing. We don't know exactly how the video is going to get into the system, but it's a top priority for Sony," the source said. Furthermore, they said that "high def movie and TV episode downloads over the online service are a definite, kind of like the iTunes Music Store."
So, the PS3 may turn out to be a kind of DVR. To be sure, Sony has been talking about putting a DVR in the PlayStation for ages, even back in the dark days of 2003. For a brief while, the company planned a PS2-based offering that would have DVR functionality and sport niceties like a DVD burner and a (then) spacious hard drive. Microsoft has thought about this internally as well. But what would a PS3 DVR look like?
The quote above gives me pause. It surprises me that the source is not clear as to how the content will get on the device; presumably this would be obvious for a device designed to be a DVR. Second, the PS3 will likely not have a hard drive in all configurations, which leads me to believe that whatever DVR-like functionality there is will be secondary to the device. To be sure, this is already the case with the Xbox 360, with its media center functionality relegated to a small part of the interface that's easy to ignore. And the Xbox 360 can't do it all itself. It's not a true DVR, and most of the media functionality that makes it interesting requires a Media Center PC somewhere in the mix. Will the PS3 offer that kind of functionality without a PC somewhere doing the heavy lifting? I have my doubts. And to be honest, thinking about what a DVR interface designed by Sony might look like makes me shudder.
If the rumors in PSM are true, what I would expect to see is something closer to the Microsoft model, where a centralized networked PC serves as the repository of content, and streaming media capabilities fill in the rest of the gaps. (Indeed, Sony already works this concept into a lather with its "Location Free" offerings.) I don't think the PS3 will be a traditional "set it and forget it" DVR device like a TiVo. Rather, I think it will play content that is fed to it, but you'll need to do the feeding. Sony will likely expand their current e-commerce options to help with that, and some tie-ins with the PS3 should be expected. I seriously doubt, however, that it will be recording streams of video from your cable connection while you're playing Madden 2007.
The writing has been on the wall for some time. Microsoft's Xbox largely paved the way for good, centrally managed online gaming services for consoles, and the company even tried to make the Xbox into a home entertainment hub (arguably, the hackers did more in this regard than Microsoft did). With the Xbox 360, Microsoft has raised the bar, and it looks like Sony will be chasing after them. But I wouldn't throw away that TiVo or Media Center just yet.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060203-6110.html
In what can only be called a surprise move, CBS has just announced that it will begin selling Survivor episodes from its own website. If you've been following the rapid changes in the online video market recently, you'll remember that not long ago Google was trumpeting the addition of CBS shows such as Survivor to the Google Video Store. Less than a month later, CBS has decided that it can do a better job of selling the shows itself (though content currently up on Google Video will apparently remain there).
The network was whistling a different tune back in November, however, when CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves commented on his company's quest for an established online partner.
"They need our content, we need their technology," Moonves said, referring to broader discussions with Internet companies. "We argue about which is more important. I think ultimately my content--no matter how you get it, content is still the most important thing."
After its brief honeymoon with Google Video, the network decided that it didn't need anyone else's technology after all. CBS apparently has the technology needed to sell you episodes of Survivor for US$1.99. New episodes will be available for sale just after midnight on days that a new episode is aired, but you'd better watch them quick?your right to watch them will expire twenty-four hours after purchase. (The exact DRM scheme is not yet clear, but note that their current video player is an online offering that offers streaming video only.) Pretty good deal, huh?
With a new season of Survivor slated to begin tonight, CBS no doubt wanted to make sure it had a solid, user-friendly platform in place to serve up hot, steaming episodes of the show to those desperate to witness the latest Immunity Challenge in all its digitized glory. Google Video turned out not to be that platform. Google Video has stumbled from the start, and a high-profile defection can't do it any good.
Though CBS may be less than thrilled at the user experience offered up by Google, they also seem to be rethinking their digital media strategy. CBS knows that, as a content provider, it is the umbrella for many profitable brands as well as the funniest late-night monologue on television (and no, I'm not talking about David Letterman). People with MBAs know that the way to make the most money is not to split it with anyone else, especially when that someone else offers up what may or may not be a crocodile laying eggs on its front page.
The problem with doing it yourself is that people don't currently think of the CBS website as the place to go to drop their hard-earned cash on television shows they can only watch for a single day. But the network wants to change this perception and build stronger brand identity by hosting and selling their content themselves. Survivor is a strong enough brand that people will go looking it for it wherever CBS tells them to look for it, and CBS can do better cross-promotion on its own site. (Plus, more money!)
This is obviously an experiment for CBS, which will probably migrate all of its content to its own site if Survivor becomes a success. (CSI, for instance, is still being sold through Google Video). If it doesn't work out, you can bet CBS will either return on bended knee to Google or seek another suitor?or both. (If video follows the path that music has trod, shows may end up on multiple online stores.) Will CBS make itself into a player in the digital media space or be sent running into the arms of others?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060202-6108.html
It would be great to see the ps3 carry dvr capabilities. Some of the interfaces sony create for a various range of products (notably the psp) are excellent.
Ah, sweet, sweet caffeine. Whether your chosen delivery device is a Triple Red Eye from Starbucks or a liter of Mountain Dew, nothing beats the gentle jolt into full wakefulness provided by the humble C8H10N4O2 molecule. Oral delivery by means of caffeinated liquids has long been the preferred method of getting one's caffeine buzz on. In a cruel twist of fate, some people are unable to brew a pot of coffee, a latte, or figure out how to open a can of Mountain Dew right after waking up, due to that very same lack of caffeine.
What's a caffeine-loving geek to do? Enter Shower Shock. In the search for ever-more-efficient ways to ingest caffeine, someone came up with the bright idea of adding caffeine to soap. That way, all you need to do is to stumble out of bed and into the shower, wash with a bar of caffeine-infused soap, and you're well on your way to full wakefulness.
I'm a long-time caffeine addict, or as we used to say in the 1980s, a Coffee Achiever. I've tried with varying degrees of success to kick the habit, and I am even married to someone who avoids the blessed molecule completely. I've managed to stay off of it for a couple of years on more than one occasion. But in the end, I always come stumbling back to the precious bean.
My current intake comes primarily in the form of coffee. On the weekends, that comes in the form of approximately a quart of Starbucks Sumatran, French Roast, or Komodo Dragon coffee freshly ground and brewed using a paper cone filter. I can accomplish nothing meaningful on a Saturday or Sunday morning until I've sat down on the couch with the newspaper and made my way through at least half of the morning's brew. During the week, I generally hold off on the coffee until I get into the office. I either grab a large coffee at the cafeteria in my building on my way in, or brew some right after arriving. Either way, I'm here, but not here until I've got some coffee in my system.
After acknowledging the depths of my addiction and subsequently resigning myself to it, I was intrigued by Shower Shock's promise of a cup of coffee in every wash. Depending on a number of factors, a regular cup of coffee contains anywhere from 120 to 200mg of caffeine. Shower Shock says each bar delivers 12 washes of 200mg each. So if nothing else, I was hoping the soap would give me a nice little jump start on my daily fix. Oh, and I was hoping it would get me clean, too.
Hardware test bed
No Ars review is complete without a discussion of the test systems.
Test bed #1:
* 38-year-old male
* Heavy caffeine user (about 5 cups daily)
* Shares responsibility for monitoring two processor-intensive child processes
* Average uptime per day: 17-18 hours
* Spends too much time in front of a computer
Test bed #2:
* Age not disclosed (I value my marital bliss, ok?)
* Avoids caffeinated beverages entirely
* Spawned two child processes, has primary responsibility for monitoring
* Average uptime per day: 16-17 hours
* Thinks I spend too much time in front of a computer
Test environment
The shower. Where else?
After my Shower Shock arrived, I deviated from my usual Dove + Neutrogena facial bar combo. I use the Dove to keep my skin from drying out during the winter and the Neutrogena because my face thinks I'm stuck in adolescence. Instead, I jumped into the shower and lathered up with the Shower Shock. Now, in addition to containing roughly 2400mg of caffeine, each bar is also heavily loaded with peppermint oil. Not long after lathering up, I got the feeling that not only had I just gone for a brisk stroll in the peppermint rain through the peppermint forest of the children's board game "Candyland," but while walking through the forest I had tripped over a peppermint tree root, fell into a peppermint mud puddle, slid down the slopes of peppermint hill through the peppermint grass, and landed in the peppermint pond.
Wanting to give my skin the maximum possible exposure to the beneficial effects of the soap, I soaped myself up and let the lather sit for a few minutes on a few areas of my body, including my big, bald head. I performed the rest of my daily ablutions, dried off, got dressed, and prepared to leave for work. In addition to feeling the effects of the peppermint oil in the soap, I also fancied I felt a bit more alert. Upon arriving in the office at 8:30, I felt perky enough to avoid the coffee maker for about a half-hour, a notable change from my usual habit of making a beeline to the kitchen upon arrival. I still downed most of my usual ration of coffee, but it seemed to me the soap had made a difference, giving me a small?yet significant?start on my daily fix.
Curious as to whether I was really feeling the effects of the soap or the mere suggestion of an effect, I asked my wife to take one for the team and try the soap. She has been off caffeine since just after we started dating. My love for her was (and is) so strong that I was willing to weather the stormy seas of caffeine withdrawal early on in our relationship. She has been off the stuff for over a decade, and drinking a cup of regular joe will give her nausea, the shakes, and a jittery feeling that will last for several hours. The most recent occurrence was a couple of weeks ago when a barrista at Starbucks failed to hear the "decaf" part of her latte order, which was evidenced by the usual symptoms along with her staying up until nearly 2am after drinking it at around noon.
So with much trepidation, she showered using the soap. The result? Not long after exiting the shower, the familiar and unwelcome symptoms of caffeine ingestion appeared. They lasted for a few hours. They weren't as severe those that follow a tall, accidentally-not-decaf latte, but she definitely felt... something.
But what was that something? We all know the power of persuasion and the reality of the placebo effect (the infamous "informed consent placebo risk"). Were our minds playing tricks on us? Were we confusing the tingling of the peppermint bomb in every wash with the bodily absorption of caffeine? In conversations with the crack Ars scientific staff, Dr. Gitlin and Dr. Timmer both expressed doubt as to how well caffeine could be absorbed through the skin. They informed me that while the molecule is very water-soluable, which allows it to be easily absorbed by the body when it is drunk, it would have a much more difficult time making it through the skin. In addition, the bond between caffeine and soap might be so strong that the caffeine molecules would follow the soap bubbles down the drain instead of being absorbed through the skin.
Was the tingling and alertness (or in the case of my wife, the shakiness and jitteriness) all in our mind? It could very well be. I've continued using the soap almost daily, and will do so until our three-bar supply is exhausted. (The manufacturer says each bar is good for 12 washes, but I'm approaching 10 uses and the bar is roughly half gone.) I'm still drinking about the same amount of coffee as before. Of course, the alert feeling could also be from the peppermint. Peppermint oils and soaps can be tingly by themselves, and we all know what happens when you bite into a York Peppermint Patty.
I will say that I feel more alert after showering with Shower Shock than if I stick with the Dove. I arrive in the office fairly alert every morning, as opposed my the usual mostly-awake state. I suppose that someone, somewhere will do a clinically controlled, double-blind study on transdermal caffeine application. Until that time, I'll cautiously recommend caffeinated soap to caffeine addicts looking for that first hit of the day?provided they don't mind spending nearly US$7.00 on a bar of soap.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060202-6106.html
p2p news / p2pnet: Sony Canada has been hit with another class action suit arising from last year's rootkit fiasco. This suit is particularly interesting for a pair of reasons.
First, it contains new allegations about Sony's conduct in Canada. In particular, it alleges:
* Sony released at least 34 titles in Canada with sales of approximately 120,000 CDs
* Sony waited two extra weeks to begin recalling CDs in Canada as compared to the United States
* Sony did not do enough to remove the CDs from store shelves. One of the named complainants purchased the CD on Boxing Day, weeks after the recall was announced and the complaint alleges that the CDs are still being sold.
Second, the complaint includes considerable analysis of Sony's alleged violation of both consumer protection and national privacy legislation.
Given the analysis, the question that immediately comes to mind is whether the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Competition Bureau have launched investigations into the Sony rootkit incident.
If not, why not?
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
p2p news / p2pnet: French plans to legalise p2p downloading are still being debated while an alarmed corporate music industry does everything it can to block the process.
France proposed the move in December, 2005, and French president Jacques Chirac recently, "added his opinions to the somewhat confusing debate on illegal file sharing that has been doing the rounds in French political circles in the last few weeks," although his views didn't clarify anything.
But EMI boss Eric Nicoli has no doubts, calling the plan an "aberration".
Now, "France's Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres is set to be questioned about the draft on Wednesday by the parliamentary commission for cultural affairs and the commission for economic affairs," says Reuters.
"The project has worried the music, film and television industries because it would make France the first country to allow unlimited peer-to-peer downloading for a flat fee of several euros a month, going on, "Some legalised versions of peer-to-peer networks are starting to crop up, including one expected to be launched soon in Germany by Warner Bros."
This is in reference to In2Movies, a fake p2p service slated for release next month.
"We are concerned and monitoring the situation closely," Reuters has a spokeswoman for the Big Four's IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) saying.
France should now expect warnings about dire consequences to the Big Four and its artists and employees from IFPI boss John Kennedy if the proposal goes through.
"The draft law, which originally aimed to tackle online piracy, is backed by consumer groups in France but heavily opposed by such companies as Vivendi Universal, which owns Universal Music, the world's biggest record company, and a stake in film and TV company NBC Universal," states Reuters.
Also See:
confusing debate - Chirac on p2p file sharing, January 12, 2006
aberration - EMI attacks French p2p plan, January 22, 2006
Reuters - France's legal file-sharing plan advancing, February 3, 2006
fake p2p service - Warner Bros p2p 'file sharing', Januaryy 30, 2006
p2p news / p2pnet: CDs are too expensive, believe three out of four music fans, and music in general is getting worse, according to an Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine Ipsos poll.
This is very far from being news and the two findings explain why more and more people are turning to the p2p networks for relief.
A total of 618.9 million CD albums were sold during 2005, sharply down from the 762.8 million sold in 2001, according to Nielsen Soundscan, says the Associated Press. "At the same time, 352.7 million tracks were sold digitally in 2005, a category that wasn't even measured five years ago. After years where fans had to buy $20 CDs because they liked one or two songs, now they can download the songs for 99 cents a pop, or free if they can burn a copy from a friend."
Some 60 million Americans had logged on a year ago, says the Digital Media Project, and, say statistics from p2p research company BigChampagne, the numbers are steadily increasing year by year.
During September, 2005, the average number of files available on p2p networks for download at any moment (average simultaneous files) was 2,789,154,393, BigChampagne told p2pnet.
But in this digital era, the Big Four Organized Music cartel is still locked in the last century with outmoded physical business models and, "Many in the music industry grumble that downloading has been their downfall, and the business has aggressively tried to stop illegal file sharing," says the story.
Quoting poll results, the story goes into detail about corporate downloads, giving the false impression there's an active and successful commercial online music market.
It also presents unqualified blanket findings.
Pollsters telephoned 1,000 adults, of whom 963 were "music listeners," from all states except Alaska and Hawaii, between January 23 and 25 and there was a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points, says AP.
It also states: "The poll found that 80 percent of people consider downloading music for free without the copyright holder's permission to be stealing."
Of course, 80% of people did nothing of the kind. That was 80% of 1,000 adults Ipsos talked to on the phone.
It's also highly unlikely that the Ipsos pollsters explained that with file sharing, no stealing is involved, nothing has been taken away, and no one has been deprived of something they used to own.
AP goes on, "People who actually download are less apt to consider it stealing, but there's evidence that many fans accept the iTunes business model. The poll found that 71 percent of music fans believe that a 99 cents a song is a fair price or outright bargain."
Again, this wasn't 71% of music fans, it was 71% of adult, not teenaged, Ipsos respondents.
"Overall, music fans were split on why music sales have been declining for the past five years," adds AP. Thirty-three percent said it was because of illegal downloads, 29% said it was because of competition from other forms of entertainment, 21% blamed it on the quality of music getting worse and 13% said it was because CDs are too expensive.
So does that mean overall, most of the interviewees attributed the decline in music sales to a mixture of bad product, over-priced CDs and competition from video games, etc?
Also See:
Associated Press - Libraries fear digital lockdown, February 3, 2006
60 million - Content and Control, January 8, 2005
p2p news / p2pnet: Mozilla has just released an upgrade to FireFox. And Bill and the Boyz have also turned loose the second beta for IE7.
But, "Bug reports and security warnings have started pouring in," says VNUNet, listing:
* A vulnerability that causes IE7 to crash or execute arbitrary code when a user visits a specially crafted site (the Internet Explorer Blog says the problem is caused by stricter URL-scheme handling in the browser and that the company is working on a fix)
* Reported issues with McAfee's antivirus software in which users were unable to launch the McAfee Security Center
* Problems working together with several anti-spyware applications
Of the crash, it was down to a DoS (Denial of Service) and it happened, "just moments" after Tom Ferris's new IE7 beta install, says PC Magazine.
Ferris said he could, "hardly believe his eyes when the new browser crashed less than 15 minutes after he started using a homemade fuzz testing tool to poke around for potential security issues," says the story.
However, Internet Explorer gained market share in the last two months, says a Dutch Web metrics company, quoted by TechWeb News, going on:
"While other measurement vendors said earlier this month that Internet Explorer (IE) continued its downward trend, Amsterdam-based OneStat's data had IE climbing by .37 percent since November 2005. According to OneStat, Microsoft's browser now accounts for 85.8 percent of all browsers used worldwide.
"In the U.S., IE's rise was half as much - 18 percent - with 80.9 percent of Americans using the browser.
"Mozilla Corp.'s FireFox, meanwhile, slipped .28 percent during the same period, ending up with 11.2 percent of the global market."
Also See:
Firefox - Mozilla releases FireFox 1.5.0.1, February 3, 2006
VNUNet - Microsoft flooded with IE7 bug reports, February 2, 2006
PC Magazine - DoS Flaw Flagged in IE7 Beta 2, January 8, 2006
TechWeb News - FireFox Slides In U.S., IE Gains Ground, Januaryy 31, 2006
* 03 February 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition
GUN lobbyists like to repeat the quote often attributed to American writer Robert Heinlein, that "an armed society is a polite society". But this is certainly not true for motorists.
A survey of 2400 drivers carried out by David Hemenway and his colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health shows that motorists who carry guns in their cars are far more likely to indulge in road rage - driving aggressively or making obscene gestures - than motorists without guns. Some 23 per cent of gun-toting drivers admitted making rude signs, compared with 16 per cent of those who did not carry guns (Accident Analysis and Prevention, DOI:10.1016/j.aap.2005.12.014).
Yet in some states it is easier than ever to own a gun and carry it a car. In the past two decades 23 states have eased restrictions on carrying guns, says researcher Mary Vriniotis. Police no longer have the right to ban someone they consider unsuitable from owning a gun. People now only have to pass background checks, such as the absence of criminal convictions.
?In some states it is easier than ever to own a gun and carry it in a car?
"Our findings indicate that the people driving around with guns in their cars are not among the most responsible and best-behaved people on the road," says Vriniotis. "In the interests of injury and violence prevention, it probably makes more sense to tighten rather than relax restrictions on gun carrying in motor vehicles."
From issue 2537 of New Scientist magazine, 03 February 2006, page 7
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* 13:29 03 February 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Will Knight
A device capable of skipping between incompatible wireless standards by tweaking its underlying code has been given world's first go-ahead for outdoor trials in Ireland.
Ireland's communications regulator Comreg has issued the licence for publicly testing a "software-defined radio" device, which has been developed by researchers at the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR) in Dublin.
The device can impersonate a multitude of different wireless devices since it uses reconfigurable software to carry out the tasks normally performed by static hardware. "I'm interested in a future where a single device can use every possible frequency," says Linda Doyle, who heads up the CTVR project, which is one of several competing projects worldwide.
The technology promises to let future gadgets jump between frequencies and standards that currently conflict. A cellphone could, for example, automatically detect and jump to a much faster Wi-Fi network when in a local hotspot. Devices could even decide for themselves which standard to use and might even be able to tease information from overlapping, or interfering, signals.
Although software-defined radio devices use a normal antenna and amplifier to receive a signal they are fundamentally different from conventional radio-based equipment. An analogue-to-digital converter changes the signal into a digital format, which can be then be processed and manipulated by the software. And the software can reconfigure itself to let the device retrieve information sent at alternative frequencies or encoded (modulated) in a different way.
Allocated spectrum
The CTVR trial will involve testing communications between software-defined radio devices across the radio frequencies of 2.08 gigahertz to 2.35 GHz, at several sites across Ireland.
The researchers will try switching the radios between frequencies and modulations for different applications, such as audio and streaming video or data transmission, and will also let the devices automatically select the best standard to use.
The underlying technology has the potential to revolutionise wireless communications but has been difficult to test outside the laboratory until now as the majority of the radio spectrum has already been allocated. Licences are normally limited to a particular radio frequency and modulation but the one issued to CTVR permits a device to hop quickly between many different standards.
The CTVR trial will also test how easily frequencies can be dynamically allocated to different devices. One idea is for companies that own a licence to automatically "sublet" access depending on demand. "The licence means we will be the first research centre in the world to practically investigate the commercial potential of dynamic spectrum-allocation," Doyle adds.
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* 13:52 03 February 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Maggie McKee
The faintest satellite galaxy yet found around the Milky Way's near-twin, Andromeda, has been turned up by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The discovery suggests other dim galaxies remain undetected and goes some way towards solving a mystery known as the "missing satellite" problem.
Standard theories of dark matter and the evolution of galaxies calculate that small galaxies should merge over time to form large ones, and that many of these undersized, unmerged galaxies should be visible today.
The trouble is that theories predict about 100 times more dwarf galaxies than are actually observed ? a discrepancy known as the missing satellite problem. So astronomers have come up with several theories to explain the difference. These range from the possibility that small galaxies somehow inhibit star formation, making them essentially invisible, to the prospect that they are surrounded by more unseen dark matter than first thought.
But since 2004, astronomers have discovered the two faintest galaxies ever seen ? UMajor around our Milky Way and Andromeda IX around our nearest large galactic neighbour, Andromeda. These finds suggested the missing satellite problem may actually be less dire than originally thought.
Now, researchers led by Daniel Zucker, who completed the work while at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, has found another dim dwarf galaxy called Andromeda X ? the faintest satellite known around that galaxy. The dwarf appears to lie about 280,000 to 450,000 light years from Andromeda, which itself lies just 2.5 million light years from the Milky Way.
Systematic mapping
"Up until a few years ago, people thought we had found all the galaxies in the Local Group [a small cluster of neighbouring galaxies including the Milky Way]," Zucker told New Scientist. Now it seems "we probably do not have a complete sample of all the galaxies in the nearby universe, and it's still an open question as to how many more there could be".
The discovery comes thanks to advances in observing technologies and detailed sky surveys. Previously, astronomers sought out new galaxies by scanning photographic plates for fuzzy blobs or clumps of stars, says Zucker. But all three of the new finds were initially identified using observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which is systematically mapping one-quarter of the sky.
The survey measures the colour and brightness of individual stars. Astronomers can then search for the particular types of stars expected to lie in dwarf galaxies. When they find a group of the stars in the same region, they can do follow-up observations with other telescopes. Such observations for this galaxy were done using the 4.2-metre William Herschel Telescope and the 2.5-metre Nordic Optical Telescope, both in La Palma, Canary Islands.
Lower limits
Zucker and his team have used this method ? "data mining" the Sloan survey ? to find both of the dim, new satellites of Andromeda. They are half as bright as "what people thought was the lower limit of detection," says Zucker, who is now at Cambridge University, UK. "We're pushing into a new regime."
He expects astronomers will discover more faint dwarfs ? but probably not enough to completely resolve the missing satellite problem. Still, he says further observations will help put a lower limit on how small a galaxy can be.
Then, other phenomena may take over ? such as the idea that below that limit, blobs of dark matter are simply too puny to hold onto enough gas to form stars. "My guess is it's going to be some combination of different effects to explain why we don't see lots of little, teeny galaxies," he says.
The research has been submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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* 16:31 03 February 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Jeff Hecht
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An increase in clay production may have lead to the rapid increase in atmospheric oxygen thought essential for the evolution of multi-celled organisms, new research suggests.
While physical weathering of rocks produces silt and sand, fungi, microbes and plants break down rock into clays. These clays are much better at trapping organic material that would otherwise react with oxygen, so a rise in clay should lead to a rise in atmospheric oxygen.
The new work, led by Martin Kennedy at the University of California at Riverside, US, shed light on this idea by looking for a rise in clay in sediments deposited during the 300 million years leading up to the start of the Cambrian period, 544 million years ago.
That is also the period when oxygen levels rose and multicellular life evolved. An increase in clay would have been produced by microbes and fungi colonising the land - plants had yet to evolve.
The idea originated when Kennedy earlier found that clay content affects the burial of organic carbon in much younger rocks. He had also noticed that Precambrian shales differ in texture from post-Cambrian shales.
Fungi to thank?
In the latest work, he analysed Precambrian shales in Australia dating from 850 to 530 million years ago. He found the clay fraction increased during the period, meaning the sediments were able to trap more organic carbon.
The event "occurs over tens of millions of years, beginning at about 620 million years ago", as primitive life spread across the continents, Kennedy told New Scientist.
"Fungi are the things that probably turned the balance," he suggests, noting they have root-like structures that can dig into rocks and accelerate weathering.
But other scientists are more cautious, warning that little evidence exists for extensive early land biota and that wider studies are needed of shales. "It is at this point an interesting idea that needs testing with larger data sets," says palaeontologist Andrew Knoll, a leading expert on Precambrian life at Harvard University in the US.
Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1118929)
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