Amazon to open market in second-hand MP3s and e-books

A new market for second-hand digital downloads could let us hold virtual yard sales of our ever-growing piles of intangible possessions

WHY buy second-hand? For physical goods, the appeal is in the price – you don't mind the creases in a book or rust spots on a car if it's a bargain. Although digital objects never lose their good-as-new lustre, their very nature means there is still uncertainty about whether we actually own them in the first place, making it tricky to set up a second-hand market. Now an Amazon patent for a system to support reselling digital purchases could change that.

Amazon's move comes after last year's European Union ruling that software vendors cannot stop customers from reselling their products. But without technical support, the ruling has had no impact. In Amazon's system, customers will keep their digital purchases – such as e-books or music – in a personal data store in the cloud that only they can access, allowing them to stream or download the content.

This part is like any cloud-based digital locker except that the customer can resell previous purchases by passing the access rights to another person. Once the transaction is complete, the seller will lose access to the content. Any system for reselling an e-book, for example, would have to ensure that it is not duplicated in the transaction. That means deleting any copies the seller may have lying around on hard drives, e-book readers, and other cloud services, since that would violate copyright.

Amazon may be the biggest company to consider a second-hand market, but it is not the first. ReDigi, based in Boston, has been running a resale market for digital goods since 2011. After downloading an app, users can buy a song on ReDigi for as little as 49 cents that would costs 99 cents new on iTunes.

When users want to sell an item, they upload it to ReDigi's servers via a mechanism that ensures no copy is made during the transfer. Software checks that the seller does not retain a copy. Once transferred, the item can be bought and downloaded by another customer. ReDigi is set to launch in Europe in a few months.

Digital items on ReDigi are cheaper because they are one-offs. If your hard drive crashes and you lose your iTunes collection you can download it again. But you can only download an item from ReDigi once – there is no other copy. That is the trade-off that makes a second-hand digital market work: the risk justifies the price. The idea has ruffled a few feathers – last year EMI sued ReDigi for infringement of copyright. A judge denied the claim, but the case continues.

Used digital goods can also come with added charm. ReDigi tracks the history of the items traded so when you buy something, you can see who has owned it and when. ReDigi's second-hand marketplace has grown into a social network. According to ReDigi founder John Ossenmacher, customers like seeing who has previously listened to a song. "It's got soul like an old guitar," he says. "We've introduced this whole feeling of connectedness."

It could be good for business too if the original vendors, such as iTunes, were to support resale and take a cut of the resell price. Nevertheless, Amazon's move bucks the industry trend. Microsoft's new Xbox, for example, is expected not to work with second-hand games.

But the market could change rapidly now that Amazon's weight is behind this, says Ossenmacher. "The industry is waking up."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Old MP3, one careful owner"

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Ecuador president vows to push large-scale mining

QUITO: Ecuador's re-elected President Rafael Correa said Saturday he will push large-scale mining projects during his next four years in office, despite opposition from some indigenous groups.

"The Ecuadoran people have voted to responsibly take advantage of non-renewable resources," said in a weekly address on his administration's activities.

Correa, a socialist, said his goal was to use the country's mining and oil wealth to eliminate poverty and said he was committed to "the Amazonian people and all the areas where there is mining or oil."

A year ago, Correa's government signed a contract with the Chinese company Ecuacorriente to mine copper in the Amazon basin province of Zamora-Chinchipe, in a major move to open the country to large-scale mining.

The country's largest indigenous organisation opposed the deal, however, and with the backing of opposition groups led a two-week-long protest march from the Amazon to Quito.

But Correa, who has been in power since 2007, won re-election last week in a landslide, with 56.77 per cent of the vote, and he used his speech Saturday to criticise opponents of big mining.

"To hurt the government, they are hurting the country, the poor, that Amazonian region," Correa said, adding that "we are not with the multinationals, we are with the poor."

"We cannot be beggars sitting in front of a bag of gold," he said.

- AFP/jc

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Google laptop shows Apple a thing or two

The 3.3-pound Google Chromebook Pixel sports a 12.85-inch, 2,560x1,700-pixel display and an Intel Core i5 processor.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Thank you, Google. For obsoleting my MacBook.

Question: What two killer hardware features are missing on MacBooks? My answer: a touch screen and 4G.

What a coincidence. Just what Google is offering on the Chromebook Pixel. And in a package that comes close to matching the MacBook's aesthetics. (I'm focusing strictly on the hardware for the moment.)

Google is saying, at least in the case of touch, hey Apple, you don't get it.

Not everyone may agree with that. Take the laptop flat-earthers. They will say touch is stupid (or "pointless" as one columnist said) on a laptop. Yeah right, just like the mouse was a stupid idea.

Then there's Apple's your-arm-wants-to-fall-off on vertical touch surfaces excuse. That will eventually give way to a touch-screen MacBook of some sort. You heard it here first.

The point is, Google knows (they're not stupid) that touch is important on a laptop. As does Microsoft (Windows 8 and Surface). That leaves Apple in Luddite land.

4G: And some might say that a Chromebook needs 4G more than a MacBook because the Chromebook is so immersed in the cloud. Hmm, my MacBook spends lots of time in the cloud too. And the last time I used it on the road, I was constantly hauling out my Verizon MiFi or running down my iPhone's battery with the Personal Hotspot. Come on, LTE belongs in a laptop.

And the operating system? I believe that cool hardware is the first step in luring consumers to a new operating environment.

While Chrome OS is still a work in progress (and lacks key features that many users need), with the success of
Android, I do think it's possible that an improved Chrome OS combined with a second-generation Chromebook Pixel could reel in more consumers.

Google certainly has my attention.

Google Chromebook Pixel.

(Credit:
CNET)

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Elderly Abandoned at World's Largest Religious Festival

Every 12 years, the northern Indian city of Allahabad plays host to a vast gathering of Hindu pilgrims called the Maha Kumbh Mela. This year, Allahabad is expected to host an estimated 80 million pilgrims between January and March. (See Kumbh Mela: Pictures From the Hindu Holy Festival)

People come to Allahabad to wash away their sins in the sacred River Ganges. For many it's the realization of their life's goal, and they emerge feeling joyful and rejuvenated. But there is also a darker side to the world's largest religious gathering, as some take advantage of the swirling crowds to abandon elderly relatives.

"They wait for this Maha Kumbh because many people are there so nobody will know," said one human rights activist who has helped people in this predicament and who wished to remain anonymous. "Old people have become useless, they don't want to look after them, so they leave them and go."

Anshu Malviya, an Allahabad-based social worker, confirmed that both men and women have been abandoned during the religious event, though it has happened more often to elderly widows. Numbers are hard to come by, since many people genuinely become separated from their groups in the crowd, and those who have been abandoned may not admit it. But Malviya estimates that dozens of people are deliberately abandoned during a Maha Kumbh Mela, at a very rough guess.

To a foreigner, it seems puzzling that these people are not capable of finding their own way home. Malviya smiles. "If you were Indian," he said, "you wouldn't be puzzled. Often they have never left their homes. They are not educated, they don't work. A lot of the time they don't even know which district their village is in."

Once the crowd disperses and the volunteer-run lost-and-found camps that provide temporary respite have packed away their tents, the abandoned elderly may have the option of entering a government-run shelter. Conditions are notoriously bad in these homes, however, and many prefer to remain on the streets, begging. Some gravitate to other holy cities such as Varanasi or Vrindavan where, if they're lucky, they are taken in by temples or charity-funded shelters.

In these cities, they join a much larger population, predominantly women, whose families no longer wish to support them, and who have been brought there because, in the Hindu religion, to die in these holy cities is to achieve moksha or Nirvana. Mohini Giri, a Delhi-based campaigner for women's rights and former chair of India's National Commission for Women, estimates that there are 10,000 such women in Varanasi and 16,000 in Vrindavan.

But even these women are just the tip of the iceberg, says economist Jean Drèze of the University of Allahabad, who has campaigned on social issues in India since 1979. "For one woman who has been explicitly parked in Vrindavan or Varanasi, there are a thousand or ten thousand who are living next door to their sons and are as good as abandoned, literally kept on a starvation diet," he said.

According to the Hindu ideal, a woman should be looked after until the end of her life by her male relatives—with responsibility for her shifting from her father to her husband to her son. But Martha Chen, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University who published a study of widows in India in 2001, found that the reality was often very different.

Chen's survey of 562 widows of different ages revealed that about half of them were supporting themselves in households that did not include an adult male—either living alone, or with young children or other single women. Many of those who did live with their families reported harassment or even violence.

According to Drèze, the situation hasn't changed since Chen's study, despite the economic growth that has taken place in India, because widows remain vulnerable due to their lack of education and employment. In 2010, the World Bank reported that only 29 percent of the Indian workforce was female. Moreover, despite changes in the law designed to protect women's rights to property, in practice sons predominantly inherit from their parents—leaving women eternally dependent on men. In a country where 37 percent of the population still lives below the poverty line, elderly dependent relatives fall low on many people's lists of priorities.

This bleak picture is all too familiar to Devshran Singh, who oversees the Durga Kund old people's home in Varanasi. People don't pay toward the upkeep of their relatives, he said, and they rarely visit. In one case, a doctor brought an old woman to Durga Kund claiming she had been abandoned. After he had gone, the woman revealed that the doctor was her son. "In modern life," said Singh, "people don't have time for their elderly."

Drèze is currently campaigning for pensions for the elderly, including widows. Giri is working to make more women aware of their rights. And most experts agree that education, which is increasingly accessible to girls in India, will help improve women's plight. "Education is a big force of social change," said Drèze. "There's no doubt about that."

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Fiery Last-Lap Daytona Crash Injures 15 Fans

A fiery last-lap crash at the Daytona International Speedway injured a number of spectators today, who were seen being carried away from the stands on stretchers.

Fifteen spectators were taken to the hospital, according to ESPN, with one on the way to surgery with head trauma.

The 12-car crash happened moments before the end of the Nationwide race, and on the eve of the Daytona 500, one of NASCAR's biggest events.

The crash was apparently triggered when driver Regan Smith's car, which was being tailed by Brad Keselowski on his back bumper, spun to the right and shot up the track. Smith had been in the lead and said after the crash he had been trying to throw a "block."

Rookie Kyle Larson's car slammed into the wall that separates the track from the grandstands, causing his No. 32 car to go airborne and erupt in flames.

When a haze of smoke cleared and Larson's car came to a stop, he jumped out uninjured.

His engine and one of his wheels were sitting in a walkway of the grandstand.

"I was getting pushed from behind," Larson told ESPN. "Before I could react, it was too late."

Driver Michael Annett was taken to the hospital after he slammed head-on into a barrier during the chaos. NASCAR officials told ESPN the driver was awake and alert.

Tony Stewart pulled out the win, but in victory lane, what would have been a celebratory mood was tempered by concern for the injured fans.

"We've always known this is a dangerous sport," Stewart said. 'But it's hard when the fans get caught up in it."

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Rusty rocks reveal ancient origin of photosynthesis

SUN-WORSHIP began even earlier than we thought. The world's oldest sedimentary rocks suggest an early form of photosynthesis may have evolved almost 3.8 billion years ago, not long after life appeared on Earth.

A hallmark of photosynthesis in plants is that the process splits water and produces oxygen gas. But some groups of bacteria oxidise substances like iron instead – a form of photosynthesis that doesn't generate oxygen. Evolutionary biologists think these non-oxygen-generating forms of photosynthesis evolved first, giving rise to oxygen-generating photosynthesis sometime before the Earth's atmosphere gained oxygen 2.4 billion years ago (New Scientist, 8 December 2012, p 12).

But when did non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis evolve? Fossilised microbial mats that formed in shallow water 3.4 billion years ago in what is now South Africa show the chemical fingerprints of the process. However, geologists have long wondered whether even earlier evidence exists.

The world's oldest sedimentary rocks – a class of rock that can preserve evidence of life – are a logical place to look, says Andrew Czaja of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. These rocks, which are found in Greenland and date back almost 3.8 billion years, contain vast deposits of iron oxide that are a puzzle. "What could have formed these giant masses of oxidised iron?" asks Czaja.

To investigate, he analysed the isotopic composition of samples taken from the oxidised iron. He found that some isotopes of iron were more common than they would be if oxygen gas was indiscriminately oxidising the metal. Moreover, the exact isotopic balance varied subtly from point to point in the rock.

Both findings make sense if photosynthetic bacteria were responsible for the iron oxide, says Czaja. That's because these microbes preferentially oxidise only a small fraction of the dissolved iron, and the iron isotopes they prefer vary slightly as environmental conditions change (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, doi.org/kh5). His findings suggest that this form of photosynthesis appeared about 370 million years earlier than we thought.

It is "the best current working hypothesis for the origin of these deposits", says Mike Tice of Texas A&M University in College Station – one of the team who analysed the 3.4-billion-year-old microbial mats from South Africa.

William Martin at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, agrees. "Anoxygenic photosynthesis is a good candidate for the isotope evidence they see," he says. "Had these fascinating results been collected on Mars, the verdict of the jury would surely remain open," says Martin Brasier at the University of Oxford. "But [on Earth] opinion seems to be swinging in the direction of non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis during the interval from 3.8 to 2.9 billion years ago."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Photosynthesis has truly ancient origins"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Catholic priests should be able to marry: British cardinal

LONDON: Roman Catholic priests should be able to marry and have children, Britain's most senior cardinal said on Friday.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who will be part of the conclave tasked with choosing a new pope to replace Benedict XVI, said the church's requirement for priests to be celibate was not of "divine origin" and should be reconsidered.

"Many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood, and felt the need of a companion, of a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family of their own," the 74-year-old told the BBC.

"The celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry -- Jesus didn't say that.

"There was a time when priests got married, and of course we know at the present time in some branches of the church -- in some branches of the Catholic church -- priests can get married," he added.

"So that is obviously not of divine origin and it could get discussed again."

O'Brien will have a say in who succeeds Benedict after he stands down on February 28.

He said he had not yet decided who should take over leadership of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, but suggested it could be time for a younger pontiff, possibly from the developing world.

"I would be open to a pope from anywhere if I thought it was the right man, whether it was Europe or Asia or Africa or wherever," he added.

Benedict stunned the world last week by becoming the first pope in more than 700 years to resign voluntarily.

No clear favourite has emerged, although the 85-year-old's announcement that he lacked the strength to lead the church indicates the need for a younger pope.

- AFP/jc

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Google to open registration for Google I/O March 13

Google co-founder showed off Google Glass at the 2012 Google I/O conference.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

Google fans will be happy to know that registration for the 2013 Google I/O conference will open Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 7:00 AM PDT (GMT-7).

In December, Google announced that it had moved up its annual developer conference a month. The confab that assemblies more than 5,000 developers will take place in San Francisco May 15-17, 2013. Previous Google I/O's had been held in June. The company has posted the registration date and details on its developer Website and on the Google+ page dedicated to developers.

Google said it will keep registration open until tickets are sold out. But based on demand from previous years, Google predicts that tickets will sell out quickly. The price of the ticket is $900 for general attendees and $300 for academic attendees. Those looking to register need to have a Google+ account and a Google Wallet buyer account.

Why is Google I/O such a hot ticket? Google uses the Google I/O conference as an opportunity to make big announcements. In 2012, it showed off the next version of
Android version 4.1 Jellybean. It also debuted Google Now, the
Nexus 7 tablet, and
Google Glass. But the new products and announcements are only part of the appeal of Google I/O.

Every year Google also gives away hundreds of dollars worth of free equipment to every attendee, making the $900 entrance fee a valuable investment for gadget lovers. Last year, Google gave away the Nexus 7 tablet running the new Jellybean software,the latest Samsung Chromebook hardware, and the ill-fated Nexus Q, home entertainment accessory.

Of course, attendees will be anxiously awaiting this year's announcements and giveaways, but many are also likely intrigued to see if Google can top the theatrics of last year's death-defying skydive stunt that offered a live demonstration of Google Glass. During one of the keynote events, Google co-founder Sergey Brin took the stage and showed a live video of a team of skydivers who were jumping out of a plane and landing on top of the Moscone Center. The whole experience was streamed live from the Google Glasses that the skydivers were wearing.

Google is keeping mum on this year's announcements and hasn't said yet if it's planning another surprise stunt. CNET hopes to get press passes again this year to cover all the news. So even if you aren't able to get a ticket to the show, you will find all the details about new products and other announcements and demonstrations right here.

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Businessman Dennis Tito Financing Manned Mission to Mars

Jane J. Lee

An announcement this week that a group led by the world's first space "tourist," Dennis Tito, plans to send a manned mission to flyby Mars in 2018 has lit up the Internet.

A press advisory from the new group, the Inspiration Mars Foundation, made no mention about whether there would be humans onboard.

But reports from NewSpace Journal say that there will be two crew members making the journey.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation, founded by Tito, plans to start its mission in January 2018, taking advantage of a rare launch window. Earth and Mars will be aligned in such a way that a trip that would normally take between two to three years would last about a year and a half, or 501 days.

The next such opportunity will occur in 2031, according to a Scientific American blog post.

Tito's foundation will hold a press conference on February 27 in Washington, presumably to offer more details about the trip.

The National Geographic Society is in talks with Inspiration Mars Foundation about a potential partnership around the 2018 mission.

The man behind the private Mars push is no stranger to the red planet.

In 2001 Tito paid $20 million to become the first "tourist" to rocket into space. He spent six days on the International Space Station. (Related: "7 Ways You Could Blast Off by 2023.")

Though Tito made his fortune in finance, he has a master's degree in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

While at JPL, Tito worked on Mariner 4 and 9, which flew to the red planet in the 60s and 70s respectively. Mariner 4 was the first successful flyby of Mars in 1965, beaming back the first pictures of another planet from deep space. (Watch a video about exploring Mars.)

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Jodi Arias' Friends Believe in Her Innocence

Accused murderer Jodi Arias believes she should be punished, but hopes she will not be sentenced to death, two of her closest friends told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

Ann Campbell and Donavan Bering have been a constant presence for Arias wth at least one of them sitting in the Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom along with Arias' family for almost every day of her murder trial. They befriended Arias after she first arrived in jail and believe in her innocence.

Arias admits killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander and lying for nearly two years about it, but insists she killed Alexander in self defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.

Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Remains Calm Under Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Doesn't Remember Stabbing Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video

Nevertheless, she is aware of the seriousness of her lies and deceitful behavior.

The women told ABC News that they understand that Arias needs to be punished and Arias understands that too.

"She does know that, you know, she does need to pay for the crime," Campbell said. "But I don't want her to die, and I know that she has so much to give back."

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

The lies that Arias admits she told to police and her family have been devastating to her, Bering said.

""She said to me, 'I wish I didn't have to have lied. That destroyed me,'" Donovan said earlier this week. "Because now when it's so important for her to be believed, she has that doubt. But as she told me on the phone yesterday, she goes, 'I have nothing to lose.' So all she can do is go out there and tell the truth."

During Arias' nine days on the stand she has described in detail the oral, anal and phone sex that she and Alexander allegedly engaged in, despite being Mormons and trying to practice chastity. She also spelled out in excruciating detail what she claimed was Alexander's growing demands for sex, loyalty and subservience along with an increasingly violent temper.

Besides her two friends, Arias' mother and sometimes her father have been sitting in the front row of the courtroom during the testimony. It's been humiliating, Bering said.

"She's horrified. There's not one ounce of her life that's not out there, that's not open to the public. She's ashamed," she said.

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Mood-sensing smartphone tells your shrink how you feel

PEOPLE with anxiety, depression or stress are often asked to record their mood changes throughout the day, helping psychologists fine-tune their treatment. But they often forget, recording only sparse information at best. Now an emotion-sensing smartphone app that automatically generates someone's "mood diary" could give psychologists all the data they need.

It's the brainchild of Matt Dobson and Duncan Barclay, founders of speech recognition firm EI Technologies, based in Saffron Walden, UK. Instead of relying on people writing diaries, the app, called Xpression, listens for telltale changes in a person's voice that indicate whether they are in one of five emotional states: calm, happy, sad, angry or anxious/frightened. It then lists a person's moods against the times they change, and automatically emails the list to their psychologist at the end of the day.

To work, the app has to be always on, listening out for the user's voice once every second, whether they are talking to family, friends, colleagues or even pets. It also listens in on phone calls. If the user is silent, the app does nothing. Crucially for the users' privacy, it doesn't record their words, instead seeking out telltale acoustic features – like pitch – that are indicative of emotional state.

This kind of emotion recognition via voice pattern already works well and is a "hot area" of research, says Stephen Cox, head of the speech processing lab at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who is scientific adviser for the firm.

Initially, Xpression will send 200-millisecond-long acoustic snapshots to a remote server where a machine-learning system will work out a person's emotional state before sending it back to the app for storage. Factors like voice loudness, intensity, changes in pitch and speaking pace allow the system to accurately estimate somebody's emotional state. "We extract acoustic features and let the machine-learning system work it out," says Cox. This ability will be built into the app itself eventually, says Dobson.

There's a strong need for this kind of technology, says Adrian Skinner, a clinical psychologist with the UK's National Health Service in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. "With conditions like depression, people tend to stop doing things like filling in mood diaries. If this app gives us more complete diaries it could help us better find the day-to-day triggers that raise or lower a patient's mood," he says.

The firm is a finalist in a UK government competition to identify the nation's top mobile tech company, to be judged on 26 February. An insurance company has already expressed an interest in using the app to ensure the workplace stress therapy it pays for is effective. Clinical trials are due to take place later this year.

This article appeared in print under the headline "We know how you really feel"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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New death from SARS-like virus in Saudi Arabia

GENEVA: Another person suffering from a SARS-like virus has died in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, bringing the worldwide number of fatalities from the mystery illness to seven.

The Saudi health ministry informed the UN's health body that the patient had been hospitalised on January 29 and died on February 10, WHO said in a statement.

A laboratory had confirmed on February 18 that the person had died from the so-called novel coronavirus (NCoV), it added.

This brings the number of cases of the virus that have so far been reported to the WHO to 13. The virus was first detected in the middle of last year, with six previous fatalities -- three in Saudi Arabia, two in Jordan and one in Britain.

The news comes just days after a person suffering from the virus died in hospital in central England on Sunday.

That patient, who had a pre-existing health condition, was one of three people in the same family with the virus, which appeared to have been caught by one of the family members during a recent visit to the Middle East and Pakistan.

Even before the death in Britain, the WHO had on Saturday urged its member states to keep a close eye on any cases of severe acute respiratory infections, like pneumonia, and to "carefully review any unusual patterns."

Health authorities should test for NCoV in cases of unexplained pneumonia or other severe, "progressive or complicated respiratory illnesses not responding to treatment, particularly in persons travelling from or resident in areas of the world known to be affected," it said.

It also urged testing of any health workers showing such symptoms, and thorough investigations of clusters of cases, regardless of where they occur in the world.

WHO meanwhile did not recommend any travel or trade restriction in connection with the virus.

Coronaviruses cause most common colds but can also cause SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

The new virus however is different from SARS, especially in that it causes rapid kidney failure.

A SARS epidemic killed more than 800 people when it swept out of China in 2003, sparking a major international health scare.

- AFP/fa

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How to manage OS X boot options with wireless keyboards

Apple offers several alternative boot environments for OS X that can help you troubleshoot problems you might be experiencing, which can be invoked by holding various key combinations at startup. Of these, Safe Mode is perhaps the most common; it offers a limited boot environment and can be started by holding the Shift key. In addition there is Single User mode (Command-S) for a command-line interface, Apple's hardware diagnostics tests (the "D" key), Target Disk mode (the "T" key), and holding the Option key will bring up the boot loader for choosing a startup disk.

These options can be invoked by holding their respective key combinations immediately when powering on the system; however, if you use Apple's Bluetooth keyboard, you could find that the system may ignore these inputs and boot normally. While you might assume that these options require a USB keyboard or other physical connection, this is not always the case. There are a couple of workarounds if you find yourself in this situation.

Apple's Bluetooth hardware controllers activate after all of the system's self-tests at boot complete and the EFI firmware loads successfully, which is indicated by the system playing the standard
Mac startup sound. It is at this point that the system will accept boot variables, either stored in the PRAM or those being sent via keyboard inputs. These are then passed to the OS X kernel to invoke the desired startup sequence.

If any inputs are being sent via the Bluetooth keyboard before the controllers are active, then they will not be recognized by the system. However, if these inputs are performed after the controllers are activated, then they will be properly read. Therefore, for Bluetooth keyboards, be sure to press the desired key sequences after you hear the boot chimes and not before.

While this approach for wireless keyboards should work, it may not in all situations. Should that happen, you can try various alternative approaches, such as using a spare USB keyboard to connect and send the desired boot argument to your system. Alternately, you can manually adjust the system's PRAM variables to invoke these boot arguments the next time the system starts up.

Setting the boot arguments PRAM variable requires administrative access, and is done from the Terminal using the following command:

sudo nvram boot-args="VALUE"

In this command, the VALUE component is one or more of the following flags separated by spaces, that will tell the kernel to load in the corresponding way:

-s -- Single User Mode
-v -- Verbose Mode
-x -- Safe Mode
rd=DISKID -- force booting to a specific partition.

In the "rd=DISKID" option, DISKID is a BSD device ID such as "disk0s1" for the first partition or "slice" of the disk0 device. The DISKID value can also be "*hd:NUMBER" where NUMBER is the partition of the drive to use as the boot volume. For example, if you would like to load the system in Single User mode and boot from the first partition on the second hard drive in the system, then you would issue the following version of the command:

sudo nvram boot-args="-s rd=disk1s2"

The Target Disk mode and startup disk can be set in the system preferences, which may be preferable to using Terminal commands.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

The "boot-args" variable can be used for setting the above modes. but in addition if you need to load the system into Target Disk mode, you can do so by setting the "target-mode" PRAM variable in the following way (this will be enabled only once for the next time the system is started):

sudo nvram target-mode=1

The option for rebooting the system into Target Disk mode or choosing an alternative boot partition can be done in the Startup Disk system preferences pane, so using the Terminal for these options is not a requirement for those with wireless keyboards. If you want to boot to Safe, Verbose, or Single User modes and cannot do so at startup with a key command, you will need to use one of these Terminal command options.

A final word of note when adjusting PRAM values is how to revert any changes you make. By default the PRAM variables mentioned here are empty, so you can delete them by running the following commands:

sudo nvram -d boot-args

sudo nvram -d target-mode

A final approach to clearing these is to simply reset the system's PRAM by rebooting and holding down the Option-Command-P-R keys at startup. Again for a Bluetooth keyboard, this needs to be done after you hear the boot chimes, or using an alternative keyboard.

---

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or !
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

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Pictures: Artifacts Provide Clues to Life in Early Christchurch

Photograph courtesy Jaden Harris, Underground Overground Archaeology
 
 
 

A tiny container for Holloway's ointment, less than two inches (five centimeters) wide, came from what was probably a brick-lined basement on Madras Street under a multistory modern commercial building.

British patent medicine entrepreneur Thomas Holloway began to advertise his ointment in 1837, claiming it would cure an impressive list of ailments—"Bad Legs, Bad Breasts, Burns, Bunions, Bite of Mosquitoes and Sandflies, Coco-bay, Chiego-foot, Chilblains, Chapped Hands, Corns (Soft), Cancers, Contracted and Stiff Joints, Elephantiasis, Fistulas, Gout, Glandular Swellings, Lumbago, Piles, Rheumatism, Scalds, Sore Nipples, Sore Throats, Skin Diseases, Scurvy, Sore Heads, Tumours, Ulcers, Wound(s), Yaws."

("Coco-bay" is a Jamaican word for a form of leprosy. "Chiego-foot" is a Trinidadian term that describes a foot covered in chigger bites.)

Holloway moved his company several times in London. "The changing address and the subtle differences in the wording and images that appear on these pots are what enable them to be dated," said Watson. The address on this particular pot—533 Oxford Street, London—indicates that it was made between 1867 and 1881.

Published February 21, 2013

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Peterson Sentenced to 38 Years for 3rd Wife's Murder

Former Illinois cop Drew Peterson yelled, "I did not kill Kathleen!" during the sentencing phase of his trial today -- and then a judge sentenced him to 38 years in jail for killing her.

The sentence came after Will County Judge Edward Burmila denied Peterson a re-trial in the killing of his third wife, Kathleen Savio, in 2004.

Peterson had faced as many as 60 years in prison.

At his sentencing, after Peterson shouted that he did not kill his wife, someone in the courtroom yelled in reply, "Yes you did!" according to ABC News Chicago station WLS. Burmila then ordered that person to leave the courtroom.

Peterson went on to claim that police "altered evidence" in his case and "intimidated witnesses and scared my children."

"I love Kathy," he said. "She was a good mom. ... She didn't deserve to die."

He added that he was planning to get a tattoo on his back that would say, "No good deed goes unpunished."

Peterson's defense team had requested a re-trial after he was found guilty in September of killing Savio and making it look like an accident.

READ MORE: Drew Peterson Found Guilty of Killing Wife, Making It Look Like Accident

M. Spencer Green/AP Photo

Drew Peterson Trial: Defense Rests, Son Shows Support Watch Video

The re-trial, Peterson's attorneys claimed, was warranted because his former lead trial counsel, Joel Brodsky, had "single-handedly" lost the trial last fall, according to attorney Steve Greenberg. Greenberg is a former colleague of Brodsky's, but the two have recently been embroiled in a bitter public feud.

Burmila today rejected all of the motions for a new trial and, as he said he would do, moved on to sentencing immediately.

It is the latest development in the bizarre story of Peterson, a former suburban Chicago police officer. In 2004, Peterson's third wife, Savio, was found dead in her bathtub, a death that was initially ruled an accident. But when his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, disappeared in 2007, Savio's body was exhumed and her death ruled a homicide.

Drew Peterson has never been charged in connection with Stacy Peterson's case.

Drew Peterson's murder trial last fall was marred by legal battles between his attorneys and prosecutors over what evidence was allowed in court. On three separate occasions, Peterson's defense team asked for a mistrial, but it was rebuffed every time by Burmila.

A large part of the testimony in that trial was hearsay, based on comments that Savio and Stacy Peterson made to friends that portrayed Peterson as a violent and threatening husband.

Peterson said at his sentencing today that hearsay was "a scary thing" because people are not accountable for the truth, according to WLS. An emotional Peterson, his voice shaking at times, blamed the media for portraying him as a monster.

In September, a jury convicted Peterson, noting that it had reached a decision it believed was "just."

READ MORE: Drew Peterson Jury Says Hearsay Convinced Them to Convict

Savio's nephew Michael Lisak said afterwards that his aunt "can finally rest in peace."

"Today is a day for battered women, not just Kathleen Savio," Lisak said. "Your voice will be heard. My aunt's voice was heard through the grave. She would not stop. They will listen to you now."

Peterson's sister Cassandra Cales had a blunt message for the newly convicted murderer.

"Game over, Drew," she said. "He can wipe the smirk off his face. It's time to pay."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Higgs may spell doom, unless supersymmetry saves us

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter

(Image: CERN)

Is the Higgs boson a herald of the apocalypse? That's the suggestion behind a theory, developed more than 30 years ago, that is back in the headlines this week. According to physicists, the mass of the Higgs-like particle announced last summer supports the notion that our universe is teetering on the edge of stability, like a pencil balanced on its point.

"It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable," Joseph Lykken, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, said on Monday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "At some point, billions of years from now, it's all going to be wiped out."

Physicists have been wringing their hands about this scenario since 1982, when theorists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek published a paper about it in Nature, NBC News points out. The pair showed that the vacuum of space can be in different energy states, and it will be most stable at its lowest energy. Trouble arises if we're not there yet, and we're inhabiting a temporarily stable state that should ultimately collapse.

"The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us," Lykken said at AAAS.

Enter the Higgs boson, the particle form of the field that gives mass to several fundamental particles. The Higgs field permeates the vacuum of space, which means the mass of the boson and the stability of the vacuum are closely intertwined. Theory predicted that if the Higgs boson is heavier than about 129 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), the universe should be on safe footing.

But in July 2012 physicists at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland announced that a particle closely matching the Higgs had been found by experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The much celebrated particle has a mass of about 126 GeV - light enough to raise fears of instability.

There is still hope for the universe as we know it. Some theorists pointed out that the relationship between the Higgs mass and the vacuum of space depends on the mass of a particle called the top quark. If the top quark's mass is different than we think it is, stability might reign.

There are also anomalies with the Higgs measurement, like the fact that it decays into photons more often than predicted. That hints we may yet find particles from the theory of supersymmetry, which says each ordinary particle has heavier "superpartners". If the Higgs has such a relative, it might save us from destruction. But some of these predicted particles, particularly the superpartners of the top quark, can push the universe back into instability.

The worries may remain unconfirmed for a while. The LHC is shutting down for a two-year break so engineers can prepare the machine to shoot higher-energy particle beams, which are needed to probe for superpartners.

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US stocks dive after Fed minutes

NEW YORK: US stocks piled up losses Wednesday after Federal Reserve minutes showed divisions over asset purchases, with some officials suggesting to wind them down before the jobs market picks up.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 108.13 points (0.77 percent) at 13,927.54.

The S&P 500-stock index fell 18.99 points (1.24 percent) to 1,511.95 and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite dropped 49.18 points (1.53 percent) to 3,164.41, dragged down by heavyweight Apple, off 2.4 percent.

After opening mostly lower amid mixed housing and wholesale inflation data, the indexes hit fresh session lows after the Fed released the minutes of the January 29-30 Federal Open Market Committee meeting.

A "number" of participants said that an ongoing evaluation of the $85 billion per month asset purchases "might well lead the committee to taper or end its purchases before it judged that a substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market had occurred," the minutes said.

Paul Edelstein of IHS Global Insight said in a research note that "if markets do not expect the Fed to stay the course, then expectations for economic growth and inflation will stay depressed and demand for safe assets (cash and government securities) will remain high."

Office Depot and OfficeMax meanwhile confirmed their merger after a premature announcement of the news.

The all-stock merger would create an $18 billion office supplies retailer. Office Depot shares slumped 16.7 percent and OfficeMax shed 7.0 percent.

Hotel chain Marriott fell 2.7 percent after posting quarterly results that missed expectations.

Luxury home builder Toll Brothers also suffered from disappointing earnings, losing 9.1 percent.

Dell, which reported a 32 percent profit fall in 2012 that was nevertheless slightly better than expected, rose 0.2 percent.

Yahoo! fell 1.7 percent after unveiling a new homepage.

Sony slid 1.2 percent ahead of its PlayStation 4 news conference

The bond market was mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 2.02 percent from 2.03 percent late Tuesday, while the 30-year edged up to 3.21 percent from 3.20 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.

-AFP/ac

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FCC takes first step toward allocating more Wi-Fi spectrum

FCC Commissioners L to R: Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, Commissioner Robert M. McDowell, Chairman Julius Genachowski, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and Commissioner Ajit Pai.

(Credit:
FCC)

The Federal Communications Commission took the first steps today toward freeing up more wireless spectrum to boost Wi-Fi data speeds and ease congestion on Wi-Fi networks in hotels, airports, and homes.

During its meeting today, the five-member commission approved a proposal that will allow 195 megahertz of additional wireless spectrum in the 5GHz band to be used for unlicensed Wi-Fi use. This will increase the amount of available unlicensed spectrum by 35 percent. This is the largest block of wireless spectrum the FCC has freed up for unlicensed use in 10 years.

The commission also agreed to create rules that would streamline the process to use more devices in this upper 5GHz band of spectrum.

What this additional spectrum means for average consumers is that they will eventually get faster uploads and downloads in Wi-Fi hot spots. And the additional capacity will also help alleviate congestion in major hubs, such as airports, convention centers, and other places where large numbers of people congregate.

The 5GHz band of spectrum that the FCC has targeted for unlicensed use is already being used by federal and non-federal users. And the agency will have to work with these other agencies to either free up the spectrum or share it with these other users.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski talked about freeing up this spectrum for unlicensed use last month at the Consumer Electronics Show. Today's vote means that the proposal is now open for public comment. At the end of the process, the FCC will write up official rules and regulations, which the agency will once again vote on.

The FCC has been working the past few years on freeing up additional wireless spectrum for wireless broadband use. The agency is currently writing rules for a wireless spectrum auction of lower frequency spectrum that broadcasters are voluntarily giving up. And the commission has also worked to reclassify spectrum designated for satellite use so that it could be used for wireless broadband services.

Chairman Genachowski has said several times publicly that it's also important to free up more unlicensed wireless spectrum. The commission has already taken steps in recent years to free up unlicensed spectrum in lower frequency bands. Lower frequency spectrum allows signals to travel longer distances and to penetrate obstacles like walls more easily.

In 2010, the FCC allocated unused spectrum between broadcast TV channels, called white spaces, for unlicensed use. And as part of the upcoming incentive broadcast wireless auctions, the FCC has also proposed to set aside some low-band spectrum for unlicensed use.

But the idea of setting aside spectrum for unlicensed use has been controversial. Some lawmakers would like to see the FCC auction as much spectrum as possible instead of allocating it for free unlicensed use. The thinking is that this spectrum can generate revenue to help pay off the national debt or fill budget deficits.

But FCC commissioners believe that freeing up more spectrum for unlicensed use will lead to innovation, as it has in the past. Commissioner Ajit Pai said:

Flexible unlicensed spectrum use was one of this country's great innovations in the 1980s...The Commission expanded several so-called junk bands to permit additional unlicensed uses and streamlined the Part 15 rules accordingly. Unlicensed spectrum in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands is now some of the most valuable spectrum in the world for broadband. And consumers are the ultimate beneficiaries of unlicensed-use technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The commission also approved new regulation that will allow consumers to use approved and licensed signal boosters to fill gaps in wireless coverage. The new rules create two classes of signal boosters. One will be for consumer use while the other will be used by businesses. Each will have their own set of requirements to minimize interference with other wireless networks. The move is expected to alleviate dead spots in cellular wireless coverage.

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Suitcase-size Satellite to Patrol for Dangerous Asteroids

Earth received a wakeup call last week with a double shot of incoming space rocks—the near miss of asteroid DA14 and the Russian meteor explosion. Our planet is in a cosmic shooting gallery and more work needs to be done to survey menacing asteroids, astronomers say.

Now the Canadian Space Agency is stepping up to the plate to help do just that with the launch of a new sentinel to detect and track near-Earth objects (NEOs). The pint-size space telescope is hitching a ride into orbit aboard an Indian rocket on February 25.

Even though the Near-Earth Object Space Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) might find it challenging to hunt down relatively smaller size meteors, like the one that crashed in Russia last week, it will be the first telescope in orbit dedicated to keeping tabs on what's buzzing around Earth. ("Pictures: Meteorite Hits Russia.")

In addition to keeping an eye out for space rocks, NEOSSat will pull double duty by monitoring traffic among the increasing crowd of orbiting satellites—guarding against collisions between wayward space junk. (Learn about how satellite collisions create dangerous debris.)

In recent years there have been a few head-on collisions between orbiting satellites and several near misses with the International Space Station, making this a concern for satellite providers and space agencies.

Suitcase-size Sentinel

Weighing in at a mere 143 pounds (65 kilograms), this $12 million suitcase-size satellite will spend half its time pinpointing asteroids. Researchers say it could find at least a hundred new ones during its first year of operation—some of which currently have undetected orbits between the Earth and the sun.

"This spacecraft is designed to be able to search the sky near the sun, which is difficult for Earth-based telescopes to do, and so it therefore complements ground-based search programs," said Alan Hildebrand, planetary scientist at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and lead scientist for the NEOSSat mission.

Outfitted with a special sunshade, the telescope will be pointed precisely within a 45 degree angle of the sun in order to continuously snap hundred-second-long exposures that the team hopes will eventually reveal at least 50 percent of the asteroids half a mile (one kilometer) across or larger within Earth's orbit around the sun.

Asteroids from far out in the solar system sometimes swing past Earth, but the most dangerous ones are those that continually cross Earth's orbit—like the inner-Earth objects (IEOs), or Atira class asteroids, which shuttle between our planet and the sun.

NEOSSat's six-inch-wide (15-centimeter-wide) telescope is no larger than those used by many backyard astronomers. But when observing space from Earth, there is simply too much scattered sunshine and atmosphere, making it difficult to spot IEOs, added Hildebrand.

Flying in a polar orbit some 435 miles (700 kilometers) above the blurring effects of the atmosphere, the tiny spacecraft will be on duty around the clock, "so it should be able to spot asteroids that are even fainter than what some of the current ground-based surveys are capable of," he said.

Celestial Hide-and-Seek

Robert Jedicke, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, who is not involved with the mission, calls Atira asteroids the champions in the hide-and-seek-game of NEO surveying. (Learn how the University of Hawaii is monitoring asteroids.)

Some NEOs hide in plain sight, said Jedicke. They move like asteroids much farther away from Earth, fooling observers into thinking the NEO is more distant than it actually is. And we can't spot some IEOs simply because they're hidden in the sun's glare, he added.

"Finding them will allow us to fine-tune the calculations of the risk of Earth impact and to test our theories that govern the evolution of asteroid orbits out of the main belt into the region near Earth."

While the technology for finding potentially dangerous asteroids has matured over the past couple of decades, most of the asteroids—larger than the Russian meteor—that can cause serious damage haven't been discovered yet, warned Jedicke.

"Just like the Chelyabinsk meteor, right now, the most likely warning time we have of an asteroid impact is zero," he said.

"While NEOSSat will make an important contribution to the goal of reducing the NEO impact risk, there will still be much left to be done."

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Armstrong Snubs Offer From Anti-Doping Officials

Lance Armstrong has turned down what may be his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban.

Armstrong has already admitted in an interview with Oprah Winfrey to a career fueled by doping and deceit. But to get a break from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, all he had to do was tell his story to those who police sports doping. The deadline was today, and Armstrong now says he won't do it.

"For several reasons, Lance will not participate in USADA's efforts to selectively conduct American prosecutions that only demonize selected individuals while failing to address the 95 percent of the sport over which USADA has no jurisdiction," said Tim Herman, Armstrong's longtime lawyer. "Lance is willing to cooperate fully and has been very clear: He will be the first man through the door, and once inside will answer every question, at an international tribunal formed to comprehensively address pro cycling."

But the "international tribunal" Armstrong is anxious to cooperate with has one major problem: It doesn't exist.

The UCI, cycling's governing body, has talked about forming a "truth and reconciliation" commission, but the World Anti-Doping Agency has resisted, citing serious concerns about the UCI and its leadership.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

Livestrong, Elizabeth Kreutz/AP Photo

READ MORE: Lance Armstrong May Have Lied to Winfrey: Investigators

WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials seemed stunned by Armstrong's decision simply to walk away.

"Over the last few weeks, he [Armstrong] has led us to believe that he wanted to come in and assist USADA, but was worried of potential criminal and civil liability if he did so," said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. "Today, we learned from the media that Mr. Armstrong is choosing not to come in and be truthful and that he will not take the opportunity to work toward righting his wrongs in sport."

Armstrong's ongoing saga plays out amid a backdrop of serious legal problems.

Sources believe one reason Armstrong wants to testify to an international tribunal, rather than USADA, is because perjury charges don't apply if Armstrong lies to a foreign agency, they told ABC News.

While Armstrong has admitted doping, he has not given up any details, including the people and methods required to pull off one of the greatest scandals in all of sport.

Armstrong is facing several multimillion-dollar lawsuits right now, but his biggest problems may be on the horizon. As ABC News first reported, a high-level source said a criminal investigation is ongoing. And the Department of Justice also reportedly is considering joining a whistleblower lawsuit claiming the U.S. Postal Service was defrauded out of millions of dollars paid to sponsor Armstrong's cycling team.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 19 February 2013

Doctors would tax sugary drinks to combat obesity

Hiking the price of fizzy drinks would cut consumption and so help fight obesity, urges the British Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Space station's dark matter hunter coy about findings

Researchers on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which sits above the International Space Station, have collected their first results - but won't reveal them for two weeks

Huge telescopes could spy alien oxygen

Hunting for oxygen in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is a tough job, but a new wave of giant telescopes should be up to the task

Evolution's detectives: Closing in on missing links

Technology is taking the guesswork out of finding evolution's turning points, from the first fish with legs to our own recent forebears, says Jeff Hecht

Moody Mercury shows its hidden colours

False-colour pictures let us see the chemical and physical landscape of the normally beige planet closest to the sun

LHC shuts down to prepare for peak energy in 2015

Over the next two years, engineers will be giving the Large Hadron Collider the makeover it needs to reach its maximum design energy

Insert real news events into your mobile game

From meteor airbursts to footballing fracas, mobile games could soon be brimming with news events that lend them more currency

3D-printing pen turns doodles into sculptures

The 3Doodle, which launched on Kickstarter today, lets users draw 3D structures in the air which solidify almost instantly

We need to rethink how we name exoplanets

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company Uwingu have asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama?

A shocking cure: Plug in for the ultimate recharge

An electrical cure for ageing attracted the ire of the medical establishment. But could the jazz-age inventor have stumbled upon a genuine therapy?

Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Planting more crops to meet the biofuel demand is destroying grasslands and pastures in the central US, threatening wildlife

Read More..

BP vows to "vigorously defend" itself at US oil spill trial

CHICAGO: British energy giant BP vowed Tuesday to "vigorously defend" itself in court next week against US government claims for "excessive" fines in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

Prosecutors shot back with a warning that they will be fighting for the stiffest penalties possible at a blockbuster trial which opens Monday with tens of billions of dollars at stake.

"The United States is fully prepared for trial," Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesman for the US Department of Justice, told AFP.

"We intend to prove that BP was grossly negligent and engaged in willful misconduct in causing the oil spill."

The mammoth trial in a New Orleans, Louisiana federal courthouse consolidates scores of remaining lawsuits stemming from the worst environmental disaster to strike the United States.

The first phase of the trial will focus on liability for the April 20, 2010 explosion that sank the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana.

The blast killed 11 people and unleashed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf, blackening beaches in five states and crippling tourism and fishing industries.

It took 87 days to cap BP's runaway well in a tragedy that riveted the nation.

BP is fighting civil penalties which could amount to as much as $21 billion if gross negligence is found.

"Gross negligence is a very high bar that BP believes cannot be met in this case," Rupert Bondy, group general counsel at BP, said in a statement.

"This was a tragic accident, resulting from multiple causes and involving multiple parties."

In addition to fighting the federal government over environmental fines, BP is also seeking to shift some of the liability to its subcontractors, drilling rig operator Transocean and Halliburton, which was responsible for the well's faulty cement job.

BP pleaded guilty in November to criminal charges -- including felony manslaughter -- and agreed to pay a record $4.5 billion in criminal fines.

It reached a $7.8 billion settlement early last year that will cover the bulk of the outstanding private claims for economic loss, property damage and medical problems.

It has paid out $10 billion to businesses, individuals and local governments impacted by the spill and spent more than $14 billion on the response and cleanup.

BP also remains on the hook for billions in additional damages, including the cost of environmental rehabilitation.

But while it was willing to settle the civil charges on "reasonable terms" BP said it will not accept the US government's assertion of gross negligence, or its estimation of how much oil was spilled.

"Faced with demands that are excessive and not based on reality or the merits of the case, we are going to trial," Bondy said in the statement.

"We have confidence in our case and in the legal team representing the company and defending our interests."

In a preview of an argument that will not reach trial until the second phase begins later this year, BP said the official US government estimate that 4.9 million barrels of oil was unleashed from the runaway well was "overstated" by at least 20 percent.

"BP believes that a figure of 3.1 million barrels should be the uppermost limit of the number of barrels spilled that should be used in calculating a Clean Water Act penalty," it said.

Meanwhile, the judge overseeing the consolidated trial on Tuesday approved a $1 billion settlement for civil penalties against rig operator Transocean.

The decision came after a $400 million settlement of criminal penalties against the Swiss drilling giant was approved last week.

Transocean pleaded guilty to one criminal count of violating the Clean Water Act and agreed to pay the $400 million fine for negligence that led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

The $1 billion civil penalty is for fines related to the oil spilled into the Gulf.

It is also responsible for implementing measures to improve operational safety and emergency response capabilities at all their drilling rigs working in waters of the United States.

-AFP/ac

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PlayStation 4 should go all-in on cloud-streaming games

Based on the steady stream of rumors about Sony's upcoming next-gen living room console, it's widely expected that gamers will be spending at least part of their time playing games streamed directly over the Internet.

According to the Wall Street Journal and others, Sony's acquisition of streaming game provider Gaikai in 2012 set the stage for streaming game content, and the new Sony console, whatever it's called, will offer both streamed games and games played via traditional optical disc, purportedly older catalog titles for the former, and newer games via the latter.

A move to streaming games is a far-thinking idea, and one that would reduce the need for large amounts of local storage for fully downloaded games, as well as the need to manufacture, transport, and store physical game discs -- with games joining music and movies as media types moving away from being distributed through retail stores on disc.

The idea of streaming game content is one we've been playing with for some time. The best-known player in this space is OnLive, a PC-based service that runs game software on a remote server farm and then streams the action, in real time, to players interacting via a controller or mouse/keyboard combo. Since that service launched in 2010, we've been reasonably impressed with it, although it works better for some games than others (for example, casual or third-person action games work better than first-person games, which are more sensitive to even the slightest lag).

The biggest pushback (besides the fact that OnLive has struggled to succeed) is that streaming games are far too reliant on your broadband Internet connection, which can be flaky, slow, or sometimes out altogether. This, coupled with the lag already built into live cloud game delivery, is enough to potentially turn off consumers.

Legitimate concerns, to be sure, and I have no illusion that today's A-list games could all be converted to cloud streaming right now and deliver the same high level of visual quality. But, the discussion about Sony and Gaikai reminds me of a conversation I had at the 2011 E3 video game trade show with John Carmack, a PC gaming legend and the lead programmer behind classics such as Doom and Quake. I asked him about streaming games in general, and OnLive specifically, and this is what he said:

I've played the OnLive stuff and a lot of people have just enough technical knowledge to count it out for the wrong reasons. When you talk about having a 50ms ping, that does not invalidate the process. One of the points that I make is that if you take a lot of the console games out there, and you're playing with your wireless controller, going through your post-process TV, the games themselves often have multiple frames of latency.

You get an event, you pipeline an animation, and it goes to the render thread and the GPU. A lot of games have over 100ms of latency in them right now. Now it's true that adding latency is always bad, and with OnLive, you're adding a compression step and two transmit steps.

But the laws of physics do not guarantee this to be a bad idea. I don't necessarily think any of the current players will live to see the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, but I'd say it's almost a foregone conclusion that five or ten years from now, that's going to be a significant marketplace.

From a raw technical standpoint, it has too many positives going for it. There are negatives, but a lot of times, people will accept a big negative for a much bigger win. And the win for convenience and managing your library is huge. And the win for publishers and developers -- zero piracy, instant patching, all that data gathering -- are strong advantages. I don't think it's the big thing next year, but I think it's coming.

Even if the next-gen PlayStation kicks off with only a nod to streaming games, the era of the physical disc is still winding down. The current
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and
Wii U all offer full game downloads (even if many of these consoles have limited onboard storage for full games), and a whole generation of media consumers already thinks of video and music as streaming products from Netflix, Spotify, and others, as opposed to something you get on a plastic disc.

The game publishers themselves would like nothing more than to kill disc-based gaming. Think of the fixed hard costs associated with manufacturing an optical disc, putting it in a box, loading it in a gas-guzzling truck, driving it to a store, placing it on a shelf, and waiting for a consumer to march in and buy it (to say nothing of the resale of used games, something game publishers hate). Many of these costs can be reduced in the future by digital distribution, both download and streaming -- not that gamers can expect to see any of the savings passed along to them.

Whatever new hardware is being announced by Sony later this week will surely include an optical drive, as will the inevitable Microsoft Xbox upgrade expected later this year. But if we take a look at the current state of laptops, there's something similar going on. Many popular models, from the
MacBook Air to almost every ultrabook, omit the once-ubiquitous DVD drive. Taken to its logical conclusion, this may be the last generation of living-room consoles that include support for physical game discs.

Sony's PlayStation event will be held in New York on February 20, starting at 3 p.m. PT/6 p.m. ET. You can tune in to the live blog here:

CNET's live coverage of Sony's event on Wednesday

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New Study Analyzes Heavy Metal Dancing

Parents may never understand their rock 'n' roll loving children, but scientists might. A study published online in arXiv this week seeks to explain the "mosh pit"—using physics.

To most scientists, heavy metal refers to elements on the lower end of the periodic table. But to Jesse Silverberg and Matt Bierbaum, doctoral students at Cornell University's department of Condensed Matter Physics, the aggressive music—and the violent dancing that accompanies it—could be a key to understanding extreme situations such as riots and panicked responses to disasters.

For the past two years, Silverberg and Bierbaum have studied "moshing," at heavy metal concerts, using theories of collective motion and the physical properties of gasses to better understand the chaos of metal fans' dancing.

Moshing, for those who have never attended a heavy metal show, is a form of dancing in which participants bump, jostle, and slam into one another. It's a form of social ritual that anthropologists have likened to spirit possession in its uncontrolled, dynamic, and often violent nature.

Silverberg and Bierbaum say it can also be understood by applying models of gaseous particles. As these particles float in groups, they too run, bash, and slam into each other, sending the elements flying in chaotic patterns.

"We are interested in how humans behave in similar excited states," said Silverberg, "but it's not exactly ethical to start a riot for research."

Extreme Physics

Mosh pits provided the scientists with a way to observe excited collective movement without causing undue injury or death. Analyzing hours of recorded footage from concerts and making multiple field trips to music clubs, Silverberg and Bierbaum recognized the particulate physical patterns in the mosh pit.

Further, they differentiated two distinct forms of heavy metal dancing: the "mosh pit" itself, which follows the gaseous pattern, and the "circle pit" (where dancers run, smash, and dance in a circular rotation) within it, which adheres to a vortex pattern of particulate behavior.

Based on these observations, they created an interactive computer model depicting the behavior.

Animal Instincts

"Herd animals behave in very similar spirit—what physicists call 'flocking' behavior," said Bierbaum. (See "The Genius of Swarms," from the July 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine.)

As with groups of flying birds or schooling fish, simple rules can be applied to individuals in large groups—like moshers—to understand what seems to be very complex behavior. This makes modeling possible, allowing computers to re-create immense numbers of actions in a matter of seconds. These models can then be used to design spaces that would minimize trampling or injury, or to tailor responses to disasters like fires.

"The lessons we've learned in mosh pits [could be used] to build better stadiums, or movie theaters," Silverberg said.

James Sethna, one of the researchers' advising professors, hastened to add that his students' forays into heavy metal science "didn't start out for reasons of creating safer stadiums. We did it because it was cool and we wanted to know if we could explain human behavior—albeit slightly intoxicated behavior—without having to use complex [models]."

A longtime heavy metal fan himself, Silverberg shared which band produced the best results: "Killswitch Engage ... always gets the crowd nuts. Although of course everyone has their own favorites."

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Report Fingers Chinese Military Unit in US Hacks

A Virginia-based cyber security firm has released a new report alleging a specific Chinese military unit is likely behind one of the largest cyber espionage and attack campaigns aimed at American infrastructure and corporations.

In the report, released today by Mandiant, China's Unit 61398 is blamed for stealing "hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations" since 2006, including 115 targets in the U.S. Twenty different industrial sectors were targeted in the attacks, Mandiant said, from energy and aerospace to transportation and financial institutions.

Mandiant believes it has tracked Unit 61398 to a 12-story office building in Shanghai that could employ hundreds of workers.

"Once [Unit 61398] has established access [to a target network], they periodically revisit the victim's network over several months or years and steal broad categories of intellectual property, including technology blueprints, proprietary manufacturing processes, test results, business plans, pricing documents, partnership agreements, and emails and contact lists from victim organizations' leadership," the report says.

The New York Times, which first reported on the Mandiant paper Monday, said digital forensic evidence presented by Mandiant pointing to the 12-story Shangai building as the likely source of the attacks has been confirmed by American intelligence officials. Mandiant was the firm that The Times said helped them investigate and eventually repel cyber attacks on their own systems in China last month.

Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied involvement in cyber intrusions and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said today that the claims in the Mandiant report were unsupported, according to a report by The Associated Press.

"To make groundless accusations based on some rough material is neither responsible nor professional," he reportedly said.

Mandiant's report was released a week after President Obama said in his State of the Union address that America must "face the rapidly growing threat from cyber attack."

"We know hackers steal people's identities and infiltrate private e-mail. We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems. We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy," he said.

Though Obama did not reference China or any country specifically, U.S. officials have previously accused the Asian nation of undertaking a widespread cyber espionage campaign.

Referring to alleged Chinese hacking in October 2011, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said in an open committee meeting that he did not believe "that there is a precedent in history for such a massive and sustained intelligence effort by a government agency to blatantly steal commercial data and intellectual property."

Rogers said that cyber intrusions into American and other Western corporations by hackers working on behalf of Beijing -- allegedly including attacks on corporate giants like Google and Lockheed Martin -- amounted to "brazen and widespread theft."

"The Chinese have proven very, very good at hacking their way into very large American companies that spend a lot of money trying to protect themselves," cyber security expert and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke said in an interview last week.

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Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Say goodbye to the grass. The scramble for biofuels is rapidly killing off unique grasslands and pastures in the central US.

Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University in Brookings analysed satellite images of five states in the western corn belt. They found that 530,000 hectares of grassland disappeared under blankets of maize and soya beans between 2006 and 2011. The rate was fastest in South Dakota and Iowa, with as much as 5 per cent of pasture becoming cropland each year.

The trend is being driven by rising demand for the crops, partly through incentives to use them as fuels instead of food.

The switch from meadows to crops is causing a crash in populations of ground-nesting birds. One of the US's most important breeding grounds for wildfowl, an area called the Prairie Pothole Region, is also at risk, with South Dakota's crop fields now within 100 metres of the wetlands. "Half of North American ducks breed here," says Wright.

Bill Henwood of the Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative in Vancouver, Canada, says the results are distressing. "Exchanging real environmental impacts for the dubious benefits of biofuels is counterproductive," he says. "Last year's record drought in the corn belt all but wiped out the crops anyway."

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1215404110

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