Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - Fascinating Rosetta image captures Philae's comet bounce (cnet.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: The hunt for Rosetta's lost lander Philae is gaining steam as scientists pore over images from above the comet that may help reveal its final location.

The ESA released an image Monday taken by Rosetta's OSIRIS camera showing Philae's first bounce on the comet. The mosaic includes a series of pictures tracking the lander descending toward the comet, the initial touchdown point and then an image of the lander moving east. "The imaging team is confident that combining the CONSERT ranging data with OSIRIS and navcam images from the orbiter and images from near the surface and on it from Philae's ROLIS and CIVA cameras will soon reveal the lander's whereabouts," says the ESA.

Submission + - Tor eyes crowdfunding campaign to upgrade its hidden services (dailydot.com)

Submitted by apexcp
apexcp writes: The web's biggest anonymity network is considering a crowdfunding campaign to overhaul its hidden services.

In the last 15 months, several of the biggest anonymous websites on the Tor network have been identified and seized by police. In most cases, no one is quite sure how it happened.

The details of such a campaign have yet to be revealed. With enough funding, Tor could have developers focusing their work entirely on hidden services, a change in developer priorities that many Tor users have been hoping for in recent years.

Submission + - Questionable "Best Effort" Copyright Enforcement (nyud.net)

Submitted by
pmdubs
pmdubs writes: "Princeton University Professor Michael Freedman, creator of CoralCDN, discusses how he received around 100 pre-settlement letters from various copyright agencies after invalid BitTorrent tracker requests were issued through CoralCDN's proxies. Interestingly, the participating agencies made no effort whatsoever to verify that the Coral nodes were actually running BitTorrent, which they weren't! He questions just how much effort agencies take to reduce false positives when it comes to DMCA notices. Considering the credence that network operators give to such notices (they'll often cut your service upon receipt), it would seem that the answer is "not enough"."
Games

Submission + - WoW Releases Final Wrath Patch Tomorrow (wow.com) 4

Submitted by
ajs
ajs writes: "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, is slated to be released tomorrow, December 8th. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, The Lich King AKA Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn--a process that may take several months. The next announced patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."

Submission + - Linux reaches 32% netbook market share (desktoplinux.com)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "Linux netbooks have captured 32% of the global netbook market, says Jeff Orr, an analyst with consumer computer research firm ABI Research. The largest share of netbook sales is in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Lai's article reports, according to Orr's interview with Eric Lai, a reporter with ComputerWorld.com. ABI's latest figures coincide with a statement by Dell executives from February of this year, in which they said that Linux netbooks comprise about 33% of Dell shipments of Dell Inspiron mini 9s netbooks. The ABI Research figures, together with the statements by the Dell executives, cast doubt on claims by Microsoft that Windows XP captured 98% of the netbook market, a figure Microsoft later reported as 93% market share. In an interview with DesktopLinux.com, Orr made clear that the 32% Linux netbook market share did not include either user-intalled Linux or dual-boot systems, but was confined to just pre-installed Linux shipments."

Submission + - Chinese woman arrested for faking fingerprints (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by squizzar
squizzar writes: A 27 year old Chinese woman was discovered to have had her fingerprints surgically swapped between hands in order to fool Japanese immigration. FTA: "It is Japan's first case of alleged biometric fraud, but police believe the practice may be widespread."

"The apparent ability of illegal migration networks to break through hi-tech controls suggests that other countries who fingerprint visitors could be equally vulnerable — not least the United States, according to BBC Asia analyst Andre Vornic."

So it seems that biometrics are not the final answer to identity fraud, I wonder if anyone will stop pushing them because of this?
The Media

Submission + - Murdoch Criticizes BBC for Providing 'Free News' 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "News Corporation's James Murdoch says that a "dominant" BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK and that free news on the web provided by the BBC made it "incredibly difficult" for private news organizations to ask people to pay for their news. "It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it," says Murdoch. "The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision." In common with the public broadcasting organizations of many other European countries, the BBC is funded by a television license fee charged to all households owning a television capable of receiving broadcasts. Murdoch's News Corporation, one of the world's largest media conglomerates, owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News TV in the US. Former BBC director general Greg Dyke responded that Murdoch's argument that the BBC was a "threat" to independent journalism was fundamentally wrong. "Journalism is going through a very difficult time — not only in this country but every country in the world — because newspapers, radio and television in the commercial world are all having a very rough time," says Dyke. "That is nothing to do with the BBC, that is just... what's happening.""
Microsoft

Obama's "ZuneGate" 608

Posted by kdawson from the et-tu-barack dept.
theodp writes "Barack Obama supporters were left shaking their heads after a report surfaced that the president-elect was using a Zune at the gym instead of an iPod. So why would Mac-user Obama be Zune-ing out? Could be one of those special-edition preloaded Zunes that Microsoft bestowed on Democratic National Convention attendees, suggests TechFlash, nixing the idea that the soon-to-be Leader of the Free World would waste time loading Parallels or Boot Camp in OS X just to use a Zune."

Online Cartoonist Finds Financial Success Offline 268

Posted by Zonk from the that's-a-lot-of-comic dept.
destinyland writes "The first collection of Perry Bible Fellowship comics has racked up pre-sales of $300,000 due to its huge online following. Within seven weeks the volume required a third printing. Ironically, the 25-year-old cartoonist speculates people would rather read his arty comics in a book than on a computer screen, and warns that 'There's something wonderful, and soon-to-be mythic, about the printed page...' He also explains the strange anti-censorship crusade in high school that earned him an FBI record!"
Privacy

Submission + - Is Adobe spying on CS3 users? (uneasysilence.com) 2

Submitted by henrypijames
henrypijames writes: For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering why some of the applications regularly connect to 192.168.112.2o7.net which looks a lot like a private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging to the web analytics company Omniture. Now allegations of user spying are getting louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack to respond, though many remain unsatisfied with his explanation.
Music

Submission + - Warner Music Group Drops DRM (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by SirLurksAlot
SirLurksAlot writes: According to an article on Ars Technica, Warner Music, Universal, and EMI (leaving Sony BMG as the last major holdout) will now be offering their entire music catalogs on Amazon completely DRM-free This move positions Amazon to be a major competitor for iTunes, and could spell the beginning of the end for DRM altogether.
Government

Submission + - Army Buys Macs to beef up security

Submitted by agent_blue
agent_blue writes: The Army is integrating macs into their IT network to thwart hack attempts. the Mac platform, they argue Mac are more secure because there are less attacks against macs than there is against windows based systems. Story Here
Security

Submission + - Mac Loses to Windows in Year's Vulnerability Stats (zdnet.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "In what will likely come as a shock to many readers, a ZDNet blog shows stats claiming (via secunia.com) that shows in average flaws per month OSX averaging 20.25 while XP & Vista combined averaged 3.67. Is this report card accurate or is this a symptom of one company turning a blind eye while the other concentrates on its own flaws?"
Security

Submission + - a little .mac security flaw

Submitted by
deleuth
deleuth writes: "The de facto online connectivity software sold along with many Apple computers, .Mac, has a web interface through which users can check their "iDisk" whilst away from their own computer. However, there is no Log-Out button in this web interface, so most users just close the browser and walk away...not realizing that their iDisk has been cached by the browser and that anyone who wants to can open up the browser, go back to the link in History, and get into their iDisk completely logged in. From here, files can be downloaded and/or deleted. This seems like a minor security flaw via bad interface design, and podcaster Klaatu (of thebadapples.info) posted this on the discussion.apple.com site, only to have his post removed by Apple. Furthermore, feedback at apple.com/feedback has gone unanswered. The problem remains: there is NO way for the average computer user to log-out of their iDisk on public computers! The format of the link that will get you into an iDisk is this: http://idisk.mac.com/USERNAME?view=web So a quick review of any public terminal's browser history could bring up all kinds of interesting things."

Slashdot Top Deals

"Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion." -- Harlan Ellison

Close