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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."
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft Seeks Patent on Brain-Based Development

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "With its just-published patent application for Developing Software Components Based on Brain Lateralization, Microsoft provides yet another example of just how broken the patent system is. Microsoft argues that its 'invention' of having a Program Manager act as an arbitrator/communicator between a group of right-brained software users and left-brained software developers mimics 'the way that the brain communicates between its two distinct hemispheres.' One of the 'inventors' is Ray Ozzie's Technical Strategist. If granted, the patent could be used to exclude others from making, using, or selling the 'invention' for 17 years."
The Internet

Submission + - Time Warner filtering iTunes traffic?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Starting on Thursday, January 31st, Time Warner subscribers in Texas starting experiencing connectivity issues to the iTunes store to the point that it's not usable. No one's having general internet traffic issues and many folks have reported that the store works as normal when they head to their nearest mega-bookstore and use their ISP instead. Time Warner has announced that they're going to begin trials of tiered pricing in one local Texas market, but I'll be darn sure to switch my provider if I hear the slightest hint of destination/content based tiers instead of bandwidth tiers.

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