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Space

Submission + - Japan launches lunar orbiter mission Friday

Sooner Boomer writes: "Japan launched its first lunar probe on Friday, nicknamed Kaguya after a fairy-tale princess, in the latest move in a new race with China, India and the United States to explore the moon. The rocket carrying the three-metric ton orbiter took off into blue skies, leaving a huge trail of vapor over the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo, at 10:31 a.m. (9:31 p.m. EDT) as it headed out over the Pacific Ocean. The mission consists of a main orbiter and two baby satellites equipped with 14 observation instruments designed to examine surface terrain, gravity and other features for clues on the origin and evolution of the moon. Read the article or see Japanese Space Agency home page (in English) China has plans to launch an orbiter later this year, with unmaanned rover lander mission scheduled for 2010. India and the US also have orbiter missions scheduled for next year."
Space

Submission + - French Threat to ID Secret US Satellites (beskerming.com)

SkiifGeek writes: "Space.com has reported that the French have identified numerous objects in orbit that do not appear in the ephemeris data reported by the US Space Surveillance Network. Since the US has claimed that if it doesn't appear in the ephemeris data, then it doesn't exist, and the French claim that at least some of the objects have solar arrays, it seems that the French have found secret US satellites.

While the French don't plan to release the information publicly, they are planning to use it as leverage to get the US to suppress reporting of sensitive French satellites in their published ephemeris.

The Graves surveillance radar (the French system) and a comparable German system may form the basis of a pan-European Space Surveillance network — another system that the Europeans don't want to rely on the US for."

Privacy

Submission + - Which ISPs Are Spying on You? (wired.com)

firesquirt writes: In an article from WIRED http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/20 07/05/isp_privacy The few souls that attempt to read and understand website privacy policies know they are almost universally unintelligible and shot through with clever loopholes. But one of the most important policies to know is your internet service provider's — the company that ferries all your traffic to and from the internet, from search queries to BitTorrent uploads, flirty IMs to porn.

Feed Apple's Leopard delayed to October, iPhone blamed (engadget.com)

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Sad news, kids: Apple is pushing back its Mac OS X Leopard release date from WWDC in June (now they tell us!) to October. Apple is blaming it all on the iPhone, saying that "iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price -- we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS(R) X team." Apple will still be showing up at WWDC with a beta version to hand out to developers, since apparently the OS will be feature-complete by then, just not bug-free. We suppose we should be grateful to Apple for being cautious and avoiding the various and often severe quality assurance issues that has plagued it recently, but this whole passing the buck thing is little lame. "Life often presents tradeoffs," says Apple, "and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones." Thanks for that little nugget of wisdom, now get back to work!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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