Microsoft starts accepting Bitcoin payments for Windows Store, Xbox, Windows Phone

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Opening up to new payment options, Microsoft has started accepting Bitcoin payments on its Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox stores.

The cryptocurrency can be used to add money to a Microsoft account in order to buy apps, games and other digital content from its various online stores, Microsoft said on a help page detailing how to use Bitcoin.

Purchasing items directly using bitcoin isnt possible at the moment though. The virtual currency can only be used to add money to a Microsoft account in the U.S. from which a payment can be made.

Microsoft also warned that it may not be the smoothest paying experience. While most Bitcoin transactions should process immediately, users are advised to wait up to two hours if they dont. Also, money added to accounts with Bitcoin cannot be refunded.

The page with Bitcoin info was discovered on Thursday by Reddit users on the Bitcoin subreddit, who largely welcomed the move. Some users, however, expressed their disappointment that the service would only be available in the U.S. for now. So far, the service can only be used with bitcoin payment processor BitPay, noted Coindesk.

Microsoft and BitPay did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The companys Bitcoin integration follows the introduction of bitcoin currency conversions in Bing search, which were highlighted at the top of the Microsoft-owned search engine in February.

By accepting Bitcoin, Microsoft joined a long list of other companies that have started offering bitcoin options. BitPay for instance is used by over 44,000 businesses and organizations, including PayPal, electronics retailer Newegg and space tourism company Virgin Galactic.

Loek Essers focuses on online privacy, intellectual property, open source, and online payment issues for the IDG News Service. More by Loek Essers

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Microsoft starts accepting Bitcoin payments for Windows Store, Xbox, Windows Phone

Microsoft starts accepting Bitcoin payments in US

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Opening up to new payment options, Microsoft has started accepting Bitcoin payments on its Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox stores.

The cryptocurrency can be used to add money to a Microsoft account in order to buy apps, games and other digital content from its various online stores, Microsoft said on a help page detailing how to use Bitcoin.

Purchasing items directly using bitcoin isn't possible at the moment though. The virtual currency can only be used to add money to a Microsoft account in the U.S. from which a payment can be made.

Microsoft also warned that it may not be the smoothest paying experience. While most Bitcoin transactions should process immediately, users are advised to wait up to two hours if they don't. Also, money added to accounts with Bitcoin cannot be refunded.

The page with Bitcoin info was discovered on Thursday by Reddit users on the Bitcoin subreddit, who largely welcomed the move. Some users, however, expressed their disappointment that the service would only be available in the U.S. for now. So far, the service can only be used with bitcoin payment processor BitPay, noted Coindesk.

Microsoft and BitPay did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The company's Bitcoin integration follows the introduction of bitcoin currency conversions in Bing search, which were highlighted at the top of the Microsoft-owned search engine in February.

By accepting Bitcoin, Microsoft joined a long list of other companies that have started offering bitcoin options. BitPay for instance is used by over 44,000 businesses and organizations, including PayPal, electronics retailer Newegg and space tourism company Virgin Galactic.

Loek is Amsterdam Correspondent and covers online privacy, intellectual property, online payment issues as well as EU technology policy and regulation for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com

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Microsoft starts accepting Bitcoin payments in US

COMET 67p CONTAINS HEAVY WATER – BBC NEWS 10th Dec 2014. ArtAlienTV – MARS ZOO 1080p – Video

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COMET 67p CONTAINS HEAVY WATER - BBC NEWS 10th Dec 2014. ArtAlienTV - MARS ZOO 1080p
Rosetta results: Comets #39;did not bring water to Earth #39;. Rosetta #39;s results are forcing scientists to think again, as David Shukman reports in this BBC news clip. Scientists have dealt a blow...

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COMET 67p CONTAINS HEAVY WATER - BBC NEWS 10th Dec 2014. ArtAlienTV - MARS ZOO 1080p - Video

Rosetta: Earth's Water Didn't Come from Comets

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Comet 67P as seen by the Rosetta probe. (ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM CC BY-SA IGO 3.0)

Europes Rosetta mission has only been in orbit aroundComet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for a few months but its already shed light on one of the central questions it was launched, ten years ago, to answer: Where did Earths water come from?

Based on evidence of the comets water, Rosetta scientists announced this week that it adds evidence that, contrary to prevailing theory, comets didnt supply Earth with its water. The new findings instead suggest that asteroids were the likely bearers of life-giving H2O on our planet.

Since August, the Rosetta probe has been orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and on Nov. 12, as you may already know, its Philae lander touched down on the surface a first for mankind. But back aboard Rosetta, an instrument called Rosina has been taking measurements of the gasses spewing out of 67P.

Using two mass spectrometers, Rosina can sift through the comets gas emissions and identify a unique signature of its water: the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen. On Earth, you can find three deuterium atoms for every 10,000 water molecules. So, the thinking goes, if you can find objects in space with the same deuterium to hydrogen ratio as water on Earth, those objects become prime candidates for sources of Earths water.

Asteroids and comets are ideal subjects to study because they are essentially time capsules of what happened during the formation of our solar system and our planet. By examining comets today, we get a glimpse billions of years into the past.

According to data from Rosina, the deuterium to hydrogen ratio on 67P is roughly three times higher than that of Earths oceans. The findings build upon previous measurements from other comets, and the story is getting clearer: comets werent the primary source of water on Earth.

According to the European Space Agency, of the 11 comets we have deuterium to hydrogen measurements for, only two matched the unique signature of Earths water. However, meteorites originating from asteroids in the Asteroid Belt have matched the Earths water signature.

Although asteroids carry less water, a high overall number of impacts could supply enough water to fill the oceans, according to the ESA. They published their findings Wednesday in the journal Science.

With the recent revelation that weve only identified 10,000 of an estimated 1 million asteroids that could hit Earth, Rosettas findings are another reminder of Earths love-hate relationship with these cosmic drifters.

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Rosetta: Earth's Water Didn't Come from Comets

You Can Quit Thanking Comets for Your Water

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TIME Science space You Can Quit Thanking Comets for Your Water Comet 67P: Does this thing look like it could quench your thirst? ESA A new finding from the Rosetta spacecraft upsets a longstanding theory

There was no shortage of drama when the European Space Agencys probe Philae set down on a comet last monththe first such landing in history. First Philae bounced, then it bounced again, ending up with one of its three legs sticking up in the air, and in the shadow of a cliff that prevented its solar panels from recharging its batteries. For two days, the probe hurried to complete whatever science it could.and then everything went black.

But that hardly spelled the end of the mission. Philaes mother ship, Rosetta, has continued to orbit comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko, as its been doing since August, taking measurements and images of unprecedented quality. And with nearly a year of close-up observations to go, Rosetta has already come up with one result, described in a new paper in Science, that chief scientist Matt Taylor, of the European Space Agency, labeled fantastic: Earths oceans, the scientists have concluded, were evidently not created by impacts from comets rich with water ice, despite earlier evidence to the contrary. We have to conclude instead, said lead author Kathrin Altwegg, a planetary scientist at the University of Bern, at a press conference, that the water came from asteroids.

Thats a big reversal from what scientists were thinking just a few years ago. Back in 2011, the European Herschel space telescope took a hard look at Comet Hartley 2 and determined that its own cache of water, detected as vapor boiling away as Hartley approached the Sun, had a chemical composition very similar to what we see on Earth. Its all H2O, but some of the H is a rare form of hydrogen known as deuterium, whose atoms carry not just a proton like the ordinary stuff, but a neutron as well. Water molecules made with deuterium are known as heavy water, and about three in a thousand water molecules on Earths surface are the heavy kind.

Measurements of Halleys Comet back in the mid-80s showed a deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio about twice that high, which argued against the idea that comets delivered water to a bone-dry Earth early in the Solar Systems history. But Halleys came from the Oort Cloud, a spherical swarm of proto-comets orbiting at the far edges of the Solar System. Hartley 2 came from the Kuiper Belt of comets, which lies just beyond Neptunenot exactly nearby, but a whole lot closer. Given what Herschel found at Hartley 2, it appeared that Kuiper belt comets are chemically different from those that hail from the Oort cloud. If so, our water could have cometary origins after all.

The new results from Rosetta say no: Comet 67P, which also comes from the Kuiper belt, has an even greater proportion of heavy water than Halleys and other Oort cloud objects. Even if significant numbers of comets do have Earthlike water, some clearly dontand even a relative few would have made Earths proportion of heavy water higher than it is. Its arguable that 67P is pretty much unique among its Kuiper Belt brethren in having so much deuterium. Thats not impossible, said Altwegg dubiously but.

If comets didnt bring us water, and if the Earth was too hot in its youth to hold on to what surface water it might have started out with, theres still one plausible water carrier. Today, said Taylor at the press conference, we know asteroids have very little water, but that was probably not always the case. The solar system was bombarded by asteroids early in its history, and if they were indeed wetter than they are now, that explains where the water in our oceans, in our seltzer bottles, in our bodies and everywhere else comes from.

Important as this new finding is, its likely to be only the first of many Rosetta will make as it rides along with 67P for the next year or so, watching carefully as the warming rays of the Sun bring the comet to life. Its a nice start to the science phase of the mission, Taylor said.

And if you think youve heard the last of the Philae lander, think again. Mission controllers are still trying to pinpoint Philaes precise location on 67Ps surface. That will allow scientists to do at least one more experiment: theyll send radio pings from Rosetta through body of the comet to bounce off Philae and back to Rosetta. By examining how the radio beams are altered en route, they will be able to figure out whether 67Ps insides are rock-solid or held together relatively loosely.

Locating Philae would also allow scientists to calculate whether the lander might be brought back from the dead six months from now. Its just possible, said Taylor, that a change in 67Ps orientation could bring Philae back into the sunlight, allowing its solar panels to recharge its batteries. If that happens, the prospects for extraordinary science from this already wildly successful mission will be even greater.

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You Can Quit Thanking Comets for Your Water

Rosetta Data Suggests Comets Were Not The Source Of Earth's Water

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December 11, 2014

Image Caption: This four image mosaic comprises images taken with Rosettas NAVCAM on 2 December from a distance of 30.1 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image resolution of the mosaic is about 3.1 m/pixel, and it has been cropped to measure 4.5 x 3.6 km. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Terrestrial water most likely did not come from comets like 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, meaning that the H2O found on Earth was most likely brought here by asteroids, scientists involved with the ESAs Rosetta mission reported Wednesday in the journal Science.

The study, which was led by Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern in Switzerland using information provided by the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument, measured the amount of deuterium (a heavier isotope of hydrogen) found in water vapor on the comets surface, said Dan Vergano of National Geographic.

While normal water contains regular hydrogen atoms, water that contains deuterium is known as heavy water, and Altwegg found that ice on the surface of 67P/C-G had a ratio of heavy water to normal water that is roughly three times that of the planets oceans. As a result, the researchers said that it is unlikely that terrestrial water came from Kuiper belt comets, as there would have been more deuterium-rich heavy water here on Earth.

Kuiper belt comets, which are formed outside of Neptunes orbit, have long been one of three entities believed to have been responsible for bringing water to the Earth during the later stages of its evolution, according to NASA. The other two likely sources are asteroid-like objects from the region of Jupiter or Oort cloud comets formed inside of Neptunes orbit, the US space agency added. The ROSINA data effectively eliminates Kuiper belt comets as a possible source.

This composite is a mosaic comprising four individual NAVCAM images taken from 19 miles (31 kilometers) from the center of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Nov. 20, 2014. The image resolution is 10 feet (3 meters) per pixel. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

We knew that Rosettas in situ analysis of this comet was always going to throw us surprises, said Matt Taylor, Rosettas project scientist from the European Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands. The bigger picture of solar-system science, and this outstanding observation, certainly fuel the debate as to where Earth got its water.

Nearly three decades ago, mass spectrometers on board the European Giotto mission to comet Halley were able to measure the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H ratio) in a comet. Those readings revealed a deuterium level twice that of Earth, concluding that Oort cloud comets such as Halley could not have been the original source of the planets water. Several other Oort cloud readings have produced similar D/H ration readings.

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Rosetta Data Suggests Comets Were Not The Source Of Earth's Water

How To Permanently Eliminate Psoriasis | Amazing Guide About How To Permanently Eliminate Psoriasis – Video

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How To Permanently Eliminate Psoriasis | Amazing Guide About How To Permanently Eliminate Psoriasis
http://www.tinyurl.com/psoriasisfreeforlifenow How To Permanently Eliminate Psoriasis: Psoriasis Free for Life is an effective method written by Katy Wilson, who is an alternative Medical Practitio...

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Travel Awards: Vancouver named world's 2nd best city to visit

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The skyline of Vancouver, as seen from Granville Street bridge.

image credit: Wikimedia Commons (author FlickrLickr)

Vancouver was named the second-best travel destination in the world by readers of British newspaper the Telegraph, in the publication's 2014 Travel Awards.

The winners over several categories, including best Rail Operator, best Airlines, and others were compiled from the votes of some 90,000 people and the award's ceremony was held in London, England.

Cape Town, South Africa was voted the world's top travel city, and New Zealand its top country. TrailFinders, an English travel company, was named the world's top tour operator a nice thing to know if you're in any of their chosen destinations.

In September, the Telegraph published its travel guide for Vancouver, and said it was "poised to become the world's greenest city".

It also identified the Pacific Rim and The Loden as the two hotels to stay in, and recommended both the Grouse Grind and a day-trip to Victoria as worthwhile activities.

The Telegraph's Rachel Dove also recommended restaurants Wildebeest, The Parker, Blue Water Cafe, Hawksworth, and Medina as desirable foodie attractions.

And in November, British personality Steve Backshall raved about Vancouver to Telegraph reporter Nick McGrath:

"Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and offers easy escapes to incredibly wild places. The North Shore has one of the world's best mountain biking areas about half an hour from the city centre and the Whistler ski resort is also nearby. You can go across to Vancouver Island, which is great for spotting orcas and bears. It's a stunning city. My sister has lived there for about four years, so I visit her a lot. I've also been there filming wildlife in the surrounding area. I'm not a city person, but if I had to live in a city, this is the one I'd choose."

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Travel Awards: Vancouver named world's 2nd best city to visit

Henry Akins, "Invisible Jiu-Jitsu" Disconnection: Jiu-Jitsu Magazine, Issue #28. – Video

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Henry Akins, "Invisible Jiu-Jitsu" Disconnection: Jiu-Jitsu Magazine, Issue #28.
His nickname is The Jiu-Jitsu Super Computer because his high level of understanding and attention to detail about the gentle art. These great qualities along with his conceptual approach...

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Henry Akins, "Invisible Jiu-Jitsu" Disconnection: Jiu-Jitsu Magazine, Issue #28. - Video

Henry Akins, "Invisible Jiu-Jitsu" Connection: Jiu-Jitsu Magazine, Issue #28. – Video

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Henry Akins, "Invisible Jiu-Jitsu" Connection: Jiu-Jitsu Magazine, Issue #28.
His nickname is The Jiu-Jitsu Super Computer because his high level of understanding and attention to detail about the gentle art. These great qualities along with his conceptual approach...

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Henry Akins, "Invisible Jiu-Jitsu" Connection: Jiu-Jitsu Magazine, Issue #28. - Video

Super Dell makes disruptive federal court appearance

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SALT LAKE CITY He was known for his TV antics promoting his computer company, but now, Dell Super Dell Schanze may become known for kicking an owl while flying a motorized paraglider.

Schanze appeared in federal court Thursday for misdemeanor charges related to reports and video footage of him kicking an owl in February or March 2011. But before his hearing even began, he was loud, disruptive and interruptive.

Other news organizations reported he lashed out at them, even calling one evil. While waiting for his own case, he made loud and rude comments about other cases.

At one point, U.S. Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells asked the defendant in another case to give up his firearms as a condition of his release.

Schanze, 45, yelled, Thats totally unconstitutional ... Thats not cool at all.

He was handcuffed and escorted out of the room until he could be compliant in the courtroom.

When he did return, he was uncooperative with Wells, who at one point said, Im not going to play these games.

But Wells managed to get a plea out of the former TV pitchman -- not guilty, he told her.

Wells eventually appointed him a public defender, Kent Hart, and set a one-day trial for Feb. 17.

Schanze was once a TV pitchman in commercials for his company Totally Awesome Computers, and he also ran as the Libertarian candidate for governor.

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Super Dell makes disruptive federal court appearance