adeelarshad82 writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report: "Google is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green technology sector, but the company is working to develop its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by [25%] or more. The company's engineers have been focused on solar thermal technology, in which the sun's energy is used to heat up a substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun's rays on the heated substance. ... Google hopes to have a viable technology to show internally in a couple of months, Bill Weihl said. It will need to do accelerated testing to show the impact of decades of wear on the new mirrors in desert conditions."

barking_at_airplanes writes "Some called him crazy a few years ago when he joined Microsoft to run the Open Source Software Lab, but Sam Ramji endured and made real differences to how Microsoft treats open source and how open source people view Microsoft. Ramji is now heading back to Silicon Valley to join a cloud computing startup. Sam comments in his announcement: '46 months later, I am amazed at the changes that have occurred for the company, for the team I belonged to, and the sentiments of the industry.' It's a statement which, 46 months ago, few Slashdotters would have thought could come true! With Sam leaving, can Microsoft's positive momentum into open source continue successfully? Bill Hilf says they're 'actively seeking someone to fill Sam's shoes.'"

ChelleChelle writes "Wiretapping technology has grown increasingly sophisticated since the police first began to utilize it as a surveillance tool in the 1890s. What once entailed simply putting clips on wires has now evolved into building wiretapping capabilities directly into communications infrastructures (at the government's behest). In a modern society, where surveillance is often touted as a way of ensuring our safety, it is important to take into consideration the risks to our privacy and security that electronic eavesdropping presents. In this article, Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau examine these issues, attempting to answer the important question: does wiretapping actually make us more secure?"

maximus1 writes "Hard as it may be to imagine, 'free' is not always the primary selling point to open source software. This article makes some interesting points about subtle ways Open Source projects might lose to the competition. Lack of features is a common answer you'd expect, but the author points out that complicated setup and configuration can be a real turn-off. Moreover, open source companies may not do enough to market major upgrades. If they did, they might lure back folks who tried and dumped the earlier, less polished version. This raises the question: what made you dump an open source app you were using? What could that project have done differently?"

Bethesda Softworks has filed a complaint with the District Court of Maryland to forbid Interplay from selling older Fallout titles. The complaint alleges that Interplay failed to hold up its end of an agreement that required it to submit marketing and packaging details to Bethesda for approval. In addition to that, Interplay was supposed to initiate full-scale development of a Fallout MMO by April, 2009, gathering at least $30 million in funding to work on the game. "If Bethesda prevails, Interplay would lose the rights to develop the Fallout MMO. There is little to show for the progress of the Fallout MMO in public venues, although many speculate that a mysterious title called Project V13 is in fact the Fallout MMO."

eldavojohn writes "Last year, Microsoft was ordered to pay Alcatel-Lucent hundreds of millions of dollars for patent infringement. Well, that award has just been overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, saving Microsoft a considerable sum. But Microsoft isn't in the clear yet; the appellate court said that they did infringe on Alcatel-Lucent patents, but that those infringements did not warrant $358 million in damages. The case needs to be retried."

An anonymous reader writes "Former Sega of America president Bernie Stolar speaks out about the man who ousted him, EA's attempt to monopolize sports games on the Dreamcast, why the Dreamcast failed, and a legendary prank he pulled against Sony. 'I fought to have a modem on the platform. Maybe it was early — who knows. But I fought for a modem in the beginning because I wanted to have massively multiplayer online games on that system.' When asked about the console's online capabilities not catching on with consumers, he said, 'It doesn't surprise me, because there wasn't software tied into it. They were not building and going after software to start that. I mean, I was looking for developers and content providers to start doing that. Sega did not do that after I left. They just abandoned it.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Canadian law professor Michael Geist, who has been leading the charge on the national copyright consultation with his SpeakOutOnCopyright.ca site, has posted his own submission to the consultation. Geist focuses on issues like fair use and circumvention, and warns against a Canadian DMCA, copyright term extension, and three-strikes program. 'If copyright veers too far toward specific technologies by mandating new protection for specific business models or technological innovations, those rules risk being overtaken as the technologies and marketplace evolve. ... It should only be a violation of the law to circumvent a technological protection measure if the underlying purpose is to infringe copyright.' He also pointed out a few days ago that Bell Canada seems to be advising content owners to sue its own customers. The public consultation ends on September 13th."

spidweb writes "The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive, especially since the purpose of DRM is entirely admirable: to stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work. This blog entry calls attention to XBox Live, a place where strong DRM is helping to encourage quality games at low prices which make money for their developers. Quoting: 'If I could snap my fingers and give myself the same absolute control over the games I make that XBox Live has over theirs (in return for lower prices), I would. The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost. Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves. The unfairness is just this side of intolerable, and it's only getting worse. DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.'"

heptapod sends in a story from the NY Times about a growing problem for the makers of high-tech gadgets: deciding when and how it's appropriate to track a stolen device. With the advent of ubiquitous GPS and connections to services like the Kindle book store, the companies frequently have a way to either narrow down a user's location or impede use of the device. But some, like Amazon, are drawing a hard line when it comes to establishing that the device was actually stolen. "Samuel Borgese, for instance, is still irate about the response from Amazon when he recently lost his Kindle. After leaving it on a plane, he canceled his account so that nobody could charge books to his credit card. Then he asked Amazon to put the serial number of his wayward device on a kind of do-not-register list that would render it inoperable — to 'brick it' in tech speak. Amazon's policy is that it will help locate a missing Kindle only if the company is contacted by a police officer bearing a subpoena. Mr. Borgese, who lives in Manhattan, questions whether hunting down a $300 e-book reader would rank as a priority for the New York Police Department."

The folks at The Register have gotten their hands on Sun's confidential roadmap from June, which outlines the company's plans for SPARC product lines. The chart has some basic technical details for the UltraSPARC T-series and the SPARC64 line. The long-anticipated "Rock" line is not mentioned. "We can expect a goosed SPARC64-VII+ chip any day now, which will run at 2.88 GHz and which will be a four-core, eight-threaded chip like its 'Jupiter' predecessor. This Jupiter+ chip is implemented in the same 65 nanometer process as the Jupiter chip was, and it is made by Fujitsu, a company that is in the process of outsourcing its chip manufacturing to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. ... not only has Sun cut back on the threads with [the 2010 UltraSPARC model, codenamed Rainbow Falls], it has also cut back on the socket count, keeping it at the same four sockets used by the T5440 server. And instead of hitting something close to 2 GHz as it should be able to do as it shifts from a 65 nanometer to a 45 nanometer process in the middle of 2010, Sun is only telling customers that it can boost clock speeds to 1.67 GHz with Rainbow Falls."

alphadogg writes "The IEEE has finally approved the 802.11n high-throughput wireless LAN standard. Bruce Kraemer, the long-time chairman of the 802.11n Task Group (part of the 802.11 Working Group, which oversees the WLAN standards), has sent out a notification to a listserv for task group members, which includes a wide range of Wi-Fi chip makers, software developers, and equipment vendors. A press release is available now as well. This process began in 2002."

Danny writes to tell us that Obscura Digital has launched their largest multitouch wall yet. 18 feet of multitouch surface is divided to allow six simultaneous users, each with their own targeted audio. The massive wall can handle 100 hi-res images and videos together in real-time. Relatedly, Atmel recently announced the release of their "maXTouch" technology, which delivers a capacitive touchscreen that boasts a refresh rate and signal-to-noise ratio that's 66% better than their nearest competitor. Hopefully this means massive multitouch surfaces will be coming into my home sooner rather than later.

CWmike writes "Twitter has modified its terms of service to state unequivocally that messages posted belong to their authors and not to the company. 'Twitter is allowed to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" your tweets because that's what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you,' wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in a blog post Thursday announcing the modifications. Twitter is still hammering out a set of guidelines for developers on the proper use of the company's API. What do Twitterers think of the TOS changes? Barbara Krasnoff writes, ' Twitter announces new ToS. Tweeters shrug,' noting that some appreciated the company's transparency in contacting its users and pointing out the changes that were being made."

Engadget recently had a chance to try out Panasonic's 3D demo rig, and, aside from the goofy glasses, report some impressive results. "Active shutter 3D technology once again did not fail to impress, though large format action content like the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony and action sports footage was far more impressive than the movie trailer. The benefit of a picture where everything, regardless of distance from the camera, is in focus is one of the biggest benefits 3D has going for it and nothing makes that more apparent than video from a large stadium. Aside from a few glitches from a pair of the glasses being low on battery and flickering annoyingly throughout, the framerate was smooth and the picture sharp, a marked difference from the jittery motion we witnessed during JVC's 3D demo earlier in the day."