US Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix
After years of selling online music digitally wrapped with copy and playback restrictions designed to hinder piracy, major music labels are beginning to make some songs available in the unrestricted MP3 file format
The molecules that make octopus skin so successful as a dynamic camouflage could provide materials scientists with a new way to make super-reflective materials. What’s even more odd is just how reflective these proteins are — they reflect all wavelengths of light that hit at any angle
Manchester is planning the largest Wi-Fi zone in Europe to enable more citizens and local businesses to access the Internet. The proposed wireless area would cover 400 square miles of the city, allowing its business and residents to access the Internet for free
Hackers are distributing a file that they say lets users of the corporate version of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system get around the software’s anti-piracy mechanisms. Windows Vista must be activated
, or authorised by Microsoft, before it will work on a particular machine. To simplify the task of activating many copies of Vista, Microsoft offers corporate users special tools, among them Key Management Service (KMS), which allows a company to run a Microsoft-supplied authorisation server on its own network and activate Vista without contacting Microsoft for each copy. The software Microsoft.Windows.Vista.Local.Activation.Server-MelindaGates lets users spoof that KMS process, allowing them to activate copies of the enterprise editions of Vista, its creators say. The hacked download is available online on sites including The Pirate Bay and other file sharing sites
Apple may be cool and hip with consumers, but it’s anything but a trendsetter when it comes to good environmental policies, according to activist group Greenpeace
The CSIRO demonstrated the world’s fastest
wireless radio link by transmitting sixteen full quality DVD streams over a 250m link and only using a quarter of the available bandwidth. The CSIRO ICT Centre announced that it has achieved over six gigabits per second over a point to point wireless connection with the highest efficiency (2.4bits/s/Hz) ever achieved for such a system
Palm is buying — or rather, buying back — what it used to own. This week, Palm announced that it purchased a perpetual license to the Palm Garnet operating system from Access Systems
When Iranian journalist Mojtaba Saminejad was sentenced to prison for insulting his leader, it was not for a newspaper article. His story was posted on his personal Web blog. Nearly one-third of journalists now serving time in prisons around the world published their work on the Internet, the second-largest category behind print journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in an analysis released Thursday
In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq. American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq
German Minister of the Interior, Gunther Beckstein, is seeking jail time for violent game developers, publishers, and players. The draft law, a reaction to a school shooting that shook German public opinion last month, will come before the upper house of parliament next year. But it is already sending shockwaves through the 2m-strong German online gaming community
Most internet users already know it: spam is on the rise again as senders of unwanted email find new ways to circumvent filtering systems. A study released last month by the security firm Postini found that unwanted messages now account for 91 per cent of all email, and over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam rose by 120 per cent. A separate report by California-based IronPort Systems concluded that worldwide spam volumes increased from 31 billion messages daily in October 2005 to 61 billion messages per day in October 2006
The massacre of elephants in the Mouadje rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a lamentably common occurrence. But now, seismic sensors developed for the battlefield are being adapted by conservationists in Africa to fight back against illegal poachers, and loggers. The detectors are buried along forest footpaths to pick up the footfalls of hunters, and eavesdropping sensors are being hidden in trees to listen out for elephant calls — and gunshots. Data is also being borrowed from environmental monitoring satellites to reveal any illegal logging that can devastate the animals’ habitat
Over the past few years, the Internet has seen new domain names such as .eu
for Europe and .travel
for the travel industry. Now, the key oversight agency is looking to get rid of some
Social networking web site MySpace says it will release tools to identify and ban US sex offenders from its service. The company said the new service will be the first national database that brings together about 46 US state sex offender registers. This is on the heels of proposed legislation that would require sex offenders to keep their email on file. The addresses would presumably be used to restrict former criminals from accessing online community sites, but in an the era of easily obtainable email addresses it’s hard to see how this would be effective
Thousands of Australians who use iPods and other digital music players will no longer be acting illegally after a major overhaul of copyright laws passed parliament today
Liquid water has flowed on the surface of Mars within the past five years, suggest images by the now lost Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). The results appear to boost the chances that Mars could harbour life
Virtual reality can apparently prompt the development of false memories. Ann Schlosser at the University of Washington tested students’ ability to learn how to use a real digital camera by operating a virtual one. Although those students who used the virtual camera found it easier to remember how the camera worked, they also experienced more false memories
Providers like Skype, Yahoo, Net2phone, Dialpad, etc, will not be able to offer VOIP in India under the proposed government clampdown. BPOs and other call centres will face the axe if they use any of the VOIP services provided by the above companies. It is not clear if this clampdown will affect regular home users
Games console makers such as Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft may need to re-engineer anti-piracy technology in consoles made for the Australian market to stop consumers using illegal game titles. Amendments to Australia’s copyright laws expected to be passed this week will make it legal for consumers to use modified chips (mod-chips) that circumvent anti-piracy technology built into game consoles if they also overcome measures that restrict the use of DVDs and games titles purchased legally in other regions
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