Solar trees get to root of energy crisis

By Lisa Botter
For CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Taking inspiration from nature, designer Ross Lovegrove has brought beauty to an everyday object that few give a passing thought to: the streetlamp.

Ross Lovegrove's 'Solar Tree' at night. The second generation tree will be fully automated and able to follow the sun.

The energy intensive lamps are quite literally, and figuratively, getting a green makeover and may be sprouting on a street near you soon.

Lovegrove's innovative lighting project, the "Solar Tree," is a solar-powered streetlamp that also serves as a piece of modern art, infusing a bit of nature into the usually gray urban landscape.

He believes that putting complex natural forms in a city can benefit all of society.

The "Solar Tree" has a striking green trunk and ten branches with solar panels that radiate light on the street below.

"The light looks pretty good when it's off. Most of the other lights out there have no life in them when they are off. I've seen more life in an old guy sleeping on a park bench then I have in some of those other streetlamps," Lovegrove told CNN.

The lamps were first planted, to much acclaim, on the Ringstrasse in Vienna in October 2007 in collaboration with MAK, the Museum of Applied Arts.

UK to clamp down on Internet piracy

(CNN) -- Britain's leading online service providers are Thursday expected to join a government--backed scheme to tackle the illegal downloading of music and films, despite concerns it could curb the freedoms of Internet users.

The record industry has long grappled with how to wrest back control of digital music.

The scheme is aimed at an estimated 6.5 million Britons who have downloaded files illegally over the past year, a practice the music industry says could cost it $2 billion over the next five years, according to the UK Press Association.

Under the new measures, the most prolific downloaders will be sent letters to inform them that their activity has been detected and is being monitored. Further measures will reportedly see their Internet access restricted.

The six Internet providers behind the scheme -- BT, Virgin Media , Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse -- are understood to have committed themselves to developing legal file-sharing services, PA reported.

According to the London Times newspaper, those who download illegally and ignore warnings could be subject to online surveillance and have their Internet speeds restricted to prevent them swapping large files.

"This is something of a step into the unknown for the Internet providers, music industries and minister," former pop star Fergal Sharkey, who now heads musicians' body British Music Rights, told the Times.

"But we can't go on without it -- no business can survive after losing as much revenue as the music industry had."

Cancer expert warns employees on cell phones

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.

The issue that concerns some scientists -- though nowhere near a consensus -- is electromagnetic radiation.

The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between cancer and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Herberman is basing his alarm on early unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science, and he believes that people should take action now, especially when it comes to children.

"Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later," Herberman said.

No other major academic cancer research institutions have sounded such an alarm about cell phone use. But Herberman's advice could raise concern among many cell phone users and especially parents.

In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff Wednesday, he says children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.

It's not easy being green

By Matthew Knight
For CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) -- You might want to go green, but how do you know what you're buying is truly ethical? Greenwash -- the ignoble art of misleading consumers about a product's true green worth -- is on the rise. But thanks to the work of increasingly vigilant regulators, some of the more curious and downright spurious claims are being weeded out.

TerraChoice's "six sins of greenwashing" include vagueness, irrelevance and outright fibbing.

TerraChoice, a Canadian environmental marketing agency, has devised a guide for consumers which they hope goes some way to eradicating greenwash. They've called it "the six sins of greenwashing."

Scott McDougall, President and CEO of TerraChoice told CNN: "The regulatory initiatives in Canada, the U.S., Australia and, I suspect, Europe are rather impenetrable bureaucratic documents, and are not very useful to the average consumer. So we developed it as a tool that would be memorable and useful to consumers."

The sins include "Vagueness" -- terms like 100 percent natural and earth-friendly which don't really mean anything, "Hidden Trade Off" -- is a product truly sustainable? And the "Lesser of Two Evils" -- trying to make consumers feel green about products that have dubious environmental benefit.

Set up in 1995 as part of the Canadian Federal Government's program against greenwash, TerraChoice examines the entire life cycle of a product and the science of environmental claims with a view to awarding Canada's environmental certification mark, the EcoLogo. "Our position is to help genuine environmental leadership win market share," McDougall said.

Net firms in music pirates deal

Six of the UK's biggest net providers have agreed a plan with the music industry to tackle piracy online.

The deal, negotiated by the government, will see hundreds of thousands of letters sent to net users suspected of illegally sharing music.

Hard core file-sharers could see their broadband connections slowed, under measures proposed by the UK government.

BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse have all signed up.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, which represents the music industry, said: "All of the major ISPs in the UK now recognise they have a responsibility to deal with illegal file-sharers on their networks."

Mr Taylor said it had taken years to persuade ISPs to adopt this view.

BY-BBC NEWS

'Neglect' of Bletchley condemned

A call to save Bletchley Park has gone out from the UK's computer scientists.

More than 100 academics have signed a letter to The Times saying the code-cracking centre and crucible of the UK computer industry deserves better.

They say Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, should be put on a secure financial basis like other "great museums".

"We cannot allow this crucial and unique piece of both British and World heritage to be neglected in this way," the letter to The Times said.

BY-BBC NEWS

Facebook libel case damages won

A businessman whose personal details were "laid bare" in fake entries on the Facebook social networking website has won a libel case at the High Court.

Mathew Firsht was awarded £22,000 in damages against an old school friend, Grant Raphael, who created the profile.

The judge ruled that Mr Raphael's defence - that the entry was created by mischievous party gate-crashers at his flat - was "built on lies".

The profiles were on Facebook for 16 days until they were taken down.

Mr Firsht accused Mr Raphael of creating a false personal profile, and a company profile called "Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?".

Mr Raphael said that "strangers" who attended an impromptu party at his house in Hampstead in North London sneaked off to a spare bedroom and created the profiles on his PC.

BY-BBC NEWS

Facebook to police site add-ons

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

Facebook will give developers good and bad rankings

Social networking site Facebook is introducing a ranking system for good and bad application developers.

Announced at F8, the Facebook developers conference in San Francisco, it aims to improve the quality of applications on offer.

Dubbed Application Verification it will promote "secure, respectful and transparent" add-ons to the site.

"We haven't done enough to reward the good or punish the abusive," said Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.

"We're going to have to find a way to ensure the applications that provide the most long term value are the ones that are succeeding," he said.

As Facebook has grown many believe it has struggled to stamp down on applications that annoy or deceive users. Common abuses include spamming people with unnecessary notifications or sharing data about users who wanted to it to stay private.

BY-BBC NEWS

To disclose or not to disclose?

Disclosing security problems is a good idea, says Bill Thompson, except when it isn't

In the last few weeks we've seen two very different approaches to the full disclosure of security flaws in large-scale computer systems.

Problems in the domain name system have been kept quiet long enough for vendors to find and fix their software, while details of how to hack Transport for London's Oyster card will soon be available to anyone with a laptop computer and a desire to break the law.

These two cases highlight a major problem facing the computing industry, one that goes back many years and is still far from being unresolved.

Given that there are inevitably bugs, flaws and unexpected interactions in complex systems, how much information about them should be made public by researchers when the details could be helpful to criminals or malicious hackers?

BY-BBC NEWS