(WIRED) — The Obama Administration will lend Tesla Motors $465 million to build an electric sedan and the battery packs needed to propel it. It’s one of three loans totaling almost $8 billion that the Department of Energy awarded Tuesday to spur the development of fuel-efficient vehicles.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that the Department of Energy is also lending $5.9 billion to Ford to retool factories in five states. Nissan will receive $1.6 billion to refurbish a factory in Tennessee to produce electric cars.
The loans are the first awarded under …

ISLAMABAD: Despite the fact that dumping old computers in developing countries has been declared as violation of international law, Pakistan was being used as dumping ground for over 50,000 tons of e-waste that hurts local industry and also creates environmental and health hazards.
Despite being a signatory to the Basel Convention that restricted importing used/old computers, more than 500,000 used computers are finding ways into Pakistani computer market each year.
These concerns were voiced at a discussion ‘Cost effective or technology defective’ held here on Tuesday.
The speakers from both public and private …

Netbooks and the New Open Source Movement Converts
Saad Sarwar Muhammad
The Open Source Movement (OSM) has come a long way since the inception of the concept by computer geeks and programmers as an alternative to proprietary software where intellectual property rights are not impugned with the use and free distribution of the software. The virtual monopolization of system software by Microsoft led these revolutionaries to alter the market space through the introduction of Linux, an Open Source system software. The software also proved more reliable as compared to Microsoft Windows with …

Open-source software has won the argument. Now a new threat to openness looms
“FIRST they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi probably never said these words, despite claims to the contrary, but they perfectly describe the progress of open-source software over the past 15 years or so. Such software, the underlying recipe for which is created by volunteers and distributed free online, was initially dismissed as the plaything of nerdy hobbyists. Big software firms derided the idea that anyone would put …

Open-source software firms are flourishing, but are also becoming less distinctive
MANY technology firms are floundering amid the recession. But many of the ones that offer services tied to open-source software—free programs written by volunteers who collaborate online—are boasting double-digit growth. Sales at Red Hat, the world’s biggest independent open-source firm with annual revenues of $653m, grew by 18% year-on-year in the first quarter. More and more firms, particularly in Europe, seem prepared to embrace open source (see chart). “Budgets are tight and we think that is good for open source,” …