kkleiner writes "A new report documents the prodigious rate at which the world's population is growing. It was just 1999 when we reached 6 billion. And now within the next month or two we will have surpassed 7 billion. What does the continued increase in world population mean for humanity and for the the planet?"

Kevin Kelly ("Senior Maverick for Wired Magazine," among many other things) is back with answers to a selection of the questions posed to him by Slashdot readers. Read on below for his take on travel, the Long Now Foundation (including the 10,000-year clock — clocks! — that is among the foundation's projects), the future of fusion, and what to do about inevitable widespread suckage.

First time accepted submitter shortyadamk writes "I just started a new job where I will have to visit many high school science classes and have the students participate in 1-3 day projects regarding sustainable energy and environmental sciences (in order to promote the regional universities' programs). I've looked at a number of the boxed projects available online and many of them are solar projects; my biggest issue with that is that we are in rural Alaska and much of the time I'll be visiting classes will be in the winter (when we have very little sunlight — and even if we did it would be too cold to go and play in). I'm curious if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for demonstrations and projects that can be done in the classroom and do not require sunlight. One other catch is that the project has to be small enough to fit in a suitcase or plastic tote; we don't have any roads connecting the villages so I will have to fly the project from school to school with me."

First time accepted submitter Lyrdor writes "The Terms of Service for the Stanford Artificial Intelligence class points to how the free class this fall will be used for 'developing and evaluating the Online Course prior any commercial release of the Course' by a startup called KnowLabs. Although all of the press accounts so far have pointed to how the course would be a new example of Open Educational Resources from Stanford, the terms of service point to something else going on. On the LinkedIn page of David Stavens, Co-Founder and CEO at Know Labs, the startup is described on his profile as an 'angel funded startup to re-envision and revolutionize education using the social web and mobile apps. We launched www.ai-class.com and attracted over 130,000 students in 190+ countries.'"

arglebargle_xiv writes "At the risk of burning people out on the topic of PKI fail, someone claiming to be the Diginotar hacker has come forward to claim responsibility: It's the ComodoGate hacker. He also claims to 0wn four more 'high-profile' CAs, and still has the ability to issue new rogue certificates, presumably from other CAs that he 0wns." Whether this claim turns out to be truthful or not, what led to the breach in the first place? Reader Dr La points to an interim report commissioned by the Dutch government (PDF), according to which "a) No antivirus software was present on Diginotar's servers; b) 'the most critical servers' had malicious software infections; c) The software installed on the public web servers was outdated and not patched; and d) all servers were accessible by one user/password combination, which was 'not very strong and could easily be brute-forced.'"

judgecorp writes "The UK government has promised to favour open source systems in its procurement (and made those promises repeatedly). However, freedom of information requests have shown it is doing nothing of the sort. It is giving contracts to the same large suppliers as before."

An anonymous reader writes "An article in the NY Times explains how the United States Postal Service is in dire financial straits, and will need emergency action from Congress to forestall a shutdown later this year. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said simply, 'If Congress doesn't act, we will default.' Labor agreements prohibiting layoffs are preventing one avenue for reducing costs, and laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keep income down. On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006. They're currently hoping for legislation that would relax their economic requirements and considering an end to Saturday delivery."

RogerRoast writes "According to an article published in the journal Cell, molecular signals from fat cell (adipocyte) precursors under the skin are necessary to spur hair growth in mice. Yale researchers report in the paper that these cells produce molecules called PDGF (platelet derived growth factors), which are necessary to produce hair growth. The discovery of the source of signals that trigger hair growth may lead to new treatments for baldness. The trick is in getting adipocyte precursors under the skin to talk to stem cells at the base of the hair follicles."

An anonymous reader writes "E Ink turned up at IFA 2011 with its Triton color e-paper, which has exactly the same properties as the monochrome version found in the Kindle (two-month battery life, no power use when viewing a page, as readable as a sheet of paper) while adding 4,096 colors. We also get to see the E Ink watch, signage, cellphone and USB stick displays, and the latest glass-less e-paper inside a credit card. E Ink hopes to use the new plastic substrate in future e-readers, meaning they will be thinner, lighter, and more shatterproof than those that ship today."

LibRT writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "Tanks could soon get night-time invisibility thanks to a cloaking device that masks their infrared signature. Developed by BAE Systems, the Adaptiv technology allows vehicles to mimic the temperature of their surroundings. It can also make a tank look like other objects, such as a cow or car, when seen through heat-sensitive 'scopes. The hi-tech camouflage uses hexagonal panels, or pixels, made of a material that can change temperature very quickly. About 1,000 pixel panels, each of which is 14cm across, are needed to cover a small tank. The panels are driven by on-board thermal cameras that constantly image the ambient temperature of the tank's surroundings. This is projected on to the panels to make it harder to spot. The cameras can also work when the tank is moving."

An anonymous reader writes "In a guest post on the Patently-O blog, Villanova University professor Michael Risch summarizes his detailed study into the methods and efficacy of patent trolls. He writes, 'It turns out that most of what I thought about trolls — good or bad — was wrong.... Perhaps the biggest surprise in the study was the provenance of patents. I thought most patents came from failed startups. While such patents were represented (about 14% of initial assignees were defunct), most came from companies still in business in 2010. Indeed, more than a third of the initial assignees were publicly traded, a subsidiary of a public company, or venture capital recipients. Only 21% were patent assertion entities at the time the patent issued, and many of those were inventor owned companies (like Katz) rather than acquisition entities (like Acacia). ... Another area of surprise was patent quality. While trolls almost never won their cases if they went to judgment (only three cases led to an infringement finding on the merits), the percentage of patents invalidated on the merits was lower than I expected.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A document released in the recent Cablegate leak reveals that Microsoft provided training to the Tunisian Ministries of Justice and the Interior in exchange for exemption from the country's open software policy. These Ministries would soon put the training to use by phishing for the social networking credentials of bloggers, reporters, political activists and protesters. Microsoft's assistance resulted in the sale of 12,000 software licenses to the Tunisian government." The cable itself details the effort Microsoft put into negotiating a deal. Their clear intent was simply expanding into a new market, but the author of the cable was skeptical of the Tunisian government's adherence to its stated goals. Quoting: "In theory, increasing GOT law enforcement capability through IT training is positive, but given heavy-handed GOT interference in the internet, Post questions whether this will expand GOT capacity to monitor its own citizens."

GMGruman writes "Over the weekend, HP execs posted statements announcing the transfer of WebOS from the PC group that produced the now-killed TouchPad tablet and other mobile devices to HP's Office of Strategy and Technology. Is that a new lifeline for WebOS? Or, as analyst Trip Chowdhry suggested, is WebOS a pawn in a Shakespearean corporate game by HP CEO Léo Apotheker?"

The long-debated .XXX top-level domain opens this week; reader SonicSpike sends a snippet from the Washington Times about what may turn into a hornet's nest of anger at how the new domain is being used: "Some adult-entertainment companies are balking at the entire scheme, saying that ICM Registry LLC, which is overseeing .xxx registrations worldwide, does not have permission to sell the .xxx version of trademarked names and brands. In addition, the Florida-based company is raising eyebrows — and charges of 'shakedown' — by trying to get non-porn companies to pay to prevent their brands from being registered as .xxx sites. After all, what maker of baby food or children's movies, for example, would want to have sites such as gerber.xxx or disney.xxx floating around the Internet?"

theodp writes "According to the FTC, 'celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.' So, would the ringing endorsement of Zeppelin tour operator Airship Ventures that Sergey Brin gave to his 200,000+ Google+ followers last week fall into that category? 'Since getting to know the folks over at airshipventures.com,' posted Brin, 'I have had the pleasure of flying with them several times and this loop in the south bay is arguably the most scenic. I will probably give it another go when they get back to SF in October.' Forbes calls Brin 'an investor in Airship Ventures,' and others have speculated about a possible Google connection."

Billly Gates writes "A new operating system called Cosmo has been developed, written entirely in C#. It shows the naysayers you can write a full OS kernel without C. So far, you need Visual Studio to compile and run it, as Mono is not supported. However, the source code can be compiled with the Express editions of Visual Studio. The project plans to add VB.NET support soon."