Thursday 8am Silicon Valley news report:

Apple sets tech conference date -Reuters

Apple has said it expects Jobs to return in late June, meaning investors and the media will be looking for any update to that timetable at the June 8 conference.

Guest Post: The 3 Major Barriers to Cloud Computing -Ulitzer

The nature and extent of how the tech leaders address, security, physical infrastructure and network management barriers will impact their market valuations and growth potentials.

A Ruling Against Intel, Unlikely to Drag It Down -NYTimes

As the world’s largest chip maker and the co-creator of the PC industry, Intel brings vast technological and business resources to a game whose rules change at Internet speed. A few minutes in the penalty box, while perhaps costly, will hardly have any impact on Intel’s position.

Intel’s Strategy Won’t Change Despite Antitrust Charges -NYTimes

The rival chip makers are not standing still. Over the next year, many of the companies that make chips for cellphones expect their wares to end up in the compact, cheap laptops known as netbooks.

Review: Flaws in Web's much-touted WolframAlpha -AP

Unlike search engines that deliver links that match keywords in your query, WolframAlpha is more of a black box. If you have it perform a calculation, it gives you an answer, along with a small link for "source information." Open that and you'll generally be told the data was "curated" - found and verified - by the company behind WolframAlpha. In other words, "trust us."

PG&E expands solar power plans -SFGate

California law requires the state's electrical utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by the end of 2010, although they have three more years to comply if necessary. PG&E has been frantically signing contracts with solar and wind companies, even agreeing to buy power from a startup that wants to build large solar arrays in space.

Trouble right here in Twitter City -TechCrunchIT

As Twitter becomes more fundamental to the realtime revolution, the company is being forced to act like the common carrier utility it has inherited. Even though Twitter has lobotomized many of its realtime features, other services such as FriendFeed have picked up the ball and kept Twitter realtime operational for all intents and purposes.

Environmental alarms raised over home electronics -AP

In a report Wednesday, the Paris-based International Energy Agency estimates new electronic gadgets will triple their energy consumption by 2030 to 1,700 terawatt hours, the equivalent of today's home electricity consumption of the United States and Japan combined.

Hate goes viral on social network sites: group -Reuters

The report was based on "over 10,000 problematic Web sites, social networking groups, portals, blogs, chat rooms, videos and hate games on the Internet which promote racial violence, anti-semitism, homophobia, hate music and terrorism."

Google Apps Continues Push Into Enterprise: 30,000 New Users at Valeo -ReadWriteWeb

As Google continues to tap into the enterprise market - competing against the desktop office software monolith Microsoft - deals like the Valeo one show that its web office suite can scale for large businesses.

Real Networks Sues Studios on Antitrust Grounds -NYTimes

At issue is a Real program called RealDVD, which lets users make backup copies of the industry’s copy-protected DVDs on their hard drives. The software is central to Real’s more important goal of putting a hard drive inside every DVD player, turning the ubiquitous living room device into a home movie server.

Craigslist to drop 'erotic services' classifieds -SFGate

The announcement marked a significant policy change for Craigslist, which in the past has never pre-screened ads, choosing instead to remove them only after receiving complaints. The new adult services ads will also carry a fee.

What the Yahoo Ruling Means for Web-based Companies -GIGaom

The court’s ruling hints that there might be an easy way out of this mess. If a web-based company disclaims any intention to be bound by a monitoring policy and it never promises to take down offensive material from the web, then it can never be bound by such an agreement.