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Woman Sues Google Over Street View Shots of Her Underwear 417

Kittenman writes "The Telegraph (and several US locals) are covering a story about a Japanese woman who had her underwear on the line while the Google car went past. She is now suing Google: 'I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime,' the woman told a district court. 'It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence.'"

Comment Mr. Vonnegut (Score 1) 297

Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Image

Selling Incandescent Light Bulbs As Heating Devices 557

Csiko writes "The European Union has banned by law trading of incandescent light bulbs due to their bad efficiency/ecology (most of the energy is transformed into heat). A company is now trying to bypass this restriction by offering their incandescent light bulb products as a heating device (article in German) instead of a light device. Still, their 'heat balls' give light as well as heating. So — every law can be bypassed if you have some creativity!"
Image

Homer Simpson Named Greatest TV Character 142

A survey by Entertainment Weekly has named Homer Simpson the greatest character created for television or film in the past 20 years. Everyone's favorite beer-swilling, donut-eating dad beat out Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the top spot. From the article: "'People can relate to Homer because we're all secretly propelled by desires we can't admit to,' Groening was quoted as telling Entertainment Weekly. 'Homer is launching himself head-first into every single impulsive thought that occurs to him. His love of whatever ... is a joy to witness.'"
Government

Moscow Police Watch Pre-Recorded Scenes On Surveillance Cams 114

An anonymous reader writes "During several months of 2009, Moscow police looked at fake pictures displayed on their monitors instead of what was supposed to be video from the city surveillance cams. The subcontractor providing the cams was paid on the basis of 'the number of working cams,' so he delivered pre-cooked pictures stored on his servers. The camera company CEO has been arrested."
Spam

Submission + - Rebranding "The Beaver" (leaderpost.com) 1

rohar writes: "Canada's second oldest magazine — the venerable, Winnipeg-based history publication The Beaver has been forced to change its name after 90 years because the title's inadvertently sexual connotation is getting caught in spam filters."
Power

Submission + - New Slash Based Energy Forum (r2dot.org)

rohar writes: "Having lurked around SlashDot since the late '90's and watching the lack of scalability of some of the newer blogging software, I thought I would put together an energy based forum on some "Old School" Slash that brings together my main interests: Open Source IT and renewable energy system design. The intent is to provide a free hosting system for renewable and traditional energy bloggers that lowers the time commitment and has the features like group moderation and threaded comments that make comments and discussion a little more scalable than blogging. r2dot.org is up and running and after messing with Slash for a week, I have a love/hate relationship with CmdrTaco. :)"
Power

Submission + - SHPEGS: DIY Solar/Geothermal Electricity

rohar writes: "SHPEGS is an open design not-for-profit project to design and prototype a base load renewable electrical generation system suitable for moderate climates and built from common materials. The design centers around creating a local geothermal source with an efficient solar thermal water heater system and can be scaled from the single residence to the mega-project. The project was recently featured in an in-depth The Future of Things article. The heliostat system used in Europe's First Solar Thermal Plant could be used in a scaled down SHPEGS system with Practical Solar's small scale heliostats."
Biotech

Submission + - RIP dust-to-dust.... hello dust-to-silk

Paul Pareti writes: Seven years ago there was a weird sci-fi short story in the London Magazine. It imagined a project where hybridised silk moths could be genetically instructed to feed on human cadavers instead of mulberry leaf. So they produce an unusually deep colored silk. Now a team of Japanese scientists is reported in the Proceedings of NASUS to have genetically modified silk moths to produce a range of different colors, depending on diet. Not quite eating human flesh yet; but how long is it before cremation is replaced with digestion? And we get to spin our own burial shrouds....
Power

Submission + - Europe's First Solar Thermal Power Online

rohar writes: "According to BBC News, Solucar, a division of Abengoa has brought Europe's first commercial solar thermal power station online. It is generating 11MW using a heliostat flat mirror and central tower solar steam system. A video of the system is available from BBC.

The system design would integrate very well with the SHPEGS concepts and combining this type of CSP plant with seasonal thermal storage and a massive air-coupled solar heat pump has a very strong potential for high summer insolation/cold winter climates like Canada and the Northern US and Europe."
Power

Submission + - Heating Your Home With A Geothermal Pump

Makarand writes: This article in the Chronicle describes how geothermal pumps could be used to heat our homes instead of natural gas or electricity. These pumps rely on the fact that regardless of what the surface temperature of the earth is, it is always 60 degrees a few hundred feet below. You have to drill a few holes 200 feet deep and insert U-shaped tubes in them and connect these to a heat exchanger. The tubes are filled with a solution of water and alcohol to prevent corrosion. Circulation pumps drive the water solution through the tubes in the ground and when the solution comes up from underground it is warm because it has passed through an environment of about 60 degrees.The heated liquid then is passed through the heat exchanger which takes care of the business of heating your home.

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