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Comment Re:Plagiarism lawsuits (Score 1) 310

those same idiots will be suing everyone who simply listens and remembers a piece of new music

They're already doing that and calling it "plagiarism lawsuits". See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music ("My Sweet Lord"), Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton ("Love Is a Wonderful Thing"), Gaye v. Thicke ("Blurred Lines"), Wolfe v. Led Zeppelin ("Stairway to Heaven"), and Ed Sheeran getting sued twice. This is not to mention other cases that you don't hear so much about because they're settled out of court: "Stay With Me" by Sam Smith is too close to "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty

The best one was John Fogerty getting sued for "Old Man Down The Road" sounding to much like "Green River" which he sold the rights to. "You sound too much like yourself!"

Image

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!"
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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."
Slashdot.org

Ask Rob Malda 405

We last interviewed CmdrTaco, along with Hemos, in January 2000. Slashdot's 10th anniversary seems like a good time to put Rob back on the hot seat. He's older now and married, his former hobby site now has well over one million registered user IDs, and Linux has gone from "upstart" operating system to a normal part of the IT landscape. So ask away, one question per post. Expect to see answers to at least 10 of the highest-moderated questions next week. And if you miss your chance to participate in this interview, don't worry. We'll probably do another one with CmdrTaco sometime between 2014 and 2017. CT: Also the clock is ticking if you want to sign up for a Slashdot 10-Year Anniversary party if you want a T-Shirt or a shot at the $1k ThinkGeek gift certificate.

Comment Re:Efficiency? (Score 4, Informative) 78

For a solar tower you..
Convection tower performance is very poor and the convection tower portion of the SHPEGS system accounts for less than 10% of the system output. It is still clean renewable power, but the convection tower wind turbine output is trivial. The chimney is there to allow a large volume of air to move across the heat exchangers efficiently and the wind turbine takes a slight advantage of the effect, but it isn't significant.

I wonder how this would be for growing winter crops as well

The thermal storage would be deep enough to not interact with the surface or shallow groundwater. The Drake Landing project has some information. This is another research document on thermal storage.

There is a lot of potential for integrating bio-methane which requires a very constant temperature as well as this Solar Hydrogen from methane production system. Algae farming also has a potential integration with the solar thermal storage.

Thanks. I'm looking for a number though.

I don't mean to avoid the efficiency question. Again, in an arid location with the majority of electrical usage for AC, Solar PV or Solar Thermal is simpler and probably more suitable. The cost/m2 of collectors is substantially cheaper in a thermal system, so I'm not sure what you are comparing. Marginal and poor land that isn't suitable for crop production or the roof of a Walmart isn't the cost factor, the solar collector is. The MIT group was able to get 1kW from 14m2 of trough collectors on a straight thermal system and the SHPEGS additions should improve on that.

There are also 2 heat sources in the SHPEGS system, solar and hot summer air along with two power generation systems, thermal and the wind turbine. In theory, the absorption system should improve not degrade the straight solar thermal system, so I would expect something better than 10% efficiency on the solar portion if you include the additional heat from the air. The conversion efficiency of the heat being extracted from the air is difficult to calculate. The energy cost is the energy going into the solution pump to pressurize the aqueous ammonia and there isn't the same direct cost in the volume of air being moved, in fact the more air that is moved the better the output of the wind turbine portion.

I used 5% thermal to electrical efficiency for the calculations to be conservative, and generally 10% is used for binary geothermal plants.

If you are comparing Solar PV, you need to account for battery cost and cut all the numbers by at least 50% to account for the daytime only output. Regardless of what is used for electrical storage, there are 3 months of the winter in Canada and the northern US where Solar PV isn't going to put out anything substantial and seasonal electrical storage isn't feasible.

The Toronto Exhibition Palace Live Solar PV Stats page has some historical data on Solar PV in winter in Canada.
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."
Bug

Submission + - Computer foul-up breaks Canadian tax filing system

CokeJunky writes: "During a weekend maintenance window, the Canada Revenue Agency (Fills the same role as the IRS south of the border) experienced data corruption issues in the tax databases. As a precaution, they have disabled all electronic filling services, and paper based returns will be stacking up in the mail room, as returns cannot be filed at all until the problem is fixed. Articles: The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Canada Revenue Agency. Apparently on Monday they discovered tax fillings submitted electronically where the Social Insurance Number, and the Date of Birth were swapped."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Open Letter to Sir Richard Branson

Dear Sir Richard Branson,

Upon reading the information on the recently announced Virgin Earth Challenge I feel that although I admire the noble effort, I have difficulty with the terms and conditions of the challenge. I believe that if you and the Virgin group of companies were serious regarding improving our planet that you have the resources to make an immediate change in the world energy si

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