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Is Google Earth dangerous for democracy?

Several countries are asking Google Earth to reduce the quality of the most sensitive pictures.

It is the first time that such high quality images have been made available to the most clueless computer user. But these images, and others with a lot higher quality, are readily available to organizations with cash (i.e. governments, terrorist organizations etc). There are several companies selling high quality satellite imaging for a lot of $$$ so blocking access to Google earth only hurts the regular guy and not the wannabe terrorist. Convince me that satellite imaging played an important part in 9/11 and I may change my mind.

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Crapman

A novel way to get back at your neighbors :

There's big trouble and bad smells a-brewing in a quiet residential district around the Kawashima Shotengai (shop district) in Nakano. Shops are going out of business. Residents are virtually sealed inside their homes. Police and city officials say their hands are tied. All because of an angry old man in his fifties who has a strange habit of cooking his own excrement and organic kitchen waste in his garden.

...

The trouble started about two and a half years ago when Crapman started boiling his own excrement and leftover food in his garden, and dumping the vile brew into a one meter square hole he dug in the ground there. Soon a foul smell started to permeate the neighborhood.:

The sad part is that the neighbors are helpless as the environmental regulations for bad smells are aimed at business and not individuals.

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3 for the price of 1

The big craze the last few years when shopping in Milano is ; 3 for the price of 2.

The person parking in the front of my house this evening went one better: 3 for the price of 1.

Believe it or not; the red car in the middle of the (bad quality) picture actually managed to block three perfectly good parking places on the first try. Impressive.

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Shagster

Warn the rest of the world before they discover the sad truth if your ex was crap at in bed at Shagster.

Or if you're curious; find out what other people say about your performance...

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Microsoft Virtual Earth: a virtual dream world

Microsoft Virtual Earth is truly virtual. It is a dream world (for Microsoft) without Apple:

And without 9/11:

Luckily Google Earth is more in touch with real life:

Via The Register: MSN Earth deletes Apple

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How Strange: a missing link

How Strange has a lot of weird photo shopped images by Dave Lee. I particularly like this one:

(The Missing Link)

This “melon“ falls into the weird category:

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Microsoft man wins Worlds Worst Writer award

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest challenges the competitors to write the worst possible opening sentence to novels. Dan McKay, a 43-year-old quantitative analyst for Microsoft Great Plains, won this years competition with this entry:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.