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Russian Town Puts Giant Smiley On Google Maps
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:58 PM
from the working-together dept.
from the working-together dept.
Toramir writes "Citizens of the Russian town Chelyabinsk calculated when the satellite, QuickBird, which takes images for Google Earth and Google Maps, would cross above their city and used people to make a giant smiley face. A rock concert on the main square attracted many people and everyone got a yellow cape. It looks like someone at Google was quicker than usual to put up the new data. Maybe Google likes the idea of an entire town working hard to get its 15 minutes of fame. The article has a screenshot of Google Maps and images taken directly at the event."
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You know what... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know what... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:You know what... (Score:5, Informative)
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Google will have to remove the pic (Score:5, Funny)
or the copyright owners of the smiley face will issue a DMCA take down notice.
Whether that would really happen or not, the news has become so much like the Onion that I kind of expect asshattery like that.
Re:Google will have to remove the pic (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, smiley face owns copyright on DMCA!
In future Soviet USA, they skip take down notice. Instead send you straight to a DMCA Forced Work Camp in Alaska. Where you will transcribe entire works of Disney, by hand.
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In soviet Russia.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In soviet Russia.. (Score:5, Funny)
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But where is it? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't see it on Google Maps:
http://tinyurl.com/butwhereisit [tinyurl.com]
Up close and personal - the long version:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=+Chelyabinsk+&ie=UTF8&ll=55.159908,61.402202&spn=0.001906,0.005686&t=h&z=18&iwloc=addr [google.com]
Fake images (Score:4, Informative)
You can see the search used in the image. Search for for 'Tscheljabinsk, russia' and zoom in. You can see that you end up in the same square, but there is no smiley there!
Also: cars were removed from the image close to the square, but they're in the same locations further away. Light hits the image from the same angle, which means same time and date difference from equinox).
Re:Fake images (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore the fake screenshot depicts the very exact same thing as the rooftop picture. What's more pathetic, that they actually did it but not for when Google would actually shoot (is there even any way to actually know that?) or that the Slashdot "editors" didn't even see that coming.
I guess that's Journalism 2.0, in which it's the user who does the editor's job of spotting the bullshit.
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Re:Fake images (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess that's Journalism 2.0, in which it's the user who does the editor's job of spotting the bullshit.
Is this really a bad thing though? I first watched CNN during the first gulf war. They were kind of dumb, but they had people on the ground in Baghdad and those people stuck their cameras out of the window and sounded scared but enthusiastic. Every time there was a crisis they'd fly someone out there and broadcast anything cool they filmed. There wasn't much attempt at analysis, but it was still pretty interesting
Now when I watch CNN they seemed to have far more stuff back home. Every half our or so they run an advert for CNN "Eco Solutions" which is the opposite of journalism - they know the story before the leave the office and select reports that fit it. There are far more talking heads back in the studio repeating conventional wisdom from the US. Frankly this is boring - I don't care what middle class Americans believe is happening.
I'd much rather just see a stream of images from what is actually happening and make up my own mind. There less editorial control the better.
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Re:Fake images (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you've forgotten that the purpose of news isn't to inform, it's to coerce opinion.
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Re:Fake images (Score:5, Funny)
No, the purpose of a cinema is to sell popcorn. It's actually quite the opposite of karma whoring.
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Re:Fake images (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind the fact that they say they timed when the satellite would come over, but it's an aerial photo.
Also, they did a similar thing on James May's 20th Century, where he made a giant space invader to be captured on a satellite image.
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ÐzÑÐнÑOE Ñ...& (Score:5, Informative)
It's a bad photoshop (Score:5, Informative)
Compare these two:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_IeJHb-2CVGM/SNUFiyTlEHI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/shQMNh5h89o/s1600-h/smiley-1000.jpg [blogspot.com]
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=tscheljabinsk+russland&ie=UTF8&oe=utf-8&client=iceweasel-a&t=h&ll=55.160037,61.403425&spn=0.004793,0.011179&z=17 [google.com]
The cars on all the side streets and all the shadows are exactly the same. Someone just photoshoped out the cars on the main street and put in the smily. Nothing to see here.
Re:It's a bad photoshop (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, since the other pictures look authentic, I'd say the meeting really happened. It's just that Google wasn't fast enough to record it. That shows you a limitation of Google :-) There are still a few things you can do without Google noticing right away.
Alain - fairsoftware.net
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Re:It's a bad photoshop (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice try, though.
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Re:It's a bad photoshop (Score:5, Informative)
Except that the high resolution photographs on google are not taken by satellite. They're aerial photographs.
So the entire exercise was based on a fiction, and the organisers probably knew this.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fooling a /. "editor" doesn't make it a good photoshop. It took me about a second to realize it was a hoax, and less than 30 more to look up the above link. I guess that was a bit too much effort for samzenpus.
Mad (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In sovied russia, tech.slashdot is the new idle (Score:5, Insightful)
I had hoped idle would stay confined to idle. This is not technology.
This ... is ... IDLE!!! </300>
hmm (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Funny)
Overcast and that's not how it works (Score:5, Interesting)
There's about 20 "I don't see it in Google Maps" and "It was photoshopped!" posts that don't mention any of the basic reasons why this didn't work.
1. Google Maps isn't realtime, some areas have photos updated every few years. My house is a picture from over a year ago, for instance. Just because the bird goes overhead doesn't mean the content goes into Google Maps, and even if it did, it would only go in for a few days until the next pass, so... concept fail.
2. Did anyone actually LOOK at the photos taken on the ground at the event? It was OVERCAST. These are not magical Star Trek satellites with super inverse polaron field vision that sees through clouds.
Why aren't other folks touching on these VERY BASIC FLAWS with the clever premise?
Here's an example of the real thing (Score:4, Interesting)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=target+stores+chicago&ie=UTF8&ll=42.006225,-87.886505&spn=0.012883,0.017509&t=k&z=16 [google.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's not for the sake of Google Maps, it's to be visible to passengers in passing planes. Notice the major international airport (O'Hare) about 500 m south-west of that spot ...
Here's [google.com] another company logo just to the south of O'Hare. Sometimes you see them further away if the building is in a flight-path. Here [google.com] and here [google.com] are a couple several km away from Auckland Airport; notice the different orientation of the logos, depending on the angle the building will be visible from.
Never mind. (Score:5, Interesting)
It was just a stupid promo action for the local Internet service provider (is74.ru). They also gathered these people to sign the petition "please introduce a $15 unlimited Internet plan". Although they did not collect enough signatures, they still introduced it.
Also, they promised to hire a plane to get rid of the clouds (which would not help anyway - google maps will never add just a 500×500 meter shot to their maps if everything else is covered by clouds. They also promised that you'll be able to see the shots on Google Maps the next day - which is also a blatant lie. This ISP already had a terrible reputation for cutting the optical cables of its competitors, and now this.
bleh (Score:4, Funny)
I'm more impressed that they made their park a union jack, I guess that was put up a 100+ years ago, so maybe they just have a history of sucking up to the powers that be..
Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
That makes me angry. They go through all the trouble of handing out yellow capes to hundreds of people. They tell them where to stand, and they probably have to wait there for quite a time while the satellite passes over. They have to block traffic, and business, etc. Then some humourless drone down at Google goes and photoshops all that work away. It was probably done by the same sourpuss person who got rid of the "Swim across the Atlantic" instruction you used to get when asking for directions from New York to London, England.
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm.
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
Off-topic, I know, but I'd never seen this before, and I found it quite funny.
Trademarks are not verbs, therefore verbs are not trademarks, therefore 'photoshopped' is not a trademark, and can therefore be used freely. Or am I applying logic where none applies? (Yes, I know, trademark law probably covers stuff like this.)
I tried to Google for an authoritative answer, but didn't come up with anything.
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
For those who absolutely refused to read the article, here is an artist's impression
: )
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree. I can provide a better artist's impression: :D
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Re:Where exactly? (Score:5, Funny)
^_^
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Yes, Lenina (Score:5, Informative)
If a town or a street got renamed during the Soviet period, after 1992 its name was in most cases restored to the pre-revolutionary version. However, if the street was built during the Soviet period, of course it would not get renamed, since it never had a pre-Soviet name in the first place. Renaming a street just because its name is no longer politically fashionable is akin to rewriting history, no better than what the Soviets were doing.
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That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
You should see how many things in the U.S. are named after Ronald Reagan!
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Re:That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
But there's only one thing named after George Bush, sadly that thing is still running the country.
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Re:Lenina? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, almost every city in Russia still has Sovetskaya street and the Lenin square (complete with a statue). My own home town, Tambov, also has Karl Marx street, Komsomolskaya street etc. Some streets that were named after the more odious figures were renamed in the 90s (one was named after Antonov-Ovseenko, who was the commissar in charge of suppressing the anti-communist Tambov peasant rebellion in 1920s, and personally signed the order to use poison gas against the rebel), but most of the "generic" names were left untouched.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Read about "ad hominem argument" in a dictionary. How is it relevant what I am?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Palin is a heroine. She once drilled oil with her bare hands.
Re:Where is it? (Score:5, Funny)
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