Slashdot Mirror
Say 'Cheese' to Google Satellite at 10AM
13.7BillionYears writes "Google's recent purchase of Keyhole and its jaw-dropping 3D earth-browsing software has apparently netted them ownership of an imaging satellite as well, now named 'gSat.' This Friday, April 1st, gSat will be capturing a new dataset (neighborhood of 1meter/pixel), passing over each time zone between 10 and 11AM. If you stand outside and wave you will supposedly show up as a blurry fleck. Even better news is that the dataset will be available within months not only to Keyhole but also to the equally jaw-dropping and open source NASA World Wind. It all seems aimed at answering a question that has plagued mankind for ages: What foolishness can we wreak upon the Earth on the Day of Fools with only 3 days' notice? I'm guessing the obscene stuff will be Photoshopped out. Thanks to the World Wind Forum for the tip and let's hope those April showers come late."
...you only show up as a 'blurry fleck,' how are you supposed to do something obscene?
Ah yes, April 1st on Slashdot. If every single story is an April Fools joke, we will just fool people over and over again because it totally isn't predictable!
I suggest we have Google take over the Hubble project, and have them turn that on us! Then we'll see what's really going on down here... ;)
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
If a guy mugged me tonight I'd just look at him with an uncertain smile until he shot me. I hate april fools. :-/
If the cat can't experience its own death, nothing will ever kill you. (No, really!)
I can see my house from here!
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
because today is April 1 and this lame excuse for an April Fool's Day joke won't work unless you're gullible enough to do it.
I keep going outside and waving but I don't see myself.
If they're capturing all of each timezone at 10-11AM of each day, gSat must either be shaped like a curved tube stretching from pole to pole, or orbiting the earth from pole to pole once every hour.
What happens if some real news happens today? Nobody will believe it.
Be sure to be drinking or holding a bottle of Google Gulp when they take the picture.
and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt
:-)
WOAH!!! hello! what a sniping remakr at Microsoft! oooouch!! call in the lawyers!
Full at : GOogle Gulp Faq
Maybe we're jaded, but we've seen all these other companies leap headlong into 1.0, thinking their product is exactly what they've been dreaming of all their lives, that everything is perfect and hunky-dory - and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt, the Board is holding emergency meetings and the CEO is on CNBC blathering sweatily about "a new direction" and "getting back to basics." No thanks, man. We like our freedom.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Isn't April Fools Day just the best? =] For a 'full' list of sites pulling pranks today check out this list here
Here is a sample:
kellyosbourne.org - Sanctuary records group shut us down
nukefreezone.net - Making fun of atrios.blogspot.com
weebl.jolt.co.uk - Replaced with Cats-By-Mail
telecom.co.nz - Click 2 Brick
ytmnd.com - (NSFW) hacked by teens for christ
wingus.ampedhost.com - Site converted into Mingus' Gently-Used Furniture store. Oh dear. Why won't he be kind?
homestarrunner.com - Now a pay service.
whirlpool.net.au - Australia's biggest Luddite to head Australia's largest telco
thinkgeek.com - Fake product listings.
theregister.co.uk - Bush twins to join Air Force tech unit in Iraq
creativebits.org - Site purchased by Microsoft
ocremix.org - Now partnered with EA (or something like that). Called EA ReMix.
spacedaily.com - Bush Cancels Space Shuttle Program
planet.gnome.org - Switched sites with planet.kde.org
planet.kde.org - Switched sites with planet.gnome.org
ietf.org - RFC: Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode
beejaysworld.de - Gentoo dropping livecds for x86
nature.com - Apollo bacteria spur lunar erosion
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov - Water On Mars
smh.com.au - (Free Reg Req) SMEGmail offers 1 terabyte storage
smh.com.au - (Free Reg Req) Linux looks to Hilton for exposure
thetoque.com - Canada Builds Own Missile Defense Shield
onion.com - U.S. Dog Owners Fear Arrival of Africanized Fleas
chron.com - Bush Twins in Maxim
ask.com - Jeeves has been replaced by a robot
animenewsnetwork.com - Viz Unlicenses Naruto
uninventthewheel.co.uk - New BMW technology to get around the EU ban on right hand drive cars in Europe.
newgrounds.com - changing to numagrounds.com
neopets.com - neopets adds 50 new pets
www.firstloox.org - The Loox is being recalled
packages.gentoo.org - Adobe doesn't sell products for Linux
pc.ign.com - Microsoft World of Wordcraft (Extremely Obvious)
spamusement.com - Page full of spoof banner ads
gentooexperimental.org - Gentoo using the NT kernel
moddb.com
Belive in Technology and AMAZE yourself. -- RIP ZDTV/TechTV
If you want to capture all of me :-)
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Slashdot is accumulating all the tech related April Fool's jokes onto one page for my easy access.
In Soviet Russia, asses suck this joke.
This is great. Now I can go to google and enter "find my lost car keys" and get a nice picture. Thanks again, Big G!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Google does not own a satellite. I Do!! Bow to me as I expand my search for Waldo to a Global scale!
This sig has been removed pending an investigation.
mirror. Aimed right back at it.
rewriting history since 2109
Your 'pranks' would be much more effective if there was an actual article to link to.
--
"Stop reading slashdot, and get back to work!" - my boss
What would they call it? Gooble? Gobble? Hoogle?
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
I think I had my eyes closed on that last one.
Sweet informative mod.
I guess so, but an open source project that uses a proprietary framework (.NET) that targets a single platform via a closed video driver spec (DirectX) strikes me as missing the point somewhat. It's a bit like an open source project coded in PPC assembler.
Yes, it is true that there is the possibility that non-Windozers could port the source to Mono, and perhaps there exists a DirectX-to-OpenGL converter such that a sufficiently talented and determined band of coders could, in theory, create working versions of this impressive project that would run somewhere other than the indicated system requirements, but it seems like a long shot to me.
---
System Requirements
* Windows 2000, XP Home, or XP Professional
* Intel Pentium 3, 1 GHz, or AMD Athlon or higher
* 256 MB of RAM
* 3D Graphics Card
o nVidia GeForce 2 Ultra
o ATI Radeon 7500
o Intel Extreme Graphics 2
* DSL / Cable connection or faster
* 2 GB of disk space
---
And yes, I am an envious OS X user -- pretty much a first for me, being envious of a Windows software project.
I am going to mow my resume into my lawn. Maybe then I will be considered for a job at Google. They like the creative thinking types right?
she takes up TWO pixels!
Dude - lay down and wave! Then you'll end up as ~2 blurry flecks, not just one! ;)
Get 30 of your closest friends
Not enough coffee - I read that as '30 of your closet friends'.
Well, this is /.
--BBD/* This comment may not be thread-safe */