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Russian Town Puts Giant Smiley On Google Maps
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."
In Soviet Russia, satellite smiles at you!
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.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
In soviet Russia, we know when the American satellites are coming!
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=55.166667,61.4&ie=UTF8&ll=55.159688,61.402395&spn=0.005522,0.013089&t=h&z=17&iwloc=addr Not there now?
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).
ÐÑо? ÐÑ Ð½Ð ÐонÐмÐÐÑÐ Ðо-ÑÑfÑÑÐÐ? ÑмоÑÑÐ Ð google ÐÐÑÐÐоÐ! ÐоРWow, seriously no cyrillic on slashdot? What is this the 90's?
Compare these two:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_IeJHb-2CVGM/SNUFiyTlEHI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/shQMNh5h89o/s1600-h/smiley-1000.jpg
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
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.
Very creative. But were they going for the Alfred E. Neuman look? Probably should have put the stage below the chin. Still love it. Perhaps more with the missing tooth.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Way to frown on the happy parade! :(
Be relentless!
I had hoped idle would stay confined to idle. This is not technology.
This ... is ... IDLE!!! </300>
Obvious Photoshop job. For punishment, I think we can all work together and put him over his bandwidth cap.
The game.
... Google searches for YOU!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
It's worth mentioning that if you zoom in on Google maps and compare the two pictures, it seems that the parked cars and traffic from outside of the immediate smiley area are exactly the same. It appears as if the smiley was photoshopped in or out of one of the pictures.
Hmmm.
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.
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?
For those who absolutely refused to read the article, here is an artist's impression
: )
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
No... wait... I see it! You kind of have to focus your eyes on a point behind the picture.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
You should see how many things in the U.S. are named after Ronald Reagan!
Target Stores sometimes paint their logo on the roofs of their locations. I don't know if they do it for the sake of Google Maps, but it's quite visible. Here's one from a store in Chicago:
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
A new breaktrough in loseless image compression, what really matters of that image in just 2 bytes.
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.
I disagree. I can provide a better artist's impression: :D
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.
Toilet paper knows when you are coming! Oh, wait a minute...
Looks fake to me. The screenshots on the article's websites show the cars on the exactly same positions, so it's obviously the same square, photoshopped.
Your head a splode
^_^
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
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.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I Britannica'd the info and found what you're looking for. I'll Xerox the page and UPS it to you.
Looks fake to me. The screenshots on the article's websites show the cars on the exactly same positions, so it's obviously the same square, photoshopped.
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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!