Iran Plans To Launch an 'Islamic Google Earth'

Shipwack sends this quote from the Guardian: "The Iranian authorities have long accused Google Earth of being a tool for western spy agencies, but now they have taken their attacks on the 3D mapping service one step further — by planning the launch of an 'Islamic' competitor. ... The minister, however, gave little information on what he meant by an Islamic 3D map. 'We are developing this service with the Islamic views we have in Iran and we will put a kind of information on our website that would take people of the world towards reality Our values in Iran are the values of God and this would be the difference between Basir and the Google Earth, which belongs to the ominous triangle of the U.S., England and the Zionists [a reference to Israel].' Experts, however, have serious doubts about the project. An IT consultant who has worked on Iran's national internet project in the past said the announcement was merely an excuse to obtain funds and secure working contracts for the future. 'They have claimed to run their service in four months and said their data centre capacity will reach Google's size in three years,' he said. 'Three-year project, no business model and only relying on government funding, a piece of cake indeed. To have a data centre with such capacity and security level they need power stations, cooler systems, bandwidth, etc, which will require billions of dollars of investment that doesn't fit with Iran's sanctions-hit economy.'"

Comments

That's how they will do it

[onyxruby]

They have long wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the map and this is how they will do it. Just make their own maps and pretend they don't exist. Now if only they would do support virtual terrorism instead of real terrorism.

Re:That's how they will do it

[jitterman]

The Moors were stopped...

Oh no, I'm so sorry it's the Moops. The correct answer is the Moops.

So it will have burkas instead of smudges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone up for a corn field portrait of a certain prophet?

Islamic 3D Earth

[Burpmaster]

So it'll be flat?

Re:Islamic 3D Earth

[magarity]

the fact that in the Qur'an, the earth is said to be flat. ... therefore, once it states something, nothing - not even scientific proofs - can negate it.

OK: what impact (pun intended) does that have when an islamic rocket scientist tries to calculate an ballistic missile trajectory?

Re:Islamic 3D Earth

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I think an Islamic 3D Earth is a great idea! The big difficulty in the plan will be convincing the Islamic folks to go live there . . .

Re:Islamic 3D Earth

[zugmeister]

Simple:
1. Create 3D map image.
2. ...
3. Prophet!

Quickly!

[GameboyRMH]

Time to draw some giant Mohammed cartoons in the desert, Nazca-style!

America

[Pallidrone]

I wonder if it will show a crudely drawn America with the caption - "Here be dragons".

ALL RIGHT we'll create our own Google Earth!

[Thud457]

Without BLACKJACK!
Or HOOKERS!


or Israel.
or gays.

Terrorist view

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

They could replace street view with Terrorist View, showing all the best places for terrorist bombings.

Yes, I know not all people from that part of the world are terrorists. But that is a lot less funny.