Google Creates Tour de France Video Maps 78
An anonymous reader writes "In honor of the Tour de France's start today, Google has used its awesome Street View technology to compile amazing Tour de France route views. A great description of the technology that went into creating this can be found in this LinuxDevices article. At least, I'm assuming these are the cameras — Google acknowledged using Elphel cameras for book scanning and 'capturing street imagery in Google Maps.' And from the article, the cameras have come a long way from the days when crazy cat ladies and other privacy freaks scuppered Street View in San Francisco a couple of years back."
Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Really? (Score:1, Interesting)
Three cheers for privacy freaks, and cat ladies if they choose to take up the same cause!
I'm not too scared that Google's driving around taking photos of public spaces, and the satellite stuff is all bought in (actually, lots of good Google stuff is bought in, but apparently that's ok unless Microsoft does it). But Google's storage of profiling data is dangerous - latest example is Viacom requesting all Google's info on who watches/uploads which videos, and that's just a private request where we do get to know who is looking for what. I avoid GMail, I clear Google cookies regularly, and I'll be the first to stop using Google entirely if I find I can't anonymise myself sufficiently.
Technology is always created by the naive geeks and then abused by the power-hungry. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
Re:Yeah, those crazy privacy freaks! (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you saying there should be special rules that apply to Google and not to normal photographers?
Woo-hoo, another Google press release! (Score:1, Interesting)
Why read Slashdot -- go straight to the source of all your Google and MIT press releases:
http://googlepress.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/ [mit.edu]
That's nice, the problem is the Tour itself (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me explain: I am an avid cyclist. Furthermore, I like everything bicycle: I built all my bikes, and I fix and adjust mine and my friends bikes.
And I can't stand Le Tour de France or Il Giro d'Italia. I hate the doping (and everything they do to hide it) and how massively it is happening. The commercializaition of these cycling events is disturbing for sure, but I am willing to accept it as a necessary evil. After all, these events have been commercialized long before even the heroic days of Binda, Coppi and Bartali. But what's going on is just bullshitting.
I don't follow these cycling events animore. I may check some of the track cycling GP competitions (less bulshitting, and it lasts a few days instead of weeks and weeks).
Any fellow slashdotter who actually follows the tour/giro?
Fuck Google and the ground they stand on (Score:3, Interesting)
I am having a Franz Kafka problem with Google. My wife (the worlds worst technophobe) lost the password to her blog. Today I discovered that the alternate email address for the account is not only an deliverable address it's an invalid domain altogether.
Google does not have a provision to fix this. The reset password either goes to the address for which I need the password, or, it goes to an undeliverable address. And every 'form' they have for every single problem on Blogger goes to the same submission form.
But here's the good part. To protect my privacy - Google's official response is to say in effect "We don't believe you, we think you're lying and so we won't and can't help you."
And there appears to be no recourse. No place to send an email no place to explain even in one sentence what this problem is.
So fuck Google and the Chinese Death Squads that use them. Fuck them all.
Google the Poodle (Score:2, Interesting)