Tech that's just wrong

AnonymousMon 3 March, 2008 5:33pm

Google Street View is the best thing since sliced bread, and when combined with Microsoft/s Bird's Eye View, you can go house hunting like nobody's business. In the areas where I've been looking (NC), I have yet to be able to read a license plate, business sign, realtor sign, house number. Its clear enough to get a sense for the area, but not clear enough to do much harm. Such cool technology.
Keep it up--just stay outta my house and backyard (literally)
-JG

AnonymousMon 3 March, 2008 6:27pm

I have another JUST SO WRONG:

CNET and their continued use of Vignette.

AnonymousMon 3 March, 2008 10:06pm

The scales are great. Good stuff. I agree that the Street View is awesome. Never heard of 'Bird's Eye View' though. As for the combustion engine, its not really a small bomb. It is based on a contained explosion, or liberation of energy, but so are your farts. Big shock. Also, space shuttles are not internal combustion. It's very external. And both make the world go round. There's nothing wrong with either. You must realize, without contained explosions, nothing that is powered would work. Even your 'green' cars.

seanpercivalMon 3 March, 2008 10:35pm

Who is the author on this and when were let out of their mail room duties to write this?

AnonymousMon 3 March, 2008 11:01pm

Google Street View gives an added benefit of having visual landmarks when trying to find some place instead of just having the number of miles to the location. Also in certain case a Google maps overhead view just can't show you everything. Where I live there is a park within the city. There are several entrance but some places are inaccessible to the park. With the trees you can see clearly where some entrances are located.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 12:05am

You just lost all tech cred cnet. Possibly the stupidest list ever compiled. I agree with maybe the hello kitty one, but the rest? You must really hate your jobs if you hate simple things like mahalo, twitter or tech convergence.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 3:25am

I have a 52 inch TV in my home theatre. When sit on my couch and I hold my iPod Touch in front of me, it fills the same viewing area when it is about 14 inches from my face. That's not bad at all, considering that is where my arms would naturally hold it. With good headphones and a darkened area (airplane on overseas flight) I think it's pretty good. It's not as good as a real theatre. But often better than talking to the person beside you in seat 23D.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 5:21pm

Guitar Hero is fun, don't know whats wrong with playing a game. It's not like the game is preventing people from actually learning a real guitar. In fact, it's probably encouraging it! Dumb.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 5:53pm

CNet you moron! Google's street view isn't in real-time! Not even close. They take photos, put em in their system and that's it. The photo you see does not match what's going on "in real life". Know what I mean?

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 6:00pm

Alright... Hello Kitty is evil, tech convergence too... (for anyone that views popular net media look up the episode of Red Vs. Blue where they talk about it), Microsoft is the big brother we hate... Google is the big brother we love... Guitar hero brings a small basis of the musical style to those otherwise inept of playing these songs (even amateur guitarists like myself). Twitter/microblogging is rather useless (just get your own webspace and make posts via txt files, save us some space on the net), Rockets are external combustion but massive scales of combustion (either internal or external) is bad no matter how you look at it. Mahalo has good intentions, but they should really be coupled with the raw power of machines to get the job done (meaning, Mahalo should do searches via google and sort the data), teledildonics is a very scary idea, sounds like the new asphyxiation... Everyone needs an entertainment fix so Films and music on phones (now being both visual and audio mediums) is not such a bad idea (i just wish the networks were faster and that I could keep good service). DRM does indeed become a pain...

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 6:06pm

Hate to tell you, but when you're in public, you're seen by more than just a Google van driving down the street.

This is the most idiotic comment I've seen in quite sometime about Google Street View.

If people are so afraid of other people seeing what their doing, they might as well lock themselves indoors and never come out.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 6:08pm

Whoever wrote this should be fired. There are far worse surveillance systems in place that we could be worried about, but nooo, a public service that's composed of occasional snapshots that give you no idea of what's going on now is what we should all be afraid of...

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 6:15pm

Leaps in logic from a short-sighted origin.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 6:17pm

Oh people get a grip, always amazed at how quick the flame-tards are to dish the dirty...c'maan, look at the graphic. The tongue is in the cheek...puhleeease...

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 6:52pm

This is ridiculous. This article simultaneously divisive and hollow. Give me a break. Cut the hounds loose on someone who really deserves it, not Google.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 7:19pm

Did anyone else notice that "Prequels" is spelled incorrectly? Shoddy copy editing; I expect more from CNet.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 7:32pm

CNET, you loose. Google street view is no where near what you insinuate. Close your blinds and all you have to worry about is the government.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 7:44pm

This is taking rather...um...hyperbolic liberties with Bentham's concept. First, in the Panopticon the central tower is always present and you never know whether a guard is looking out of it or not. That's different from a van that drives down a street every once in a while. Second the tower contains guards who represent an authority that can punish you. Can Google punish you? Third, the purpose of the Panopticon is to discipline prisoners. The purpose of Google Street View is to let ordinary people have a view of the street. What's "wrong" about that?

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 8:38pm

So you mean as a result of Google Street View people might begin behaving as if...*gasp*...someone could see them FROM THE STREET???

OH THE HORRORS!

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 8:38pm

LEARNT? LEARNT? WTF? It's true what they say, "Then English haven't spoken English for years!"

srmattoTue 4 March, 2008 8:57pm

Let me get this straight. A drive by photo taken at really infrequent intervals, probably greater than six months, by a private company is supposed to paralyze me with fear? Get a grip man, your almost as bad as the guy who thinks the gentlemen on top of Google are zionists for pulling youtube videos with smoking piles of bodies in them.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 10:31pm

The authors also seem to not be aware that 'the space shuttle' does not use any sort of internal combustion engine. It uses rather the opposite kind of engine. Three staged combustion rocket engines, two steel-cased explosions, err, solid rockets, three external-combustion gas driven turbines... And three fuel cells. It uses about every kind of engine except 'internal combustion'.

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 11:45pm

Idiots. All that nonsense about going into space has nothing to do with the internal combustion engine. What monkies got out of the zoo and wrote this??

AnonymousTue 4 March, 2008 11:53pm

@Above: the same ones that taught you how to spell simple animal names, jackass.

AnonymousWed 5 March, 2008 12:49am

I love the final "Futurama/Firefly" vs. "Fox Network Execs" scale. I shall henceforth use this in all my scaling and comparison activities. In fact, it should replace the "thumbs up/thumbs down" comparison.

AnonymousWed 5 March, 2008 9:16am

An outrageous overreaction to a product and technology that's doing no harm. There are rarely people on those images. You do not see a live view. You are talking utter crap.

"Is this a scene from George Orwell's terrifying dystopian vision of 1984? No, it's real, and it's here. Is it the nanny state's latest scheme to monitor you, watch you and hopefully tax you in some way? No. Google is watching you."

This has to be the worst of all. You're going WAY over the top with linking to dystopian and/or draconian fiction. Yes, things aren't so free at the moment and I hate it. I'd like things to open up. But you are WAY off the mark here.

Just a classic case of someone trying to build up traffic. Go and do some real journalism, idiot.

AnonymousWed 5 March, 2008 1:12pm

This article looks like a case of people being afraid of anything they don't understand, and attacking something before they actually fired up their brain to think about it.

AnonymousWed 5 March, 2008 6:15pm

Idiots.

AnonymousThu 6 March, 2008 9:44am

The fact that you can see flames come from a rocket rather indicates that the combustion is not INTERNAL...

rocket =/= internal combustion engine