West Coast Connection Forum

Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: Suffice on November 14, 2007, 01:04:42 AM

Title: Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google Earth, Street View, Etc...
Post by: Suffice on November 14, 2007, 01:04:42 AM
Why do you guys think these companies are investing billions of dollars into these technologies (when they are free to use, so they're not getting much revenue from it, save for loyalty). For example, Microsoft Virtual earth is a program that renders big cities entirely in 3-D in very good detail, and you can rotate the camera, look from above, etc... the question is, why? and why is it publicly available? shouldn't this be military technology? or if it is, does this mean that Microsoft and Google are collaborating with the government. Call me paranoid, but i'm worried that microsoft/google monopolization of the internet will ultimately lead to heavy censorship of information such as YouTube, Facebook, E-mails, etc., it's already starting with YouTube since Google bought them out and with MySpace since Fox bought it. I guess i'm diverging from the original topic, so i guess i just wanted to see some thoughts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Virtual_Earth
Title: Re: Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google Earth, Street View, Etc...
Post by: AndrE16686 on November 14, 2007, 02:01:20 AM
 The military has satellites and more detailed and up to date maps, they can look at your house switch on the infra-red and see how many people in there and what they doing, so they wouldnt bother with google earth, there are military satellites constantly taking pictures of the globe, whereas google earth's maps are like 3 years behind (at least over my house it is).


It will be hard to take away free-speech from the internet because if you don't like how you being treated you can just go to a different site with your subversive typings, so far....  like Youtube, I noticed on youtube that you can't watch fights and much violence, so other sites see a market so allow more violent shit on theres instead. I wouldnt be so paranoid about being censored, the thing is, instead of censoring, they can simply watch you and observe your online and offline activity, thats probably enough to see if they can charge you with anything. At the end of the day, it's  the individual nation's government that would censor the internet, because the laws on the internet have to be territorial because you can't get the whole world to agree, thats where contracts between governments and big internet corporations like google come into play.  It's easier for them to make laws in the country you reside and watch your online and offline activity and catch you doing something against the law of your country, rather than censor the entire internet. The trick is to make far-reaching laws. Thankfully, at least here in Australia, most of the 'anti-terror' cases brought forward by ASIO have been laughed out by our good old judges, I remember this one guy was arrested because he had satellite pictures available from google and videos of marines getting beheaded, all material freely available over the internet, that you or I could easily access, but they charged him with something like 'possessing material that could be used for a terrorist act' or 'promoting a terrorist act' or something to that effect...that was enough to detain him for a week without legal aid and then charge him, actually they don't even have to charge you, they can detain you for a week regardless and you are not allowed to tell anybody you were detained or else they can charge you with that! They have power like the Gestapo, they are just being restrained with it, but they do have it.