Readers of The Reg have found disturbing evidence that Apple’s HQ in Cupertino might soon disappear from the face of the earth. They also found strong evidence that London will vanish too, while the Twin Towers are supposed to reappear shortly.
Readers of The Reg have found disturbing evidence that Apple’s HQ in Cupertino might soon disappear from the face of the earth. They also found strong evidence that London will vanish too, while the Twin Towers are supposed to reappear shortly.
Don’t go blaming Microsoft. This little “bug” exists in all the software that uses the USGS Digital Orthoimagery. Microsoft just hosts the images (at TerraServer) and offers a front-end. Check NASA World Wind if you don’t believe me. Google, however, uses propriatary data on their Maps and Google Earth services (purchased along with Keyhole). The propriatary data is color, higher resolution, more prevalent, and more recent. Overall, nothing to worry about.
It’s a joke Roguelazer
.
But you know there is/was a whole host of people that are just waiting to pounce on this one or are out there telling anyone who will listen that MS has done it again.
Yes, but I don’t care.
Good that poor little Microsoft has you guys to watch their backs and protect people from any misleading info about them, they never do that themselves. 😛
Good that poor little Microsoft has you guys to watch their backs and protect people from any misleading info about them, they never do that themselves. 😛
I don’t think it has anything to do with a desire to protect Microsoft, but rather annoyance at having read the exact same facile “huh huh, M$ sux, Beavith” posts over and over again.
…it wouldn’t be funny if there are any emetgency services out there relying on the same data.
The data looks very old and incomplete–especially data for locations outside the US. I live in a metropolitan area of 1 million people in Canada and the data is total crap on MSN Virtual Earth. Honetly, we’re on the same continent, right up there on top of you people–we’re not THAT hard to find! If you cannot adequately MAP a good portion of the earth then you shouldn’t call your product virutal earth–you should call it Virtual USA.
I can understand why MS would rush out a piece of crap like this to have “first mover advantage” or catch a smaller competitor off-guard by releasing a marginally usable version of their innovation before the small cometitor can gain momentum. However “virtual earth” seems to do nothing but make MS look bad–not only does it have an inferior interface to Google Maps and less data, but the data it DOES have is so out of date it can serve no use to anyone except for historic novelty use. Not a way to make your company look modern and forward thinking.
I agree it makes for a funny joke for most of us, but if I were BillG I’d be making some heads roll for releasing something that is obviously far from ready for primetime.
MSN obviously caught Apple when they were testing their Apple Headquarters Stealth Technology ™.
This is sadly not a joke:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&…
I grew up in Cupertino but was living elsewhere from 1986 to 1996. First of all, the Apple campus was the site of another computer company that died a long time ago. ?? 1980s ?? The building just south of the current campus is pictured (it is a funny shape ‘H’) and was part of the old computer company campus and is now part of Apple. If you go north of highway 280, you will also notice that there are a bunch of roads on the map with names like Via Paviso. Those are homes now but I think that that land was open for a long while.
The most interesting thing about the satilite image that MS is using is that there are construction trucks (on the “Apple Campus” just next to highway 280. So we can approximately date this image. My guess is the early 1900s.
I appreace it your personal input on the subject, but I do hope your last sentence is sarcasm, or intentional exaggeration. It’s funny that your topic is “it is probably just an old satilite image.”, yet the post ends with “My guess is the early 1900s.”; when we all know that in the early 1900’s photography was still relativly new, airplanes were just being “invented”, aerial photography was not possible yet, and finally there certainly were no man-made satelites in space…
> “My guess is the early 1900s.”
I meant 1990s. The question is what is MS doing with decade old images?
stupid typo eh. yea, that makes a lot more sense.
I agree the problem is with the company that they are using for the technology, as described above. I mean if it was only like Apple, and Red Hat headquarters were missing, then certainly we would have a conspiracy theory here. But considering they still have WTC’s in NYC around too, this time I think it really isn’t M$’s fault. I would also think that up-to-date stalite images aren’t all that easy do gather and obtain, considering that a large portion of them would probably somehow come from the military. This is only speculation ofcourse, and I don’t know how it all works.
The funny thing is that on M$ map the road is labeled as “infinte loop” !
LOL !
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014 is Apple’s address.
Also the houses across 280 don’t exist either. Just an old pic but funny never the less.
What I find disturbing with msn earth is that the back button of firefox is disabled, this is a bit annoying.
“The funny thing is that on M$ map the road is labeled as “infinte loop” ! ”
That is the name of the street…
Microsoft maps uses data from around 1996-1998 in the maps of my town. 10 year old maps are just about totally useless. It’s like reading a 10 year old news paper.
If you look, the sat image was taken when the whole area was under construction.
If you compare google & microsoft maps, the MS maps show that the subdivision north of the spot was cleared but empty, while the google map shows everything as it.
Old data, bummer. Really old data.
im serious, what in gods name is disturbing about this ?
The information MS uses is just behind the times and old. big deal.
That empty field, for those of you not familar with constrution, actually appears to be in the middle of being prepared to build Apple’s HQ. Probably shortly before they demolished that building you see where Infinite Loop runs right through.
why do these non-stories even get published ANY WHERE?
why do these non-stories even get published ANY WHERE?
Because it’s a JOKE. *Look* at the icon, read my 2nd post. It’s a JOKE. Just don’t post on stories you don’t give a fcuk about. Is it that hard?
your OSN Staff, watch your language. Your meant to lead by example not adhere to the lowest common denominator…
The google site has very recent picts of neighborhood. The house across the street that was there for 100 years was torn down. The house was just torn down last week. I think it is very important to have recent picts.
http://moon.google.com/ then do a (maximum) zoom in
Dammit ! I can’t remember the name, nor the title of that Edgar Poe’s novel. Uncle, uncle… Something. When he wouldn’t believe something exists, said thing wouldn’t exist. Really cool ! Makes a lot of stuff disappear in the novel. Microsoft rented him to iron out the bugs and security issues in Windows, but the problem is he believes there are bugs and security issues in Windows ! But he doesn’t believe Apple exists at all…
Not to bash Microsoft here but why even come out with MSN maps? I don’t understand how they stand to benefit from releasing an inferrior piece of software months after google does. It’s slower, way out of date, and offers nothing new. This just proves to me that Microsoft is a cheap immitator.
Not to bash Microsoft here but why even come out with MSN maps? I don’t understand how they stand to benefit from releasing an inferrior piece of software months after google does. It’s slower, way out of date, and offers nothing new.
HaHaHa, Where have you been for the last 20 years.
Actually it does offer something new. Not revolutionary, but new.
When you do a search for say, a company/restaurant/whatever… as you move the map, it shows you matches in the visible area as you move. It’s actually quite convenient. As well, I believe you can have multiple searches going at once. When they were demoing it, they were showing how it would be convenient for doing something like finding all the steak restaurans and bars in an area, or something similar. Not quite as easy with google..
Point taken, what’s the use if it doesn’t even include up to date satelite images though? One of the things I really like about google maps is you can usually use the satelite image to look for points of reference. Where I worked there was a huge shopping mall, it was much easier when you were looking for 485 Some Road and see where that was in relation to the said mall. Great, microsoft came out with a fancier looking mapquest but in this case the software is only as good as the data it’s providing and in this case it’s 11 year old data. So much changes year to year let alone decade to decade.
You’ll also notice that MSN maps has listed the location as “Apple Computer Corporate Offices”.
Sure the data is old, my own neck of woods is maybe 5-10yrs out of date (MA), still its kind of neat that MSN wants to be in the pic biz with such old data. Besides the zoom scale and pic/map switch, maybe a time line switch would be nice too for google/msn if they have the storage for it. They’d only have to keep differences but that wouldn’t be easy.
I like that they overlayed street names on clearer gray imagery though.
Let’s remember that recently Microsoft’s legal team forced programmer Mike Row to abandon his domain mikerowsoft.com (say it out loud) and cross-platform toolkit wxWindows to change its name to wxWidgets.
Do a Google search for “mikerowsoft.”
My fear may well be true: Microsoft is really a front for InfiniDim Enterprises.
Some of the data is older than Google, some is newer. In my neighborhood, the images are from at least 2002.
How is VE inferior just because the sattalite data is partially out of date? Also, Microsoft has been doing mapping probably before you even heard of Google. Including sattelite aerial photos (see TerraServer).
Really old images? Apple HQ is over twenty years old! So you’re trying to tell me that MS couldn’t find recent images of that area. BS my funny looking friend.
USGS. United States Geological Survey. That’s where all of MSN Earth’s high-res imagery comes from. That’s openly available imagery, the same as used by NASA’s World Wind. That’s MSN Earth’s advantage over Google Maps. Their imagery is open to the public, free, via terraserver. As compared to Google’s, which is copyrighted and licensed from various providers (although some of them, such as Mass GIS offer their data for free if gotten directly in their fancy schmancy format). Don’t knock MS on this one.
My first thought before I read the article, was that apple was just going to outsource everything but Jobs’s home office to india.
Good now a real beneficial company like Dell can build a factory in the empty real estate.
Yeah, yeah, we got you and you’re getting boring.
Article funny, images funny, new good, old useless, etc. Smiling: ok, bashing: not ok.
Uff.
Anybody notice “Vista Drive” in that map, SE of the Apple campus?
on google earth it appears the shot of my area was taken summer/fall 2003