Google earth scares the hell out me

I think this is better: http://maps.live.com/

You can do 3d view or flat, and the images are much better :D

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Originally Posted by Michael

you dont needa hide satellites. it only takes a few up there to see anything in the world within minutes. it doesnt take long to orbit the earth. they prolly dont have live feed to everywhere at once, but to anywhere within minutes.

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Satellites reflect the sunlight and can be seen by astronomers I guess.

To have live feed from a point the satellites can't be moving, they need to be geostationary. So what you mean is they can get photos (like google earth) from anywhere they want.
The majority of satellites are placed in low earth orbit (LEO) and the orbital period usually takes around 90 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Man of Steel

I was hearing just the other day about some new 300Ghz processor IBM is supposed to be coming out with for consumer use, that the NSA has been using in their servers for over a decade. A data transfer rate of 400 gigaflops/second, if I remember correctly.


Go figure.

[Edit:] A quick search yielded this article: The IBM Neoton

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Yeah that's not real.

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Originally Posted by Adam

I think this is better: http://maps.live.com/

You can do 3d view or flat, and the images are much better :D

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The photos are better cause they're aerial photographs, not actually satellite images.

BUt Google is only satalite 'photos' of poor quality, the areal photographs are better

All I know is quite a few years ago, the government could already read a newspaper over someone's shoulder from space.. Im pretty sure they have some crazy stuff nowadays..

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Originally Posted by Adam

BUt Google is only satalite 'photos' of poor quality, the areal photographs are better

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You are misinformed. Google uses satellite imagery at high altitudes (and uses "Blue Marble" at space level), but at lower altitudes aerial photography (often at high resolution) is used. This change is rather transparent but can be noticed by the differing copyright notices when zooming in.

Oh! And I've found the source text the (lame) hoaxers used:

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Originally Posted by Micheal Kanellos, ZD Net

IBM has created a chip that can slow down light, the latest advance in an industrywide effort to develop computers that will use only a fraction of the energy of today's machines.

The chip, called a photonic silicon waveguide, is a piece of silicon dotted with arrays of tiny holes. Scattered systematically by the holes, light shown on the chip slows down to 1/300th of its ordinary speed of 186,000 miles per second. In a computer system, slower light pulses could carry data rapidly, but in an orderly fashion. The light can be further slowed by applying an electric field to the waveguide.

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, have slowed light in laboratories. IBM, though, claims that its light-slowing device is the first to be fashioned out of fairly standard materials, potentially paving the way toward commercial adoption.
A number of companies and university researchers are currently tinkering with ways to replace the electronic components inside computers, which ferry signals with electrons, with optical technology. Optical equipment ferries data on photons, the smallest measure of light. Photons are far faster. More important, optical equipment generates less heat, curbing the growing problem of heat and power consumption.

(More at source)

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Damn that hoaxx was lame, how on Earth did you believe it Man of Steel? :P

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Originally Posted by pyroguy305

All I know is quite a few years ago, the government could already read a newspaper over someone's shoulder from space.

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And how could you possibly know that? Pish. Why would they have spy planes when they have this, then?