Have you heard of Google Street View? Basically, Google has cars with cameras mounted on them that provide a 360-degree view of wherever the Street View car is driving. With a GPS tracking its route, Google is able to integrate these pictures into Google Maps. The end result is that you can “drive” along the road while sitting in front of your computer. Pretty neat stuff!

Of course, when you drive along as many roads as the Street View cars have taking pictures, it’s inevitable that you’ll capture pictures of things like drug deals going down, and rednecks with guns and booze walking down 7th Street. There’s really no end of things you’ll find if you look hard enough, though depending on what it is Google may remove the photos when they find out.

Another consequence of driving as much as the Street View cars do is that sooner or later the Street View car is going to hit something and capture the incident for posterity, such as a Street View car running into Bambi. (Actually, to be fair it looks like the deer hit the car, which is what’s happened to me twice.)

Of course, Google has since removed the photos from their database, but not before someone made screen captures and posted them on the Internet.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few weeks, you know that Local 279 of the Amalgamated Transit Union is on strike. Today, they union is being forced to take the last offer from the City to the members for a vote. The union executive is strongly encouraging its members to vote “no”, meaning the strike will continue, even though the majority of citizens in Ottawa are prepared to freeze them out.

Most of the bloggers I know are encouraging the union members to vote “yes” for what is generally felt by everyone except the union executive to be a fair offer. Here’s a quick round up of what they’re writing:

• Darin points out to the members that this is their chance to redeem themselves for the behaviour of their union boss by voting to accept the offer
• Ken suspects they will vote “no” and muses about the fact that it appears Cornellier was set on striking from day 1 of the negotiations
• Trashy hopes the members ignore the union rhetoric and vote to accept and reminds us that the Canadian Industrial Relations Board is accepting submissions from members of  the public on how they’re being impacted by the strike

And, of course I’ve written an entry encouraging people to not demonstrate outside where the union members are voting.

All there is to do at this point is wait and hope that the union members are clearer thinkers than their union boss.

*** If you’re looking for the results, I wrote about them here.

Repeat after me:

The Internet never forgets.

In other words, if you’re going to do something illegal like steal custom license plates, you shouldn’t post pictures of you and your friends holding them on the Internet. Similarly, if you’re going to shoplift things from stores and you don’t want to get caught then you shouldn’t post pictures and videos of yourself bragging about it to YouTube.

This lesson seems to have been missed by thieves in Cape Breton. Retailers there are banding together and using Facebook and YouTube to identify shoplifters caught by their security cameras. In some cases, they have found videos like these (though not these ones specifically) with the people bragging about it:

Part 1: Hmm… so many choices…

Part 2: And she’ll probably never wear it!

Once they identify someone, they share that information with other retailers who will probably ban the thieves from their establishments.

Good!

An AP story on the Globe and Mail’s website this morning hints that  the Chinese Shenzhou 7 mission set to launch in two days, is going to encounter some weird temporal anomalies à la movie Frequency and actually be able to communicate with the mission control before they’ve even taken off. (more…)

Joseph Mallozzi, one of the executive producers of Stargate Atlantis, has confirmed in his blog that Stargate Atlantis is coming to an end after 100 episodes and 5 years.  Rising costs and the decline of the US dollar are two reasons he mentions.  As sci-fi television series go, SGA has had a decent run, so it’s not a complete shock that it’s being wrapped up — all good things must come to an end sometime.

Viewers won’t be left wondering what happens next at the end of the final episode.  We’re assured that they “will not be ending things with a cliffhanger.”  And there’s talk of one or more SGA movies, similar to the SG-1 movies that have been released after the end of the ten-year run of that series, so the stories should continue.

So, to the cast, crew and writers: Thank you!

I posted my latest entry about the perils of using an ammo can as a geocache container just last night.  This morning, one of my news alerts sent me a story from Midland, Texas.

According to the story, three young people carried a package out to the mesquite grove next to a University of Texas building at 4 p.m. and then left the area.  Someone reported this to the police who investigated.  The Midland Police Department robot, Andros, X-rayed the package that said “10 blasting caps” on the side and found several toys inside. Investigators from the sherriff’s office said they’re going to be taking fingerprints from the container and looking for the people involved.

How many more incidents is it going to take before people learn?

Unfortunately, in this case the spammer killed his family before killing himself.

U.S. Attorney Troy Eid summed it up best…

“What a nightmare, and such a coward.  Davidson imposed the ‘death penalty’ on family members for his own crime.”