>>>The first time I used Google Earth (before I knew how the images were captured) I had an urge to start a huge fire in my backyard and see how long it would take before it showed up. I guess that is the kid in me though. Then I read and saw how it worked, and was glad I didn't...
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>>I don't know. How DOES it work?
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>One or two satellite passes every few years for every place. So the pics you see may be a few years old.
>In some cases you see weird stuff due to different angles. I remember seeing (don't have a link handy) a city (I think it was downtown Chicago), where part of the picture is from one angle and part from another. It makes for different shadows on the tall buildings. Seems like a 3-d effect.

Oh I had no illusions that it was a real-time uplink. I thought he was sauying it was something insidious. :-)
And I think I observed that today, different shadows.