Google Streetview Ireland goes live

[Denny]

yer one o'dem foreigners, ain't ya?

[Innocent Bystander]

I wouldn't worry about the fractured brickwork. There's a lot of that in Dublin. It's the disjointed streetlight that worries me.

[dwest]

Worse yet the downspout will dump water on me when I try to pick the lock on the front door. I hate tracking water into other peoples homes, just not polite.

[Doug_Tipple]

You do see a lot of brightly colored doors in Dublin, but doors that open inward are easy to kick in. Just a little bit of wood around the locks are all that is securing the door. I see how easy it is to do on the TV crime shows that I watch. I know that it is not as attractive and the neighborhood people would probably be up in arms, but I feel more secure in my home with additional steel security doors that open outward, making it next to impossible to kick in. Be very careful with the double-keyed deadbolt locks, though.

[dwest]

I like an AA-12 loaded with rock salt for protection, even smaller women can handle them with ease. Why waste all that money on preventive stuff. However flush bolts on exterior doors are a nice touch, top and bottom.

[fearfaoin]

The photos of my house, and the level of detail you can zoom into, show exactly where my house is most vulnerable.

Couldn't you just... I don't know... fix those
vulnerabilities? Anyway, it's nothing they
couldn't get from sitting in a car across the
street and looking through binoculars.

Google has moved a long long way from the days when their motto was 'Do no evil'.

Actually, the motto is "Don't be evil", which
leaves many weird shades of grey, I think.

[dwest]

Google's new Cutomer Sir-Vile Rep.

[fearfaoin]

Right, as if Google would be happy
with just one MILLION dollars...

[Innocent Bystander]

You do see a lot of brightly colored doors in Dublin, but doors that open inward are easy to kick in. Just a little bit of wood around the locks are all that is securing the door. I see how easy it is to do on the TV crime shows that I watch. I know that it is not as attractive and the neighborhood people would probably be up in arms, but I feel more secure in my home with additional steel security doors that open outward, making it next to impossible to kick in. Be very careful with the double-keyed deadbolt locks, though.

It's true, and I've kicked my way through a door when I've been locked out. On TV people make a big show of breaking a door down. It's a lot easier than that in real life. Oddly, forced entry by means of the main door isn't a big problem in Ireland or the UK.
Our current house has a main door that opens outwards. This is the result of (one more) bodged DIY job on the part of the previous occupants. I could wish that the guy who perpetrated these obscenities takes it into his head to practice DIY cosmetic surgery on himself. We find that a door opening outwards is pretty scarey to anyone standing outside. We don't use it. Everyone comes in by the kitchen door.

[Mr.Gumby]

You do see a lot of brightly colored doors in Dublin, but doors that open inward are easy to kick in. Just a little bit of wood around the locks are all that is securing the door. I see how easy it is to do on the TV crime shows that I watch. I know that it is not as attractive and the neighborhood people would probably be up in arms, but I feel more secure in my home with additional steel security doors that open outward, making it next to impossible to kick in. Be very careful with the double-keyed deadbolt locks, though.

I think that's more of a sad reflection of the society you've created for yourselves over there than it is on the sense of security as Dubliners have it. I don't think anyone in the country would think of Dublin as a particularly safe place, but anyone living behind dead-bolted steel doors for fear of burglary would be regarded as an eejit.




Had an interesting reply looking for a door at a joinery in the West recently. 'Hm, opening out? Don't you get the wind then?'

People here don't have doors opening out because the wind will take them off the hinges, tout de suite.

[Innocent Bystander]

For a moment there I thought he meant you were suffering from intestinal gases.

[I.D.10-t]

In Minnesota, you would never have a door that opens out.

If you are talking security, having the hinges on the outside renders a lock less effective, but then again so do windows. There is always going to be a balance between security and diminishing returns. Spending more on a safe than the worth of its contents would seem silly, but leaving valuables in the open in an unlocked car seems to be on the other end of the spectrum.

Of course that spectrum changes due to many factors, such as location, and levels of local crime.

The same thing goes for safety, but there is a profit to be made to be made through marketing excessive solutions to make people feel safe and secure.

[dwest]

In Ireland my grandparents and my great-grandmother had what we called captain's doors on their homes. An outer door that opened to a partially glass enclosed space with benches on either side for removing and hanging wet clothing, then the inner door for the house. The outer doors were every bit as stout as the inner door. Of course there was all that glass. A very practical entry way I always thought.

[Doug_Tipple]

People here don't have doors opening out because the wind will take them off the hinges, tout de suite.

If you have two doors at an entrance, the convention is for the main door to open inward and the outer door to open outward.The outer doors on our house have pneumatic/spring devices to protect the door from sudden openings from the wind. Our front screen door is partially shielded from the wind by wall extensions on the front porch. Of course in the colder months the screen is removed from the door and replaced with glass to act as a storm door. Our outer doors are custom-made doors made from steel and faux wrought ironwork. The doors with the round tops may look interesting and quaint, but the workman doubled the price of the door because of the rounded top. I have to agree, though, about the difficulty of doors opening outward, in general. We have that problem with our side screen door opening outward on narrow steps to the house. It makes it difficult to carry anything into or out of the house.

[benhall.1]

The photos of my house, and the level of detail you can zoom into, show exactly where my house is most vulnerable.

Couldn't you just... I don't know... fix those
vulnerabilities? Anyway, it's nothing they
couldn't get from sitting in a car across the
street and looking through binoculars.

Yeah, I should probably fix those vulnerabilities. Other things to spend moeny on though ...

The thing about being able to get the same detail from a car across the street ... I live in a very small village in the country. So as not to block the road, you'd have to park either in my drive or someone else's to look for very long. Which means, pre-Google, that burglars would only get to see the place properly on their burgling visit. Now, thanks to Google, they get the chance to see it from all angles, including several that aren't actually visible from the road (despite what Google says about only showing things directly visible from the road). Evil, I tell you. Evil.