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Google Earth Launching For Free
Nathan Weinberg writes "Google launches Keyhole 3 today, rebranded Google Earth, and are dumping the subscription rate (except for a $20/year "plus" versions with prettier pictures) available soon at earth.google.com. The program lets you fly around a 3D globe, with overhead satellite photos, tilted 45-degree photos, 3D rendered buildings, and overlays that display everything from roads to hotels to bike routes. I have a lot of info and screenshots at InsideGoogle, and Search Engine Watch has a big writeup. With yesterday's Google Video release, this is shaping up to be a major week for the search giant."
This was going to be my post. I wish google would stop giving Bill and Steve B. rim jobs. I would think that google employees with OSX or Linux on their desk would be sick of not being able to use the products that their company develops too. WTF.
To everyone complaining that it's shitty of Google not to debut with a Linux version of Earth because they use Linux, shut the fuck up. Do you expect a discount from your ISP if they use Linux on their servers? Do you expect free tickets to movies that used Linux render farms for their special effects?
I bet most of you bitching don't even contribute to the body of open source software.
"I wonder, perchance, if you've considered why it's commonly referred to as "9/11" or "September the eleventh two thousand and one"? It's because that's when it happened. The only time it has ever happened."
Now this is amusing, so by your logic if something has happened once it can't happen again? At least this seems to be what you are inferring. You have conveniently forgotten the 1993 World Trade Center attack, so only 6 people died, six too many in my opinion, but it does demonstrate that your presumption that it was "The only time it has ever happened" is in fact incorrect.
"In the last 5 years - actually, in the whole of history - just over 3000 people have been killed by Al Qaeda militants on the US mainland, all on 9/11 in a single coordinated attack. It hasn't happened since, and despite plenty of fear mongering, there hasn't been any credible evidence to suggest that it could either."
Big who cares on this little point, that's 3,000 (or more) too many innocent people dead. The fact remains that Osama Bin Laden is still out there and until he is apprehended and bought to justice (I don't care if he is a symbolic figurehead or not) we should continue to be conscientious about the possibility of a repeat attack.
"In the year 2001 ALONE there were 42,443 deaths on the US mainland due to road traffic accidents."
Let me get this straight, you are equating road traffic deaths to those killed, sorry, murdered by terrorists flying planes into buildings and the ground? Your values are so unbelievably out of whack that you may just be beyond help. Traffic deaths are tragic and I understand that they cause a lot of pain for the families of their victims but just because there are more that makes them more tragic? Sheesh.
"Of course, even US road deaths pale in comparison to the 250,000-and-still-rising deathtoll which resulted from the boxing day tsunami in the Indian Ocean."
A tragic humanitarian disaster but why do you consider this a more worthy disaster? It was a geological disaster, nobody is to blame. I believe it is just as sad and heart-wrenching that all of these people died but it was ENTIRELY unavoidable.
"And let's not forget the 972 US citizens who have been killed on US soil by.... the US Government, since 1976. Sure, they might be criminals (At least, you'd better hope they are!) but who says some of the people in the Twin Towers weren't?"
I believe that the US justice system has a pretty good record in this department and most of these people are criminals proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Nobody, including me, has ever said that all of the people in the twin towers, pentagon or Shanksville, PA were saints but I do happen to know that the number of bad people was 19.
"Never mind though. So long as you can convince yourself that the sky is falling and there are terrorists lurking in every doorway and around every corner, I'm sure things will be just hunky dory. Who needs civil liberties anyways?"
I don't live in fear but neither do I deny the existence of evil in the world. On the point of civil liberties I would just like to say that the United States is without a doubt the most free place to live in the Western world. I am originally from England where such civil liberties as the ability to design and build your own house pretty much anywhere, purchase a weapon (though you're probably against that civil liberty) or drive a large car or truck are unheard of. If the government wants to check what books I have checked out of my local library that's fine, the only people against that sort of thing either have a guilty conscience or something to hide.
"but in the overall scale of things.. well.. it was no big deal, quite frankly."
I left this one until last because it was the only one that made me really mad. To say that it was "no big deal" is not just naive but plain offensive and undermines al