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Google Earth v4 Released - Linux Support at Last
chrisd writes "We're very happy to announce that the a new version of Google Earth has been released. It features 3D textured buildings, some neat UI updates, better internationalization and, with this release, a native Linux version is available for download as well. The Google Earth team (with the help of Ryan Gordon) worked very hard to make this possible. Please see the Earth support site and check out the BBS for more information."
"Thanks so much Google" - for finally making a Linux version .... of anything.
Whatever you do, you can obviously never please a Linux user. First they complain about the missing support from software companies, then when some company ports their application to Linux, they complain about missing sources.
I've been using Linux for years now and I love open source software but I don't expect a software company to open their sources if it's not part of their business model.
So, thanks Google for the great job!
-DBS
Sigs suck!
...about no publicity?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
how should I protect myself from malicious binaries?
Don't them as root.
How is a binary unsafe but somehow source code is? I have a hard time believing you audit the code for everything that Gentoo installs. Why is a mirror offering up source code somehow trusted, but binaries aren't?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I'm trying not to troll here but I don't really "get" the point of Google Earth. I understand that it's cool to look around cities and famous places but is that it? Am I missing something?
I feel a little bad for you. Don't you experience any sort of wonder and amazement that you can look at just about any point on the planet, all from the comfort of your own chair? I mean, even if it wasn't useful for getting maps, creating driving routes, and all that, isn't it still an amazing achievement to you? GoogleEarth is a significant cultural and technological achievement.
And how fitting that Google, of all companies, has provided this free of charge to everyone on Earth.
The fact that GoogleEarth exists at all is the point.
This is no offense to you, personally, but how sad is it that, in our modern era, we can create stunning accomplishments that overshadow any and all accomplishments in the entirety of human history and so many of us still have the lack of appreciation to say "That's it?".
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
The tarball might be downloaded from anywhere, but if the hashes don't match you have a different file than the package maintainer used, and it won't be installed.
That doesn't tell you that it's safe, it tells you that it's the same thing the package maintainer used. All it means is you're passing the responsibility for auditing up the chain to the package maintainer.*
Now, the package maintainer for your distro may audit the code themselves, or they may rely on similar hashes/signatures to make sure that the source they use is the same as the source the project itself provides. In which case that's passing the buck up once again.
So really, what you're doing is relying on the original source to be safe...so it's not much different than relying on the original binary to be safe. It comes down to this: Do I trust the provider of this software? Inclusion in a distro can be seen as a vote of confidence: Gentoo includes app X, implying that Gentoo believes X is not going to take over my machine. You can choose to believe that anything included in your distro is likely to be safe, or rather that anything unsafe in it is unsafe by accident and not deliberately. (Choosing otherwise makes it a hell of a lot harder to build and maintain a system, though it can certainly be done.)
But hash checks and GPG signatures don't tell you that an app is safe, whether you download it as source or as a binary. They only tell you that it hasn't been altered.
*Note that the same is true for RPM-based distros like Fedora or SuSE -- packages are signed with GPG, and it won't install if the signature doesn't validate -- and I would assume for Debian-derived distros as well. This isn't a distro war issue.
I could be way off base here, but isn't the whole point of the Wine project not to produce a windows emulator but libraries that can be substituted for the Windows libraries your program is using to allow it to easily run on linux? If so I'd say Picasa is a shining example of the Wine projects maturity
There is more to the world we live in than "cities and famous places". I can spend hours and hours on Google Earth, just looking at mountains in the Rockies or Andes for example. The physical world interests me, landforms, geology, physical geography in general. To me, Google Earth is one of the most significant pieces of educational software ever released on any format. Someone in Ohio or Oostende can gain an appreciation of the landforms of Papua New Guinea, fly through the Grand Canyon or explore the Antarctic Peninsula without ever leaving their desks, things they will probably never get a chance to do in real life.
The question you ask is analogous to asking "what's the point of any form of learning that doesn't further our everyday lives?".
Answer: "Some people find it interesting." If software formats and web 2.0 are more interesting to you than the High Himalayas, then that's your bag (...), but you have to appreciate that other's tastes and interests vary.
Um, yeah. The whole "500 versions" lie is always fun to repeat, but it conveniently ignores reality. If this were true, no binary programs would exist for the platform. This is not the case. id software releases native versions of all their games. Unreal Tournament has as well.
People have been repeating the "it'll never work" assertion since, well, forever, yet every day more stuff works. Reconcile that.