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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."
Now for China...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
What, I'm supposed to trust Google's binary?
Also today - Google's free version of Sketchup for the Mac is available: Download here
More info on Sketchup - it's basically a super-intuitive CAD program for quickly getting 3D ideas down on paper.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Please see the Earth support site
Well, it finally happened... Google took over. But it's one thing to take the planet over, but quite another to provide support for it too. Man, I'd hate to be be at the other end of the support line... wonder if you need to run the standard Google employment gauntlet to be first-tier support?
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
(Mod company) +1 Not Evil
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
"Thanks so much Google" - for finally making a Linux version .... of anything.
Did anyone follow the link over there to Google SketchUp? I am amazed that this program hasn't gotten any publicity. Some details from the site:
"SketchUp is a simple but powerful tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying your 3D ideas.
* Click on a shape and push or pull it to create your desired 3D geometry.
* Experiment with color and texture directly on your model.
* Real-time shadow casting lets you see exactly where the sun falls as you model.
* Select from thousands of pre-drawn components to save time drawing.
And once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies. Google SketchUp is free for personal use. No registration is required."
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I hear that segmentation earthquakes often occur along segmentation fault lines in the googleearth.
I would take any necessary precations.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
IF you go to this WindWindCentral page, you'll learn that Google Earth's open source competitor is readying Linux and Mac versions of NASA World Wind. You can learn a lot about WW here and a lot about GE here.
"NASA is currently making plans for World Wind 1.5. This version will be available for multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux and the Macintosh."
Animoog.org
If you never go outside, it can show you what the world looks like.
For the rest of us, take a GPS datalogger when boating, biking, driving, etc. Then import the data into Google Earth to have a satellite image with your trek pre-drawn on it.
...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.
When run "sudo GoogleEarth . . . " it creates a directory in /usr/local/google-earth. That directory is chock full of .so files, not .DLL files. Also Icculus (Ryan Gordon) is "not a big fan of wine". Ryan and most of the folks who hang their hats at icculus.org are former employees or had connections to Loki Software, a company that made NATIVE PORTS of games.
One other chap who worked at Loki then moved on to Epic Software and brought us NATIVE ports of UT2003 and UT2004.
It's definitely native.
Thanks to Gordon and I hope you had fun working with the folks at Google.
This is indeed a great day, google earth was the only app I ever used on my laptop under Windows.
Yeah, it's not perfect yet, read the forums, play around with it, tweek it and it'll go.
(I COULD be wrong, of course, but icculus is a fairly major native Linux porter, so I'd doubt that he'd be working on a wine port.)
Yes, you're missing something. But a lot of people are, believe me ;-)
There are 4 versions of Google Earth. Most people know about the free version only. The other Google Earth versions gives you way more features, including GIS-like features.
Animoog.org
So what you're saying is, "Google Earth helped a geek get laid"?
Sounds like the beginnings of a marketing campaign, if I ever heard one...
Reality has a liberal bias
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
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.
This would mean you're not running it under KDE then. In this case, try running `qtconfig` first and play with the settings, you might be able to get a slightly better look.
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.
Why does the Google Pack EULA ask me to agree not to do something that's physically impossible?
From the Google Pack EULA:
Who in this universe has an infinite number of computers, or would install a piece of software an infinite number of times? Why don't also they require me to agree not to perform an infinite number of other impossible tasks? Why are so concerned about preventing people with infinite numbers of computers and patience installing their software?
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
OK, first things first. I am serving in the Army as an enlisted Military Policeman. Currently stationed at Fort Hood in the 1st Cavalry Division, I came back from a 1 year tour in Iraq in early/mid 2005. In Baghdad the military is using a "new" tool (that DARPA has been working on for a number of years) that easily allows collaborative efforts and battle tracking. (I just googled for it, and the name is out in the open with a nice description of it on defense-update.com ... so it _appears_ that I am not "talking out of school" here.)
Anyway, last year around April/May the Cav returns back to the states, we get a little down time, turn most of our trucks and tanks to be "Reset" (rebuilt/refurbished/updated) ... and catch a nice little breather when Katrina hits. The 82nd Airborne gets to New Orleans first (after the National Guard and reserves) and then the Cav.
Being an enlisted Military Policeman gave me a unique perspective to what was going on... and more importantly what was NOT going on. When I worked in Baghdad my job was to coordinate efforts between the Coalition Forces and the Iraqi Police. We tracked what the Iraqi Police were seeing on the Streets and what the military was seeing on the streets and tried to keep everybody on the same page.
Low and behold when I get to New Orleans I discover that I have the PERFECT skill set for this disaster. Military and Law Enforcement experience, VERY knowledgeable on how to push and pull information to and from everybody who needs it, dealing with ALL flavors of law enforcement and coordinating efforts on the fly.
One problem. I don't have a tool to put the coordination together. However, most places (hospitals, Police Stations, FBI, DEA, NYFD, Customs, and the FEMA coordination centers) all have Internet access. Guess what. We have the perfect tool... Google Earth.
Google had recently worked there ASSES off putting current and updated flood information into Google Earth, you could pull up where downed power lines and flooded roads were at, you could transpose the "pre flood" and the "post flood" images, and the downtown area even had 3D models of the buildings.
Oh, and IT WAS FREE... and easy to use... And you can EASILY share information between other people. I put an icon in my Google Earth .KML describing a dead body that needs to be picked up and the proper agencies (who are "subscribed" to my .KML) see that information in SECONDS (or minutes at the latest). There were a limited number of people there who could legally move bodies according to LA law so it was a constant effort to get them to where they needed to be.
You add a VOIP aspect to it and POOF! Instant command and control for the different agencies. It is nigh-impossible to crash google's servers and as long as you had power (which was rapidly becoming a NON issue) and Internet access (same thing) you were able to talk and coordinate your efforts.
The beauty of the system is that as long as each agency updates their little piece of the pie everybody can see and use that data... Even if they don't update it, there was so much overlap that someone would see and report an incident.
One other problem. We are dealing with the CIVILIAN government and FEMA here. They have a major case of "It wasn't grown here"-itis. Everybody I showed it to was amazed and astounded with how easy and efficient it was... and the power of collaboration was something completely new and foreign to almost EVERYBODY involved... except for the 1st Cav. FEMA seems hell bent to spend MILLIONS of dollars setting up a command and control center that only talked to itself... AMAZING. I showed their tech people and some higher ups what Google Earth could bring to the plate and they were impressed. The tech types were ready and willing to embrace the tool, but hesitant because t
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.