Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Curt]

On 2015-10-10, Mario Castelán Castro  wrote:
>
> You want to hear "yes, I have been using it for years with no incident", 
> but that doesn't means it's secure. With the internals of the system 
> hidden from you, you will never be able to trust it.
>

That's what I tell my wife.

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Timothy Hobbs]

PRISM has been watching you for years with no incident.


On 2015-10-10, Mario Castelán Castro  wrote:

You want to hear "yes, I have been using it for years with no incident",
but that doesn't means it's secure. With the internals of the system
hidden from you, you will never be able to trust it.


That's what I tell my wife.

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[moxalt]

PRISM has been watching me my entire life without incident. Yet.

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Mario Castelán Castro]

Indeed, using any software makes you used to it, and dependent on it up 
to whatever extent you use it. With free software, you know that you 
have control over the software. You can rely on the community to do most 
of the job, and do for yourself what they won't do or you would do 
better (and contribute that to upstream). With proprietary software, you 
are making yourself dependent and handing the control of a part of your 
life (computing) to a company that only cares for profit; that's not 
security.


Also, most proprietary software is distributed without source. That 
precludes a real security audit, incentives the developer to be sloppy 
about security and to intentionally build anti-features into the 
software that work for his own interests and against those of the user, 
since it's unlikely that users will figure about these anti-features. 
There are many cases. Just to name one, think of the recent cases of VW 
and Lenovo with Superfish.



is google earth safe to install?


You want to hear "yes, I have been using it for years with no incident", 
but that doesn't means it's secure. With the internals of the system 
hidden from you, you will never be able to trust it.


El 10/10/15 a las 16:31, Timothy Hobbs escribió:

You could try running google-earth in subuser.org . But I don't
recommend it, because I don't recommend using any non-free software ;).

Tim

On 10/10/15 23:29, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

On Sat, October 10, 2015 3:20 pm, Torsten Rahn wrote:
Thanks, Torsen.

Over the past week I have been running Google Earth on an old machine in
an isolated, but it would be nice to have GE capability without the GE
liability.

I still have Marble installed, so I shall read over the documentation and
give Marble another try.

Regards,
Russell

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[rlharris]

On Sat, October 10, 2015 4:31 pm, Timothy Hobbs wrote:
> You could try running google-earth in subuser.org . But I don't
> recommend it, because I don't recommend using any non-free software ;).

Thanks, Tim.  This is the first I have heard of subuser.org.  I just
punched it up in the browser, and am going to take a look.

Russ

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Torsten Rahn]

Hi, 

> On Tue, September 1, 2015 9:47 am, Darac Marjal wrote:
> > In that case, consider "marble", which provides a similar "virtual
> > globe" and is LGPL 2.1+ licensed.
> > I did install marble.  Perhaps my installation is not correctly
> configured, but after seeing the detailed photograph of "Tour Eiffel" on
> the google.com website which advertises google earth, I am disappointed in
> marble.
> > For example, looking at London, I see nothing but pixels in shades of> 
> > green and tan.
> > RLH

you apparently looked at our "Atlas" map theme which just renders a classroom 
atlas. However Marble offers plenty of other map themes, like OpenStreetMap 
and others. Some even allow you to view the Tour Eiffel.

For more information check out our documentation

https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kdeedu/marble/index.html

or

http://www.tuxarena.com/2014/10/marble-atlas-review-alternative-to-google-earth/

Technically it's even possible to view Google Maps/Earth map content using 
Marble 
although it's not officially supported.

Best Regards,
Torsten

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[rlharris]

On Sat, October 10, 2015 3:20 pm, Torsten Rahn wrote:
Thanks, Torsen.

Over the past week I have been running Google Earth on an old machine in
an isolated, but it would be nice to have GE capability without the GE
liability.

I still have Marble installed, so I shall read over the documentation and
give Marble another try.

Regards,
Russell

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Timothy Hobbs]

You could try running google-earth in subuser.org . But I don't 
recommend it, because I don't recommend using any non-free software ;).


Tim

On 10/10/15 23:29, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

On Sat, October 10, 2015 3:20 pm, Torsten Rahn wrote:
Thanks, Torsen.

Over the past week I have been running Google Earth on an old machine in
an isolated, but it would be nice to have GE capability without the GE
liability.

I still have Marble installed, so I shall read over the documentation and
give Marble another try.

Regards,
Russell

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Ric Moore]

On 09/03/2015 05:06 PM, Stuart Longland wrote:

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On 02/09/15 08:55, Ric Moore wrote:

Perhaps we should team up and buy some better satellite data to
"free" it? Kickstarter anyone?


I'm building "Grit". I'll let everyone know how well it works. You
do need an nVidia graphic card though. Ric


I'll bite, why an nVidia graphic card?  I have a couple, but the Intel
GPU in this laptop would run rings around most of them.

Surely it only matters that it implements ${OPENGL_FEATURES} to a
sufficient standard to run the application.

Does this application bypass the kernel to talk to the video card
directly?


They recommended nvidia over AMD, which they seemed to have problems 
with. I don't usually read of Intel being recommended for gaming / 3D. Ric




--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Martin Read]

On 03/09/15 22:06, Stuart Longland wrote:

I'll bite, why an nVidia graphic card?  I have a couple, but the Intel
GPU in this laptop would run rings around most of them.

Surely it only matters that it implements ${OPENGL_FEATURES} to a
sufficient standard to run the application.


OpenGL's architecture explicitly provides for the existence of 
vendor-specific extensions.

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Stuart Longland]

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On 02/09/15 08:55, Ric Moore wrote:
>> Perhaps we should team up and buy some better satellite data to
>> "free" it? Kickstarter anyone?
> 
> I'm building "Grit". I'll let everyone know how well it works. You
> do need an nVidia graphic card though. Ric

I'll bite, why an nVidia graphic card?  I have a couple, but the Intel
GPU in this laptop would run rings around most of them.

Surely it only matters that it implements ${OPENGL_FEATURES} to a
sufficient standard to run the application.

Does this application bypass the kernel to talk to the video card
directly?
- -- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.
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Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Sven Arvidsson]

On Tue, 2015-09-01 at 18:22 -0500, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> I keep forgetting about WINE -- likely because I never have used 
> WINE.
> 
> > From the WINE HQ web site, it appears that WINE may be a reasonable
> solution, and even a way to circumvent the  problems of running the 
> intel
> code on an amd machine.

That's not how it works, see
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAMD64Faq

Q: Is this port only for AMD 64-bit [[CPUs]]?

A: No. "AMD64" is the name chosen by AMD for their 64-bit extension to
the Intel x86 instruction set. Before release, it was called "x86-64"
or "x86_64", and some distributions still use these names. Intel refers
to its AMD64 implementation as "?Intel64" previously named "?EM64T".
The architecture is AMD64-compatible and Debian AMD64 will run on AMD
and Intel processors with 64-bit support. Because of the technology
paternity, Debian uses the name "AMD64".


-- 
Cheers,
Sven Arvidsson
http://www.whiz.se
PGP Key ID 6FAB5CD5




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Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Ron]

On Tue, 01 Sep 2015 16:48:35 -0700
Gary Roach  wrote:

> BTW Google Earth should operate on an AMD chip set if you enable 
> milti-arch as Sven said. That would seem to be the easier cleaner way to go.

It does, on my box, without any problem.
 
Cheers,
 
Ron.
-- 
  If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.
   If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.
  -- Nelson Mandela

   -- http://www.olgiati-in-paraguay.org --
 

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Ric Moore]

On 09/02/2015 03:52 AM, Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI wrote:

On Tue, 01 Sep 2015 16:48:35 -0700
Gary Roach  wrote:


BTW Google Earth should operate on an AMD chip set if you enable
milti-arch as Sven said. That would seem to be the easier cleaner way to go.


It does, on my box, without any problem.


It appears that Grits is one of those projects that requires you 
download the Internet, and after a bunch of grinding and thrashing, the 
last instruction in the README doesn't jive with the files and 
directories  in front of you. I hate when that happens. :( Ric



--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[tomas]

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On Tue, Sep 01, 2015 at 03:47:53PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Tuesday 01 September 2015 14:09:39 rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, September 1, 2015 9:47 am, Darac Marjal wrote:
> > > In that case, consider "marble", which provides a similar "virtual
> > > globe" and is LGPL 2.1+ licensed.

[...]

> > For example, looking at London, I see nothing but pixels in shades of
> > green and tan.
> >
> > RLH
> 
> Gaggh, you are right, I just installed it. Minimum viewing altitude is 
> 50km!  Nothing but smeared green large pixels where London is marked. Of 
> what use is this in the real world?  [...]

Well, freely available data versus expensively paid for by Google (and paid
back to them with your and my privacy :-)

Perhaps we should team up and buy some better satellite data to "free" it?
Kickstarter anyone?

- -- t
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Re: is google earth safe to install?

[rlharris]

On Tue, September 1, 2015 9:47 am, Darac Marjal wrote:
> In that case, consider "marble", which provides a similar "virtual
> globe" and is LGPL 2.1+ licensed.

I did install marble.  Perhaps my installation is not correctly
configured, but after seeing the detailed photograph of "Tour Eiffel" on
the google.com website which advertises google earth, I am disappointed in
marble.

For example, looking at London, I see nothing but pixels in shades of
green and tan.

RLH

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 01 September 2015 14:09:39 rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

> On Tue, September 1, 2015 9:47 am, Darac Marjal wrote:
> > In that case, consider "marble", which provides a similar "virtual
> > globe" and is LGPL 2.1+ licensed.
>
> I did install marble.  Perhaps my installation is not correctly
> configured, but after seeing the detailed photograph of "Tour Eiffel"
> on the google.com website which advertises google earth, I am
> disappointed in marble.
>
> For example, looking at London, I see nothing but pixels in shades of
> green and tan.
>
> RLH

Gaggh, you are right, I just installed it. Minimum viewing altitude is 
50km!  Nothing but smeared green large pixels where London is marked. Of 
what use is this in the real world?  Even less useful than the 
appendages on the belly of a bore hog.  And its no better above where I 
am either.  No wonder its buried about 5 levels out in my TDE menu's, 
its a total disappointment.

I have no clue where the map data is coming from, but IMO its a nukable 
utility.  With the weather map data I can zoom into my neighborhood and 
find my house & yard buildings with no effort at all.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Sven Arvidsson]

On Tue, 2015-09-01 at 13:09 -0500, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> On Tue, September 1, 2015 9:47 am, Darac Marjal wrote:
> > In that case, consider "marble", which provides a similar "virtual
> > globe" and is LGPL 2.1+ licensed.
> 
> I did install marble.  Perhaps my installation is not correctly
> configured, but after seeing the detailed photograph of "Tour Eiffel" 
> on
> the google.com website which advertises google earth, I am 
> disappointed in
> marble.
> 
> For example, looking at London, I see nothing but pixels in shades of
> green and tan.

Have you tried using Google Maps, and street view?

BTW, you should be able to use GE on amd64 if you enable multi-arch. 

-- 
Cheers,
Sven Arvidsson
http://www.whiz.se
PGP Key ID 6FAB5CD5




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Re: is google earth safe to install?

[rlharris]

I keep forgetting about WINE -- likely because I never have used WINE.

>From the WINE HQ web site, it appears that WINE may be a reasonable
solution, and even a way to circumvent the  problems of running the intel
code on an amd machine.

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application=2292

RLH

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Gary Roach]

On 09/01/2015 04:22 PM, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

I keep forgetting about WINE -- likely because I never have used WINE.

>From the WINE HQ web site, it appears that WINE may be a reasonable
solution, and even a way to circumvent the  problems of running the intel
code on an amd machine.

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application=2292

RLH



Having tried wine in the past, I do not recommend it. I had fits with 
it. Some things work. Some don't. I use VirtualBox and load in a whole 
separate operating system. If you don't have the disks that could be a 
problem. If you have the installation disks for another OS, VirtualBox 
is the way to go.


BTW Google Earth should operate on an AMD chip set if you enable 
milti-arch as Sven said. That would seem to be the easier cleaner way to go.

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Ric Moore]

On 09/01/2015 03:53 PM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

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On Tue, Sep 01, 2015 at 03:47:53PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:

On Tuesday 01 September 2015 14:09:39 rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:


On Tue, September 1, 2015 9:47 am, Darac Marjal wrote:

In that case, consider "marble", which provides a similar "virtual
globe" and is LGPL 2.1+ licensed.


[...]


For example, looking at London, I see nothing but pixels in shades of
green and tan.

RLH


Gaggh, you are right, I just installed it. Minimum viewing altitude is
50km!  Nothing but smeared green large pixels where London is marked. Of
what use is this in the real world?  [...]


Well, freely available data versus expensively paid for by Google (and paid
back to them with your and my privacy :-)

Perhaps we should team up and buy some better satellite data to "free" it?
Kickstarter anyone?


I'm building "Grit". I'll let everyone know how well it works. You do 
need an nVidia graphic card though. Ric




--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 01 September 2015 01:41:20 rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:

> To facilitate our search for property and discussion over the
> telephone of various properties, my client wishes me to install google
> earth.
>
> I see that Debian has a google earth package.
>
> In view of our recent discussion "laptop protection in an office
> network", I am curious as to what danger of compromise, if any, is
> incurred by the installation of google earth.
>
> RLH

No clue about safety, but its unsupported and doesn't work at all well 
with the nouveau drivers. Essentially it should be considered 
deprecated.

There is a newer format, used by the weather maps on most local tv 
station web sites. Preset to show about 1/4 of WV on my old stations 
site, but put your mouse on it, and roll the wheel and the scale can be 
reduced to planet sized, then grabbed at the mouse pointer location and 
drag it to turn the planet until your area of interest is centered, put 
the mouse there and zoom back in.  All of this in very close to real 
time, easily 100x faster than GE has ever run on one of my machines.

Works with iceweazel and chromium, no GE install needed.  Just a recent 
browser.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[rlharris]

On Tue, September 1, 2015 12:41 am, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> To facilitate our search for property and discussion over the telephone
> of various properties, my client wishes me to install google earth.
>
> I see that Debian has a google earth package.
>
> In view of our recent discussion "laptop protection in an office
> network", I am curious as to what danger of compromise, if any, is
> incurred by the installation of google earth.

Answering my own question:  After installing the Debian package (which is
a script to download google earth and make of it a Debian package) I would
have proceded except for the fact that (according to the Debian README
file, it currently works only on x86 packages, because google earth is an
i386 binary.  But my laptop is an amd64.  And I am unwilling to run
proprietary google code on my desktop machine.

RLH

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Darac Marjal]

On Tue, Sep 01, 2015 at 03:31:22AM -0500, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> On Tue, September 1, 2015 12:41 am, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> > To facilitate our search for property and discussion over the telephone
> > of various properties, my client wishes me to install google earth.
> >
> > I see that Debian has a google earth package.
> >
> > In view of our recent discussion "laptop protection in an office
> > network", I am curious as to what danger of compromise, if any, is
> > incurred by the installation of google earth.
> 
> Answering my own question:  After installing the Debian package (which is
> a script to download google earth and make of it a Debian package) I would
> have proceded except for the fact that (according to the Debian README
> file, it currently works only on x86 packages, because google earth is an
> i386 binary.  But my laptop is an amd64.  And I am unwilling to run
> proprietary google code on my desktop machine.

In that case, consider "marble", which provides a similar "virtual
globe" and is LGPL 2.1+ licensed.

> 
> RLH
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
For more information, please reread.


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Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 01 September 2015 09:08:19 Richard Owlett wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Tuesday 01 September 2015 01:41:20 rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:
> >> To facilitate our search for property and discussion over the
> >> telephone of various properties, my client wishes me to install
> >> google earth.[SNIP]
> >
> > No clue about safety, but its unsupported and doesn't work at all
> > well with the nouveau drivers. Essentially it should be considered
> > deprecated.
> >
> > There is a newer format, used by the weather maps on most local tv
> > station web sites. Preset to show about 1/4 of WV on my old stations
> > site, but put your mouse on it, and roll the wheel and the scale can
> > be reduced to planet sized, then grabbed at the mouse pointer
> > location and drag it to turn the planet until your area of interest
> > is centered, put the mouse there and zoom back in.  All of this in
> > very close to real time, easily 100x faster than GE has ever run on
> > one of my machines.
> >
> > Works with iceweazel and chromium, no GE install needed.  Just a
> > recent browser.
> >
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett
>
> Sounds interesting. What is it? Where do I find it?
> TIA

Its the live weathermap on the web site of your local tv station. it 
shows a couple of usages on  and seems to have become the 
favorite way to display the last 4 hours of so of radar detected weather 
activity.  The background data is from google of course, called google 
maps, its a login required page at google, I don't remember my pw so 
I've had the site email a reset msg.  The web server using it then 
overlays the radar data in a roughly 4 hours worth of history moving 
overlay.

That email hasn't been received, so I assume I have never registered.  
Didn't need to, the weather maps work fine for that here.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: is google earth safe to install?

[Richard Owlett]

Gene Heskett wrote:

On Tuesday 01 September 2015 01:41:20 rlhar...@oplink.net wrote:


To facilitate our search for property and discussion over the
telephone of various properties, my client wishes me to install google
earth.[SNIP]

No clue about safety, but its unsupported and doesn't work at all well
with the nouveau drivers. Essentially it should be considered
deprecated.

There is a newer format, used by the weather maps on most local tv
station web sites. Preset to show about 1/4 of WV on my old stations
site, but put your mouse on it, and roll the wheel and the scale can be
reduced to planet sized, then grabbed at the mouse pointer location and
drag it to turn the planet until your area of interest is centered, put
the mouse there and zoom back in.  All of this in very close to real
time, easily 100x faster than GE has ever run on one of my machines.

Works with iceweazel and chromium, no GE install needed.  Just a recent
browser.

Cheers, Gene Heskett



Sounds interesting. What is it? Where do I find it?
TIA