Google Earth

I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere, so beware .
Mostly contributing to the noise level in the off-topic discussions, but in between I'm trying to absorb what knowledge I can.

You know, while your at it use the Google map to look at the arch in ST. Louis. Not far away from it in northerly direction is a parking lot that appears to have an airplane painted on it. I really don't understand that... is it a shadow?
LLB

I looked thru Google maps and there is indeed a plane outline shown, but using zillow.com shows the lot to be empty.
I guess they had a plane parked there!
technomaNge

Macs are nice, nowadays, and I speak as someone who wouldn't even contemplate having one until they put a unix o/s under the GUI.
It's pretty clean unix under there, most open source compiles & runs fine. Try one & see for yourself. I only use my SPARC boxes as servers nowadays.
PDW

"brassbend" wrote It looks like a shadow of a plane flying overhead to me. Maybe a C-130...
Best Regards, Keith Marshall snipped-for-privacy@progressivelogic.com
"I'm not grown up enough to be so old!"

Been using Google earth on dialup -- very useful, in some respects, but slow. It's way too fuzzy to help much in lat/long measurements in my 'hood, but it does give elevation where the pointer is, and that seems quite accurate.
In fact, using the Google elevation data gave me the info I needed to complete a gravity water system from a spring about 0.3 miles away from our house. After building a water holding pond, we checked true levels using some existing piping and a long garden hose. It was right on. (To my great relief, and my neighbor's astonishment. And mine.)
Take care, Will

According to Peter Wiley : Hmm ... I'm in the process of helping develop some software which will run on Windows, Macs, and unix, with the principal programmer using OS-X. In the process of trying to discover things about what works and what does not, it appears that OS-X is allergic to two files whose names differ only in case (e.g. "Makefile" and "makefile"), and will overwrite the file which is already there as you copy one in with a different case mix. Of course, that system has a mix of MS-DOS old Mac OS-IX (*not* OS/9, which I have used, and which is *very* different), and whatever filesystem the OS-X uses, and I'm not really sure which he was trying that on. It is a real pain to not have my hands directly on the hardware. :-)
Enjoy, DoN.

On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:31:02 GMT, Lew Hartswick scribed:
Try:

Your house and all the hood, with current assessment and taxes.
Fred

BT, DT. We use Java. Realtime datalogging system logging to filesystem, database (Postgresql & Oracle) and retransmitting to 'interested' processes via UDP. Proven to run happily on Win2K, XP, linux, OS-X and probably anything else that has a 1.5 JVM available.
OS-X can handle a few different types of filesystem, I've never had a problem yet. If your programmer is screwing about with some arcane version of unix for Mac, I wonder why.
I like my machine, it's the one I use most and take with me when I have to travel. A 15" Powerbook G4. The Windows machine on my desk really only gets used for corporate stuff and occasionally Oracle sys admin stuff tho I'm thinking of installing Solidworks.
PDW

DoN, Why don't you try Reatogo? 's a Linux program based on Bart PE that allows a person to create his own CD with His choice of Windows in an ISO file. The CD is bootable and the program runs on the CD and Ram. When the CD is removed there is no trace left on the hard drive. Any viruses picked up online will die. The person can run Win XP, for example but does not have to defile his machine by installing Micro$oft products. If you want to try it I can send you a disk. John
who has only unix systems which he *will* allow to touch the net, the only option seems to be to pick up a Mac for this sort of thing. And I'm *not* that thrilled with even the idea of a Mac -- even though it does have a unix underpinning these days.
Good Luck, DoN. >

If you have a firewall between your Windows box and the outside world, and you don't run anything but Windows Update (which is really internet Explorer) on your Windows box while you're updating, I don't know of any attack from outside that can affect you. Your firewall probably won't even let the Windows system be visible to the outside world.
Connecting to the outside world doesn't automatically mean being exposed to attacks - that's what the firewall is for.
Dave

You think that this is certain? Over a period of years it might be, but if it happens then just remove the bloody virus.
And why have you not applied them?
Uh, why is your firewall letting these alleged "attacks" through? It should be blocking them.
You wouldn't _have_ to do that. You do it because you are so paranoid that you think that allowing a Windows box to contact the Microsoft site through a firewall has a high probability of resulting in the installation of malware on your system in the few hours that it takes to install the updates.
You clearly don't know enough about Windows if you are this afraid of it.
The _main_ things you need to do are put it behind a decent firewall and not run as root (which in Windows is called "administrator") unless you have to. If you do those two things you'll very, very seldom have a problem.
Sounds like you've bought into the hype from Norton and AOL and all the other outfits that have a vested interest in scaring you to death.
Just for hohos why not back up that Windows box, install the updates, put a user account on it, and use it for a while and see what happens. I think you'll, assuming that it's running an NT-derived Windows and not a 9x variant, find it much less hazardous than you imagine.

My firewall is set up to keep even the web browser from reaching the outside, as I normally don't even *want* to use a browser from the Windows box. It is used for a very few functions these days, and I do normal browsing from unix-based systems with Mozilla, FireFox, or Opera, depending on the system and what I want to do -- plus wget for downloading images to which direct urls have been posted, or very occasionally lynx, for text-only browsing.
And some of the biggest holes are in IE itself. (Some of them are accessed by e-mail being passed off by OE to IE.)
And that is what I keep it set up for -- to totally eliminate connections between the Windows box and anything other than things within my own local network.
Enjoy, DoN.

Except that the typical purpose of Windows viruses these days is to install backdoors which allow the infected system to be used to:
1) Attack other systems, to install viruses in them as well.
2) Serve as spam servers (thus getting my domain on blocklists)
3) Participate in DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attacks on other systems.
I wish none of these things to happen from my domain.
I regularly see sufficient evidence of (1) and (2) above. So far, I have not been sufficiently visible to become a target if (3).
Because there is no *need* for my Windows system to touch the outside net -- and sometimes the security patches break working programs.
I never said that it *was* letting them through. It is *recording* attempts to connect to Windows ports on my visible systems, even though those systems are not running Windows -- and for that matter, *cannot* run Windows, as they have the wrong CPU. :-)
Given that the time to infection for a new install on certain networks, such as those at colleges, is significantly less than the time needed to download and install the patches, I think that my "paranoia" has sufficient reason.
I know what I see regularly from infected systems scattered around the world -- bringing a new box every few seconds to attempt to deliver (spam) e-mail. And most of those boxes are on either cable modems or (a)dsl connections, getting their addresses from dhcp servers. These machines are not *supposed* to be mail servers, but they are *acting* as one-way servers. They don't accept incoming e-mail, but the spew out outgoing e-mail -- sometimes as many as 1300 delivery attempts (in the face of refusal to accept connections) in a single hour.
The one token Windows box is behind a *very* tightly closed firewall. I don't *need* it to connect the outside, so why enable that? That would mean that I would have to keep up with security patches -- sometimes several in a week.
And -- that box happens to be in an awkward location. My unix boxen, however, can all be accessed from any one of them.
I've observed attacks from the outside, and the information in news.admin.net-abuse.email. And I don't have a *need* to have that system access the outside, so why bother?
Actually -- these days, probably the safest system in the Windows group is Win 95, because it will not *run* the current crop of viruses.
The Windows box is Win 2000-Pro. But, as explained several times above, I have no *need* for it to talk to the outside world, My unix boxen do that very nicely, thank you.
Enjoy, DoN.

According to Peter Wiley : using a commercial database program. We are providing something which will run on all systems without having to *purchase* extra software. (Of course, he started this before OS-X came on the market, and I've been trying to guide him to "the unix way" as we go. It is a bit easier, now that he has a unix available for most things, other than him being a bit afraid to try certain things, such as setting up a /etc/csh.cshrc file to set some environment variables on login. :-)
[ ... ]
He is using Apple's OS-X -- I forget which version, but it is a fairly recent one.
Try this experiment (all from the unix command line):
1) Create a subdirectory.
2) cd to it
3) create two files whose names differ only in the case (such as "Junque" and "junque"). Ideally, put a different text string in each, so they can be identified later.
4) Use "ls -laF" to verify that both are there.
5) Now -- go to the OS-X GUI, and go look at the same subdirectory. His experience was that he saw both names for an instant, and then one of them overwrote the other.
6) If this happens, go back in with the command line "ls -laF" to see whether both files are still present. (I haven't gotten him to try this, yet.
O.K. Now, the trick comes of affording a Powerbook G4 on a fixed retirement income. :-)
Enjoy, DoN.

According to snipped-for-privacy@aol.com : I can download it, and built it with Win 2000-Pro. Thanks for the pointer. As long as the real disks on the system remain invisible to the Windows.
I wonder whether it will compile and work under OpenBSD or Solaris? Some linux programs tend to be *very* linux specific.
Of course -- most of my systems are based on various flavors of SPARC CPUs, so I doubt that it would work on those. :-)
Thanks, DoN.

At one stage I tested every dbms I could find that had a type 4 JDBC driver against some of my code. I got all of them to work tho with differing levels of performance. Oracle definitely works; the reason I stopped using it is the same reason I don't use Windows. Poor software sold by hype.
Postgresql isn't really a commercial dbms, it's open source. I've used mysql and a couple of the small fry pure Java database engines as well.
Yes, I understand that. So am I. That's why I switched *from* Oracle to Postgres. My main data servers are all open systems software from o/s to our code to dbms.
Hmmm. It's worse than that. I created Fred.txt (vi Fred.txt) then attempted to create fred.txt - vi opened the Fred.txt file. Interesting.
ok, cd .. and vi fred.txt no probs.
mv fred.txt archive/. (which is where the Fred.txt file was created)
Guess what? Fred.txt vanishes. fred.txt takes its place, as shown by different text inside the file.
You don't need to do anything with Finder in the Mac GUI at all to cause this.
I'd say OS X has a serious filesystem bug.
I don't work here (only) for the salary, I like the toys.........
PDW

While you're looking at stuff, this one may be interesting if you haven't come across it. First distrib we've been able to load straight onto a HP laptop and work straight away, graphics card and all.
PDW

The bottom line on this seems to be that you're unhappy because you can't use Google Earth and the reason you can't use it is that you're too chicken to do something that the average third grader takes in stride.