I'm trying to find out what exactly Google Earth is actually useful for???
I mean, Google Maps, sure I use that all the time to find where something is, directions how to get to it...on my iPhone, it even shows traffic loads.
I click Google Earth...it is neat how it zooms down to where I'm at from outer space..but after that...what?
As others have pointed out, it has a real value in the GIS community. Not so much for the actual work and planning, but for distributing our planned work in a format that's easily viewable.
Real life example, we're currently searching off of Brazil for Flight 447 and, while we use professional tools for the actual planning and searching, we also have our scan lines, the debris field, and the last known location all exported out into a set of layers that's easily opened in a KMZ file. For a quick look at what's going on, it's perfect.
We were in a similar situation when we wanted to migrate away from IE6. We have several client sites that we must use that are IE6 only and were not compatible with IE8's backwards compatibility.
The solution we came up with was to deploy Firefox throughout the company with IETab already installed with a list of rules to load incompatible pages into an Internet Explorer tab within Firefox. This is completely transparent to our users and the majority of web browsing is done with Firefox.
100,000th story, what's the comment count at? 30408632?
Google anonymizes data that is older than nine months, unless said data is tied to a Google account.
Spy Hunter was rebooted in 2001 for PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, and Windows. A sequel was also released.
Anyone else remember this game? Came out same time as Descent, but I found it to be quite more enjoyable.
Its not that "the need for the users to have a friend that they can goto with their questions", but rather Linux users need more friends. Lets admit it, we don't have many that we've met in person.
Maybe, but it's not like there are not plenty of oppurtunities to utilize.
Yes, but the problem as I view it isn't so much the transitional phase, but the need for the users to have a friend that they can goto with their questions. Windows users are so incorporated into Microsoft's operating system that the majority of users like to deem themselves as experts. This provides a large 'friend support' base that is easily accessed by other Windows users for the majority of day-to-day problems and warnings that they receive. Until Linux has an adoption rate similar to Windows, the 'friend support' base that people actually know will be quite small, and especially dwarfed to that of Windows. And until we can get the support to the same comfort and convenience of Windows, the adoption rate of Linux is going to me limited to those technically inclined enough to do basic troubleshooting on their own or follow instructions on Ubuntu forums.
A very chicken vs egg type situation. Ubuntu has done a great job to make the intuitiveness and ease of use of Linux better which has helped shorten this gap and increase the adoption rate, but to become highly adoptable outside of the IT crowd and their friends, more vendors and shops will need to improve their support for Linux; and this is something not easily done with a large number of available Linux flavors (kudos to Ubuntu and Debian for creating a standard widely adopted and kudos to Dell for basic Linux support.)
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.