As a geographer Google Earth is an interesting little program to look at globe with. The program is quite easily installed. Drivers for the display to work correctly are important, as it is an intensive program. Sometimes extraneous lines will show up if the display driver is outdated. Updating it will usually resolve most of the display problems.
My Ubuntu setup was fairly generic so that it could work with most computers. However, the display driver was not exactly configured, which meant that every time I launch Google Earth, I was sent back to the login screen. I was able to download the drivers and then used the text interface I described in a recent post. The ability to post into a completely text based environment allows me to update the graphics drivers. This is not possible to do while logged into a graphics environment. After doing this, Google Earth is working great!
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What do you think about Google Earth as a proprietary, rather than open source, venture? Because Google operates 'free' as a search engine, with advirtisements, I think Google is associated with the open source mentality. While it is true that Google Earth operates as a really fantastic interface that anyone can freely download, additional functions come at increasing costs (See Google Earth Plus, Pro, and Enterprise). Is this free-ness a public good, a 'catch,' or both? At previous AAG meetings there have been some interesting debates on representation and Google Earth - who is included? Who is excluded? Do users wrongly view Google Earth as an exhaustive representation or search of local environments?
While it's fresh in your mind, you might write a note about the Wikipedia lecture yesterday and any ideas that it gave you related to open-source.
I haven't had much chance to investigate these links, but here are some more interesting takes on the open source idea:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
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