Windows users -- For new geeky coolness...

[redguru]

Check out Desktop Earth. It's a photorealistic realtime mercator projection of the earth as a desktop background. Even the cloud formations are only a couple hours behind real-time.

 

[sawastea]

That's fucking cool!!!

I'm using it now. Europe is all in lights.

 

[redguru]

I thought so too, it's slightly hoggy, but is interesting. You can change the settings for more city lights as well.

 

[redguru]

For those of us on linux there is a much more powerful toy called xplanet, I haven't played with it as my linux box is currently sans processor.

 

[sawastea]

Well, I'm curious to see how it shows in a few hours. Considering it's still summer in South America, they still have more daylight than us. When it's 6 p.m. in NYC, it's 8 p.m. in Argentina, and it's still daylight there.

 

[hotzie]

wtf is linux ?

 

[redguru]

linux is UNIX for intel-based boxes.

 

[nycgirl]

That is neat.

 

[hotzie]

linux is UNIX for intel-based boxes.

oh now i get it


not really at all

 

[redguru]

oh now i get it


not really at all

Linux is an open source (free) operating system that replaces dos and windows and mimics UNIX.

 

[hotzie]

Linux is an open source (free) operating system that replaces dos and windows and mimics UNIX.

is it better or something ....sorry im not a tweek or geek lol

 

[redguru]

is it better or something ....sorry im not a tweek or geek lol

That's the age-old question. For compatibility and user-friendlyiness, stick with Gates Ware. For power-users and those who are used to Mozilla-based browsers, I'd go with a linux distribution.

 

[hotzie]

That's the age-old question. For compatibility and user-friendlyiness, stick with Gates Ware. For power-users and those who are used to Mozilla-based browsers, I'd go with a linux distribution.

see im just an everday user , but i love mozilla

what should i do


ps i know shit about computers

 

[redguru]

I'd stick with windows if I were you. If you didn't get rid of your old computer, you could learn linux on that.

 

[redguru]

Here's a screen cap of my current desktop.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

It's pretty cool. I'm interested to see what the U.S. will look like at night, delayed real time.

 

[hotzie]

Here's a screen cap of my current desktop.

thats alot of stuff on there

 

[digger]

Here's a screen cap of my current desktop.

No pic?

xearth does rock -- I had that going for a while but didn't put it back last time I upgraded.

There's a whole subculture of geeks who download the NASA cloud-cover photos and merge them into the right format to feed xearth, and it's popular enough that they have problems coming up with enough bandwidth to share. (I had to run a script to hit up something like six different sites, and I was trying to be super nice by only updating my copy three times a day.)

If you want a neat timezone/sunlight display, Geoclock is still cool. It looks sort of old-fashioned, since it dates back to the MS-DOS days, but that means it doesn't suck up all your machine's horsepower either. It was written by a guy who is into ham radio -- he wanted one of those mechanical Geochron clocks, which are as cool as a date with Cindy Crawford but also cost about as much. So he came up with a way to put one on his PC.

 

[hotzie]

you cant see the pic digger ?

 

[redguru]

I went over my bandwidth at xs.to, so I put it in my gallery. There's a thumbnail in my post.