Domain: esri.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to esri.com.
Comments · 114
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Re:Yeah no fan of that
Looks like a few in India:
https://storymaps.esri.com/sto...Looks like mosques are synagogues are being attacked by quite a lot of people, but that's ok, you keep blaming white nationalists.
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ArcGIS by ESRI had a similar bug
Posting for the second time - my AC first post gets filtered and I wanted to vent again! ArcGIS' arcpy Python package deleted about 15 TB of my data (about 90% backed up, some hadn't been yet) and two commercial disk recovery programs, Recuva and Eraser, failed to recover ALL the files, got about 95% back, about six months ago. They created a bug when doing parallel processing where they wrote temp directories for this purpose to the root of the drive and when doing this it deleted data on the drive, I'm guessing when it ran out of temp space. I wiped out two hard drives before I figured out an error in their programming was wiping out my data. I have never gotten the full story on what was happening as they don't let users talk to the developers, just the support people. I had to spend three weeks of my time troubleshooting it for them because 'my script was too complex'. That's what it took to trigger this ridiculous mess, a fairly complex process to trigger the right functions in the right order. We shouldn't be liable when a program deletes something in an area other than what was commanded, whether it was backed up or not. As was noted above with contract law, their EULA isn't a complete get out of jail free card. https://my.esri.com/#/support/...
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Some alternate sourcesSome sources that are not "Mother Jones":
Abstract of the original article: https://www.nature.com/nclimat...
Press release from Nature East Asia: http://www.natureasia.com/en/r...
Press release from U. Hawaii Manoa (the institution of the lead authors): http://www.hawaii.edu/news/201...
Article at phys.org: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-...
Article at Science Daily: https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...Interactive map of number of deadly heat days: https://maps.esri.com/globalri...
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Re: Thinking people aren't breeders.
I search on Seattle, WA and saw a whole shitload of blue.
Hey, at least you tried.
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Re:Because old-style Google Maps
Are you sure about that?
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Re:Altered telemetry is a possibility.
In the video, the telemetry says -49.5 feet after the crash. Thats NEGATIVE 49.5 feet. It must have been very high to drill itself so far underground.
Quadcopters rarely carry radar altimeters, so the altimeter data comes from one of two possible sources:
1) barometric pressure.
2) GPSThe former requires correction for current air temperature and pressure, a process that pilots accomplish by setting a reported value in their altimeter and verifying the displayed altitude against known airport elevation. Quad pilots not operating at an airport with a reported "altimeter setting" are likely to make any adjustment by setting current altitude to "0" (AGL). If you start flying on a hilltop, then any flight that goes below that hilltop will become negative. If you fail to set the pressure altitude to 0 before taking off, you can easily have a negative elevation for the entire time of the flight. The quad flight management will create its own "AGL" by subtracting the starting altitude, but since the pilot may want to know MSL based on a calibrated pressure it won't convert the recorded telemetry.
If it is a GPS elevation, you should know that most GPS 3D data reports neither "MSL" nor "AGL" but "EHT" -- ellipsoid height. That is, the elevation above a reference ellipsoid that approximates the surface of the earth but does not equal it. It is quite possible to have an EHT of -49.5 feet and still be above ground level.
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Re:The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States
You gotta explain how the ""straw that broke the camel's back"" occurred in the third year of the war.
It was more or less a series of border skirmishes (including a few port cities), until the proclamation.
This map animation demonstrates it better than I could with just words:
http://storymaps.esri.com/stor...
The proclamation more or less gave a mandate to penetrate deeply into the Southern states in order to enforce it.
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A little clarification
The internment of Japanese-Americans was immoral and unnecessary, the use of census information in wartime to track enemy aliens was less problematic than the internment of Japanese-Americans who were American citizens. The law allowing the use of the census data was passed in 1942 and repealed in 1947.
http://www.scientificamerican....
However, Sherman had every legal right to get census data on farmland (not persons) in any even he used information from state of georgia quoting sherman
"I had obtained not only the United States census-tables of 1860," Sherman wrote in his Memoirs, "but a compilation made by the Controller of the State of Georgia for the purpose of taxation, containing in considerable detail the 'population and statistics' of every county in Georgia" (Sherman)." -
Another Google Maps Style Version
http://servicesbeta.esri.com/demos/web-tiled/xkcd-1110.html Totally amazing work, my favorite XKCD. Now if someone turns it into a game...
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The Esri Nonprofit Organization Program
"The Esri Nonprofit Organization Program is designed to provide conservation and humanitarian nonprofit organizations around the world an affordable means of acquiring ArcGIS software and services for organized volunteer efforts. Other types of nonprofit organizations may also be eligible for membership in the program."
http://www.esri.com/nonprofit/index.html
If you can get ArcGIS at a reasonable price, do it. Save time, save labor. Build on a solid foundation.
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Re:The old Guard from my perspective
Meant to post ESRI Web Mapping API link.
it's okay. you get twice the karma by "forgetting" to post the link.
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Re:The old Guard from my perspective
Meant to post ESRI Web Mapping API link.
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Re:The old Guard from my perspective
In response to the old guard comments, some good supporting evidence of the newcomers understanding the importance of getting away from flat layer/shape/whatever files is SQL Spatial support in SQL Server 2008. If you haven't played with it, well, it is pretty impressive for Microsoft (at a hefty cost, of course).
I also heard rumoring of upcoming Spatial support in Azure (might be already here), so if that goes well, companies dealing with alot of customer map data will have a sweet way to move it all to the cloud, and serve it out via web services, and with many of the different mapping providers, this will provide excellent venues for serving out customer map-data from the cloud, allieviating them them on-site storage head-aches, and makiing things much more scalable and modular.
I know tools like ESRI's line of products have also come a long way in terms of Web 2.0-ish kind of stuff, as well, and they are worth checking out if you want to get into professional GIS work. -
Re:Deposit Scheme
That's using up everyone's time at home and at work. If you use up five minutes per person per week, that's still two full working weeks (83 hours of time per week) per thousand people.
You're awfully worried about what other people do with their time. Really, you're worried about 5 minutes per person per week? And you post here on Slashdot? I'd like to see what you think about spam.... it must be painful to watch.
Then we get to landfills. I simply don't buy, especially in places like the US with a lot of land, that landfills are that costly to build and operate.
Welcome to the real world. As it turns out, your wrong:
The useful life of the Larimer county landfill is anticipated to expire within the next eight years. Currently, due to heightened public sensibility and legislative pressure, the process of siting a landfill in the U.S. can take up to a decade. In the Colorado Front Range, siting a landfill is particularly difficult because the mountains to the west restrict development while the population through immigration has nearly doubled in twenty years.
Not everywhere has lots of places to stuff garbage. Go do a cursory search if you think Larimer County is an exception. Yeah, you can ship it to Africa, but, it's going to cost you. Might think about decreasing the amount of crap you send and how does that happen? Recycling (or precycling, that's better but a different discussion). In the little town in Southeast Alaska that I live in, siting an EPA approved landfill with a 20 year lifespan cost 20 million dollars. That's a lot of garbage. Currently we recycle (and get some marginal return) and try to get the bigger shippers to think about what they are sending up in the first place. Then we ship the rest to Oregon.
The world just might be more complex than you think and sometimes marginal improvements are all that you can do. -
Arclogistics!?
This program is not free but it seems to work very well: http://www.esri.com/software/arclogistics/index.html You can keep track of thousands of orders, thousands of customers, and thousands of trucks. You can manage a whole logistics system including planning out efficient routes, etc.
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Streamlines and Bottles
I posted this once before, but here is a good link to an ArcGIS 'Message in a Bottle' plotter. Now I know the dynamics of an oil spill and the dynamics of a floating bottle are apples and oranges, but it still provides an inkling of the possible ramifications of this goop spreading. Click a couple points around the perimeter of the spill, and just watch the areas that will be affected due to lack of early containment.
I understand they are a business, but dammit if they didn't do everything in their power to eek money out of it, even after it was deemed a catastrophe. Yes, I understand they are an oil company and that killing the well is your least favorite option because it doesn't make your money, but well, I believe intentions are a bit 'questionable' at best when it comes to the order of control methodologies. -
Re:Streamlines
Here is a better example, its a bit more responsive and its hosted directly on the ArcGIS demo center, no registration required, (just?) silverlight. Zoom in to the gulf and just start clicking.
And yes, again, this is probably wildly inaccurate and unpredictable, but it is still pretty cool. -
digitize me
I've used ESRI to digitize and geo-rectify paper maps, you could see what they offer. They have the big high-res scanner and experience that you need. Who knows, maybe they have a history buff on their staff that would do some pro-bono work. http://www.esri.com/
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Re:Get these on Verizon!!!
Attention Google: if you want Android to challenge Apple, you have to get it on Verizon. Verizon is the only company with an infrastructure that can kick AT&T in the teeth.
This is a US only issue, Google are looking at the entire world. Android is not doing badly in the US (1 million G1's sold in the first six months) but mobile (cellular) networks are better built and better regulated in the rest of the world which is why Australia and Europe have all four Android phones whilst the US has just released it's second.
Here is a 3G coverage map of the world and 21 MB PDF of the same map. Brown in 2G and yellow is 3G, Europe and Australia have greater coverage of 3G then the US. Even Indonesia and Malaysia have better coverage and lets not even look at Japan or Korea. -
Re:Call a tow truck
My back-of-the-napkin estimate says you claim it is only ~300 miles to the far side of the planet.
You seem to be using elapsed distance over elapsed time as a measure of the rover's speed. However, the rovers are often sitting still doing science and taking pictures for a good deal of the time, so that's not a realistic speed.
So, Let's see... [/me finds napkin, turns over]... 148 years at MER top speed of 5 cm/s (as per NASA site) comes to about 234,000 km, or 47,000km if you use the 1cm/s average speed the rover gets when you take obstacle avoidance into effect. Opportunity could drive itself around Mars twice in that time. Of course this assumes travel 24h/day (or 24.6597h/sol). If we only have usable sunlight for a third of that time, then Opportunity can only travel 16,000km.
So how far apart are the rovers? Plugging some latitude and longitude figures into a great circle calculator and compensating for the different Mars parameters... 9700km apart, as the Martian crow-equivalent flies. So, assuming a travel day of 1/3 of a sol at the 0.036 km/h rover self drive speed, and allowing for an increase in distance to avoid obstacles of 50-60% - 15,000km.
Wow! My my pull-a-number-out-of-thin-air wild guess came remarkably close. -
Re:It gives you something just as bad...
Of course not. I take pride in anything i do, and Most of my software ESRI GIS is Database intensive so theyll have to have the DB in 20 years, but if i knew my software 20 years from know would be being used, id be very proud of my work.Im sure everyone at MAXIS feels the same way. Although the game looks more like something a 9 year old would play, Im sure its worth getting to play
... the DRM is another thing. There is nothing i hate more than restrictions on my stuff. I was the kid that always took the chain cover off my bike (so my show laces could make me face plant?) and the fact that the DRM tells me i can only install the software 3 times is bullshit. If you own a license, you should be able to copy it and install it (for your use only) on as many machines as you want. But thats why i [dont] :) break laws and Rip games cuz the DRM pisses me off. Always an alternative to not installing a rootkit is to dual boot with windows, And you cant tell me you cant get ahold of a copy of 2k, cuz they are everywhere. Or even better, Does spore work under Wine/Cedega? Its really too bad they need something like DRM to ruin the fun for everyone else just so some punks cant illegally copy. then again, maybe its worse because it keeps some people from buying the game to boycott DRM? Man, I never thought the Direct Rendering Manager was THAT bad ... ;) -
Re:I had a dream...
My temptation was excessively high. I got the shaft for no good reason, and I was told that either I'd resign or they'd sue me for some kind of breach of contract: they didn't want to have to pay my unemployment, so they made this threat...I can't even remember what it was about now, but I do remember that the PHB...
Oh wait, I remember, it was an Arcview application that had never gotten completed because the demographic data was hung up at the state level, and he kept calling it Arcserve. So yea, I'm sitting there listening to this fat idiot with the bad hairpiece threatening me with a breach of contract dealing with a Windows backup program which we didn't even sell.
What a moron.
Anyway the "contract" was a complete handshake agreement, no paper work, no actual project specs, nothing, and the ball was in the clients court anyway, and in my opinion, they had no real interest in it in the first place. Basically he was trying to force me out to isolate one of the partners (my actual boss), and he was a real asshole about it.
So I had a moment, when I realized I had basically unlimited access, where I was tempted. I'm not a fuckup like the guy in San Fran either; I could have set shit in motion that would never have been caught, and I knew the state their backups were in.
But I'm a professional, and while I never would have been caught, I wouldn't have felt like I could be trusted with the big systems, wouldn't have been able to sit in an interview and say that my personal integrity matters more to me than just about anything.
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14th Most Obese in Country
...high rates of obesity (soul food), diabetes (sweet tea), and heart disease....
Having just moved from there, to the Bay Area, Ca....
Yes, Ga is unhealthy. Alot of the blame can also be put on the government of the state, which continues to push for more and wider highways (as if 16 lanes isnt enough), continue to allow and support the majority of power plants running on fossil fuels, mainly coal and including 3 of the dirtiest in the US, with two in the top 3 of that list. This, combined with naturally high humidity, ultra high pollen counts and high temperatures makes the air quality suck, putting Atlanta in 4th for most challenging place to live with asthma and consistently in the Top Ten smoggiest cities. This keeps people inside. Going anywhere basically means driving there as sprawl and the resulting proliferation of more roads without increased mass transit or even bike lanes(again, gvmt sponsored), reckless drivers in large vehicles thanks to (previously, and relatively) cheap gas and the whole "southern/redneck" bit that leans towards F250s with 12"lift on mud tires, and the horrid air make it difficult to impossible to walk or bike anywhere (outside of Down/Mid Town Atl) for fear of your life. So people tend to sit on their fat asses in their offices all day and eat at one of about 20 McDonads or Waffle Houses in the 2mi radius of their home (after driving there of course)... not that I miss having a 24h eatery nearby (I miss my WaHo and Marietta Diner!). Add to all that that NASCAR is a "Sport" in Ga, and as such, "exercising" consists of sitting in bleachers (or on the sofa), smoking, drinking budweiser and eating chilli cheese dogs while watching cars go in circles.Alot of this could be fixed by improving mass-transit, curbing Sprawl (which is what really caused the drought) and improving Atlanta's Bikability. Generally getting people out of their cars and walking or biking places. MARTA's subway line only goes to about 3 useful places: the airport, downtown, and perimeter mall, while a majority of people live in Cobb County, which rejected having anything to do with a Marta rail line (think: "It will bring in the colored people to steal our TV's!").
Ga is way behind in most rankings of things as well: the Gov'ner has repeatedly struck down attempts to allow Sunday sales of any alcoholic beverage (outside of a restaurant), the most recent time saying it would teach "better time management," thus keeping Georgia one of 3 states still having such arcane blue laws. The state is kept in the past though laws like this, as well as the control the churches have over it and its citizens, which al
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Science and Google toolsGoogle continues to crank out new services, products, APIs, tools, and more. It's really quite staggering, but they do have the cash and brains to do it. But the investments they make are huge. I'm talking about money, time and brainpower. Working within the geospatial domain (a blend of GIS, remote sensing, GPS, virtual globes, webmapping and much more) and running a website about it, clearly the "newcomers" (mainly Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) with what has been often called neogeography are making serious inroads in traditional GIS software providers such as ESRI. (rejoice
/. users, open source is also making serious inroads there too)
The thing is, neogeography *is* useful and efficient for many tasks. Not everybody needs "a real" powerful GIS to visualize and analyse geodata. That's why I can believe this rumored Google Ocean will be attractive to many oceanography scientists (as well to hobbyists, of course). See this recent article named "Google Earth, GIS, and the Great Divide: A new and simple method for sharing paleontological data" -
Re:peaceful applications could save more livesGood idea, but it has been around for a while.
Google for "GIS" + "law enforcement" or "disaster response", to see lots of sources. For example ESRI produces several products for these purposes.
The most recent trends are to add real-time synchronous and asynchronous collaboration and knowledge sharing capabilities on top of the basic GIS "maps + database", to get capabilities like those required in military command and control applications.
As mentioned above, inter-agency cooperation [and inter-operability] is an even harder problem. Remember: "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."
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Geographics Major
Some CS major probably figured this out instead of traveling salesman.
More likely was a Geographics Major and a group of the many people who optimize routes. There is a whole industry for that sort of thing as well as software from ESRI and I am sure many others. GIS software will route things based on stop signs vs. stop lights, traffic congestion and time of day, can even account for taking the stops with the biggest load in your truck first to increase fuel efficiency. I can only imagine that UPS has a goodly number of people who do nothing but operate GIS software and this commonly known aspect of route finding is actually becoming part of their agenda. -
Try Microsoft and ESRI
Got some information on the table.
Seems the table works using a product from ESRI called ArcGlobe and some Northrop Grumman ArcEngine code that controls the touch and the menu. It uses controls originally developed by a company called applied minds. System runs on windows. Seems like it has a lot of potential but as most windows users know - programs tend to crash at embarrassing moments.
In terms of potential, it really depends on what you are trying to do, but costing a couple of million dollars I would think you should have something really important to do. But, it could always be a nice expensive show piece for people who have stock options in a company and like to push it as something to use good tax funds for.
I wonder what other kinds of businesses and government entities use this thing and for what?
http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/summer03articles/ introducing-arcglobe.html
http://www.touchtable.com/ -
Re:District Strength
How or what does a district really do? Perhaps I'm naive but isn't a vote a vote? What matters what district you're in? If 100 people vote, 51 for x and 49 for y. It shouldn't matter who voted where.
Well, say you are someone with a stake in the balance of power between the Reps and the Dems in the House of Representatives. For example, lets pretend you are ... I don't know ... the leader of one of the parties in the House. Let's further say that the House is closely divided. To you a couple of changed seats either way can mean the difference between being (arguably) the most powerful person in the US, and meerly being the lead whiner.
Now lets say you somehow, by hook or by crook, manage to get yourself in control of redistricting a nice big state ... like say ... Texas.
Now lets suppose this state happens to have a lot of close districts, 50/50 rep and dem. If you can get yourself access to the newest census data mining software, you can figure out where reps and dems are down to a really low resolution. So what you can do is take 5 or so 50/50 districts. Pick one, and split all its reps you can find into the other districts. Move something like %15 of the other 4 districts' dems into the first district. Now instead of 5 50/50 districts, you have 4 safely rep districts and 1 very safe dem district. Do this a couple of more times, and you can pick up a lot of seats.
Of course there's a price to pay for this. That new safe dem in the house is probably going to be very liberal now, where she perhaps couldn't get away with that before. However, the other 4 reps are going to be a bit more conservative, since they can now get away with that. The one liberal is in the minority, and can be labeled a kook and ignored. Another drawback is that you just made the House way more partisan. But what do you care? You're now the most powerful person in the US! Time to go have a talk with those rich lobbyists... -
Re:Surprising?
Ok, I'm too stoned (on codeine) and sick to continue this. Co-60 is a red haring.
Of the 100 million curies (4 exabecquerels) of radioactive material, the short lived radioactive isotopes such as I131 Chernobyl released were initially the most dangerous. Due to their short half-lives of 5 and 8 days they have now decayed, leaving the more long-lived Cs 137 (with a half-life of 30.07 years) and Sr 90 (with a half-life of 28.78 years) as main dangers.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#
N uclear_reactor_accidentsThe groundwater issue I was talking about seems to have subsided a bit in the years since I've read up on it (more likely it's better understood). It's still an issue though.
Fig. 3 shows a 2D plot of the total elevation level of the Shelter site above Baltic Sea level in m. Furthermore the positions of observations wells for investigation of the groundwater and the aspiration units for air contamination sampling are depicted. Fig. 4 shows Shelter site from the north-west with height profile of the territory and the groundwater table. Fig. 5 shows the groundwater contamination with the radionuclide Sr 90, the contamination for Cs 137 is very similar.http://gis2.esri.com/library/userconf/proc02/pap0
6 58/p0658.htm Ctl+F "5.3" - for the appropriate section (nice graph).I think you just killed my immune system.
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So much for Data Analysis
It looks like many quantitative applications are currently not going to work on Vista, at least for now. Major statistical analysis, data mining and Geographic Information Systems tools that don't run on Vista include:
SPSS, SAS, MATLAB and SAP and ESRI ArcGIS
Eh, this is no big deal, right? I mean, who really wants to know about facts and numbers? Especially when you are using a *computer*. -
Re:Not exactly accurateCheck out ESRI's desktop products for support on Microsoft Vista. Apple is by no means the only company to not immediately support Microsoft's latest OS. Yes, releases have been available but that doesn't require the company to have an update immediately available. How long have some of the Apple products been out?
Oh, I looked at some of the IBM Tivoli documents as well and when selecting the OS in the support section, they haven't updated to include MS Windows Vista yet. I also saw the following question in one of the Tivoli support questions:
Problem
Several customers have asked if TBSM has plans to support the soon to be released Vista Operating System.
Solution
Due to the upcoming TBSM 4.1 release, there are currently no plans for TBSM 3.1 to support/run on the Microsoft Vista O/S.
From the BEA WebLogic site, neither their current release (9.2) or their preview release (10) are listed as supporting Vista. They only cover XP.
From a quick check of the Oracle website, they didn't have support at Vista release as well. 32 bit support 1st quarter 2007, 64 bit sometime in the second half.
Why bash Apple when they are not the only company that hasn't jumped at Microsoft's latest creation. -
Re:Now, by "sift through" ...
This type of thing would make me laugh, but for the fact that one of the primary database applications I support has this sort of silliness built in. ESRI's ArcSDE 9.1 in the MSSQL version uses a table named SDE_table_registry. The primary purpose of this table is to keep track of the type of data stored in the other tables. While this does make some sense in that the data in a geodatabase is usually classified as either point, vector or raster it would be nice if they would key off of the object_id (sysObjects or sys.objects) instead of actually listing the table name in SDE_table_registry, and doing so with an nvarchar(13). Also, every row has the current database name as an field as well.
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Re:The Pentagon already bought this,,,
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Re:Next Up: A Google WebOS?
Ah hah; thanks for the explanation! It's been several years since I worked with GIS tools. I remember using ESRI's ArcSomething (IMS?) to overlay training base boundaries with road maps and such, and the discrepancies varied from negligible to annoying—never anything this bad!
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Just so we are clear.....
from the TFA.....
Google Earth will not replace high tech programs like AutoCAD or ESRI's ArcGIS
The topic missing from this discussion is a simple question: Where does all this data come from?.
You can't plan bike routes, model road trips, view cityscapes, etc. unless you have good data to start with. Neither Google Earth nor KML function to build geographic data. The tools for doing that are as follows: v
ArcGIS, for vector-based data and some imagery.
ERDAS IMAGINE, for imagery, and
for all you open source kiddies:
GRASS and GRASS for Macs
Without these basic development tools, client-side web apps like Google Earth don't exist. These data have a long history and complex standards for verification and use.
In a community normally so concerned with standards, metadata, etc., I am surprised by the Gee whiz view comparing Google Earth and similar client side apps. -
Good article
The article is in my opinion well-rounded and truthful with no fanboyism on either side, And as a co-admin on the NASA World Wind forums, it pains me to say that!
I'm particularly looking forward to Microsoft's offering since I know some of the imagery they have lined up, and "neat" describes it pretty well.
2006 will be an interesting year for imagery on the desktop, especially with ESRI getting in on the act, too - their app, ArcGIS Explorer, looks extremely nice: http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer/ -
Re:A little too late?
The big deal about web mapping services for GIS shops is whether or not they work with the back end systems. In my state, more than 90% of the state, county, and local GIS departments run on ESRI software for their actual data services, so for them, putting data on the web with ESRI's ARCIMS web software is an easy way to go. Unfortunately, ESRI software is massively expensive. Fortunately, you can buy it in modules, so the web service is seperate from the database. Government agencies at all levels could probably benefit from open source web mapping tools, as long as those tools are compatible with the back end. Another very popular open source GIS web application is UMN's MapServer.
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I'm guessing....
I'm guessing that your real question isn't how to use Oracle, but how to create a geodatabase. You might try "Designing Geodatabases: Case Studies in GIS Data Modeling"
http://gis.esri.com/esripress/display/index.cfm?fu seaction=display&websiteID=85&moduleID=0/
A google search on geodatabases turns up a number of similar resources. -
Re:ESRI's ARC products and other GIS tools
With the release of Google maps, NASA's Worldwind, and MSN's Virtual Earth, I don't expect ESRI's products to continue their dominance in the GIS market. Everyday brings new extensions for Google maps allowing the importing of GI data. At the minimum, I predict they'll lower the price of their products.
I know a couple people who work there and they say that tensions are very high. -
Re:I think that's just MS way
True that Microsoft didn't copy from Google but if I remember correctly, Microsoft started the TerraServer project to compete with ESRI when they released their ArcIMS and ArcSDE applications (sorry, both links are for their latest releases rather than their earlier products). Way back, Microsoft's MapPoint (think that was the application) was competing with ESRI's ArcView application. ESRI began developing web based mapping tools and Microsoft decided to try to compete with them. If anything, Microsoft copied from ESRI or possibly another GIS vendor.
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Re:I think that's just MS way
True that Microsoft didn't copy from Google but if I remember correctly, Microsoft started the TerraServer project to compete with ESRI when they released their ArcIMS and ArcSDE applications (sorry, both links are for their latest releases rather than their earlier products). Way back, Microsoft's MapPoint (think that was the application) was competing with ESRI's ArcView application. ESRI began developing web based mapping tools and Microsoft decided to try to compete with them. If anything, Microsoft copied from ESRI or possibly another GIS vendor.
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Re:I think that's just MS way
True that Microsoft didn't copy from Google but if I remember correctly, Microsoft started the TerraServer project to compete with ESRI when they released their ArcIMS and ArcSDE applications (sorry, both links are for their latest releases rather than their earlier products). Way back, Microsoft's MapPoint (think that was the application) was competing with ESRI's ArcView application. ESRI began developing web based mapping tools and Microsoft decided to try to compete with them. If anything, Microsoft copied from ESRI or possibly another GIS vendor.
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Re:Some free solutions
Nadaou is on the right train of thought. If I can offer the following:
Hardware
Stick with consumer Garmin, etrex units are small (easy to conceal), easy to use and affordable.
Software
Consider ESRI's free ArcExplorer. It supports MANY data format, very simply to use, and is cross platform.
http://esri.com/software/arcexplorer/index.html
Data
I highly recommend Landsat satellite imagery, specifically Landsat GeoCover 2000. It is free, global coverage at 30 metre resolution, compressed, yada yada, trust me, it is exceptional!
Get it here:
https://zulu.ssc.nasa.gov/mrsid/
http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/portal/geocover/earthsa t.shtml
These MrSID wavelet compressed images can also be viewed using a free geoviewer from LizardTech:
http://www.lizardtech.com/download/dl_options.php? page=viewers
Do as much prep work at home before going over there. I would suggest printing maps with UTM grid on them (this is the grid that the GPS can tell your position in) - I've always found this more useful then Lat-Long (how far away is 7 seconds?!?). Essentially build one map at a good logical scale like 1:10,000, then PAN & PRINT, PAN & PRINT, repeat as necessary. -
Re:Been using often this morning....It totally blows away any geographical user interface ESRI or Autodesk or anyone else has.
I dunno about that...it looks just like ArcGlobe to me. Except for the 'free' part of course.
So are you as bummed as me that you didn't realize Google was hiring GISers?
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Re:Yeah, But...
You're missing the point: you don't need that complexity any more. Google Maps basically gives me the ability to use a $300 thin client to accomplish (some of the) tasks I do at work using a $5000 Xeon machine with $10000 worth of ESRI software to do at work. What's more, if Google comes up with some way to make Google Maps better, like, say, add satellite images, they implement that functionality overnight and have millions of users using it the next day. Compare with the release-patch-rerelease paradigm of old. I don't consider JavaScript and the browser and it to be a brain-damaged programming environment--you just have to remember that you are no longer expected to do any heavy lifting on the client side, and the majority of the GUI tasks are already handled for you by the browser itself. Most of the "refinment[s] in programming interfaces that have been around since the 70s" were to simplify those very chores. In that sense, the limited functionality provided by JS is really quite elegant.
Also, emulating stateful-ness over the web is being handled at a much lower level than the browser these days, and to good effect. See Tapestry. -
Re:Is this ESRI's software?
MS definately does not use ESRI's software and is years behind the power and flexibility ESRI's suite of desktop and server tools provides. See ArcWebServices project for some really cool stuff. Street maps and satellite imagery are only the beginning. Try overlaying any number of datasets along with "live" data including traffic, weather, crime, etc. etc.
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Who is innovating?
It seems like neither Google nor MS is really innovating much on this; granted the scrolling ability is cool with Google, but web-based GIS systems have been around for a long time, such as ESRI's ArcIMS, Autodesk's MapGuide and myriad others that support Web Mapping Services (WMS)
If I wanted to, I can download ortho photos of the entire United States from the USGS or from the USDA's NAIP program.
I guess is seems that these days it's actually pretty easy to build and manipulate web based GIS systems, so I'm curious to see what the next Big Thing will be. Maybe better integration with mobile devices? -
Re:Intelligence an asset
Spatio (Spatial) = Location
IBM has released a Linux based technology enabling the visualization of infectious agents across the United States at any point in time, providing scientists and public health officials with a powerful tool for understanding, and potentially preventing, the spread of infectious diseases.
Temporal = TimeBeing able to model the data using different visualization/modelling techniques has the potential to allow officials to identify areas of interest. For more info look at ESRIs Website.
For example: Map the Maximum growth rate per head of population to identify geographic areas where the disease grew the fastest. Combine this with census/demographic information such as Population density, ethnicity, Std of living. Display as a heat map (eg Red Max, Green Min).
Visually, some data can be mined for useful information qith some speed.
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Re:Huh?
I can't speak for the hardware in the 911 center prior to my working with the county as they were in the process of switching over already. I know they had two sections in the building where one was for the older equipment and the other for the "new" system, which was where I spent most of my time when I was at the building. My involvement was primarily from the counties GIS department where we prepared a centerline vector file for loading into the system. I know the previous system used tables where the records weren't geo-referenced in any way but they worked primarily due to the efforts of the fire fighters verify printouts with their extensive knowledge of the areas they covered. My task was to prepare the setup a system for attributing and maintaining the counties centerline file and writing a conversion routine to the Tiburon data format (which oddly enough was still flat files).
I'm not entirely familiar with the systems you've listed beyond knowing the names. When I started my career, I was at the DEC Ultrix time frame with a VMS system, but that was for a company that converted paper maps to GIS datasets. The VMS was primarily used to extract county CAMA (tax files) and the Ultrix systems were used to run workstation ArcInfo (ESRI).
I think I'll have to find out how to tour my current counties 911 system. Should be interesting to see the operations. -
i like this style
Make a webpage something like this
I use this site all the time to look up little arcane tidbits of info, and it's really usable.