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Geocoding All Content
martin dodge writes "What happens when all content is automatically tagged with the geographical location of its production? We are all used to having a date stamp on documents, but I think adding a location stamp opens up lots of new possibilities. Two recent articles look at many of the interesting possible apps/services which are made possible when you ground cyberspace with location. 'Get Caught Mapping' from Guardian Online and 'The Revenge of Geography' by Tom (writer of The Victorian Internet) Standage in the Economist. I think one of the most exciting is for locating online conversations by geographic proximity. Taking Waldo Tobler's First Law of Geography ("Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things"), often nearby conversations are most relevant and interesting. See UpMyStreet's Conversations for an example."
Ya hear that giant sucking sound? That's dozens of black helicopters homing in on your anti-American web page, boy. This-here chart shows all of the missiles they're going to use to blow you to pieces.
What's your damage, Heather?
I think this is just adding more meta data to content, and I am sure many applications do that. I think in the Word Doc the information about the printer is added, might as well add the geographical information.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/19/234625 1
l d=-1&commentsort=0&tid=126&mode=thread&cid=2882245
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26525&thresho
From the gnu website:
m l
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.ht
``Content''
If you want to describe a feeling of comfort and satisfaction, by all means say you are ``content'', but using it as a noun to describe written and other works of authorship is worth avoiding. That usage adopts a specific attitude towards those works: that they are an interchangeable commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it treats the works themselves with disrespect.
Those who use this term are often the publishers that push for increased copyright power in the name of the authors (``creators'', as they say) of the works. The term ``content'' reveals what they really feel.
As long as other people use the term ``content provider'', political dissidents can well call themselves ``malcontent providers''.
Yeah so now the FBI/CIA/DEA and anything else i forgot can have access to even more of your information than before.
How many people on the internet do you *really* want to know your real location?
Ok... now what if I told you that "she" is really a "he", and that the picture "she" game you was off some amateur porn site. Anyone else you'd like to know your real location?
I see this only becoming a privacy issue -- it's removing one of the greatest parts of the internet -- it's anonymity. I've known people like "her" who can express themselves in ways heretofore impossible were it not for the (at least percieved) absolute anonymity of the internet. It would be a shame to see that go, at least from a standpoint of creative expression.
-d
Near Kevin Bakon?
same thing for those super market 'discount' cards
I mean, you trust your local politician, don't you?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How will they deal with evolving documents modified by many people in many different countries?
The potential for invasion of privacy also seems extremely high. Think of oppressive governments using any lists to find "undesirable" documents published in their country and taking "appropriate measures" to stop their production. Although maybe The National Security Strategy will soon take care of such situations (here's hoping :).
The poster seems to think this is a good idea but I'm not so sure about the privacy implications. It would make life a lot easier, though, for law enforcement to track down copyright violators and purveyors of other illicit (read illegal) material.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Look on the bottom of your shoe. It likely says something like "Made in China" (picking a common country at random). If we did this for computer software, we'd simply have tags in the help menu that said "Made in Redmond?"
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
On a more important note - whilst I don't have a problem with open-sourcing the code for that site, which is a mishmash of C++ and php, who knows anything about attempts to come up with a concept of open source datasets? Somewherenear has a useful collection of data relating to bars, restaurants and accommodation in the UK, but it seems to me that just as a form of GPL for software benefits most users, so would an open dataset licence so that the kind of information stored there. The more geolocated information the world has, the more useful it becomes.
Gecoding all the docs would allow all those "wall of china" firewalls to become viable again: simple rule - block all content that's not from the mainland.
Hell, I'm sure it would do wonders for the copyright business....
So, we all be able to answer the question for certain when asked: Who's yer daddy???
Just another day in Paradise
Interesting new twist, though.
A fundamental question is whether all content will automatically be labeled. One of the great benefits of the internet is anonymity. That one can say anything without revealing who you are. In fact, the U.S. court system has commented on this, and how it benefits freedom of speech. I certainly use the freedom, and millions of others do it. Sure with enough effort someone could find out who "MyNameIsFred" really is, but I have no desire to make that easier for them. Given a preference, I would turn-off automatic labelling. If not given a preference, I would not go to such a site. Based on the many slashdotters who hate the registration requirement at NY Times, I don't think I am alone.
...or you will have to fear that some short-tempered angry man (or woman) will drive by your house and shoot you!
But seriously, it's a nice idea as long as it's opt-in. Can't think of too many great uses, though, other than the usual: Where's the next cinema/pharmacy/McDo's?
(If you are in any way offended by this post, please visit me at my home address: Saddam Hussein Boulevard 555, Baghdad, Iraq)
Looking at UpMyStreet is cool to be able to find people who are nearby but I do have to wonder about my privacy. Least with UpMyStreet I choose to say where I live but I can't help wonder what would happen if they plant a cookie in your browser.
You then goto another site that pulls up that cookie via some method and they can geo target you. I can see why marketers might like it so they could target ads at your local area
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Doesn't anyone realize the goal is tracking *everything* you do? One more step to total governmental domination of all content, movement, thought....
This is just one more major step in that direction.
Come on people, wake the hell up.. before its too late ( or is it already... i wonder sometimes )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There have been a few posts saying that geography probably shouldn't matter. Maybe they're right, sort of.
Think about it in terms of searching. I often find myself doing things like, "Honda dealerships". Of course, I naturally have to append "Madison Wisconsin Honda Dealerships" to get any sort of legitimate result.
There is a clear example where refining the internet geographically matters. I would wager that it probably extends even beyond that concept.
I'd imagine too that governments would love to have more control over geographic information for taxation purposes (not a good reason, but one nonetheless).
Geo-stamping data published on the www?
;-)
Why not? And, by the way, make cows fly while you are at it, will you? Thanks.
Case in point: I publish data on a web site located somewhere in North America, using computers based in Europe, through the magic of OpenSSH. And my European ISP does not keep a log of my activities.
Most of the data I publish come from, for example, from web sites published in South-East Asia and China, which is translated by a friend who spends half his time in Taiwan and half his time in Japan, with an occasional stay in Korea.
Now, where on earth is my info created? In Asia, where my friend is, in Europe, where I do most of the web design, or in Northern America, where the web site is officially hosted?
Oh, and I forgot: the information is created using open-source products and a reasonable amount of paranoia, which means all data is anonymized before being posted.
Now, where does my data comes from?
And to those who think this is a silly example: it's actually close to the truth...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Neat technology for something like linking gamers together.
:-)
I kinda like the idea of having no idea at all where online friends are from, unless they care to tell me. Sometimes I can figure it out from little hints (color vs. colour) or if I note that they use phraseology that indicates they use a slavic language to think.
But if I'm gonna play Quake against 'em I guess it's better to pick someone in the same general hemisphere at least.
I dunno about you guys but I have my web service out of Missoula, Montana. http://www.modwest.com I, geographically, am almost half-way around the world from there. I dunno how that info might be useful to others. Geocoding works sometimes - like when I dial up to my Italian ISP and go to google it defaults to the Italian Google. Google allows me to select the English version off of the Italian one.
... and people wonder why the image of GNU-addicts is so tarnished.
For [insert deity here]'s sake!
Q: What are you providing as a content-provider for X?
A: The contents of X.
Enough said. There are many important battles to be fought against too-greedy IP and copyright holders. This isn't one of them.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I guess I can imagine a few circumstances in which this type of information could be useful... but this smells to me like a way to find the closest wal-mart and other marketing schemes more than anything I might find actually useful.
Really, if you're looking to meet people in your neighborhood, go take a walk outside, if you're looking to hear your own point of view (or that of people just like you), turn the TV off for a few minutes.
In an Internet of comments like "country borders are speed bumps on the information superhighway" and such, when we speak of a global internet creating unity, what's the point of putting tags on things so we know where it's created? Isn't the point of ubiquitous communication that we don't have to care where people are any more if we do wish to speak to them?
-JDF
Atlanta, GA, 30342
The harm this will do to content far outweighs its good.
It is a very easy way to let authority figures restrict all objectional material.
We have embargoed products based on their country of origin (think cigars from Cuba). I don't want the possibilty of that happening to information for any citizen of the planet.
-
"...when all content is automatically tagged with the geographical location of its production?"
I would love to have all my digital media tagged in this manner! Yes, high-end Nikon equipment accepts GPS input (remember this?), but that's a separate, external device.I'd love to see it built into cameras (both still & video) and audio recorders. And for visual data, add in a compass so I can know both where it was taken, and which direction it was pointing!
I can do without knowing where an email/document/webpage was written, though. Sometimes more data is good... and sometimes it's just noise.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
The concept of finding local conversations more interesting than other ones is itself interesting. One of the neat features of the internet that everybody loved at first was the fact that it made geography meaningless, and TeenLuvr16 that you met in that AOL chatroom could as easily be a hairy-backed man from Australia as it could be Steve Case in Northern Virginia, or some schmoe in Japan.
Now that people have complete geographical independence, they want more geographical specific information? I guess it sort of makes sense as people want to expand the functionality of the internet, but what's really interesting about this is not how it's done or whether it's done, but if it focuses the social interest of the internet more inward than it traditionally has been.
Anything like this though is definitely a good example of something that should be optional, not mandatory.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I suppose this could prove where you authored something, as well as when. Yet I just can't think of why this is important when the internet transcends boundaries. Why would I want to do this when the whole point of my digital life seems to be that I can conduct it via IP over anything?
"This message brought to you by LOUD YELLING, the future of nationwide wireless communication."
Can't we all live in anonymity? Isn't this a bit excess, to start stamping all files with a location string? The headers for files are already too large anyways why should we bloat them with another piece of only special use info. Its really quite pointless as most of the time when a file is moved all such header info is lost. Therefore all the files on a computer will have the same location eventhough they my have been downloaded.
Checking out my form of escapism.
Is already possible for web pages. See http://geourl.org/
Perfect! Now the government can censor Al Jazeera and Arab News with the touch of a button!
I had added GeoTags when /. mentioned them quite some time ago.
All the "Agg Evil Gov." posts, I really dont get, as with all HTML-metadata it is optional (and almost always under used).
That said, the London 'Bloggers'[1] page is funky use of the same sort of thing.
[1] I want to kill the prat that started calling Web Logs/Journals "blogs" it is just such a frigging stupid work.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
GPS can track down to a few meters anything in the world...this is the most elegant solution to tag anything geographically. Nerds like elegant solutions. Good.
The GeoURL service seems to have a pseudo-standard for this. To geo-code your content add the following META tags to it:
<meta name="ICBM" content="XX.XXXXX, XX.XXXXX">
<meta name="DC.title" content="THE NAME OF YOUR SITE">
The ICBM meta-tag there is where you put the coordinates. More info.
Another similar service seems to be GeoTags
Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
2. you have those that think this is the greatest thing
Then you have those like myself that see this as just another technology/technique that will find a use or two but in general will just make doing technical stuff more complicated without any real benefit.
I think that if that kind of thing were available today, we would not have any news of the war from the field. With the same point of view, could be security reccomendations against this (in times of peace, you always have terrorism). And all this concerns, are just in the military point of view, could be more more universal objections.
Webloggers can specify nearest airport locations in their FOAF files.
o af/foaf-a-matic.html
r /2 002/month/12#9 (airport stuff)
a f. shtml
http://xmlns.com/foaf/
http://www.ldodds.com/f
http://www.perceive.net/pages/page/articles/yea
http://www.sixapart.com/log/2003/01/fun_with_fo
(moveable type stuff)
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
with the ability to trace the origination of content it would become far more viable for the censors around the globe to be more assertive.
there is little doubt that some web content of a fascist nature must be generated in france (where it is illegal), and whilst i disagree with such content i would always choose to allow freedom of speech (such that they could be ridiculed)... but with locational information in meta data, it would be very easy for governments and other interested parties to become more stringent in their enforcement.
it is a terrible idea for the majority of information and documents.
that said, a flip side to the argument is more meanigful search results, especially when you look for services within a geographical region. i would opt for a few more minutes on google and freedom of speech than this additional useability though.
I think the most exciting possibility is the ability for China and Iran and any other repressive regieme to easily block content from the outside world. Oops, that packet came from the US, thats no good.
Hmm...looks like you're in China - time for the industrial strength spam filter. And then a copy of the message will be automatically forwarded to your government.
Anonymity is an extremely important part of the Internet - we shouldn't try to lose it. Geocoding has possibilities, but many constitute major invasions of privacy.
PS - Today, the principal of my school pissed me off, so I signed him up for every newsletter I could find. I want the ability to do that in the future - but I bet he doesn't want me to have it. It's trivial to see that this cuts both ways.
I worked a GPS enabled web portal a couple years back and it is a powerful tool. But the biggest barrier is not every piece of data is geocoded, or the long/lat is wrong. Even commercial directory listing companies like InfoUSA have a high percentage of error. Back in 1999/2000 I worked on a project that use directory listings data from InfoUSA. More than half the geocodes were wrong. For those who are afraid of big brother like behavior, well it's fairly easy if you have a client on the phone. The software and technology already exists, but the biggest barrier is political. Phone companies want to make money from it, but they don't really know how. That's one of the reason they have been purposely dragging their feet.
Apache is doing it already:
http://cvs.apache.org/~dirkx/sgala.html
Or play with this also http://demo.asemantics.com/wms/asf?styles=emotion
. Similar stuff for freebsd is at the same location http://http://demo.asemantics.com/zoom.pl and more powerfull www.asemantics.com/showcase/zoom.html.
FUN!
90% of the online community will be proven to live in Antarctica.
Think of the economic and status benifits to Antarctician society
right now, the world needs ways to bridge peoples in all places and allow them to discourse if all the violence - from *anyone* - has any chance to stop. Talking to my next door nieghbor on the web not only makes me *much* less likely to be exposed to different viewpoints and ideas, cultures and moralities but also keeps me in my comfort zone since I don't need to worry about what common ideas we may not share about any given topic. After all, it's hard to see something differently standing shoulder to shoulder looking at it together.
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
In the architecture, each master document had actually a 1:M relationship with its geodocuments. The geodocument carried the contents of the document, translated for that geo and also located on a different geo-based server (IBM has a very large network). Every document had to have a version in Simple English (SE), the level of English used so that auto-translators could achieve a high probability of success during the translation. Note that the SE version might not ever be directly displayed, since it could be more simplistic than a standard English version.
User preferences could be set in one of several ways:
- Show me content in my native language only
- Show me content in my native language if possible, offer transations
- Show me content in all languages, let me decide
In this way, the architecture could flex to the abilities of the user. If a user could only read their language, that's all they saw. If they could try the SE version, the architecture offered it. If they wanted to try a translation, they could.The geodocuments also supported the distribution of the documents into their cache-optimized locations, so that a user's request would be routed most effectively to servers most likely located near them. Regardless of the way we'd like the web to work, location does account for speed.
All in all, it was a bold design and one of which I am proud. Too bad I left to go start my own .com, but we did get the first versions done. Now, it really appears IBM has gone back to links.
...tizzyd
Say I'm located in the central US, but I'm doing work remotely on a server resident in New Delhi.
Which location is attached to the document?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
1 - Being anonymous IS important. Do you want everything you do being tracked? *I* don't, regardless of the fact I'm not doing anything illegal, its no ones business, period. ( I wont debate whether that is even possible now, I'm talking the ideal situation ).
... even those issues are guaranteed as absolute rights in the constitution.. you would call me nuts.. but we are there ( even beyond that really, those were just simple examples ) .. today..
2 - Knowledge of everyone's action is part of control. if you have total information then you have the ability to control the peoples action ( similar to 'herding' cattle ). while by itself it may not mean control I agree, its part of the process, a necessary part of end goal of total control of the people. ( and to maintain that control afterwards )
If you think that is good, move to a fascist or socialist country, and see how it feels to be watched 24/7 in order to control behavior.
4 - Control of thought, true the internet wont save/condemn you on that, but its again a slow process of manipulation. If f you get used to being watched on the internet, then you are more prone to accept it in the real world.. Same goes for many things that are accepted over time due to the slow perseverance in seemingly non related areas. People are susceptible to that form of mind control as a whole..
You can call me extremist, and paranoid, but if I told you 10 years ago a company that produces records would be demanding for the right to search your home at will . or that your friendly government would be taking away your right to protect yourself, or be searched on the street "at will'
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I understand that the term "author" is more accurate than "creator" because copyright law uses "author", but what word better describes the concept of "works of authorship other than computer programs" than "content"? RMS fails to give positive examples for some of the buzzwords in his "words to avoid" page.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There is an inherent danger in using Tobler's First Law in a communications context. It's focus is on the impact of similar experiences as felt by the individual. We "empathize" with an injustice 16,000 miles away. We "experience" one 6 miles away.
The danger is when one group believes they have a "better perspective" because of location. If you are having a conversation with a person about Iraq and they tell you they are from Pakistan or the United States does it influence how you interpret what they say? Should it? Do you provide their ideas with stronger support if they are closer to you or the event?
As the people of Iraq are closest to Saddam, they are a better judge of the current US/Iraq situation. Equally so, because Americans are closest to their government, they are a better judge of what is right. Now with Americans in Iraq who is a better judge?
While GeoTagging is becoming more popular, it carries a prejudice. You are no longer expressing your opinion you are expressing your "French" opinion or your "German" opinion. Your facts are "Swiss" facts, or "American" facts. Your beliefs are "South African" beliefs or "Australian" beliefs.
There may be value in putting context around what you state, however it may serve just as well to cloud the message by providing context before the message. And that may lead to the question of what is the Truth ?
if(geocode=="ASIA" || geocode=="AFRICA" || geocode="EAST_EUROPE") then
{
sendmailitem(totrash);
}
sounds okay to me...
I'm always amazed at how many gizmos and services are sold on the premise that they will help you locate a restaurant when you're travelling. If you had enough sense to find your way to a strange city, doesn't it follow that you would manage to find food once you got there (and maybe even to avoid the kind of tourist trap that would advertise on such a service?)
Like most people i couldn't care less where someone is located. It's your message that interests me (or not). The content is important.
I can only see this is coming in handy in cases where the law is broken (i.e. kiddiepr0n or online stalking etc..). But i cannot see this as a reason to throw away any privacy. It makes it easier to catch the perpetrator but it's not that it isn't otherwise possible. However, if i would like to post something anonimously because of some issues that are political or otherwise problematic (whistleblowers) i could really do without a geographical tag. It would be like a big neon sign pointing to me which says "He did it!". And i'd rather would have those PI firms have a little more trouble to find me.
Of course, these things can be forged but it could only be done by the tech savvy person and not joe six-pack.
Geolocation.
Because what everyone knows is that the internet is about geographical location, and enabling those who are close together to work together. It's certainly not about letting people far away work together. And it certainly doesn't make location totally irrelevant. Location is more important now than ever.
Sheesh, this just proves that just because you can do something doesn't mean anyone is going to care.
...but because of the abuse factor, and the numerous questions involved(do you update the geostamp when it passes through a system that reprocesses the content, like we do with timestamps? is this a router level concept or a user level concept?), I think it may be best to included the location as a part of the content itself rather than in the header.
Reuters is already doing this with something they call a "dateline." They also encode usernames with something called a "byline," and summarize content with "jump text."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Geo-stamping data published on the www will just make censorship easier
Think blocking all middle east news site covering war with the a press of a button instead of blocking them one by one..
DNS already has resource records for a host/IP that provide location.
:)
The record is LOC and defined in RFC 1876
Copying a snippit from oreilly's DNS and BIND:
In its basic form, the LOC record takes latitude, longitude and altitude (in that order) as its record-specific data. Latitude and longitude are expressed in the format:
degrees [minutes [seconds.fractional_seconds]] (N|S|E|W)
Altitude is expressed in meters.
Ex.: huskymo.acmebw.com. IN LOC 40 2 0.373 N 105 17 23.528 W 1638m
Notice pretty much no one uses this?
Obviously one doesnt need to worry about the new data at all if it is just an option, as the option in DNS is not used at all now.
If this new piece of data was required, well, then start yelling
OK, the fact that I imagine there's an enemy behind every bush doesn't mean I'm necessarily wrong... :-)
So the 40 year old pedophile (pretending to be 14... this tech. wouldn't prevent that) can see where the 13 year old girl he's talking to lives... yay
On the other hand, the cops should easily be able to find where he was talking *from*, but if he was semi-intelligent where he takes her and where he was talking from would be different.
no comment
Somewhat simillar in intention is the subway line based categorization at NYCBloggers.com
This would for instance allow you to produce a map after a holiday showing where you went.
Picard should have included the coordinates whenever he entered something into his log.
The earth does not stand still. As it moves through the cosmos, we would have to give the exact location relative to a universal origin of coordinates.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I've read a bunch of posts here which raise a number of valid points:
1. Geographical data might be useful
2. Geographical data is unimportant -- it is the quality of communications which matters
3. Technical barriers to creating this sort of information are really fairly trivial
My concerns are that expansion of meta data (essentially what this is) may then lead to greater expansion of meta data. To wit: if geographical data is useful, why not attach the personal identifier as well? The slippery slope argument does not always necessarily follow when technology goes down a road like this, but I am always cautious when it comes to labeling content and specifically identifying its source.
I can see a day when a state might mandate that data contain personal identifiers if it is to be available to residents of that state. If geographic Meta data is commonly used and provides a proof of concept, the technical barriers to doing that could disappear quickly.
As things stand today, Pennsylvania already prevents ISPs (under threat of felony charges) from allowing their customers in PA to have access to certain types of content (currently limited to child pornography, but for no reason other than politics). This has been a hobby horse of mine, not because I don't hate child porn, but because there will be extensions and expansions of this law and more and more content will be prohibited based solely on the whim of the legislature and some limited constiutional checks (which are expensive and unpopular to raise).
Once a system for geographical identification comes into play, other regulatory possibilities arise. Those possibilities will (gien my cynical outlook) certainly be abused in the legislature by the well-meaning but ultimately ignorant sacks of shit that are elected by less well-meaning and even more ignorant sacks of shit. (I do favor a republic, but at least I recognize its limitations)
This is a road that should be travelled, if at all, only with extreme caution. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
The Exif file format, which contains header information for JPEG images is ready for location stamps. There are tags for longitude and lattitude. Exif is embedded in JPEG images and is in use by most digital cameras.
This means that a GPS-enabled digital camera could not only store when a picture was taken, but automatically record WHERE it was taken. This could be a great asset for travelers, surveyors, journalists, etc.
Cos yeah - that's a good idea. I can see it now:
* NiceMan (dirtyoldman_1945@dsl4-ak.anyisp.com) has joined #teenchat
NiceMan> Hello little girl, would you like to see my puppies?
Jenny> you have puppees? can I see them?
The challenge now is to figure out how to best use those location-aware technologies, and some of the things that can be done with the technology.
Here are a few weblogs that think about this in the broader sense:
digitalearth.org
headmap
urbansimulation
I guess the idea would be to call them "works"-- an existing legal term. Why change the word already in use, especially when it's fairly specific?
In this case, the argument is simple. Geocoding "content" is a meaningless notion. You can geocode computer files, documents, or data streams by including some additional data that constitutes a geocode, but how do you geocode "content"? Content might mean the contents of the document, it might mean the ideas embodied in the document... you want to geocode the ideas or the file/document/stream, which is it?
I do not have a signature
See, what you don't realise is that with most grownup marketeers[1], effective targeting means you get less ads, not more, and you also get less crap that doesn't bear even the flimsiest relationship to anything you might actually buy.
If an ad costs me 0.10 to run, why would I run it to people who I don't think are going to buy? If it's for a service only available in some areas, why would I waste money running it for people who don't live there, or who aren't the kind of people who buy it.
Good marketing uses data to screen out prospects - qualifying the prospects and saving money doing so.
Old advertising maxim: 50% of my spend is wasted. If only I knew which 50%.
[1] Accepted, many online 'marketeers' are not grownups
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
"What happens when all content is automatically tagged with..."
The word "all"
Some, or user selctable, but all?
Thank you very much, but I'll pass.
[conspiracy]
This is all just a ploy by book publishers and Microsoft to give e-books DVD-like region encoding. Package it in with some crappy "copy-protection" and you've got something that's (legally) uncrackable.
[/conspiracy]
Ok, I'll just get back to work now.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I've been thinking about this topic for awhile. Especially something analogous to the WorldBoard idea. If this sort of thing becomes pervasive it could have quite a big impact.
As possibilities think of the following:
Private location boards - when I go abroad, I leave markers at certain locations that say things like "This restaurant is good", or "Avoid the fish here", or even "The toilet in this airport is in this direction", later on my friends and relations in the same place can pick up this information. All you need for this is ubiquitous GPS and simple database associating co-ordinates and height with information.
Public web boards - targetted adverts together with reputation rating sites. Think of some of the restaurant review sites you access, except in this case the board stores a marker associated with the location of the restaurant itself, you pull up the reviews then and there.
How soon before there are lawsuits over the concept of what exactly constitutes the 'private space' around a restaurant - will you be only able to leave markers in certain places, will public boards censor this sort of information ?
Just some thoughts.
- The mentally unstable MMORPG addict... whom you just roasted the lvl 100+ character that he/she has spent the last week (straight, without sleep) building
- Anyone who happens to disagree with your religious/political views (people do die over this)
- The programmer for an organization which decided to use your beta-coded app as a production system
- Oh, and um...if you're female, probably about 90% of the slashdot population
Yeah... I can think of any number of other scary examples to add to this.Knowing the geographical location of someone is practically impossible, from various standpoints
From a corporate standpoint, they may be using NAT /Proxy to service 300 or 3,000 from a single I.P Address, so a guy in CNN Europe or CNN China, may actually be connecting (via leased line/private) through I.P addresses to CNN's HQ (U.S), that hit may not reflect an actual geographic location.
For a more literate user, there is always the case of "Spoofing",where he can send a bogus I.P address to the server, again not reflecting an actual geographic location.
I'd love to know where that Timex DataLink watch my ex lost is....
Anonymous communication has a long and valid history in the U.S., and is constitutionally protected.
Remember that if it weren't, various whistle blowers would never have brought horrid practices to light.
Remember Watergate?
I forget what 8 was for.
What's so awesome about geocoding is, if you get a geocoded spam, you can fwd the gps location to a tomahawk cruise missile, which navigates via gps, and it can fly into the spammer's face at Mach 3.
Maybe it's because they feel they have to emphatically latch on to any half-brained directives RMS belches out in half-sleep, even when they seem designed solely to inflate his ego.
From that page:
``Creator''
The term ``creator'' as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (``the creator''). The term is used by publishers to elevate the authors' moral stature above that of ordinary people, to justify increased copyright power that the publishers can exercise in the name of the authors.
May I propose the term GNU/creators instead?
Here is a great case of MS being hammered for something for years and yet when someone else starts suggesting doing the same thing it's all great?
MS has been tagging documents with GUID (Location + time stamp) and has been blasted repeatedly for it and yet this is heading in exactly that direction. (Ok, not as FAR as individually identifying location, but a long way twards it!) Just how fine a location? What today? What tomorrow? Is this something you really want to start?
Does the hypocrisy not just scream?
Today "Palladium" is evil. Tomorrow RMS will hail the Linux version of the exact same thing as the greatest security tool ever devised.
I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine where he said IP's should hold Long/Lat/Alt data in them.
I couldn't help but think, OK yes, a mildly interesting idea, but not exactly safe. I mean it would completely alter Dilbert's rule of flamemails for one!
And well, it would rule out P2P piracy as well.
I think it was all one of this Hippy/Geek idealisms.
Yes, let's just "imagine" what would happen if all content is "geocoded". We could make it so people could only view certain content with certain geocoded viewers, and outlaw viewers that can view all content regardless of its geocode. Imagine how marvelous such a thing would be!!
What happens when all content is automatically tagged with the geographical location of its production?
One thing: Filtering by geographic location. This creates ghettos. It's the electronic equivalent of redlining.
Another: Privacy violations. It's yet another marker useful for identifying an originator that you must remember to spoof or disable if you want to publish anonymously.
One of the most highly touted benefits of The Net is that "no one knows that you're a dog". Your ideas can be considered in isolation from your appearance, ethnicity, age, sex, nationality, and so on. This would take a BIG bite out of the net's egalitarianism.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm contracted by a non-profit in collaboration with the County of San Diego and we created a Community portal with geo-coded communities which are integrated with discussion forums. We don't have any ads but I'd like some feedback. Most records are geocoded automatically if you associate a geographical location with a zipcode which makes a search engine fairly easy to build. It's interesting to me that people still focus on the World Wide nature of the Internet when there are lots of opportunities to create localized Internet based resources. SDcommunities.net
Will this allow me to put a GBU-32 through a window of the building where the goatse website is hosted?!
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
Godseye Project
Mentioned in Slashback a few weeks ago.
Updates coming soon. (BTW, I'm looking for funding.)
--
Fiber Optics discussion and information board. Please help the effort to start this board if you have an interst in fiber optics or backbone technology. thank you :)
- Josh
http://www.webula.net/dir/computers/internet/fiber _optics.php
Traceroute will localize my DSL at home pretty closely, yes indeed; even better for small Class C/D domains with single street address. But how well can you geolocate AOL users from their temporary IP addresses?
The IP address in the log for this page-post will traceroute to the corp firewall I went through. Which of our corp datacenters it will show I don't know, it might or might not be in the same state I'm in; I'm pretty sure it's within 2000 miles, probably within 100, maybe within 10. Does that tell you which of our hundreds of offices around the world I abused my internet privileges at to post this? I think not.
Another good reason for those who don't understand the technology to use AOL ?-)
-- Bill N1VUX
which ID will geolocate me better than IP,
if you grok it
Here in Sydney, there are concentrations of geeks at North Sydney, St Leonards, Lane Cove West, and North Ryde, just for starters, and there are concentrations of geocaches in those places too :-)
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Maybe if everyone had a rating for their trustworthiness, and you could encrypt your Geocode data so that only people with a high enough trust rating could decrypt it. "Geocode available to those of trust 500+" One central database, each person with one core ID linked to their driver's license or social security number. Of course, the difficulty in creating such a trust system that could survive hacking, cheating, blackmailing etc is bordering on possible, it would take the wisest mathematical midns ever to work out something resilient yet fair. And then people woudl have to opt in to it.
I'd love to know where half the crap that appears in my daily newspaper and every other dead-tree rag was written...
eg.
"Why we must bomb Iraq" - Jim Sneddon (Baghdad 010420030700)
or
"Why we must bomb Iraq" - Jim Sneddon (Florida Keys 010420030700)
BTW, April fools !
'sapientia potestas est'
...as adding an ICBM address at the bottom of your e-mails? Used to be popular once.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
From thermodynamics, we know entropy (a measure of randomness) typically increases except where there is life that creates order. Where there is order there is redundancy of information, which leads to better compression.
- the date/time stamp of a digital camera,
- the timecoded track log of a consumer-grade handheld GPS,
- maps generated from publically available topography and coastline data,
- a gazetteer (place names and locations) database, and
- links to map web sites
to create a geocoded picture album and trip log.You can view such an example at http://www.spinellis.gr/geoweb/Chalkidiki/. An article titled Position-annotated Photographs: The Geotemporal Web to appear in IEEE Pervasive Computing presents the technical aspects of Geoweb's design and implementation.
Congress shall make no law.
Think about it for a second. Again, I believe you need to read up on the history of the 1st Amendment.
The bill of rights doesn't say anything about speech while standing on your head, either. It merely states what the government cannot do.
To wit, make a law about speech, whether you're wearing a nametag or standing on your head.
I don't feel that anonymnity is a right in the same way that speech is [...]
I'm done here.
I forget what 8 was for.
... computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
-- Fred Brooks
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