Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Tourists in the Swiss Alps
Roland Piquepaille writes "Farmers in Switzerland receive money from their government for letting their cows eat young trees in the Alps. But why? Because this is improving the mountain views for tourists who might return year after year and spend their cash in the country. As the Swiss government wants to wisely spend its money, it is using a computer model of the mountains populated by virtual tourists -- or software agents -- which tirelessly take the same roads again and again and give their appreciation about the best spots. The Economist reports about these virtual tourists in this very cleverly-titled article, "Computer browsers." What will be the next logical step? Pay more the farmers with the strongest potential to improve the views for real tourists? Wrong. Instead, real hikers will be invited to explore the virtual Alps to give their feedback. Their observations will be then integrated into the software managing the virtual travelers. Read more for pictures and references."
This is pretty rediculous, I mean, as far as the tourism industry is concerned that money could be spent in better ways such as advertisments. Plus, it's not like the cows are seeing any of the money. And I don't know if trees are more tasty to cows than grass? Anyone?
It seems he is able to get an article posted on the front page at least once a week, maybe more.
This is just spam to get to his little site.
Maybe the editors are just incompetent and getting trolled, or this is some synergy (paid referrals) going on. So whats the deal?
Was I the only one who read it that way?
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they arn't out to get me!
Can cows eat wood? The trees I'm familiar with in the northeast are such that by the time they're a half a meter tall, their trunks are already wooden. I wasn't aware that a cow could eat wood. The other possibility is that they're eating the trees at such an early age that the plant tissue is still soft, which would mean that the trees are still very small, and would barely be disginguishable from tall grass, in which case it makes you wonder why go through this strange process of needing cows to deal with the problem rather than just hiring a guy with a lawnmower to just clear the area out in one day. Also, how big of a problem is rampant tree growth? They don't exactly grow like weeds that need to be trimmed every week.
As an experienced backpacker, I suspect that the miles walked through canopied forest make the scenic views more outstanding because of the contrast.
Constant anything becomes boring. Long miles above treeline make the shady coolness of the forest canopy interesting.
I do not know the duration of hikes in the Swiss Alps, perhaps their shortness makes constant panoramic scenery desirable. Most of my hikes were of many months duration, and I learned to appreciate all of the wonders, large and small, that I came across.
Having to deal with townies in real life always makes me want to NOT visit a place again.
On the other hand, I wish all these "leaf peepers" would get the hell out of my town.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
** So what? His articles are interesting.
**
his articles suck.
basically what the guy does is he follows some other sites that have the real news on them, then he takes them(sometimes pretty much copypastes) them to his blog and after that he submits them to slashdot.
his publication(his blog) is pretty much a standard ripoff of the real sites and their news. but i guess they don't another publication copying their stories verbatim without hesitation.. I wonder if they would mind if started a newspaper that just copied the articles from other papers..
if he just wanted us to know about it he could submit the stories instead of copypasting together 'stories' of his own. yeah, i got karma to burn. i wish the excess karma could be used to vote on _changes_ to the system(among other things filtering the politics.slashdot.org doesn't seem to work, i've ticked both 'politics' topics in the exclude topics tab.. and for the reference there aren't _any_ sections to tick in the sections tab).
and to really 'stick it up': here's actually a meaningful link about the story at hand: http://www.sim.inf.ethz.ch/projects/alpsim/ . It's to the actual project..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Did anybody else instantly think of Roller Coaster Tycoon when reading about this? I know I did. Sounds exactly like an expansion pack--RCT: Swiss Alps Edition. The "autonomous agents" would be similar as well I would think, since RCT park guests have a aesthetics variable wherein they evaluate an area's value based on the surroundings.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
umm.. how about RTFA, or RTFB?
/satisfying in reality and make you come back..
it's about using virtualised models to simulate what would look good
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The entire scheme has a few problems associated with it. First, if the mountainsides suffer too much soil erosion, you can be damn sure the tourists won't be hanging around. Nor will the farmers, for that matter. It's awfully hard to farm rock.
The second problem is that this assumes that the tourists are interested in seeing the mountains from any viewpoint low enough to support trees. More than a few tourists are interested in climbing the mountains, which would generally put them above the tree line.
Also, many tourists are quite content to see quaint villages, junky tourist-trap shops, and the usual round of Alpine monastaries with their infamous breweries.
There's also some environmental damage. The Pennines in Britain suffered badly from deforestation, from Neolithic times right the way through to the late Middle Ages. The ground, which supported Giant Redwoods at one point, is now largely peat bogs. It's unclear if the damage is reversible at all. The Alps are infinitely harsher. As such, it would logically take considerably less to render the ground unusable.
Last, but by no means least, the tourists with the most money are the Americans. Americans were never very cosmopoliton to start with, but this whole "War on Terror" carp has produced considerable phobia of travel. As such, investing the money on countering the damage done by Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld to the travel industry would probably produce far higher returns on the investment.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The scene: a tough interview in an Alpine meadow...
JD: So, Mrs. Cow, have you stopped destroying Swiss tourist industry through soil erosion? Cow: MUUUUUUU!!!(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
I was lucky enough to visit Swizterland this summer. Spent most of my time around Geneva. Saw the CERN visitor center, and saw the very first web server, a NeXT cube. Waited too late to get reservations in time to get the full tour. Anyway, this whole business of the cows eating trees to clear the mountain views sounds a bit odd. I really doubt the Swiss are that stupid. We went and saw the Matterhorn and the only thing that obscured the view was clouds. It finally cleared up enough so we could see 90% of the mountain. Zermatt was like a big Disney attraction with lots of Japanese tourists.
I visited Gruyere and saw the castle and the H.R. Giger Museum.. He's one sick puppy. Had a beer at his Giger Bar. That was cool. Gruyere is of course famous for it's cheese. We took the took the tour of the cheese factory at the base of the mountain. We had an electronic device that we could punch in a number and hear the narration for each station. Our narrator was Cherry the Cow. She informed us when drinking her milk you could taste EVERYTHING she's ever eaten.
Thank God we don't drink dog's milk or we'd be able taste everything they've ever eaten or excreted and eaten or vomited and eaten or drank out of the toilet."You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
When I lived for a few years in Switzerland, I knew the Alps were beautiful. When you hike along mountain meadows, covered in flowers, under blue skies and the sun making the snow covered mountain tops glitter, it is breathtaking.
:)
But I only realized how much I loved the open space in the Alps when I came to New England in the US. It is nice, but in the last few hundred years, it has grown over with forrest. I like forrests, but I also appreciate some open space.
Appart from the White Mountains, the views are rather limited in New England.
I've stopped complaining about farmers getting payed by the government - not only do they produce food - they help to maintain an open landscapes.
Cows and farmers, keep up the good work
There are about 210 RP submissions, the first being posted by michael dating back to November 20, 2002.
. ..19
I went through 119 of the postings, here's the editor submission tally:
michael.......39
timothy.......30
simoniker..
hemos.........15
CmdrTaco......9
Cowboy Neal...5
samzenpus.....1
Cliff.........1
Whether this brings to light any pattern, who knows. It will be interesting to find out the true story behind this.
Doesn't anybody see that this is an urban legend? Because eliminating trees and shrubbery from the mountains'/Alps' slopes also eliminates their extensive root systems. Which are fundamental to keeping the dirt together and on top of the bedrock. Dirt that has an extremely important 'sponge' function: it collects and holds water (rain and melted snow) and - under 'normal' circumstances - releases that water gradually over time into the valleys and river systems. Without trees and shrubbery on the mountains the rain and melted snow are NOT collected NOR held, but flow almost immediately into the valleys and river systems. Since these cannot handle all that water at once, the result is flooding! We see it every spring time. And every new skiing piste/slope aggravates the problem!!!