Slashdot Mirror
NOAA Adopts New Net Policy
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has adopted a
new policy which applies to provision of all National Weather Service environmental information, including forecasts, warnings, and observations. In June,
/. reported that NOAA was taking comments on the proposed policy.
Hundreds of Slashdotters responded. And it made a difference: NOAA will make its data and products available in internet-accessible, vendor-neutral form and will use other dissemination technologies, e.g. satellite broadcast, NOAA Weather Radio, and wireless, as appropriate. Congrats to the Slash community for making a difference and helping to set US Govt policy.
Does this mean someone could write a free version of weatherbug that doesn't include the annoying spyware and registration? That'd be nice.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It's good to see a Government agency actually doing something proactive with technology! Props all round.
Pies and cookies all around Congrats ya'll --------- "I just want you to know, rocks arn't people" - Tucker
"Could you put that in a memo entitled, SHIT I ALREADY KNOW!" - Sarge
Just try not to yell at the weather man! Remember, he can't predict nature...
I'm happy because my concerns were addressed. I was afraid that the proposed policy was going to give commercial interests the ability to reqeust the NOAA discontinue a service without review, meaning that if weather.com didn't like the ability of the NWS to issue point forecasts they could behind-the-scenes ask for it to be ended. The modified policy now states they will "Establish... orderly processes for seeking input and suggestions to create, modify, or discontinue products and services".
It's a cool feeling to be a part of a process that actually seems to have worked to our advantage for a change.
John
This just goes to show that not all hope is lost in participatory government. I know I get frustrated at times with how much clout corporations have in government operations, but every now and again I get a little glimmer of hope.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
Showing people that there are a lot of us out there to consider, those who know what they are talking about and can show others how to support everybody at once... not just the majority (and proprietary) slice of the market. Kudos!
Least they listen every once in a while. Still, it's good to see that at least ONE agency remembers that the people are supposed to run the government, not the other way around.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
'Hundreds' is right! I searched their "comment" pdf for slashdot and had to tell it to stop at around 500 and I'm sure it would have kept going for quite some time.
Maybe all the "But I'm helpless..." posters should print this story out, and put it on their wall.
So, since "Hundreds of Slashdotters responded..." and NOAA both kept functioning and was able listen to the comments, would it be safe to say that they weathered the storm?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
so does this mean that all those nifty superkaramba weather checking apps will be better?
anyway, congrats slashdotters! this just goes to show that people, en masse, can make a difference.
We might be able to lobby for something useful. The joys of capitalism.
I'm posting this for my brother who works out at the NOAA as an advanced research analyst.
--- Begin ---
Hi there Slashdot, yes, I'm a total weather freak and as such I was really glad to help serve you guys and field your comments, questions, and complaints.
What really hit home for me was how passionate many of you are for our services and that they be delivered in an open, fair medium. As technology advances, some of us tend to go for the first choice, and Microsoft, Oracle, and other closed-source large companies were trying to influence our decisions.
It was thanks to you the people of Slashdot that our eyes were opened and we have begun to embrace cheaper (which my manager likes) and more open (open-source) tools.
Thank you and it's my pleasure to help serve you and continue research our weather systems here on Earth.
Sincerely,
David M. ******* (name withheld for privacy)
--- End ---
Enjoy guys hope that was interesting as a first-hand perspective.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
[ OT: your math skills need updating. Slashdotters have a much higher combined IQ than a flea (750,000 users will get there by sheer quantity if nothing else.) What you probably meant to say was the average Slashdotter has the IQ of a flea. ]
That's whole new meaning for ./ -effect. I hope we could ./ the world, starting from software patents.
all the hot air in DC?
Can we get some action on that?
I like Chuck Palahniuk as much as the next burnt-out twenty-something office worker, but like Nietzsche, not everything he writes is an endorsement of what comes out of his pen, or for that matter, the gospel truth.
YLFI,a beautiful and unique snowflake
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
> NOAA will make its data and products available in internet-accessible, vendor-neutral form and will use other dissemination technologies, e.g. satellite broadcast, NOAA Weather Radio, and wireless, as appropriate.
Now if only we could get the Feds to make their porn available in internet-accessible, vendor-neutral form, and use other dissemination technologies such as satellite, radio, and wireless.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In Korea, only old people take recommendations from slashdotters.
If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?
You can access it on the internets
Not every *AA is evil!
this lasts.
All it will take is someone from TWC or some of the other commercial repackagers of NWS information who happens to have been a good RNC/TeamW contributor to put a whisper in Karl Rove's ear that NOAA is out of line here, that those commie freeniks should have to pay for the information, and it will then fall under some blanket of the US PATRIOT Act, National Security, DMCA, etc., so that their handle on the data from NOAA/NWS is impenetrable for the untermenschen (ie., the rest of us).
It can never be emphasized enough how utterly valuable a SAME equipped weather radio can be. They do not just allow you to get up to the minute weather reports, but they also act as your first warning of any kind of serious emergency in your area.
Warning sirens are only intended to notify people outdoors, and TVs and radios are only useful if you are awake, the unit is on and you are within earshot and paying attention at the time.
When NOAA or an emergency management agency (NOAA allows them to utilize the system without running the transmissions by them first) sends out a warning message, it is proceeded by what sounds like intermittent static. In fact, the system is sending out a burst of number sequences that are decoded by SAME equipped radios that compare the number sequence to that which the user has previously entered. If they do not match, the radio ignores the message, if they do match however, a generally ear-piercing alarm sounds while the radio interprets the alert code and displays the corresponding text message before the computer voice announcement (or real person if the situation warrants it) from the NOAA station begins to broadcast. The process takes about 10 seconds (this is to give you a chance to get closer to the radio before the voice warning begins).
Here is a complete list of all of the emergency codes
They are not as cheap as a clock radio, but they are worth every penny. I'm still astonished when I come across people who live in tornado-prone areas who don't buy them despite their financial ability to do so and their fear of dangerous weather.
NOAA!
.really?
You talkin' to me?
It's Slashdot, NOAA.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight! Who is this. .
KFG
congrats to the slash community eh? what do explicit homosexual sex stories have to do with noaa? :-P
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Let's see if we can milk all the way.... Seeing as how the FCC can way overstep it's bounds, maybe the NOAA can too. What are the odds that we can petition them to create a policy that voids the DMCA, declares SCO corrupt and bankrupt, and actively tracks down and imprisons scammers?
We've found something that works, so now it's our civil responsibility to use it to the fullest.
If we could only get that kind of voice on the issues of copyright and patents!!
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
"Tonight, a little bit of darkness, followed tomorrow morning with some scattered light."
There can not be any /. comments in that document because I did not see "First Post!", "In Soviet Russia...", anything relating to hot grits or Natalie Portman.
Linux O Muerte!
"It's a cool feeling to be a part of a process that actually seems to have worked to our advantage for a change. "
And come 2008, you can repeat the experiment.
The big problem with NOAA is getting the data out the door. Even their NWS field offices only get a small piece of what's available, and they have very tight bandwidth limitations. For example, it would be great to get all of the GFS ensemble member grids in real time, but they're largely unavailable; and it's really a small ensemble compared to what the future (should) hold.
http://www.usdoj.gov
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Silly, silly slashdoters, we. Some stupid agency compiled a list of our worthless comments, made some changes they were planning to the original policy and now we all KNOW THEY LISTEN.
I'm surprised we didn't /. the weather service. That would have been great. "Now let's look at the weather... Wait... Where is it? Crap, it seems that geeky news site is at it again."
We should write them some nice 'thank you' letters!
./'ers input and made decisions with our ideas in mind it would be great!
I missed this story and acting on it, but if someone with some political savvy could direct myself and others to the people who listened (and those who didn't) to
Firefox &
First thing that came to my mind seeing the NOAA acronym....
Say "NO!" to *AA!
"NOAA will make its data and products available in internet-accessible, vendor-neutral form and will use other dissemination technologies, e.g. satellite broadcast, NOAA Weather Radio, and wireless, as appropriate"
Has been internet accessible for years http://www.noaa.gov/, and if you crawl around enough you can find where they put the raw data feeds and make an app that reads them (seem to be the same ones that go to the automated 'voices' that broadcast NOAA Weather Radio, yes, the Weather Radio network that has been around for a long time, heck, I have scanners and CB sets that have Weather Radio switches). The only one I don't understand directly by this is 'wireless', as the weather radio and satellite networks are wireless, and wireless internet and cellular telephone access is publicly available.
Video Production Support
In addition to having written a weather warning widget with the information they provide, I've noticed that their system usually takes beatings nicely whenever widespread severe weather occurs. Based on the interactions I've had with the website in creating the widget, their backend consists of the PHP/MySQL duo... they also run Apache 2 and Red Hat according to Netcraft. Their warnings are in both RSS and XML feeds. So it's been nice working with what they've been willing to provide, especially when you consider the large audience they serve.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
It's called ForecastFox now because of trademark issues with The Weather Channel. You may download it at http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/
si vis pacem, para bellum..."if you wish peace, prepare for war"
they are an unconstitutional parasitic entity that must be abolished. Of course, everything in the government unless it's constitutional "Which of course, nothing is" should be abolished. Fuck, we don't need no government owned military, the second amendment states that a well armed militia has the right to bear arms. The people is the fucking militia, not the God Damned government. NO fucking safety nets, known as social services/welfare. if you must use them, then you need to be taken out of the gene pool. He who is willing to give up essential freedoms for temporary safety deserves neither. So in 2006 on, vote Libertarian, the ones that don't are the fucktards that are too stupid to stand on their own two fucking feet.
It is true that a lot of power in Democracy (and probably other forms as well) is given to those that show up. It looks like Slashdot did. But before we pat ourselves on the back, I found an interesting comment when I was scanning the FairweartherComments3.pdf, page 332, it was from the Director of Sales-Media of Accuweather Inc who was also in support of rejecting the changes, citing that it would break a 60 year understanding on the line between what work was done by the private and publich sector.
RTF is a proprietary format.
It's open, sure, but you can say the same about PDF.
Try looking for "sucks". It's in there -- twice. Yay for governmental immortalization of public comment!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
IIRC, RTF came from a fellow in the NAVY, and is quite public domain.
The spec on MS site is for MSs IMPLEMENTATION.
Sorta like PDF, only completely different.
I lamely googled for a link, but RTF is sort of a common search result...
The original format may be public domain (I have yet to find such evidence), however the current RTF specifications are written by Microsoft.
Heh, it says slashdot.com even though it takes you to the same site as .org.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Want a more mature forum than Slashdot? Try Technocrat.net
... I would like to say.. YES! This is not only a victory for us weather nerds but for the entire population of the U.S. After all, it's all about the warning time! Imagine, all the media outlets having to pay a licensing fee to Accuweather for issuing a tornado warning... OK, I know that's pushing it but the basic point remains the same. It's our information and it should stay that way!
Also, as a trained weather spotter, I have been in contact with my local weather service office (KPUB) about this issue and they completely agree that the information be as accessible as possible.
Chalk one up for us!
bash: rtfm: command not found
Before anybody accepts this immediately as true, I'd just like to point out that this guy has posted lots of things about his personal achievements and his accomplishments, so much that you have to be a bit skeptical. Besides being the brother of an NOAA analyst, he claims all of the following... (taken from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=131294&cid=109 59811)
Ken Jennings was my roommate freshman year at Brigham Young University
I worked for NASA for 8 years straight out of MIT undergrad.
I'm an editor for Tom's Hardware Guide
I worked for a particular company that denied another company a lucrative contract just because that company's CTO had bullied my company's CEO when he was in high school
I have TWO friends who work at Bungie
I work on LAMP software and deploy to customer's websites.
I obtained a preview release [of GIMP 2.0]
Forgive me for being skeptical, but I have trouble believing all that. A child of the post pointed to above says that the parent poster is a known troll, and a check of his recent comments shows many rated troll.
So perhaps this shouldn't be 5, Interesting?
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
so what if they are written by Microsoft, so long as the format is available to everyone and is not patent encumbered it is open enough.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
From the great-grandparent:
RTF is a proprietary format.
It's open, sure, but you can say the same about PDF
This thread has nothing to do with the openess of RTF, but correcting the claims that RTF isn't proprietary (since it is).
I'm an Aussie who uses the free NOAA weather data services extensively in my travels around the globe. I don't pay for this service, nor fund it with my tax dollars, but I can still access it for free and without restriction.
Thank you NOAA, for making the right decision for everyone on the internet, not just those that fund you.
Real Bruce
To whomever identified this point, whether it was a commenter or NOAA staff member:
"Mission connection: NOAA's information services will support the NOAA mission. As a government agency, NOAA recognizes its core responsibility to protect life and property."
The responsibility to protect life and property trumps all other concerns. Providing for the security of citizens is the primary responsibility of government. Supplying the data only to commercial entities would be improper delegation of that responsibility.
63 - In Soviet Russia the weather updates you.
19 - Notices that this service is already provided by Goatse.cx
3 - Requests to add a feature that notifies you anytime Natalie Portman comes within 50 meters of hot grits.
16 - Pondering what a beowulf cluster of these might be like.
48 - Blasting the NOAA because Microsoft is secretly behind bad weather.
27 - Claimed the request was a dupe and cited existing services provided by the NOAA.
16 - Only old Koreans use the weather.
19 - Claims that "1 0wnz d4 w34th3r cuz 1m s0 133t"
193 - Users suggesting the NOAA needs to rely on perl, python, BSD, Linux, MySQL, PHP, emacs, vi, haskell, or ruby for all future development efforts.
1 - Comment suggesting the weather should be properly called GNU/Weather (thanks RMS!)
11 - Requested a change for notices about clear sunny days. The new notice will read, "Nothing to see here. Move along."
13 - Requesting that the raw weather data and weather forcasting software be sent as part of an ebuild that they could emerge and compile the report anytime they wanted, because they've got their Gentoo system totally tweaked out for this type of application.
27 - Asked for help getting WeatherBug to work correctly on Linux w/ Wine.
9 - Posts about how Netcraft had confirmed it, weather is dead.
1 - Comment with made up statistics about how important changing was.
1 - Comment with made up statistics about how important not changing was.
32 - EA employees asked for pictures, b/c they've never seen the light of day, a blue sky or snow lit by daylight.
1 - Comment that read...
Quite an impact.
and he's a sad, lonely shell of a man.
Be sure to attend The FTC workshop on P2P networks If you read the adgenda, you would think FTC is trying to convince people that P2P is a threat to consumers. It would make sense to use a spurious issue that pushes congressional hot buttons if you wanted to slap restrictive laws on P2P since protecting copyrights doesn't get out the votes.
Oh, yeah the weather. I bike to work in new england: a very detailed forcast is critical to my saftey so this little victory is a serious win from my perspective. I already paid taxes for this data...be damned if I'll pay twice for it.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Get, Weather Watcher.
No ads, no spyware, just works, and works well.
Question everything
What the heck does proprietary matter?
There are plenty of ISO and ANSI standards which are patent-encumbered. And you usually have to pay money to get access to the standards documents.
Non-proprietary doesn't mean open.
And proprietary doesn't mean non-open.
So what's the point in distinguishing them, then? Not many people care about who created the standard. People do care about if they can implement it for free, and freely.
"The people is the fucking militia"
I genuflect when I see the results of a public education.
What? The services are available to foreigners too?..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's been possible for years now to get all of these services directly from the NOAA ftp site. Everything, including real-time NEXRAD radar has been available.
Now if they make it available as XML web services, that would be fabulous.
-brian
Does anyone else remember Cobra's Weather Machine? I blame the resurgence of Cobra for the four hurricanes that smacked Florida this summer. Crazy environmentalists are paying him and he's using our new culture of fear to make a name for himself again.
Laws are for people with no friends.
For a couple decades now NOAA has been on the conservative's hit list for abolition. One reason is because much of its research is into the environement. Another reason is that some small governement people believe that the government should outsource most, if not all research to universities, think tanks and companies.
I live near the the Boulder UCAR/NCAR/NOAA centers. Every year in recent years their proposed fudning gets whacked 25-50%, only to be restored last minute. But the restoration may not continue much longer.
Notice that this policy does not use the term "free" but rather "at the lowest possible cost to users."
This leaves the door open to a fee in the future.
http://weather.gov/feedback.php
Please everyone, take the time to write out a nice sincere thank you note. Try to stay away from such negativites as "Thanks for not being an just another government agency" and steer more towards "We appreciate your willingness to disseminate this information."
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
http://weather.gov/xml/ At least a good chunk of it. My project, openWeather aims to fill some gaps that the NWS has in their services. Come and help out.
It's great that a little NOAA radio from Radio Shack can always tell you the latest forcasts, warnings and advisory conditions.
NOAA Radio has come in handy when traveling, hiking, boating, flying, diving and driving.
NOAA is One of the things the government does right... Thank you USA !
The commerical weather industry attempted to gain exclusive access to NOAA weather data. Specifically, they wanted to shut down the NOAA NextRad looping radar images that are updated every 7 to 10 minutes or so.
The CAII members already had a glossy GUI + ads interface which offered NO MORE than what NOAA's looping NextRad site offered, but they wanted $30/year for access 'rights' and they only covered 75 cities, a limitation probably established because rural areas like mine in Eastern Nebraska don't have a population large enough to generate ad income, even if we would be forced to pay for access rights. Also, the commercial NextRad windows were only guaranteeing 15 minute updates, instead of NOAA's 7 to 10 minute average.
Now, if we can break the hold other land grabbers have or are attempting to get on the Public Commons, like software patents on mythical Intellectual Property "rights" (i.e, like 200 year old math algorithms, common code snippets,etc.) we well go a long way toward restoring the freedoms which corrupt corporations have stolen. How can we do it? Work to get corrupt, money-grubbing politicians voted out of office. They are the ones who took the 'campaign donations', formerly known as bribes, to sponsor the changes in laws so favorable to the Gates of this country, but detrimental to you and I.
It's often fairly easy to distinguish the airheads from meteorologists on the news.
On a day when severe weather is expected, watch closely. If the weatherperson is clearly excited but trying not to sound too excited (since people hit by the storms might take offense), you're watching a meteorologist or at least a genuine weather geek. Otherwise, they'e likely just reading a report without understanding what it really means.
Bonus points if they use appropriate modes of the nexrad to point out storm features that actually matter. If they ever put it in doppler mode and try to explain the indicators of potential or actual tornado formation, you'll know for sure.
Mod Parent Up
How does the fact that Microsoft writes the standard make it proprietary?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Holy cow, Skilling was (is?) awesome. Back in our college days we'd try to catch the evening forecast every night. They gave (still give?) him like 15 minutes to talk about the weather in detail. I learned way more from him in a few nights about weather than listening to the useless talking heads on any other station for years.
We were (are?) such geeks.
Obviously you are making up those statistics because you state in your overview that 490 of 1473 the comments made were made by slashdotters and yet the sum of the "breakdown" is 500. Nice try troll.
I thought I'd never seen the day. Who'd thought NOAA would offer such services instead of throwing lawyers to people?
In Canada, this site appears to be the equivalent to the NOAA site. I browsed around a bit and it says the data is available, but the site is not responding right now so I am unable to see what kind of format it is provided in.
STFU about slashdot bias.
You mean like WeatherGopher? Free as in beer, and free from spyware.
Has anyone else had problems with NOAA's graphics causing their computer to lock up? It does this on several of mine. I don't get a BSD, or anything that will give me a clue what the problem is. It just locks up.
Proverbs 21:19
Congrats to the Slash community for making a difference and helping to set US Govt policy.
And thanks to NOAA for being receptive to non-corporate opinions.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Let Amerstam go out there and send us back updates from natural disasters as they happen. He can stand right next to Jim Cantore and take do live updates for slashdot via webcam.
Amerstam... ooops.... he really needs to hold on better than that... he could could use all that technical skill he claims and help us learn about the impacts of natural disasters... oooo...he should be quicker on his feet in those trailer parks. They generate a lot of debris during landfall... but with huge weather disaters expected to increase with global warming, we'll need... ooof... good thing palm trees aren't very dense, walk it off Amerstam... we'll need better data and a wider variety of data about... ouch... I didn't realize the Epcot Center dome would get airborne and still hug the ground like that... wider variety of data from the these storms as they happen so that we learn how to plan evacuations better... look out for the... eeewwwwww.... Tugboat.
fyi- 7000 LIVE, local stations at schools, universities, businesses in your neighborhood with live conditions vs. once an hour updates from airport stations. you decide which is better if weather is important for your business.
hate to rain on LordEnder's parade, but WeatherBug, which he incorrectly calls spyware (more on that in a sec) actually helps supply weather from our 7000 LIVE weather stations (as opposed to the NWS stations that are mostly at aiports and do NOT update live) to the NWS as announced in the Nov. 19th press release from the DOC- NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE, AWS CONVERGENCE TECHNOLOGIES IN NEW PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP TO EXPAND USE OF WEATHERBUG DATA so, the very data that is helping the NWS give better forecasts may in some instances be helped by the data from local WeatherBug stations. The Dept. of Homeland Security through the Homeland Security Initiative already relies on WeatherBug data in times of national crisis since our stations update wind conditions live- getting 1 hour old wind direction isn't going to help us too much if God forbid there is a dispersal of something in the air. Now, if you don't like our program, hey, it's a free country. There are great weather programs out there that I've seen listed in these posts. Use them if you don't like ours. The more folks interested in live weather the better for all of us in the weather market. As for the spyware concerns- WeatherBug is not spyware. In fact, we are passionately committed to fighting the spread of these technologies because they damage the environment in which we do business. If you define adware like most as "software that serves ads based on user surfing habits" then we are NOT adware either- you actually choose a sponsor if you have the free program. If you define adware simply as "anything with ads" then, yes, like The Weather Channel's desktop program, AIM, yahoo mail etc., by that broad swatch since we serve ads, we'd be adware. Our formal spyware policy can be found at: http://www.weatherbug.com/aws/support/faq_spyware. htm
where you can view our certification from TRUST and free downloads to what we believe are some of the most effective anti-spyware detection programs, as part of our commitment to end spyware. We are also a member of COAST (Coalition Against Spyware Technology- www.coast-info.org).
For the record, spyware tracks websurfing activity and sometimes reads what is on the user's hard drive. WeatherBug is not capable of tracking your overall web use or deciphering anything on your hard drive.
I am aware that occasionally some spyware detectors may list, incorrectly, certain programs. WeatherBug has been victim to this- many of you probably are thinking that Spybot or Adaware used to list us and they did- Spybot stopped about 9 months ago and Adware in early 2003 but I know that the reputation sometimes sticks, incorrect though it may be.
If you have other questions, please feel free to email me directly at jay@weatherbug.com
for the unelightened/humorless (including the mod who modded my posts offtopic, yes you) slash is a kind of sexual fiction (very often fan fiction) written about homosexual encounters. I was making a play on words, maybe its not funny to some but it wasnt any more offtopic than any other joke made here
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Try Weather Watcher, found at www.SingersCreations.com
no spyware, no popups, no ads, no cost. Just desktop weather.
But couldn't terrorists get hold of this information and use it to execute their agendas of fear on the American (and World) public? We should definitely not allow the terrorists to do this! All information should be taken off the Internet immediately!
</tounge-in-cheek>