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.
At least wxunderground.com will let you see the fleshed-out NWS scientist commentaries on the weather forecasts, along the lines of "two of the models predict X, but Model A predicts not X, and it seems to be more accurate this time of year, so I'm going with the Model A.", etc.
The NWS/Accu-Trak/TWC reports are what the weather puppets on TV/Radio read anyways. Not too many actually bother trying to interpret things on their own anymore. Tom Skilling @ WGN comes to mind.
If you remember wx.purdue.edu in the old days, this was probably the most awesome weather information site available (also had wx.washington.edu, etc.). Well, the atmospheric sciences people I think got tired of hosting these public wx sites ($$$), and they went non-public in the DotCom days, but now it's in a commercial form of wxunderground.com.
Weather.com's stuff just sucks.
Ironically, the bureaucracy apparently listens better than actual elected officials!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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 &
Dude! That's awesome! Just another reason why I love The Weather Underground! I looked high and low for a simple weather page with a radar image that I could display on my Treo 600, and I found it.
an interesting comment when I was scanning the FairweartherComments3.pdf, page 332, it was from the Director of Sales-Media of Accuweather Inc
Actually that comment is almost difficult to miss, considering that it appears no less than SIXTY FOUR TIMES! Accuweather engaged in a spam campaign.
They apparently gave their employees a form letter to send in. The form letter appears to have been minorly revised from the initial comment to the final round of submissions, but the letter remains essentially intact. Virtually all sumbmitted the form letter intact, I think only one or two submitters bothered to add on a personal note. A number of them even comically wound up copy/pasting it with ">" at the beginning of each line, as email commonly does when quoting. Chuckle.
It first appears in comment 227. It then appears as comments: 1120 1211 1213 1215 1217 1219 1220 1223 1224 1225 1226 1227 1229 1230 1231 1232 1235 1236 1237 1286 1307 1322 1334 1336 1339 1340 1341 1344 1346 1347 1348 1349 1352 1353 1355 1361 1367 1368 1369 1371 1372 1373 1390 1399 1401 1403 1409 1411 1411 1412 1414 1417 1420 1422 1428 1451 1454 1455 1458 1459 1464 1565 1469.
Most of them are officially signes with an "AccuWeather employee" tag, but undoubtedly every single one derives for AccuWeather.
As far as I can see their only arguments are
(1) they want the old policy to remain
(which isn't really a reason to retain the old policy)
(2) The new policy will "disadvantage the American public" because "It can negatively impact job growth and corporate stability".
I would say "job growth" is a bad thing and harmful to the economy when it is accomplished through supression of information and duplication of work.
Nor is "corporate stability" itself a valid goal. Business live and die on actually satisying unmet the needs of the public. You do not artifically create or maintain an "unmet need" restricting existing publicly funded information. If Accuweather wants the government out of the "weather business", then fine, they should be denied any government funded, government created, or gorventment gathered information as well. Let AccuWeather launch their own satallites and operate countless ground stations themselves.
The increased availablility of information information increases the opportunities for new businesses to crop up and utilize that information and to add value to that information. Corporate instability is a good thing, survival of the fittest constantly struggling to actually fulfill NEEDED work, rather than surpression to artificially create a need.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.