At the risk of burning some Karma, and whoring our own FOSS disaster project...;)
If anyone is interested in being involved in a FOSS project for disasters, the Sahana Software Foundation is very interested in getting more developers involved in writing software to be used in disaster and emergency management. Sahana was created in Sri Lanka in early 2005 following the tsunami in late 2004. Since then Sahana has been deployed to a number of events in various countries (China, Peru, Philippines, Pakistan, India etc).
Coming back to Haiti, we have deployed our new Python version of Sahana, and it has been very well received, including by the likes of SOUTHCOM and the World Food Programme. In addition, we have been pushing a lot of standards for emergency interoperability, and due to some of our early work implementing the Emergency Data eXchange Language (EDXL) - Hospital AVailability Extension (HAVE), we have a lot of interest in not only FOSS, but also open standards.
We are looking for assistance in further developing Sahana, and these are some of the key skills we are looking for to help with our existing deployment in Haiti (note you don't need them all to be able to work on Sahana):
# Python - all the core coding is undertaken in Python # web2py - this is the application framework that we use in Python for SahanaPy # OpenLayers - this is the client javascript library we use for mapping in the browser # jQuery - additional view tweaks are done using this JavaScript library # XSLT/XPath - a lot of import/export functionality is created using XSLT templates written using XPath
For more info on our Haiti response, and if you want to help out, check out this wiki page: http://trac.sahanapy.org/wiki/Haiti Alternatively, jump into #sahana on freenode. If you want to contact me directly, email me - gt at kestrel dot co dot nz
If you read this far, thanks for the attention:)
Cheers Gavin Board Member, Sahana Software Foundation
Wow - brings back memories;) I think it was 1993 at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. A stage 2 computer science source said we could use the lab for programming, or we could install this thing called Slackware Linux that had gcc and everything we needed for out projects. So, of course I did. Mmmm, floppy installs. So, it was mainly used early on for COSC assignments. A few years later setup Red Hat as a DNS and webserver in 1996 for our fledgling web development company. In later years after I stepped out of the IT field continued to use it for servers in our small business, although starting to fix it up with OS X as well. Never used it as a desktop - have primarily been Windows, and over the last nearly 5 years OS X (which seems to be a fantastic compromise).
But yeah, the first thing was COSC programming assignments in '93.
I'm stoked that Sahana - a project to develop a FOSS web-based system for disaster management has been selected again for GSOC. Thanks Goggle!
If you're interested in working on a system that will help ease suffering and save lives during and after a disaster, then consider contributing to the Sahana project. It was started after the Boxing Day Tsunami struck Sri Lanka and it now into our fourth year, and I think third GSOC year.
Some areas we're focusing hard on this year are incorporating social networking for disaster response, and implementing a more comprehensive GIS. We would welcome other suggestions.
If you want to contribute to an humanitarian project for a change, Sahana may be the project for you. Of course, we've got plenty of technical opportunities as well;)
Tthey have probably left the shores of the land of the free and made their way to other countries that have GSM networks. We've had quite a few come here to New Zealand. I'm sure there have been loads of exports from the US because they weren't made available sooner in other countries.
Our business has adopted this for including version information in document filenames. It took a little convincing, but they soon saw how well it worked and everyone uses it happily now. The benefit of being able to easily sort the different versions of a document in correct time order in a folder is all it takes to show the benefits (and filesystem metadata is not always right, so last modified date doesn't always work). And variants for monthly documents work well too - say a monthly timesheet becomes 'Timesheet 200608.xls'.
I'd guess that the main reason your users 'hate it' is because they don't understand the reasons for it. I explained why I wanted it done this way, didn't force it initially, but used it in all the documents I used with my colleagues, and over time they all changed and use it without fail now. They just had to acclimatise and understand the system. Once they saw the benefits there was no turning back.
I find it interesting then that they want to build such an infrastructure hub so close to a river that could flood, and an active tectonic zone that provides them both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But as long as you've got multiple of these centres, I guess it isn't a big problem.
Will they only be handing over information about searches from Americans? Or is it going to be pulled from all Google users? I know this probably doesn't breach any privacy laws in the US (do you have any?) but could be of concern to Europeans. Does anyone have more info on this aspect?
Just want to plug a project that I've become involved in that was started during response to the recent earthquake and tsunami in Asia. In Sri Lanka, they built web server applications to manage victim information and many other aspects of disasters.
We're now restarting from scratch with proper planning to develop disaster management software for the (L)AMP platform. We're currently going through design and prototyping.
This sort of FOSS is really needed as there is currently nothing like it that we have found. If you are interested in helping develop this software, please visit the Sahana project page and sign up to help!
Linux would be better. They get educated, participate in an open source community, and, bext of all, IT'S FREE!
Sorry, and OS X users don't get educated and don't participate in an open source community? I'm sure there are many that do, and I'm going to be one of them. However I'll probably stick to OS X because for most of my uses it is far more developed than Linux (I've got about three FC3 servers floating around currently). Just because someone uses OSX doesn't mean that they are not prepared to contribute to OSS.
Let me say first, that whilst Lucas has created a good universe and good action films, he is definitely not perfect. No need to repeat his flaws, they get dragged out in every SW thread here, and I agree with most of them. No, the SW universe is not as deep and rich as Tolkien, but Lucas has told a good story (even though there are holes, shallow acting) and it is still enjoyable.
I wouldn't call myself a fanboy, although I think SW was one of the first movies I saw, and I've enjoyed them since (naturally TPM is the weakest as it is the foundation for the others - ironically, AOTC and ROTS will make TPM a marginally better movie because it now has increased relevance to the overall plot, but lets face it, TPM is not flash).
That said, I enjoyed ROTS, and think it will probably become my favourite SW movie, above ANH and TESB. SW is about Anakin, not Luke, and ROTS is _the_ episode that goes into the most detail in Anakin's story. The OT is more about Luke, which whilst it is an important part of the overall story, it is now clearly a sub-plot of the whole.
ROTS benefits by being the last movie released of the six, much like ROTK benefited by the groundwork done by the first two LOTR movies. Everyone was up to speed with the universe the movie took place in, and hence a lot more can be communicated to the viewer. ROTS doesn't disappoint and answers most of the questions people have and at first viewing it appears to provide an excellent bridge from PT to OT. A lot happens in ROTS.
It was interesting coming home and watching the first 30-45 minutes of ANH. The scene where Obiwan is telling Luke about the Clone Wars and his father - you now know so much more of that story, and realise that that story is much bigger than Luke's role. It definitely changes the context of the OT.
Given the weaknesses of TPM, AOTC and ROTJ, I'd say that many SW fans favourite movies may now become ROTS, ANH and TESB. Watching these three in a row probably will give the best watching of the SW universe in years to come. It may even make ROTJ seem like a lame finish to the Anakin story. I think the peak of the SW universe will be centred around ROTS and ANH.
Be interesting to see other comments as they come in.
Yep. As someone that does emergency management planning for various public and utility organisations, this patent also appears to cover placing copies of organisations plans on intranets, PDA's and others. At least thats what I got from my first quick glance. I need to spend some time going over it in more detail to verify that. But pretty damn broad. Luckily it hasn't been filed yet in our country.
Forgot to mention, MS Office on Mac is better than Windows as well. Only downside it that it is one of the few applications that has crashed on the Mac though.
Ya, I've been down this path. iPod Jul 2003, PowerBook Jul 2004.
I used to build PC's and it was fun and you'd get more bang for the buck, but I got ever sick of dealing with flaky drivers and Windows problems. But until the Mac Mini there wasn't an affordable Mac for most people.
I do almost all work and personal stuff on the Mac now. Only time I tend to go back to WinXP is for Visio (which doesn't seem to quite work right under VirtualPC). I'm hopeful that one-day Visio will be produced for the Mac.
Fedora Core is also used, but primarily as a server platform in my small business.
We've got a number of Toshiba WinXP laptops and all of my users have trouble every single day with Windows Wireless networking. They have to repair their connections 2-3 times a day. My PowerBook has no troubles at all with connections. Hibernation of laptops is another - try going a week with hibernating Windows - it becomes so flakey. Now the PowerBook only gets a reboot when an OS update needs it. Otherwise hibernation just works - currently at 24 days with hibernation only - no reboots! All off my work colleagues reboot their WinXP laptop daily.
I have been providing tech support for family and friends in the past, but now with the Mac Mini I'm going to provide them with a subtle and a not-so-subtle hint - "Check out the Mac Mini!" and I'm no longer providing support for Windows.
The Mac operating system and application platform is great. iLife (haven't touched Garageband) is a really great suite of software and the integration works really well. I'm going to be suggesting to family that they should switch just because of the improvements they will have in being able to manage their digital photos etc. And having it all on *nix underpinning is nice - its great for me being able to crank open terminal.
I had an Apple ][ many years ago - ah Castle Wolfenstein;) but hardly touched pre-OSX because it was and still is crap. I did get a dual-CPU Mac once but promptly installed BeOS instead.
It would be very useful if I could have an install on flash that would allow me to run Firefox on say FC3/WinXP and OSX, yet just have the one store of data. I'm finding more and more that I'm using different OS's for different tasks, but its always useful to have my browser with me. With flash getting cheaper and cheaper there is probably little reason other than configuration why I can't have binaries for different platforms sharing the same files.
I seem to recall that the reason the radiation goes further in is that the skull isn't fully developed. At the end of puberty the skull is fully formed and is much better at absorbing radiation, hence it doesn't penetrate as deeply. Clearly this is an issue for increasing children/teenage use of cellphones. You can probably Google for more info.
when the shit hits the fan in CONUS of the sort of crisis they are talking about, that means that all the emergency services, police, emergency management agencies, volunteers and many other will lose the benefit of the GPS as well. As someone that works in emergency management, this seems like handicapping yourself to make a bad situation even worse...
I got an ipod in July last year. Had been enjoying it, using iTunes on a Toshiba laptop happily, but in the back of my mind entertained the thought of investigating Macs. OS9 and less weren't even an option, but the BSD basis and command line got my attention. I still had ignored the first couple of releases of OSX as they had coverage of being slow as a wet week.
In the end the decision was forced upon me. My laptop HD failed about 3 days before I was heading overseas for 3 weeks. Did some quick research and ended up getting a PowerBook and it has been great.
I hate going back to XP now, I only do it for certain work applications now. Happily connecting to linux servers regularly. Things do just work so much more smoothly and are more reliable. I look after 4 PC laptops in our small business, and windows wireless is so flaky under XPSP2. I have no troubles.
Microsoft Office 2004 on Mac is much better than 2003 on PCs, and interoperates with no problems. And its great being able to open a shell and rsync to backup the important stuff on the servers. I'm starting to find a good range of open source software to use as well. iSync is great as I can sync iCal and Addressbook to my Palm, K700i phone and ipod all at once. Only real downsides I have is that there is no Visio or Project available (otherwise I'd be able to move the rest of our work laptops to Macs as well, Virtual PC is OK but not suitable for my other users) or there is no decent New Zealand mapping software that runs natively. Hopefully these will be remedied over time though one means or other.
I knew that I was on-camera everywhere I went and I felt safer. Part of that was because I knew that policemen were watching.
No, it just means that they would be able to play back the footage of the crims beating you to a pulp, and maybe have some evidence that will allow them to track them down. That won't help you any as you recover in hospital. The police cannot actively monitor the 1m+ cameras they have in the UK. This is a recognised problem. Don't get a false sense of security just because there are cameras everywhere. Your immediate security is only protected if all of the 1m+ cameras are continuously monitored.
I've been using sleeves recently for laptops that you can just chuck in a backpack, briefcase or whatever. Then you can just stick it in whatever type of bag you want, rather than having a specific bag such as a laptop/backpack or whatever.
Yeah I've been doing the same with my old Toshiba laptops - I seem to keep having the hard drives fail. I'll be doing that will all the old laptops from the business now. I've taken to sticking Fedora on them, using Samba for file sharing, SquirrelMail and DoveCot IMAP for email archives, and eGroupWare.
As a small business server they are fantastic. Take up little space, have an inbuilt screeen, mouse, keyboard, networking and battery if the power fails. Setup rsync for backups and you're set! Especially now I've got a PowerBook G4 and can rsync from the terminal. And it all works beautifully with a mixture of XP, OSX and FC machines on the network!
I agree with what you say. However, there is usually one very good reason why public agencies do not release the information - they are not allowed to. They usually hire a contractor to get gather the information, and then they licence the orthophotography. So they don't own it, they just have a licence to use it. Governments therefore have to either be a bit more forceful about the rights that they have on the data they pay to be gathered, or they should do it themselves rather than use a commercial provider.
Slashdot Mirror
At the risk of burning some Karma, and whoring our own FOSS disaster project... ;)
If anyone is interested in being involved in a FOSS project for disasters, the Sahana Software Foundation is very interested in getting more developers involved in writing software to be used in disaster and emergency management. Sahana was created in Sri Lanka in early 2005 following the tsunami in late 2004. Since then Sahana has been deployed to a number of events in various countries (China, Peru, Philippines, Pakistan, India etc).
Coming back to Haiti, we have deployed our new Python version of Sahana, and it has been very well received, including by the likes of SOUTHCOM and the World Food Programme. In addition, we have been pushing a lot of standards for emergency interoperability, and due to some of our early work implementing the Emergency Data eXchange Language (EDXL) - Hospital AVailability Extension (HAVE), we have a lot of interest in not only FOSS, but also open standards.
We are looking for assistance in further developing Sahana, and these are some of the key skills we are looking for to help with our existing deployment in Haiti (note you don't need them all to be able to work on Sahana):
# Python - all the core coding is undertaken in Python
# web2py - this is the application framework that we use in Python for SahanaPy
# OpenLayers - this is the client javascript library we use for mapping in the browser
# jQuery - additional view tweaks are done using this JavaScript library
# XSLT/XPath - a lot of import/export functionality is created using XSLT templates written using XPath
For more info on our Haiti response, and if you want to help out, check out this wiki page: http://trac.sahanapy.org/wiki/Haiti
Alternatively, jump into #sahana on freenode. If you want to contact me directly, email me - gt at kestrel dot co dot nz
If you read this far, thanks for the attention :)
Cheers Gavin
Board Member, Sahana Software Foundation
Wow - brings back memories ;) I think it was 1993 at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. A stage 2 computer science source said we could use the lab for programming, or we could install this thing called Slackware Linux that had gcc and everything we needed for out projects. So, of course I did. Mmmm, floppy installs. So, it was mainly used early on for COSC assignments. A few years later setup Red Hat as a DNS and webserver in 1996 for our fledgling web development company. In later years after I stepped out of the IT field continued to use it for servers in our small business, although starting to fix it up with OS X as well. Never used it as a desktop - have primarily been Windows, and over the last nearly 5 years OS X (which seems to be a fantastic compromise).
But yeah, the first thing was COSC programming assignments in '93.
Only on the mother-in-laws ;)
I'm stoked that Sahana - a project to develop a FOSS web-based system for disaster management has been selected again for GSOC. Thanks Goggle!
If you're interested in working on a system that will help ease suffering and save lives during and after a disaster, then consider contributing to the Sahana project. It was started after the Boxing Day Tsunami struck Sri Lanka and it now into our fourth year, and I think third GSOC year.
Some areas we're focusing hard on this year are incorporating social networking for disaster response, and implementing a more comprehensive GIS. We would welcome other suggestions.
Sahana@GSOC, Sahana GSOC ideas. If you want to discuss it more, join up to the Sahana maindev list on sf.net.
If you want to contribute to an humanitarian project for a change, Sahana may be the project for you. Of course, we've got plenty of technical opportunities as well ;)
Tthey have probably left the shores of the land of the free and made their way to other countries that have GSM networks. We've had quite a few come here to New Zealand. I'm sure there have been loads of exports from the US because they weren't made available sooner in other countries.
Actually, they have keys on iWork as well, so it isn't just their pro apps.
Our business has adopted this for including version information in document filenames. It took a little convincing, but they soon saw how well it worked and everyone uses it happily now. The benefit of being able to easily sort the different versions of a document in correct time order in a folder is all it takes to show the benefits (and filesystem metadata is not always right, so last modified date doesn't always work). And variants for monthly documents work well too - say a monthly timesheet becomes 'Timesheet 200608.xls'.
I'd guess that the main reason your users 'hate it' is because they don't understand the reasons for it. I explained why I wanted it done this way, didn't force it initially, but used it in all the documents I used with my colleagues, and over time they all changed and use it without fail now. They just had to acclimatise and understand the system. Once they saw the benefits there was no turning back.
I find it interesting then that they want to build such an infrastructure hub so close to a river that could flood, and an active tectonic zone that provides them both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But as long as you've got multiple of these centres, I guess it isn't a big problem.
Will they only be handing over information about searches from Americans? Or is it going to be pulled from all Google users? I know this probably doesn't breach any privacy laws in the US (do you have any?) but could be of concern to Europeans. Does anyone have more info on this aspect?
Just want to plug a project that I've become involved in that was started during response to the recent earthquake and tsunami in Asia. In Sri Lanka, they built web server applications to manage victim information and many other aspects of disasters.
We're now restarting from scratch with proper planning to develop disaster management software for the (L)AMP platform. We're currently going through design and prototyping.
This sort of FOSS is really needed as there is currently nothing like it that we have found. If you are interested in helping develop this software, please visit the Sahana project page and sign up to help!
http://sahana.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sahana/
Can you take some pictures as well? :)
Linux would be better. They get educated, participate in an open source community, and, bext of all, IT'S FREE!
Sorry, and OS X users don't get educated and don't participate in an open source community? I'm sure there are many that do, and I'm going to be one of them. However I'll probably stick to OS X because for most of my uses it is far more developed than Linux (I've got about three FC3 servers floating around currently). Just because someone uses OSX doesn't mean that they are not prepared to contribute to OSS.
Let me say first, that whilst Lucas has created a good universe and good action films, he is definitely not perfect. No need to repeat his flaws, they get dragged out in every SW thread here, and I agree with most of them. No, the SW universe is not as deep and rich as Tolkien, but Lucas has told a good story (even though there are holes, shallow acting) and it is still enjoyable.
I wouldn't call myself a fanboy, although I think SW was one of the first movies I saw, and I've enjoyed them since (naturally TPM is the weakest as it is the foundation for the others - ironically, AOTC and ROTS will make TPM a marginally better movie because it now has increased relevance to the overall plot, but lets face it, TPM is not flash).
That said, I enjoyed ROTS, and think it will probably become my favourite SW movie, above ANH and TESB. SW is about Anakin, not Luke, and ROTS is _the_ episode that goes into the most detail in Anakin's story. The OT is more about Luke, which whilst it is an important part of the overall story, it is now clearly a sub-plot of the whole.
ROTS benefits by being the last movie released of the six, much like ROTK benefited by the groundwork done by the first two LOTR movies. Everyone was up to speed with the universe the movie took place in, and hence a lot more can be communicated to the viewer. ROTS doesn't disappoint and answers most of the questions people have and at first viewing it appears to provide an excellent bridge from PT to OT. A lot happens in ROTS.
It was interesting coming home and watching the first 30-45 minutes of ANH. The scene where Obiwan is telling Luke about the Clone Wars and his father - you now know so much more of that story, and realise that that story is much bigger than Luke's role. It definitely changes the context of the OT.
Given the weaknesses of TPM, AOTC and ROTJ, I'd say that many SW fans favourite movies may now become ROTS, ANH and TESB. Watching these three in a row probably will give the best watching of the SW universe in years to come. It may even make ROTJ seem like a lame finish to the Anakin story. I think the peak of the SW universe will be centred around ROTS and ANH.
Be interesting to see other comments as they come in.
Yep. As someone that does emergency management planning for various public and utility organisations, this patent also appears to cover placing copies of organisations plans on intranets, PDA's and others. At least thats what I got from my first quick glance. I need to spend some time going over it in more detail to verify that. But pretty damn broad. Luckily it hasn't been filed yet in our country.
Forgot to mention, MS Office on Mac is better than Windows as well. Only downside it that it is one of the few applications that has crashed on the Mac though.
Ya, I've been down this path. iPod Jul 2003, PowerBook Jul 2004.
I used to build PC's and it was fun and you'd get more bang for the buck, but I got ever sick of dealing with flaky drivers and Windows problems. But until the Mac Mini there wasn't an affordable Mac for most people.
I do almost all work and personal stuff on the Mac now. Only time I tend to go back to WinXP is for Visio (which doesn't seem to quite work right under VirtualPC). I'm hopeful that one-day Visio will be produced for the Mac.
Fedora Core is also used, but primarily as a server platform in my small business.
We've got a number of Toshiba WinXP laptops and all of my users have trouble every single day with Windows Wireless networking. They have to repair their connections 2-3 times a day. My PowerBook has no troubles at all with connections. Hibernation of laptops is another - try going a week with hibernating Windows - it becomes so flakey. Now the PowerBook only gets a reboot when an OS update needs it. Otherwise hibernation just works - currently at 24 days with hibernation only - no reboots! All off my work colleagues reboot their WinXP laptop daily.
I have been providing tech support for family and friends in the past, but now with the Mac Mini I'm going to provide them with a subtle and a not-so-subtle hint - "Check out the Mac Mini!" and I'm no longer providing support for Windows.
The Mac operating system and application platform is great. iLife (haven't touched Garageband) is a really great suite of software and the integration works really well. I'm going to be suggesting to family that they should switch just because of the improvements they will have in being able to manage their digital photos etc. And having it all on *nix underpinning is nice - its great for me being able to crank open terminal.
I had an Apple ][ many years ago - ah Castle Wolfenstein ;) but hardly touched pre-OSX because it was and still is crap. I did get a dual-CPU Mac once but promptly installed BeOS instead.
It would be very useful if I could have an install on flash that would allow me to run Firefox on say FC3/WinXP and OSX, yet just have the one store of data. I'm finding more and more that I'm using different OS's for different tasks, but its always useful to have my browser with me. With flash getting cheaper and cheaper there is probably little reason other than configuration why I can't have binaries for different platforms sharing the same files.
I seem to recall that the reason the radiation goes further in is that the skull isn't fully developed. At the end of puberty the skull is fully formed and is much better at absorbing radiation, hence it doesn't penetrate as deeply. Clearly this is an issue for increasing children/teenage use of cellphones. You can probably Google for more info.
Correct, the atlantic ridge is a divergent plate boundary, not a converging plate boundary. This means North America and Europe should be separating.
when the shit hits the fan in CONUS of the sort of crisis they are talking about, that means that all the emergency services, police, emergency management agencies, volunteers and many other will lose the benefit of the GPS as well. As someone that works in emergency management, this seems like handicapping yourself to make a bad situation even worse...
I got an ipod in July last year. Had been enjoying it, using iTunes on a Toshiba laptop happily, but in the back of my mind entertained the thought of investigating Macs. OS9 and less weren't even an option, but the BSD basis and command line got my attention. I still had ignored the first couple of releases of OSX as they had coverage of being slow as a wet week.
In the end the decision was forced upon me. My laptop HD failed about 3 days before I was heading overseas for 3 weeks. Did some quick research and ended up getting a PowerBook and it has been great.
I hate going back to XP now, I only do it for certain work applications now. Happily connecting to linux servers regularly. Things do just work so much more smoothly and are more reliable. I look after 4 PC laptops in our small business, and windows wireless is so flaky under XPSP2. I have no troubles.
Microsoft Office 2004 on Mac is much better than 2003 on PCs, and interoperates with no problems. And its great being able to open a shell and rsync to backup the important stuff on the servers. I'm starting to find a good range of open source software to use as well. iSync is great as I can sync iCal and Addressbook to my Palm, K700i phone and ipod all at once. Only real downsides I have is that there is no Visio or Project available (otherwise I'd be able to move the rest of our work laptops to Macs as well, Virtual PC is OK but not suitable for my other users) or there is no decent New Zealand mapping software that runs natively. Hopefully these will be remedied over time though one means or other.
I knew that I was on-camera everywhere I went and I felt safer. Part of that was because I knew that policemen were watching.
No, it just means that they would be able to play back the footage of the crims beating you to a pulp, and maybe have some evidence that will allow them to track them down. That won't help you any as you recover in hospital. The police cannot actively monitor the 1m+ cameras they have in the UK. This is a recognised problem. Don't get a false sense of security just because there are cameras everywhere. Your immediate security is only protected if all of the 1m+ cameras are continuously monitored.
I've been using sleeves recently for laptops that you can just chuck in a backpack, briefcase or whatever. Then you can just stick it in whatever type of bag you want, rather than having a specific bag such as a laptop/backpack or whatever.
STM
Yeah I've been doing the same with my old Toshiba laptops - I seem to keep having the hard drives fail. I'll be doing that will all the old laptops from the business now. I've taken to sticking Fedora on them, using Samba for file sharing, SquirrelMail and DoveCot IMAP for email archives, and eGroupWare.
As a small business server they are fantastic. Take up little space, have an inbuilt screeen, mouse, keyboard, networking and battery if the power fails. Setup rsync for backups and you're set! Especially now I've got a PowerBook G4 and can rsync from the terminal. And it all works beautifully with a mixture of XP, OSX and FC machines on the network!
I agree with what you say. However, there is usually one very good reason why public agencies do not release the information - they are not allowed to. They usually hire a contractor to get gather the information, and then they licence the orthophotography. So they don't own it, they just have a licence to use it. Governments therefore have to either be a bit more forceful about the rights that they have on the data they pay to be gathered, or they should do it themselves rather than use a commercial provider.