Of course. I'm sure all that spam I get offering to make my missile longer and give her explosive orgasms is causing a ton of false positives in Carnivore.
Sheesh. Give them some credit man, this is the fucking NSA. Hopefully they have enough blackops financing to comb through spam email.
Although, I will say that ENCRYPTING your message using spam-like language would be a dynamite hack.
Well, considering the public nature of all internet services, I'd have to say there probably isn't a law and probably shouldn't be. If any machine has to be able to deliver a packet to any other machine, that every router has to have the rights to read the information in that packet. It's trivial to put a sniffer to one of these routers and smell around for shit going down.
Of course, if what you're transmitting is encrypted data, it becomes harder to figure out what you're up to. If your encryption is based on keys that only you and the recipient have, it becomes nearly impossible. Which is exactly why you should be doing that with any data more personal than, well, a post on slashdot.
Actually, I've worked three places that have been audited by the BSA. Tip offs from disgruntled ex employees. On all three occasions, we ran their self audit software, and came up roses. They thanked us and never called back. No money exchanged hands.
But then again, I usually work at companies that have software budgets.
Yes, but the key to the 1.8T is not so much the engine (which i'll admit is merely above average...nothing bleeding edge like that Nissan 6 banger) that they put it in some very nice cars, with great suspension, handling, sound, styling and features. I've yet to drive an American car that has the size of a German car without feeling claustrophobic...I mean, I'm a six footer and I can comfortably drive everything in the VW line, even the damn Cabrio. The Neon makes me cramped, the Focus is, well, a noble effort that falls flat, and don't get me started on the Cougar. I hate that fucking thing, it's got a cockpit like Apollo 13 and you'd think a car that looks like that would be, i dunno, fast or something.
it may not be possible to do this in the near future.
I call bullshit on this, it's just wrong. The firmware in ECUs is NOT getting more and more complex, at least not drastically so. My buddy wrote a new program for his Impala with basically no prior knowledge, and it worked well enough to control his supercharger. Sure, there's new stuff in there, but it is all built off the same basic premises as the old stuff. It's not making the leaps and bounds you seem the think it is, and it doesn't have to. Everything the ECU needs to do, it already can do.
Of course, electronic control of other parts of the car is getting more and more complex, but that's generally not performed by the ECU. Nor would you want it to be. Radio, security system, navigation, etc, don't need the same tolerances nor the same reliability as ignition timing or knock sensing.
And a most of chip tuners aren't amateurs, but rather contractors who write the software for the factory ECUs in the first place. Maybe not for the same car, but a chip tuner who writes programs for Ford may also write aftermarket code for Dodge. It's not like they're starting from scratch -- they've got the tools and the knowledge and they're building off an existing codebase. Furthermore, some chip tuners actually license the OEM program and build on that. NASCAR tuners do this for sure. OEMs don't care too much about aftermarket hacking, at least once a car is out of warranty, that is.
Re:Stupid question
on
Hack Your Ride
·
· Score: 4, Informative
A chip adjusts the sensitivity of the wastegate (which is electronically adjustable, yes, it's apparently a solenoid), as well as controlling the fuel-air mixture. It also increases the rev limit, not that it matters since you'll never hit it (the shift point is in the late 5000s for the 1.8T). Here's some info from a Volvo turbo page...though the effect on VW/Audi cars is a bit more spectacular (due to heavily overengineered and underspeced engines...if only the steering and stabilization systems were so trustworthy!).
The overengineered specs for the 1.8T mean HUGE boosts in engine performance can be had relatively simply. Generally, a chip in a normally aspirated car means at most 10 hp. In a turbo, it can be fairly extreme...with the Audi V6 2.7 biturbo seeing a boost of 65+ hp without adding new turbos or exhausts! VW noticed this overengineering as well (if they didn't do it on purpose) -- notice with the 1.8T that the same engine that was stock 150 hp in 1997 is now stock at 170 hp. They say it's due to DBW, but I say it's due to a better boost program.
Either way, you'd be nuts to buy the crummy 2.8 V6, which actually puts out LESS power after a boost mod than the 1.8T. And it's heavier. And it's $1800 more expensive. But I guess you get more torque under 2k, meaning you don't sound like you're gunning it all the time.
The chip is particular to the engine, but this usually amounts to being particular to model as well, because though Volkswagen uses the same basic engine, the 1.8T, on 4 models, each has a different exhaust and intake system and thus has different allowances for safe boosting.
A quick primer in speed: your engine has three main systems: air intake, combustion, and exhaust. Your car can only be as fast as the weakest of these three. Chipping takes advantage of down-speccing that goes on with the intake and the engine to reduce warranty requests -- the exhaust, at least on modern german autos, is usually good enough for up to 230-250hp. Chipping is a much more effective AND cost effective means of gaining speed out of a stock automobile than slapping on a big exhaust system or a body kit. It's why my Passat has been known to smoke Integras and Mustangs (though, to be honest, that's more likely a combination of good reflexes and shitty driving on the Ford's part).
The whole idea of a turbo is that if you drive your car carefully, it never spools up (that sucking sound you hear around 2500 rpm). So if you keep it under 3000 rpm, you really hardly use the turbo. And the APR chip dynamically adjusts boost pressure...so at spool, you're only running a little bit more pressure than stock. Hence the improved fuel economy with the chip (2 mpg in my experience, with my lightweight flywheel I can get upwards of 37 mpg with the cruise set to 65, not bad for a car with 215 hp!)
The only time you really stress your turbo with increased boost pressure is when you push it to the floor. Which is when you WANT to stress the turbo. The switch that's on newer APR chips was put in to give drivers peace of mind...I have 100,000 miles on my APR chip and both turbo and engine are wearing better than expected.
And keep in mind that graphic arts is about melding discordant shapes and images in a seamless fashion. User interface design is about demarcating where one conceptual function ends and another begins.
Which is the whole problem with skins. Skin artist makes this beautiful brushed metal design, and then can't figure out where his scrollbars are.
Apple done it right. Backgrounds are dull whites or brushed metal, but foregrounds are bright, gaudy mixes of whitish and bluish with big colorful icons. Shit, the three window accessory buttons (minimize, resize and close) are red, yellow and green.
XP is of course a mess, but not because of the colors. XP is a mess because it replaces the simple icons and buttons with a shitload of text and an obnoxious dog. People don't want to read a short novel and wrestle Bonzi Buddy just to install a printer.
So don't replace it with a 3 GHz Dell. Replace it with an 800 MHz iBook. You can get an iBook G3-800 (last year's girl) for about $750. And your usability issues? Pss. Gone. And battery life is about twice as long, thanks to more efficient processor and screen.
Word. A 12" iBook may not be as OMG impressive as a 17" widescreen Dell. But 6 hours of battery life is nothing to sneeze at. That's almost as good as my iPod!
(swear to god if any of you make ignorant comments about being able to replace the battery I will revoke your internet licenses)
I've thought about that. The problem is...well, there are several.
1) The energy produced by pedaling a bicycle with idle resistance is relatively low. And the resistance required to produce real power makes the pedaling uncomfortably difficult. Ever ridden the "light cycle" at a kid's museum -- the bike attached to a lightbulb? To get the equivalent glow of a 40W bulb, you have to pedal like a madman. Your processor alone expects up to 2 times that.
2) You'd have to connect the pedal portion to the chair, or it wouldn't be stable. Which means you've got a chair with a 4 foot extension on the front of it, plus pedals. Not many people want that in their computer room.
3) Sweat is inevitable, and that leads to smelly, sticky keyboards, chairs, and rooms in general.
If you want to work out while computing, get yourself a dumbbell. There's a lot of evidence that shows a good lifting session is more effective at burning calories and of course building muscle than a low impact cardio workout. Of course, the best solution of all is both...so spend a half hour in front of the PC, working on your arms, shoulders, back and chest, then take a nice half hour jog. I guarantee you'll solve some of your computer problems while you're running, too.
What we really need is a Michael Moore's law. That's the time between the occurance an act of social injustice and the making of a smug, one-sided incendiary film on the subject.
I don't think we're here to debate how shitty Novell is. For one thing, we'd be hard pressed to find anybody on the PRO side, besides some washed up fiftysomethings desperately clinging to the idea that Novell's Linux ventures will somehow bring more value than anything else they've done.
I guess I should salute Novell for one thing, though: Ximian's Mono. Cocking brilliance, that is.
Of course. Many of us assholes devote our time to debunking useless and stupid ideas on slashdot. Not all of us feel the need to post anonymously, though. It takes some of the fun out of it if they can't holler back.
In no sense whatsoever is the iPod a fileserver. Maybe you IT wannabes don't know this, but a fileserver is a computer that has been designed to maximize file delivery on a network. It generally has a lot of RAID'd storage and a lot of access methods. Ours runs Samba, NFS, AppleTalk, FTP, SFTP/SCP and WebDAV, just for completeness. Here's how a fileserver works: a client makes a request for a file, the server loads it from the drive and queues it up in memory, and begins feeding it back to the user. The client cannot actually read the physical medium on the drive, thus preventing a rogue client from thrashing the disc.
Your thumbdrives, flash cards, and iPod hard drives run FUCK ALL in way of file access protocols. They expect the host computer to do all of the work involved with accessing filesystems. If the host wants a file, it has to go into the very bloody bits and find it. A rogue host can easily thrash the disc. These are devices for file storage, not file serving.
The main reasons for running a file server are to permit multiple clients to access data at the same time, provide access to larger amounts of storage than the clients have locally, and to provide a unified location for backups. The iPod, being a relatively slow device designed for a sequential file access with a limited amount of space is distinctly unqualified for any of these activities. A BSD box with a few terrabytes of raided discs and a couple nics is much more like it. Unfortunately, you cannot yet fit such a setup in your hands, ergo most useful fileservers are not designed on portable audio platforms.
I guess, within the bounds hackerdom, I define something as cool when it permits me to perform radical new activities. Webserving is hardly a radical nor new activity.
1) The iPod does not have any networking capabilities. You'd have to plug it in to a slave device to get this functionality, and in doing so you'd still have little more than a hard drive.
2) If you really want to waste your time making a palm sized file or webserver, you'd be much better off with a pocket PC or miniATX machine. Seeing as these already operate as a web/file server in the palm of your hand, really you add nothing by doing the same with an iPod.
3) WTF do you want a portable file server for in the first place? File servers are supposed to be STATIONARY. That's why they're servers...so they can efficiently deliver you files without you having to get up! If the fucking thing is a portable hard drive already, you'd be much better off just copying files from it. The extra overhead and memory cost are just going to slow down the transfer, which would be inefficient to start with considering the kludges you'd have to pull to get the thing on the network (without slaving it to a PC).
4) Anybody who thinks that an inefficient, clunky interface podged onto an MP3 devices just to make it a webserver is cool should really consider devoting some of their energy to real problems in computing.
Well, if you consider "Runs Linux" a feature, that's one thing this adds.
Of course, when I bought my car, I didn't check to see who had manufactured the chassis. I sure as shit didn't rip it apart trying to build my own. Maybe I'm missing something here. Or maybe I'm not a fucking idiot with too much time on his hands.
I propose a theorum: It does not matter how expensive a device is, some nerd will castigate and cripple it for no readily explainable reason other than pure anarchic hubris.
1) If you're in NY, CT or PA, have him email me. I'll get my guy in touch with him. You can have him email me if he's not, too, but those states are our company's focus right now.
2) Wait. It's a technology demo right now. Implementation is a ways down the road...but should be out before the end of 2005 (seems like forever to you and me, but in government, a 2 year window is just about right. After all, it takes three months of proposals to get the money set aside for the software, and that's assuming it's budget season and there's no politics involved.)
3) *IF* he wanted it right away, a custom set of ArcMap layers similar to what I'm doing automatically in software should not be hard for any qualified GIS specialist. Heck, I just picked it up and I had the data meaningfully sandwiched in a matter of minutes! A copy of ArcView, a few datasets carefully overlayed, bingobangoboingo you've got total data overload.
4) Of course, if the data doesn't exist -- especially the parcel boundaries polygons, I got lucky that I live in Rensselaer, most of NY including ALbany does NOT have such data available -- you'll have to get it, usually by scanning in the development blueprints and mucking about in CAD. Expensive and time consuming, but way worth it...and you only have to do it once! Well, really more like once, and then some maintenance every 3 to 6 months to plot new developments.
showing folks information in a graphical or visual format makes it more real
I agree. As a demo to a new government GIS system I'm working on, I created a web service: enter any street address in New York, and you get spit back a 1 pixel/foot aerial photo of the property embedded with the parcel boundaries. The premise is to settle border disputes between neighbours without going to the planner's office for the plat blueprints. And some people are just shocked that we have the ability to do this...they're of the opinion that we're taking the photos real time (not so -- it takes about a year to scan and process the data for 1/3 of the state). The neat thing about this is all the data is freely available from NYS -- gigabytes and gigabytes of geographic data, census data, elevation data, orthophotography (overhead pictures), raster graphics (scanned maps), polygon files (which contain in them a bunch of fantastic parcel data)...and linking them all is as easy as layering them in ArcMap.
Is prividing so much data online a privacy thing? Maybe. But the information is so valuable -- to planners, developers, ecologists, home buyers, home owners and just plain curious folks that I think it's worth it. I mean, I don't freak out over the town pruning trees along the right of way , the census man, or USGS surveyors. Besides, the data over my house is so old, it has the driveway in the wrong place and trees that aren't even there any more.
BTW: NY did shut down access to detailed maps and orthophotgraphy files after 9/11. The came back up in November, 2003, even more detailed. We heal quick in the Empire State.
BTW2: I can't make the webservice available, because the machine it's on is laughably underpowered. If you want access, convince your town to buy our software;)
Uh, the German plural of box is Kasten. See, they have different nouns over there. As part of their different language.
"Boxen," as it has been explained to me, is not a German-style plural at heart. It is, instead, an attempt to glorify the ubiquity of *NIX computers by comparing them with livestock. Box + oxen = boxen, tee hee. Which is ridiciculous, as it shows an insulting lack of insight into livestock themselves (here's a hint: all animals are better suited to one task than another, and they are NOT interchangable) as well as a severe reduction of the complexity of computing.
The nickname "das Megabyte" is actually German for "The Megabyte," a name given to me a long time because my signature (an M with the superscript 3, signifying three M initials) looks like "MB." I switched it to das Megabyte and the shortened form dasmb when it became obvious there were several "TheMegabyte"s on the internet, vying for the same usernames. BTW, Megabyte is a unit of measure and therefore takes the neuter and not the masculine "der."
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Of course. I'm sure all that spam I get offering to make my missile longer and give her explosive orgasms is causing a ton of false positives in Carnivore.
Sheesh. Give them some credit man, this is the fucking NSA. Hopefully they have enough blackops financing to comb through spam email.
Although, I will say that ENCRYPTING your message using spam-like language would be a dynamite hack.
Well, considering the public nature of all internet services, I'd have to say there probably isn't a law and probably shouldn't be. If any machine has to be able to deliver a packet to any other machine, that every router has to have the rights to read the information in that packet. It's trivial to put a sniffer to one of these routers and smell around for shit going down.
Of course, if what you're transmitting is encrypted data, it becomes harder to figure out what you're up to. If your encryption is based on keys that only you and the recipient have, it becomes nearly impossible. Which is exactly why you should be doing that with any data more personal than, well, a post on slashdot.
But maybe...there should be?
Actually, I've worked three places that have been audited by the BSA. Tip offs from disgruntled ex employees. On all three occasions, we ran their self audit software, and came up roses. They thanked us and never called back. No money exchanged hands.
But then again, I usually work at companies that have software budgets.
Yes, but the key to the 1.8T is not so much the engine (which i'll admit is merely above average...nothing bleeding edge like that Nissan 6 banger) that they put it in some very nice cars, with great suspension, handling, sound, styling and features. I've yet to drive an American car that has the size of a German car without feeling claustrophobic...I mean, I'm a six footer and I can comfortably drive everything in the VW line, even the damn Cabrio. The Neon makes me cramped, the Focus is, well, a noble effort that falls flat, and don't get me started on the Cougar. I hate that fucking thing, it's got a cockpit like Apollo 13 and you'd think a car that looks like that would be, i dunno, fast or something.
it may not be possible to do this in the near future.
I call bullshit on this, it's just wrong. The firmware in ECUs is NOT getting more and more complex, at least not drastically so. My buddy wrote a new program for his Impala with basically no prior knowledge, and it worked well enough to control his supercharger. Sure, there's new stuff in there, but it is all built off the same basic premises as the old stuff. It's not making the leaps and bounds you seem the think it is, and it doesn't have to. Everything the ECU needs to do, it already can do.
Of course, electronic control of other parts of the car is getting more and more complex, but that's generally not performed by the ECU. Nor would you want it to be. Radio, security system, navigation, etc, don't need the same tolerances nor the same reliability as ignition timing or knock sensing.
And a most of chip tuners aren't amateurs, but rather contractors who write the software for the factory ECUs in the first place. Maybe not for the same car, but a chip tuner who writes programs for Ford may also write aftermarket code for Dodge. It's not like they're starting from scratch -- they've got the tools and the knowledge and they're building off an existing codebase. Furthermore, some chip tuners actually license the OEM program and build on that. NASCAR tuners do this for sure. OEMs don't care too much about aftermarket hacking, at least once a car is out of warranty, that is.
A chip adjusts the sensitivity of the wastegate (which is electronically adjustable, yes, it's apparently a solenoid), as well as controlling the fuel-air mixture. It also increases the rev limit, not that it matters since you'll never hit it (the shift point is in the late 5000s for the 1.8T). Here's some info from a Volvo turbo page...though the effect on VW/Audi cars is a bit more spectacular (due to heavily overengineered and underspeced engines...if only the steering and stabilization systems were so trustworthy!).
The overengineered specs for the 1.8T mean HUGE boosts in engine performance can be had relatively simply. Generally, a chip in a normally aspirated car means at most 10 hp. In a turbo, it can be fairly extreme...with the Audi V6 2.7 biturbo seeing a boost of 65+ hp without adding new turbos or exhausts! VW noticed this overengineering as well (if they didn't do it on purpose) -- notice with the 1.8T that the same engine that was stock 150 hp in 1997 is now stock at 170 hp. They say it's due to DBW, but I say it's due to a better boost program.
Either way, you'd be nuts to buy the crummy 2.8 V6, which actually puts out LESS power after a boost mod than the 1.8T. And it's heavier. And it's $1800 more expensive. But I guess you get more torque under 2k, meaning you don't sound like you're gunning it all the time.
The chip is particular to the engine, but this usually amounts to being particular to model as well, because though Volkswagen uses the same basic engine, the 1.8T, on 4 models, each has a different exhaust and intake system and thus has different allowances for safe boosting.
A quick primer in speed: your engine has three main systems: air intake, combustion, and exhaust. Your car can only be as fast as the weakest of these three. Chipping takes advantage of down-speccing that goes on with the intake and the engine to reduce warranty requests -- the exhaust, at least on modern german autos, is usually good enough for up to 230-250hp. Chipping is a much more effective AND cost effective means of gaining speed out of a stock automobile than slapping on a big exhaust system or a body kit. It's why my Passat has been known to smoke Integras and Mustangs (though, to be honest, that's more likely a combination of good reflexes and shitty driving on the Ford's part).
The whole idea of a turbo is that if you drive your car carefully, it never spools up (that sucking sound you hear around 2500 rpm). So if you keep it under 3000 rpm, you really hardly use the turbo. And the APR chip dynamically adjusts boost pressure...so at spool, you're only running a little bit more pressure than stock. Hence the improved fuel economy with the chip (2 mpg in my experience, with my lightweight flywheel I can get upwards of 37 mpg with the cruise set to 65, not bad for a car with 215 hp!)
The only time you really stress your turbo with increased boost pressure is when you push it to the floor. Which is when you WANT to stress the turbo. The switch that's on newer APR chips was put in to give drivers peace of mind...I have 100,000 miles on my APR chip and both turbo and engine are wearing better than expected.
And keep in mind that graphic arts is about melding discordant shapes and images in a seamless fashion. User interface design is about demarcating where one conceptual function ends and another begins.
Which is the whole problem with skins. Skin artist makes this beautiful brushed metal design, and then can't figure out where his scrollbars are.
Apple done it right. Backgrounds are dull whites or brushed metal, but foregrounds are bright, gaudy mixes of whitish and bluish with big colorful icons. Shit, the three window accessory buttons (minimize, resize and close) are red, yellow and green.
XP is of course a mess, but not because of the colors. XP is a mess because it replaces the simple icons and buttons with a shitload of text and an obnoxious dog. People don't want to read a short novel and wrestle Bonzi Buddy just to install a printer.
So don't replace it with a 3 GHz Dell. Replace it with an 800 MHz iBook. You can get an iBook G3-800 (last year's girl) for about $750. And your usability issues? Pss. Gone. And battery life is about twice as long, thanks to more efficient processor and screen.
Word. A 12" iBook may not be as OMG impressive as a 17" widescreen Dell. But 6 hours of battery life is nothing to sneeze at. That's almost as good as my iPod!
(swear to god if any of you make ignorant comments about being able to replace the battery I will revoke your internet licenses)
I've thought about that. The problem is...well, there are several.
1) The energy produced by pedaling a bicycle with idle resistance is relatively low. And the resistance required to produce real power makes the pedaling uncomfortably difficult. Ever ridden the "light cycle" at a kid's museum -- the bike attached to a lightbulb? To get the equivalent glow of a 40W bulb, you have to pedal like a madman. Your processor alone expects up to 2 times that.
2) You'd have to connect the pedal portion to the chair, or it wouldn't be stable. Which means you've got a chair with a 4 foot extension on the front of it, plus pedals. Not many people want that in their computer room.
3) Sweat is inevitable, and that leads to smelly, sticky keyboards, chairs, and rooms in general.
If you want to work out while computing, get yourself a dumbbell. There's a lot of evidence that shows a good lifting session is more effective at burning calories and of course building muscle than a low impact cardio workout. Of course, the best solution of all is both...so spend a half hour in front of the PC, working on your arms, shoulders, back and chest, then take a nice half hour jog. I guarantee you'll solve some of your computer problems while you're running, too.
What we really need is a Michael Moore's law. That's the time between the occurance an act of social injustice and the making of a smug, one-sided incendiary film on the subject.
I don't think we're here to debate how shitty Novell is. For one thing, we'd be hard pressed to find anybody on the PRO side, besides some washed up fiftysomethings desperately clinging to the idea that Novell's Linux ventures will somehow bring more value than anything else they've done.
I guess I should salute Novell for one thing, though: Ximian's Mono. Cocking brilliance, that is.
Uh, my website doesn't use ANY colours. Please adjust your gamma.
Of course. Many of us assholes devote our time to debunking useless and stupid ideas on slashdot. Not all of us feel the need to post anonymously, though. It takes some of the fun out of it if they can't holler back.
In no sense whatsoever is the iPod a fileserver. Maybe you IT wannabes don't know this, but a fileserver is a computer that has been designed to maximize file delivery on a network. It generally has a lot of RAID'd storage and a lot of access methods. Ours runs Samba, NFS, AppleTalk, FTP, SFTP/SCP and WebDAV, just for completeness. Here's how a fileserver works: a client makes a request for a file, the server loads it from the drive and queues it up in memory, and begins feeding it back to the user. The client cannot actually read the physical medium on the drive, thus preventing a rogue client from thrashing the disc.
Your thumbdrives, flash cards, and iPod hard drives run FUCK ALL in way of file access protocols. They expect the host computer to do all of the work involved with accessing filesystems. If the host wants a file, it has to go into the very bloody bits and find it. A rogue host can easily thrash the disc. These are devices for file storage, not file serving.
The main reasons for running a file server are to permit multiple clients to access data at the same time, provide access to larger amounts of storage than the clients have locally, and to provide a unified location for backups. The iPod, being a relatively slow device designed for a sequential file access with a limited amount of space is distinctly unqualified for any of these activities. A BSD box with a few terrabytes of raided discs and a couple nics is much more like it. Unfortunately, you cannot yet fit such a setup in your hands, ergo most useful fileservers are not designed on portable audio platforms.
I guess, within the bounds hackerdom, I define something as cool when it permits me to perform radical new activities. Webserving is hardly a radical nor new activity.
Hmm. I demonstrate: this website! HAHAHA.
I need a fucking beer.
Uh, sure would. Except:
1) The iPod does not have any networking capabilities. You'd have to plug it in to a slave device to get this functionality, and in doing so you'd still have little more than a hard drive.
2) If you really want to waste your time making a palm sized file or webserver, you'd be much better off with a pocket PC or miniATX machine. Seeing as these already operate as a web/file server in the palm of your hand, really you add nothing by doing the same with an iPod.
3) WTF do you want a portable file server for in the first place? File servers are supposed to be STATIONARY. That's why they're servers...so they can efficiently deliver you files without you having to get up! If the fucking thing is a portable hard drive already, you'd be much better off just copying files from it. The extra overhead and memory cost are just going to slow down the transfer, which would be inefficient to start with considering the kludges you'd have to pull to get the thing on the network (without slaving it to a PC).
4) Anybody who thinks that an inefficient, clunky interface podged onto an MP3 devices just to make it a webserver is cool should really consider devoting some of their energy to real problems in computing.
Well, if you consider "Runs Linux" a feature, that's one thing this adds.
Of course, when I bought my car, I didn't check to see who had manufactured the chassis. I sure as shit didn't rip it apart trying to build my own. Maybe I'm missing something here. Or maybe I'm not a fucking idiot with too much time on his hands.
No, that can't be it. Look at my website!
I propose a theorum: It does not matter how expensive a device is, some nerd will castigate and cripple it for no readily explainable reason other than pure anarchic hubris.
Because one cannot leave well enough alone.
1) If you're in NY, CT or PA, have him email me. I'll get my guy in touch with him. You can have him email me if he's not, too, but those states are our company's focus right now.
2) Wait. It's a technology demo right now. Implementation is a ways down the road...but should be out before the end of 2005 (seems like forever to you and me, but in government, a 2 year window is just about right. After all, it takes three months of proposals to get the money set aside for the software, and that's assuming it's budget season and there's no politics involved.)
3) *IF* he wanted it right away, a custom set of ArcMap layers similar to what I'm doing automatically in software should not be hard for any qualified GIS specialist. Heck, I just picked it up and I had the data meaningfully sandwiched in a matter of minutes! A copy of ArcView, a few datasets carefully overlayed, bingobangoboingo you've got total data overload.
4) Of course, if the data doesn't exist -- especially the parcel boundaries polygons, I got lucky that I live in Rensselaer, most of NY including ALbany does NOT have such data available -- you'll have to get it, usually by scanning in the development blueprints and mucking about in CAD. Expensive and time consuming, but way worth it...and you only have to do it once! Well, really more like once, and then some maintenance every 3 to 6 months to plot new developments.
showing folks information in a graphical or visual format makes it more real
;)
I agree. As a demo to a new government GIS system I'm working on, I created a web service: enter any street address in New York, and you get spit back a 1 pixel/foot aerial photo of the property embedded with the parcel boundaries. The premise is to settle border disputes between neighbours without going to the planner's office for the plat blueprints. And some people are just shocked that we have the ability to do this...they're of the opinion that we're taking the photos real time (not so -- it takes about a year to scan and process the data for 1/3 of the state). The neat thing about this is all the data is freely available from NYS -- gigabytes and gigabytes of geographic data, census data, elevation data, orthophotography (overhead pictures), raster graphics (scanned maps), polygon files (which contain in them a bunch of fantastic parcel data)...and linking them all is as easy as layering them in ArcMap.
Is prividing so much data online a privacy thing? Maybe. But the information is so valuable -- to planners, developers, ecologists, home buyers, home owners and just plain curious folks that I think it's worth it. I mean, I don't freak out over the town pruning trees along the right of way , the census man, or USGS surveyors. Besides, the data over my house is so old, it has the driveway in the wrong place and trees that aren't even there any more.
BTW: NY did shut down access to detailed maps and orthophotgraphy files after 9/11. The came back up in November, 2003, even more detailed. We heal quick in the Empire State.
BTW2: I can't make the webservice available, because the machine it's on is laughably underpowered. If you want access, convince your town to buy our software
Uh, the German plural of box is Kasten. See, they have different nouns over there. As part of their different language.
"Boxen," as it has been explained to me, is not a German-style plural at heart. It is, instead, an attempt to glorify the ubiquity of *NIX computers by comparing them with livestock. Box + oxen = boxen, tee hee. Which is ridiciculous, as it shows an insulting lack of insight into livestock themselves (here's a hint: all animals are better suited to one task than another, and they are NOT interchangable) as well as a severe reduction of the complexity of computing.
The nickname "das Megabyte" is actually German for "The Megabyte," a name given to me a long time because my signature (an M with the superscript 3, signifying three M initials) looks like "MB." I switched it to das Megabyte and the shortened form dasmb when it became obvious there were several "TheMegabyte"s on the internet, vying for the same usernames. BTW, Megabyte is a unit of measure and therefore takes the neuter and not the masculine "der."