That's what OpenStreetMap is all about: http://openstreetmap.org/
Crowdsourced mapping combined with an open license produces free, high quality mapping that can be very detailed and very up-to-date.
There's a choice of about 50 different models here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GPS_Reviews It all depends on whether you want to contribute content to OpenStreetMap or just use the maps, or ideally both.
How on earth could the article have missed off Rod Stewart. This Telegraph article tells that he was recently featured on the front page of Model Railroader.
There are some very interesting benefits that can be obtained by aggregating large quantities of health data. The drug companies already pay a lot of money for access to this data.
Unfortunately this price puts the data out of reach of small and non-profit research organizations. OpenHealthRecord is an interesting proof-of-concept project that is collecting health data (by providing an on-line PHR) and making it openly available to anyone who can use it.
Scaled up this approach could provide research groups with unrivalled quantities of data, at almost no cost. Imagine how this could facilitate and accelerate medical research and progress.
And making this kind of data available to Joe Public could stimulate a whole new wave of epidemiological mash-ups that could reveal all kinds of interesting things.
Check out http://www.openhealthrecord.org/ This is a proof of concept of how to do this kind of thing properly. Fully anonymous, it makes all data available to anyone for all kinds of research and totally undercuts anyone, like MS, who tries to monetize your data.
Your health data is your data, don't let Microsoft profit from it by selling it to drug companies.
we're a) not going to force it down someone else's throat, based on the 11th article of Faith:
Unless that someone else is your child!
I consider people who do that to be child abusers. Young children are vulnerable and easily influenced, especially by people they trust. You have a moral responsibility not to force your beliefs down your own childs throat.
I'd say that http://www.openstreetmap.org/ might be the right solution for you sometime in the future. It describes itself as: The Free Wiki World Map. If your street isn't marked you can go right in there and draw it (a GPS trace can be uploaded, which helps).
Its way far from complete yet, but map data is being created at an ever increasing rate and the accuracy of what gets loaded is, from what I can see, much better than that provided to Google by TeleAtlas.
It seems to me that anyone using any kind of computer system should have fallback contingency plans. If the application that you are using is suddenly discovered to have a fatal security flaw then this is no different from any other kind of failure - stop using the product.
Its no more acceptable to continue using software with a known vulnerability than it would be to carry on driving your car if you were informed that the brakes could fail at any moment without warning.
An immediate consequence of this would be than manufacturers would very quickly learn to make products that are maintainable enough that they can be fixed (or at least made safe) in a very short period of time. If a security flaw required 12 months to fix because it takes that long to test the product, then you have chosen that product unwisely - modular design and maintainability are important features.
A smart software designer will know that there could be a vulnerability and will design their software so that at least key parts can be enabled/disabled etc so that any vulnerability can be mitigated without total loss of functionality for the customer - like providing a mechanical lock as backup for an electronic car entry system - but with a way of disabling the electronic system if a flaw was found.
Full disclosure will lead eventually to better products.
Just as branding your enemy a communist during the 1950s was a sure fire way of ensuring their downfall, the so-called War on Terror has sparked a modern day witch hunt for "terrorist links".
As the United States Department of Justice attempts to extradite an Australian indicted as head of an international email spamming ring, the battle against spam has been spurred by unsubstantiated claims it funds terrorism.
The Department of Justice made the claims before a United States congressional hearing earlier this month but could not provide evidence.
Organised criminal syndicates profit from spam, according to Jack G. Michael, a deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division at the Department of Justice. He was addressing the US House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Direct Marketing Association oversight hearing, titled "International Email Spam Links to Organised Crime and Terrorism".
Making the link to terrorism Malcolm said, "Organised crime syndicates are frequently engaged in many types of criminal enterprises, including supporting terrorist activities".
Malcolm could not cite an actual case where spam was linked to terrorism, but said, "it would surprise me greatly if the number were not large".
The Direct Marketing Association head James Valentine continued the terrorism theme in his written submission to the hearing.
"September 11 changed the way Americans look at the world. It also changed the way American law enforcement looks at spamming crimes," wrote Valentine - borrowing from a November 2002 article in the Customs Service newsletter US Customs Today.
The Department of Justice's war on spam was boosted recently by the indictment of 40-year-old Ray Hugh Griffin, of South Wales, as co-leader of the worldwide spamming group SpendToSave.
The extradition of Griffin - known by the online alias "SanNiBel" - will be sought "in the coming weeks," according to US Attorney Peter J McCarthy.
Griffin's indictment is the latest action arising from "Operation Mountaineer" - a joint US Customs and Department of Justice investigation which has seen 20 people convicted.
Operation Mountaineer has seen spammers put behind bars for several years. Similar penalties should apply to college students sending unsolicited messages using chat applications such as Gaim and MSN, Congressman John Carter - a Texas Republican - told the congressional hearing.
"I think it'd be a good idea to go out and actually bust a couple of these college kids," said Carter.
"If you want to see college kids duck and run, you let them read the papers and somebody's got a 33-month sentence in the federal penitentiary for sending unsolicited emails."
The incumbent telecoms companies ought to be really worried by VoIP. Right now they can get a slice of the action providing someone is trying to make a call to a legacy phone, by if its VoIP to VoIP they dont stand a chance.
Imagine, free unlimited and unrestricted (open source, of course) telephone services worldwide. Just like email. It will happen and there's nothing they can do about it.
And cell phones will be replaced by WiFi phones, with the gentle propagation of free WiFi hot spots in Cafes etc who's going to need to pay for a cell phone?
One thing the article doesn't mention is that metric sized ring binders (folders) are a bit too high to fit on the shelves of most standard US office shelving units.
You guys are gonna have to buy new shelves before you can even start using modern sized paper.
We're all pretty used to having a Disaster Recovery plan for our sites, it seems like what's needed is a DR plan for the planet.
Consider the scenario where there is a global disaster (asteroid or any number of other causes) that results in a residual population of survivors.
Chances are that they aren't all going to be rocket scientists, indeed it could be a few generations before anyone of that calibre is born.
What a legacy it would be if there was an archive of a significant knowlege base coupled with some pretty simple instructions for accessing it.
What would it cost to do this?
The difference is that you have to pay for the stuff you buy in a store, and they store is paying you (indirectly, by giving a very small discount) when you use the card.
When you borrow books from a library you don't have to pay anything, so there is no cost in taking out two books instead of one.
BTW You should try my peanut flavored cream-of-chicken aphrodisiac soup. You apply it with a spatula and then lick it off...;)
Next time you go to your public library, as well as borrowing the book that you want, just borrow a book chosen at random.
If enough people do this then it would be impossible for TPTB to know whether you really borrowed (and read) that book or just selected it randomly.
Similar techniques are used for making survey responses anonymous.
80N
Do they already have crawling insects?
on
Spy Fly
·
· Score: 1
Since they are now developing flying insects one has to assume that the military already have the technology to deploy crawling insects.
In any case, a centipede would be a lot stealthier than a bee and probably does more miles to the gallon.
80N (Learn to crawl before you can walk)
Ability to fly is not a major requirement
on
Spy Fly
·
· Score: 1
For many beneficial uses an insect sized robot could be useful (penetrating collapsed buildings, mines, etc). But the ability to fly doesn't have to be very high up on the list of needs. Yet this is probably the most difficult and expensive feature of the project.
Sound's like they ought to have a requirements review meeting...
Slashdot Mirror
They're made out of Meat by Terry Bisson
That's what OpenStreetMap is all about: http://openstreetmap.org/ Crowdsourced mapping combined with an open license produces free, high quality mapping that can be very detailed and very up-to-date.
There's a choice of about 50 different models here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GPS_Reviews It all depends on whether you want to contribute content to OpenStreetMap or just use the maps, or ideally both.
How on earth could the article have missed off Rod Stewart. This Telegraph article tells that he was recently featured on the front page of Model Railroader.
That's way too geek for me.
There are some very interesting benefits that can be obtained by aggregating large quantities of health data. The drug companies already pay a lot of money for access to this data.
Unfortunately this price puts the data out of reach of small and non-profit research organizations. OpenHealthRecord is an interesting proof-of-concept project that is collecting health data (by providing an on-line PHR) and making it openly available to anyone who can use it.
Scaled up this approach could provide research groups with unrivalled quantities of data, at almost no cost. Imagine how this could facilitate and accelerate medical research and progress.
And making this kind of data available to Joe Public could stimulate a whole new wave of epidemiological mash-ups that could reveal all kinds of interesting things.
Check out http://www.openhealthrecord.org/ This is a proof of concept of how to do this kind of thing properly. Fully anonymous, it makes all data available to anyone for all kinds of research and totally undercuts anyone, like MS, who tries to monetize your data.
Your health data is your data, don't let Microsoft profit from it by selling it to drug companies.
80NAt http://www.ebay.com/ 21,491 items found for lego.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy
Which at some point boil down to either, "I don't know." or beliefs on your part.
Wrong. At the end it boils down to "I don't know." Period.
If I don't know something (and there's a lot of stuff I don't know) then I don't ever say "just believe it".
Sharing any kind of blind faith beliefs with others is immoral and unethical. If you don't know something then don't pretend that you do.
And leave your kids alone, child abuser!
we're a) not going to force it down someone else's throat, based on the 11th article of Faith:
Unless that someone else is your child!
I consider people who do that to be child abusers. Young children are vulnerable and easily influenced, especially by people they trust. You have a moral responsibility not to force your beliefs down your own childs throat.
I'd say that http://www.openstreetmap.org/ might be the right solution for you sometime in the future. It describes itself as: The Free Wiki World Map. If your street isn't marked you can go right in there and draw it (a GPS trace can be uploaded, which helps).
Its way far from complete yet, but map data is being created at an ever increasing rate and the accuracy of what gets loaded is, from what I can see, much better than that provided to Google by TeleAtlas.
It seems to me that anyone using any kind of computer system should have fallback contingency plans. If the application that you are using is suddenly discovered to have a fatal security flaw then this is no different from any other kind of failure - stop using the product.
Its no more acceptable to continue using software with a known vulnerability than it would be to carry on driving your car if you were informed that the brakes could fail at any moment without warning.
An immediate consequence of this would be than manufacturers would very quickly learn to make products that are maintainable enough that they can be fixed (or at least made safe) in a very short period of time. If a security flaw required 12 months to fix because it takes that long to test the product, then you have chosen that product unwisely - modular design and maintainability are important features.
A smart software designer will know that there could be a vulnerability and will design their software so that at least key parts can be enabled/disabled etc so that any vulnerability can be mitigated without total loss of functionality for the customer - like providing a mechanical lock as backup for an electronic car entry system - but with a way of disabling the electronic system if a flaw was found.
Full disclosure will lead eventually to better products.
an RFI from the Department of Health and Human Services posted November 15th:
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/04-25382.htm
80N
Well, actually I just saw a web-based cash register app.
It comprises of Slackware 9.1, Mozilla Firebird (using a very tiny bit of XUL), GT.M (for local data caching and server comms).
What's more it runs on very modest hardware (think 233Mhz) and there's nothing kludgy in the whole architecture (except maybe the XUL bit).
80N
Just as branding your enemy a communist during the 1950s was a sure fire way of ensuring their downfall, the so-called War on Terror has sparked a modern day witch hunt for "terrorist links".
As the United States Department of Justice attempts to extradite an Australian indicted as head of an international email spamming ring, the battle against spam has been spurred by unsubstantiated claims it funds terrorism.
The Department of Justice made the claims before a United States congressional hearing earlier this month but could not provide evidence.
Organised criminal syndicates profit from spam, according to Jack G. Michael, a deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division at the Department of Justice. He was addressing the US House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Direct Marketing Association oversight hearing, titled "International Email Spam Links to Organised Crime and Terrorism".
Making the link to terrorism Malcolm said, "Organised crime syndicates are frequently engaged in many types of criminal enterprises, including supporting terrorist activities".
Malcolm could not cite an actual case where spam was linked to terrorism, but said, "it would surprise me greatly if the number were not large".
The Direct Marketing Association head James Valentine continued the terrorism theme in his written submission to the hearing.
"September 11 changed the way Americans look at the world. It also changed the way American law enforcement looks at spamming crimes," wrote Valentine - borrowing from a November 2002 article in the Customs Service newsletter US Customs Today.
The Department of Justice's war on spam was boosted recently by the indictment of 40-year-old Ray Hugh Griffin, of South Wales, as co-leader of the worldwide spamming group SpendToSave.
The extradition of Griffin - known by the online alias "SanNiBel" - will be sought "in the coming weeks," according to US Attorney Peter J McCarthy.
Griffin's indictment is the latest action arising from "Operation Mountaineer" - a joint US Customs and Department of Justice investigation which has seen 20 people convicted.
Operation Mountaineer has seen spammers put behind bars for several years. Similar penalties should apply to college students sending unsolicited messages using chat applications such as Gaim and MSN, Congressman John Carter - a Texas Republican - told the congressional hearing.
"I think it'd be a good idea to go out and actually bust a couple of these college kids," said Carter.
"If you want to see college kids duck and run, you let them read the papers and somebody's got a 33-month sentence in the federal penitentiary for sending unsolicited emails."
The incumbent telecoms companies ought to be really worried by VoIP. Right now they can get a slice of the action providing someone is trying to make a call to a legacy phone, by if its VoIP to VoIP they dont stand a chance.
Imagine, free unlimited and unrestricted (open source, of course) telephone services worldwide. Just like email. It will happen and there's nothing they can do about it.
And cell phones will be replaced by WiFi phones, with the gentle propagation of free WiFi hot spots in Cafes etc who's going to need to pay for a cell phone?
80N
One thing the article doesn't mention is that metric sized ring binders (folders) are a bit too high to fit on the shelves of most standard US office shelving units. You guys are gonna have to buy new shelves before you can even start using modern sized paper.
We're all pretty used to having a Disaster Recovery plan for our sites, it seems like what's needed is a DR plan for the planet. Consider the scenario where there is a global disaster (asteroid or any number of other causes) that results in a residual population of survivors. Chances are that they aren't all going to be rocket scientists, indeed it could be a few generations before anyone of that calibre is born. What a legacy it would be if there was an archive of a significant knowlege base coupled with some pretty simple instructions for accessing it. What would it cost to do this?
Darth Vader: The rebel base is hidden on the far side of the Moon. The Moon will be in range in 30 minutes...
Princess Leia: Time to scramble... (Where are you going Han Solo?)
80N
When you borrow books from a library you don't have to pay anything, so there is no cost in taking out two books instead of one.
BTW You should try my peanut flavored cream-of-chicken aphrodisiac soup. You apply it with a spatula and then lick it off... ;)
80N
If enough people do this then it would be impossible for TPTB to know whether you really borrowed (and read) that book or just selected it randomly.
Similar techniques are used for making survey responses anonymous.
80N
In any case, a centipede would be a lot stealthier than a bee and probably does more miles to the gallon.
80N (Learn to crawl before you can walk)
Sound's like they ought to have a requirements review meeting...
80N
What kind of payload / application would there be for such a device?
- Germ warefare
- Surveillance (Little Brother)
- Assassination (with a Sarin filled hypodermic)
- Military/battlefield Intelligence
Hm, can't think of many good uses for it.80N
Any votes for FLI? (We can work out what this is an acronym for later).
80N