I haven't had a chance to play with this yet, but it certainly seems interesting. This sort of tool is becoming ever more useful as a way of dealing with natural and man made epidemics. While of no real use during an epidemic, they do provide a useful tool to help emergency planners decide what strategies will be best when it does happen. It has to be better to carry out these experiments before hand rather than during an emergency.
The Open GeoSpatial Consortium has worked hard to develop open interopeability standards to do this sort of thing. The web map server standard is even an ISO standard.
But no google had to do thier own thing so I have another mapping application to learn. That may not seem a big thing to you but as a geographer I already have to use 10-15 diferent mapping tools.
If you want to see open web mapping standards in action (and maps of the whole world) try here or look at some of NASA's data here
When I came into the US last week with my wife, the imigration guy managed to attach my fingerprints to my wife's passport and viceaversa. The guy in the office said it happens all the time but they can't fix it. So now any time I visit the US I'm going to fail imigration and have to go to second stage where they can view the note attached to my file that says they screwed up.
I can't lay my hands on the exact money laundering regs at the moment but there is an approved list of IDs one to prove who you are and one to prove where you live.
The thing to remember is that bank staff often don't know what is acceptable and what is not. For both proof of ID and Address a letter from a responsible person (Dr, vicar, lawyer) is ok. If a bank gives you a hard time refer them to the FSA Handbook ML3.1.5/6 (see the link above).
Money laundering regs are a pain in the bum but they are a required part of any finacial organisation in the UK.
Ian (who's a credit union director who failed his money laundering test the first time).
Interestingly this is why the Netherlands doesn't have a national census as it was missused by the Nazis. On the other hand they do have a national id card and a legal requirement to inform the government when they move.
Whereas we in the UK think the exact oppersite for the same reasons.
Ok, they borrow your identity, trash it and return it. If they did that to your car, they would have stolen it.
Not in the UK they haven't, its called "taking without the owners consent (TWOC)" to specifically show the difference between stealing a car (permenantly depriving the owner of it) and "borrowing" it.
First as has been pointed out already to blow a map up you need a vector (or high resolution raster) data source. The next step you need is a way of producing a map from the data, you could buy a professional GIS (Geographic Information System) these tend to be expensive, though you might be able to get an educational discount for use at school but thats not much help for homework.
The OGC has been developing ways of sharing and displaying geographic data for some time now. This allows (at its simplest) a user to request an image of a set of vector data (see demo ). If you need a bigger image change the size params. There are many useful WMS available for the US and some for the rest of the world where we don't give data away as freely. It should be well within any slashdotter's ability to write a modfied html form to grab a bigger map. There are also java clients available for free.
To answer questions about where places are check out the alexandria digital library gazeteer again there is a simple html interface or a java client is available.
Finally if you need more maps than are available its pretty easy to down load a server that can be used to publish date using the same protocols (for example the US statistical atlas files).
These ideas will obviously only help users with some sight. How to provide map data to the blind is a much harder problem which geographers are still working on.
How does ELF harm mammals any more than any other radio wave?
ELF provides a useful earth science investigation tool. By looking at how the waves are modified by subsurface geology it is possible to detect conducting deposits which can't be found by magnetometors. I guess the UK's facillity in Rugby will continue but this could be a set back in the US.
Well this site gives details of the ammount of potassium in coffee (highest listed) as 115mg per 100g.
Specific activity (picocuries of potassium-40 per gram of potassium) = 818 pCi/g (see here)
and the UK Radioactive Substances Act 1993 (c. 12) says you can't put radioactive waste in to landfills. I accept that they aren't really going to stop you but technically you shouldn't!
See also this article on radiological problems in food and other goods.
Ian
Radioactivity in the Body
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This site discusses the fact that radioactive Potassium is the largest source of Beta-radiation in the body. As an earth-science undergrad I learnt that coffee is in fact too radioactive to landfill under current EU regulations.
We went on a field trip where we were supposed to use a gigier meter to determine where the bed rock changed from granite to sandstone. In fact all we could determine was which farmers used more potassium based fertilser than others. You could pick the field boundaries out in the plots but nothing useful about the geology.
All real would have to do is use un DRMed mp3s or aac.
I think the point of thier hack was to switch files bought form thier store from Real's DRM to Apples DRM. If they just provided unDRMed files I guess the music businesses would stop supplying them with music.
I don't see any real advantage to the system as opposed to having a dedicated bus lane, buses can pull out of a bus lane to pass others that are collecting/dropping off passengers, whereas this guided system just creates queues of buses in the lane.
The advantage is that other drivers can't get into the lane and delay your bus. This is a major problem for my bus to work as so many cars are 'so important' that they have to use my bus lane.
When this was tried in the UK, Safeway put the scanner on the trolley so you scanned as you put the item in the basket. Then as you left the scanner was interogated and you paid either the machine or a cashier. There was a random chance of being checked, which meant the cashier rescanned everything to check you hadn't "forgotten" to scan something. Seemed to work much better than the american self scan checkout I tried once.
Of course Safeway got bought out so the system may not of helped.
why not get the numbers printed on cloth and sew them on? or air brush with a template? or iron on? or fabric markers? or those big fancy embrodary machnies? Or get 1000 shirts with numbers made and pick the right one. no way indeed.
Because when a rider retires they have to hand the numbers into the race officials. This prevents them riding in the car and then rejoining the peleton while no ones watching.
The agreement you sign before sending the paper off to the journal, that the journal owns the copyright of your work and specfically takes the electronic distribution rights.
Actually somewhere I read about this search engine that specializes in searching thru electronic scientific papers and journals - many customers pay lot of money 'cause thats the real value - find everything you need in 10th of time you'd need to the same on Google.
You might be refering to citeseer, which lists (and caches) papers from websites and allows you to see which papers cite it and which papers it cites and how similar it is to other papers in the collection:-)
The thing keeping the journals alive is that to get tenure (and other review targets) I have to publish in journals listed by the ISI citation index. I've yet to find an online journal listed in there. This is despite the fact that one of the best journals in my field The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation is now effectivly barred to me. I know, I could publish in there and still make the count in recognised journals, but when would I read slashdot then.
It should also be noted that while the university gets almost all of these journals online any way we still pay an awful lot for the privilege of using our own paper to print them out.
When Edinburgh University bought a Cray T3D they did use the waste heat to heat the building. Cray T3Ds used a liquid freon cooling system to shift the heat from the 256/512 alphas this went through a huge heat exchanger with the output of this feed to the heating/hot water system. This went some way to offset the costs of the electricity. The power requirement was such that a new electrical sub station was required.
Slashdot Mirror
Ian
The story was all over newsnet and we had exactly the same debate then.
Ian
If you want to see open web mapping standards in action (and maps of the whole world) try here or look at some of NASA's data here
Ian
Damm right I'm thinking twice about comming back!
Ian
I can't lay my hands on the exact money laundering regs at the moment but there is an approved list of IDs one to prove who you are and one to prove where you live.
The thing to remember is that bank staff often don't know what is acceptable and what is not. For both proof of ID and Address a letter from a responsible person (Dr, vicar, lawyer) is ok. If a bank gives you a hard time refer them to the FSA Handbook ML3.1.5/6 (see the link above).
Money laundering regs are a pain in the bum but they are a required part of any finacial organisation in the UK.
Ian (who's a credit union director who failed his money laundering test the first time).
Whereas we in the UK think the exact oppersite for the same reasons.
Ian
Ian
Not in the UK they haven't, its called "taking without the owners consent (TWOC)" to specifically show the difference between stealing a car (permenantly depriving the owner of it) and "borrowing" it.
Ian
Ian
The OGC has been developing ways of sharing and displaying geographic data for some time now. This allows (at its simplest) a user to request an image of a set of vector data (see demo ). If you need a bigger image change the size params. There are many useful WMS available for the US and some for the rest of the world where we don't give data away as freely. It should be well within any slashdotter's ability to write a modfied html form to grab a bigger map. There are also java clients available for free.
To answer questions about where places are check out the alexandria digital library gazeteer again there is a simple html interface or a java client is available.
Finally if you need more maps than are available its pretty easy to down load a server that can be used to publish date using the same protocols (for example the US statistical atlas files).
These ideas will obviously only help users with some sight. How to provide map data to the blind is a much harder problem which geographers are still working on.
Ian, (Computational Geographer)
Two points,
Ian
Specific activity (picocuries of potassium-40 per gram of potassium) = 818 pCi/g (see here)
and the UK Radioactive Substances Act 1993 (c. 12) says you can't put radioactive waste in to landfills. I accept that they aren't really going to stop you but technically you shouldn't!
See also this article on radiological problems in food and other goods.
Ian
This site discusses the fact that radioactive Potassium is the largest source of Beta-radiation in the body. As an earth-science undergrad I learnt that coffee is in fact too radioactive to landfill under current EU regulations.
We went on a field trip where we were supposed to use a gigier meter to determine where the bed rock changed from granite to sandstone. In fact all we could determine was which farmers used more potassium based fertilser than others. You could pick the field boundaries out in the plots but nothing useful about the geology.
Ian
Ian
I think the point of thier hack was to switch files bought form thier store from Real's DRM to Apples DRM. If they just provided unDRMed files I guess the music businesses would stop supplying them with music.
Ian
The advantage is that other drivers can't get into the lane and delay your bus. This is a major problem for my bus to work as so many cars are 'so important' that they have to use my bus lane.
Ian (who doesn't own a car :-)
Ian
Of course Safeway got bought out so the system may not of helped.
Ian
Ian
Because when a rider retires they have to hand the numbers into the race officials. This prevents them riding in the car and then rejoining the peleton while no ones watching.
Ian
Ian
You might be refering to citeseer, which lists (and caches) papers from websites and allows you to see which papers cite it and which papers it cites and how similar it is to other papers in the collection :-)
Ian
It should also be noted that while the university gets almost all of these journals online any way we still pay an awful lot for the privilege of using our own paper to print them out.
Ian
China and I think India are putting money into the EU system.
Ian
When Edinburgh University bought a Cray T3D they did use the waste heat to heat the building. Cray T3Ds used a liquid freon cooling system to shift the heat from the 256/512 alphas this went through a huge heat exchanger with the output of this feed to the heating/hot water system. This went some way to offset the costs of the electricity. The power requirement was such that a new electrical sub station was required.