yes, importing an Ipod gets cheaper... but you will still pay the music tax, just like you must pay the GST (goods and services tax... sales tax) as if you bought it in Canada.
Think im wrong? wait til the UPS/fedex guy comes to the door delivering your goods... and leaves without giving it to you when you refuse to pay.
Of course you could risk telling the customs officer that it was already yours, when you return from your next trip to the US... and have it taken away when you fail to show that you registered it with them before leaving canada.
When the tax starts, which by the way also includes a massive increase to the music industry tax on blank CD's that will nearly double their already taxed price, far fewer people will want to buy the products.
However, they will still neeeeed the products.
SO... they will simply wander on down to their local weekend flea market, for example the one in the big red building on Terminal Ave. here in Vancouver BC, and spend their money on all the stolen property stacked up in every stall.
There's a couple stalls in particular that sell unopened, new stacks of CD's that are already a lot cheaper than retail and 'strangely' have no Music tax on them.
In the end, the music industry looses their tax grab (...that they were never getting anyways as the canadian government has not paid out ONE CENT of the money theyve collected in the past few years...), because fewer people can afford to buy the CD's, the crime rate goes up with more B&E's on businesses that sell blank CD's, or even through smuggling of cheaper CD's up from the US, The technology companies will offer fewer players as they become even further priced above what people will play, many will continue to gripe about a tax they are supposed to pay when they are just backing up their own data....... and millions will continue to go merrily along burning mp3's onto blank CD's, just now they're stolen CD's.
Can't happen? look what happened in Ontario when taxes went too high on cigarettes (with the help of some slimy smugglers on a native reserve, and the bastard cigarette companies that covertly supplied the smugglers).
Theres a big difference between making a jet powered go kart (which a great many have done), and making an autonomous machine with the brains to keep it self not only flying, but flying to a specific target.
Look at his website, only 3 of the 15 or so pages that document the project actually link to anything even though the project is basicaly done, and those three show nothing of any substance except that more will be uploaded 'in a few days'.
He doesnt even show any hint that he has any understanding of aeodynamics and design and control of flight surfaces.
He just happens to know how to bolt a mini jet engine to a go-kart. Thats it. The engine he claims he is designing is just as much a scam! Posters on his forums point out how his engine looks exactly like the off the shelf engines anyone can buy!
I call shenanigans! The subscribers and donators to his project and all of you that believe it have been scammed. His tax bill wasn't paid because he couldnt fool enough of you to send him money. Notice how eager he is to sell exclusive media rights to his story yet the best you see is the go kart? its all a money grab.
And now that he's bankrupt, he is conveniently blaming it all on the government. Claiming the missile is in a friend's possesion, ignoring the fact that if the government really cared, they could just demand that he identify the friend or else jail him as a threat to society. Surprise proof of the missile's existance is gone. Let's hope he has a few friends that aren't as imaginary as the one hiding the missile.
Only the taxman is after him, not the military. There is no conspiracy to prevent him from making the missile, just his own inability to report and pay his taxes properly.
Gee a scammer who avoids taxes, there's a new twist.
Could a cruise missle be manufactured for $5,000? Probably after all the research and development.
Did this guy do it? no way.
Move on, there's nothing to see here, the little grey men, silent black helicopters, and missing snipers from the grassy gnoll will escort you out.
This message brought to you by the silent black helicopters. you dont see them, you dont hear them, but you know they are there. I hear the military stole optical processor technology from the UFO remains stored at area 51!
Grow up! only the most basic concepts of optical processors have been worked out. They are as close to having a working optical processor as this supposed record setting transistor is to being in your home computer... ain't gunna happen anytime soon.
The processor in the Galileo probe that recently ended it's life in the atmosphere of Jupiter had a processor that literally was a modified version of the processor found in a 1970's Pong game console.
The processor was so old because the probe was designed in the late 70's, and it had long delays before it was launched... the challenger disaster being one of the delays for example, needing the right timing to get the probe to Jupiter being another.
Being that the Voyager probes were launched in '77 and '78, I'd expect it to have a very similar processor in it.
Plausible deniability is something only used to protect presidents from their own blatant stupidity.
2 years ago a friend of mine in a similar manner tried to lead on a 'nigerian' scammer. It got as far as the scammer arranging a meeting in Toronto. My friend being in Vancouver didn't take it any further, and couldn't be convinced to bring the police in.
She regulary received calls from africa, she had a number in nigeria that she could call, and the people (one of whom i talked to) most definately were nigerian, with very strong accents.... but they wanted to meet to do the exchange in Toronto.
Deniability will be irrelevant.
You don't think the money is just going to make some jerk rich do you?
Its buying weapons, its supporting terrorists, it's letting dumbass bastards like George Dubya take away your rights and security.
AMD has produced a transistor that operates at 3300 Ghz... 6.5 times faster than the supposed record holder in the above story. Sure, its a different kind of transistor, but the headline read fastest transistor, not fastest type xxx transistor.
The part I don't understand is where you think the people have the right to bare arms.
The constitution gives the individual states the right to form armed militias, not the public the right to bare arms, But the NRA suckered you into thinking otherwise and other ignorant politicians (and gun dealers after your money) made statements like your quote to manipulate the truth and keep you on their side.
Why do you let yourself be so scared as to think you need a gun anyways? You'll just end up killing your kid by accident long before you use your gun the way you have been made to think you will use it.
Symantec is blocking weapons promoting websites (IF YOU ENABLE THE BLOCK, ITS YOUR CHOICE) the NRA promotes weapons, therefore they are blocked. Thats all there is to it. There is no attack by symantec on the NRA here at all.
'From My Cold Dead Hands!' - Yes Charlton, that will happen, and not soon enough.
Re:Three word's on Atkins that says it all:
on
Hackers On Atkins
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
wow, look at all the suckers i reeled in...
I just said Atkins is dead, I never claimed he died because of his screwy diet. Although I like the response that claims he was light-headed from the diet when he fell.
Get some common sense here people!
The ONLY way to loose weight is to burn more calories than you consume. There is simply no other way.
Atkins is one way of accomplishing this, One where many have had success, and many have made themselves sick.
BUT, like users of the Q-Ray ionized bracelet, a dumbass sucker is born every minute and you'll only hear the 'successful' point of view - no one wants to admit they were dumb enough to get screwed.
far far more water is lost through leaky watermain systems. investing money in maintaining infrastructure would be far more effective.
For Example in Montreal Canada, one of the largest cities in Canada, 40% of their drinking water is lost before it reaches the customers through leaky watermains!
Three word's on Atkins that says it all:
on
Hackers On Atkins
·
· Score: 2, Funny
symantec is blocking weapons promoting web sites. The NRA promotes weapons, therefore they are blocking it. DUH!
Its your option whether or not to enable the blocking.
Just another example of the idiot confusion the NRA likes to use to their advantage. The most common example being that of making you think you all have the right to bare arms, when really your constitution gives the states the right to form militias.
'From My Cold Dead Hands!' - yes charlton, that will happen, and not soon enough.
ok, that 10% of the market is covered, now what about the other 90% of books that the average person reads? The story is not about text books and papers for journals.
Do you propose that universities pay for the sci-fi, fantasy, general fiction, mystery, etc, etc, etc, books that are the bulk of what gets read?
sure there's you, your 3 friends, and maybe 2 other people, all of whom might produce free content for everyone that no one would ever pay for anyways.... but everyone else out there expects to be compensated for the many months of hard work that it takes to produce a book.
If no one pays for content, then the only content you will see will come from corporations that are trying to sell you their products or some abused 3rd world slave writers.
but isn't it a bit ironic that AOL - the king of popups and brutal advertising stuck in their own subscriber's faces - is complaining about these popups?... also, 90% of this story is very old news, for those of you who were born this morning, the last round if big viruses were propagated through the mis-use of that MS network messenger.
you bet, sorry I didnt think of that..
Here's the National Atlas of Canada website, run by the government of Canada:
http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/index.html... this example has a slick looking interface but is actually a rather simplistic example as they didn't give any controls for turning individual layers on or off, or controls for querying data about the map layers. Also they could have used either a frames setup or a flash setup of mapserver so that only the map itself would refresh instead of the whole page with each action.
Here's a site for viewing British Columbia's cadastre data
http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/sgb/IMF/index.html... the data displayed may be very specialized, but its a good example of what MapServer can do. this site has a nice interface where the map frame can refresh without the whole page having to refresh. The map frame and tools are controled by a java applet. This page has a query tool - the 'drill down identify' button that will bring up data from the layers under where you click on the map.
If i could show you my website, you'd have a frame with the map on the left, a frame on the right that can have either Layer controls (grouped in folders that open or close without refreshing the frame), or a legend of the displayed layers, or various instructions, or a list of links that take you to pre-arranged views of the map... depending on which button you click at the top of the page.
On my page, using the query tool, for example on an exploration drill hole, pops up a table of the drill hole's location data and assay results for the drill hole, generated on the fly with data queried out of an access database - the SQL query parsed into an ASP link when you query the map. In the future I will have layers with features that will link to search results of the BC government mining websites (minfile, aris, claim data, etc)... links generated on the fly based on what feature you click on.
MapServer plus javascript and asp make powerful tools.
geezz! Open source! Free! works on any operating system! Powerful! only limited by your imagination!... and my posts are not modded up at all.
Oh, and to the person who made the first reply to my post... I pointed out right away that I was posting about the best software, not the best way to find directions to grandma's house. MapServer could run a setup like MapQuest easily, their controls are very simple, they have no analysis tools... you just need the data.
First of all, you don't even name the software 'the military' uses. They must have a name for it even if it isn't public software.
Lives depend on it? Give me a break! Are you one of those guys who measures distances on a computer screen with a ruler? - The rounding errors you speak of are way smaller than any significant distances you'll even need to measure. Besides you can just zoom in to the map to pick your measuring points better.
Thirdly..'quality of the data' - Has nothing to do with the map serving software. It has everything to do with good data collection, which affects all map serving systems. If some punk ass private can't get his easting and northing straight it won't matter how accurate your satellite image is!
Forthly - 'because the underlying data is not accurate enough' Again, thats not the problem of the map server, garbage in = garbage out. its the problem of the idiot who didn't enable differential correctons on his GPS when collecting points.
The best internet mapping software is MAPSERVER... im not talking the best implementation which is how all the rest of you seem to be answering. I'm talking the best software for doing the job.
Its free, has no licensing fees, open source, and has a large community of users dedicated to improving and advancing the software.
mapserver homepage:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
Don't like how it looks or works? - make your own interface. There are versions for any operating system under the sun and source code readily available.
Think it can't handle the load? - During the last Canadian federal election, a specialized MapServer website on an Apache cluster server, showing live election results easily handled creating 150,000 maps in one evening.
The Canadian government as well as the province of BC are slowing shutting down their MapGuide based websites and setting up MapServer websites why? - because one guy like me can setup a custom mapserver website for less than the cost the annual license fee for Autodesk MapGuide! ($13,000 a year for MapGuide in canada with NO phone support!).... think my price is still expensive? then don't bother looking at ESRI's ArcIMS cuz you'll find them starting 10X higher for crappy software that craps out on a 10mb raster while Mapserver chews through airphoto mosaics 800mb and bigger like no ones business.
MapServer can display Shapefiles, Coverages, GeoTiffs, MapInfo layers, Oracle, ArcSDE, PostGIS or other spatial database features taking in the features and reprojecting them into your local map projection on the fly.
MapServer can also act as a layer server making your data available as layers on someone elses map. Some guy even made a way for his mapserver to read directly out of an ArcIMS server.
Output images are in many formats GIF, JPG, Flash or even as PDF's.
Have a small website that could use a map server? MapServer makes it possible for nothing but your own time invested.
Now if i could trust you/.'ers not to swamp my puny home computer I'd show you the best damn Internet mapserving site you've ever seen, set up to show off any and all data imaginable about a gold mine property with 75 map layers available so far (for a small company that you would never think could afford a map serving website). But I don't trust you.
Give me a break, since when has anyone thought of FOX or CNN as science channels!
This is just a blatant advertisement for CSN.
Now if micheal had been trying to make a real effort on posting real thoughts on this subject instead of just advertising for CSN, he would have mentioned all the fake science (psychic crap, "some say it was ghosts", "some say it was UFO's") garbage that is often on TLC and DISCOVERY.
I guess it's hard to keep the free advertising out of these topics when the slashdot editors themselves post it. hmmm do you smell kickbacks?
ya you're right, we should all just give up and cower in the dark.
It will be done, and it must be done. Until we have colonies in other star systems, we have all our eggs in one basket where just one idiot (hmm Dubya comes to mind) could destroy it all.
Slashdot Mirror
The judgement has come to pass ..
There shall be a levy on the mp3 players, but the bastards failed to get their increase on the blank media levy!
i stand corrected on the 'one cent' part ... it seems in fact they've paid out a third of what they have collected
yes a third, more than my number of zero, however far less than the money collected.... and how many years did it take to make that payout?
yes, importing an Ipod gets cheaper ... but you will still pay the music tax, just like you must pay the GST (goods and services tax ... sales tax) as if you bought it in Canada.
... and leaves without giving it to you when you refuse to pay.
... and have it taken away when you fail to show that you registered it with them before leaving canada.
Think im wrong? wait til the UPS/fedex guy comes to the door delivering your goods
Of course you could risk telling the customs officer that it was already yours, when you return from your next trip to the US
Here's what will happen.
... they will simply wander on down to their local weekend flea market, for example the one in the big red building on Terminal Ave. here in Vancouver BC, and spend their money on all the stolen property stacked up in every stall.
.... ... and millions will continue to go merrily along burning mp3's onto blank CD's, just now they're stolen CD's.
When the tax starts, which by the way also includes a massive increase to the music industry tax on blank CD's that will nearly double their already taxed price, far fewer people will want to buy the products.
However, they will still neeeeed the products.
SO
There's a couple stalls in particular that sell unopened, new stacks of CD's that are already a lot cheaper than retail and 'strangely' have no Music tax on them.
In the end, the music industry looses their tax grab (...that they were never getting anyways as the canadian government has not paid out ONE CENT of the money theyve collected in the past few years...), because fewer people can afford to buy the CD's, the crime rate goes up with more B&E's on businesses that sell blank CD's, or even through smuggling of cheaper CD's up from the US, The technology companies will offer fewer players as they become even further priced above what people will play, many will continue to gripe about a tax they are supposed to pay when they are just backing up their own data
Can't happen? look what happened in Ontario when taxes went too high on cigarettes (with the help of some slimy smugglers on a native reserve, and the bastard cigarette companies that covertly supplied the smugglers).
Theres a big difference between making a jet powered go kart (which a great many have done), and making an autonomous machine with the brains to keep it self not only flying, but flying to a specific target.
Look at his website, only 3 of the 15 or so pages that document the project actually link to anything even though the project is basicaly done, and those three show nothing of any substance except that more will be uploaded 'in a few days'.
He doesnt even show any hint that he has any understanding of aeodynamics and design and control of flight surfaces.
He just happens to know how to bolt a mini jet engine to a go-kart. Thats it. The engine he claims he is designing is just as much a scam! Posters on his forums point out how his engine looks exactly like the off the shelf engines anyone can buy!
I call shenanigans! The subscribers and donators to his project and all of you that believe it have been scammed. His tax bill wasn't paid because he couldnt fool enough of you to send him money. Notice how eager he is to sell exclusive media rights to his story yet the best you see is the go kart? its all a money grab.
And now that he's bankrupt, he is conveniently blaming it all on the government. Claiming the missile is in a friend's possesion, ignoring the fact that if the government really cared, they could just demand that he identify the friend or else jail him as a threat to society. Surprise proof of the missile's existance is gone. Let's hope he has a few friends that aren't as imaginary as the one hiding the missile.
Only the taxman is after him, not the military. There is no conspiracy to prevent him from making the missile, just his own inability to report and pay his taxes properly.
Gee a scammer who avoids taxes, there's a new twist.
Could a cruise missle be manufactured for $5,000? Probably after all the research and development.
Did this guy do it? no way.
Move on, there's nothing to see here, the little grey men, silent black helicopters, and missing snipers from the grassy gnoll will escort you out.
This message brought to you by the silent black helicopters. you dont see them, you dont hear them, but you know they are there. I hear the military stole optical processor technology from the UFO remains stored at area 51!
... ain't gunna happen anytime soon.
Grow up! only the most basic concepts of optical processors have been worked out. They are as close to having a working optical processor as this supposed record setting transistor is to being in your home computer
The processor in the Galileo probe that recently ended it's life in the atmosphere of Jupiter had a processor that literally was a modified version of the processor found in a 1970's Pong game console.
... the challenger disaster being one of the delays for example, needing the right timing to get the probe to Jupiter being another.
The processor was so old because the probe was designed in the late 70's, and it had long delays before it was launched
Being that the Voyager probes were launched in '77 and '78, I'd expect it to have a very similar processor in it.
Blahh!
... but they wanted to meet to do the exchange in Toronto.
Plausible deniability is something only used to protect presidents from their own blatant stupidity.
2 years ago a friend of mine in a similar manner tried to lead on a 'nigerian' scammer. It got as far as the scammer arranging a meeting in Toronto. My friend being in Vancouver didn't take it any further, and couldn't be convinced to bring the police in.
She regulary received calls from africa, she had a number in nigeria that she could call, and the people (one of whom i talked to) most definately were nigerian, with very strong accents.
Deniability will be irrelevant.
You don't think the money is just going to make some jerk rich do you?
Its buying weapons, its supporting terrorists, it's letting dumbass bastards like George Dubya take away your rights and security.
AMD has produced a transistor that operates at 3300 Ghz ... 6.5 times faster than the supposed record holder in the above story. Sure, its a different kind of transistor, but the headline read fastest transistor, not fastest type xxx transistor.
Check It Out
The part I don't understand is where you think the people have the right to bare arms.
The constitution gives the individual states the right to form armed militias, not the public the right to bare arms, But the NRA suckered you into thinking otherwise and other ignorant politicians (and gun dealers after your money) made statements like your quote to manipulate the truth and keep you on their side.
Why do you let yourself be so scared as to think you need a gun anyways? You'll just end up killing your kid by accident long before you use your gun the way you have been made to think you will use it.
Symantec is blocking weapons promoting websites (IF YOU ENABLE THE BLOCK, ITS YOUR CHOICE) the NRA promotes weapons, therefore they are blocked. Thats all there is to it. There is no attack by symantec on the NRA here at all.
'From My Cold Dead Hands!' - Yes Charlton, that will happen, and not soon enough.
wow, look at all the suckers i reeled in ...
I just said Atkins is dead, I never claimed he died because of his screwy diet. Although I like the response that claims he was light-headed from the diet when he fell.
Get some common sense here people!
The ONLY way to loose weight is to burn more calories than you consume. There is simply no other way.
Atkins is one way of accomplishing this, One where many have had success, and many have made themselves sick.
BUT, like users of the Q-Ray ionized bracelet, a dumbass sucker is born every minute and you'll only hear the 'successful' point of view - no one wants to admit they were dumb enough to get screwed.
far far more water is lost through leaky watermain systems. investing money in maintaining infrastructure would be far more effective.
For Example in Montreal Canada, one of the largest cities in Canada, 40% of their drinking water is lost before it reaches the customers through leaky watermains!
Atkins is dead.
hehe and this porkchop clown gets the award for 'most obvious example of not understanding a post while covering it up by correcting spelling'
'From My Cold Dead Hands!' - Yes Charlton, that will happen, and not soon enough.
sigh.
yet another sucker.
Your constitution doesn't give you the right to bare arms. It gives the states the right to form armed militias.
It is you who's been manipulating and abusing disinformation.
'From My Cold Dead Hands!' - Yes Charlton, that will happen, and not soon enough.
looooooser!
symantec is blocking weapons promoting web sites. The NRA promotes weapons, therefore they are blocking it. DUH!
Its your option whether or not to enable the blocking.
Just another example of the idiot confusion the NRA likes to use to their advantage. The most common example being that of making you think you all have the right to bare arms, when really your constitution gives the states the right to form militias.
'From My Cold Dead Hands!' - yes charlton, that will happen, and not soon enough.
You totally missed the point.
ok, that 10% of the market is covered, now what about the other 90% of books that the average person reads? The story is not about text books and papers for journals.
Do you propose that universities pay for the sci-fi, fantasy, general fiction, mystery, etc, etc, etc, books that are the bulk of what gets read?
Helloo!
.... but everyone else out there expects to be compensated for the many months of hard work that it takes to produce a book.
The 'truly free content' WILL NEVER ARRIVE!
sure there's you, your 3 friends, and maybe 2 other people, all of whom might produce free content for everyone that no one would ever pay for anyways
If no one pays for content, then the only content you will see will come from corporations that are trying to sell you their products or some abused 3rd world slave writers.
Yay! that's the world we need!
I don't use AOL, so correct me if im wrong ..
... also, 90% of this story is very old news, for those of you who were born this morning, the last round if big viruses were propagated through the mis-use of that MS network messenger.
but isn't it a bit ironic that AOL - the king of popups and brutal advertising stuck in their own subscriber's faces - is complaining about these popups?
Doh! looks like i posted my message 'HTML Formatted'
I hope people still take the time to read it.
you bet, sorry I didnt think of that ..
Here's the National Atlas of Canada website, run by the government of Canada:
http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/index.html ... this example has a slick looking interface but is actually a rather simplistic example as they didn't give any controls for turning individual layers on or off, or controls for querying data about the map layers. Also they could have used either a frames setup or a flash setup of mapserver so that only the map itself would refresh instead of the whole page with each action.
Here's a site for viewing British Columbia's cadastre data
http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/sgb/IMF/index.html ... the data displayed may be very specialized, but its a good example of what MapServer can do. this site has a nice interface where the map frame can refresh without the whole page having to refresh. The map frame and tools are controled by a java applet. This page has a query tool - the 'drill down identify' button that will bring up data from the layers under where you click on the map.
If i could show you my website, you'd have a frame with the map on the left, a frame on the right that can have either Layer controls (grouped in folders that open or close without refreshing the frame), or a legend of the displayed layers, or various instructions, or a list of links that take you to pre-arranged views of the map ... depending on which button you click at the top of the page.
On my page, using the query tool, for example on an exploration drill hole, pops up a table of the drill hole's location data and assay results for the drill hole, generated on the fly with data queried out of an access database - the SQL query parsed into an ASP link when you query the map. In the future I will have layers with features that will link to search results of the BC government mining websites (minfile, aris, claim data, etc) ... links generated on the fly based on what feature you click on.
MapServer plus javascript and asp make powerful tools.
geezz! Open source! Free! works on any operating system! Powerful! only limited by your imagination! ... and my posts are not modded up at all.
Oh, and to the person who made the first reply to my post ... I pointed out right away that I was posting about the best software, not the best way to find directions to grandma's house. MapServer could run a setup like MapQuest easily, their controls are very simple, they have no analysis tools... you just need the data.
bull i say!
..'quality of the data' - Has nothing to do with the map serving software. It has everything to do with good data collection, which affects all map serving systems. If some punk ass private can't get his easting and northing straight it won't matter how accurate your satellite image is!
First of all, you don't even name the software 'the military' uses. They must have a name for it even if it isn't public software.
Lives depend on it? Give me a break! Are you one of those guys who measures distances on a computer screen with a ruler? - The rounding errors you speak of are way smaller than any significant distances you'll even need to measure. Besides you can just zoom in to the map to pick your measuring points better.
Thirdly
Forthly - 'because the underlying data is not accurate enough' Again, thats not the problem of the map server, garbage in = garbage out. its the problem of the idiot who didn't enable differential correctons on his GPS when collecting points.
Ok, You're all wrong
... im not talking the best implementation which is how all the rest of you seem to be answering. I'm talking the best software for doing the job.
.... think my price is still expensive? then don't bother looking at ESRI's ArcIMS cuz you'll find them starting 10X higher for crappy software that craps out on a 10mb raster while Mapserver chews through airphoto mosaics 800mb and bigger like no ones business.
/.'ers not to swamp my puny home computer I'd show you the best damn Internet mapserving site you've ever seen, set up to show off any and all data imaginable about a gold mine property with 75 map layers available so far (for a small company that you would never think could afford a map serving website). But I don't trust you.
The best internet mapping software is MAPSERVER
Its free, has no licensing fees, open source, and has a large community of users dedicated to improving and advancing the software.
mapserver homepage:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
Don't like how it looks or works? - make your own interface. There are versions for any operating system under the sun and source code readily available.
Think it can't handle the load? - During the last Canadian federal election, a specialized MapServer website on an Apache cluster server, showing live election results easily handled creating 150,000 maps in one evening.
The Canadian government as well as the province of BC are slowing shutting down their MapGuide based websites and setting up MapServer websites why? - because one guy like me can setup a custom mapserver website for less than the cost the annual license fee for Autodesk MapGuide! ($13,000 a year for MapGuide in canada with NO phone support!)
MapServer can display Shapefiles, Coverages, GeoTiffs, MapInfo layers, Oracle, ArcSDE, PostGIS or other spatial database features taking in the features and reprojecting them into your local map projection on the fly.
MapServer can also act as a layer server making your data available as layers on someone elses map. Some guy even made a way for his mapserver to read directly out of an ArcIMS server.
Output images are in many formats GIF, JPG, Flash or even as PDF's.
Have a small website that could use a map server? MapServer makes it possible for nothing but your own time invested.
Now if i could trust you
Give me a break, since when has anyone thought of FOX or CNN as science channels!
This is just a blatant advertisement for CSN.
Now if micheal had been trying to make a real effort on posting real thoughts on this subject instead of just advertising for CSN, he would have mentioned all the fake science (psychic crap, "some say it was ghosts", "some say it was UFO's") garbage that is often on TLC and DISCOVERY.
I guess it's hard to keep the free advertising out of these topics when the slashdot editors themselves post it. hmmm do you smell kickbacks?
ya you're right, we should all just give up and cower in the dark.
It will be done, and it must be done. Until we have colonies in other star systems, we have all our eggs in one basket where just one idiot (hmm Dubya comes to mind) could destroy it all.
Re-entry and lift off will be moot once the Space Elevator is in place anyways.