I think they need to reverse these signs. Way too many slow drivers stick in the left lanes instead of just using them for passing. Seems that reverse logic might get them to use the right lanes for travel and the left for passing.
It's all a matter of perspective though. From your descriptions, you haven't been in a real serious crime. Neither have I. On the other hand, what if you or someone you care about was accidentally shot in a drive by shooting (I live near Baltimore, MD and this is not a rare occurance). If I lived in the city, I might be willing to give up some freedoms knowing that I could let my kids play outside without having to worry about getting shot or being approached by drug dealers.
The problem is that everyone will have a different tolerance level and what one envisions as too much, another will see as too little. Consider that some people don't have the resources to protect themselves and the ones they love (picture a single mother who leaves her children at home because of day care cost).
There is a cost of reducing crime, and it is not worth my freedom.
We have already given up a certain amount of freedom. Do you feel that the current freedoms we've given up (social security numbers, birth certificates, drivers license, public records, etc...) are adequate? I'm sure I could find someone who thinks these are too much.
I'm not sure of the exact dataset that your reviewing, but please do check out ArcExplorer from ESRI (the free multiple platform viewer) to see if it can work for you. Depending on the exact format of the dataset, you might be able to find some conversion scripts to move between formats. I recall someone writing some C code to convert several of the ESRI format into others, but I've never actually needed it myself so I don't know a website or codename to search on.
Right now the most common "open standards" efforts seem to be more on the delivery side of web services rather than the underlying data format for the file system. I really think the industry is going with ESRI as the default format. Sort of odd that I'm generally against MS, but actually for ESRI given the monopolistic nature. Your post has given me something to think about. For a current project that I'm working on, we actually chose to work with Oracle Spatial as our repository rather than an ESRI product that performs a similar function. The only problem we forsee is that in the end, clients will use ESRI products and they have been developed to only work with their ArcSDE (Spatial Database Engine) product as "middleware" to a commercial database.
FYI: Lately,the industry/agency trend has been to work with commercial products rather than creating their own custom software or data formats. My current employer provides a lot of IT solutions to various agencies and we see a shift from projects where we had to write millions of lines of code to projects where a commercial product is used and a much smaller amount of "wrapper" code is developed. The wrapper code is primarily to "glue" or integrate various COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products together. Companies/agencies have come to realize that "custom" solutions have a few draw backs that they can't afford today:
cost - obviously custom is more expensive
support - you can't get regular upgrades as you are likely the only user of "that" particular custom solution. COTS products have regular upgrade cycles and the time/money to upgrade a custom solution can be a pain.
time - building a custom solution is expensive and timely. The decision to build a custom solution often involves much more planning, funding aquisition, development, and training.
As for data formats, the same applies. Quite a few datasets are in open standards, but usually it's the major GIS vendors who can actually support reading those formats.
I'm not sure which dataset in particular you are looking for, but if it's one for elevation like DTED or DEMS, these are not proprietary data formats. If your looking for a vector dataset representing man made features, check out the USGS DLG (Digital Line Graph) format (again, not a proprietary format). Usually you can find the documentation describing these file formats as a link off the download sites. Just a warning, the data formats can be quite complex (GIS datasets can represent some fairly complex "real world" features/relationships), but not impossible to work with if your comfortable with reading data structures.
Another problem with an "open standard" is that a single standard doesn't necessarily satisfy all situations. NGA has many different open standard data formats that have lead to problems when trying to move to a single format. It all depends what your trying to capture. Picture a road for example. You might want to store attributes like:
name
width
category - highway, secondary, dirt, etc...
alt-name
A military analyst will likely want to add things like:
surface-material
existence
A police/fire/EMS person will want:
response-zone
speed-impedement
speed-bump
address-start-left
address-end-left
address-start-right
address-end-right
And to make it even more complex, try throwing in temporal attributes.
Sorry for preaching about GIS. My main argument is that if you want to get your data to the masses, you publish it in a format that the masses can read. GIS data isn't generally the type of data that most people would be interested and the software development reflects that by being a higher cost. GIS software, namely the main stream market leaders, is quite expensive due to the fact that development cost is spread over a smaller number of sales.
ESRI certainly has it's foot in the door of most agencies that are interested in producing geographic datasets, but they aren't the only ones. Intergraph, another major GIS vendor (I forget which position they are in for sales/installations), competes hard with ESRI to sell their software and also practices the same strategies of encouraging their format. Intergraphs GeoMedia software (maybe it was a different name before) started out on their own proprietery hardware called Clipper workstations which NIMA (NGA now) was locked into at one point. The parts all came from Intergraph and they controlled the pricing and had all sorts of political push from the representatives in Alabama .
Until recently (say the last 5 years or so), the computing power to work with these national datasets was limited to a small community of agencies/companies. Consider the data format that an agency chooses to be akin to distributing a document as either MS Word format or Adobe PDF. If an agency provides the data, it has to be in some format and they typically choose one that reaches the broadest audience. That being said, there are organizations like Open GIS Consortium that are working to create open standards so that the smaller GIS vendors and the not so traditional GIS vendors can have access to data once reserved for the more powerful systems. A company called Ionic produces an application called Red Spider (NOTE: This software is very very expensive. We evaluated it and found while it impliments most Open GIS Consortium "OGC" specifications, we could never pass the cost on to our customers.) that allows for "Web Feature Service" or "WFS". An open source project that is attempting to impliment these specifications, and certainly not the only one, is GeoTools, but they are slow in development and not mature enough at this point for commercial deployments. WFS allows applications to request geographic data similar to other web service applications. Part of the problem with these open standards though is getting people to buy into them. Obviously vendors like ESRI, Intergraph, Microstation, etc... have lesser interest in promoting the open standards over their own product standards, but they are starting to do it.
As far as restrictions on the datasets, I'm not entirely sure I follow you on that. The datasets are generally available for free (sometimes export controlled, but still free) and free viewers do exist. Granted that the free viewers are not always the best product for "high end" analysis, but they do at minimum allow for data viewing. One such tool from ESRI is called ArcExplorer (This link provides the location to download the viewer and an Interoperatability Extension) that is available for various platforms (MS Win32, Linux, UNIX, Mac) as it's Java based.
I know there are other open source GIS analysis applications, but I haven't used them as my employers have had the ability to purchase the high end commercial software. If I recall correctly, a copy of the ArcView software was less than $1000 a couple years ago and the software was available on UNIX (Sun, SGI, and a few others) and MS Win32 systems (sorry, no Linux version that I'm aware of).
I think I jumped around a bit on my above ramble so please forgive. I am coding/compiling and writing in between things. I guess I'm not sure if your disappointed a
I don't know if this is a school, work, or a personal project but you could try one of the following.
ESRI may be willing to give you a trial copy of their software for a 30 day (possibly longer if you can justify it) period. Their software uses FLEXlm (off a hostID on UNIX or a "dongle" key on MS Win32 platforms) and they can generate a temporary license. If this is school related or possibly a charity, they may give or greatly reduce the license cost. As for applications from them, you'll likely want their ArcScan product which can convert an image into vectors (capture contour lines) and ArcGIS or ArcInfo workstation to assign attributes (elevation) to the lines and ultimately convert to the other data format you require. They also have an extension called ArcScene that creates "fly throughs", but I've not worked with it myself to know what data formats it can export to (but I think I heard VRML before).
If you have school connections, your Earth and Mineral Science (or where ever your Geography program falls under) may already have access to ESRI or another GIS vendors applications. You may see if you could find a GIS student to do the conversion for you.
The National datasets are created to support various government agencies to help eliminate the overlap of data collection (an attempt to be efficient).
I found it rather offensive that my government spent all this tax payer money on creating maps that only work with one particular commercial application.
The data format chosen to represent the dataset is a tough point. Some agencies, I'll use NGA (the agency formerly known as NIMA - they had a 3 letter acronym complex), have created their own data standards (look at the specifications for VMAP (several "levels"), DNC, DCW, etc...) and various GIS vendors/projects have implimented interfaces to allow import or native access. By not choosing a vendor's native data format, the agency does not show bias, but users of the data must wait for vendors to code for the dataset. An agency choosing a file format that is already available makes the dataset more widely available. In the case of ESRI data formats, you'll find that in many ways, they have become the industry standard (sort of the MS of the GIS community). Most non-ESRI applications choose to, at a minimum, import ESRI formats into their proprietery format, or work natively with the ESRI format.
Did ESRI pay for that satellite imaging? Hell no. That's taxpayer money.
For the first part, why would ESRI pay for the data? They are providing a tool to access and analyze geospatial data. Data stored in their format surely helps the company grow, but they are not "requiring" agencies to store data in their format. Agencies see the benefit of working with industry standard formats rather than spending resources to create their own formats (consider USGS produces DLG files, Census produces TIGER files, etc...). Coming up with your own data specification and maintaining it can be resource intensive. By going with the industry format, they are saving tax payer money compared to producing their own format.
Why are they, and their Win2K required software mandated to access data aquired with taxpayer money.
ESRI doesn't require you to run on MS Win32 platforms. If you choose ESRI software, you can select various UNIX platforms including Linux. They produce Workstation ArcInfo (which has traditionally been a UNIX application (although early releases were on other platforms but not for long)) that can access pretty much all formats except the newer GeoDatabase formats available only in their ArcGIS software. If you'd like, consider using Oracle Spatial (with a developer copy) and developing your own applications. Other open source GIS tools exist (can't think of the names off hand) so feel free to check around if you really have an interest in GIS data.
Oh, yeah, if you have a copy of ArcView then you're free to export into DXF. What the hell kind of subsidy is that?
The ability to export to DXF is just a simple set of instructions to let people know they can convert the data. If using AutoDesk Map, I believe that application can import just as easily as ESRI ArcView can export it, same for Microstation or Intergraph.
...gross misdirection of public funds...this fails to actually benefit 99% of the public in the way that it could.
First, this is not a misdirection of funds. An easy example that a non-GIS person could relate to would be the use of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and it's determination of flood plain areas. Another would be the use of USGS DLG and CADRG's by county police when they need to search a large park for a missing person. You also have the benefit from a military perspective (mission planning, intelligence gathering, etc...). The Census TIGER files (generated itself from a combination of other national datasets) is used by planning agencies for development projects (track population changes over time - high growth areas that might need increased public services - police, fire, hospitals, schools, etc...).
I'm going to give you a gold star right on your cute little forehead.
Please send the gold star to:
100 Kiss My Ass Drive...
Obviously people get confused when property theft vs copyright infringement are in discussion. Was providing information that can be backed up rather than blindly placing comments into a post.
Main Entry: copyright
Function: noun
: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form (as of a literary, musical, or artistic work)
Main Entry: infringement
Function: noun
1 : the act of infringing : VIOLATION
2 : an encroachment or trespass on a right or privilege
Unless the songs being shared were not available on any of the available download stores...
Even if the material is unavailable in the format that you want it in, one does not have the right to share it unless they truly were given (by the copyright holder) the rights for distribution.
What I would love to see though is an environment where the large distributors are not part of the picture at all and artist can choose for themselves how to get their work out to the masses. The acceptance of the Internet should allow for a more direct artist to consumer market. Coming up with a business model could be tough, but if they can cut out the overhead of a distributor, it should be possible. We as consumers will need to change our purchasing habits to allow for the new models. Obviously illegal downloading isn't necessarily helping the artist (yes, one could argue it ultimately leads to a CD sale, but for most, it probably doesn't) and I imagine most would like to be compensated (you'll have the die hards in it for the art, but most probably would like to generate income).
Until the artist and the consumers come up with another process, the RIAA is going to exist and we'll have to deal with their rules.
Try finding a comparable Dell Server to a Sun Server and you'll find that prices are very close. In some cases, you'll find Sun cheaper. Make sure you compare the proper systems (remember MHz isn't everything just as AMD has indicated in their naming convention).
Their OS is less feature rich, but has more bugs, and doesn't perform as well in most cases as Linux.
And I guess all the bugs are the reason that companies choose Sun for their critical applications. I also guess that the government and military organizations also went with Sun solutions (I know, they also go with other UNIX vendors but Linux is still relatively new with them)
Look around, everyone who possibly can is getting off of Suns and onto Linux x86.
Linux is a bit of a "buzz word" right now so managers are going to check with their IT department to see if they should switch. Evalutating your IT choices is critical. You can't select vendor X just because it's your favorite vendor or they have cool commercials. You really need to consider what solution works for the problem your trying to solve. Making a blanket statement that everyone is getting off Sun is absurd. I know system administrators that will fight to keep their Sun systems (yes, they are extremist, but they will resist removing Sun systems usually for good reason).
hagbard5253, please provide some details on your Sun (or other UNIX vendor) experience so that we can understand your opinions.
Port 25 could theoretically be used for another service (I could setup a Tomcat server listening at 25). While not practical to step on well established ports, it's not unheard of.
You got lucky on that one. One of my previous employers had about 80 of us contracted to a county government. The government ran into a budget problem and they had to either cut contractors or reduce them to 32 hour weeks. I tried to negotiate for an old Sun 100E server (work 40, charge 32, get 100E) that was pretty well obsolete and they said they couldn't do it because of policies. Anything the county didn't want had to go to auction where you could purchase "lots" of junk.
Wouldn't have been a fast machine or anything, but would be a nice toy.
Most of the non-work related IT support I provide is compensated via food. Pizza and beer work best.
Other compensations include baby sitting and occasionally it keeps the inlaws from visiting (they are happy playing on the Internet and have less time to visit).
Not understanding the whole picture here but how often would parts need to be retired? Obviously an inspection process would need to be in place to make sure everything is in working order and safe Would this involve numerous shutdown/startup sequences for maintainence/inspections?
I agree that 50-100 years doesn't seem like a great deal of time, but that depends on how many parts we'll be storing. If parts are pulled every day/week/month, we could be looking at large storage areas. If the parts are retired over a longer period of time, then the storage would appear to be a lesser issue.
The key word is they are "compatible", not "identical". We purchase a set of computers, but out of those, a handful could go to a previous site where a single image exist. When we deliver updated images, we certainly don't want to put the burden on the end user to figure out which image to use. As you've stated, you have 3 ghost images and while not impossible to work with, it is not desirable. At least deployment group in my company has switched from Dell's to HP because HP was able to guarantee identical systems over multiple orders. We are in the early stages here so we'll see if that holds true.
Personally, I'd rather see the software sit in a network server to be mounted locally for use, there by relying on OS compatibility rather than a specific configuration (at least if carefully done). Unfortunately, our customers are moving further away from a UNIX environment and we are dealing more with MS Win32.
My company still uses a lot of Dell equipment (desktop and servers), even though many of the administrators are starting to complain about them. One of the biggest complaints at the desktop level is getting a duplicate hardware configuration for a given model. The company I work for delivers "solutions" which include servers and workstations and getting a single hardware configuration is a problem for the PC admins. We order anywhere from 50 - 100 PC's at a time, then maybe a week or two later, order another batch. Deploying an image to these systems can be a bit of a challenge (so I'm told by the PC admins) when you can't be sure what the actual hardware is inside, particulary graphic cards.
The Dell servers aren't quite as bad as our installation process on servers doesn't involve deploying an image. We do however find that the Dell power supplies seem to be the first part that goes on servers.
My former employer used Compaq Pro-Liant servers and I did like them over the Dell servers. The Compaq's seemed to work well for small to medium size configurations.
Poor Gateway, why are they failing
I don't think Gateway does a much better job then Dell in my opinion. In fact, Gateway's case designs have often been undesirable if you have to work on them. Most of Dell's desktop cases are easier to access than the Gatways that I'm familiar with (haven't used them in a couple of years, so maybe they have improved).
The document states that "Boise Schiller & Flexner will reimburse you for all reasonable duplication cost.". I'd want clarification on "reasonable" though. It sounds like they may have a bit of research to locate "all" documents "related". My idea of reasonable and the lawyers idea of reasonable could be completely different.
Scenario - SPAM company A follows the rules. SPAM company B does not. You, company P, aim to employ a SPAMMER to attract people to your website. Which company are you likely to hire knowing the the bulk of the population will filter out the content if sent by company A? As long as you have a way around the rule (likely a non-US SPAMMER or one in the US that ignores the "rule"), your not going to employ company A.
While you may drive some companies out of business, this will just make the ones who don't follow the rules richer or we'll see a shift of location from countries with the rules to countries without the rules.
Ultimately, I think that the solution has to look at those funding the SPAMMERs in the first place. SPAM is generally trying to get you to buy something so regulate where they can send their advertising budget.
My wife actually got a red light camera ticket (noticed the car in the turning lane start moving and started herself only to realize that she didn't have the green - didn't completely traverse the intersection, but enough to set off the detector) and it was sent to me as the registered owner of the vehicle. In Maryland, the Dept. of Motor Vehicles has a photo file of licensed drivers and easily could have cross referenced the photo of me to see that I was not the operator of the vehicle and therefore not guilty of the crime. In this case, I would have ended up ultimately paying the fine (my wife is a student and not employed), but if it were a friend or coworker, I would have bear the burdern of proving my innocence rather than the police bearing the burden of proving the driver.
In the case of red light or speeding cameras, the owner is assumed guilty and must prove their innocence. Unfortunately (guess it depends how you look at it), the fine and the filing of the offense are not overly significant to encourage a person to give up a days pay to fight the ticket. At least in Maryland, the ticket cost (red light) was under $100 (at least at the time my wife got it) and was not considered a moving violation (forget how they defined it, but it doesn't affect insurance or show up on a driving record). For something less than $100, who is going to give up a day's pay (usually more than the $100) to fight this.
If you aren't in the car... you can't be found guilty of speeding.
You can in Maryland. Speed cameras are being setup all over the place near where I live. I imagine as the financial benefits of these devices are realized, we'll see more and more of them. The fines and policies are likely to be similar to those of red light cameras.
If the gun is stolen and you do not report it, you will likely be the prime suspect in the case. You will need to prove that you were not involved in the incident. Until that time, you will likely be the one under investigated. Due to the severity of the gun example, a greater amount of effort will be applied to find the "real" user of the weapon. I doubt that the same level of investigation would be performed in the case of a stolen network connection. The burden will be on the connection owner to prove that they are not at fault, but likely most TOS will define the subscriber as being responsible.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they need to reverse these signs. Way too many slow drivers stick in the left lanes instead of just using them for passing. Seems that reverse logic might get them to use the right lanes for travel and the left for passing.
Now he'll have a lot more free time to do generate SPAM.
It's all a matter of perspective though. From your descriptions, you haven't been in a real serious crime. Neither have I. On the other hand, what if you or someone you care about was accidentally shot in a drive by shooting (I live near Baltimore, MD and this is not a rare occurance). If I lived in the city, I might be willing to give up some freedoms knowing that I could let my kids play outside without having to worry about getting shot or being approached by drug dealers.
The problem is that everyone will have a different tolerance level and what one envisions as too much, another will see as too little. Consider that some people don't have the resources to protect themselves and the ones they love (picture a single mother who leaves her children at home because of day care cost).
There is a cost of reducing crime, and it is not worth my freedom.
We have already given up a certain amount of freedom. Do you feel that the current freedoms we've given up (social security numbers, birth certificates, drivers license, public records, etc...) are adequate? I'm sure I could find someone who thinks these are too much.
Right now the most common "open standards" efforts seem to be more on the delivery side of web services rather than the underlying data format for the file system. I really think the industry is going with ESRI as the default format. Sort of odd that I'm generally against MS, but actually for ESRI given the monopolistic nature. Your post has given me something to think about. For a current project that I'm working on, we actually chose to work with Oracle Spatial as our repository rather than an ESRI product that performs a similar function. The only problem we forsee is that in the end, clients will use ESRI products and they have been developed to only work with their ArcSDE (Spatial Database Engine) product as "middleware" to a commercial database.
FYI: Lately,the industry/agency trend has been to work with commercial products rather than creating their own custom software or data formats. My current employer provides a lot of IT solutions to various agencies and we see a shift from projects where we had to write millions of lines of code to projects where a commercial product is used and a much smaller amount of "wrapper" code is developed. The wrapper code is primarily to "glue" or integrate various COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products together. Companies/agencies have come to realize that "custom" solutions have a few draw backs that they can't afford today:
cost - obviously custom is more expensive
support - you can't get regular upgrades as you are likely the only user of "that" particular custom solution. COTS products have regular upgrade cycles and the time/money to upgrade a custom solution can be a pain.
time - building a custom solution is expensive and timely. The decision to build a custom solution often involves much more planning, funding aquisition, development, and training.
As for data formats, the same applies. Quite a few datasets are in open standards, but usually it's the major GIS vendors who can actually support reading those formats.
I'm not sure which dataset in particular you are looking for, but if it's one for elevation like DTED or DEMS, these are not proprietary data formats. If your looking for a vector dataset representing man made features, check out the USGS DLG (Digital Line Graph) format (again, not a proprietary format). Usually you can find the documentation describing these file formats as a link off the download sites. Just a warning, the data formats can be quite complex (GIS datasets can represent some fairly complex "real world" features/relationships), but not impossible to work with if your comfortable with reading data structures.
Another problem with an "open standard" is that a single standard doesn't necessarily satisfy all situations. NGA has many different open standard data formats that have lead to problems when trying to move to a single format. It all depends what your trying to capture. Picture a road for example. You might want to store attributes like:
name
width
category - highway, secondary, dirt, etc...
alt-name
A military analyst will likely want to add things like:
surface-material
existence
A police/fire/EMS person will want:
response-zone
speed-impedement
speed-bump
address-start-left
address-end-left
address-start-right
address-end-right
And to make it even more complex, try throwing in temporal attributes.
created
maintenance-date
previous-("n")-mainenance-dates
next-ma
Sorry for preaching about GIS. My main argument is that if you want to get your data to the masses, you publish it in a format that the masses can read. GIS data isn't generally the type of data that most people would be interested and the software development reflects that by being a higher cost. GIS software, namely the main stream market leaders, is quite expensive due to the fact that development cost is spread over a smaller number of sales.
ESRI certainly has it's foot in the door of most agencies that are interested in producing geographic datasets, but they aren't the only ones. Intergraph, another major GIS vendor (I forget which position they are in for sales/installations), competes hard with ESRI to sell their software and also practices the same strategies of encouraging their format. Intergraphs GeoMedia software (maybe it was a different name before) started out on their own proprietery hardware called Clipper workstations which NIMA (NGA now) was locked into at one point. The parts all came from Intergraph and they controlled the pricing and had all sorts of political push from the representatives in Alabama .
Until recently (say the last 5 years or so), the computing power to work with these national datasets was limited to a small community of agencies/companies. Consider the data format that an agency chooses to be akin to distributing a document as either MS Word format or Adobe PDF. If an agency provides the data, it has to be in some format and they typically choose one that reaches the broadest audience. That being said, there are organizations like Open GIS Consortium that are working to create open standards so that the smaller GIS vendors and the not so traditional GIS vendors can have access to data once reserved for the more powerful systems. A company called Ionic produces an application called Red Spider (NOTE: This software is very very expensive. We evaluated it and found while it impliments most Open GIS Consortium "OGC" specifications, we could never pass the cost on to our customers.) that allows for "Web Feature Service" or "WFS". An open source project that is attempting to impliment these specifications, and certainly not the only one, is GeoTools, but they are slow in development and not mature enough at this point for commercial deployments. WFS allows applications to request geographic data similar to other web service applications. Part of the problem with these open standards though is getting people to buy into them. Obviously vendors like ESRI, Intergraph, Microstation, etc... have lesser interest in promoting the open standards over their own product standards, but they are starting to do it.
As far as restrictions on the datasets, I'm not entirely sure I follow you on that. The datasets are generally available for free (sometimes export controlled, but still free) and free viewers do exist. Granted that the free viewers are not always the best product for "high end" analysis, but they do at minimum allow for data viewing. One such tool from ESRI is called ArcExplorer (This link provides the location to download the viewer and an Interoperatability Extension) that is available for various platforms (MS Win32, Linux, UNIX, Mac) as it's Java based.
I know there are other open source GIS analysis applications, but I haven't used them as my employers have had the ability to purchase the high end commercial software. If I recall correctly, a copy of the ArcView software was less than $1000 a couple years ago and the software was available on UNIX (Sun, SGI, and a few others) and MS Win32 systems (sorry, no Linux version that I'm aware of).
I think I jumped around a bit on my above ramble so please forgive. I am coding/compiling and writing in between things. I guess I'm not sure if your disappointed a
Guess this will exclude trailer parks as the mobile homes often have "skirts".
In other news, Reynolds and Alcoa report higher than average sales of their aluminum foil wrap.
I don't know if this is a school, work, or a personal project but you could try one of the following.
ESRI may be willing to give you a trial copy of their software for a 30 day (possibly longer if you can justify it) period. Their software uses FLEXlm (off a hostID on UNIX or a "dongle" key on MS Win32 platforms) and they can generate a temporary license. If this is school related or possibly a charity, they may give or greatly reduce the license cost. As for applications from them, you'll likely want their ArcScan product which can convert an image into vectors (capture contour lines) and ArcGIS or ArcInfo workstation to assign attributes (elevation) to the lines and ultimately convert to the other data format you require. They also have an extension called ArcScene that creates "fly throughs", but I've not worked with it myself to know what data formats it can export to (but I think I heard VRML before).
If you have school connections, your Earth and Mineral Science (or where ever your Geography program falls under) may already have access to ESRI or another GIS vendors applications. You may see if you could find a GIS student to do the conversion for you.
The National datasets are created to support various government agencies to help eliminate the overlap of data collection (an attempt to be efficient).
...gross misdirection of public funds...this fails to actually benefit 99% of the public in the way that it could.
I found it rather offensive that my government spent all this tax payer money on creating maps that only work with one particular commercial application.
The data format chosen to represent the dataset is a tough point. Some agencies, I'll use NGA (the agency formerly known as NIMA - they had a 3 letter acronym complex), have created their own data standards (look at the specifications for VMAP (several "levels"), DNC, DCW, etc...) and various GIS vendors/projects have implimented interfaces to allow import or native access. By not choosing a vendor's native data format, the agency does not show bias, but users of the data must wait for vendors to code for the dataset. An agency choosing a file format that is already available makes the dataset more widely available. In the case of ESRI data formats, you'll find that in many ways, they have become the industry standard (sort of the MS of the GIS community). Most non-ESRI applications choose to, at a minimum, import ESRI formats into their proprietery format, or work natively with the ESRI format.
Did ESRI pay for that satellite imaging? Hell no. That's taxpayer money.
For the first part, why would ESRI pay for the data? They are providing a tool to access and analyze geospatial data. Data stored in their format surely helps the company grow, but they are not "requiring" agencies to store data in their format. Agencies see the benefit of working with industry standard formats rather than spending resources to create their own formats (consider USGS produces DLG files, Census produces TIGER files, etc...). Coming up with your own data specification and maintaining it can be resource intensive. By going with the industry format, they are saving tax payer money compared to producing their own format.
Why are they, and their Win2K required software mandated to access data aquired with taxpayer money.
ESRI doesn't require you to run on MS Win32 platforms. If you choose ESRI software, you can select various UNIX platforms including Linux. They produce Workstation ArcInfo (which has traditionally been a UNIX application (although early releases were on other platforms but not for long)) that can access pretty much all formats except the newer GeoDatabase formats available only in their ArcGIS software. If you'd like, consider using Oracle Spatial (with a developer copy) and developing your own applications. Other open source GIS tools exist (can't think of the names off hand) so feel free to check around if you really have an interest in GIS data.
Oh, yeah, if you have a copy of ArcView then you're free to export into DXF. What the hell kind of subsidy is that?
The ability to export to DXF is just a simple set of instructions to let people know they can convert the data. If using AutoDesk Map, I believe that application can import just as easily as ESRI ArcView can export it, same for Microstation or Intergraph.
First, this is not a misdirection of funds. An easy example that a non-GIS person could relate to would be the use of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and it's determination of flood plain areas. Another would be the use of USGS DLG and CADRG's by county police when they need to search a large park for a missing person. You also have the benefit from a military perspective (mission planning, intelligence gathering, etc...). The Census TIGER files (generated itself from a combination of other national datasets) is used by planning agencies for development projects (track population changes over time - high growth areas that might need increased public services - police, fire, hospitals, schools, etc...).
While GIS may be
Please send the gold star to:
- 100 Kiss My Ass Drive...
Obviously people get confused when property theft vs copyright infringement are in discussion. Was providing information that can be backed up rather than blindly placing comments into a post.From Webster Online
Main Entry: copyright
Function: noun
: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form (as of a literary, musical, or artistic work)
Webster Online
Main Entry: infringement
Function: noun
1 : the act of infringing : VIOLATION
2 : an encroachment or trespass on a right or privilege
Unless the songs being shared were not available on any of the available download stores...
Even if the material is unavailable in the format that you want it in, one does not have the right to share it unless they truly were given (by the copyright holder) the rights for distribution.
What I would love to see though is an environment where the large distributors are not part of the picture at all and artist can choose for themselves how to get their work out to the masses. The acceptance of the Internet should allow for a more direct artist to consumer market. Coming up with a business model could be tough, but if they can cut out the overhead of a distributor, it should be possible. We as consumers will need to change our purchasing habits to allow for the new models. Obviously illegal downloading isn't necessarily helping the artist (yes, one could argue it ultimately leads to a CD sale, but for most, it probably doesn't) and I imagine most would like to be compensated (you'll have the die hards in it for the art, but most probably would like to generate income).
Until the artist and the consumers come up with another process, the RIAA is going to exist and we'll have to deal with their rules.
The competition between the two will hopefully drive each to improve. We wouldn't want a digital animated monopoly now, would we?
Depends on your employer and who your employers customers are (read as people with clearances).
Also throw in the fact that this could show up on a background investigation and you could have problems obtaining employment.
Their hardware is more expensive, and slower.
Try finding a comparable Dell Server to a Sun Server and you'll find that prices are very close. In some cases, you'll find Sun cheaper. Make sure you compare the proper systems (remember MHz isn't everything just as AMD has indicated in their naming convention).
Their OS is less feature rich, but has more bugs, and doesn't perform as well in most cases as Linux.
And I guess all the bugs are the reason that companies choose Sun for their critical applications. I also guess that the government and military organizations also went with Sun solutions (I know, they also go with other UNIX vendors but Linux is still relatively new with them)
Look around, everyone who possibly can is getting off of Suns and onto Linux x86.
Linux is a bit of a "buzz word" right now so managers are going to check with their IT department to see if they should switch. Evalutating your IT choices is critical. You can't select vendor X just because it's your favorite vendor or they have cool commercials. You really need to consider what solution works for the problem your trying to solve. Making a blanket statement that everyone is getting off Sun is absurd. I know system administrators that will fight to keep their Sun systems (yes, they are extremist, but they will resist removing Sun systems usually for good reason).
hagbard5253, please provide some details on your Sun (or other UNIX vendor) experience so that we can understand your opinions.
Port 25 could theoretically be used for another service (I could setup a Tomcat server listening at 25). While not practical to step on well established ports, it's not unheard of.
Someone has to make the comment...
Are you sure you got a good barter out of that?
As a happily married guy myself, I say this with a lot of humor.
You got lucky on that one. One of my previous employers had about 80 of us contracted to a county government. The government ran into a budget problem and they had to either cut contractors or reduce them to 32 hour weeks. I tried to negotiate for an old Sun 100E server (work 40, charge 32, get 100E) that was pretty well obsolete and they said they couldn't do it because of policies. Anything the county didn't want had to go to auction where you could purchase "lots" of junk.
Wouldn't have been a fast machine or anything, but would be a nice toy.
Most of the non-work related IT support I provide is compensated via food. Pizza and beer work best.
Other compensations include baby sitting and occasionally it keeps the inlaws from visiting (they are happy playing on the Internet and have less time to visit).
Not understanding the whole picture here but how often would parts need to be retired? Obviously an inspection process would need to be in place to make sure everything is in working order and safe Would this involve numerous shutdown/startup sequences for maintainence/inspections?
I agree that 50-100 years doesn't seem like a great deal of time, but that depends on how many parts we'll be storing. If parts are pulled every day/week/month, we could be looking at large storage areas. If the parts are retired over a longer period of time, then the storage would appear to be a lesser issue.
The key word is they are "compatible", not "identical". We purchase a set of computers, but out of those, a handful could go to a previous site where a single image exist. When we deliver updated images, we certainly don't want to put the burden on the end user to figure out which image to use. As you've stated, you have 3 ghost images and while not impossible to work with, it is not desirable. At least deployment group in my company has switched from Dell's to HP because HP was able to guarantee identical systems over multiple orders. We are in the early stages here so we'll see if that holds true.
Personally, I'd rather see the software sit in a network server to be mounted locally for use, there by relying on OS compatibility rather than a specific configuration (at least if carefully done). Unfortunately, our customers are moving further away from a UNIX environment and we are dealing more with MS Win32.
My company still uses a lot of Dell equipment (desktop and servers), even though many of the administrators are starting to complain about them. One of the biggest complaints at the desktop level is getting a duplicate hardware configuration for a given model. The company I work for delivers "solutions" which include servers and workstations and getting a single hardware configuration is a problem for the PC admins. We order anywhere from 50 - 100 PC's at a time, then maybe a week or two later, order another batch. Deploying an image to these systems can be a bit of a challenge (so I'm told by the PC admins) when you can't be sure what the actual hardware is inside, particulary graphic cards.
The Dell servers aren't quite as bad as our installation process on servers doesn't involve deploying an image. We do however find that the Dell power supplies seem to be the first part that goes on servers.
My former employer used Compaq Pro-Liant servers and I did like them over the Dell servers. The Compaq's seemed to work well for small to medium size configurations.
Poor Gateway, why are they failing
I don't think Gateway does a much better job then Dell in my opinion. In fact, Gateway's case designs have often been undesirable if you have to work on them. Most of Dell's desktop cases are easier to access than the Gatways that I'm familiar with (haven't used them in a couple of years, so maybe they have improved).
The document states that "Boise Schiller & Flexner will reimburse you for all reasonable duplication cost.". I'd want clarification on "reasonable" though. It sounds like they may have a bit of research to locate "all" documents "related". My idea of reasonable and the lawyers idea of reasonable could be completely different.
Scenario - SPAM company A follows the rules. SPAM company B does not. You, company P, aim to employ a SPAMMER to attract people to your website. Which company are you likely to hire knowing the the bulk of the population will filter out the content if sent by company A? As long as you have a way around the rule (likely a non-US SPAMMER or one in the US that ignores the "rule"), your not going to employ company A.
While you may drive some companies out of business, this will just make the ones who don't follow the rules richer or we'll see a shift of location from countries with the rules to countries without the rules.
Ultimately, I think that the solution has to look at those funding the SPAMMERs in the first place. SPAM is generally trying to get you to buy something so regulate where they can send their advertising budget.
My wife actually got a red light camera ticket (noticed the car in the turning lane start moving and started herself only to realize that she didn't have the green - didn't completely traverse the intersection, but enough to set off the detector) and it was sent to me as the registered owner of the vehicle. In Maryland, the Dept. of Motor Vehicles has a photo file of licensed drivers and easily could have cross referenced the photo of me to see that I was not the operator of the vehicle and therefore not guilty of the crime. In this case, I would have ended up ultimately paying the fine (my wife is a student and not employed), but if it were a friend or coworker, I would have bear the burdern of proving my innocence rather than the police bearing the burden of proving the driver.
In the case of red light or speeding cameras, the owner is assumed guilty and must prove their innocence. Unfortunately (guess it depends how you look at it), the fine and the filing of the offense are not overly significant to encourage a person to give up a days pay to fight the ticket. At least in Maryland, the ticket cost (red light) was under $100 (at least at the time my wife got it) and was not considered a moving violation (forget how they defined it, but it doesn't affect insurance or show up on a driving record). For something less than $100, who is going to give up a day's pay (usually more than the $100) to fight this.
If you aren't in the car... you can't be found guilty of speeding.
You can in Maryland. Speed cameras are being setup all over the place near where I live. I imagine as the financial benefits of these devices are realized, we'll see more and more of them. The fines and policies are likely to be similar to those of red light cameras.
If the gun is stolen and you do not report it, you will likely be the prime suspect in the case. You will need to prove that you were not involved in the incident. Until that time, you will likely be the one under investigated. Due to the severity of the gun example, a greater amount of effort will be applied to find the "real" user of the weapon. I doubt that the same level of investigation would be performed in the case of a stolen network connection. The burden will be on the connection owner to prove that they are not at fault, but likely most TOS will define the subscriber as being responsible.