|
|
| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
| |
| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | Re: GISList: OGC and Standards, - a response |
| Date: |
12/16/2002 06:20:55 PM |
| From: |
Peter Shary |
|
|
A very interesting discussion...
Here in Russia I encountered monopolists dealing
with spatial data and those dealing with "all-purpose"
formats (for which monopolists are sponsors), so that
this part of story is not surprising for me. Another part
is, about prospectives of GIS in this relation.
From three messages to remember this part.
Anthony Quartararo:
>So what is the compelling reason to become
>an OGC member ? How many open
>source (GIS) software providers are there ?
Carl Reed (OGC):
>Very simple - do you want a voice in the
>future of our industry or not?
Dimitri Rotow:
>Actually, the most effective way to have a voice in
>the future of our industry is to create cool software
>that provides better technology and better quality, is
>easier to use and has all the features people want, and
>then you sell it for 1/20th of the cost of the software
>sold by legacy companies. You make it easy to buy
>the software through Internet so anyone in the world
>can buy it at the same price. You put all your effort into
>evolving the software rapidly, with two or three major
>releases a year so that users know they won't have to
>wait years for their "wishlist" items to appear on their
>desktop. Price the software so low so that while the
>legacy companies struggle to sell a few thousand
>licenses you sell hundreds of thousands or even
>millions of copies.
Dimitri,
Is this really "the most effective way" in the future of GIS ?
What is "cool" GIS: simply that of better technology/quality ?
And / or lower-price GIS ?
-- Compare guns and atomic bombs: what is "cooler" ?
My feeling is that the idea you described is to enhance
(and to sell at lower price) "guns", not to discover an "atomic
bomb" in GIS. Is the "GIS-bomb" impossible ?
If possible, your and ESRI's GISs will both appear dinosaurs.
If possible, OGC's "interoperability" is a fictive goal.
If possible, new questions are of more importance.
I believe, this is possible, and my work has created
a first model. Below are principles.
Remember the history: guns need technology,
an atomic bomb needs corresponding science.
Like with atomic bombs in 2-nd World war,
the "war of GISs" is scientific, not technological.
Speaking "data", "formats", "interoperability", we imply
DEMs with or with no some geographical (or vector)
additions. For example, NASA's SRTM are DEMs
with no vector data.
DEMs are of great importance for numerous tasks, but
current GISs are almost not able to treat DEMs. To do
this, GIS developers must use geomorphometry as a
science. What does "to create a science" mean? - This
is: (1) to classify all methods (both discovered and
not) into non-overlapping classes, (2) to introduce essential
part of methods, and (3) to develop a conceptual scheme of
the science. [The item (2) is not always necessary: all
formulae of special theory of relativity (relativistic
mechanics) were introduced by Lorentz before Albert
Einstein has created this science.] The description of
geomorphometry as a science:
Shary, P.A., Sharaya, L.S., Mitusov, A.V., 2002.
Fundamental quantitative methods of land surface analysis.
Geoderma Vol.107, No.1-2, p.1-32.
About 100 theorems were needed to be prooved...
Now people may (using DEMs) predicts oil spills, provide
solution of predicting detailed spatial distribution of soil
properties (commonly-known idea for this: if there is
high correlation between some soil property and topography,
this property can be predicted directly by topography.
Sufficient set of basic topographic attributes were
unknown.), obtain essential new results in precision
agriculture, decode geological structures, create less doubtful
hydrological models (does water divider exists as a line?), and
so on. One may term such kind of software "Analytical GIS":
it might use ESRI/ERDAS routine functions, but essentially
differs in its ability to predict/decode, or to solve practical tasks
(tasks like projection transformations are considered as routine).
Details and first Analytical GIS can be found at this research
website:
http://members.fortunecity.com/eco4/research_shary/
What do people need: only to store / transform digital data, or also
to solve their tasks by powerful methods of fundamental science ?
Anthony Quartararo in this discussion wrote:
>The WWW as we know it, and continue to piece together was
>NEVER intended to be what people have forced it to be today.
>Not e-commerce, not e-biz, not VOIP, etc.
>...the WWW has been successful despite this, why ?
>Because of people and organizations taking the initiative...
I believe, people will similarly choose to solve their ta
|
|
Sponsored by:
For information
regarding
advertising rates
Click Here!
|
