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| Subject: | RE: GISList: Cartography and Data Viewer |
| Date: |
08/26/2003 08:15:00 AM |
| From: |
Pat Waggaman |
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When the law is against you, try it on the facts: when the facts are
against you, try it on the law: when both are against you - try it in the
media. That's an old lawyer's dictum which seems to apply to your reply
below.
Sonny, the religious wars brought about through the introduction of new
formats are fun for those of us who have a pretty good view of how GIS,
databases and the Internet work today. Your argument expressed below
abandons fact and knowledge: it relies upon the divinely drawn vision of
the "next reality", unrestrained by "reality checks", which its priests are
free to elaborate on their own terms.
For us feet in the mud GIS types, Dimitri's argument is unshakeable: if
only because it aligns with the (one and only) Universal Constant -
Murphy's Law. When you need data over the Internet:
1) 9/11 will have caused it to be removed from the Internet,
2) Your network admin will tell you, "sorry, port 21 is closed today,
you know - that new virus"
3) The data server will be off-line.
...
We run an advanced information society because we have the data "tools at
hand". The easiest way to break that society back to the stone age is to
make those tools hard or impossible to get. Let the competition rely on
insecure data inputs, for your own use I recommend - download the data when
you have the chance, and let it sit on some slightly used HDD / DVD /
Tape. It'll - probably - be there when you need it.
When the day comes that the Internet matures to the point where Murphy gets
superceded, I'll trash my on-network data: until then, I'll keep planning
for Murphy to rear his ugly head and store data locally.
Cheers,
Pat Waggaman
At 09:23 PM 8/25/2003, Sonny Parafina wrote:
>Sniff? sniff?!! What is that funky smell? Oh yeah, FUD. Fear. Uncertainty.
>Doubt.
>
>Nothing like scare tactics to help you make an informed decision.
>
>Cheers!
>
>sonny
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dimitri Rotow [mailto:dar@manifold.net]
>Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 7:21 PM
>To: gislist@geocomm.com
>Subject: RE: GISList: Cartography and Data Viewer
>
>
>
> >
> > However, if you feel that setting up the same data that everyone
> > has set up
> > a million times over and over again is a waste of time then look into OGC
> > interfaces. For example the USGS is the data producer and steward of many
> > spatial data products, however instead of distributing only
> > files, the data
> > is distributed through a web service that only provides the
> > current data you
>
>Lucky for most GIS users the USGS continues to distribute files. Well, at
>least those that it has not privatized by giving them away to private
>parties.
>
> > want when you want it. This saves you the time of searching, downloading,
> > unzipping, converting, formatting, projecting, loading, serving
> > up the data,
> > and maintaining it. The flab in desktop gis is the 80% of your
> > budget spent
> > on processing the same data that other organizations have already done.
> >
>
>If it is good data, it doesn't need much processing. If it is bad data, it
>will need processing whether or not you fetch it from a web service or from
>a file. Likewise for projections, etc. People find it convenient to fetch
>data in files because it is so much faster, more reliable and more flexible
>than getting it from a web service. There is no need to invent slow and
>inefficient OGC things to prevent people from having access to data.
>
>Last week's events show how unreliable web services are under the stress of
>even a single virus. This will get much worse before it gets better. Even
>in the best of times, web access is unthinkably slow compared to simply
>opening a file on one's own machine. Given the absurdly low cost
>(essentially, free) of disk, it makes sense to grab all the data you might
>want from USGS so you can have the data on hand to do what you want with it
>when you want. Why be dependent upon USGS? You never know, after all, when
>USGS will decide to change the service, to make it unavailable, to start
>charging for it, to give it away to a private company or if it will just
>simply be too slow to use when you need it.
>
>The idea of web services that just give you only that part of the data you
>"need" is just another webstacle to keep you from having access to *all* the
>data you might want. Don't buy into that, or the next thing you know you
>won't have access to all the data when you need it.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Dimitri
>
>
>
>
>
>
>To unsubscribe, write to gislist-unsubscribe@geocomm.com
>__________________________
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