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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | RE: GISList: Cartography and Data Viewer |
| Date: |
08/26/2003 05:35:00 PM |
| From: |
Dimitri Rotow |
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Look, these are all examples of a peculiarly irrelevant attempted rebuttal
to the criticism that Internet is too slow and web services are too
unreliable. The attempted rebuttal is in the form "maybe, but it's getting
faster!"
The point is not that Internet is getting faster. Of course it is getting
faster... the point is that speeds inside the box are currently a million
times faster than Internet and they are getting faster much more rapidly
than Internet is getting faster. The real comparison when it comes down to
the effectiveness of web services within interactive applications is always
between Internet speed and in-the-box speed.
Once again, I would call your attention to the essay at
http://exchange.manifold.net/manifold/manuals/5_userman/mfd50GIS_and_Network
ing.htm where this is made clear in detail.
> been ordained online, I am not a priest. Here are some personal
> anectdotal
> experiences that "reality checks" would have put a wet blanket on.
>
> 1. 30 years ago an overseas phone call from relatives was an
> expensive event
> that we waited up for and enjoyed vicariously through my parents.
> Today, I
> make daily conference calls to Europe for 6 cents a minute over a
> Voice over
> IP router, which is much cheaper than calling friends that live 90 miles
> away using a landline.
>
Yes, that's wonderful, but irrelevant. Modern software runs at gigahertz
clock rates over memory busses that exchange billions of bytes per second.
No one in their right minds would suggest running a processor to RAM
connection through a dial up modem, nor does doing it at Voice over IP
speeds help any since it is still hundreds of thousands of times slower.
> 2. 15 years ago I would back up my imagery and analysis to 9-track because
> there wasn't enough hard disk space to go around in the university lab. I
> also used to get yelled at because I would transfer gigs of data
> across the
> university network. Today, I keep gigs and gigs of imagery on
> spinning disk
> and I don't even do image analysis any more. I keep them around because
> they are pretty pictures. I transfer gigs of data across the internet all
> the time today.
>
Yes, but no person in their right minds would run, say, PhotoShop as a web
services application where an OGC Image Server would feed individual pixels
to the image within PhotoShop based on Image Queries compliant with some OGC
image server standard. Yet, what OGC proponents suggest is just as stupid,
since the average number of inflection points within objects in a typical
GIS editing session is about the same as the number of pixels in an average
PhotoShop editing session.
One doesn't use web services for such things because progress has continued
within silicon lithography to the point we all have gigahertz-class
processors with screaming local buses that are a million times faster than
Internet. Those of us with a need for speed like to use that capability.
> 3. 10 years ago I would telnet into a server from home to check processes
> and maybe run a script over my then "oh so speedy" 2800 baud
> modem. Today,
> I can control very large relational databases, several time zones away,
> graphically via VNC on a PDA at my local sandwich shop through a free
> wireless 5 megabit link. And I get free refills on my ice tea.
>
Yet more irrelevancy. Let's see you write a PhD thesis in Word through that
PDA, or create the next advertising layout for a Fortune 500 company on that
PDA in PhotoShop or design a new bank building in AutoCAD or write the next
great GIS application in Visual Studio. For that matter, no one in their
right minds would think of doing serious GIS via that PDA.
Cheers,
Dimitri
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