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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Subject: | RE: GISList: Cartography and Data Viewer |
| Date: |
08/26/2003 05:35:01 PM |
| From: |
Dimitri Rotow |
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> I am sorry that the competitive delivery of GIS and its base
> information via
> the net and software other than buy yours is upsetting to you personally.
> And if the OGC and other OGC-like efforts are threatening to your
> company's
> future, then that is the way it is. Times change Old Boy!
>
My company? Let's see... I recommended ArcExplorer, an ESRI product, in
response to the original post. I don't work for ESRI, now, do I? (Let me
check my badge... nope... not ESRI).
As far as times changing, OGC-like stuff is incredibly old-fashioned from a
techology perspective. What serious technologist regards GML as either
modern or efficient? It is a bureaucrat's dream, but one who is out of
touch with the possibilities of modern technology. The idea of living
fossils ganging together under an OGC banner to declare that "dinosaurs
aren't dead... really!" is not hardly an example of "times changing"... it
is an example of a conservative reaction to modern GIS.
> As for internet delivery by connection to data and related data
> processing/presentation services that will likely eclipse your products
> well I too remember (faintly) the 300 baud modems of last decade. Today I
> enjoy broadband and look to someday have essentially "free" not just
> megabytes but terabytes pipes.
>
I think you are confusing the difference between products that deliver data
and products that work with data. The company I work for builds products
that work with data. The more data, the merrier, and frankly we really
don't care how people get that data. However, that doesn't mean that the
laws of physics change (such as a basic limitation on the speed of light) or
that the effect of such laws on the performance of machines and software
changes.
Your argument that "some day networks will be faster" does not really
address the physics of the matter. For why, see the essay at
http://exchange.manifold.net/manifold/manuals/5_userman/mfd50GIS_and_Network
ing.htm
> My bet is the "public" maps that construct the base of most "personal"
> spatial analysis is best served from a library, either private and/or
> public. The emerging benefits from up-to-date mapping
> depositories/services,
> agreed, has had some rough moments due to mainly designed incompatibility
> due to GIS product competitions. I believe that is mostly behind
No, it is mainly due to the bureaucratic foolishness of the OGC designs.
People like solutions that are fast, elegant, effective and inexpensive.
None of those adjectives apply to OGC. The intrinsic clumsiness of OGC
designs (like GML) defy swift and easy interoperability, so they are not
popular with people who create products for large marketplaces. They are
popular with some types of bureaucrats (who don't have to earn the money
they spend) so one does encounter Potemkin village "demonstrations" that are
heavily-funded exercises in special cases with no practical relevance to
large markets. I suppose it is the way that some bureaucrats prove to each
other they are good guys, by spending millions on a imnpractical demo when
they could have spent a fraction of that on real solutions.
[For those of us who are not yet familiar with Russian history, Potemkin was
a minister of Catherine the Great who wanted to impress her with the
progress he had made in developing formerly wild regions of Russia. When
Catherine the Great took an inspection trip down a great river to see what
new villages and industries had been developed, he had false-front
"villages" erected along the way. Each day when Catherine paused for the
night he had the villages dismantled and quickly moved downstream so she
could admire yet more villages the next day as her ship passed. Hence, the
term "Potemkin village." Very much like the OGC "demonstrations," don't you
think?]
> us - even
> you endorse the SHP format with all its warts and gaps? Certainly you can
> buy a book or two, particularly new "best sellers", but the archive of the
> library remains part and parcel of civilization.
>
> And lastly, I believe you are misdirecting many on this list as to motives
> of our National government as may regard something that has not even
> happened yet. Viruses? Many used to get stuck in the mud back in Model T
> days too but now not only do we have road improvements but in-car
> navigation
So, it is paranoia to point out the obvious effects of what happened last
week and will happen to an increasing degree as viruses become more
sophisticated? The number of naive machines connected to the web full time
is growing very rapidly with the rise of broadband connections, yet the
potential for mischief grows exponentially with the number of naive machines
available (
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