24 Nov 2009
Entchev reflexively repeats one of the most foolish canards ever hurled against collaborative knowledge building (open source, open data, open knowledge)
You get what you pay for.
Was there ever a putdown more easily falsifiable?
You pay nothing for PostGIS. Is the value to you nothing? You pay nothing for Wikipedia. Is the value to you nothing? You pay nothing for Open Street Map, is the value to you… nothing? Clearly, you, and everyone, gets more than what they pay for.
Now, there are many arguments to be made and beers to be drunk over whether what you get is enough for all possible purposes of all possible people. Some think that the trend in open knowledge is so strong that even that goal is within reach. Me, not so much.
But clearly, everyone has access to these resources, for free, and what they get in return is more than what they paid.
13 Nov 2009
Who knew that ESRI was so hip? From James Fee’s blog:
Note: If you post any specific 9.4 Beta information (such as quoting forums posts on the Beta forums), expect ESRI to personally contact you. They appear to be monitoring this blog post. You’ve been warned.
13 Nov 2009
James Fee has a nice rant on mapping interfaces today, but the part the piqued my interest was embedded in the screen shot of the National Map. It said “The National Map Viewer BETA: Powered by Palanterra X3”
Interesting! Who or what is this Palanterra X3 who have managed to get a top-of-the-fold “Powered by” on a major USGS site? Oddly, the Google is unusually terse about this topic. Looks like it’s an NGA project, and yet it’s “Palanterra (TM)”. Intra-governmental entrepreneurship at its finest, a carefully imagined brand name that appears only in meeting agendas and powerpoints.
12 Nov 2009
A quiet bit of byplay is going on in the world of extreme geogeekery, as the State of the Map conference, the annual gathering of the OpenStreetMap community, decides where to host their 2010 event. The twist for this year is that an intrepid member of their spanish community has suggested hosting the event in Barcelona, to align with the FOSS4G 2010 event (either right before or right after). The OSM community decides on their site in early December – I’ll add my non-binding “ooooooooh, I hopehopehopehopehope they choose Barcelona!”
05 Nov 2009
I gave a 30 minute talk about the past present and future of PostGIS at FOSS4G two weeks ago, and thanks to the efforts of the folks at FOSSLC it’s now online as a video.
