Comment Re:Offer custom maps (Score 1) 304
I think I used JOSM as well--it was a while ago. But I don't think JOSM allowed any rendering, so once I got a map segment with JOSM I had to render it with Mapnik.
Comment Offer custom maps (Score 1) 304
When I got married, I decided I wanted to make maps for my guests, none of whom lived in our small exurb. It turns out this is a pretty common task. I didn't want ugly, low resolution mapquest printout maps though. I wanted to be able to put in points of interest, I wanted a high level of street detail and I wanted some control over the rendering. I was excited to find out about OSM. It turns out, the Open Street Map website allows you to download a section of the map as SVG. Great! However, one problem: it has a pretty small limit on how big it can be, which limits either map size or level of detail. I ended up downloading the entire map, the rendering software and Mapnik style sheets, and having to compile the renderer myself. Then I edited the map in Inkscape, but there are some boundary issues when you just want a small segment of a big map. It was a pretty complicated project, but I think ultimately worth it.
If OSM offered a paid or advertising supported service to help make custom maps, I think it would be pretty popular. I've toyed around with the idea myself of offering this service, but I don't have the time.
If OSM offered a paid or advertising supported service to help make custom maps, I think it would be pretty popular. I've toyed around with the idea myself of offering this service, but I don't have the time.
Comment Re:It's not the words... (Score 1) 487
I don't think that's real language--it's made up for the movie Airplane!
Comment Nope (Score 1) 341
No. Almost nothing is a regulatory taking. There's a very narrow area that's protected, and this almost certainly does not fall in that area.
Comment Re:Storm chasers say they have as much right to wa (Score 1) 402
The probability of someone with a PhD in meteorology (or something similar) knowing what they are doing with a storm is quite a bit higher than some random guy who thinks storms are neat.
Are there amateurs who know a lot about what they are doing and their hobby is contributing in some way to society / our knowledge base? I'm sure there are, but very few compared to the "random yokel who wants to video tape the storm because he watched Twister last weekend"
Comment Re:Storm chasers say they have as much right to wa (Score 1) 402
Yup. Clearly if money is the prime goal one wants to spend 4 years in a tough undergrad program becfore moving on to a 6 year (on average) graduate program and probably a post-doc or 2, vs. getting a degree in marketing and having your company pay for your MBA and rolling in 6 figures.
Comment Re:So.... (Score 1) 347
So your friend is a complete douchebag?
Geologists Might Be Charged For Not Predicting Quake 375
mmmscience writes "In 2009, a series of small earthquakes shook the region of L'Aquila, Italy. Seismologists investigated the tremors, but concluded that there was no direct indication of a big quake on the horizon. Less than a month later, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake killed more than 300 people. Now, the chief prosecutor of L'Aquila is
looking to charge the scientists with gross negligent manslaughter for not predicting the quake."
Comment Re:What I want (Score 1) 375
Sounds like a research project at CMU called Internet Suspend and Resume. http://isr.cmu.edu/
Comment Re:Fat Chance (Score 1) 482
Congress passed a law, the Communications Decency Act, which protected "service providers" from liability for distribution of information published on their forums by others. This covers Youtube, but not someone like Apple who is essentially a software reseller.
Submission + - Local TV Could Go the Way of Newspapers
Hugh Pickens writes: "Alan D. Mutter writes on "Reflections of a Newsosaur" that the economics of local broadcasting may begin to unravel as dramatically in the next five years as they did for newspapers in the last five years due to the unparalleled consumer choice made possible by a growing mass of (mostly free) content on the Internet. "Once it becomes as easy and satisfying to view a YouTube video on your 50-inch television as it is to watch “Two and a Half Men,” audiences will fragment to the point that local broadcasters will not be able to attract large quantities of viewers for a particular program at a finite point in time," writes Mutter. The economics of cable TV programming already are geared to serving small but targeted niches but as audiences shatter, those options won’t be available to local broadcasters, who will be deprived of the vast reach that enabled the high ad rates and enviable profits long associated with their businesses. Although barely 8% of US households had access to IPTV in 2009, this technology is likely to be available to some 20% of the more than 100 million homes subscribing to pay-television services in 2014, according to senior analyst Lee Ratliff of iSuppli, a private market research company. "We already have gotten a hint of what the future could hold. Acting to trim spending during the recession, many local stations cut back their news staffs, resulting in a decline in the caliber and depth of their coverage," writes Mutter. "With the gruel we call local TV news already quite thin, our society can ill afford further cutbacks. But this may be the path we are on.""
Submission + - How to Go Broke Selling 0-Days (threatpost.com)
Trailrunner7 writes: Despite all of the hand-wringing and moral posturing about the public sale of security vulnerabilities, it turns out that not many people are buying or selling vulns and the ones who are aren't making much money at it. A new survey of security researchers who sell vulnerabilities either publicly or in private, directed sales found that the vast majority of the flaws sell for less than $5,000. And almost none of them sell for much more than $10,000. At those prices, there's little chance that this is going to turn into the chaotic Wild West marketplace that some people predicted. It's a small, mostly controlled market that isn't making anyone rich.
Submission + - Meet The New Voicemail: Google Voice vs. YouMail (computerworld.com)
CWmike writes: Looking for a better voicemail service? Web-based voice mail services have been adding features that go beyond just storing your messages online. Most can automatically transcribe recorded messages. And some have evolved into virtual command centers to handle your calling needs, whether it's receiving calls, making them or forwarding them to other phones. Howard Wen reviews four free Web-based voice mail services: Google Voice, Phonebooth, Ribbit Mobile and YouMail. Bottom line: YouMail might lack the neat extras of the other services in this roundup, but you can still use multiple outgoing greetings and assign each to specific phone numbers calling you. Plus, it provides apps for three of the major smartphone platforms. And YouMail is open to all right now.
Submission + - Rest in Peas: The Death of Speech Recognition (posterous.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Speech recognition accuracy flatlined--years ago. Works great for small vocabularies on your cell phone, but basically computers can't understand language--amazingly. Prospects for AI are dimmed and we seem to need AI for computers to understand language. Time to rewrite the story of the future.
Submission + - Texas to Cape Wind: You're Not First Yet
longacre writes: Cape Wind is making headlines for for being the first offshore wind farm to earn federal approval, but it still has plenty of legal hoops to jump through before groundbreaking. Texas, on the other hand, requires no review--state, federal or otherwise--to build wind farms off its shore. Texas energy expert and Popular Mechanics senior editor Jennifer Bogo talks to Texan energy leaders who are confident they will beat Cape Wind to the punch for the distinction of having the first functional U.S. Offshore wind farm. "I was about to write a press release to congratulate Cape Wind for getting their approval," says Jim Suydam, press secretary of the Texas General Land Office, "and let them know when they're done jumping through hoops up there they can come build off the Texas Coast." Despite its reputation as an oil-addicted, non-environmentally-friendly conservative state, Texas' existing land-based wind farms actually produce four-times more electricity than California.
