Wait a minute. I consume electricity for the server, some of which is turned to heat, which I then use to raise the temperature of my hot water tank and then I save money in the process?? Wanna buy a bridge?

I understand. Maybe 'where something is' in the sense of one map which shows the grounds plan, yes, BUT... shooting in (gps, cartesian, polar, whatever) coordinates for every object and keeping that in a database will present many other problems relating to production and maintenance costs, accuracy and usage. Land objects can have point, area and path attributes to name a few (maybe you want elevation too?!) and you want to spend how much for this capability? And rest assured, when your are gone your complex legacy will be trashed (unless you choose to hand your successor a paper map with some notes scribbled on it for which he will sing your praise) BTW, I have in the past found some decent overhead imagery with observable tie points and warped that image into a geo rectified image usable as a geo-pdf using open source S/W - if the map thing is what you want.

As a HOA board member for a number of years I have to ask...why on earth do you want to associate a collection of fixed mostly static objects with geographic coordinates (or more generally spacial coordinates) as apposed to just using plain old name tags. Don't you really want to know that work/something is going on with 'unit xyz' or the 'clubhouse' or the 'entrance driveway' ,etc. Why do you care what the coordinates of these objects are? Using simple naming locations (ie. db key fields) allows you to utilize any plain relational data base with some API software while avoiding the extra step of calling up a map of where the object is.

Gosh, I thought digital cell phone voice packets ARE encrypted? What case has occurred where criminals have listened to cell phone voice calls? OK, OK, that leaves the NSA and of course no other foreign governments (which we all know, aren't listening). Given all of this to be true, how can we complain when we now know we can pick up our phone and speak directly to someone in the NSA? For this, we can thank Mr. Snowden and I would sorely miss this feature if I bought some super phone that only those despicably nosey creatures on Vega could listen in on. My phone calls are very important and I want the right people paying attention to what I have to say.

Like you, I too enjoy thinking through how I would spend millions of dollars of windfall should I ever receive it. In the end, can you guess what will make us different on this issue?

I would look at the motion app which has a range of timed and scene change options for image capture and output. I use a web camera connected to a Raspberry Pi in conjunction with cron tasks linked to simple scripts and the dropbox applications interface to auto upload camera scenes where scene changes have been detected. Motion has an easy to use configure file and can perform change based or timed image capture. Motion allows the camera choice to determine the upper limit on image quality but other software options that set output format and compression levels, if you select them, could degrade this quality. This solution separates image file generation and capture (Camera/Motion S/W) from image transmission (script file coding) which I believe is the best architecture to work with. Everything of importance is then determined by you and not the packaged app you pick.

Ironic since from your description it would appear the RAID architecture served sufficiently well here (as it should have). It would appear you are seeking a solution to operator error, not equipment failure or other acts of God. Good luck.

Hurray for Asimov! On many subjects, science is a methodology, or process, that links data to a family of truths. The truths display a continuum of increasing 'correctness'. Fail to appreciate this aspect of the process and we become gullible to the false logic of 'truth number 'n' is just a theory so therefore my theory must be just as valid' (btw, I don't have any data). My favorite example is the shape of the Earth. The truths are it's flat, it's a circle, it's a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid and it's a geoid. But don't tell a cave man that the earth is not flat. He has his data and he knows he theory is correct. However, we do have a right to tell someone else that his theory that the earth is a cube is full of it.

Thank you for your response....spying is 'information gathering for knowledge/interest/situational awareness' or whatever you want to call it. We are all guilty of 'spying' for one reason or another in pursuit of our own self interests and it appears to me to be a pretty mild form of miss-behavin'.. IMHO, it is very much a necessity for my country to spy and I fully support their continued efforts to conduct information gathering activities 'pusuent to the laws of our country'. In this context I grant all countries a right to 'spy' and we will just have to agree to disagree on that point (I clearly distinquish information gathering from meddling in other countries affairs and have totally different opinions about that). Furthermore, I am in complete agreement with you that all legal aspects of this issue need to be examined and, contrary to your sugestion, fully support such efforts. My money is on the bet that no U.S. laws were broken, no civil cases will be filed and nothing will come of it..(which will not please most people on this forum). Why waste so much energy on this issue when there are so many REAL privacy issues that actually do effect us little people that need to be discussed (like stealing my fricken credit card data!).

How many negative commentors on this forum are US citizens? For those of you who aren't US citizens, I would suggest that when your country quits spying on the U.S., then the US should quit spying on your country (and certainly vice-versa if you think your country is so noble). IF you are a US citizen concerned about your privacy, then get off your butt and figure out who to sue (and for what) or who to press criminal charges against (and for what), go do one or both, but in any case, quit this paranoid posturing everytime this subject comes up.

Given that this forum pays some attention to scientific enquiry, lets question the basis for this original article. A 53% increase in ' investigated book banning incidents' in the past year??? Really? (1) Maybe the increase is due to a staff increase with the group doing the work or (2) exactly what is the definition of a book ban or, (3) if one county in Texas bans Humpty Dumpty did that action go directly to the bottom line of 53% without considering that it only represented ~0.0001% of all schools? Conversely, can I suppose that when 'Shades of Grey' got added to the list of banned books for grades 1-6, there was an increase in the number of banned books? School boards in fact need to set standards for what students read at what level. This implies both accepting titles and rejecting titles. Equating rejecting a title to a 'book banning' is a slippery slope. Investigatiing an incident and claiming that the investigation proved a probable cause for some undesired consequence are two different conclusions with two different impacts. No school can ever give a child enough read time for all of the stuff they need to become educated. Their job is to teach children to be capable readers and to enjoy it. This article only got us to the first step of defining a problem and that doesn't get it in my opinion.

One voice of reason in hailstorm of hysteria. From a U.S. citizen, wouldn't it be nice if those who were not U.S citizens identified themselves and then made a statement about what their own country is up to before bashing the U.S for gathering information vital to its security and well being. The fact is, the U.S is the most spied upon country in the world.

A tragedy indeed. I was not aware that Evi was aboard. Your comment is well made. Were they for real taking a 80 plus year old boat into the Tasmin Sea in the dead of winter? One EPIRB didn't come on?? What about survival rafts, suits and spare satellite emergency equipment? I've sailed these seas and making such a voyage at this time with that boat appears most foolish.

The suggestion to keep passwords for sites that have a high consequence of failure separate from those used for sites that have a low or zero consequence of failure (in my case this ratio runs about one to a 100) is obviously a good security practice that we should all follow. It is also a wise thing to not store credit card numbers on vendors sites. I also keep my credit cards where you have to physically steal them to use them. So I'm now running FC18 with an encrypted /home file system which has a pretty tight unlock password, plus I enjoy the benefits of all of the SELinux mumbo jumbo. But I still use stupid passwords for the vast majority of places which have a zero consequence of failure due to a breach. Why is this not a sufficient approach to good personal security?

Superficially nice idea but I don't believe it would ever work as intended! (a) most of us are absorbed in our own rhetoric and (b) if you don't believe me you need to take a good look around Vegas.