Take the gun away from your head. No one is forcing you to read what others type. It’s called, freedom of choice. Exercise it.

BS….ya right. Don’t scream like a smashed cat when the milk is spilt.

If you want GIS talk. Want to talk about the multiple uses of all this free and low cost technology and information/data? I’d rather not be specific. Suffice to say, anyone with a brain, few hundred people, and relatively small resources can be a serious problem.

And here’s a clue, they(death to america crowd) are very smart. They have no problem using our “free/lost cost” technology and information against us. A perfect example, one of the most highly decorated Marine snipers wrote a book after his service. Basically laying out his knowledge on how to be a good sniper. Guess what, in Iraq they have used the knowledge in the book against us.

And another clue, they are pretty good at IT. Read the recent articles about the OBL video leak. People were surprised by the speed and efficiency in which they took down their network and plugged their vulnerabilities.

It wouldn’t be hard to set fire to portions of the West, in the right time of year. Especially in important areas, like transmission lines. Kinda easy to find where the transmission towers are looking at various imagery while sitting behind a keyboard in a distant land .

Heck load up some MODIS and/or LandSat imagery to determine areas which have already been burnt. Or even look for rainfall data or drought info to help determine areas.

Another example, going back to the school. Have the floor plans. Use sketchup(or similar program) to build a model. Paint it with imagery found online. Maybe even, put someone inside the school to take more photos. Next thing, have a virtual model to train and plan with. It sure is a great supplement to real facilities for planning and training. The only bad thing, during their virtual training, they can’t yell commands in English to those “training dummies”.

Better yet, use the tools and imagery to help determine LoS issues, site selection, response times, so forth and so on. Helps weed out the less desirable sites.

Anyone, pretty much, can do their job from behind a computer with the software and information/data, which we provide willing and blindly.

They sure are saving a lot in costs. And minimize their chances of exposure, the less data collected in the field, the better. Plus, if we do most of the work for them, gather the useful information and data. Heck, no need to get an ally in trouble for providing information, like a nation-state or large organization.

Frankly I have mixed feelings about our industry atm. I have no problem censoring, in times of need, like we did during WWII. Unfortunately, the current times are not the same, our conflict will go on for a long time. And we can’t have open-ended censorship.

So now what? Self-regulation? Have govt impose regulations? Ignore it, and rationalize the cat is already out of the bag and we can’t do anything about? Try to be proactive so as not have any or minimize milk spills?

No where during this “rant”(hahah) did I put my tin-foil stove top hat on and chant “Four Scores and Seven years ago”.

If what I said earlier in the thread benefits one person. Great. One less ignoramus running around. I would be willing to bet, many people were unaware. Just like before 9/11.

KoS

Besides the “way cool” factor, does this feature actually serve any purpose? Is it just a texture-library for Sketchup and similar 3-D building efforts?

Thus far, I’m not aware of any analysis being done on Google’s imagery. At least TeleAtlas claims to performing sign/image/text recognition to improve their vector data (hence they are not selling/distributing the imagery).

Seems like a lot of effort is being put into collecting and displaying these images, but I find their value dubious. I’ve at least been able to use the overhead imagery to improve some decision making in the past. Even the isometric views(Pictometry via Local Live) have provided some level of value.

Usually, if the pictometry material wasn’t sufficient, then an onsite visit was required. Thus far, the street-view stuff hasn’t served any purpose other than to fill some strange, repressed voyeristic adiction for me.

More GIS, Less BS.

That way, people who seem to have thin skins or even don’t like to hear things which are uncomfortable, won’t have their panties in a bunch.

KoS

Please show me how protecting kids and being aware is political?( I can semi-see where you are coming from) I would have never brought it up if James hadn’t mentioned his wife issues with the imagery of their school. (I’m not putting any blame on James)

A rant? Not hardly, if you want a rant I can provide one. I was providing facts and ideas. I think we are seeing two different things.

And world view? If you mean in the above context, it’s not my view, it’s actual events and/or possible events.

Now, if you are meaning the discussion of moving outside of the country? You realize that was a off-shoot of talking about street-view and privacy.

Talking about privacy is political too. Guess we shouldn’t talk about that either.

While we at it, no one should talk about currency. That’s political too.

Btw, like I stated before, if James think it wasn’t proper. He can delete my posts. No skin off my nose.

Plus, isn’t this a “public board”?

KoS

I come to this site for technical information and not worldview rants. I believe the point of Chris C.’s original post was to take your commentary where it belongs…political blogs.

I think it’ll be a failure in the long run, but in the mean-time, I plan to exploit it for all I can.

One thing, depends on ones view, the devaluation of the dollar could be a good thing. More investment here and/or buying “things”. Lower dollar value means cheaper to do business here.

KoS