Posts by Tim Bowden

Otto Z. Stern possibly dead at 57

Goodbye AV

So long and thanks for all the fish...

Paris, cause hot is measured in units of Paris.

IBM's eight-core Power7 chip to clock in at 4.0GHz

Vista Jokes?

Actually AC, it is funny. Still. This long after Vista is released, and speed is still an issue? Says something important methinks. Particularly given the state of hardware way back when the project kicked of, and the state of hardware way back when it was first supposed to be released. Perhaps MS are wishing it had been even further delayed so hardware had even more of a chance to catch up.

And yes it does achieve something. It gives us a fresh chance to question just what we're getting for our money. Given the enormous advances in hardware since (for arguments sake, say) the 80486, can we really say we've seen the same with desktop software? Is Vista as many times more productive than win 3.11? Or is it time to ask some hard questions about just what we're getting for our money? For my part, I've asked and answered those questions, and the answer wasn't Vista. FWIW, my current choice doesn't meet that standard either, but it is pushing the boundaries in that direction.

eBay pulls Vista laptop pwned in hacking contest

Harm

Of course the laptop in question could do harm; It has Vista installed. What more evidence do you need? It does harm by wasting so much of the users time (putting up with it's behavior, then installing something else to make it useful).

Microsoft measures up

Meat and drink

Yes, this is all meat and drink to spatial IT types. When you try and squish a round earth onto a flat map you end up with all sorts of hideous complications. It isn't helped by the fact that the earth actually isn't round. And no, it's not exactly an (oblate) spheroid either. It's all lumpy and squished in funny ways. Dealing with those complications (and the historical legacy of past attempts) makes for interesting times and very ugly maths. A telling datapoint, the list of coordinate systems on my laptop (/usr/share/proj/epsg) lists over 3,200 different options (ok, so that includes projected and unprojected as opposed to the 388 unprojected from MS). Projected and unprojected? Yes, another wrinkle. Is it any wonder seasoned spatial operatives sigh when non spatial people proclaim it can't be all that hard and launch another wreck-in-waiting?

As to the second part of the article being the more informative, that's a matter of opinion. MS is so late to the spatial game, they're not going to make a huge difference. My feeling is at best they're going to stem migrations away from existing SQL Server environments where new apps require a spatial focus. Hopefully the benefit of this article may well be to stop general IT types from assuming spatial is a piece of cake, and consider calling in someone who's done it once or twice before.