The Memory Leak

A lot of people search for arcgis server cost or price.

I believe ESRI has a policy against posting prices on the web, however an exception seems to be made for GSA Advantage. Type in “arcgis server” without the quotes into the search box.

There’ve been some changes to the Geodatabase Toolset (GDBT) for 9.2. If you’ve downloaded it already, you might want to uninstall and get the more recent version posted today.

Here’s a thread about the bugs fixed.

A GIS manager here in San Antonio has stirred up some discussion, after Adena commented on his interview here stating

“People interested in working in geographic information systems must understand that everything learned today will be useless in the future because technology constantly changes, the geographic information systems manager for the city of San Antonio said April 12.”

This assumes that what is being learned is strictly technology, without any sort of scientific foundation.

Astronomy is not about telescopes. Geography is not about GIS.

In any discipline I suppose there is a risk that a tool can cultivate a state of “learned helplessness” resulting in users who are unable to imagine solutions to problems for which their tool was not designed. Ever try to look at a black hole with a telescope?

The problem, though, is that the market does not reward mastery of theory in the short term (and for astronomers, not even in the long term). So maybe what kids need is to learn how to learn more quickly … remember learning the planets ? “Mark’s Very Extravagant Mother Just Sent Us Ninety …” is obsolete now that pluto is no longer a planet. Nevertheless my kids thought up several new mnemonics to remember by.

Learned helplessness becomes quite apparent when viewing the attitude many GIS users have towards major software vendors. I won’t mention any names here, let’s just say their initials are E.S.R.I. Many times I’ve heard users with very constructive ideas that fail to make any suggestions for how those ideas could be used to improve software quality. They take on a kind of fatalistic “oh they would never listen to me” attitude. I don’t think its ESRI’s fault. Instead, I think the problem is an educational system that’s trained users to push the right buttons like rats in a skinner box.

The Geodatabase toolset for 9.2 can now be downloaded here.

To put Web2.0 to the test I decided to wait til the last minute to e-file my taxes. Using Turbotax online last night, I was surprised to experience only a few timeouts.

Update: others weren’t so lucky.

I wonder how they go about scaling their servers. What do they do with all the spare capacity during the rest of the year? I’ve heard EC2 is Amazon’s way of generating revenue during offpeak periods - I’d be interested in hearing how much EC2 performance degrades during Christmas shopping season.

Perhaps more importantly, what does Turbotax do with all the data they collect? They promise me confidentiality, and yet they implicate me and everyone else here in San Antonio as being stingy.

OK, so if they’ve decided publication of aggregated tax return data doesn’t violate confidentiality standards, why don’t they become a data vendor? It’d be interesting to see a map showing zipcodes shaded based on percent of last minute filers. In looking through their products, I don’t see any mention of geodata.

Looks like all the samples are posted here.

Actually it was afternoon. But it was dark & stormy - we were under a tornado watch. Suddenly my phone rang. I answered … after saying hello a few times a man greets me and offers to sell me home insurance. He offers me a special deal, emphasizing that it covers completely “should your house be destroyed by a tornado”. He was very anxious for my credit card number.

I can’t help but wonder if this telemarketing call center is equiped with GIS allowing them to target potential customers (or scam victims?) based on real-time weather alerts.

I’m surprised no one has suggested setting up a mesh WiFi covering Baghdad. Such a mesh could track everyone via active RFID. Motion triggered survellance cameras could detect people moving by that lack RFIDs and alert appropriate authorities. A huge geodatabase would know who was where and at what times. Crime would diminish, peace would ensue, property values would skyrocket.

Tele-atlas has opened an office in Singapore, a very safe city. I bet they start tracking people with RFID, some day billing the parents of kids who joy-ride the elevators. They’ll have a 3D model after all.

Speaking of Singapore, I wonder when they’ll expand their electronic road pricing to charge people based on their use of other public spaces, and not just roads. Or maybe just charge visitors passing through. Disneyland could prototype the system - they’re already tracking kids. Maybe they could pursue a defense contract making Baghdad into a theme park based on the animated movie Aladdin.

I guess spatial access codesharing between cities will evolve the same way as it has with airlines. Citizens of certain cities will be forgiven their trespasses as their hometown forgives the trespasses of visitors from other codesharing cities.

I read about an all-you-can-eat buffet in Japan. The food is free - but you have to pay based on how long you are inside the restaurant.

Remember Visicalc ? … not sure but l think it inspired the term “killer app”.

Spreadsheets are the first step for most people into computer modeling. I suspect more people have written a spreadsheet based model to save for retirement than any other type of model. So to get more people into spatial modeling, it seems like the spreadsheet would be a logical starting point.

It looks like Google might be heading in that direction.

It doesn’t seem like it would be difficult for Google to beef up cell formulae to support spatial operators.

For example: make a map of restaurants within 1 mile of movie theaters where “Blades of Glory” is playing.

They’ve hired Ed Parsons, so expect some cool things.

There is competition in this area, as Adena notes, Yahoo Pipes offers a lot of value.