On 10/20/07, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Images are *not* an efficient way to store data. Unless they are > three-dimensional images, they lack data. Normally, they include a lot of > unnecessary or redundant data. It is very, very rare that a computer stores > any but the smallest image without compressing it. And remember, an image > can be stored as symbols in a relational database very easily as a set of > x-coords, y-coords, and colors.
maps ARE symbols. Whether it's a paper street map or Google maps, they're a collection of simple symbols that represent the objects they're "mapping." At the most ridiculous, each pixel on the screen is a symbol that your optic nerve detects and passes to your brain to find some meaningful correspondence to interpret. I think the point that Mark is making is that the representation (display) of data can resemble a map - but the map (or "image") is only one possible interpretation of the data. There are algorithms to provide close-enough approximations of details where there is insufficient data. ex: It is unlikely that an elevation map would have a 1000 meter variance over a 2 meter gap in the data points if either side of the gap are equal elevations. That kind of 'smoothing' can not be done with images alone - there must be data. If you do have only map images, you would have to extract data from the map before you can use it effectively against other data. So why store the data in an image in the first place? Arguably, the data storage mechanism is irrelevant - there will be decisions made about performance depending on the initial acquisition and later retrieval realities: maybe a camera streams video directly to disk to achieve high throughput, then later analysis compresses the scene into a symbolic representation at less than a realtime rate. You can't really argue that the video stream is an ideal way to manage the details in a knowledgebase. (eh Mike?) ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=55761625-a2d246
