Re: [Talk-in] Geospatial Information Regulation Bill propsal
On 6 May 2016 at 01:30, Johnson Chetty <johnsonche...@gmail.com> wrote: > Just my two cents: > > This is the Indian government trying to reduce the spread of information > that is non-conducive to national interests. > > However, OSM can dispute that our freedom of speech is being restrained. > There is no freedom of speech in the Indian Constitution. Please have no illusions on this score. -- Ajay Shah ajays...@mayin.org http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com ___ Talk-in mailing list Talk-in@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-in
Re: [Talk-in] GPS for sale
I have put the Holux through some heavy duty use in Himachal and Kashmir recently and never had any problems apart from eating batteries. I did not have a high capacity rechargeable battery at hand, so had to buy alkalines throughout. A duracell lasts for about 6-8 hours, and i roughly used 3 cells every 2 days. Havent tried it with rechargeables yet. May I just doublecheck: Is the Holux fire and forget in that I switch it on and toss it in my backpack and forget about it? Or do I have to mess with it to verify that it's got the signal? -- Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah ajays...@mayin.org http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com *(:-? - wizard who doesn't know the answer. ___ Talk-in mailing list Talk-in@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-in
Re: [Talk-in] State Of Country Posters - Deadline 8/07/2010 10AM
On Wed, Jul 07, 2010 at 09:35:04PM +0100, Emilie Laffray wrote: Hello, the deadline for posters for State Of Country is on 8/07/2010 10am (tomorrow morning). The poster is A1 vertical. An example can be found at the following link: http://dl.free.fr/mcXHIJPi4 It would be good to have a link for it. You can reply to that email. If you had problems seeing the file it is: http://dl.free.fr/mcXHIJPi4/stateofFrance.pdf This looks great! We should do this for India. I will print and frame it in my office :-) -- Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah ajays...@mayin.org http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com *(:-? - wizard who doesn't know the answer. ___ Talk-in mailing list Talk-in@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-in
[Talk-in] This could be rather relevant in India
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/23/navigation-system-us.html -- Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah ajays...@mayin.org http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com *(:-? - wizard who doesn't know the answer. ___ Talk-in mailing list Talk-in@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-in
Re: [Talk-in] server update
On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 12:51:45PM +0530, ?? / Nishant wrote: this is only for a small area - the XML button is disabled for area the size of India where - have been searching but cannot find anything Please follow the links mentioned in point no. 1 at: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin#Directions:_Creating_your_map_from_OSM_Data I haven't given it a try yet, but it is a probable weekend project for me as well ;) I read these instructions a while ago but haven't gotten around to doing them yet. What would be a great weekend project would be to build a self-contained Unix tool which would take a frame (lat,long,lat,long) on the commandline, and emit a gmapsupp.img file which can be loaded into a Garmin gps. That would basically involve automating the steps described on this URL. -- Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah ajays...@mayin.org http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com *(:-? - wizard who doesn't know the answer. ___ Talk-in mailing list Talk-in@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-in
Re: [Talk-in] Request for comments
The licensing conditions of openstreetmap are quite open, though not as open as those used by the US government. In what respect US's conditions are better than OSM? See the last comment at: http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/maps-vs-maps-data-appropriately-drawing.html -- Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah ajays...@mayin.org http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com *(:-? - wizard who doesn't know the answer. ___ Talk-in mailing list Talk-in@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-in
[Talk-in] Maps vs. map data: drawing the line between public and private
Folks, Do see: http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/maps-vs-maps-data-appropriately-drawing.html and thanks for all the help in building this. -- Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah ajays...@mayin.org http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com *(:-? - wizard who doesn't know the answer. ___ Talk-in mailing list Talk-in@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-in
Re: [Talk-in] Maps vs. map data: drawing the line between public and private
On Sat, Aug 08, 2009 at 02:00:10AM +0530, Harshad RJ wrote: While SOI maps are no where in the league as digitised sat-imagery or maps, I did find them useful at times. If government thinks of closing down Survey of India, this should be preceded by releasing all their existing map data into the public domain! :-) -- Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah ajays...@mayin.org http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com *(:-? - wizard who doesn't know the answer. ___ Talk-in mailing list Talk-in@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-in
[Talk-in] Request for comments
I wrote a column which I intend to publish on the edit page of Financial Express. The text is ahead. Will be great if you guys could give me comments. What should government do? To economists, there is a technical answer: government should raise money through taxes, and spend it on the provision of `public goods'. A public good is non-rival (i.e. the use by one person does not preclude the use by another) and non-excludable (it is not possible to prevent an additional person from benefiting from the public good). While there are shades of gray in rivalness and excludability, public goods are the zone where government involvement in the economy is legitimate. Protection from war, for example, is a pure public good. When an army is setup which protects the population, it is non-rival (the safety of one person imposes no cost on another) and non-excludable (it is impossible to prevent a newborn child from benefiting from this safety). An important pure public good is map data. Maps are rival: when I am looking at a map, you can't simultaneously look at the same map. But map data is a public good. If that data is created once and released into the public domain, then myriad private players can use it to create maps, GPS based navigation systems, etc. The job of the government, then, is to run the Survey of India, which is funded by taxes, which creates high quality maps data, and releases databases on the website for free download. Unfortunately, in India, we do everything wrong. Survey of India maps are grossly outdated. On the website, they proudly say: We know every inch of the Nation, because we map every inch of it. However, in good countries, 1:24,000 topo sheets are trustworthy, while Survey of India does not even have good quality 1:250,000 topo sheets. The weakest link about Survey of India is the rules of release. Survey of India is funded by taxpayer money. As a consequence, the information that they create should be freely released back into the public domain for unencumbered use. Instead, Survey of India thinks like a corporation. It has licensing restrictions which has effectively made their data unusable. The most important maps in India today are produced by google. Google maps and google earth are a remarkable combination of satellite imagery and maps, and they are available for free (!). Google has had to reconstruct maps of India from scratch, thanks to the legal problems (and low quality of work) of Survey of India. It is ironic that even though taxpayers are funding Survey of India, this work is useless for the people of India, who are flocking to google maps and google earth. Nokia has also created good maps of India, which are usable through some Nokia handsets (only). The only flaw with google maps and google earth is that the underlying databases are the private property of google. What would be most desirable is for maps data to be a public good, which can be used in all manner of ways by all individuals and companies. As an example, handheld GPS devices are now available for $100. If these are loaded with Indian map data, they can be immensely useful tools for navigation, exploration and business efficiency. Google does not give out their map database to the public, so such applications are infeasible. Until Survey of India gets its act together, the solution lies with a public domain initiative named `openstreetmap'. This uses Internet-scale collaboration to build maps. It involves volunteers, armed with handheld GPS devices, who are feeding in maps data into a central database. This database is a true public good. The licensing conditions of openstreetmap are quite open, though not as open as those used by the US government. Openstreetmap is doing what Survey of India should have done: accumulating high quality maps data and releasing it into the (mostly) public domain. Thus, three strategies are now in play in India: a high quality solution which is a public goods effort (openstreetmap), a good solution which is owned by a corporation (google) and a poor solution which acts like a corporation (Survey of India). The users of maps are flocking to google, Nokia and openstreetmap. From the viewpoint of the government, the first best strategy is to shift Survey of India into the mode of uncompromisingly releasing maps data into the public domain, matching the release strategy of the US government on openness. Through this, the government would continue to engage in taxpayer-funded efforts at creating maps databases, but the full benefits would come back to the people of India. In addition, Survey of India needs to get up to timely 1:24000 coverage of the full country. If these changes are infeasible, it is better to shut down Survey of India, and transfer its annual budget to openstreetmap, for the latter is producing public goods while the former is acting like an inefficient corporation. -- Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah
