Perhaps at the start of our next meeting I could talk a bit about VMWare? I agree though -- The OSM presentation was inspiring in a social way that few other presentations (not VAGUE, but in general) are! I look forward to contributing
Stan On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 3:31 PM, Nick Floersch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Just a quick thanks to all who contributed to our meeting last night - I > personally found both topics interesting and useful. > > The OpenStreetMap presentation was really quite excellent - it was nice to > have a highly organized and focused discussion topic like that. Given my > daily work with maps and GIS and such, the topic was even more relevant than > just as an interesting geek project - I see the real world applications of > data like that every day. The comment that if anyone made maps of Barre, > nobody else would care, because Barre is a slum (or something to that > effect) ... not really true, as it turns out. Barre is a place with a lot of > problems, and some of them are related to chemical/pollutant > spills/plumes/leaks that not only mean there will be remediation necessary > for a given area or property, but for nearby properties as well. My company > has -paid- people to get data for Barre just so we can plan remediation > efforts. Having up-to-date basemap data such as that provided by > OpenStreetMap, for free, is useful just about anywhere! Furthermore, while > it would seem that data collected by the government about public areas or > public knowledge - say parcel data for a county, or accurate street data for > New York city, would be easy to get, it is in fact severely difficult. In > New York, Nassau county requires you to bypass reels and reels of red-tape > to get parcel data ... for the county, from the county. It is f*cked up. And > then the office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination > in New York, after 9/11, locked down tons of seemingly public and generally > useful data, such as their up-to-date roads data, for fear that it could be > used by terrorists. My company has been working with New York for the past > two years on a project that required us to collect data like this from all > over that State, and we ran into many roadblocks accessing this seemingly > public and free data. OpenStreetMap would be a very viable answer once the > state of NY has been properly cleaned up in the OSM database. > > On the virtualization side... Virtual Box seems nice, but what does it > offer that VMWare does not offer, aside from a lower price? Any particular > features? Performance? Does it run on more platforms than Linux, Mac, and > Windows? Is there a server version of Virtual Box so I could build a VB > machine on my workstation, and then deploy it to my VB server? On the other > hand, Xen did appear to be highly interesting ... eschewing the traditional > GUI is nice, but I'm curious if Xen has a web GUI like VMWare Server v2? Is > it entirely CLI based? I don't have a problem with a CLI, but other people > in my IT group would prefer a GUI ... so while it might mean better job > security for me to setup the VMs in Xen if there was only a CLI, it wouldn't > be all that nice to my buddies who don't have a CLI inclination. > > Again, thanks to all - it was a good meeting! > > -Nick > > --- > Nicholas Floersch (pr. Floor-sh) > Stone Environmental, Inc. > > > * This communication, including any attachments, is solely for the > confidential use of the person(s) named above. If you have received this > communication in error, please notify the sender immediately and > delete/destroy the original. Any reader other than the intended recipient is > hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of > this message is strictly prohibited. * >
