Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry

2011-09-14 Thread Nic Roets
Barriers to entry are good when they prevent us from doing some thing bad.

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> Hi,
>
>   there are many different types of barriers. There are of course those we
> tag with "barrier", the physical ones. They are used to keep unwanted,
> unauthorized or unsuitable people or vehicles out.


Congestion e.g. blocking walkways or cycleways is bad. Pollution is bad.

There are barriers of entry in the form of entrance exams at places like
> universities, with the aim of assessing the likelihood of someone succeeding
> in their studies.


Students keeping the professors busy with the school curriculum is bad.
Students dropping out with large amounts of debt is bad.

And of course there are job interviews, where employers sometimes raise the
> barrier of entry so high that only one in 1000 can pass.
>

Paying someone more than they are producing is bad. Firing someone is often
expensive and disruptive.


> In OpenStreetMap, people sometimes point to our barriers of entry and
> blindly claim that they must be bad for us. The main page not welcoming
> enough, the editor too difficult, the path to signup too cumbersome, and on
> and on.
>

If a newbie tries to change something and makes a mess (1), it's only a bad
thing if it's difficult to spot the mistake(2) and revert it (3).

The only important thing is that (2) and (3) must be much easier than (1).
We don't need "barriers to entry".
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Re: [OSM-talk] [osmf-talk] Membership applications from Skobbler employees

2011-08-24 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 11:57 AM, Richard Fairhurst
 wrote:
> Oliver Kuhn, Chief Commercial Officer of Skobbler, is of course already on
> the OSMF board and has posted that he personally believes OSM should
> concentrate on the needs of "data consumers" like his
> (http://www.abalakov.com/openstreetmap-map-data-who-cares), steering
> contributors towards projects such as addressing
> (http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2010-July/051511.html), and
> that it could consider weakening the share-alike clause
> (http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2010-June/003398.html).
>
> Again, there's no suggestion that Oliver has been using his OSMF position
> to push these aims, and I'm sure he wouldn't.

Well, if you are sure that he does not want push any of his issues,
you also need to consider the possibility that he wants to maintain
the status quo, i.e. block other members from pushing their issues.

Regardless of his intentions, I certainly don't see the typical
Skobbler employee as representative of the community. (Have they
opensourced any significant piece of software ?) I've collected a lot
of street addresses during the last year, but every time OSMF becomes
less representative, my motivation drops.

And the suggestions from Henk and Frederik will not solve the problem
of representation: Henk wants a 30 day waiting period before members
can vote. Frederik wants to ban the practice of sponsoring membership
fees.

As Milo said, others like wikimedia have tackled these problems.

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Re: [OSM-talk] alternative to navit on windows CE

2011-08-11 Thread Nic Roets
On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Tanveer Singh  wrote:
> I was looking at an OSM routing application(offline routing) like navit.
> Tried navit, but its not stable, does not even start on my windows CE
> device, and support forum is inactive. I was wondering if there are other
> apps which can do offline navigation with OSM data just like navit claims to
> do?
> MY PND is Windows CE 5.0 device(Mio C320) and I can run moving map apps like
> oziexplorer just fine.

You could try gosmore. I used it on my 4.2 device for over a year and
then used it on my Mio for another year. The easiest is to get a
osm.bz2 file of no more than 50 MB, drag and drop it onto the Windows
binary (or follow the rebuild instructions under Linux). Then unzip
the WinCE package to an SD card and add the compiled map (gosmore.pak)
to the same directory.

Having said that, Android devices cost the same, is much more capable
(compass, accelerometers,   onscreen keyboard, multitasking) and is
easier to program and debug. So the WinCE port is deprecated.

>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Hitting reset on talk-au

2011-07-13 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Michael Collinson  wrote:
> Richard is a calm, thoughtful, intelligent guy who listens to people and
> tries to create a fun, global, human environment for our project.

+1

> Steve has
> made one post making a considered overview of an ugly situation and inviting
> discussion ... a proper course of action for the founder of our project to
> take.

Michael,

If you carefully read Steve's post, you will see that some people may
find it insulting. For example he is belittling Etienne's efforts. He
expresses a dislike of pseudonyms which may bring into question his
motivation(s) for "resetting" the list.

> I personally hope you (David) will also calm down, withdraw unwarranted
> personal insults and consider apologising.

+1

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Re: [OSM-talk] License/CT issues: Let's not punish the world's disadvantaged, pls.

2011-06-24 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:49 AM, Julio Costa Zambelli
 wrote:
> On 23 June 2011 16:52, Nic Roets  wrote:
>>
>> It's much closer to what's been
>> happening in the Arab States this year:
>
> There are at least two big difference between revolutions in the Maghreb and
> Arab Countries, and the License discussion inside OSM.
> In this mailing lists it doesn't matter if a position is backed by one or
> ten thousand people, one persons email message weight the same as fifty
> thousand people shouting at Tahrir Square, even if that message has more in
> common with one crazy guy screaming about conspiracy theories outside ground
> zero.

Basically all you are saying is that mailing lists are a bad way to
measure support. And I agree 100%.

Can you can prove that the average contributor thinks that the average
contributor thinks that the benefits* of the ODbL exceeds the cost of
implementing it** ? Then I will personally start telling people that
they are in the minority and should go away.

*: Looking at whitehouse.gov, the software on my phone etc, I can't
see a single thing that will change (either positive or negative).

**: To implement it, we will have to delete some data. We are
bothering people by sending them email and if they do not respond, we
use facebook etc.

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Re: [OSM-talk] License/CT issues: Let's not punish the world's disadvantaged, pls.

2011-06-23 Thread Nic Roets
On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Eugene Alvin Villar  wrote:
> Uh huh. So I suppose if there were a successful plebiscite in a
> country wanting to change their form of government from presidential
> to parliamentary (or vice versa) then that's a rotten thing unless the
> winning side leaves the territory to the losing side and create a new
> country with a new name?

I don't think Gert should have used the word 'hijack'.

But I also don't know why you three compare the license change to
ordinary democratic processes. It's much closer to what's been
happening in the Arab States this year: People opposed to the license
change have been voicing their discontent for 2 years now. And Steve
and some other directors keep responding to it. So the basis for the
discontent must have merit.

And it's clogging up our main communications channel (talk).

A modern democratic government would have found a way to defuse the
situation long ago.

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] License/CT issues: Let's not punish the world's disadvantaged, pls.

2011-06-22 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Jaakko Helleranta.com
 wrote:
> ... and hope that we have enough time to do this before any purging of data 
> begins!

Jaakko,

I really want to know when that will occur (purging without
resurveying within a reasonable time frame). The LWG said that is a
"community decision". I assume that that implies that the Haiti
community (you and your collaborators) can decide by themselves how to
proceed.

Some cities or regions may never see the need to delete non-compliant
data. What will then happen ? The only way I can see that the global
community can make a decision for a local city or region in an orderly
fashion is by a global vote. The whole process could take years.

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] Join the OSMF !

2011-06-18 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Russ,

It is very seldom that a democracy will make the best decisions.
Winston Churchill said "The best argument against democracy is a
five-minute conversation with the average voter."

But democracy has real motivational benefits in an information
society. In our case, users will be more motivated to keep on
maintaining their contributions.

Regards,
Nic

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 11:13 PM, Russ Nelson  wrote:
> Replying to myself ... I know ... But I was thinking while I was out
> mowing the lawn. It's NOT necessary for OSM or the OSMF to be a
> democracy. It's simply necessary to provide an environment where
> people can contribute to the map and share their contributions with
> other people. If accomplishing this means sometimes dragging people
> kicking and screaming, then that's what it means.
>
> But don't call it a democracy and don't call seeking accommodation
> "voting" or if a majority of accommodation is achieved, call it
> "approval".
> -russ
>
> Russ Nelson writes:
>  > Dermot McNally writes:
>  >  > In a democracy, a majority decides which way a decision should
>  >  > fall.
>  >
>  > It's still not a democracy.
>  >
>  >  > In our "vote"
>  >
>  > It's still not a vote, and calling it a "vote" instead of a vote
>  > doesn't help matters.
>  >
>  >  > Not my intention - everybody is free to explain what they meant by
>  >  > "yes". My point is, if enough people say "yes", it's fair to take them
>  >  > at their word and to proceed with the licence change.
>  >
>  > It's still not a vote, and you can't claim support for the process. If
>  > you want to look at the poll numbers, only 20% are actually in favor
>  > of the license change -- the other 80% are either indifferent or
>  > actively hostile.
>  >
>  > --
>  > --my blog is at    http://blog.russnelson.com
>  > Crynwr supports open source software
>  > 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
>  > Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  |     Sheepdog
>  >
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Re: [OSM-talk] Join the OSMF !

2011-06-14 Thread Nic Roets
On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 11:54 PM, Henk Hoff  wrote:
> Outcome: 75% would accept the new license, 11% undecided, 14% not (at that
> time)
> There has been similar polls by the community during that time with similar
> results.
> Both (the vote and the poll) show a large majority in favor of the proposed
> change. Again: ODbL combined with CT.

Hello Henk,

The process has always been described as consisting of at least 2 phases:
1. Asking contributors to relicense and
2. Using the new license, which entails deleting stuff.

The vote by OSMF members was to allow the directors to use their
discretion in these two phases.

The poll only concerned the first phase. It does not tell us if "a
large majority (was) in favor of the proposed change". To do that you
need another poll: "Will the benefits of the ODbL license outweigh the
deletion of the data ?".

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] Join the OSMF ! + PD / CC0 projects

2011-06-12 Thread Nic Roets
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Mike  Dupont
 wrote:
> The code is the law,
> http://www.lessig.org/content/standard/0,1902,4165,00.html and we need to
> change the code so that these discussions about licensing and all that are
> less important.

If it was easy, someone would have done it already.

Think of how much trouble we already have with once-off imports
(Canvec, TIGER, etc). What will happen if the upstream source is
dynamic or hostile ?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Join the OSMF ! + PD / CC0 projects

2011-06-12 Thread Nic Roets
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 12:37 AM, Brendan Morley  wrote:
> On 11/06/2011 10:02 AM, Nic Roets wrote:
>>>
>>> Not at all - I know of no form of democracy that distinguishes between
>>> grudging acceptance or evangelical zeal.
>>>
>>
>> Dermot,
>>
>> I would quite like to take my data and start my own PD / CC0 project.
>>
>
> Nic,
>
> Before you go doing that, please consider the fine choices already in play.

I have. But if you read my complete email you will see that I don't
care too much which open source license is being used.

I'm much more worried about the effects of a fork. If we spend time
updating a number of forks, it will detract from time that we could
have spent mapping.

It's much better if we a democratic process and settle the license one
and for all. If joining the OSMF is a requirement to vote, then so be
it. It's only 25 bucks.

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] Join the OSMF !

2011-06-10 Thread Nic Roets
> Not at all - I know of no form of democracy that distinguishes between
> grudging acceptance or evangelical zeal.

Dermot,

I would quite like to take my data and start my own PD / CC0 project.
So by simply matching my new license to the conditions set by the
OSMF, I would be voting "yes" in your "referendum".

In this "referendum", the OSMF substantially influenced the outcome by
declaring beforehand "We are changing the license". They refused to
register new users who do not vote "yes". The emails that was sent out
only listed the advantages of the license change.

Go and look how an electoral commission operates. Something as simple
as the order in which the candidates appear on the ballot can be seen
as unfair.

--
I am not saying OSMF acted illegally or that the license change is a
bad thing. I am merely saying that the OSMF decided on the license
change before there was overwhelming support for it from the
community. The license change was not driven by the community. It was
driven by a few individuals. How else can you explain the dismally low
voter turn out when the OSMF members voted on it ?

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] Join the OSMF !

2011-06-10 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 8:18 PM, Ben Laenen  wrote:
> "The OpenStreetMap Foundation is an international not-for-profit organization
> supporting, but not controlling, the OpenStreetMap Project."
>

This statement is really wishful thinking on the part of the OSMF. By
virtue of the domain name and the trademarks owned by it, the
organization do have an extraordinary amount of control over the
project. Many people accepted the CTs giving the organization even
more control.

Look what is happening with the openoffice.org domain. Even when
LibreOffice was/is clearly a superior product, openoffice.org still
had a tremendous amount of hits and downloads.

Another way to interpret the quoted statement is to say that the OSMF
will only make changes when there is overwhelming support from the
community. This has a number of problems:
1. Deciding not to change something is also a decision.
2. How do they know that there is overwhelming support from the
community ? (I don't believe the license change passed this test) and
3. And waiting for the community to get 100% behind a change can take
a very long time. If we want to compete with Google Map Maker, we may
need to act much faster.

In the short term people should either become OSMF members or live
with the consequences. In the long term, we could adopt a process
where voting does not cost anything. (For example, I recently received
a couple of messages from Wikimedia saying that my small number of
edits made me eligible to vote in their election).

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] Unlicensed use of the logo in iPhone app?

2011-05-17 Thread Nic Roets
On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 8:46 PM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> Because trademark law is a different and parallel universe to copyright law.

I am not a lawyer, but I'll explain it a little bit. Trademark law
only restricts what you can do to sell your product or otherwise
attract attention. So for example, a logo that appears inside a manual
of a commercial product will rarely be restricted by trademark law.

> I don't know, but I don't think we particularly want to restrict use in the
> strict sense.

I think the matter is rather complicated. I assume your aim is that
OSM will become a source of information that is trusted by a large
section of the population within a decade. In 2020 every app developer
may want to use the trademark to sell his app. So choosing a good
policy now can prevent legal hassles later.

Wikipedia is already dealing with these issues, so I copied the most
important paragraph from their policy document.

"The Wikimedia Foundation's trademark policy attempts to balance two
competing interests. The first interest is the Foundation's need to
ensure that the Wikimedia Marks remain reliable indicators of free
content (as Richard Stallman has said, "Think free as in free speech,
not free beer") and source/origin. The second interest is the
Wikimedia Foundation's desire to permit community members, chapters,
and others with whom the Foundation works to discuss Foundation
projects and to accurately describe or communicate their association
with us."

I think we should also see our trademarks as an indicator of "free
content". So any product that overlays non free content onto the map
should be disallowed from using our trademarks. That should exclude
most ad supported products (as ads are typically non free), but we
should also consider explicitly disallowing ads.

> Trademark law is designed to do exactly what people here have
> mentioned and not let someone use our logo to confuse the public by, say,
> slapping it on a google maps app. So it's there if we want to use that
> power.
>
> Steve
>
>
> On 5/16/2011 12:40 PM, Josh Doe wrote:
>>
>> Can someone explain to me how OSMF can restrict usage of the logo if
>> it's CC-BY-SA? Or rather, if the original logo had a more restrictive
>> license (and copyright was owned by OSMF), and this logo is clearly a
>> derivative work, then this new logo can't be CC-BY-SA, can it?
>>
>> -Josh
>>
>> On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 2:28 PM, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer
>>   wrote:
>>>
>>> 2011/5/16 Grant Slater:

 On 16 May 2011 14:54, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer
  wrote:
>
> Is there an informal policy? If I am displaying an OSM based map, am I
> generally entitled/allowed to use the logo ("OSM inside") in my
> application / on my website?
>
 Sounds ok to me, you are promoting OpenStreetMap. What would not be
 cool is claiming (or misleading) that your app/website/etc _IS_
 OpenStreetMap or endorsed by OpenStreetMap.

 Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and I do no represent OSMF.
>>>
>>> Yes, also to me it "feels" OK, but I think the best would be to get an
>>> official statement from OSMF when and how the logo can be used,
>>> because I think that it is good to encourage the use of the logo, but
>>> commercial users would not risk to use the logo if there is no formal
>>> permit to do so.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Martin
>>>
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Re: [OSM-talk] FAQs from help.osm.org

2011-05-06 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 9:15 PM, Tom Hughes  wrote:
> On 06/05/11 19:31, Nic Roets wrote:
>
>> I really want to avoid the delays that another round of discussion and
>> eventual hardware purchases will bring. So I'm willing to pay for
>> hosting on Amazon during a trial period. That will give us the ability
>> to scale infinitely. It will also give us time to find the most
>> appropriate hardware and raise the necessary donations.
>
> Have you asked the sysadmins if they would consider such a solution
> acceptable? I would certainly be against it.

Actually I did ask Grant. He indicated that he had no problem with
other than it being expensive. But I still want to know the answer to
Lambertus' question.

>> So the only remaining issue is for the sysadmins to apply, test and
>> deploy the patch they received.
>
> To the best of my knowledge the sysadmins have never received any such
> patch. Indeed as far as I know it doesn't exist.

I was referring to the patch that Frederik sent you on 7 March 2011.

> I originally understood that what you had on dev was a properly integrated
> solution but I now understand that it is in fact just static HTML and JS
> code that has been bolted on the side of the rails code.

I got the static Html working inside a rails 'erb'.
http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/rails

Not going through a rails controller has a couple of benefits:
Firstly, browsers parse jsonp code much faster than XML. Secondly it
allows the routing server, nominatim (and the tile server) to all be
hosted on different servers.

> If I'm wrong then please correct me and send me the patch to review.

The problem is that you are making so many changes to the rails port,
it's like trying to shoot a bullet with a smaller bullet. While some
of your changes were important, many are IMHO not nearly important as
getting routing going.

>
> Tom
>
> --
> Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu)
> http://compton.nu/
>

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Re: [OSM-talk] FAQs from help.osm.org

2011-05-06 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 1:48 PM, Richard Weait  wrote:
> On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 2:43 AM, Lambertus  wrote:
>> On 06-05-11 02:09, Grant Slater wrote:
>>>
>>> And routing on osm.org?
>>>
>>> / Grant
>>>
>>>
>> Would be awesome and is already possible for a while. See:
>> http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/ (select the 'routing' layer).
>
> This one seems much faster, though with fewer options.
> http://routingdemo.geofabrik.de/

Richard,

I'm not sure when you last tried it. I now have a server that keeps
the complete planet in RAM, making it considerably faster. In fact,
someone who recently compared the two said it was faster than the
geofabrik demo. The reason for this may be due to differences in
Javascript, network latencies, density of the map where the test is
being performed etc.

> Perhaps the UI and options of the first can be improved with the speed
> and routing engine of the second?
>

There are two more things to consider: Update frequency and support
for a variety of tags.

> ... evaluate ... the resources / server it will require.  Then acquire the 
> hardware.

AFAIK, whenever this topic was discussed by the sysadmins, it did not
end in any real conclusion. (A number of other websites found that
it's better to "Just do it")

I really want to avoid the delays that another round of discussion and
eventual hardware purchases will bring. So I'm willing to pay for
hosting on Amazon during a trial period. That will give us the ability
to scale infinitely. It will also give us time to find the most
appropriate hardware and raise the necessary donations.

So the only remaining issue is for the sysadmins to apply, test and
deploy the patch they received.

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)

2011-05-04 Thread Nic Roets
I think OSM can be great, but it still has a very long way to go.

Let's look at some of the best open source projects:
1. Linux: Dominates the server market and will soon dominate the
smartphone market.
2. Apache: Dominates web servers.
3. Firefox: For a very long time they were miles ahead of their closed
source competitor (IE).

On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:26 PM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> Oh and I missed the second half - what makes you think we appointed the
> sysadmins?

Perhaps you have not appointed them explicitly, but control the domain
name and the servers on your behalf. So they are acting as your
agents.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)

2011-05-04 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> ... one of the best open source projects.
>

I rejected the CTs because I felt the OSMF* was out of touch with the
community. Your statement just reaffirms that.

*: I make no distinction between the board and the people they appoint
e.g. the sysadmins.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)

2011-05-04 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> I dispute point 1, if anything the project is German-centric if you look at
> the depth and quantity of data?

Steve, he was talking about language, not geographical dominance. You
can't argue that English is dominant.

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[OSM-talk] When advertising is good

2011-05-03 Thread Nic Roets
One or two people on the list said that they avoid advertising where
ever they can. I know advertising can be annoying when the same add
appears 10 times in a row, but I just want to explain a few things.

Let's look at the example of a restaurant that is working below
capacity. It can be because they recently opened. It can be because
they are not located on a busy corner. So they have waiters and chefs
not working at peak productivity. They have freshly prepared food
going to waste.

This is a problem that on demand location based advertising can solve,
provided people are willing to accept it in their lives: The
restaurant gets more patrons. Those patrons no longer go to other
restaurants. The other restaurants are now able to serve the remaining
patrons faster.

And the same argument does for most retail and service business.

The great thing about OSM is that we are driving the cost of maps to
$0. If media corporation have annoying ads, people will simply switch.
The media corporation and the advertiser (the restaurant) will now
need to work together to give you the maps at a cost "below 0". My
guess is that it will be in the form of coupons or other specials. "If
you order the OSM special, you get a free softdrink with your burger".

So next time you want to embed maknik in website, consider the
advantages of embedding MapQuest instead.

(And no, I do not have affiliation with MapQuest or any media company).

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Re: [OSM-talk] New Logo in the Wiki

2011-05-01 Thread Nic Roets
Elizabeth,

I don't see David's comments as constructive. Terms like "consulting
the community" is quite vague and Steve has said that many of his
prior efforts to consult the community end in flame wars.

Now let me give it a try: I think the OSMF should make (more) use of
polling. Not for everything. But once or twice a year would be a nice
way to involve the community.

Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> There is hardly any part of OSM that is not open for you to participate;

Note that open IRC is the Internet equivalent to the town hall
meetings. In some instances they work well. But it is remarkably easy
for one grouping to impose their will on the community.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_hall_meeting

OSMville is already the size of a small city and many of us do not
have English as a first language. Town hall meetings cannot be the
only way to involve the community.

Regards,
Nic

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 5:54 AM, Elizabeth Dodd  wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:33:42 -0700 (PDT)
> Mikel Maron  wrote:
>
>> This has not been constructive in the slightest. Inflammatory and
>> untrue. I don't have time for this. Most of us don't. You're making a
>> mockery of the hard work that's gone into this project.
>> Stop. Just stop.
>>
>>
>
> let me rewrite the piece from David Murn
>
>  a big part of the discussion is the
> way that we as a community are treated.  If SWG and OSMF feel they have
> the power to do what they want without consulting the community, then
> those handful of mappers should be the ones mapping and not be using the
> efforts of the community they refuse to consult with.  Maybe SWG needs
> to comprehend what the O in OSM means, it doesnt mean you make major
> decisions behind closed doors, document them with a 3 word note in the
> minutes and refuse to discuss with the community because it might cause
> a big discussion, even aware that once the community becomes aware of
> their change, a big discussion will ensue anyway.
>
>
> This is constructive. It is hard hitting and direct. Sometimes medicine
> is bitter.
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] question for folks working on routing engines

2011-04-15 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Richard,

Gosmore looks at maxspeed and tracktype.

I did not use surface, because I am under the impression that it is
possible to drive fast on properly maintained dirt roads in dryer
regions.

Regards,
Nic

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 4:36 PM, Richard Welty  wrote:
> this occurred to me while surveying speed limits in a somewhat rural
> part of the US.
>
> are any of the routing engines looking at the surface tag as part of
> their decision making?
>
> i ask this because in NY, the default speed limit in rural areas is 55
> on all roads. there are numerous unpaved roads (dirt, gravel) which
> do not have posted speed limits, but where driving at 55 is not
> reasonable unless you're a rally driver and the road is closed.
>
> i want to tag these accurately, and am doing so, but i should think
> that the routing engines ought to avoid, when possible, this combination
> or others like it:
>
> highway=unclassified
> name=Mead Road
> maxspeed=55 mph
> surface=dirt
>
> richard
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] We Need to Stop Google's Exploitation of Open Communities

2011-04-11 Thread Nic Roets
Let's not loose sight of a few facts / trends w.r.t. sub Saharan Africa:
1. The continent is not experiencing the same demographic dividend as
other emerging economies. Birthrates will remain high for at least
another 50 years. AIDS is decimating the economically active
population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

2. African governments are simply not building the required infrastructure.

3. The mobile phone has increase productivity in Africa more than all
previous inventions combined. Farmers no longer need to make slow and
expensive journeys to find out what price the market will pay for
their crops. Migrant workers can send money to their families over
long distances.

4. A dismally small percentage of Africans can read maps. But
augmented reality-type applications will completely change that.

5. OSM is simply not successful enough in Africa to cover the
tremendous opportunities presented in points 3 and 4. Lack of cheap
Internet access on the African continent should take most of the
blame. But it doesn't help that so many OSM apps are not available in
Africa (Skobbler, ORS, OSM-3D etc).

So I'm really glad about Google's efforts.

--
Note that if you use Google to search for "Mapping party", the top hit
is the the OSM wiki. So it's public knowledge that we invented and
perfected the concept.

Regards,
Nic

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 5:27 PM, Mikel Maron  wrote:
> http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/04/11/1635
>
> == Mikel Maron ==
> +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] April fools that should have been

2011-04-02 Thread Nic Roets
Steve and Hurricane announce the birth of their daughter "Ivory".

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 5:46 PM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> * Replace OSM front page with google maps
>
> * HOT announce zombie apocalypse response team
>
> * OSM made official royal wedding map
>
> Steve
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Okay, this is just cool (Lockport, NY)

2011-03-31 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 1:07 AM, andrzej zaborowski  wrote:
> On 1 April 2011 00:59, Nic Roets  wrote:
>> One more argument in Pieren's favour: OSM is not for profit. On
>> Slashdot a court case was recently mentioned where the judge ruled in
>> favour of a non profit who copied a complete article from a
>> copyrighted journal.
>
> Right, but I think we can stop discussing copyright as in this case
> Google is using their Terms of Use which is more like contract than
> copyright license.

Do you honestly think Google will risk taking legal action on the
basis that it's a contract ? Suppose it turns out that person A asks
person B for the name of a certain street. Person B obtains the Street
View image with his phone and shows it to A. A is either not aware
that it's a streetview image or perhaps does not even know what Street
View is. So Google can only sue B for breach of contract. They can't
compel OSM to delete the data.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Okay, this is just cool (Lockport, NY)

2011-03-31 Thread Nic Roets
One more argument in Pieren's favour: OSM is not for profit. On
Slashdot a court case was recently mentioned where the judge ruled in
favour of a non profit who copied a complete article from a
copyrighted journal.

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 8:48 PM, Richard Fairhurst  wrote:
> Pieren wrote:
>>> Anyone round here ever seen the film 'Groundhog Day'?
>> If you mean it's a desperate fud which will never end, I understand.
>
> Yes. If we separate the horrid neologism into its three component parts -
> Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt - then I'm entirely with you on that.
>
> We are Uncertain as to what exactly copyright law and Google's (IMO
> deliberately[1]) ambiguous terms allow. We are Doubtful at what point Google
> would start suing people. We are Fearful that the world's biggest technology
> company

Richard, would you be any less fearful if it turns out that Google is
in fact 4th by market cap and is quite far from the the largest by
revenue ?

http://www.google.com/finance?q=apple
http://www.google.com/finance?q=microsoft
http://www.google.com/finance?q=ibm
http://www.google.com/finance?q=google

> could, with one carefully publicised nastygram, undermine the
> promise at the heart of OSM - "you can rely that this data is legally safe
> to use".
>
> Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. That's exactly why we don't do it. If you are a
> world-beating copyright, database rights and contract lawyer with a
> billion-pound fortune you don't mind pissing away, then maybe you can
> elevate the debate beyond that. But I doubt it (not least because it's
> pretty clear there's no such thing as a world-beating database rights
> lawyer).
>
> Come on, Pieren, you are smart enough to know all this. IIRC you were among
> the first to comment on my long Bauman vs Fussell posting way back when,
> which was pretty much the same issue. We know the parameters of the debate:
> all we can do is rattle around inside them, Groundhog Day-style.
>
> cheers
> Richard
>
> [1] I actually think Google is being depressingly smart on this. They
> purposefully don't elucidate what you can and can't do. On the one hand,
> they want people to build geo apps and create indexable geodata on the
> Google Maps platform - even though some of this might well infringe their
> data/imagery suppliers' copyright. On the other, they don't want anyone -
> like OSM - to leverage their data to build their own platform. So they just
> say nothing. It's best for their business that way.
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: 
> http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Okay-this-is-just-cool-Lockport-NY-tp6225128p6228293.html
> Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Examples of OSM used in Transport Planning?

2011-03-27 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Mikel,

Most of your examples concerns the day to day planning done by
individuals. But my guess is that the conference concerns long term
planning by authorities, esp. infrastructure.

There is an open source software package called MATSIM that predicts
congestion and traveling times. AFAIK, it can combine digital maps
(OSM), public transport data, population data and landuse data. Then
it can simulate millions? of commuters each of them optimizing their
traveling patterns.

Although European universities are driving the R&D, it is also being
used in South Africa. I met a couple of times with Professor Johan
Joubert who is driving the research here. Although OSM is not yet at
the same quality as commercial maps, it fits his requirements better
(easy integration, flexibility etc). In fact, he and his students have
done a significant amount of tracing of the low income and informal
settlements. They are also busy adding "lanes" tags to make the
simulations more realistic. So they are using the Bing aerial
extensively.

Here in the Gauteng province, a a number of large transport projects
are nearing completion (the Gautrain rapid rail link, the motorway
improvement project and subsequent tolling and the Bus Rapid Transport
service (BRT)). His work is being used to predict the effect they will
have on economic growth.

Regards,
Nic

On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Mikel Maron  wrote:
> Hi
>
> The World Bank is holding a conference this Wednesday on Transport Planning
> & Applications, and I've been asked to give a talk on applications of OSM in
> transport.
>
> Off the top of my head, I think of ITO's work, London Tube Travel Time, UK
> Rail OSM seat back maps, Portland Oregon's transport work (they'll be
> there), India railways maps. Just a few...
>
> What are some of the best example applications of OSM in transport?
>
> Thanks
> Mikel
>
> == Mikel Maron ==
> +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] City with completed housenumbering?

2011-03-23 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Matthias,

I'm working quite hard on the house numbers of Pretoria (South
Africa). I guess I collect a similar number of houses (around 22,000
numbers) since starting 2 months ago. But I admit my quality will be
much lower. I just visit the 2 endpoints of each street and then use
addr:interpolation. Quite often I use 'even' or 'odd' interpolation
when the numbers increase 4 between properties.

Another disadvantage of my approach is not splitting the interpolation
way where it crosses another street. The drawback will be that OSM
based SatNavs may get the last turn wrong (e.g. "Turn left and stop"
instead of "Turn right").

2011/3/23 Matthias Meißer :
> Hi all,
>
> the mappers of the city of Rostock (Germany) is going to complete all house
> numbers of the town. I never heard that a city in OSM in that size (250.000
> inhabitants, 22.000 numbers) had been completely mapped. I know the number
> import of Denmark, so they have 100% complete, but we asking ourself, if
> there is another bigger city that had manually been mapped all housenumbers?
>
> cu
> Matthias
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Bike / Pedestrian directions on the MQ Open sites

2011-03-05 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Antony Pegg  wrote:
>  - We've already discovered highway=bridleway not included - we've updated

Hello Ant,

Considering how weak the standardization processes inside OSM is, you
should considered prior art:
http://trac.openstreetmap.org/browser/applications/rendering/gosmore/elemstyles.xml

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] Any process on website usability?

2011-02-27 Thread Nic Roets
Gert, I think you should have tagged it as sarcasm, not irony. In that
case, I think there is a lot of truth in what you are saying.

On a slightly more constructive note, I would like to remind everyone
that it is possible to "fork the rails" and / or embed Potlatch and a
few other tricks. If someone builds a portal like that that is better,
then sign me up / migrate me. There are a lot of talented webmasters
in the chapters...

2011/2/27 ce-test, qualified testing bv - Gert Gremmen :
> 
>
> "the community" is too busy changing license
> and blocking users to be considered with futile
> details like theOSM.ORG website.
> You will probably get more support if you
> suggest to improve the looks of
> the osmfoundation.org website
> But your request will soon get attention,
> once everyone has been forced to accept the new
> OSMF (sorry ODBL) license.
> That will probably be somewhere in 2015
>
> 
>
> Gert Gremmen
>
> -Oorspronkelijk bericht-
> Van: Matthias Meißer [mailto:dig...@arcor.de]
> Verzonden: zondag 27 februari 2011 11:07
> Aan: talk@openstreetmap.org
> Onderwerp: [OSM-talk] Any process on website usability?
>
> Hi,
>
> sometimes I get asked when the webfrontend of osm.org get a renew to fit
> better the needs of mappers or externals. In most times I just point the
> person to a page of
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Usability
>
> But anyway is there any process started or still the freeze of single
> users overwhelmed by this huge task?
>
> regards
> Matthias
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Zero tolerance on imports

2011-02-19 Thread Nic Roets
On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 2:03 AM, Richard Fairhurst  wrote:
> This is getting crazy.
>
> Exhibit 1:
> http://twitter.com/#!/maproomblog/status/39053538692698112
>
> "Whoever imported CanVec in Aylmer, Quebec obliterated hours of work and
> introduced hundreds of errors. #osm #openstreetmap #whybother"
>
> Once again, some keyboard jockey has decided that his l337 import skills are
> better than the knowledge and hours of work by a local mapper. The offender
> appears to be user 'sammuell' by the look of it -
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/sammuell - though he hasn't posted
> anything about his activities on the user page, the wiki, or indeed
> anywhere.

I would consider that immediate ground for reverting it.

But Samuel has made over 500 changesets in the 3 years he's been
active and most of them are normal edits. Which means a normal dispute
resolution process may be advisable.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Why isn't any XAPI server available ?

2011-02-19 Thread Nic Roets
Let me just explain what I see as the major performance bottleneck
with and API implementation: Disk seeks. A typical computer can
perform a million calculations while waiting for the disk to fetch a
few bytes. So a good data structure that can answer most map (bbox)
calls with a single disk seek is what is needed. (Not a debate on the
best programming language). I have ideas how to do that if anyone is
interested. But I willing to wait and see what Ian comes up with.

--
I'm learning Java right now and I find the array handling quite
peculiar. For storing arrays of dynamic size, I use ArrayList<>. The
only way to index the elements are with the get() method. Compare that
with STL where you can address vectors with the normal [] operator.

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Anders Arnholm  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> 2011-02-18 22:47, David Murn skrev:
>> Is there any language slower or more resource intensive than java?
>
> Yes, there are many, Java have is strengths and down sides, Java as any
> language have it's strengths and down sides. Speed in Java can be much
> better that C, C++ or even hand optimized Assembler. It can also and
> java's weak sides, for performance, is it's dependence on garbage
> collection. That even is proved mathematically be a more efficient way
> of handling memory allocations tends to do the memory handling at for
> the user bad times.
>
> And real time performance in almost all applications have very little
> with the language to do, but with the chooses of algorithms and
> data-storage chosen for the application.
>
>> currently, in the world), then who cares about java, why isnt it written
>> in optimized C or some other similarly lowish level language, rather
>> than java?
>
> There can be a 1000 reasons, and all valid.
> A good team knowing java but not c.
> C make to much time go into development compared to an object oriented
> language.
> C have no good api's to connect to the other services around.
> The bottle neck is not at all in the code for the service but in stuff
> around it.
> When is comes to error's in the code, web, net servers in java are as
> possible to break, using java is not a safe way to make sure the code is
> correct. It still need to be planned and safe for internet usage. The
> typical safety problems thou differ because different things are hard
> ans easy in the two language families.
>
> Just a few random morning thoughts.
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAk1fdUwACgkQtbR3SXmySrdAnACgrSQlpvvBNqtT32RlIGBssqMO
> npcAoKrP8LY3syoJf3lKl4VdZz5yttkK
> =EVqp
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Announcement: Availability of True Offset web service

2011-02-18 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Dermot and Steve,

Perhaps one solution would be to make a tool that downloads a few
reference tiles in the target area and then store the MD5 signatures.
Subsequent runs of the tool will check the hashes and generate beeps,
emails or tweets asking a human to check the offsets. And the tool
should be easy to write because it can work on either the compressed
images or a screen capture of an editor.

Regards,
Nic

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 2:52 AM, Dermot McNally  wrote:
> On 18 February 2011 23:35, Steve Bennett  wrote:
>
>> Ok, I think you're probably right. One thing that would mitigate the
>> situation I was talking about would be if OSM editors display the
>> current offset somewhere on the screen. Maybe a little red arrow
>> pointing in the appropriate direction (and perhaps length indicating
>> the distance of the offset).
>
> Hmm, not bad - that is, at any stage that the imagery has been moved
> from its default position, there would be a subtle but visible
> indicator? That fits in pretty well with our underlying goals with
> True Offset, to make sure no mapper traces without realising that
> alignment is sometimes wrong, must be considered and can be changed.
>
> That suggestion, of course, would need to be taken up by the authors
> of each editor.
>
> Cheers,
> Dermot
>
>
> --
> --
> Igaühel on siin oma laul
> ja ma oma ei leiagi üles
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Re: [OSM-talk] Power-user GPS app for Android?

2011-02-15 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 1:42 AM, David Murn  wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-02-15 at 15:24 +0200, Nic Roets wrote:
>
>> And for view the map I use the unreleased (still in development)
>> version of Gosmore.
>
> Nic,
>
> Do you mean gosmore on android, or gosmore on CE?  If you mean android,
> is there any ETA on when this might be released, or escape from your
> system? :)  As you know, Im an avid user of the CE version, but if
> theres an android version floating around, I cant wait to give that a
> try.
>
> David

Gosmore on Android. Within a week or two.

One major enhancement is that the sea is rendered as an area. And it's
already fairly responsive on my entry level 500 Mhz single core phone.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Power-user GPS app for Android?

2011-02-15 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Andrew Gregory
 wrote:
> and usability, and by adding OpenStreetBugs support (which needs network
> comms). I've been using OpenStreetBugs as my online POI database of things
> to survey. It probably wouldn't take too much work to create offline bug
> reporting, and upload bugs when comms become available.

Another idea would be to create a photo bugs toolchain:
1. Surveyor takes a geotagged photo of a bug
2. Uploads it at a later stage to a central server
3. Another user open Josm, zoom in on an area and downloads the photos.
4. Make the corrections and upload.

The idea would be to streamline the process as far as possible. In
(1), the GPS, compass and sensors must all be accurate before taking
the picture. The user must be allowed to annotate the picture, perhaps
even with a voice recording. Bulk operations must be supported in (2)
and (3)

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Re: [OSM-talk] Power-user GPS app for Android?

2011-02-15 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Ivan,

I use a number of apps. I customize my home screen, so it's very fast
to switch between them.

For recording tracks, I use My Tracks (a Google product, very mature).

For recording house numbers I made my own app. (I'm currently adding
150 new addresses each day, nearly a thousand if you count
interpolation)  If you know a little bit java and python, you can
certainly adapt it to recording PoIs:
Source: https://github.com/nroets/KeypadMapper
Documentation: 
http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/1385/what-is-the-best-mobile-application-for-large-scale-house-number-collection

And for view the map I use the unreleased (still in development)
version of Gosmore.

Regards,
Nic

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 11:49 AM, Ivan Petrushev  wrote:
> Can you suggest me a power-user GPS application for Android?
> I've recently switched from my Sony Ericsson K800 to Android and
> really miss MapNav. Most of the android apps I've tried are really
> naive - there is a map, and there is a dot representing your position,
> and this is all. Some of them have online routing via Cloudmade or
> other service. Not something really impressive.
> There are two cases I'll be using that app for:
> A) collect data for OSM
> B) when on a trip - checking and correcting OSM data
> For A) - I don't want anything with a embedded OSM editor! I like to
> make marks (in the app), take photos and then later enter all data in
> JOSM.
> I'm often in regions with no access to Internet. So I need all maps to
> be prepared before and use them offline. Preferably use vector maps
> because of the scaling and routing.
> Also if using routing (and it is new to me and I don't find it really
> "a-must") it should be offline routing.
> About tracks - I keep lots of tracks, some of them with 5k+ nodes. I
> need to be able to easily tell which track is what.
>
> MapNav was a perfect app with tons of options, but it won't run on
> Android. There are certain emulators but none of them get to run it
> smoothly. That's why I search for something that is android-native,
> but so far I haven't hit anything worthy. I've checked OsmAnd and it
> has troubles saving tracks. I've checked Maverick and it has troubles
> saving POIs.
>
> I've created a list of features that I need and a list of features
> that it will be nice to have but not mandatory.
>
> MUST HAVES
>
> - Tracks
> -- record track points by distance traveled (for example "every 50 m")
> or by time (for example "every 10 s"). Combination of two can be
> possible with AND or OR.
> -- save and load tracks
> -- view saved tracks in list select active track
> -- export/import track formats - at least GPX
> -- display and update active track on the map
> -- ability to easily pause track recording (for example when you are
> standing still at one place)
>
> - Marks
> -- ability to quickly add new mark (or call it POI if you like) around
> my current location
> -- ability to add new mark with specific coordinates (useful for geocaching)
> -- easily export and import marks
>
> - Main display
> -- display current speed
> -- display distance between current position and a selected target position
> -- display distance between random two points
>
>
> - Map sources
> -- offline maps easily created
> -- OSM
> -- downloading Google Earth (or other sources) tiles from Internet
>
>
> OPTIONALS
>
> - Tracks
> -- show altitude and speed profiling of a track
> -- edit track nodes (for example cut nodes out of the track, or split
> track in two)
> -- rename saved tracks
> -- list saved tracks with details (like length, timestamp of first
> node, timestamp of last node) and sorting
> -- display more than one track over the map at once
>
> - Marks
> -- ability to take photo and geotag/add it to a mark
>
> - Main display
> -- display current coordinates and altitude
> -- number of points in active track
> -- ability to show a "ruler" on the map
> -- display satelite status
>
> - Navigation
> -- ability to calculate route from point A to point B w/o Internet
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] magical road detector to play with

2011-02-05 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Serge,

I hope Richard convinced you that my intentions was purely to further
the debate and not to attack anyone. It is however not the point of
this email...

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 11:34 PM, Serge Wroclawski  wrote:
> Nic, Richard has a long history with this community of being one of
> our ambassadors, in every sense of the world. He's a prolific mapper,
> he's been a very effective community organizer, a project leader,
> conference organizer, and former Cloudmade Ambassador.

Personally I'm not a fan of the Cloudmade business model. Perhaps I'm
alone in this, but I think they they have distracted the community and
the osm.org website and the tagging standards would have evolved a lot
faster if they were not around.

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] magical road detector to play with

2011-02-03 Thread Nic Roets
On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Richard Weait  wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Nic Roets  wrote:
>> A little bit of care will be needed to suppress databases that may be
>> legally protected. But I can't see any problem if you extract 1
>> address per website.
>
> I can see a problem with that idea.
>
> "I only infringed a little bit" is still infringing.

My understanding is that extracting a single fact from a single source
is always legal (in the US, in the UK, everywhere). Journalists
extracts small amounts of facts from many individual sources all day
long and rarely get into trouble.

If we extract only 1 address per website, the vast majority of those
pages will be home pages and business websites. People who would
approve of what we are doing if it is brought to their attention. So
it's a symbiotic relationship.

Google's idea of "a little bit of care" is simply to honor robots.txt,
spider with an obvious user agent and adherence to a few web
standards. And there is a word for people with disapprove of this
practice: Copyright Troll.

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Re: [OSM-talk] magical road detector to play with

2011-02-03 Thread Nic Roets
Steve,

Another thing that Bing can help us with is determining address ranges
of roads. For example, when you spider the web and find references to
5, 20 and 48 Lion Street, Pretoria, then it may help the user who is
mapping that street. Perhaps it's a cul de sac and now he doesn't need
to travel all the way down it to see where the range ends.

A little bit of care will be needed to suppress databases that may be
legally protected. But I can't see any problem if you extract 1
address per website.

Regards,
Nic

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 7:17 PM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2011/02/03/automatically-detect-roads-with-bing-aerial-imagery.aspx
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Nominatim updates

2011-01-28 Thread Nic Roets
For me, reverse lookups are completely wrong right now. (I haven't
tried forward lookups). And the status indication on
nominatim.openstreetmap.org is blank. So I figure he's doing a DB
rebuild or something.

http://osm.org/?lat=-25.797306&lon=28.289618&zoom=18

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Re: [OSM-talk] Postmortem analysys

2011-01-07 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Mike N.  wrote:
>> Mike, please don't blame the bot. Ungluing a node an just leaving it
>> there, is really looking for trouble. Some routing engine(s) glue
>> nodes together that are less than a few centimeters from each other.
>> Now you may want to complain that those routing engine(s) are buggy,
>> but that "bug" has historically made things easier rather than more
>> difficult. And going forward, I expect it to continue to be a
>> "feature" rather than a bug.
>
>  Consider me firmly in the "it's a bug" camp.   Routers in general work with
> data from different sources; but it's a bug in OSM to have an intended
> connection only be close but not connected.There's no minimum node
> distance for disconnected nodes - just best practices to minimize database
> clutter from dupe nodes.  QA tools like Keepright make it feasible to
> monitor and maintain large areas in a fully correct topology.
>
> Do routing engines glue nodes from different layers?

Yes, provided they are close enough (for the engine(s) in question).

>  Do they automatically
> connect crossing ways on the same layer?

Only in the rare case where both crossing ways contain nodes at the
crossing point. (for the engine(s) in question).

Look, I'm saying that I do my part fix things that may cause problems
somewhere in the software stack. For example, I discovered that the
Appalachian trail was at some point the largest object in the DB.
Potlach and several other pieces of software would either bomb out or
take ages to respond. So I messaged the last editor and he agreed that
many of the nodes are redundant. So I deleted those nodes.

After ungluing a node, move one of them just a little bit. (Unless you
used a DGPS with a 10cm resolution and found that the centerlines are
in fact on top of each other). If you leave them on top of each other,
it's going to waste someone's time later on (either after a bot edit,
a keepright warning, a routing error or a user editing the area who is
completely oblivious to the possibility that two nodes can be on top
of each other).

A very simple way of reducing the problem inside the router will be to
move nodes by small random amounts, but I have more urgent bugs and
feature requests.

> Either modification would change
> the calculated route.
>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Postmortem analysys

2011-01-07 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Mike N.  wrote:
> Recently I encountered a CSI-style mystery.  Why was the Skobbler lady (OSM
> Nav based) telling people to go jump off of so many bridges?   An inspection
> showed that the bridges were joined to the interstate highway below, but
> many interchanges otherwise had very high quality edits, with attention to
> many details.  So how did the people who made such skilled edits overlook
> false intersections?  It turns out that they didn't.  A history view shows
> the dreaded "Removing duplicate nodes" in the  change list.   The original
> edit just used JOSM's un(G)lue node command, leaving the dupe nodes in
> place.   A perfectly valid technique until the attack of the duplicate node
> bots.

Mike, please don't blame the bot. Ungluing a node an just leaving it
there, is really looking for trouble. Some routing engine(s) glue
nodes together that are less than a few centimeters from each other.
Now you may want to complain that those routing engine(s) are buggy,
but that "bug" has historically made things easier rather than more
difficult. And going forward, I expect it to continue to be a
"feature" rather than a bug.

>
>  Now this is all past history - I think most of the mass and uninformed
> duplicate node work in the US has stopped since last year.  But, like the
> grumpy old man who runs outside and yells at the neighborhood kids who play
> in his yard, you can bet that every time I hear the whir and clickety-clack
> of anything that sounds like an OSM bot, I'll make sure that they've done
> due diligence rather than just relying on only the changeset comment.   But
> quality bot edits are still welcome!
>
> P.S. Don't get me started on how the dupe node bots made a 3 minute county
> line road fixup into a 30 minute nightmare.
>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What phones do OSMers have?

2011-01-05 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Nick Whitelegg
 wrote:
>
>>-If you look at Android from the view point of the end user or the
>>hacker, it's quite closed. DRM, binary drivers, and the mobile
>>operators occasionally blocking tethering applications.
>
>>However, independent application developers with valid business models
>>love Android. Their applications aren't tied to a proprietary
>>operating system. There have been reports that it's even possible to
>>remove Google from the ecosystem, should they ever become evil.
>
> TBH I think that hackers (as in open-source developers) can do quite a bit 
> with Android too, as is evidenced by the large number of OSM applications 
> available for it - as long as, presumably, they don't have to do anything too 
> low-level. I myself intend to do some hacking with it and it looks like it 
> will allow me to do what I want to do. I don't think a "valid business model" 
> is needed. Compared with the ridiculously closed model of the iPhone, far, 
> far more closed than desktop Windows ever was, Android is very open by 
> comparison.
>
> Nick

I meant "valid business model" as in no malware, no piracy, no
violation of the terms of service of the mobile operator e.g.
tethering. Using a mobile phone to collect and verify mapping data is
definitely a valid business model, even if no money changes hands.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What phones do OSMers have?

2011-01-04 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 6:27 PM, Robert Kaiser  wrote:
> andrzej zaborowski schrieb:
>>
>> Note that that there will also be some folks that have a Nokia phone
>> because they're open souce nuts and use a Maemo-linux Nokia phone.
>> AFAIK Maemo, Palm's Webos and Android are all about the same level of
>> "open", i.e. linux-based but including some closed source drivers or
>> libraries.
>
> I have to disagree, as Android is quite closed compared to those other two,

If you look at Android from the view point of the end user or the
hacker, it's quite closed. DRM, binary drivers, and the mobile
operators occasionally blocking tethering applications.

However, independent application developers with valid business models
love Android. Their applications aren't tied to a proprietary
operating system. There have been reports that it's even possible to
remove Google from the ecosystem, should they ever become evil.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What phones do OSMers have?

2011-01-03 Thread Nic Roets
On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Steve Coast  wrote:
> I’m curious. So here’s a little survey, people like you take a second to
> answer it;
>
>
>
>     http://bit.ly/ii3cKg
>
>
>
> Specifically I’m wondering if everyone has androids because we’re all open
> source nuts or if it’s more balanced? Only the data will show.
>

When I wrote my mobile app, I chose Windows CE over OpenMoko based on
what devices will be cheaply available a couple of years down the line
without having to rewrite large parts of the code. (It was a bit
tricky to support all the variations of Windows CE, but still quite
successful).

By the same logic, Android will rule amongst hobbyists over the next
few years, while Iphone will make all the money.  You don't need to be
an open source nut to see that.

>
>
> Steve
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Turn left restriction on two way highways

2010-12-30 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 4:11 AM, Eugene Alvin Villar wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 7:12 AM, Steve Doerr
>  wrote:
> > On 30/12/2010 22:50, Diego Woitasen wrote:
> >
> >> Yes, we'll map the restrictions. I reviewed the local law and
> >> sometimes you can turn left so we must tag the restriction on every
> >> case.
> >
> > Does it have to be every intersection, or could you tag a default on the
> way
> > or relation and then tag the exceptions?
> >
> > How would routers feel about that?
>
> I remember a suggestion like this a long time ago. Tagging a way with
> restriction=no_left_turn (especially if it has a oneway=yes tag) would
> specify a default for that particular way only. This is much easier
> for routers or preprocessors to adopt.
>
>
I think before we had relations, I suggested it as a way of specifying turn
restrictions without relations.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Turn left restriction on two way highways

2010-12-29 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Diego,

Are left turns prohibited for the majority of junctions where two
residential roads cross each other ? Are left turns prohibited even at the
majority of residential T junctions ?

I know it may look like a lot of work adding all the no_left_turns, but it's
the right way.

Having different defaults for each country leads to many problems:
1. At a T junction, something that looks a left turn to some may look like a
straight on to others.
2. Writing the code is non trivial and it affects routing engines, relation
editors, validators and even some renderers.
3. Tourists who map in Argentina may not do the right thing.

Regards,
Nic

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Diego Woitasen wrote:

> Hi,
>  In Argentina we have a general rule. If you are driving in a two way
> highway (residential, primary, secondary, etc) you can't turn left.
> You can do it only if there is a sign and/or traffic light with the
> turn left row. We are discussing in the Argentina forum about if it's
> make sense to map the no_turn_left restriction on every crossing road
> or not. I think that we should drive the exception to the rule, the
> routing software should apply the default restriction.
>
> What are you doing in the other countries?
>
> Regards,
>  Diego
>
> --
> Diego Woitasen
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Bing imagery now available in JOSM

2010-12-01 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves  wrote:

> On Wed, 2010-12-01 at 13:07 +0100, Sebastian Klein wrote:
> > Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2010-12-01 at 12:26 +0100, Sebastian Klein wrote:
> > >> thanks to fast development by Ian Dees, Bing imagery can now be
> > used
> > >> in
> > >> JOSM.
> > >
> > > and it is legal to use it?
> >
> > Yes, see http://opengeodata.org/microsoft-imagery-details.
> >
> > Richard Fairhurst, seems to be in closer contact with the people from
> > MS
> > and there may be minor revisions, but these are basically the terms we
> > have.
> >
> >
>
> this is not an OSM site - where is the OSM viewpoint on this?
>


It was posted by Steve Coast, Chairman of OSMF and a Microsoft employee. So
the chances of Microsoft suing us for taking that info at face value is
zero.
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Re: [OSM-talk] routing across open spaces

2010-11-30 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 6:14 PM, Martijn van Exel  wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Nic Roets  wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 2:22 AM, Robin Paulson 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> hi,
>>> i walk a lot, and would like a routing engine which understands i can
>>> take a direct route across an open public space, such as a park,
>>> without needing a footpath to be explicitly drawn in. the existing
>>> routing engines don't seem to understand this.
>>>
>>> or am i missing a tag? do i need to tag parks, etc. with "area=yes"
>>> "foot=yes", "access=yes" or would that be a case of "tagging for the
>>> routing engine"
>>>
>>>
>> Firstly note that routing across areas is (theoretically) much harder than
>> routing along ways (Non-polynomial time VS polynomial time).
>>
>> Secondly note that the problem is not restricted to pedestrian routing,
>> e.g. parking areas. There have been cases where people mapped the road
>> surface as areas, although they would then also have ways running down the
>> centerline.
>>
>> Supporting areas is on my list of things that I would like to do, but
>> there are many other things in front of it. I recently added dragable routes
>> to the Osm.org Routing Demo. I improved the endpoints. Negotiated for a
>> better server. Routing instructions and translations. And for Christmas I
>> want a mobile application for large scale collection of house numbers.
>>
>>
>> I definitely second your call for a mobile app to easily collect house
> numbers. A single-purpose app could be very simple. Would you want to have
> something graphical (user pinpoints address on map on-screen) or something
> even simpler (user enters housenumber, selects street based on location or
> accepts best match, address node is sent to OSM). In the latter case, which
> is what I would prefer, how would you deal with GPS inaccuracy?
>
>
Non-graphical. The streetname is not added to the address PoI. Nominatim is
smart enough to take the closest street.

If I travel down a street it, I want to be able to tell it that house 23 is
on my left using just 3 or 4 keystrokes / taps.

http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/1385/what-is-the-best-mobile-application-for-large-scale-house-number-collection



> Martijn van Exel +++ m...@rtijn.org
> laziness – impatience – hubris
> http://schaaltreinen.nl | http://martijnvanexel.nl |
> http://oegeo.wordpress.com/
> twitter / skype: mvexel
> flickr: rhodes
>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] routing across open spaces

2010-11-30 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 2:22 AM, Robin Paulson wrote:

> hi,
> i walk a lot, and would like a routing engine which understands i can
> take a direct route across an open public space, such as a park,
> without needing a footpath to be explicitly drawn in. the existing
> routing engines don't seem to understand this.
>
> or am i missing a tag? do i need to tag parks, etc. with "area=yes"
> "foot=yes", "access=yes" or would that be a case of "tagging for the
> routing engine"
>
>
Firstly note that routing across areas is (theoretically) much harder than
routing along ways (Non-polynomial time VS polynomial time).

Secondly note that the problem is not restricted to pedestrian routing, e.g.
parking areas. There have been cases where people mapped the road surface as
areas, although they would then also have ways running down the centerline.

Supporting areas is on my list of things that I would like to do, but there
are many other things in front of it. I recently added dragable routes to
the Osm.org Routing Demo. I improved the endpoints. Negotiated for a better
server. Routing instructions and translations. And for Christmas I want a
mobile application for large scale collection of house numbers.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Bing Tracing

2010-11-26 Thread Nic Roets
I must say, I haven't seen an open community this excited about an MS
announcement since ... umm .. forever !

On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Frank Steggink wrote:

> I suspect that if legal had decided it was unacceptable, Bing wouldn't have
>> released the statement in the first place. It is a matter of reviewing
>> everything before opening the flood gate.
>>
>>
> Indeed, that would be quite a PR disaster, and would force SteveC to do a
> lot of explanations. So, that scenario is very unlikely...
>
>
The devil may still be in the detail. Such as limits on zoom levels and / or
coverage or even a requirement that tracing can only be done in Silverlight.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Google expands their map data

2010-11-13 Thread Nic Roets
On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 7:54 PM, S Omeone  wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> I haven't seen this mention before and I thought it might be of some
> interest here.
>
> Since sometime last year Google no longer used TeleAtlas for their map data
> in the
> USA but instead created their own map data.  It seems they have now
> extended
> their own data to 10 more countries including some in Europe Africa and
>

In South Africa's case that doesn't mean too much. The StreetView cars
didn't cover all the roads. So they had to buy  data from a commercial
vendor. That vendor has some quality issues (see the illegal route in the
link below). They also rely on government data that is no longer being
maintained.

So Google is not really smarter. They are relying on man power like everyone
else.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=-25.781959,28.291027&daddr=326+Edna+St,+Pretoria+0081,+South+Africa&hl=en&geocode=%3BCXVbiDH7YSbAFSendv4duLevASkdxtgEomCVHjEtejqmm6w9SA&mra=mift&mrsp=0&sz=17&sll=-25.781141,28.290718&sspn=0.006975,0.009645&ie=UTF8&z=17


> Oceania [1,2]. However, what makes it interesting from a OSM point of view
> (apart from knowing what the "competitors" do) is the way they seemingly
> crowd
> source their  updates and error reports. (The main data is, unlike their
> also very
>  successful map maker maps, not crowd sourced, but supposedly collected
> together
> with the street view data). Just like they have had in the US, however,
> they now
> have a nice and simple, easy to spot and convenient  "Report a problem"
> link in
> these countries in the bottom right hand corner.
>
> OpenStreetMap has of cause something similar with OpenStreetBugs (which
> Google may well have used as inspiration), but unfortunately, as too often,
> less
> convenient.  Instead of simply clicking on the report a problem link, in
> OSM you
> first have to know something like this exists, then figure out that you
> might learn
> about such a feature on the wiki, search the wiki for it, go to some random
> external
> page, then find your location on the map again without a search box on the
> OSB
> page, and then finally you might actually be able to add your error
> report...
>
> Can we perhaps learn something from Google of how to build a nice user
> friendly
> crowd sourcing of local knowledge?
>
> Also, can we perhaps somehow harness the fact that Google is "educating"
> people
> about the possibilities to crowd source maps through map maker and the
> "report a
> problem" link? E.g. by creating a press release highlighting some of the
> additional
> benefits of OSM over Google (without being unfair to them)?
>
> Or will Google eventually beat OSM at its own game?
>
> [1]
> http://searchengineland.com/google-updates-maps-in-10-countries-teleatlas-going-away-55288
> [2]
> http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/11/changing-world-changing-maps.html
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] SotM11 will be held in Denver.

2010-10-24 Thread Nic Roets
On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 12:35 AM, Dave F.  wrote:

>  On 24/10/2010 09:40, Nic Roets wrote:
>
> On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Julio Costa Zambelli <
> julio.co...@openstreetmap.cl> wrote:
>
>>
>> contributors, core developers, authors, etc. are still in Germany, the
>> UK and other countries of Western Europe,
>>
>
> As an outsider to the bidding and selection process, I think that hosting
> it in the US will be good for OSM. If a company wants to announce a new
> technology, they almost always do it in the US for various reasons e.g. the
> story gets picked up by international TV channels, the vast numbers of
> foreign born US residents spread the idea throughout the world etc
>
>
> Is that why Dell launched it's Streak mobile 'phone in the UK first?
>
>
Launched in the UK ? I guess that is why I have never heard of it.

I guess you are not too fond of the US being the trend setter for the world,
in which case I would like to point out two things: The UK had it's turn
during the colonial era. The US is loosing it's throne to the Internet i.e.
location is becoming less and less important.


>  . Also consider the fact that the Cloudmade and MapQuest ambassador
> programs
>
>
> What's an 'ambassador' program?
>

http://cloudmade.com/careers/community-ambassador


>
> Cheers
> Dave F.
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] SotM11 will be held in Denver.

2010-10-24 Thread Nic Roets
On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Julio Costa Zambelli <
julio.co...@openstreetmap.cl> wrote:

>
> contributors, core developers, authors, etc. are still in Germany, the
> UK and other countries of Western Europe,
>

As an outsider to the bidding and selection process, I think that hosting it
in the US will be good for OSM. If a company wants to announce a new
technology, they almost always do it in the US for various reasons e.g. the
story gets picked up by international TV channels, the vast numbers of
foreign born US residents spread the idea throughout the world etc. Also
consider the fact that the Cloudmade and MapQuest ambassador programs are /
were aimed at the US and as sponsors, their preferences should be taken into
consideration.
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Re: [OSM-talk] New: Mobile Map for Android and iPhone

2010-10-22 Thread Nic Roets
Somewhere in the (firefox?) documentation of geolocation, they hint at the
possibility of turn-by-turn navigation. Which caused me to think what other
GPS or vehicle tracking applications can be written as web apps.

For example, a friend of mine with a sailing boat (yacht) is always worrying
that the anchor may not be secure and the wind may blow it out to sea or
onto the rocks. If he's on the boat, the alarm of the on board GPS is
sufficient. But he needs a device to monitor the boat when he's onshore. So
I pointed him to the wide range of vehicle tracking devices that exist. But
it's the type of thing that is / will become feasible with an inexpensive
mobile phone. If only there was an app for it.

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Bernhard Zwischenbrugger <
b...@datenkueche.com> wrote:

> Hi all
>
> I made a map with GPS and Nominatim for Android and iPhone.
> It is a WebApplication that lives in the Browser.
>
> On iPhone you can add the map to the home screen to make it fullscreen.
>
> How to open:
> -
>
> Just type
>
> http://khtml.org
>
> in your mobile browser URL field.
>
> You don't have to install it - it's a normal web page.
>
> Using the touchscreen :
> 
>
> drag/drop: move the map
> doubleclick: zooms in at the click position
>
> iPhone:
> On iPhone you have multitouch to zoom in/out
>
> Android:
> For zoom in/out the map you have 2 buttons. This will zoom the map center.
>
> GPS:
> ---
> There is a button that allows you to find your own position.
> The location service on your mobile phone must be enabled to use this
> function.
>
> The geolocation will try to use real GPS signal from satellite.
> If you are in a building the map tries to find the position using
> the signatures of wifi stations or GSM base stations.
>
> Nominatim:
> --
> Press the "search" button and type the place you search for.
> There is NO list of search results as on the osm.org page.
> It will take the first result an the map jumps to this position.
>
> If you search for example for "vienna" vienna in Austria will show up
> in the map. If you look for vienna in the states type "vienna usa" for
> example.
>
> Bugs:
> -
> I have tested on Motorola Milestone and iPhone 3GS iOS 3.1.2.
> If you find bugs please let me know.
>
> Mobile Opera and Mobile Firefox (fennec) don't have touch events and the
> map does not work.
>
> have fun
>
> Bernhard
>
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Question

2010-10-19 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Kevin Sharpe
wrote:

>   I posted these questions to the Forum and it was suggested that I try
> here;
>
> We wish to add to OSM data relating to electric vehicle charge point
> locations and capabilities. However, it is not clear to me whether a third
> party could extract and use the charge point data without restriction.
>
Why not just republish your raw data on your own site under the license of
your choice ? Then set the source url to your website and add it to OSM.

If you don't do it this way, then there will there will always be doubts
when a user or bot change your contribution.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Response to A critique of OpenStreetMap

2010-10-15 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 9:32 PM, Elizabeth Dodd  wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:22:56 -0600
> SteveC  wrote:
>
> > Anthony is just trolling. He's been kicked out of wikipedia, as noted
> > multiple times. Ignore him.
>
> That is untruthful.
>
>
I'm afraid that Steve is right to say "Ignore him". He's almost always
looking for an angle that will cause conflict, upset people and steer the
debate off topic. Like bringing up the license change. Like suggesting that
MapQuest is only here for short term gains.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Response to A critique of OpenStreetMap

2010-10-15 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Valent Turkovic  wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:07:56 +0200, Milo van der Linden wrote:
>
> > "Making the perfectly rendered map available to the world" is *not* a
> > mission goal for the OSMF. The OSMF is primarily responsible for
> > maintaining the database and the services related to it.
>
> Well then OSMF should change their mission to include nice representation
> of data also, not to compete with commercial companies just to make
> defalut map not suck would be nice ;).
>
>
Note that Justin did not refer to OSMF. Milo brought it up. I thought Justin
was addressing the community (a loose association of thousands of
volunteers).

OSMF has a duty to entice or motivate people to improve the map. That will
be easier when the map is pretty. So making a pretty map is a means to an
end.

I think however that the rendering is pretty enough and that there are a lot
of other things that are more important. Perform a simple test: Take someone
with a reasonable computer background and ask them to plan their next
journey with OSM. Will they be able to locate the places on the map ?
Routing ?? After completing the journey, will they be able to register on
our site and make the corrections they identified ? How long does it all
take ? People value their own time.

The good news is that there are a lot of improvements in testing right now.


>
>
> --
> pratite me na twitteru - www.twitter.com/valentt
> blog: http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com
> linux, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless, ronjenje, pametne kuće
> registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org.
> ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic, MSN: valent.turko...@hotmail.com
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] If you've missed this ...

2010-10-06 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Richard Weait  wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Stefan de Konink  wrote:
>> Op 06-10-10 15:12, Nic Roets schreef:
>>> On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 2:55 PM, TimSC
>>>  wrote:
>>>>  On 06/10/10 00:59, Richard Weait wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://opengeodata.org/osm-founder-steve-coast-leaves-cloudmade
>>>>
>>>> What, if any, impact does this have on OSM and OSMF, I wonder?
>>>
>>> It may remove a conflict of interest problem or two ??
>>
>> He is still shareholder, as is stated in the message. That shows that
>> there is a potential financial conflict of interest. For example if OSM
>> switches license, it can be good for Cloudmade or bad for them, he could
>> defend his own financial position.

He will definitely be more independent now that he doesn't spend 8
hours a day in close proximity to the CM employees and he never has
meetings with their lawyers (see some of the discussions on legal-talk
in recent months).

> Y'all have a funny way of demonstrating your warm wishes for his
> future and presumption of good faith.

Unlike you, I guess I'm just seeing him and his wife as ordinary
members of the team (taking into account code written, keynote
speeches etc). So yes, good luck to him and good luck to anyone else
on this list changing careers.

And saying someone has a conflict on interest is not an insult. Nor
should it lead to automatic exclusion from debates or votes. But it
should be mentioned.

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Re: [OSM-talk] If you've missed this ...

2010-10-06 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 2:55 PM, TimSC
 wrote:
>  On 06/10/10 00:59, Richard Weait wrote:
>>
>> http://opengeodata.org/osm-founder-steve-coast-leaves-cloudmade
>
> What, if any, impact does this have on OSM and OSMF, I wonder?

It may remove a conflict of interest problem or two ??

But more importantly, it shows to me that the feature curve or novelty
factor of OSM is flattening out. Once you have efficient rendering,
searching and routing and the community is no longer growing
exponentially, it's just hard work to polish everything.

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Re: [OSM-talk] OSM and MapQuest [was Hurricane hits MapQuest]

2010-10-05 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 2:00 AM, Shaun McDonald
 wrote:
>
> On 5 Oct 2010, at 00:38, Nic Roets wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 12:46 AM, Ed Avis  wrote:
>>> So, is it possible for Mapquest to generate aggregate information on what 
>>> name
>>> searches people are doing and how often they find the result they wanted?  
>>> The
>>> latter is not something you can measure directly, but you can see which of 
>>> the
>>> offered results the user clicks on, which gives a clue.
>>
>> The biggest problem I experience when searching with Nominatim for a
>> street is that you need to guess the place name that *it* has chosen.
>> For example, Hyperion Drive falls in a suburb (johannesburg North, I
>> think). The suburb falls in a region and the region falls in a city.
>> And the city falls in a province. Some of that information is already
>> in OSM as administrative borders.
>>
>> But end users seldom know where the borders are, so they will just
>> search for "hyperion, johannesburg" and not get an answer. (To get it,
>> search for "hyperion, roodepoort") Or they will be too lazy to type
>> the suburb.
>
> Admin, town and city boundaries are in many ways hit and miss with nominatim, 
> however that is generally through a lack of osm data. Or better said just 
> having points, where it is difficult to estimate the size. For example 
> according to Nominatim Surrey covers most of London 
> http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=559111 (Which it 
> doesn't really). By using Polygons for the boundaries in the osm data instead 
> of simple points, it will be more likely to give a more accurate result.
>

That's a nice visual presentation. I guess it's generated by Fortune's
algorithm like Brian mentioned on dev.

The first problem with trying to get polygons for all places is that
surveying them can be quite labourious, if not impossible.

The second problem is that people, especially tourists and foreign,
don't speak like that. They often know only one placename, like
Johannesburg
http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=750446

IMHO, Gosmore handles the problem a little bit better: It first finds
the placename and then it will look for occurrences of the street
name, even if they are quite far from the place.

> Another problem is that place names can be fuzzy, as one person will say 
> place x will cover a certain area, however another person will say it covers 
> a different area, yet officially that's wrong.
>
> Shaun
>
>

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Re: [OSM-talk] OSM and MapQuest [was Hurricane hits MapQuest]

2010-10-04 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 12:46 AM, Ed Avis  wrote:
> So, is it possible for Mapquest to generate aggregate information on what name
> searches people are doing and how often they find the result they wanted?  The
> latter is not something you can measure directly, but you can see which of the
> offered results the user clicks on, which gives a clue.

The biggest problem I experience when searching with Nominatim for a
street is that you need to guess the place name that *it* has chosen.
For example, Hyperion Drive falls in a suburb (johannesburg North, I
think). The suburb falls in a region and the region falls in a city.
And the city falls in a province. Some of that information is already
in OSM as administrative borders.

But end users seldom know where the borders are, so they will just
search for "hyperion, johannesburg" and not get an answer. (To get it,
search for "hyperion, roodepoort") Or they will be too lazy to type
the suburb.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Are there any other projects in a similar fork situation? (Slightly OT)

2010-10-02 Thread Nic Roets
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 7:25 PM, Serge Wroclawski  wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Dave F.  wrote:
>
>> From what I understand, it appears that OSM is cutting ties with many of
>> these due to the wording of the new license/CT.
>
> That's totally wrong. We're seeing greater commercial support than
> ever before,

Really ? Can you name a single commercial company who said that they
are going to do something more with the data after the license change
? SteveC hinted at it a few times, without giving any details.

>  and we're seeing (for example) the French government
> adopt the OBbL.

Well the US government has consistently stuck to PD for many decades.
And they have released a LOT more data. (TIGER, SRTM, GPS, Landsat
etc).

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Re: [OSM-talk] Are there any other projects in a similar fork situation? (Slightly OT)

2010-10-02 Thread Nic Roets
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Vincent Pottier  wrote:
> On 02/10/2010 05:51, Brendan Morley wrote:
>>
>> I actually investigated the use of public domain principles - however
>> Australian copyright law does not allow it.  The best we can do is a CC BY
>> with zero attribution.  If there's anyone out there who can let me know why
>> zero attribution is not a good enough substitute for public domain, I'd like
>> to get in contact with you.
>
> I'm not a lawer, but I think in the French law the moral fatherhood
> (paernité morale) can't be removed. So, zero attribution can't be a ggod
> solution for France.

I am also not a lawyer, but I think some of these problems can be
solved by a little bit of legal structuring. The foundation can ask
the contributors to collect and process the data in return for some
token reward, like a little bit of CPU time. Then the contributors
will never have ownership of the data.

You can even go a step further: If one of the governments are
interested in getting directly involved, the terms and conditions of
the website can say that that government is asking you to collect the
data and process the data for some token reward. Then that government
can make it PD.

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Re: [OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] In what direction should OSM go?

2010-09-29 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Grant Slater
 wrote:
> On 29 September 2010 11:26, Nic Roets  wrote:
>>
>> Obviously there are many exceptions to your rule, like the TIGER import.
>>

> Nic, local example... Durban South Africa, we imported a dataset, the
> few new mappers who were starting up these stopped mapping and haven't
> returned post import. The import data is now stagnating. The imported
> data also has many errors.

It's not really as if Johannesburg (where no imports have been made)
did any better. A few people started with Roodepoort, but left some
holes: Just North of Robert Broom and Florida Lake, both affluent
leafy suburbs. Then it stagnated. When the holes were more than a year
old, I made a trip to fill them in. My guess is that the original
contributors did not even notice.

If Johannesburg can't sustain a community, what chance does the less
technologically advanced and much smaller Durban have ?

>
> TIGER isn't a good example of a successful import.
>
> The TIGER import killed a fledgling community in the US, which is now
> only slowly recovering. TIGER has masses of data without anyone taking
> any ownership. Do we really need inaccurate, incorrectly tagged data
> for a dirt track crossing the Rockies?

Thanks for sending the links to the blogs, Frederik.

All of them focus on the social issues. A few mappers starting out,
then telling other "Look what I've done, why don't you join me". Then
you get the logistic growth that Matt refers to.

But the majority of the mappers in my area have selfish motivations.
For example the cyclist who adds all the foot paths so that he can use
our routing tools to reduce his own traveling time. Or the
entrepreneur who adds his own business for the free publicity. There
is however a very long lag: After doing the (TIGER) import it takes a
lot of time to build a user base of sufficient scale.

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Re: [OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] In what direction should OSM go?

2010-09-29 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:57 AM, Peter Körner  wrote:
> Am 29.09.2010 11:50, schrieb Elizabeth Dodd:
>>
>> This belongs back on talk
>> with a new header.
>> OSM states that it is a free map, free to edit and free to use
>> Whether the database should contain imported stuff, traced stuff, or
>> only personally surveyed stuff is a very big issue and any intent now
>> to alter the basic rules of inputting should be back on Talk.
>
> Imported data is dead data - there's no one that feels responsible for it.
> Imports can kill community and give "newcomers" the feeling that there's
> nothing more to be done. Imports *can* help osm but they can also *hurt*
> osm, because osm is about people, not data.

Obviously there are many exceptions to your rule, like the TIGER import.

To get back to what OSM should be. I think the words "Open" and
"StreetMap" create certain expectations among the general public and
we should close attention to that. When we reach them, we get only a
few minutes of their time, and if their expectations aren't met they
loose interest.

Many of the issues have been identified by the uservoice survey. But I
also think the paralysis and endless arguments over tagging standards
and the license are causing a lot of people to leave.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Measuring the OpenStreetMap Economy

2010-09-23 Thread Nic Roets
On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 5:05 PM, SteveC  wrote:
> Once you have the criteria of what goes in to the measuring pot of the "OSM 
> economy" you further have large error bars on the data for each thing. For 
> example, are those freelancers going to tell you what kind of money they're 
> making?

It's almost pointless to count actual revenue. The reason why no one
started a new competitor to NA / TA in the mid-noughties, was that the
intense competition would reduce revenue making it unprofitable. (Ok
Google started to compete with NA / TA, but they cleverly combined it
with other things like streetview).

Most open source / open content projects are a bit like a security
guard or an external auditor. If all goes well, it will appear to
casual observers that their only function is to consume oxygen. But
take them away and you get chaos.

A better exercise would be to take the page rank of osm.org and
compare it with the market cap of a website with the same page rank.

Or compare the number of tags in our database with the number of tags
in the NA / TA databases and their values on the balance sheets of
their parents.

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Re: [OSM-talk] A warning about gates and other barriers

2010-09-20 Thread Nic Roets
On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:12 PM, Donald Campbell II
 wrote:
> So if you visit lots of places in ?outback? Australia, you get to open
> and close the gates as you go.
> The gate should be closed, and you are free to pass, but have to open
> the gate, pass the boundary and close the gate again.
>
> You mean like in the movie "The God's Must Be Crazy"?  :-)

Same hemisphere, different continent, different desert. But the gates
serve the same purpose, namely keeping the livestock fenced in.

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Re: [OSM-talk] A warning about gates and other barriers

2010-09-19 Thread Nic Roets
On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 6:02 PM, Richard Fairhurst  wrote:
> It's probably just as well the wiki documents, not defines. And given the
> vast preponderance of highway=gate nodes within (say) highway=footway ways,
> the wiki docs look pretty unambiguously wrong.

So to obtain a definition of barrier=gate, you want me to do the
following: Look at a region where barrier=gate has frequently been
used without access tag. Let's say somewhere in the UK (a country I
have never visited). Then conclude that a default of access=yes or
foot=yes makes the most sense, because it will allow routing along
some footways.

Except there are places where the placements of the gates (the
topology) would lead an intelligent person to conclude that the
default access value for gates should be "no". For example when there
are many ways with gates into an area and one way without a gate:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/308935502

Then there is the possibility that a footway or gate have not been
mapped. So I will have to look at many, many gates and have an
outstanding intelligence to obtain the "correct" definition.

I'd much rather just look at the wiki.

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Re: [OSM-talk] A warning about gates and other barriers

2010-09-19 Thread Nic Roets
On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 4:33 PM, Richard Fairhurst  wrote:
>
> Nic Roets wrote:
>> This is because a gate with no access tags
>> implies that nothing can go through.
>
> Where on earth do you get that idea from?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:barrier

in the sidebar under 'implies'

And AFAIK that rule goes back to 2008.

> barrier=gate states that there's a gate. The thing about gates, as opposed
> to (say) walls, is that you can open them to get through.

Unless they are locked ? Unless that are manned by a security guard ?

>
> Here are some pictures if I haven't explained it clearly enough:
> http://www.artlondon.com/photogallery/images/wellmann/Open-gate.jpg
> http://www.camulos.com/Virtual/wall.jpg
> cheers
> Richard
> --
> View this message in context: 
> http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/A-warning-about-gates-and-other-barriers-tp5547675p5547756.html
> Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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[OSM-talk] A warning about gates and other barriers

2010-09-19 Thread Nic Roets
Hello,

I see a lot of frustration with routing not working when there are
gates involved. In particular when the gate is in the middle of a
public road (residential). This is because a gate with no access tags
implies that nothing can go through. By contrast, most highway types
let some type of traffic through. For routing purposes. it often
creates islands, where some segments can't be reached from the rest of
the routing graph.

For example, much of this service road is cut off.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=49.2214151&lon=18.7401969&zoom=18

Is there perhaps a worldwide tool that can identify these segments ? I
tried keepright and the cloudmade debug map, but neither of them show
it.

Here is a more extensive description of the tagging of restricted areas:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm.org_Routing_Demo#How_to_tag_restricted_areas

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] Exceeded API bandwidth limit, now what?

2010-09-14 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 9:02 PM, Michal Migurski  wrote:
> Is there any interest here in publishing the OSM API via tile-like URLs? For 
> example, being able to make a request like this to pull a chunk of bounded 
> XML cached out of the OSM API:
>        http://tile.openstreetmap.org/14/2627/6331.xml  < note "xml" on 
> the end
>

Slicing the planet into thousands of rectangular extracts and updating
it daily is quite feasible using a combination of osmosis and
bboxSplit. One major advantage of this approach is that it can use
"idle" computing time. And you only need 3GB RAM. (I'm doing something
similar for the routing demo.)

In fact, I would offer to do this for you on dev.osm.org. But I'm
afraid that by the time you start using it heavily, other projects on
dev will be affected by the increased load.

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Re: [OSM-talk] list of OSM use by commercial entities

2010-09-08 Thread Nic Roets
There many companies that are harder to pin down because they are not
media companies, nor do they provide consumer services :
* Consulting e.g. urban planning, typical GIS work
* Logistics companies and the suppliers of their software, like PocketGIS.

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Stephan Knauss  wrote:
> SteveC wrote:
>>
>> I've been asked a few times for examples of companies that are using OSM
>> and as the list keeps getting longer I keep forgetting examples. Anyone
>> fancy setting up a wiki page to keep a track of them?
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM_based_Services
>
> This lists some. Companies are not marked special. They are just included in
> the list.
>
> Stephan
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Duplicate nodes generally

2010-08-30 Thread Nic Roets
On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 5:26 PM, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer  wrote:

> 2010/8/30 Nic Roets :
>
> > Or you are not supposed to route over them. My routing engine merge those
> > nodes during the "compile" phase and then does route over them.
>
>
> and how does it determinate, that the 2 nodes are really one, and it
> isn't disconnected on purpose?
>

It doesn't, so it's a bug. But it's extremely unlikely that it will ever
have any impact on the user. You will e.g. need a double decker bridge that
was surveyed with high precision DGPS equipment and then you can't use
Potlatch. The variables I'm using have 10cm resolution.

So it's a bug that has become a feature.

cheers,
> Martin
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Duplicate nodes generally

2010-08-30 Thread Nic Roets
On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 2:10 PM, Brendan Morley wrote:

> On a similar topic...
>
> What is the problem with duplicate nodes, exactly?
>

They are created when you import data from a source that does not use our
way-node model, esp. when the import is done in stages, e.g. at the borders
of US counties. And the problem is that you can't route over them.

Or you are not supposed to route over them. My routing engine merge those
nodes during the "compile" phase and then does route over them.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Directions API available on OSM data

2010-08-27 Thread Nic Roets
First you need to ask "When will they support routing outside Europe / the
UK ?"

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 8:23 PM, Julio Costa Zambelli <
julio.co...@openstreetmap.cl> wrote:

> Ant,
>
> Do you know how often will the data be updated?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Julio Costa
> OpenStreetMap Chile
> http://www.openstreetmap.cl/
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 1:43 PM,   wrote:
> > FYI:
> >
> >
> http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/08/24/new-mapquest-directions-api-built-on-open-data/
> >
> > Our own blog post goes out Monday, but it looks like programmable web
> found the slides from SOTM US.
> >
> > Details on our developer network at
> >
> http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/featured/open-source/directions-service
> >
> > And the API itself is at http://open.mapquestapi.com/directions
> >
> > Cheers
> > Ant
> >
> > Aut invenium viam aut faciam
> > ___
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> > talk@openstreetmap.org
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> >
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Re: [OSM-talk] click-your-route wanted

2010-08-27 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Peter,

I have made my own branch of YOURS for the Osm.org Routing Demo[1]. I fixed
many issues. You can get a source tarball[2] from my site.

[1]:
http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/?lat=47.43117&lon=3.46952&zoom=6&layers=B000FTFTT&markers=!52.37101,4.90011!41.98003,2.82021&v=motorcar&fast=1

[2]: http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 6:29 PM, Peter Wendorff
wrote:

>  Hi.
> I have to do some tests for navigation and search for a good solution to
> create my route files.
> Changing the format of a file to my target format is simple, but it's
> really difficult to get the route.
>
> It would be perfect if there is an application where I can draw a route by
> hand, getting a file containing some kind of node-way-node-way list as a
> result.
>
> Everything I found yet either has no current data (YOURS - data is older
> than my edits I need), or not possible to install locally (YOURS fails due
> to issues I cannot solve at installing gosmore and partly php5
> incompatibility).
>
> Hints are highly welcome.
>
> Regards
> Peter
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Useful changeset comments are useful.

2010-08-24 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Richard Weait  wrote:

>
> There are a lot of things that could be added to a changeset.  For
> instance, a useful changeset comment is a simple and obvious way to
> cooperate with other mappers.
>
> http://ow.ly/2u0IQ
>
>
This this ? http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/1180563


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] NearMap Community Licence and OSM Contributor Terms

2010-08-19 Thread Nic Roets
Steve,

I'm trying to be on your side.

But as chairman of the OSMF board, you really need to pick your words
better. By saying "which every rational person I know thinks is the best
step forward - the ODbL", you are implying that a lot of people are
irrational.

I see that your company recently raised $12m, and I deduce that your goal is
to make money. And that will be harder if NT and TA can use our data.

My goal and that of many other OSM contributors have nothing to do with
money. We want people to use the data. If some of the data leaks because of
the current license, then it may not be a bad thing.

Then it may be simpler to solve the other issues with the current license by
presenting each user with a number of check boxes like this:
[ ] I give the OSMF the right to sue persons for copyright infringement on
my behalf.
  [ ] Should the OSMF choose not to take legal action, I will not sue anyone
myself.
[ ] For the purposes of the Share-Alike clause, I interpret "alike" as
meaning ...
...
Even if we do not get 100% response, then we remove some of the uncertainty
with the current license.

One thing we certainly we do not want is closed discussions with lawyers.

Regards,
Nic

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 9:23 PM, SteveC  wrote:

> NearMap is the only company I'm aware of attempting to hold a lot of data
> hostage in this way. We all have our different opinions on the license, but
> the point is that we need to do something going forward which will be on
> average better for everyone. It won't be perfect. Therefore we have to make
> compromises.
>
> NearMap have some valid things they pointed out might make the CT's better.
> The LWG has had approximately 12 hours (from memory) to look at them, and
> for all we know might think they're awesome and change. Maybe not. We don't
> know.
>
> That's not the same thing as "oh my god we should do whatever NearMap want
> us to do".
>
> Therefore it's a discussion about the points in the CT's, which may or may
> not be changed. Not just "do whatever NearMap says".
>
> I think a much better position from NearMap would be to compromise on the
> data already in. Say, yes the data already derived can be used under the
> CT's. Then work with the LWG to fix the issues they see. You can't really
> put "it's not our place as a company to try and direct or influence the
> direction of OSM." at the end of an email which is all about trying to
> direct and influence the directions of the LWG and OSM and expect to be
> taken seriously. I'd be more honest and say, yes, we do want to change the
> direction so that it suits our business better. Because that's the reality
> as I see it. And it's not really that bad.
>
> I think the bigger issues is NearMap mistaking the intention and the word
> of the license. We can debate for the next millennia the meaning of a
> "future free and open license" under the specific wording of what that might
> mean. These are open issues that will take a long time, possibly a lot
> longer than the ODbL process to figure out.
>
> I don't think we're going to get anywhere bouncing between people who want
> everything to be PD (like USGS) and folks who want it to be some variant of
> attribution-sharealike and possibly NC (NearMap). We need to move forward in
> the spirit of compromise on to something which every rational person I know
> thinks is the best step forward - the ODbL.
>
> The other way of cooling this off is to not see the ODbL as the final step.
> I don't think it was intended to be. Once that's in place, then the field is
> open to discuss the next steps.
>
> Finally, I think the most honest step forward for NearMap and us unless
> they show some compromise on things like past data is to just shut it off.
> Believe me, there are a lot of other aerial imagery options being pursued
> hard and NearMap aren't the be all and end all. If they don't want to play
> ball and want to place restrictions on OSM, lets just work on alternatives.
>
> Steve
>
> stevecoast.com
>
>
>
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Peter.
> >
> > 2010/8/19 Brad Neuhauser :
> >> If it's about NearMap, then talk-au seems more appropriate.
> >>
> >> On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Anthony  wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Frederik Ramm 
> wrote:
>    this discussion must move to legal-talk.
> >>>
> >>> If we don't change the contributor terms, then we lose NearMap.
> >>>
> >>> That's not a legal discussion.
> >>>
> >>> ___
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> >>> talk@openstreetmap.org
> >>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
> >>>
> >>
> >> ___
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> >> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > mortigi tempo
> > Pēteris Krišjānis
> >
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Re: [OSM-talk] NearMap Community Licence and OSM Contributor Terms

2010-08-19 Thread Nic Roets
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Brendan Morley wrote:

>
> Um, what happened in October 2008?
>
>
If you look at the percentage change in US GDP and you compare it to the
1800s and the early 1900s, then you will come to the conclusion that nothing
happened. The economic contraction was very mild.

That is more than 30 years after the US left the gold standard. By no means
cause and effect.
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Re: [OSM-talk] NearMap Community Licence and OSM Contributor Terms

2010-08-19 Thread Nic Roets
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Chris Browet  wrote:

> Let's keep the Talk-List clean from Legal discussions. Anybody is welcome
>> to join it on Legal-talk.
>>
>> Sorry, but I've seen those kind of invitations, too.
>
> I'm not subscribed to Legal-talk and have no interest in the obscure legal
> details.
>
> General discussion about the new License/CT belongs to Talk. The future of
> the OSM project as such is at stake, here...
>
>
Chris,

It is possible to change the legal status of something without affecting the
community. For example the gold standard was removed making the dollar a
Fiat currency without an economic meltdown.

So please discuss these things on the legal list.

Regards,
Nic
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Re: [OSM-talk] Howto add simple push pin or marker to OpenStreetMap ?

2010-08-17 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Richard Weait  wrote:

>
> > Could perhaps someone add a "Marker-Permalink"-Link on the map? Would
> increase
> > the usability a *lot*! :-)
>
> Ummm, "Patches Welcome" ?  ;-)
>
>
We have something better: The routing demo allows manipulation of multiple
markers.
http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/?lat=47.43117&lon=3.46952&zoom=5&layers=B000FTFTT&markers=!52.37101,4.90011!41.98003,2.82021&v=motorcar&fast=1
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Re: [OSM-talk] visualizing relation on gosmore

2010-07-21 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Sergio,

I made a small change to the rebuild process that should solve it:
When a route relation has a 'ref', all ways belonging to it will have
that ref string appended to their string data. So now you can search
for that ref, it will appear many times, and after you select it, all
ways that are part of the route will be highlighted (pink outline).

If you want me to update spain.zip, please email me off-list. You will
not need a new gosmore.exe

Regards,
NIc

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:43 AM, sergio sevillano
 wrote:
> wouldn't be nice to be able to visualize a route relation in gosmore, in a 
> noname style.
> just when you input relation id.
> quite useful to visualize a route and compare to the gpx been recorded.
>
> s
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[OSM-talk] Why quality is more important than routing speed

2010-07-03 Thread Nic Roets
There is a lot of talk around better algorithms (e.g. contraction
hierarchies), distributed routing, stress tests etc. So I'm going to
put in into perspective with a few calculations.

For a 40km journey, Gosmore takes 50ms*. So let's say Errol costs
around $10,000 and you want to pay it off in 2 years by "selling"
routes. Over the two years it can calculate roughly 12 billion 40km
routes. That's 0.0001 cents per route. So you can make a profit by
selling 2 year subscriptions at 1c each. Compare that with how
expensive cars are per km. An algorithm that is 10 times faster does
not change the economics.

By contrast, let's say you add support for just a few more tags.
Perhaps routing the driver around congested intersections. He sees
that the product is saving him time and fuel. Then he will pay when
you increase your price with a few dollars.

*: I admit that the core algorithm is quite bad but it does make up
for it by being able to do everything in RAM and reducing cache
misses.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Osm.org Routing Demo

2010-07-02 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Hillsman, Edward  wrote:
> I agree, this is great. A couple of quick observations. First, for some 
> reason, it won't work in Internet Explorer 8 on my machine. Clicking on the 
> link opens the webpage and OSM top and left sidebars, but displays no map or 
> options. Opening the link in Firefox works fine.
>

Ok, I got IE 8.0 working. Perhaps I broke a few other things in the
process, but that will have to wait until I get some sleep !

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Re: [OSM-talk] Osm.org Routing Demo

2010-07-02 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 5:56 PM, woll  wrote:
>
> Is the idea that this demo will become the 'official' OSM routing system?
> From the intro post, I can't quite make out if it is going to appear on the
> OSM home page, or it is a 'private' demo.

The sys-admins must decide and that excludes me and the author of
YOURS (Lambertus Ijsselstein, who must be thrilled that NL kicked
Brazil out of the WC. Die Kaap is weer Hollands !).

The sys-admins must in turn take into account the wishes of the
community and the recent uservoice survey indicated that getting
routing on osm.org is important.

> I know very little about the details/history of the various routing systems
> that use OSM, and nothing of the background to this functionality appearing,
> but why choose YOURS/Gosmore instead of any of the other "non-commercial"
> OSM-based routing systems?

AFAIK, Gosmore is the only FOSS router capable of meeting the
requirements of the community with reasonable hardware:
1. Planet wide coverage.
2. Staying (reasonably) up-to-date
3. Supporting turn-restrictions, destination ways and barriers,
otherwise people will have no incentive to tag them.

> For example, I have used another OSM-based router that already has good
> routing instructions and loads of options, so would appear to also be a good
> contender. I'm not advocating a particular one, but would be interested in
> hearing a bit about the background of why YOURS was chosen, so I can learn a
> bit about such things!
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: 
> http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Osm-org-Routing-Demo-tp5247667p5248238.html
> Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Osm.org Routing Demo

2010-07-02 Thread Nic Roets
The permalink in the info box doesn't work (yet), but you can use the
permalink in the map to save the view. So it you have a problem in
Detroit, please zoom in as far as possible and give us that permalink.

The reverse and normal geocoding comes from nominatim, so you'll have
to look on the wiki why it does that.

Thanks.

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Nakor  wrote:
>  Woa that sounds very promising!
>
> A couple issues I found:
>
> * permalink does not work (always gives a view center on the UK).
> * locations filled in does not seems to work correctly (data issue?) e.g. if
> I click at 42.492985,-83.222165 the text shows Southfiled Rd, Berverly
> Hills, although this is in Southfiled Rd, Larthrup Village
> * I tried a couple routes in Detroit area and it kept "Calculating route"
> (due to maintenance and/or heavy load?)
>
>  Thanks,
>
> N.
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Osm.org Routing Demo

2010-07-02 Thread Nic Roets
On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 3:51 PM, Ian Dees  wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Richard Weait  wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 9:03 AM, Nic Roets  wrote:
>> > I made a demonstration of how the yournavigation.org website can be
>> > embedded inside osm.org. Check it out:
>> >
>> >
>> > http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/?lat=52.32796&lon=5.62046&zoom=15&layers=B000FTFT
>>
>> Nick, This is wonderful!  I just did a "reasonable" route and it was
>> blindingly fast.  Fantastic.
>>
>
> Yes, this is quite nice! I wish there was a way to make it more obvious that
> routing exists on the home page, but I understand your concerns about
> performance.
> Can you give more details about what is involved in doing driving
> directions?

It's a text to text transformation. So you can use your favourite
language and your favourite debugger.

I've included an example of the routing engine output below. The first
column is latitude and the second column is longitude.

>From the first two lines you can calculate the direction of travel. It
looks like South East to me, but there are simple formulas that
calculate that I can give to you. You can also calculate the distance
for each segment. The lower case 'j's indicate that it's not a
junction and the capital 'J's indicate there is a junction. So the
first few instructions may look like this:
1. Travel 500m South East on Westdijk.
2. Turn right at the junction and travel 1km South West on Westerweg.
...

As you can see, the first 4 lines are combined into 1 entry.

So you calculate the Azimuth angle (0 degree=North, 90=East, 180=South
and 270=West) and then you look at how much it changes with every
segment, if the name changes, junction type etc. Then you look up the
appropriate string with the i18n library of your choice and format the
output.

--
As for the load: Most of the time Errol is using half a core right now
and it has 16 ! I think when Richard did Amsterdam to Girona, most of
the data was swapped out and he had to wait a few seconds for it to be
swapped back in. Under full production we may choose to lock the data
in RAM.

--
Mike N wrote:
> It should be noted that this is neither the shortest or fastest route, so 
> there may need to be a new option?
> There's talk of several back end routing engines (Gosmore/etc), so I'm not 
> sure if I should look at modifying one
> of these engines, or if I would need to add a new one?

To solve such a problem with mathematics and computers, we need a goal
function. And it may be impossible to collect all the relevant
information objectively. (For example, this hiking trail is long, but
it has spectacular views). So I don't have time to work on something
like this on my spare time and I doubt someone will get far in hacking
it into Gosmore.

A better solution is to post the trail on a website, like gpsies.com
with photos and descriptions so that it will get the attention of
tourists.

Regards,
Nic

Input:
QUERY_STRING='flat=52.672938&flon=4.814691&tlat=50.765825&tlon=4.304728&fast=1&v=motorcar'
/home/nroets/gosmore/gosmore

Gosmore Output:
Content-Type: text/plain

^M52.673050,4.813020,j,tertiary,8856,Westdijk
^M52.672800,4.815380,j,tertiary,8845,Westdijk
^M52.672170,4.822010,j,tertiary,8814,Westdijk
^M52.672110,4.822420,j,tertiary,8812,Westdijk
^M52.672000,4.822630,J,primary,8810,Westerweg
^M52.671160,4.820630,J,primary,8802,Westerweg
^M52.670990,4.820080,j,primary,8800,Westerweg
^M52.670790,4.819590,j,primary,8798,Westerweg
^M52.670030,4.818010,J,primary,8791,Westerweg
^M52.669910,4.817820,J,primary,8789,Westerweg
^M52.669460,4.816960,j,primary,8785,Westerweg

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[OSM-talk] Osm.org Routing Demo

2010-07-02 Thread Nic Roets
I made a demonstration of how the yournavigation.org website can be
embedded inside osm.org. Check it out:

http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/?lat=52.32796&lon=5.62046&zoom=15&layers=B000FTFT

As you can see, it is hidden inside '+' (the layers). There are two
reasons for this: Firstly, I did not want to make a new layout that
will not work on small screens. Secondly it will help to make the
computing power requirement more manageable. Once we understand user
preferences and load levels better, we can unhide it.

The computer it is running on (Errol) is 10 times larger than YOURS
and can keep everything in RAM. So it is possible to find the shortest
route from New York to California, in other words routing through the
massive TIGER network. However, when the server becomes too busy, it
will return partial routes (routes that start with a jump).

The data is the current planet file. Importing a new planet file takes
approximately 5 hours.

The YOURS javascript is quite powerful. You can have more than 2
points, i.e. a via point. You can drag them inside the panel to change
their order and you can drag them on the map to reposition them. This
demo has also helped to make YOURS more portable, so that it will be
easier to integrate it with other OpenLayers sites.

We are still looking for a volunteer to implement driving directions.
It is a simple, well defined job. Any computer language can be used.
It will be nice to have i18n capabilities but any product out there
can be used. It can also be independent of both YOURS and the current
Gosmore routing engine, so it can have a life of it's own. There is a
little bit of 2D geometry involved, but we will help with the
formulas.

Lambertus pointed out that some bicycles routes take strange detours
when the fastest option is chosen. I know what the problem is and I'll
fix it shortly.

Regards,
Nic

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Re: [OSM-talk] [OSM-Talk-ZA] Downloading gps traces- Ponta Malongane

2010-06-19 Thread Nic Roets
Hello John,

I've downloaded the data with JOSM and attached. Email me off-list if
you did not get it (perhaps the list will scrub it). It is however
only a small subset of the OSM data. I guess someone traced from
Landsat or he is not sharing his tracks with us.

AFAIK, there is no direct way to find the corresponding track on the
system. I can see who edited that region, but none of those users
uploaded a track with Mozambique in the description or the tag. I can
also see that it was uploaded on 26 Feb 2009, but going through all
the tracks uploaded during the following few days is a big job.

OSM is most certainly not the only or best repository of tracklogs.
www.Gpsies.com is quite good and there is comprehensive list of
websites here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nroets

Regards,
Nic

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Nic Roets  wrote:
> Hello John,
>
> I've downloaded the data with JOSM and attached. Email me off-list if
> you did not get it (perhaps the list will scrub it). It is however
> only a small subset of the OSM data. I guess someone traced from
> Landsat or he is not sharing his tracks with us.
>
> AFAIK, there is no direct way to find the corresponding track on the
> system. I can see who edited that region, but none of those users
> uploaded a track with Mozambique in the description or the tag. I can
> also see that it was uploaded on 26 Feb 2009, but going through all
> the tracks uploaded during the following few days is a big job.
>
> OSM is most certainly not the only or best repository of tracklogs.
> www.Gpsies.com is quite good and there is comprehensive list of
> websites here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nroets
>
> Regards,
> Nic
>
> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 9:25 AM, John Grant  wrote:
>> I am going to Ponta Malongane in southern Mozambique and would like to
>> download the gpx traces.
>>
>> http://osm.org/go/k2tz9ZA--?node=619885951
>>
>> Is there a way to do this via web interface or do I need to use an external
>> editting tool like JOSM?
>>
>> Regards,
>> John
>>
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Re: [OSM-talk] WolframAlpha uses OpenStreetMap data

2010-06-17 Thread Nic Roets
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 7:14 PM, Ian Dees  wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:16 AM, SteveC  wrote:
>>
>> There is a slight contradiction here though because the other thing I hear
>> a lot is they'd like to try something with us but keep it quiet - i.e. try
>> something small, but that's extremely hard with an open community.
>
> I find the exact opposite: the majority of the projects related to OSM in
> the past few years have been done in relative quiet. The tools that OSMers
> use are developed by a small group (or single person) in a bunker somewhere.

+1

I also think the companies like to tell Steve that they're the next
Sun or Red Hat (opening everyhing up). But when the board meeting
comes, they start thinking NT/TA licensing fees is just a cost that
they pass on to their customers. If they help OSM, then it will also
help their competitors and will not really improve the bottom line.
Furthermore, once OSM competes with NT/TA, they may have to compete
with the "person in the bunker".

> Are we not there yet because we're scaring them off? If so, maybe the
> community could open its mind and eyes a little bit when ideas like these
> come in instead of scaring them off with questions about legality and server
> load and whatnot.

That is much easier said than done. Companies are quite wary of
launching the next "New Coke". To explain it in OSM terminology: Let's
say a company devises a new web site and it has scientifically proof
that it is better (e.g. blind tests). Then some people may still see
it as a faceless company prescribing to a community what they should
do. Throw in a few words like "profiteering" and it can generate some
undeserved bad press for the company.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Price for OSM survey

2010-06-15 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 7:13 PM, Roland Ramthun
 wrote:
> Dear talk@,
>
> at some point in the future there may be a survey on OSM topics, which
> is free to take for any OSM member.
>
> You don't need to have any special knowledge or skills to answer the
> questions, just to get down to work and fill it out.
>
> To motivate you, there shall be non-cash prizes with a value of approx.
> 50 Euro.
>
> Do you know of any non-cash prize, ideally related to OSM, which would
> motivate you?

A WinCE based GPS preloaded with all the different software tools we
have developed for the OS ? (e.g. Gosmore)

I am really pleased with my Mio Moov 200. With 2GB of onboard flash it
can store lots of maps. The MioPocket bundle includes apps like a
calculator and Sudoku. Battery life exceeds 5 hours. I've even used
the bright screen as a rear facing bicycle light.

> Or would you rather take the cash, if possible?
>
> Please tell me on or off list if you have any thoughts on this topic.
>
> Kind regards,
> Roland
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Gosmore map.pak update for Camino de Santiago,

2010-06-08 Thread Nic Roets
Hello Sergio,

I've started updating of the extracts. I will PM you when I see that
it is complete.

You can also try a bbox. For most of them the data comes from +-20 May.
Northern Spain & Southern France:
http://dev.openstreetmap.de/gosmore/0332037005210401.zip
Northern Spain & More of France:
http://dev.openstreetmap.de/gosmore/0488036005200383.zip
Spain, Northern Africa & Corsica:
http://dev.openstreetmap.de/gosmore/0314037505500428.zip

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 8:58 AM, sergio sevillano
 wrote:
> hi
>
> im going to map on detail last part of Camino de Santiago [1] in Galicia,
> Spain
> i have done a little pre-survey work,
> and it will be greatelly helpfull to have those changes up to date in our
> gps/datalogger unit.
>
> im using Gosmore [2] to get the tracks
> can someone be so kind to compile a spain.pak file (as in [3])
> and make it available to get it?
>
> (sorry no dev skills here)
>
> thanks,
> sergio
>
>
> [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago
> [2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Gosmore
> [3] http://dev.openstreetmap.de/gosmore/extracts/europe/
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Re: [OSM-talk] Software goes on, brain goes off...

2010-06-02 Thread Nic Roets
On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Nathan Edgars II  wrote:
> John Smith wrote:
>>If you wanted something more definite, police injury records could
>>provide alternative verifiability, if as John pointed out 5 people
>>were hurt or killed trying to cross a road than it's obviously not
>>safe.
> Only if you do the same for other vehicles - highway with lots of
> crashes means motor_vehicle=no :)
>
> As others have said, foot=no when pedestrians are legally allowed is a
> bad idea. As long as you walk against traffic, drivers will usually
> see you, and you can easily see and get out of the way of any vehicles
> unless the paved area extends all the way to the edge of the
> right-of-way. The idea that one should not walk on certain roadways
> where walking is legal, simply because certain drivers can't drive, is
> ridiculous, and leads to legal restrictions that prohibit reasonable


Nathan, the problem is providing good routing instructions to average
people. If we can't provide that we will loose people to Google Map
Maker, Waze, Tom Tom etc.

--

There are many reasons why a routing engine should not follow the
legal definition of right of way:
1. Safety (as discussed here).
2. Permissive. Fortunately a tag was defined for it long ago.
3. An illegal barrier (gate or fence) has been erected. And you may
think that this strange, but it happens frequently in South Africa. In
fact, it has happened that the municipality wanted to remove one of
them and the residents association obtained an injunction against the
municipality on the basis that removing it will cause the crime rate
to return to unacceptable levels. So sometimes it is not even possible
to determine the legal status of a right of way.
4. Driving on some tracks it will cause unnecessary environmental
damage, like erosion. Sometimes such an opinion is debatable, but
there are cases where a clear majority of local residents feel the
same way. Usually the authorities will signpost it (effectively
removing the right of way), but that may not always be the case.
5. Other things that we can't forsee right now.

When I map, I just want to create a useful map. And when I write
software it should be backward compatible with old data and forward
compatible with new data and still give reasonable results. I don't
want to waste time on finding the legal status of everything.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Software goes on, brain goes off...

2010-06-01 Thread Nic Roets
Jeffrey, when the thread was started the cycleway was incorrectly
tagged, but I fixed it soon afterwards. Cloudmade will catch up soon
enough.

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 9:05 PM, Jeffrey Ollie  wrote:
> On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 6:20 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>>
>> Looking more closely, there is a sidewalk, which turns into a "cycleway"
>> (http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/40967519), about 50 feet from the
>> roadway, on the southbound side which is the same side she was walking on.
>> And if she had been using the sidewalk while heading north on Main St, it
>> would have led her directly to that sidewalk.
>
> Interesting thing about that is that the cycleway shows up in Mapnik
> and OsmaRender, but doesn't in CloudMade's maps, and CloudMade doesn't
> use the cycleway for routing.  In fact CloudMade gives a nearly
> identical route to Google.  Does CloudMade's routing engine ignore
> highway=cycleway?
>
> --
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>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Software goes on, brain goes off...

2010-06-01 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 5:22 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> Ideally, yes. But routing software can't possibly process the logic
>> correctly in cases like these. Some roads may not have a pavement, but
>> they are safe for pedestrians due to the lack of traffic. In other
>> cases extreme footways should not be used because of crime.
>
> What does lack of traffic matter?  Unless you mean absolutely no traffic, I
> don't think that makes much difference.  If the road is unsafe to walk on,
> I'm not going to walk down it whether there's 1 car a day or 10,000.  If
> there's a low enough speed limit maybe.

By that logic you should never leave your house. What if a storm
suddenly appears and you get hit by lightning ?

As traffic volumes increase, following distances decrease and drivers
become overloaded with all the information. Their view may also be
obscured by the traffic. And if the oncoming lane is also full of
traffic, it gives less space for drives to take evasive action.

I've had a number of close calls where I was cycling and a driver
overtook the traffic on the outside at high speed i.e. on the left in
a country with left hand traffic. But I guess that's largely a
developing country problem.

> How about "foot=destination"? :)  I'm kidding, but it'd be better (and more
> accurate) than foot=no.

I won't argue with that.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Software goes on, brain goes off...

2010-06-01 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Elena of Valhalla
 wrote:
> On 6/1/10, Nic Roets  wrote:
>> If you don't trust your own opinion, ask a few locals if they would
>> advise a tourist to walk there. If they say no, then tag them with
>> foot=no and add a note describing why you did it.
>
> I don't think this would be correct: foot=no usually means "you are
> not legally allowed to walk here", not "this road may be dangerous for
> you to walk on"
>
> using a different tag may be appropriate, however

Which one, or do I have to invent a new one ? The problem is that
tagging standards change faster than the map can be reviewed. For
example, I did most of my mapping during 2008. At stage the access=no
tag indicated that "Access by this transport mode not permitted or
unsuitable". "dangerous" is one form of being unsuitable.

I'd much rather use the tag that is the best approximation of reality
and add a note if it is really necessary.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Software goes on, brain goes off...

2010-06-01 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Matt Williams  wrote:
> The road should simply be marked as having no pavement/sidewalk.
> Something like pavement=yes/no is a start at least. It's best to avoid
> subject assessments like how dangerous a road is.

Ideally, yes. But routing software can't possibly process the logic
correctly in cases like these. Some roads may not have a pavement, but
they are safe for pedestrians due to the lack of traffic. In other
cases extreme footways should not be used because of crime.

If you don't trust your own opinion, ask a few locals if they would
advise a tourist to walk there. If they say no, then tag them with
foot=no and add a note describing why you did it.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Software goes on, brain goes off...

2010-06-01 Thread Nic Roets
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 2:07 AM, John Smith  wrote:
> On 1 June 2010 09:52, Tim McNamara  wrote:
>> Still, even if they breached the duty of care, the injured woman will still
>> need to establish that the breach was a cause of her injury.
>
> The only thing that is new in all this is pedestrian routing, people
> have been following incorrect satnav routes for ages and usually
> driving into places they shouldn't as a result, people seem to love to
> be told what to do:
>
> http://www.intology.com/science-technology/satnav-causes-30-accidents-in-uk-each-year/

That's an interesting article. But the details are sketchy: 300,000
out of a total of how many ? Are there any controlled studies where
they establish cause and effect ? e.g. take away Satnav from some
drivers and see what happens, or insist that they use it and see what
happens.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Routing error Cloudmap.com or wrong tagging?

2010-05-27 Thread Nic Roets
On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 3:34 PM, Michael Eric Menk  wrote:
> The access in question clearly says YES, so I do not see the problem.

You're original email did not mention the vehicle type with which the
problem occurs. Is it pedestrian or bicycle ? If so, they do have a
bug in their code.

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