Tis true, KML (Keyhole Markup Language, as developed by Google for use with their Google Earth app) has been adopted as an OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standard, as reported on the Google blog and the OGC news page. Being a simple markup language like HTML, KML is a fantastically easy way to represent spatial information and is being used by an increasing number of apps not only to publish to Google Earth but to transfer data between systems and serve information on demand. OGC standardisation of the format is the icing on the cake for what has turned out to be a really useful format. Well done Google!
Yearly Archives: 2008
KML comes of age
Posted in GIS, Research interests, technology
Tagged API, GIS, Google, Keyhole Markup Language, KML, markup, OGC, Open Geospatial Consortium, standard
Copyright theft on a grand scale
You could see photos you take of your family and kids, or of a family vacation, used in a magazine or newspaper without your permission or payment to you. You would have to pay to register your photos, all of them, in every new registry in order to protect them. Say the average person takes 300 photos per year (I take a lot more than that). If a registry only charges $5 per image, that is a whopping $1,500 to protect your photos that are protected automatically under the current laws. If there are three registries, protecting your images could cost an amazing $4,500. Not to mention the time it would take to register every photo you take. Plus, you will also have to place your copyright sign on every photo.
From an article in Animation World Magazine where the author describes some horrendously bad legislation being created in the USA whereby an artist will have to register each and every artwork they produce in order to achieve the same levels of protection under copyright law currently afforded. What is more worrying (from my UK pov) is that Europe is noted as looking at similar legislation. If this happens, i would have to register each and every one of my Flickr photos in order that they can be listed as my copyright and not treated as ‘orphaned works’ and therefore free of copyright. Ridiculous! I am currently protected by the current copyright laws and therefore stand to lose protection not gain by such proposed legislation. Not to mention the logistical nightmare of maintaining registers of copyrighted works and potential for errors.
Hopefully this will turn out to be another example of the US legislators failing to understand basic principals (remember how it always used to be the way that to win an election, you needed more votes rather than more friends and relatives in positions of power?) and our legislators in Europe will not go down the same route (if only because they are arguing over the straightness of cucumbers or how dangerous barometers are). But then again, there’s nothing like a bit of new legislation to make it look like you’re doing something useful…
Stonehenge excavations
There aren’t many folk who can claim to have dug at Stonehenge (and I’m not one of them!) but I was lucky enough to see the ongoing excavations first hand this week. And i was only saying recently about getting up there to take some pictures! What a unique site and what a small trench; archaeology in a nutshell (or fish tank as one correspondant described it as groups of academics were shown round all day on Wednesday, completely diverting the site directors from their activities). Thanks to the directors for arranging for there to be such an open day (and providing such a truly fantastic opportunity for us researchers). Indeed the whole access to information side of things is exemplary: There are also big screens in the Timewatch tent showing live images from the trench providing even greater access not to mention the Smithsonian Magazine blog and BBC video blogs.
As regards the dig itself, it was interesting to see the bluestone socket and how deep it was (massive compared to the sarsen sockets, perhaps indicative of techniques more commonly applied to timber posts than stone settings) and entertaining to hear how pottery had been discovered in the backfill of the previous excavations (doh!). I was also surprised to learn that the concrete used in recent history to, ahem, shore up the monument was actually reinforced with steels, hence no decent magnetometer results within the circle. This recent history is equally as interesting as the prehistory!
The amount of disturbance to the bluestones is also fascinating and does suggest there is something special going on with them and different from other stones used in Stonehenge and other stone circles. Combined with the observation that most of the bluestones have in fact been removed totally from the site, this would suggest they were important enough to some people to invest considerable effort in their removal. And of course, transporting them from Wales in the first place was hardly a casual decision, involving considerable investment of time and energy. The idea that they had mysterious healing powers would go some way to explaining this unusual activity, why they were brought to the site in the first place and their subsequent role in activities at the site up to the present day.
Posted in Archaeology, Research interests
Tagged Archaeology, Darvill, dig, excavation, Stonehenge, Wainwright
