On 11/16/06, Jon Pruente <jdpruente@gmail.com> wrote:

I know of a guy who has built his own mapping engines and put together
location data from public sources.  He's pretty busy, but he might at
least be able to shed light on certains topics if needed.  Shannon
Larratt has built many location fetures into bmezine.com and it's
sister sites.  He's also recently gone Linux and runs Xubuntu on his
laptop.  He's been moving to UNIX from Windows for a while.  He's done
some really nifty custom work, including a worldwide location mapper,
etc.

One warning- that link is potentially NSFW!

I am of mixed feelings here- while ANY expansion of OSS is good, appearances count too.
Squicking the mundanes so deeply that they consider OSS to be entangled with
the BM set is a risk. Then again- there is a past example. In an attempt at image manipulation Edison proposed AC for judicial executions. , To prove his DC system as "Safe" and the competing AC system as "Deadly" Edison purchased alternators and donated them to prisons for use with electric chairs. The punch line however being that AC became the preferred current distribution method- even if only for practical considerations.
So much for political grandstanding and technology playing off against each other.
Let's hope I am being concerned about nothing.

Oren