Category: #OSE Open Source Everything

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Patrick Meier: Crowdsourcing the Evaluation of Post-Sandy Building Damage Using Aerial Imagery

Geospatial
Patrick Meier

Crowdsourcing the Evaluation of Post-Sandy Building Damage Using Aerial Imagery

My colleague Schuyler Erle from Humanitarian OpenStreetMap  just launched a very interesting effort in response to Hurricane Sandy. He shared the info below via CrisisMappers earlier this morning, which I’m turning into this blog post to help him  recruit more volunteers.

Schuyler and team just got their hands on the Civil Air Patrol’s (CAP) super high resolution aerial imagery of the disaster affected areas. They’ve imported this imagery into their Micro-Tasking Server MapMill created by Jeff Warren and are now asking volunteers to help tag the images in terms of the damage depicted in each photo. “The 531 images on the site were taken from the air by CAP over New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts on 31 Oct 2012.”

Click on Image to Enlarge

To access this platform, simply click here: http://sandy.hotosm.org.

Click on Image to Enlarge

“For each photo shown, please select ‘ok’ if no building or infrastructure damage is evident; please select ‘not ok’ if some damage or flooding is evident; and please select ‘bad’ if buildings etc. seem to be significantly damaged or underwater. Our *hope* is that the aggregation of the ok/not ok/bad ratings can be used to help guide FEMA resource deployment, or so was indicated might be the case during RELIEF at Camp Roberts this summer.”

A disaster response professional working in the affected areas for FEMA replied (via CrisisMappers) to Schuyler’s efforts to confirm that:

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GI Wilson: Maps for Post-Sandy Recovery – Good, Bad, & Ugly – Comment by Robert Steele

Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, IO Mapping
Col GI Wilson, USMC (Ret)

We always have a map problem…I know you have known this for yrs and yrs and been the single voice in the map wilderness calling out….I wonder who got all those old Soviet maps after the fall…..we have never solved this problem…we just think we have. yes…No…?

After Sandy, Intelligence Agencies Scramble To Feed Maps, Data To Rescuers

Colin Clark

AOL Government, 30 October 2012

Click on Image to Enlarge

As FEMA, firemen, police and the National Guard wade into the devastation visited upon us by Hurricane Sandy, many of them are using maps and other information made available to them by intelligence agencies.

While intelligence analysts and their technical specialists usually spend their time targeting bad guys and helping troops plan to get them, some of them have gotten the rare and welcome chance to help their own countrymen at home several times since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans.

The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency provides most of the support to civil authorities during disasters. It takes photos, infrared and other data from satellites and airplanes and builds them into remarkably detailed and accurate maps.

Read full article.

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Rickard Falkvinge: Epic Global Copyright Case Goes to US Supreme Court

Knowledge, Politics
Rickard Falkvinge

The Scary Spectre Of Perpetual IPR

Posted: 31 Oct 2012 10:33 AM PDT

Activism – Wendy Cockcroft:  The nightmare scenario of perpetual copyright approaches. The Supreme Court is hearing Kirtsaeng V Wiley, the case of an entrepreneurial Thai student who purchased his textbooks from his native land and imported them into the United States, taking advantage of the price differential. At issue is the question of whether or not you own what you buy. If Wiley wins outright, goods manufactured abroad could actually enjoy copyright protection indefinitely.

Mathematics graduate Supap Kirtsaeng was frustrated that there was such a massive difference between the prices of the textbooks he needed for his course that he arranged to import them from his native Thailand. Relatives purchased the books and sent them over. Then he realised he could make money doing this so he asked them to send more so he could sell them on eBay, making profits of over a million dollars. Wiley found out and sued.

There is a separate provision of U.S. copyright law that prohibits the importation into the United States, “without the authority of the owner of copyright,” of copies of a work “acquired outside the United States.” – Slate

This is what got Kirtsaeng into trouble. He owned what he bought, via his relatives in Thailand. As soon as they entered the country, Wiley had ownership and Kirtsaeng required a license. The law is unambiguous:

(1) Importation.—Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. – Importation and Exportation, US Copyright Law

But so is First Sale Doctrine, which Kirtsaeng used as his defense:

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Richard Stallman: Free Software Supporter Issue 55

Software
Richard Stallman

Free Software Supporter

Issue 55, October 2012

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update — being read by you and 63,183 other activists. That's 1,414 more than last month!

View this issue online here:

El Free Software Supporter estará disponible en castellano a partir de mañana (1ro de noviembre). Para ver la versión en castellano haz click aqui:

Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos números del Supporter en castellano, haz click aquí:

Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your web site.

Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues at http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter.

Multilingual? Send translations of the Supporter to campaigns@fsf.org.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Free Software Supporter available in Spanish!
  • GNUs trick-or-treat at Windows 8 launch
  • Nominate your free software heroes
  • Happy Ada Lovelace Day!
  • GNU MediaGoblin offers what you've been missing in an Internet media-sharing system
  • Jeremy Allison on why Samba switched to GPLv3
  • Your right to own, under threat
  • Update on the effort to defeat Restricted Boot
  • Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
  • Copyright Office fails to protect users from DMCA
  • Summer 2012 trip to Europe: Photos from InterTice, in Marly-le-Roi
  • LulzBot AO-100 3D printer now FSF-certified to respect your freedom
  • LibrePlanet featured resource: Windows 8 Group
  • GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 13 new GNU releases!
  • GNU Toolchain update
  • Richard Stallman's speaking schedule
  • Thank GNUs!
  • Take action with the FSF

Free Software Supporter available in Spanish!

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Andrea Pitasa: Hypercitizenship & New Directions in Goverance and the Law

Knowledge
Prof. Andrea Pitasi

Hypercitizenship and the Management of Genetic Diversity. Sociology of Law and the Key Systemic Bifurcation Between the RING Singularity and the Neofeudal Age

Andrea Pitasi

Associate Professor at the Gabriele D’Annunzio University, Chieti and Pescara, Italy.

Abstract

This essay is essentially theoretical and is focused on the allocative function of the legal systems to attract/reject different capitals according to their procedures to shape norms and laws. This function of the legal systems is pivotal in our times as humankind is before a systemic and evolutionary bifurcation between the heideggerian Gegnet of a strategic, high speed convergence (i.e. Singularity) among robotics, informatics, nanotechonologies and genetics (RINGs) – which is going to reshape the human life concerning its life quality styles and standards especially regarding health and environment matters- and the so called Neofeudal Scenario (NS) supported by whom the Industrial Model failed and the only way to save humankind and its environment would be a kind of trip back to a Medioeval life style inspired by slowness and austerity.

This essay provides an overview of the most important and recent international references about the two alternatives of the bifurcation and describes a potential paradigm shift inside the systemic approach to reframe the conceptual map of global change through a systemic epistemology of the sociology of law.

Source Paper Online (March 2011)  Rivista di Criminologia, Vittimologia e Sicurezza – Vol. V – N. 3 – Settembre-Dicembre 2011

EXTRACTS:

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John Steiner: IMF Working Paper The Chicago Plan Revisited (Eliminate Debt to Banks, End Credit Leverage, Governments Control Money)

03 Economy, Economics/True Cost
Click on Image to Enlarge
John Steiner

Abstract: At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.

Working Paper at IMF Web Site

Safety Copy: IMF Chicago Plan Revisited

Phi Beta Iota:  The radical sensibility of this paper, which essentially ends the reign of financial terrorism by Goldman Sachs et al, certainly suggests that in 2011, when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was set up by a maid later found to have been paid, there was already a major schism between Wall Street and the IMF–or among the IMF member states.  The paper is breathtakingly brilliant, with all due credit to its antecedents, and we can only hope that the current head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, will make this the centerpiece of her administration.  The other half is the Automated Payment Transaction Tax (APT), which not only doubles or triples government revenue, but also eliminates tax codes and other regulatory means by which legislatures and executives extort money

See Also:

IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers

Balanced Budget And Comprehensive Tax Reform Made Simple ? The Automated Payment Transaction Tax (Forbes.com, 28 October 2012)

Hotel releases CCTV of DSK chamber maid reporting ‘rape' to colleagues and their high-five at centre of ‘set-up' scandal

The Global Banking ‘Super-Entity’ Drug Cartel: The “Free Market” of Finance Capital

Goldman, Wall Street and Financial Terrorism