[Live-demo] Introduction

[Jonathan Roach]

Hamish,

You make a very compelling point.

however my intentions of experimenting with a 64 bit environment are to assist people buying estate of the art hardware to get their value for the money.

now days users are buying estate of the art computer hardware (computers with multiple processing power), but there are very few software applications that can support a 64 bit environment. most application currently available can work in a 64 bit environment but they still do not use effectively the hardware resources available. Mostly, the Open Source Community have higher chances of making 64-bit software application. This will mean value for money for the low budget customer. Because developers of open source community are not subject to the politics and marketing strategies that a private company is subject to, Open source Software effectively working in a 64 bit environment will give the open source community the upper hand over the private companies making open source application more appealing to a low budget customer and others in the hunt for new software technologies.

I work for a local government and our service provider, for mapping purposes, is Pitney Bowes MapInfo. MapInfo is great product but we have reach it's limits, as organizations that i work for is becoming more aware of how important GIS is for its core business, request are increasing. these are logical and reasonable requests but the program MapInfo has reached its limit and we are starting to run out of solutions. When we brought this to the attention of the Pitney Bowes Mapinfo, they simply did not have an answer and our request was thrown to the too hard basket. because they are not concern with problems of customer where they are not making any money on.

and so as Cameron Shorter has made a point on several presentations of his we are stack with that vendor. but if open source software could offer a more appealing solution, a low budget customer, such as ourselves, could benefit from these solutions offered by the Open Source community, plus the support from companies such as Lisa-soft, would make it very appealing to customers.

specially if it attracts the eye of a technically knowledgeable IT Manger of any organization who is starting to run out of options.

but In response to your statements, Hamish, the live DVD is a demonstration only, if a customer signs up to purchase the software from the Open Source Community they will be installing it locally in their machines. not running it from the DVD.

I think the Live DVD is a great idea for demonstration purposes only but nothing else. but it should provide the option of a 64-bit environment. if the software can operate well in the 64 bit environment then as you well state it, Hamish, 32 bit PCs will be around for the next 5-7 years, working in a 64-bit environment puts the Open Source Community Software Applications 5 to 7 years ahead of the market making us yet more appealing to not only to the low budget user but also to every one else.

and for individual in the GIS industry opens a door of knowledge that not many of us would currently dare to step into because it is too risky.

Regards

Jonathan K. Roach
Geographic and Land Information Systems Officer
Division: Land Use and Sustainability
Branch: Strategic Land Use Planning (Design and Technical Group/GIS)
Manly Council
Phone: (02) 9976 - 1612
E-Mail: jonathan.roach at manly.nsw.gov.au

-----Original Message-----
From: Hamish [mailto:hamish_b at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 23 November 2010 3:13 PM
To: live-demo at lists.osgeo.org; Jonathan Roach
Cc: oo7bone at bigfoot.com
Subject: Re: [Live-demo] Introduction

Jonathan wrote:
> Particularly I would like to test in a 64 bit environment

Hi and welcome.


for what it's worth & as is my understanding, despite common
perceptions and advertising campaigns, 64bit is not magically
faster and better than 32bit. fundamentally it just means that
the addressable space goes from 2^32 bytes (a couple of gigs) to
2^64 (computer with that limit hasn't been invented yet).
Integers can count higher by using twice the number of bits to
store themselves in, and that's all.

So 64bit is great for dealing with huge geo-data files (LFS),
although most modern 32bit operating systems can deal with eg
>2gb files. WindowsXP famously doesn't reach it's theoretical
limit of 4gb RAM, and the program saving/reading the file has
to use the right variable type (eg off_t) in the memory address
to be 32bit LFS-capable as well.

actually if huge files/memory requirements are not an issue for
you, you might very well be better off sticking with 32-bit as
it only needs to push half of the I/O bandwidth!

On the other hand, while amd64 CPUs runs 32bit quite well, the
CPUs will, with time, be tuned for 64bit instruction sets.
..maybe the increased number of registers helps more than
anything else to unclog processing bottlenecks?


So, unless working with really massive datasets is a goal for
our demo DVD, I'm not entirely convinced that it gains us
anything useful, but it does make the dvd unusable on xx% of
the computers out there, and like it or not, 32 bit PCs will
be around for the next 5-7 years.



regards,
Hamish





This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. Re-transmitting or re-publishing the content of this email in any media format without the express permission of the Author is strictly prohibited.

If you have received this email in error please notify Manly Council immediately. Information transmitted via email may be subject to corruption by the process. Information contained in this email should not be relied upon where loss, damage or injury is possible. Verified information should be obtained in writing directly from the authorised Council officers.