Hello,
Thought you'd want to know as of yesterday GRASS GIS is now at version
6.0 after two years in development. Mac OS X, MS-Windows, and Linux
distributions are available. Oh, for those of you who don't know this
product its a FREE (open-source) commercial grade GIS (Geographic
Information System).
Details can be found here:
http://grass.itc.it/announces/announce_grass600.html
Cheers,
Doug
...from:
http://hardware.silicon.com/storage/0,39024649,39127655,00.htm
Doctors turn to iPods and open source to cut costs
February 07 2005
by Jo Best
Apple is doctors' orders for storage
While Apple is riding high on the sales of the iPod, the iconic music
player is morphing into a business tool: radiologists at the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), are teaming the devices with an open
source platform to help the medical community cut costs.
UCLA's Dr Osman Ratib, whose background is in medical imaging, wanted
to find a way to sidestep the $100,000 workstations needed to view high
resolution images that required 3D rendering. With help from programmer
and fellow radiologist Dr Antoine Rosset, he created OsiriX, an open
source application, to enable radiologists to teleconference with the
images on Mac desktop systems.
"The platform has similar functionality [to the high-end workstations],
it's accessible to the rest of the medical community and you don't have
to spend $100,000, $200,000 to view the images," Ratib said.
He added that he was a "strong advocate" of the open source
development model. The doctors were able to build the software using
ready-made components and add the environment and interface themselves.
"It took nine months to create... the platform. It very quickly took
off," he said. "Before we'd showed it in any meeting, we had hundreds
and very soon thousands of users."
When it came time to find a way to store the high-res images, Ratib
turned to another Apple staple - the iPod.
Ratib told silicon.com: "It was difficult finding enough space on the
hard disc to keep image sets... They don't fit on discs, they don't fit
on memory sticks."
"It's amazing - [with iPods] people are carrying around 60GB in their
pocket when I don't even have 60GB on my computer," he said. "That's
the beauty of adopting consumer technology."
As well as using the iPod for storing the image sets, Ratib adapted
the software to cope with the iPod photo after its release in December,
giving medical staff a "cute, sexy" way to show images to other
personnel.
Despite warnings from analysts that all removeable storage - including
the iPod - is a security risk - Dr Ratib said that using an iPod
doesn't present an additional inherent security risk.
"It's not the device, it's how you use it... I don't think an iPod has
any different risk to any informatics device. We strongly recommended
to anonymise the data," Ratib said.
"When [users] are outside the institution, they can be compliant or
not, depending on their behaviour. It's not different to copying it to
CD or memory discs."
While Ratib described the medical profession as "a little more
traditional in adopting technology," the software is also enabling
medical workers to start working remotely; the software is compatible
with Apple's videoconferencing software, so physicians can see and
share medical images.
"We rigged the software to mimic the camera... it basically shows
what's on your screen" to other iChat users, Ratib said.
"We were that close to having Steve Jobs presenting it as a feature in
the San Francisco keynote," Ratib said.
