What the hell, lets continue posting about Manifold. I know both the NASA World Wind team and others have been wondering how they heck Manifold can be allowed to use the Google when they aren’t. Well that has changed (via Bull’s rambles):
Just prior to the release of 7x, Google lawyers contacted manifold.net to complain that Google requires access to Google web offerings to be licensed in accordance with Google’s API. Because manifold.net does not create ISI drivers for Google we cannot say that such ISI drivers are or are not licensed under Google’s API, and we will not cooperate in any efforts to limit the rights of third party developers who are writing ISI drivers.
Although all ISI drivers for Google are created by third parties unrelated to manifold.net, we are concerned that our unwillingness to help Google stomp on such developers will expose 7x as a target. Therefore, to avoid legal complications that could delay the release of 7x, manifold.net has removed discussion of third party ISI drivers for Google from the Help documentation committed to the 7x DVD. It could be that if Google’s lawyers come to their senses this topic will be restored in future updates available by download as part of the automatic update notification system in 7x.
OK, so there you have it. But in true Manifold tradition, they can’t but not push their holier than thou attitude.
Even though this is not our fight, we therefore cannot in good faith any longer recommend use of ISI drivers for Google, even if such ISI drivers are duly licensed and approved by Google. If Google insists on total control, we cannot recommend them. Instead, we will encourage developers and users to move to the more open world of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.
Of course, a cynic might say it is easy for Manifold to delete discussion of Google image servers since in any event the Microsoft Virtual Earth image servers work so much better that nobody uses ISI drivers for Google anyway. That may be true, but nonetheless we feel that ethics and fair competition continue to be important and that moral support for third party developers is our duty.
Ah, feels so good to be better than everyone else. Of course they do point out what everyone else has noted, Virtual Earth is available and Microsoft seems to be more open than Google to sharing their data (of course we have no idea if there are contractual reasons Google can’t allow this). Those at the ESRI .NET SIG also saw ESRI combining ArcGIS Server and Virtual Earth in their new .NET API (which is to be included as a demo so everyone can see how to use Virtual Earth with ESRI server products).
21 responses so far ↓
1
Jason Birch
// Aug 24, 2006 at 7:22 pm
How does a lack of “ethics and fair competition” have anything to do with the license agreement that Google has in place around its data service?
Does this mean that because Manifold objects to users cracking their software and using it against the terms of the license agreement, that they are exhibiting unethical behaviour?
Just because Microsoft has chosen to, yet again, try to squash their competition with lost leaders doesn’t mean that Google’s business decisions are unethical or unfair.
Jason
2
GeoMullah
// Aug 25, 2006 at 3:58 am
Google Fanboy says, “I have to agree with Jason on this one.”
Angry Google Hater says, “F’ Google, they be evil.”
GeoMullah says, “‘Unethical & unfair’ are harsh words. There’s business to be done, and Google obviously has mechanisims in place to generate revenue from 3rd-parties for commercial use. As I suspect the Virtual Earth Team does too. . . Albeit, somewhere.
“So, everyone just chill. No one should get hurt. I’m only going to shoot the lot of you.”
3
glenn
// Aug 25, 2006 at 6:42 am
oh man, this is getting good! Dimitri will be up late responding to some of these comments I’m sure… nice digging James!
4
Doug
// Aug 25, 2006 at 10:18 am
“If Google insists on total control, we cannot recommend them. Instead, we will encourage developers and users to move to the more open world of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth”
I swear the man wants to be bought out by The Bill and is currying favor in advance so that once Manifold is owned by M$ Dimitri can be Steve Ballmer’s right hand man.
Steve B: “Dimitri write an artile praising Windows XP and bashing open source. throw in some stuff talking about how great ActiveX, OLE DB and ODBC, Microsoft Internet Information Server, COM, Visual Basic scripting, Microsoft Jscript (Javascript), Microsoft XML are!”
Dimitri: “Already done with great pleasure my masterrrrr….”
5
Bob
// Aug 25, 2006 at 11:42 pm
James, you make it sound like it was Manifold who was using Google’s data. This was not the case.
A disclaimer: I have a copy of Manifold and am quite happy with it. I do not work for Manifold, however, and am not affiliated with them in any way.
Manifold exposed an open API for bringing in live image data and this API was used by third-party developers who created modules connecting Manifold to Google Earth and a variety of other image data sources. People started using these third-party modules, which apparently got Google angry. From the excerpted article it looks like Google went to Manifold and yelled at them, and as a result Manifold cleaned up their documentation to make sure the words “Google” and “image servers” (Manifold-speak) never occur in the same sentence.
Now, you can perhaps poke at Manifold’s “holier than thou” attitude in other places, but in this particular case they seem to have a point. All Manifold did was expose an API (which, as I say above, can be used and is used to bring images from sites other than Google’s, including sites created with Manifold’s IMS first and foremost). The fact that Google made them take measures against possible “legal complications” over something that is not even Manifold’s doing, does not exactly speak in favor of Google. If I were Manifold, I would surely be annoyed by Google. There is no question I would regard Google as being significantly more evil than, say, Microsoft (who owns Virtual Earth, reachable from Manifold similarly to Google Earth) or Yahoo (who owns Yahoo Maps, also reachable from Manifold in the same way). Come to think of it, I do not need to be Manifold to see that Google *are* significantly more evil than Microsoft and Yahoo judging from what has happened… Disagree?
6
anonymous
// Aug 26, 2006 at 3:53 am
Well well, I must say that I saw this coming for a long time. Being a Manifold user myself, and I would say I belong to that group that most users outside of the Manifold sphere would call “Fan Boys”, but I am still able to separate the software, Manifold GIS, from the company, Manifold. And I have learned to take any official communication (which includes in my sense all utterings from Dimitri) with a heavy pinch of salt.
The company (Manifold) made a flawed decision when they created their “Open Source” API. They knew fair well from the very beginning that they would run into trouble by circumventing the official API of Google and just pull of the data directly posing as a browser client. It not only strips Google from any rights they have on their licensed imagery, but is also dangerous as it exposes naive Manifold users to legal issues as well when they discover this new functionality and cheerfully use it in their projects.
As most GIS users know there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to commercial data, which is what Google uses.
I think that Google did the only sensible thing by giving them a warning shot, and righty so.
And now they try to put the blame back on Google , which is the best bit, and just goes to show the spin that Manifold the company tries to put on. It is a sad affair that most people seem to fall for that propaganda, judging from the comments here.
7
John
// Aug 26, 2006 at 6:46 am
As said by Bob, the API created by Manifold is alive and well without Google’s data so, combining this with the obvious focus on Microsoft, I would be more inclined to think that Manifold just did not think through the implications of providing an API which can be used in a manner that would not please Google.
Never attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence (although in this case “incompetence” is perhaps too harsh, Google has gotten really psychotic lately).
Just another Manifold user. A pretty happy one, too (is this symptomatic or what? I am yet to meet an unhappy Manifold user… or perhaps they do not care to post).
8
John
// Aug 26, 2006 at 6:55 am
“I swear the man wants to be bought out by The Bill and is currying favor in advance so that once Manifold is owned by M$ Dimitri can be Steve Ballmer’s right hand man.”
Yeah, right. Company A (Manifold) rolls out an entire API and committs to supporting it in future versions of their products just to piss of company B (Google) so that company C (Microsoft) gets warm and fuzzy? Put down the crack pipe, dude, it looks like you are starting seeing things.
9
ChrisJ
// Aug 26, 2006 at 11:40 am
I find it ironic that Manifold’s “state-of-the-art” software only runs on Windows. With all the bashing of ESRI’s COM-based software stack, you’d think Manifold would support *nix-based OSs. I doubt any “highly educated” technologist would argue that Windows is technically superior to *nix or Mac OSX. Wouldn’t it make sense to port your superior GIS over to superior OSs?
10
Dimitri Rotow
// Aug 27, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Look, no need to make this any more complicated than it needs to be. It’s simple:
1. Manifold has always been focused exclusively on markets defined by Microsoft technologies. That’s where the money is, and to compete in those markets effectively you have to focus on them. So no need to dream up any stupid “Steve Ballmer” influence conspiracy theories. It’s enough to understand you have to work very hard in such competitive markets to win the prize.
2. It’s flattering ESRI folks have a lot of opinions and gossip about Manifold’s image server capability, but that is something Manifold has had for years and ESRI does not as yet have. Our community has discussed the ramifications of this, both as a matter of technology and ethics, for three years so until you have some real experience in this (as our community has), please don’t presume to judge our discussions on the matter. If there is any “holier than thou” attitude being dispensed, it is entirely from the ESRI observers offering judgements on matters of which they have no personal experience.
3. Microsoft’s Terraserver came first, years ahead of Google, so it was Microsoft that invented this segment and therefore, understandably, for those of us who react to modern technology of course all implementations were aimed at Microsoft. Not to make too fine a point of it, but it is absurd to suggest anything else might have been considered because there was nothing else, zero, other than Microsoft’s Terraserver in that great beginning. Google was the last to enter this segment. After Terraserver came Microsoft’s MapPoint web service, NASA World Wind and Yahoo. Pretty much simultaneously with Google Earth came Virtual Earth, but the latter had the benefit of being a third generation technology whilst Google Earth was a first effort. It’s no surprise that Microsoft has acquired a lot of valuable experience in this area and that people (like us) who have been working it for three years are attracted to leveraging that experience.
4. It’s well known and well documented how arose Manifold’s exposure of an API for image servers: For those with a taste for the occasionally acid comment, a good historical summary is at…
http://forum.manifold.net/Site/Thread.aspx?id=25493&ti=632919884905770000
…this summary arose from a thread launched by someone unable to use Search capabilities to see what was written over the course of years on the Web, but it nonetheless is a handy summary for those who have passed over the emergence of this important part of GIS over the last four years (from Terraserver on).
5. I trust that everyone reading this blog agrees that both the web and browers are evolving, and understands things like NASA World Wind, the Microsoft Virual Earth interfaces and Google Earth are all browsers, just for a wider class of data than old-fashioned text-only or text+image browsers.
After Terraserver there were many, hundreds or even thousands, of applications that expanded browsers into geographic browsing and also expanded websites into including geographic content. Some took very generic approaches, such as IE or Firefox + geographic browsing, some built more open browsers such as NASA World Wind and some built proprietary browsers like Google Earth that combined geographic browsing with more traditional text+image browsing. And tens of thousands of developers built everything in between, including applications, like Manifold, that included elements of geographic browsing.
The key idea now is that in the rise of Internet one of the great traditions most of us have admired is the notion that when companies have tried to launch monopolies by forcing people to use a proprietary browser to visit otherwise public web sites we have agreed that is an evil thing. For example, you wouldn’t accept any Microsoft efforts to prevent people from using, say, Firefox, to access the Microsoft MSDN knowledge base. If you don’t think that’s an evil thing, well, I’ve lost you right there. No point reading any further.
But if you agree that a core part of the public web is that people should be free to browse public web sites using whatever browser they want to use, well, then I think you should join me and everyone else in being outraged when companies try to stab that wonderful notion in the back. And, it should not matter what company it is.
The present discussion revolves around Google’s efforts to prevent people from using whatever browser they want to visit public (let me repeat, *public*) Google web sites that contain geographic content. Instead, Google wants to force people exclusively to use Google’s own proprietary browser or (same thing) Google’s proprietary licensed technology. Hotheads who want to shoot off opinions without reading (see the above URL) to learn context before they shoot off should pay special attention to this: we are not talking about proprietary, closed Google web sites. We are talking about open, public web sites. There is a difference.
Folks at Manifold think it is reprehensible that Google is trying to force exclusive use of Google’s own browser. So we castigate them and refuse to feature their technologies as we do other technologies in our gallery of third party players. If you are with us, fine. If you are not with us, that’s OK too. But at least we have the ethics to say where we stand on the matter. If you criticize us for that ethical position, you are taking sides as well and making it clear to all readers where you stand.
Note that Manifold makes no use of Google stuff whatsoever. At one point we did indeed show Google images on our web pages that talked about export to KML. Google complained we used Google images on our web site so we switched to Virtual Earth images. That’s actually (as the astute reader will immediately understand) a matter of disagreement on trademark of images used on a web site and nothing at all about how third parties use our image server capability (even Google would agree with that).
As anyone who has read the above cited URL can see, we are exclusively Microsoft, we created the ISI interfaces to solve a maintenance/upgrade issue with Microsoft and we don’t care about Google at all. If you use Google you deserve, in our opinion, whatever hassles you encounter (the price you pay for not following our advice to stick with Microsoft).
It is also important to note that Manifold does nothing with Google. We just expose an interface, like ODBC, that people can use however they want. The only image server connections built into Manifold are for Microsoft. Any discussion in our user manuals or web sites about image servers for other things is mention of third parties, and not a discussion about our own stuff. However, like just about every other software company on the planet when appropriate we do discuss the use of our software by third parties. No surprises there.
In Google’s case they are fine with us talking about third parties who sign a contract with Google. They’ve offered us business connections if we encourage third parties to go along with their programs. We’re not willing to do that. We’d rather stick with Microsoft, keep clean hands and not help support a Google effort to force people to use their proprietary browser.
Long way around to a conclusion, no? One of our conclusions is that this entire area of discussion arises from modern software capabilities that Manifold has and ESRI does not. There is a message in that: Manifold is three years ahead of ESRI in this area, and a big area of technology and ethics with which Manifold users have long been engaged is just popping up on the radar screens of blogs like this one. Again, a telling point.
A second conclusion is that when browser wars break out there are really two positions to take: either you are for open choice for visiting public web sites or you think it is OK for vendors to force people to use proprietary browsers. I agree it is odd that the Google crowd (seems to be a sure bet for being Opera and Firefox and other open browser supporters) feels OK with a reprensible Google policy and that Microsoft is cast in the role (unexpected by that crowd) of being the open browser, open software supporter, but that’s the way it is.
I guess the bottom line is that if you use ESRI none of this applies to you since ESRI doesn’t give you the capabilities under discussion. If you use Manifold and you don’t like the image server capability of Manifold, don’t use it. If you like it but have sworn fealty to Google, no problem. Cut your best deal with them and use their API and feel happy about kissing their boots. If, in contrast, you prefer your browsers open and your web sites open as well, use Virtual Earth and be glad that Microsoft provides an open alternative. It’s not any more complicated than that.
11
Jason Birch
// Aug 28, 2006 at 6:52 am
Dimitri,
Your comparison of this issue to Microsoft making MSDN only accessible via FireFox is spurious. There would be no problem if Manifold was enabling users to browse the entire content of the Google Maps website, in context.
The problem arises because you are enabling users to directly access the underlying (expensive, and only licensed for display via web) data that supports Google Maps. This is akin to hyperlinking another website’s images into your own pages, not giving them credit or revenue stream, and making them pay for the bandwidth.
The ISI drivers are not compatible with the Google Maps terms and conditions, and pages such as this one on your site are encouraging users to engage in illegal activity:
http://www.manifold.net/doc/700/linked_images_from_google_servers.htm
Jason
12
mrt
// Aug 28, 2006 at 8:14 am
What a logic! So, should Intel and AMD be held liable for providing the writers of malicious software with a lucrative environment in which they can launch their viruses? Or maybe that’s Microsoft who should be held liable, since it provides the aforementioned writers with the C++ compiler? That’s just silly.
13
Bob
// Aug 28, 2006 at 8:29 am
Actually, by Jason’s logic it’s Google themselves who should be held liable, because they enable (as in, make it possible via the normal web access protocols) users to directly access the underlying - expensive and licensed for display only - data that supports Google Maps. You know, this is akin to hyperlinking another website’s images into your own pages, not giving them credit or revenue stream, in that the terms of license obtained by Google do not allow Google to enable access to the data that supports Google Maps in this way…
Now, after you all stopped laughing, I am going to make another shocking revelation: I agree with this logic. If the terms of license obtained by Google are such that Google should limit access to the data, and Google do not limit access to the data, Google are in breach of the license and should be held liable for that. Seriously.
14
Bull_UK
// Aug 28, 2006 at 10:16 am
If google are so worried about breaching thier contract with thier imagery suppliers (Digital Globe etc.), which is what they claim is the reason behind all this, then they should also be telling all webite with screenshots or gmaps images to remove them (we were told to remove all google images from our forums by NASA, to keep google happy), and not just the big players like manifold and world wind. They seem to be selectively targetting the competition, or maybe they just don’t know thousands of websites and blogs have screenshots and imagery, wikipedia, googleearthblog, ogleearth… And yes it is in thier ToS “You shall not copy, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, translate, modify or make derivative works of the Software, geographical information,screen outputs or prints in whole or in part.”.
15
Jason Birch
// Aug 28, 2006 at 3:27 pm
I hate that I suffered from a moment of insanity and responded to the initial post. Anyway, since I’ve started, I feel obliged to continue…
I should have been more clear about what I meant by enable. The point isn’t that the ISI API makes it technically possible to perform this illegal action. That would not be a problem unless it was clear that the technology was specifically developed to circumvent intellectual property rights.
The point is that in their documentation Manifold has outlined how to use the Google Maps ISI drivers to perform this action which is in contravention of the Google Maps T&C. In this, they are aiding & abetting others in the theft of intellectual property, which would otherwise require considerable effort. From the above example, this is like Intel, AMD, or Microsoft providing documentation on how use a virus creation toolkit.
Anyway, satellite imagery is expensive data. I know that applications like Microsoft’s and Google’s have accustomed users to being able to access these with no apparent cost, but I am still surprised that people feel that they should have the right to these data outside of the conditions set by the providers.
This is neither here nor there, but my personal feeling is that screen shots of Google Maps on websites are likely covered by fair use doctrine.
Jason
P.S. Just for the record, I am a Manifold user, along with other proprietary and open source GIS software.
16
Dimitri Rotow
// Aug 28, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Jason,
You are arguing sincerely and I respect you for that, but you are making several assumptions that are not at all true.
First, consider:
“The point is that in their documentation Manifold has outlined how to use the Google Maps ISI drivers to perform this action which is in contravention of the Google Maps T&C.”
Not true. There has never been *one word* on any Manifold web site or any Manifold communication of any kind that has ever instructed anyone on how to create an ISI driver for Google, or that has suggested to anyone that they should use a Google API or any Google code at all, either within the Google T&C or not.
You are really selling the Google user community short when you write such stuff, because you are implying that somehow Google people had to get instruction from a bunch of Microsoft dorks like us before they could figure out how to connect to Google.
In point of fact, Google’s user community is highy fanatic, highly expert, knows more about Google than we ever will (even if we ever took it into our heads to depart from our well-known fealty to Microsoft) and has apparently created tens of thousands of “mash ups” (a vulger phrase if there ever was one…) with Google without any help or encouragement from Manifold.
In fact, it is the expenditure of a few billion dollars by *Google* that has successfully proliferated the Google Earth browser onto more than 100 million desktops worldwide, and it is the expenditure of those billions of dollars by Google that has convinced tens of thousands of highly talented engineers to start doing “mash ups” of all kinds connecting Google in every imagineable way to every imagineable application.
It is utterly preposterous and simply not believable that Manifold’s noting the work of such people in our small neck of the woods (and it is small compared to the enormous Google universe) could in any way “encourage” anything in comparison to the vast and powerful promotion exerted by Google itself.
I’d like to respectfully point out to both the Google community and the open source community that you can’t have it both ways. You cannot on the one side refer to Manifold as the “little Satan” as the vassal of Microsoft’s “great Satan” and then turn around and suggest that somehow we are also the font of open-source innovation for Google.
I mean, that’s just not how human nature works.
In point of fact, we really are Microsoft’s vassal (so to speak) and cheerfully so. We happen to believe in the Microsoft ecosystem and have been beavering away at it for years. We really did create the ISI interface to solve a maintenance and upgrade issue revolving around our initial use of Terraserver and our expected use of Virtual Earth. Anyone with software development experience can look at the history of what we did and why and immediately think, “yeah, I would have done the same thing.”
But doing so in a workmanlike manner means that once you open up those interfaces, well, all sorts of people with all sorts of different opinions from yours will be using them. That’s the way it works.
In the case of Google, their success in promoting development for Google has been so immense that there is no corner of the computing world that does not have its Google partisans. Even the Manifold user community includes many Google fanatics, so it’s no surprise that however much we as a company may be aimed at Microsoft the Google folks would take advantage of our open APIs to do their thing. And that’s OK. That is what open APIs are for.
Throughout Manifold there are many open connections expressly placed there so people can use the system as they see fit. Don’t like Microsoft scripting languages? No problem. Use the ActiveState languages to script in PERL or Python or roll your own engine to script in Ruby. Don’t like our choice of Oracle, SQL Server or DB2? No problem - use MySQL. Don’t like our choice of geocoding engines? That’s OK. Use the open geocoding server interface to use whichever engine you want.
Given that Google people are notoriously inclined to open source, Linux, making their own shoes, reading O’Reilly books on the computer equivalent of making their own shoes and so on (I’m teasing here… hotheads please calm down..:-), well it was the most obvious thing in the world that those highly talented and motivated Google people would do whatever they wanted. That’s OK and as it should be.
I for one think it is dishonest and a betrayal of open source work to suggest from the beginning, as Jason has done, that whatever such Google fans did is illegal or even unethical. That’s a pretty big slam on the ethics of the Google community. It’s a bit like suggesting that any open source work is automatically infringing. I strongly disagree.
To the contrary, I think that you should trust the Google community to know what they are doing and to react honestly to the impetus given them by Google itself.
For example, it has been widely discussed that none of the image server drivers use the Google API, so any suggestion that someone has ripped off Google code contrary to some T&C or some NDA is false.
Further, the precedent for these types of web sites to be considered public web sites was established years ago by Terraserver and the notion that the browers used to view them are forms of browsers as much as Opera or IE or Firefox are was well established by the first such browser, World Wind. Where do you think Google and all the other imitators got the idea from?
In point of fact, if Google wants in any way to keep any of this private and controlled they have a vast array of trivially-easy mechanisms to use. They don’t do that because they want to benefit from the public relations gesture of being “open” and they don’t want any hint of the true, proprietary control that they seek to limit uptake of their browser, Google Earth. Instead, they are promoting Google Earth under the misrepresentation that it is an “open” thing. That is crooked.
What is really going on here is yet another round of the browser wars. Google wants to control this next generation of content by controlling the browser. If they could force you not to visit Google web sites but through Google browsers they would do that. They are trying already by shooting out their Google toolbar for IE.
If you want to test the accuracy of what I write it is easy to see for yourself: create your own toolbar for IE that uses the same connections that Google’s toolbar does to the same public Google web sites and Google results. You’ll find yourself being tied to a stake by Google lawyers claiming you are trying to circumvent a proprietary, private Google interest.
They want exclusive control over the browser you use and the reason they want that is because they want to control Search. The next wave in geographic browsers is displaying search results not just in some adjunct window but in the geographic view itself. That’s what this is all about. To control that and to control the advertising revenue from such Search display in a geographic context, Google wants to force you to use its browser.
This is not a new trick, no more than when AOL tried to force people to use only an AOL-supplied browser to view AOL web sites. It’s perfectly understandable why Google wants to do it.
You may wonder why we are even in this fight as it is not our fight. The answer is we don’t like how Google tried to pressure us, and we don’t like no stinkin’ lawyer trying to prevent people from using whatever browser they want. And ultimately no matter how Microsoft we are or how exasperated we may be with Google fanatics cobbling up code to connect Manifold to whatever they want, well, at the end of the day they *are* our users and they *are* doing something cool for the product and we don’t like it when some wretched Goliath of a Google tries to stomp them.
I admit for now there is not much we can do about it as a practical matter. But over time we can apply ourselves to doing all in our power to help Microsoft’s Virtual Earth emerge as the ultimate winner in this. Google may feel smug about cutting off NASA World Wind at the knees and even forcing a bow from the notoriously truculent bunch at Manifold, but we think they will find Microsoft a much tougher competitor.
Note, by the way, that Microsoft has especially clean hands in all this. For a long time now the Virtual Earth developer’s web site has featured step-by-step instructions for bypassing Microsoft’s own API and processes to enable direction connection of and usage of NASA World Wind with Microsoft content in a totally open way, absolutely free of regulation by Microsoft.
Microsoft also provides imagery without watermarks, does not attempt to kill off IP addresses of active users, provides much better looking imagery in large scales, often provides more detailed imagery in higher resolution and does a vastly better job of supporting developers. They also have much better integration with software of interest to enterprises and businesses. Even if Google weren’t acting like a bunch of thugs, it would still be a compelling case to prefer Virtual Earth.
17
Bull_UK
// Aug 29, 2006 at 11:14 am
Well said Dimitri, people seem to forget that google is a company that needs to make a profit (which they do mainly from advertising revenue), they are not releasing GE etc. just because they love us and are not ‘evil’ they are releasing this stuff to make money.
I’m not anti-google, I use google search and I love gmail, what I don’t like is their two faced attitude, and heavy handed tactics. I believe they contacted NASA and Manifold directly instead of the people actually breaching thier ToS so they don’t look bad, not to save us having to face nasty lawyers.
18
adam
// Jan 24, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Just paid our yearly maintenance contract to ESRI for $9000. I also just order Manifold 7x. What the heck I’ll give it a try. Besides I went to kindergarten in Carson City……
19
josh
// Jan 25, 2007 at 6:39 am
just make sure you read the help manual as Manifold instructs, or invest in the gisadvisor.com training. Otherwise, you may have a tough time getting started with it, and give up before you give it a fair shake.
20
Love
// Apr 20, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Dimiri- you guys got to start sitting yoga or something man. life is too short for all that pain and bitterness. the whole world ain’t against you, they just need help seeing the light. The great Al Sharpton said once, people don’t react so much to what you say, but how you say it. Just start thinking of marketing as a tricky technical problem. You’ll get there. Or better yet, just take yourself out of the equation.
21
KoS
// Apr 21, 2007 at 6:48 am
I couldn’t help making a comment……great in the same sentence as Al Sharpton….hahaha That is a good one. Thanks for the laugh early in the morning. He’s like everyone else now-n-days, in the public arena, he has as much dirt and baggage as the rest of them. Most people seem to over look it.
KoS
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