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[Roger L. Costello
> It just dawned on me that I have been locked into this mental pattern:
> "distance is the critical value and that value must be maintained
> between the sender and recipients". Let's change that mental pattern.
> (Has anyone read Lateral Thinking by Edward DeBono?)
>
> Let's stop making distance the critical value but rather make position
> the critical value! For example, rather than the recipient application
> behaving in this fashion:
>
> "when the distance is 400 then I will do xyz",
>
> instead the recipient application deals with the position directly and
> thus behaves like this:
>
> "when the position is {lat=39.345, lon=78.410, hae="12000"}
> then I will do xyz".
>
> [hae = height above ellipsoid]
>
> By shifting the applications' focus away from distance to position we
> get multiple benefits:
> - we get all the benefits of interchanging "high value data" (which
> I described in my last message)
> - plus, we get the confidence that the sender and receiver will
> be dealing with the same data
>
What is really important is so context-dependent. Let us say that we are
sending data on cars on a road. The road may have tight curves, and one
critical parameter is the road distance to the car ahead (in the future,
this may be possible an even desirable). Then position of the one car in
itself would not be very helpful, but the distance would be.
Since the data may get used differently by different users, it would seem
that a case could be made for sending the data in the form best for the
immediate consumer or producer. This would fit in with Tony's remarks about
financial messages.
Cheers,
Tom P
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