NOAA Adopts New Net Policy

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has adopted a new policy which applies to provision of all National Weather Service environmental information, including forecasts, warnings, and observations. In June, /. reported that NOAA was taking comments on the proposed policy. Hundreds of Slashdotters responded. And it made a difference: NOAA will make its data and products available in internet-accessible, vendor-neutral form and will use other dissemination technologies, e.g. satellite broadcast, NOAA Weather Radio, and wireless, as appropriate. Congrats to the Slash community for making a difference and helping to set US Govt policy.

free weatherbug?

Does this mean someone could write a free version of weatherbug that doesn't include the annoying spyware and registration? That'd be nice.

Re:free weatherbug?

Just get yourself the WeatherFox extension for Mozilla Firefox to use instead. That way not only is the code of it free (as in beer and freedom), but also the updates come from the Weather Channel and not the Weather Channel rejects that end up working for WeatherBug.

Re:free weatherbug?

I just corresponded with Jon, the developer of ForecastFox. I work as a contractor at The Weather Channel, and was surprised that they had objected to the name 'WeatherFox'. Jon explained that it was the owner of the domain name weatherfox.com that objected, not TWC.

TWC is actually a huge supporter of open source software, to the point of providing full time employment for a FreeBSD kernel developer. We've directly funded some other open source projects too, and try to give back in lots of ways.

Re:free weatherbug?

Sure, I'll write one but it'll use Clippy. "You seem to be getting hit by a PYA hurricane."

Re:free weatherbug?

Dude! That's awesome! Just another reason why I love The Weather Underground! I looked high and low for a simple weather page with a radar image that I could display on my Treo 600, and I found it [wunderground.com].

The system works!!!

Slashdot even got an honorable mention [noaa.gov] in the NOAA writeup (third paragraph)!

I'm happy because my concerns were addressed. I was afraid that the proposed policy was going to give commercial interests the ability to reqeust the NOAA discontinue a service without review, meaning that if weather.com didn't like the ability of the NWS to issue point forecasts they could behind-the-scenes ask for it to be ended. The modified policy now states they will "Establish... orderly processes for seeking input and suggestions to create, modify, or discontinue products and services".

It's a cool feeling to be a part of a process that actually seems to have worked to our advantage for a change.

Re:The system works!!!

At least wxunderground.com will let you see the fleshed-out NWS scientist commentaries on the weather forecasts, along the lines of "two of the models predict X, but Model A predicts not X, and it seems to be more accurate this time of year, so I'm going with the Model A.", etc.

The NWS/Accu-Trak/TWC reports are what the weather puppets on TV/Radio read anyways. Not too many actually bother trying to interpret things on their own anymore. Tom Skilling @ WGN comes to mind.

If you remember wx.purdue.edu in the old days, this was probably the most awesome weather information site available (also had wx.washington.edu, etc.). Well, the atmospheric sciences people I think got tired of hosting these public wx sites ($$$), and they went non-public in the DotCom days, but now it's in a commercial form of wxunderground.com.

Weather.com's stuff just sucks.

Re:The system works!!!

You can find this stuff pretty easily from NOAA if you take a look around. I'm a broadcaster, and I look at these every day when I'm preparing my forecasts. We get prepared weather from a commercial provider, but I find it to be severely lacking, because the community my station serves has weather that can be quite different, depending upon where you are. During the winter, you can go from just rain to a foot of snow within 40 miles.

Here's the site [noaa.gov] I visit every day. Take a look at things like the "Area Forecast Discussions." While they're a bit cryptic to read, they give you a better picture than the limited local forecast.

Re:The system works!!!

Yup, I can vouch for that. While I am not a broadcaster, I am a hardcore weather nerd. I visit the local [noaa.gov] forecast discussion daily. It offers the details that you simply cannot get anywhere else. During the spring/early summer months, the forecast discussion pages offer a *gold mine* of information on where the severe weather will be. Depending on how closely the models agree with eachother, I can usually get enough advance notice to make an eight hour drive to see some action.

Government not a lost cause yet

This just goes to show that not all hope is lost in participatory government. I know I get frustrated at times with how much clout corporations have in government operations, but every now and again I get a little glimmer of hope.

Re:Government not a lost cause yet

Ironically, the bureaucracy apparently listens better than actual elected officials!

Well...

Least they listen every once in a while. Still, it's good to see that at least ONE agency remembers that the people are supposed to run the government, not the other way around.

NOAA's electronic survival

So, since "Hundreds of Slashdotters responded..." and NOAA both kept functioning and was able listen to the comments, would it be safe to say that they weathered the storm?

Ok, now what about

all the hot air in DC?
Can we get some action on that?

See?

Not every *AA is evil!

We'll see how long...

this lasts.

All it will take is someone from TWC or some of the other commercial repackagers of NWS information who happens to have been a good RNC/TeamW contributor to put a whisper in Karl Rove's ear that NOAA is out of line here, that those commie freeniks should have to pay for the information, and it will then fall under some blanket of the US PATRIOT Act, National Security, DMCA, etc., so that their handle on the data from NOAA/NWS is impenetrable for the untermenschen (ie., the rest of us).

NOAA & EAS

It can never be emphasized enough how utterly valuable a SAME [noaa.gov] equipped weather radio can be. They do not just allow you to get up to the minute weather reports, but they also act as your first warning of any kind of serious emergency in your area.

Warning sirens are only intended to notify people outdoors, and TVs and radios are only useful if you are awake, the unit is on and you are within earshot and paying attention at the time.

When NOAA or an emergency management agency (NOAA allows them to utilize the system without running the transmissions by them first) sends out a warning message, it is proceeded by what sounds like intermittent static. In fact, the system is sending out a burst of number sequences that are decoded by SAME equipped radios that compare the number sequence to that which the user has previously entered. If they do not match, the radio ignores the message, if they do match however, a generally ear-piercing alarm sounds while the radio interprets the alert code and displays the corresponding text message before the computer voice announcement (or real person if the situation warrants it) from the NOAA station begins to broadcast. The process takes about 10 seconds (this is to give you a chance to get closer to the radio before the voice warning begins).

Here is a complete list of all of the emergency codes [weather.gov]

They are not as cheap as a clock radio, but they are worth every penny. I'm still astonished when I come across people who live in tornado-prone areas who don't buy them despite their financial ability to do so and their fear of dangerous weather.

Now....

If we could only get that kind of voice on the issues of copyright and patents!!

GREAT!! Who do we THANK?!

We should write them some nice 'thank you' letters!

I missed this story and acting on it, but if someone with some political savvy could direct myself and others to the people who listened (and those who didn't) to ./'ers input and made decisions with our ideas in mind it would be great!

Relevance of Slashdot

It is true that a lot of power in Democracy (and probably other forms as well) is given to those that show up. It looks like Slashdot did. But before we pat ourselves on the back, I found an interesting comment when I was scanning the FairweartherComments3.pdf, page 332, it was from the Director of Sales-Media of Accuweather Inc who was also in support of rejecting the changes, citing that it would break a 60 year understanding on the line between what work was done by the private and publich sector.

Re:Relevance of Slashdot

an interesting comment when I was scanning the FairweartherComments3.pdf, page 332, it was from the Director of Sales-Media of Accuweather Inc

Actually that comment is almost difficult to miss, considering that it appears no less than SIXTY FOUR TIMES! Accuweather engaged in a spam campaign.

They apparently gave their employees a form letter to send in. The form letter appears to have been minorly revised from the initial comment to the final round of submissions, but the letter remains essentially intact. Virtually all sumbmitted the form letter intact, I think only one or two submitters bothered to add on a personal note. A number of them even comically wound up copy/pasting it with ">" at the beginning of each line, as email commonly does when quoting. Chuckle.

It first appears in comment 227. It then appears as comments: 1120 1211 1213 1215 1217 1219 1220 1223 1224 1225 1226 1227 1229 1230 1231 1232 1235 1236 1237 1286 1307 1322 1334 1336 1339 1340 1341 1344 1346 1347 1348 1349 1352 1353 1355 1361 1367 1368 1369 1371 1372 1373 1390 1399 1401 1403 1409 1411 1411 1412 1414 1417 1420 1422 1428 1451 1454 1455 1458 1459 1464 1565 1469.

Most of them are officially signes with an "AccuWeather employee" tag, but undoubtedly every single one derives for AccuWeather.

As far as I can see their only arguments are
(1) they want the old policy to remain
(which isn't really a reason to retain the old policy)
(2) The new policy will "disadvantage the American public" because "It can negatively impact job growth and corporate stability".

I would say "job growth" is a bad thing and harmful to the economy when it is accomplished through supression of information and duplication of work.

Nor is "corporate stability" itself a valid goal. Business live and die on actually satisying unmet the needs of the public. You do not artifically create or maintain an "unmet need" restricting existing publicly funded information. If Accuweather wants the government out of the "weather business", then fine, they should be denied any government funded, government created, or gorventment gathered information as well. Let AccuWeather launch their own satallites and operate countless ground stations themselves.

The increased availablility of information information increases the opportunities for new businesses to crop up and utilize that information and to add value to that information. Corporate instability is a good thing, survival of the fittest constantly struggling to actually fulfill NEEDED work, rather than surpression to artificially create a need.

-

33% of response were from Slashdot

There were a total of 1473 comments, of those 490 were submitted by Slashdoters, according to the linked-from URL. This is 33.26%, which on the surface seems like a significant impact, but when you look a little closer you'll see that the #s are not quite as impressive as they seem. Here's the breakdown

63 - In Soviet Russia the weather updates you.
19 - Notices that this service is already provided by Goatse.cx
3 - Requests to add a feature that notifies you anytime Natalie Portman comes within 50 meters of hot grits.
16 - Pondering what a beowulf cluster of these might be like.
48 - Blasting the NOAA because Microsoft is secretly behind bad weather.
27 - Claimed the request was a dupe and cited existing services provided by the NOAA.
16 - Only old Koreans use the weather.
19 - Claims that "1 0wnz d4 w34th3r cuz 1m s0 133t"
193 - Users suggesting the NOAA needs to rely on perl, python, BSD, Linux, MySQL, PHP, emacs, vi, haskell, or ruby for all future development efforts.
1 - Comment suggesting the weather should be properly called GNU/Weather (thanks RMS!)
11 - Requested a change for notices about clear sunny days. The new notice will read, "Nothing to see here. Move along."
13 - Requesting that the raw weather data and weather forcasting software be sent as part of an ebuild that they could emerge and compile the report anytime they wanted, because they've got their Gentoo system totally tweaked out for this type of application.
27 - Asked for help getting WeatherBug to work correctly on Linux w/ Wine.
9 - Posts about how Netcraft had confirmed it, weather is dead.
1 - Comment with made up statistics about how important changing was.
1 - Comment with made up statistics about how important not changing was.
32 - EA employees asked for pictures, b/c they've never seen the light of day, a blue sky or snow lit by daylight.
1 - Comment that read...

To Whom It May Concern:

Thanks, this is a great idea. Go for it. You guys rock. I've only been here a few days now, but I'm glad I could give my 2 cents, check out my blog (excluded). Also, I was thinking about going into programming because I took a class on C++, and I wrote a program that would randomly guess the weather, but since you're going to do this maybe I need to consider not studying IT in college... any suggestions?

Josh Milsken
Sophmore, Wuleska High School
Topeka, KS

P.S. - My birthday is next week... gonna be 15... gonna get my learners permit. Woohoo!

Quite an impact.

congrats /.ers for your next assignment....

Be sure to attend The FTC workshop on P2P networks [ftc.gov] If you read the adgenda, you would think FTC is trying to convince people that P2P is a threat to consumers. It would make sense to use a spurious issue that pushes congressional hot buttons if you wanted to slap restrictive laws on P2P since protecting copyrights doesn't get out the votes.
Oh, yeah the weather. I bike to work in new england: a very detailed forcast is critical to my saftey so this little victory is a serious win from my perspective. I already paid taxes for this data...be damned if I'll pay twice for it.

Re:Good stuff!

This is scary stuff. If the terrorists got their hands on weather reports in the USA there is no telling what trouble they could stir up. I imagine this kind of thing should remain secret and proprietary.

Amerstam Vallon is a troll... read for more.

Before anybody accepts this immediately as true, I'd just like to point out that this guy has posted lots of things about his personal achievements and his accomplishments, so much that you have to be a bit skeptical. Besides being the brother of an NOAA analyst, he claims all of the following... (taken from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=131294&cid=109 59811 [slashdot.org])

Ken Jennings was my roommate freshman year at Brigham Young University

I worked for NASA for 8 years straight out of MIT undergrad.

I'm an editor for Tom's Hardware Guide

I worked for a particular company that denied another company a lucrative contract just because that company's CTO had bullied my company's CEO when he was in high school

I have TWO friends who work at Bungie

I work on LAMP software and deploy to customer's websites.

I obtained a preview release [of GIMP 2.0]

Forgive me for being skeptical, but I have trouble believing all that. A child of the post pointed to above says that the parent poster is a known troll, and a check of his recent comments shows many rated troll.

So perhaps this shouldn't be 5, Interesting?