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Open Source... Mining? 81

Posted by michael from the somebody-light-this-monkey dept.
farrellj writes "In mining, geophysical data is the "source code" of the industry, and is usually guarded as closely as Microsoft guards their source code for their programs, sometimes even more so. But one Canadian mining company opened up their data, and reaped the rewards of Open Source in higher profits. Read all about it at: FastCompany. NOTE: Originally seen on Linux Today."
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Open Source... Mining? More

Open Source... Mining?

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  • What's the incentive to be secretive? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by deanc ( 2214 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @09:38AM (#3622347) Homepage
    If a mine has exclusive rights to mine in the area it has surveyed, what is the incentive to hide the geological data? After all, any additional information that outsiders provide based on the data will either help the mine or at worst help a neighboring mine. In neither scenario will the first mine be hurt if anyone else sees their data. So I don't see how the culture of secrecy became so ingrained.
    • From the article:
      At first, Goldcorp's geologists were appalled at the idea of exposing their super-secret data to the world. "This is a very conservative, very private industry," says Dr. James M. Franklin, former chief geoscientist for the Geological Survey of Canada and a judge in the Goldcorp Challenge. "Confidentiality and secrecy about reserves and exploration have been its watchwords. This was a totally unconventional thing to do."
      So basically it was just tradition.

      • Re:What's the incentive to be secretive? (Score:5, Informative)

        by RatOmeter ( 468015 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @10:28AM (#3622462)
        It's more than just tradition. My experience is more from the petroleum exploration arena, so I'll speak it its terms.

        Almost no property owner owns the mineral rights to their land, only the 'surface' rights. The mineral rights (in most cases) were seperated years ago.

        Exploration for petroleum involves statistical analysis as well as physical discovery. Physical discovery used to involve guessing, based on prior performance or just a hunch, where there might be oil or gas. These days, there's a lot more technology to be applied. One method involves placing sensitive seismic instruments in a variety of locations. Then large machines called 'thumpers' are put in place to cause deliberate seismic disturbances. The effects of these disturbances and underground interference to them are measured, mapped and analysed using the instrumentation that's scattered about.

        This type of physical discovery is not cheap. It consists of:
        expensive instruments
        expensive machines
        well-paid geologists and other crew
        paying landowners for use of their land.
        costom analysis software
        and more

        The best ways for a venture like that to make money are to (a) sell the information to mineral rights owners, or (b) use the information to drill for petroleum themselves.

        In case (a), making the information available at no charge is contrary to the business plan. In (b), they would need to acquire/lease the necessary mineral rights and it wouldn't pay advertise what they were looking for where.

        • The Spice (Score:3, Funny)

          by Myriad ( 89793 )
          Then large machines called 'thumpers' are put in place to cause deliberate seismic disturbances. The effects of these disturbances and underground interference to them are measured, mapped and analysed using the instrumentation that's scattered about.

          Hmmmm, personally I would have thought the sandworms a dead give away!

          • Funny (score 3) you should mention that! There is actually a geological interpretation technology called "worming" that uses gravity and magnetis readings to try and detect ore bodies.

            Developed and used by the very same Fractal Graphics [fractalgraphics.com.au] mentioned in the original article.

            Art, Life, Mirror, etc, etc ;)
        • Or to put it in simpler language, exposing the geological data can change the value of adjoining real estate and mineral rights. If you were trying to acquire said real estate or mineral rights, this could drastically impact how much money you have to cough up.

          It used to be common to spread false geological data (back when it was a lot harder to confirm any such data) to inflate useless mineral rights and to degrade desirable mineral rights, depending on whether you were selling or buying.

        • >Almost no property owner owns the mineral rights to their land, only the 'surface' rights. The mineral rights (in most cases) were seperated years ago.

          This statement has me curious.
          Where is that the case?
          I know the properties I've bought had no such restrictions -- and I do read the deeds, but the properties I've bought have no petroleum potential.

          Is this a common practice in areas with potential petroleum reserves? Has it become common in recent years?

          Who would actually spend the money for those rights unless there is at least some legitimate basis for thinking they might harbor valuable resources?

          Just wondering.

    • Re:What's the incentive to be secretive? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The danger is in a possible hostile take-over bid as a result of the analysis of the data that's released.

    • Consessions (Score:2, Informative)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 )
      In many cases, consessions for exploitation are only obtained after ascertaining the presence of whatever it is your after. Drilling for oil comes to mind. In such cases it is naturally vital to keep your data secret, as you don't want any competitors moving in and reaping the rewards of your hard work.
    • Secrecy in the mining industry is a matter of convenience. In the Red Lake district, mining has been going on for many years, nearly all the ground in the immediate area is under patented claims, in this case revealing the information poses little threat. Where I am currently working (Brasil) there is a lot of virgin territory, and making your data public increases the chance of a competitor snapping up the adjacent claims, not to mention attracting hordes of garimpeiros. A company is also willing to release data if they think it will sell shares, juniors are fond of doing this. A project I was involved in, the client posted the geophysical results from the surveys on their website as soon as they got their hands on the data... Mining companies can be selective about the data released as well, one well known promoter would do a hole parallel to the vein:
      "look at the fabulous intersections!! 100 meters of 5 grams per tonne" while not mentioning the vein was only a half meter wide and had no significant strike length. Then there was Bre-X...

    • Re:What's the incentive to be secretive? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because mining concessions are often granted for only a particular type of mineral. (Meaning more than one company might have concessions or stakes for the same territory.)

      For instance - I once did a survey for a gold and copper mining concern in Botswana. One of the geological features that we found suggested the presence of kimberlites (and thus possible diamonds) - which was useless for our client, since they didn't have the diamond concession.
    • Well, while I was taking my college courses, one of the professors of engineering talked about his experiences as a surveyor in a mine.

      Basically, the minning company had illegally dug under property they had no right to. They started on the surface where they had a legal right, but then once underground they pretty much went where ever they wanted.

      The professor (a young kid just out of college at the time) couldn't figure out why he made so many "mistakes" with the surveying equipment that had to be "corrected" by his supervisor. He got in trouble for his "errors" too. When he plotted the full data himself, he figured out what they were up to. So he shut-up about the survey data, and found another job as soon as he could.

      The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

    • Not allowing others to see your data allows you to have more maneuvering room insofar as determining your own company's valuation (up or down, depending on the situation). Furthermore, having more information than your neighbor allows you to make better hedges on futures prices and influence them as well.

      "Open source" in the mining industry is a naive and stupid idea insofar as individual companies are concerned.

  • I guess that just shows that Open Source > *
    =]

    • Re:Hrm (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Perhaps, however, I can see plenty of hidden expenses of opening the source code up. If you wish to use source coded by outside parties, it's a good idea to hire people to maintain patches and to extensively review and test code not written in-house. In other words, with closed source, you can expect to trust the quality of the source written by anyone you license the source code to. With open source, you need to review what's submitted for quality, perhaps to better document the code, and to make sure it really does what it says it does. If you're up to the challenge, good luck. Go for it. But closed source isn't a bad option either.

  • Open source comparison is a sham (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gewalker ( 57809 ) <Gary DOT Walker AT AstraDigital DOT com> on Saturday June 01, 2002 @09:47AM (#3622366)
    Come, open source as usually perceived and promoted is that by "contributing to the public software" and "scratching an itch", much good comes to all as you everyone can then use this freely.

    The valuable use of this data is pretty much restricted to the property owners of the gold mine. This was just a fancy version of a contest (not a random-lottery style one), whereby skilled competitors vie for the prize, but one without an entry fee, and no signup form. The data is inherently useless (in terms of mineral rights) to anyone that is not the property owner, or interested in control over what happends to the property (hostile takeover threat).

    If Microsoft had been the property owner, this story would have been on Slashdot, decrying the shameless use of skilled dupes working for Microsoft and getting a small return on their investment of time & talent. The mine owners were clever enough to capitalize on the positive name association with "Open Source" more than anything. A smart business that take a gamble (hostile takeover threat, etc.) that paid off well.

    • Sorry, this bothers me, just thought of another analogy.

      Say Microsoft publishing its source code on the Internet, with the restrictions against using the data for profit (equivalent to mineral rights), and runs a contest whereby cash prizes acrue to winners for quality bug fixes or other enhancements.

      Has MS suddenly gone open source? hardly. MS would be exposed to much more financial risk than the mining company in this comparison, as the source code is arguably valuable to competitors wishing to drill in MS fields. MS would be keeping all IP legal rights (just like the mineral rights), and noone would be saying, "Wow another open source success story."

    • Honestly, my first reaction was just like yours. But I think maybe both of us were missing a bit of the point... There is a connection with open source, however narrow. (Enough that I wouldn't call the comparison a sham.)

      Open Source/ Free Software and the like are loaded terms, and 'open source' in particular is almost more of a basket of loosely-related phenomenon than it is a specific thing. (Open Source Definition not withstanding.)

      Some of the things in that basket are itch-scratching and enriching the public domain, to be sure. But there are other things in that basket as well. One, which is receiving a fair amount of academic attention, is "peer-enabled content production". It may have to do with methodology instead of ideology, but the open source movements have provided much of its source material.

      So, was this contest "open source"? Well... there was open access to the known 'source' data of the mine. Is that enough for it to be open source? Maybe not. But it's enough for a comparison, imho. Was it peer-enabled production? Well... the winning entry was (I think) actually a collaboration of two teams, and they were 'peered' with the mine company halfway around the world. Enough for the label? I dunno. But sham seems too harsh.
    • well at least using the resources available proved that open source is actually a gold mine in its self...where else could a person, company, or country find such solutions - open source programmers and groups are the solution. They have the resources and skills that are required. ok at least he asked the right group!

      www.emotioncafe.com [emotioncafe.com]

    • It isn't a sham, it is a hint at something greater (Score:4, Interesting)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @10:59AM (#3622530)
      Open source comparison is a sham

      No, it isn't a sham, but it is a poor choice of wording.

      Free Software, Free Media, and Open Source are subsets of a much more fundamental, and important, concept, namely freedom of information, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression, which together might be termed simply freedom were it not that that particular word has been so abused by pundits over the last century as to have lost much of its meaning. These freedoms are antithetical to secrecy at their most basic levels, and in their consiquences, whether that is secrecy of information, secrecy of methodology, or secrecy of design (to name just three).

      So, while mapping the benefits of open and free information to those of open and free software is a bit of a misnomer, clearly the underlying theme that free information is, unsurprisingly, bringing the same benefits to this particular mining company that free source code does to software companies is a valid parallel to draw, in that these benefits are a consiquence of freedom of knowledge and freedom of information, in other words, of the freedoms being granted, of which free software and free geological data are but two small examples.

      It is a shame that our intellectual property laws are such that these freedoms must be granted rather than assumed by default, making them (and their obvious benefits) so much rarer in our society than they need to be.

      • Oh give me a break (Score:3, Insightful)

        by FallLine ( 12211 )
        What this company did is fundamentally different from the freedoms that you speak of. The benefits to society at large are practically non-existent in this company's case. The information that they shared was: A) of little risk to themselves because they owned the rights already (and because a failing company has little to lose) B) of little benefit to society. This situation is far more analogous to Microsoft releasing some of their source code with the condition that it can essentially only be used to make improvements to MS's product and virtually nothing else. If anything, Microsoft is a far more sympathetic case because it can be argued that there is educational value to their code and that they're taking a greater risk. While I'm no fan of Microsoft, I must admit that the open source advocates are being extremely hypocritical to praise this "open geology" on one hand and utterly dismiss Microsoft's claims on the other. Perhaps MS' open license isn't as "open" as other open source licenses, but nor is this mining example as "open" as it could be in the idealists minds (at least if we assume that they're capable of critical thinking). In the crackpot mindframe of the open source zealots this company *could* open their hard earned information without any additional protections that give them advantage over and above of those that recieve the data and charge a fee for support or some nonsense.

        It is a shame that our intellectual property laws are such that these freedoms must be granted rather than assumed by default, making them (and their obvious benefits) so much rarer in our society than they need to be.
        Yeah, because we all know societies that do this (e.g., China, Cuba, etc.) are vastly more productive places for ideas than the United States.....err yeah. Show me a time in history or a place in the world that has been as productive or spends as much money on research and development (proportionately speaking). The United States is extremely successful in this reguard because of our strong IP, not inspite of it. It may cost you, say, 100 dollars to purchase that textbook and that may be something of a negative, and of itself, but then you're taking for granted its creation and that its secondary benefits (i.e., your education from it, ideas you may have taken from it, etc) are generally free AFTER that point. For all the complaints of information being locked away, it simply does not stand up by and large. There is a TONS of information out there for anyone that wants it, it may cost a little something and take a little time, but the vast majority of information nonetheless available (and productive) to an extent that it's NOT anywhere else in the world (because it largely does not exist in those other places). EOF

    • IMHO, I think that on the surface it could appear as "open sourcing", insofar as the company shared with the outside world data normally privately retained. But in digging deeper it becomes clear that there is a misunderstanding of the term "Open Source" in this application of it. Sure, I'm willing to go along with the idea that the company doesn't have a heart of gold, but I don't think it's fair to assume that the contest was in the same vein as cheap gimmicks, either. Why? Because it seems to me that they simply misunderstood the term "Open Source" (they're not an IT company, after all); --- and, too, there were so many puns to be made by reporters about data mining and the like.

      Seriously, I think this just illustrates the confusion of the general public (and in the press) about what "Open Source" is/means. I think they really meant that the idea of "Open Source" inspired them to outsource in a novel way that seemed to them to be parallel to what they understood as "Open Source". Sorry that's convoluted.

      At least they didn't call it a "Free" goldmine.

      • Your comment about "outsource in a novel way" made me realize that, from a business perspective, open sourcing *is* just a novel way of outsourcing -- getting people who aren't directly involved with the company active in some aspect that improves the company. It's a market transaction -- give me X, I'll give you Y -- rather than an internal one -- you do what I say because I give you a paycheck.

        For open-source software, the X is "access to the source, with limited rights to reproduce the source and object code" and Y is "improvements to the source for no additional labor costs i.e. money." Here, it was "full access to all our expensively acquired mining data"in exchange for "a pre-determined amount of cash under particular restrictions". In both cases, there are also additional incentives external to the basic exchange e.g. prestige and improved marketability. That is, just as Linus Torvalds can get better jobs based on his known expertise with Linux, this winning 3-D company will have people coming to them.

        One of the interesting things about open-source, of course, is that money doesn't normally change hands at all. Any direct incentives have to be in the use of the code/application. That wasn't the case with the mining company, of course, but then the "source" here -- data for the area around the mine -- can't be as useful an application's source code, except to the owner of the mine. You'd have to sweeten the pot in order to get anyone interested.

        I think that this is a main difference -- again, from a business perspective -- between outsourcing and open-sourcing: Is the data I'm getting useful enough to me that I'll forgo additional compensation? On the one hand, this proves your point -- they are just outsourcing -- but on the other it suggests that the difference can be pretty thin.

        One question I have is "How is this different from putting this project up for bid?" Someone else in the thread said that it would have been easier just to pay consultants $500K to tell them where the gold was. So, why didn't they? Here's some guesses from someone who knows nothing about mining:

        • Consultants are more expensive than that.
        • By making it a "contest" they were able to reap advantages in publicity that made it more cost-effective -- making that $500K worth more.
        • If they had put it up for bid, they would only have attracted companies that usually did this, and probably just those in their area. They also would have had the "protect your local data" mindset, which would have lead them to include monitoring provisions (e.g. NDAs) that would have increased their costs. Ultimately, these would reduce the "universe" of potential problem-solvers. With fewer people involved, fewer answers would have been put forth and, by extension, the results would not have been as exceptional.

        And they were amazing --- something like a 10x increase in yield at 16% of the cost/oz. It's possible that this was an unusual situation -- having a mine "down the street" from a very productive competitor -- but, if not, this could become a very lucrative way of improving one's yields.

        And it's all a matter of recognizing that some business-specific data is actually worth more when widely released than when held closely. Just like open-source software.

        Me

      • "But in digging deeper it becomes clear that there is a misunderstanding of the term "Open Source" in this application of it."
        No, I think they get it. Not just piddling stuff like Operating Systems and browsers. Open Source is not for the benefit of the IT industry. It's for all the suffering bastards that have to use the stuff.
    • It might not be a direct analogy, but the Open Source movement certainly inspired their actions to pursue this type of open bidding process.

      So while they might not be equivalent, I think that it's really cool that non-conventional approaches in other industries are being inspired by the growing success and profile of Open Source solutions in software.

      If other industries begin to seriously experiment with various types of peer collaboration models some of the new approaches might stick. If they point to Open Source and Free Software as inspiration for whatever success they achieve, I think that the community should accept that as a good reflection and recognition of the real impact this way of thinking is starting to make. It's also great advertising for Open Source -- I'm sure this story has exposed a bunch of mining executives and analysts to Linux etc. for the first time, and in a positive light at that.

      The Open Source movement is as much (or more) about thinking outside of the box as it is about code, copyrights, and collaboration.

      I'd love to see more stories like this on Slashdot, even if the direct links are sometimes tenuous.
    • "The data is inherently useless (in terms of mineral rights) to anyone that is not the property owner, or interested in control over what happends to the property (hostile takeover threat)."

      "7.1 Disputes between Land Owners and Free Miners
      The Mineral Tenure Act gives a free miner the right to enter onto all lands where the minerals are held by the government. This includes private land where mineral rights are not held as freehold by the surface title. Section 11(2) of the Act places some restrictions on this right to enter private land; refer to chapter 2.2 for details." http://www.em.gov.bc.ca/mining/Titles/Publications / eb-book/h)chap7.htm [gov.bc.ca]

  • How about an open source designed mining robot? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NZheretic ( 23872 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @09:50AM (#3622377) Homepage Journal
    For either deep sea [google.com] or deep space [google.com] based search, mine and recovery?

  • Good PR Prospects (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @09:54AM (#3622382) Journal
    Although the prize money, which Archibald's team shared with Taylor Wall & Associates, barely covered the cost of the project, the publicity has boosted the firm's business. "It would have taken us years to get the recognition in North America that this project gave us overnight," he says.

    These are the folks that came up with the 3D mine map - so it looks like it was a good investment for them.

    And so it looks like the Open source model has been proven valid in areas outside of computing.

  • It's not actually "open source" ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @09:55AM (#3622386) Journal


    From the story I've just read, I get the feeling that the "opening up of the data" does not sounds like "open source".

    Rather, I get the feeling that it sounds more like BOUNTY HUNTING.

    Like bounty hunters, there is a target. All you need to do is to get the target and you get your bounty. That's just what the company does.

    • Bounty hunting is a viable model for open source revenue though. If I see an open source program that almost does what I need, I'm likely to pay the programmer to add features that he might not otherwise. This is basically what Red Hat does with their large customers, and it's what every company can do by directly contacting authors.


      • You said:
        "Bounty hunting is a viable model for open source revenue though"

        You got a valid point there.

        Methinks that the future looks bright for open source, for people can see and check the quality of the product ( source code ) and if they like what they see, and if they have a need for an extension or project with similar goal, those who produce the code can reap in the bounty.

        Thanks for the reply.

        • Come to think of it, this is really no different from when someone announces "First person who can write code to implement [whatever] gets paid $NNNN!!"

          In parallel with the gold mine that sparked this discussion -- by making the announcement, you've exposed your idea in public for anyone to "steal", but even so, chances are the end result will be that you get your code, and some programmer gets paid for his efforts.

    • I think you're exactly right. I was going to call it mere outsourcing, but bounty hunting is more exact: You provide a description of the target to anyone who cares to hear it, and whoever brings you the target first gets paid.

      Which does entail a risk that anyone can learn about the target and maybe grab it for themselves, but even so the potential benefits (you might get your target, someone else gets paid too) outweigh the drawbacks (you never get your target, no one gets paid).



      • You said:
        "Which does entail a risk that anyone can learn about the target and maybe grab it for
        themselves, but even so the potential benefits (you might get your target, someone else
        gets paid too) outweigh the drawbacks (you never get your target, no one gets paid)."

        When there's a risk, there's a reward, and methinks the "bounty-hunting" approach may work on a case-by-case basis.

        There's a tendency for people to take a "one size fits all" approach in doing things, and methinks that the outcome under this approach almost always ends up in disaster.

        And if we want to avoid disasters in the Open Source community, we should be flexible enough to adapt more than one approach, and methinks that the "bounty hunting" approach ought to be considered as just ONE OF the viable approaches to accomplish what we are after.

        Thanks for your comment !

  • I've looked around at their Challenge site, and can't find any data. I'd like to see what this data looks like...

  • Not Quite Open Source (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ajknott ( 313187 )
    The company posted its data on the net, offered $500k in prizes, big deal. That much can easily be spent by hiring outside consultants to tell you where the gold is. The contest was inspired by Open Source, but I fail to see how making the data publically available makes it open source.

    What did the company get for its efforts anyhow?

    In one word: Lucky.

    Lucky that an Australian firm looking for North American PR took a bath and lost money on creating a professional 3D model of the mine:

    Although the prize money, which Archibald's team shared with Taylor Wall & Associates, barely covered the cost of the project, the publicity has boosted the firm's business. "It would have taken us years to get the recognition in North America that this project gave us overnight," he says.
    • Lucky that an Australian firm looking for North American PR took a bath and lost money on creating a professional 3D model of the mine:


      Although the prize money, which Archibald's team shared with Taylor Wall & Associates, barely covered the cost of the project, the publicity has boosted the firm's business. "It would have taken us years to get the recognition in North America that this project gave us overnight," he says.
      You don't know much about business. Anything that covers your expenses (which includes salaries, etc.) is a success assuming that you don't have other, more lucrative job offers. At the same time, this company got free advertising. In fact, since the cost of the project was barely covered, i.e. the reward was more than the cost, you could say that they were paid to advertise their product.
    • Fractal Graphics hardly "took a bath" on the exercise. Prior to the Challenge, the company was stuck between a faltering minerals market and a faltering IT market. Additionally, it's nigh-on impossible for small Australian firms (FG employed around 16 people at the time) to get publicity/recognition in the North American markets through traditional means.

      FG got essentially free publicity in its largest target market, Goldcorp got just about the best possible modelling and analysis of its data. Both parties have had huge grins on their faces ever since. In particular, FG has gone from strength to strength.

      Disclaimer: I work for FG and am one of the original developers of our key software systems.

      You can see what it's all about here [fractalgraphics.com.au] Yes, the website needs an overhaul, we're working on it!
  • Maybe you could call this "open data". Really, though, it's a fascinating example of how thinking outside the box can benefit a company.

    -Thomas

  • Initially I didn't envision actual mineral mining with this. What came to my mind was the idea of data mining Open Source code for segments of code that could be used to help construct applications. After I've given it a little thought, I think it might be worth looking at for someone with the resources and technical know-how to see if there is a way to set up sort of a "source code search engine". Set up a database specifically geared to holding source code files, sorted by function type (if this is possible to code in a search engine environment) and application type. This way, people could not only use Open Source code to modify the application as a whole, but it could make it much easier to use chunks of code from seperate projects to combine with original code and create new software. Why rewrite the same kind of function from program to program if it's possible to use it from another source? The biggest drawback to this that I can see would be keeping track of contributed code by owner. And I'm sure there could be a pretty hearty debate about whether or not this idea would cause the overall quality of code to improve or not, but I have suspicions that the benefits that might come from a source code search system could be a pretty good resource. As I envision it, there're a few things that a source code search process would need for basic functionality. It would need to track who contributed to which projects in the search database. It would need to list which code trees are available in a browsable fashion. Another touch that I feel would be needed, would be a way for users of the system to record which code pieces they're using. It would be very good to have a way a user could log into the system to search, then have an automatically generated page showing the authors/projects of code they could mark as used in whatever project they're working on themselves. This idea would also require a fairly well maintained revision control system. As the code trees would be almost constantly updated, the engine would need to be able to handle older versions (at least to a point) and manage keeping itself updated on a near continual basis. My suggestion would start with the idea of using only submitted source in the database, to help verify that code incorporated into the system met GPL standards. The more I think about it, the more I think an database like this could be an excellent addition to SourceForge's offerings both commercial and publically accessible. I'd really like to hear what people think about this, because honestly this is the best place I know of to propose such an idea. And I don't know how many people are going to read this thread.

  • Fake data (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MSBob ( 307239 ) on Saturday June 01, 2002 @02:06PM (#3623281)
    One of the problems faced by small software development houses in the scientific field is acquiring enough sample data that allows for meaningful testing of algorithms. Since most geophisical data is considered intellectual property of exploration companies it is closely guarded and hard to obtain unless you're already established in the market and have good reputation. Artificially generated data just doesn't have the same qualities real life samples have. I have seen the same algorithms work perfect on artificial SEG-Y data that crumbled when exposed to some real life heavily faulted seismic.
  • The article focused mostly on Goldcorp's Redlake mine. Slashdotters might be more interested in the software technology behind the winning bid.

    Have a look here [fractalgraphics.com.au] but please let our servers come back up by Monday!!

    (Yep, I work for them)

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