My favorite part of the article was the final sentences:
Van Wijk attributes his success to being somewhat of an outsider. Cartographers typically seek single formulae that can be used to transform the entire globe, he says, while computer scientists look for algorithms that work in small steps and can be more adaptable.
Once again thinking in an innovative ways results in something useful and interesting.
I think so. My first request seems to have been redirected to http://new-count.cn/go.php?id=2015&key=ace6725ec&d=1 , which serves up some obfuscated javascript after redirecting me to a page on antivirusguardz2.com .
I got the same result and Microsoft Security Essentials (heh) also warned me. I fired up the Ubuntu VM that I use for questionable sites and oddly did not see the same behavior though.
Edit: Not redirecting anymore when I go there in the Windows host OS. Interesting.
I want to know why Google hasn't fixed the stupid "javascript s.t. I can't close the stupid tab that's not doing a good job pretending to scan my hard drive".
Jack van Wijk gave the keynote at IEEE visualization a few years back and spent an inordinate amount of time talking about how to pronounce his name, the best part of which was when he told how Greg Nielson remarked that his last name looked like a tensor.
It's really cool and a convenient visualization for humans, but with the proliferation of GPS and computerized mapping (everything in a big -180 to +180, -90 to +90 rectangle), I'm afraid it's destined to be a smaller niche than it could have been prior to the information age. Shame really.
Van Wijk attributes his success to being somewhat of an outsider. Cartographers typically seek single formulae that can be used to transform the entire globe, he says, while computer scientists look for algorithms that work in small steps and can be more adaptable.
Once again thinking in an innovative ways results in something useful and interesting.