[uxguy]

Another interesting discussion on it - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1849928/how-to-intelligen...

[blutonium]

Not sure that's better than the Wiki article, but the PostGIS mention is really handy if you're generalizing data for maps or to make paths from GPS data.

Protip: If you set the epsilon low enough, the PostGIS implementation has a good chance of repairing invalid geometries, even when ArcInfo can't.