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From: Whiskers on 19 Mar 2010 09:02
On 2010-03-19, andy <andy.ggrps(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 18 Mar, 23:09, "Graham." <m...(a)privacy.net> wrote:
>> "E.B.G. McAllister" <edward.goehr...(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:dfe13136-b897-4956-8d45-573d31a08fa0(a)k4g2000prb.googlegroups.com...

[...]

> The suggestion is like a joke anyway
>
> On the contrary, there are cases where people have been promptly
> rescued because they were able to give a GPS-derived position

Some people fail to grasp that a GPS receiver can only ever give a (pretty
good) indication of where you are. It can't tell you anything about that
place other than its co-ordinates. Only the user can assess the location
by observation and make intelligent choices.

Even those GPS gadgets that have maps that allow route planning, mostly
seem to have little topographical information beyond a plan of the roads,
so a good map and/or local knowledge is still a good idea. There have been
serious suggestions that all such devices should be programmed with
information about the suitability of each road for various sorts of
vehicle, but the onus would still be on the user to set the device
appropriately for the vehicle, and to pay attention to the places the
device is directing him to.

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-- Whiskers
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From: Whiskers on 19 Mar 2010 13:21
On 2010-03-19, alexd <troffasky(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/03/10 13:02, Whiskers wrote:
>> There have been
>> serious suggestions that all such devices should be programmed with
>> information about the suitability of each road for various sorts of
>> vehicle, but the onus would still be on the user to set the device
>> appropriately for the vehicle, and to pay attention to the places the
>> device is directing him to.
>
> I can see this all ending in GPS manufacturers leaving the market
> because the cost of insuring the liabilities of retarded users becomes
> too high.

That debate has begun
<http://news.cnet.com/Is-GPS-liability-next/2010-1033_3-6226346.html>

My first GPS receiver had (has; it still works fine) no mapping or
route-planning abilities; it can give the co-ordinates of the current
location, and point an arrow in the direction of co-ordinates entered
manually, and calculate direction of movement and current and average
speed, and that's about it. But used with a good map and compass it's
still useful even on the road.

Perhaps we'll all have to revert to that level of assistance. It would
also leave more processing power and memory on our smart-phones for things
like, say, communication. (There; not entirely Off Topic!)



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-- Whiskers
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From: Whiskers on 21 Mar 2010 19:49
On 2010-03-21, E.B.G. McAllister <edward.goehring(a)gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> Yes, I did post deliberately on a UK Google Group.

[...]

Just a technical point, but a big one: this is not a Google Group, it's a
usenet newsgroup having nothing at all to do with Google (who for their
own reasons provide a reading and posting interface in their web forums).

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-- Whiskers
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From: Whiskers on 22 Mar 2010 14:55
On 2010-03-22, E.B.G. McAllister <edward.goehring(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 21, 4:49 pm, Whiskers <catwhee...(a)operamail.com> wrote:
>> On 2010-03-21, E.B.G. McAllister <edward.goehr...(a)gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> Pretty sneaky, Google. In any event, thank you for educating me :)

Sneaky indeed. There is some resentment among usenet users at the way
Google has hijacked newsgroups and ignored established standards. This
discussion is a long way off topic for this group so I'll close it with
some linkage <http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deja_News>.

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-- Whiskers
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