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Could the world cope if GPS stopped working?
What would happen if GPS - the Global Positioning System - stopped working?
For a start, we would all have to engage our brains and pay attention to the world around us when getting from A to B. Perhaps this would be no bad thing: we'd be less likely to drive into rivers or over cliffs through misplaced trust in our navigation devices.
Pick your own favourite story about the kind of idiocy only GPS can enable. Mine is the Swedish couple who misspelled the Italian island of Capri and turned up hundreds of miles away in Carpi, asking where the sea was.
But these are the exceptions.
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Could the World Cope If GPS Stopped Working?
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 09 2019, @10:19PM (7 children)
I could at least. As far as my phone knows, it's always at home. I don't have anything against using a map app as a map but I'm not interested in turn-by-turn, GPS-assited navigation nonsense. But then I started driving back when you had to either be able to navigate all on your own or cut off your testicles and ask for directions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:41AM (2 children)
Well, that makes two of us. I grew up on reading maps. I had some frustrating times when I discovered how many mapmakers have (had?) their own atlases, and that they didn't all stick to the same color scheme and legends. Don't much like Universal or American maps, love Rand McNally. Other lesser known map makers who stick to Rand McNally style are good.
A map CAN get you into trouble, especially if it's five years old, or more. Some town in Florida tore up a street, and RM didn't show that, so I turned down a wrong street, and couldn't figure out where I was at until I found someone to talk to. A town in New Jersey renamed a highway, and caused me some frustration. And, of course new construction doesn't show up for a year or so. Still, those little snafus leave me safer than driving around with my nose to a screen.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday November 11 2019, @12:12AM
Thirded. When I started driving truck, consumer GPS didn't even exist yet. Well, that's not technically true, most GPS receivers looked like this:
http://retro-gps.info/Magellan/index.html [retro-gps.info]
Expensive, bulky, not very practical, and you still had to be able to read a map to use one.
I have a friend who cannot even find her home without GPS (she's also the scariest driver I ever rode with, and if you mention it she say "you didn't die did you?") Her phone died on her one day and she didn't have her car charger with her. I got a phone call from an unknown number that turned out to be her, asking if I could possibly find her and help her get home. She borrowed someones cell to call me. When she told me where she was (northside Safeway) I went and guided her to her house ten blocks away! She was literally in her own neighborhood and passes that shopping center every day going to and from work.
Oh, she's seventeen, it's her parents house, and she has lived there all her life.
And no, she's not a blonde and I can't find any good dumb redhead jokes.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @11:51AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwBoa-NbNL8 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Mer on Sunday November 10 2019, @06:52AM (1 child)
I do care a lot for turn by turn guidance actually. Having to visit up to 6 clients a day at places I've never been before in a european city (without grid pattern).
But I can already think of a workaround. You plot the course from a start and end address, the app generates the step instructions and you validate each step by pushing a button.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 10 2019, @10:07AM
How many turns are we talking here? If it's half a dozen or less from a known location, I wouldn't even have a map app open.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @06:54AM (1 child)
Lemme guess... you did ask for directions, right?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 10 2019, @10:05AM
Nope. I just check a map and the address. I might temporarily misplace my destination but I've never been lost while driving. No, seriously, never. I always know which way's north within five or ten degrees (plenty for rough navigation) and which way the roads I've been driving on are from where I am now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.