Microsoft has misplaced Melbourne, the four-million-inhabitant capital of the Australian State of Victoria.
A search on Bing Maps for "Melbourne, Victoria, Australia" says the city is at 37.813610, 144.963100 which we've screen-captured above (or here for those reading our mobile site).
The co-ordinates are right save for one important detail: Melbourne is at 37.8136° South. Bing's therefore put it in the wrong hemisphere.
Bing's not alone in finding Australia hard to navigate: in 2012 police warned not to use Apple Maps as it directed those seeking the rural Victorian town of Mildura into the middle of a desert. Apple Maps also sent those looking for the remote city of Mount Isa to an even less hospitable and more remote part of Australia's great inland deserts. ®
What is the best (worst?) IT data error that you can recall? We will discount the old chestnut 'Keyboard not found - Press F12 to continue' but share whatever else you have.
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Melbourne Launches World-Class Free Wi-Fi Network
Victoria has cemented its reputation as Australia's tech leader with the launch of the country's largest and fastest free Wi-Fi network across Melbourne's CBD today.
Minister for Small Business, Innovation and Trade Philip Dalidakis joined City of Melbourne's Chief Digital Officer Michelle Fitzgerald at Southern Cross Station to announce the first of many Wi-Fi access points to be rolled-out across Melbourne as part of the Andrews Labor Government's $11 million Victorian Free Wi-Fi Pilot.
From today, visitors can use the VicFreeWiFi service within all Melbourne CBD train stations, the Bourke St Mall, Queen Victoria Market, and South Wharf Promenade at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
[...] Once the Melbourne network is complete, the VicFreeWiFi service will be the largest free public Wi-Fi network of its kind in Australia, covering an area of 600,000 square metres across the three cities.
Running for five years, the project is managed by telecommunications company TPG, allows for up to 250 MB per device, per day – and does not require personal logins or feature pop-up advertising.
You might recall that we published a story that Bing Maps appeared to have misplaced Melbourne, changing it from the Southern to the Northern hemisphere:
Microsoft's maps lost Melbourne because it used bad Wikipedia data • The Register
Submitted via IRC for crutchy
Microsoft has laid part of the blame for Bing Maps' mis-location of the Australian city of Melbourne by a whole hemisphere on Wikipedia.
Yes, Wikipedia, "the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit."
Microsoft made its admission after your correspondent took to Twitter on Monday to do what we in publishing call "pimping"the story of Melbourne's mis-placement.
[...] Deletion may be an option because our exploration of the Wikipedia page for Melbourne suggests it had the correct co-ordinates back in February 2012. So there you have it: Bing Maps sometimes relies on Wikipedia data. That data can be edited by anyone and is therefore often contentious.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/23/microsoft_lost_a_city_because_it_used_bad_wikipedia_data/
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:14PM
j00 5h00d ûs3 L1ñûx béçūz3 Lînúx Røxx.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @11:55PM
Rock that compose key!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:17PM
The Aussies are moving up in the world!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:11PM
Who the fuck moderated that redundant? I'm sick of wankers who don't know the meaning of the word.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:32PM
Math.abs(bullshit + crap);
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:34PM
Microsoft may simply have failed to take into account that logical bit operations are inverted down under.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:04PM
To be safe, I'm moving to Sao Tome and Principe.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday August 24 2016, @01:21AM
Microsoft may simply have failed to take into account that logical bit operations are inverted down under.
They could easily have checked that by phoning someone here and asking them which way the water swirls when it drains from a sink.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:36PM
I had a job interview at a certain street address in San Luis Obispo. Google Maps showed a body of water nearby. I had not known there was such a body of water in SLO.
Eventually I realized that it was the same street address in Morro Bay, also in SLO county.
How many are late to appointments because two different cities have the same street addresses?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:43PM
Was an hour late to an interview after being dropped in the wrong town, a few miles south of the same address in the right town, deep in Generica.
No cell phone then, had to hoof it along a busy highway where people would not even slow down for a white guy trying to hitchhike in a suit...
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:14PM
that once worked really well but no more.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Wednesday August 24 2016, @02:33AM
When I was a teenager, my friend and I got a ride once when we were hitchhiking while carrying rifles. I think times have changed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @01:12PM
Took a train to interview once... only the town had 2 train stops not one! Which was unusual. I got off on the first one. Ended up walking miles in a suit as no one would stop to give me a lift.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:32AM
I don't have that problem with people coming to my house: the street name + type is (according to Google's autocomplete) unique in the world!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday August 24 2016, @05:11PM
Last Friday traveling west through Missouri to go to Worldcon, I wanted to know haw far Kansas City was (my daughter drove). So I turned on GPS and asked Google how far Kansas City was. It said five hundred some-odd miles, when St Louis is only 250 miles away; it thought I was in Chicago! I haven't been in that city for over a decade. My daughter suggested doing a "remove the battery" reboot so I did.
Then it thought I was in Texas. WTF??
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gawdonblue on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:47PM
This one always amused me: Lockheeds F22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line [dailytech.com].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 24 2016, @12:57AM
There's an urban legend about an F16 autopilot that would invert the aircraft when crossing the equator.
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=79859 [snopes.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:24PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:49PM
Depends on the geometry of the drain, and the waters initial momentum vector.
For me, this is yet another sign that the self-proclaimed 'overlords', globalists and promoters of their 'New World Order' are in panic:
This here map [wikimedia.org]seems to be a much more consistent representation of the Earth. Notice Australia?
In this information age, inconsistencies on the Southern hemisphere are impossible to hide. Already people are realizing that the math for Australia's railway do not add up on a globe, neither do the navigation logs from the first British explorers, nor do Southern constellations. There is no such thing as a 'midnight Sun' in Antarctica.
All military protocols consider the Earth as stationary and flat: navigation, ballistics, everything. Flight paths and shipping lanes make much more sense on an azimuthal equidistant map, as do wind patterns.
Act responsibly, do your own research, and keep a keen eye for 'new' technologies and rhetoric aiming to keep this deception going: they will do whatever to keep kicking this can for as much as possible.
But most importantly, have a Great Day!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @12:25AM
I'm sorry, but the Ministry of Silly Conspiracy Theories is going to have to again deny your funding to further develop this conspiracy theory. Your presentation of the azimuthal equidistant projection is a classic amateur mistake. If you'd had a bit more experience with conspiracy theories, you would have realized that in order to make that point, you'd also need to perform a Koernke-Icke reversal and include the information that the UN logo is also an azimuthal equidistant projection, allowing you to then present a circular argument that your theory is correct by illustrating that the lizard people are flaunting the hidden truth in plain sight.
Now, I must see to the other applicant who has a research proposal concerning flesh-eating alien hybrids. Good day to you as well.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @01:25AM
Note: If anybody wants a very interesting interactive map, try https://earth.nullschool.net/ [nullschool.net]
Click on the word "earth" at the bottom left. Then change projection to AE. Drag mouse around to recenter the azimuthal equidistant projection. Fascinating watching it change in real time. There are a few other projections to play with as well, and it can overlay various things such as wind currents.
(Obviously, parent comment is an idiot.)
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday August 24 2016, @06:53AM
Sinu-Mollweide projection FTW
In which countries are drawn in their correct proportions to one another.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0071/5032/products/Wide_Angle_Ver_1_18f5a9f4-dbf8-4fe0-a9d9-335bd86da28f.jpg?v=1465360883 [shopify.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @03:06AM
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday August 23 2016, @11:54PM
Any chance of MS getting off of their elbows and fixing it?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday August 24 2016, @05:14PM
About as much chance as slashdot fixing its "garbled unicode" bug (among others).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @06:55AM
I contacted Bing Maps about five years ago via their "report an error" feature, about a local road that was closed years ago (before I moved here in 1998), that Bing still suggests using. If I were to follow Bings directions, I would have to climb over a fence, cross the railroad track, and then climb over another fence. And that's even though I select "car". They still haven't bothered to fix the problem.
Google Maps, on the other hand, always routed across the nearest bridge over the railway.
(Score: 1) by BenFenner on Wednesday August 24 2016, @12:59PM
Similar things have happened to me in the past, which is why I love https://www.openstreetmap.org/ [openstreetmap.org] which blissfully allows me to make those corrections myself!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @01:14PM
Classic Microsoft "Me Too But Shittier" philosophy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday August 24 2016, @07:09AM
Actually the key to press was F1.
Note that the AT had a lock which stopped the PC from booting. It did so by internally disconnecting the keyboard. So if the PC happened to be locked when started, and you had the key, you could unlock the computer and then, indeed, press F1 to continue.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 24 2016, @08:55AM
If that's true it shows how few people use Bing Maps or care...
It's a shame, Microsoft was actually a pioneer in this field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraserver.com [wikipedia.org]