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Do You Know Where You Live?
An anonymous submitter writes "Thanks to GPS, it seems quite a few people are discovering they don't live where they thought. Prior to GPS, state, county and city borders were part law, part measurement, and part guesswork. Now, they're able to go back and discover where actual borders should be, and it's making many people unhappy. Some familes in Rhode Island are finding out they may actually live in Connecticut. Each state, county and city wants as much land as possible, because it means more tax income. The people caught in the middle simply want to know where they'll send their kids for school."
NOOOOOOOoooooooo...
I'm Canadian!
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
Glad to find out I *DON'T* live in San Francisco after all, couldn't take another one of those summers
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
That seems a bit high.. Do the GPS satellites really orbit that high?
Wherever you go, there you are!
>
maybe that can solve the India-Pakistan problem....
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I think now, if countries, provinces, states, countys or towns were to start changing borders, it could lead to huge disputes. No one will be happy. Even though the technology is here, we nessecarly dont have to use it. It could ruin many things. We shouldn't just run out and start changing borders. Look at whats happening in the holy land and in isreal(same places?) all they do is dispute over land. do you think if a WESTERN world(mainly USA) were to go over there with satellites and GPS's that it would change everything? Nah...
Your either trolling, or overly paranoid.
I have a GPS receiver. Note, I said RECEIVER! It doesn't transmit anything.
Kinda fun to use on commercial airliners too! (I have an interesting trace of a recent trip, its only partial but shows us flying in anything but a straight line. (We were avoiding some rough weather).
Had they written the Constitution with Licensing 6.0 in mind, this probably wouldn't be an issue right now.
I'm always in the State of Confusion.
I used to work in the Oil-n-Gas business (petroleum, not Taco Bell) and that industry is grappling with the same question about well spotting -- the exact surface location of a well. Historically, they are identified via footage calls from a known location (e.g. 354' N, 287' E of SW corner of such-n-such)
While the state agencies would love to have nice, precise lat-lon coords, the property owners often refuse access to the survey crews because an accurate survey may show that the property line is incorrect, and Farmer Smith never really owned the well, it's on Farmer Johnson's land.
The real financial impact can be huge.
I believe that Sprint's (and other manufacturers') new third-generation phones come out soon - many of them are bundled with GPS capability.
It's touted as a convenience (calling assistance and saying "find me an ATM") and/or safety feature (Calling Cell 911 with "I've just been probed by aliens and have no idea where I am, come save me!"), but I wonder how soon marketing people (and Big Brother) will get a hold of the info... "Hm, this person spends 10 hours a week at supermarket A, let's SMS-page him with sale announcements for our client, supermarket B!"
*shrug*
That's my purse! I don't know you! -- Bobby Hill
We're currently having issues at work with that silly GPS, as it's nowhere nearly as reliable as we'd need when it comes to field use. You know where you stand, but you can't quite know where most of the limits are supposed to be, thanks to the napoleonic era cadastre that is still used. So, while getting the data to map again, the surface we get for a given plot can be wildly different from what was previous declared, with no way to know which is right. So what good are precision tools when you still have to rely on your eyes and ancient maps?
i can see where this could matter to states or municipalities in terms of tax revenues, etc...but when it comes to interfering with people's lives, common sense should be used...for intance, if a kid has been going to a school in one district for a while, then they find out that the family actually lives somewhere different (becuase of a redrawn line), let the kid stay in his old school...make it some sort of grandfather clause...the other things, such as taxes, etc, that's fine...they don't directly effect your day-to-day life...and if the two disputing parties want to sort out who collects taxes and what not from you, that's fine me...of course, i can already see the problem arising where a student goes to school in township A, but his family pays taxes that support schools in township B...i didn't say it was is perfect, but every effort should be made to not interfere with people's daily lives becuase of some poorly drawn boundry line many, many years ago...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
That may piss people off if they have to change countries.
At least I am far enough away from any border that it will not affect me.
In writing the manual for some civil engineering software back in the 80s, I found that there are some very oddly laid-out survey markers out there, especially in the plains states. The client explained that most of these were laid in the mid-19th century, which was the peak period of American alcohol consumption.
rj
...in a sea of shitty BAL and COBOL programs due next Wednesday.
GPS will not help me deal with the crappy MVS system on the IBM 390 mainframe.
Ahhhhh, dreaded COBOL fingers!
So I read Slashdot, which I don't need no GPS to find.
he speaks the truth.
I live 45 minutes away from the US border and i'd hate to find out i was born in america. But hey, at least I got free health care for 18 years! w00t!
Would be an easy case to present, and keeping common agreed boundries is a no brainer. If one starts using fixed points on boundries, who's to say a narrow river that is used as a boundry will not just move entirely into another state or county...imagine the implications for water management...
No rational person wants that.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Just make a 51st state that includes Everyone Living on the Thick Black Lines of the US Map. Think of all the interstate commerce with all the states they'd border! Oh, but wait, what about the people living on the border between the new Border State and the other states? Let's create another...ouch. **Brain implosion**
A better question is do you know where Natalie Portman lives. :)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
How accurate is GPS for civilian use?
20 meters? 10 meters? 1 meter?
just a question, from what input does the satalite generate the data to send to the GPS reciever? Or how does the satalite no where to send the data? Odds are, your Receiver is also transmitting something.
I bought a piece of peopery in Surry County Virginia a few years ago. I had a hell of a time because the recorded deed goes back more than a hundred years and refers to chops in trees for markers and distances measured in chains.
Most mortgage companies wouln't touch it without a recent survey. I finally found a farm credit company that would give me the mortgage. I've had the road frontage surveyed but I still have to survey the other 60+acres. Researching the sale was quite an education.
I could go down to the city office and pull up three different aerial surveys of the area, but no land surveys. Reaally sad because the county taxes me on 40 acres and acording to the surveyer I used for the frontage, I probably have 80+ acres.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
And I see troll
Last year, I went through Four Corners - for those of you not up on your US geography, Four Corners is the point at which Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah all meet, being the only place in the US where 4 states meet.
I was struck by the arbitrariness of this location - it was nothing but a meeting of fictional lines on a map. There was no magical property of this location - c was still 3E8 m/sec (to 1 significant digit), 9.8 m/sec^2 acceleration, no majestic peaks, poles, or pyramids rising from the ground. Save for a decision made by a bunch of beaurcrats there was nothing special about this location.
This article strikes me the same way. Due to a complete non-event (the changing of a line on a map), people's lives are going through upheaval.
So we are able to more accurately define these imaginary lines. Why do we need to change the location of the border - why not just more accurately define existing practice. Look at a map of Kansas - the state USED to be a simple rectangle, until somebody decided to use the river to define the northeast corner. Now we have the silliness of "Kansas City, Mo!"
It just seems so wasteful!
www.eFax.com are spammers
But are the children really in africa? Couldn't they be on the disputed border between africa and... uhhh..... never mind
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
just a question, from what input does the satalite generate the data to send to the GPS reciever? Or how does the satalite no where to send the data? Odds are, your Receiver is also transmitting something.
Nope. The satellites determine their positions from triangulating ground signals and one another's signals. Each satellite transmits its own position. The receiver determines its own position by triangulating the signals of as many satellites as possible. The GPS receiver is merely a receiver with enough brainpower to do some simple geometry.
Apparently, the whole Rhode Island thing was just a hoax played on us by the Founding Fathers. Rhode Island doesn't exist, and never did, and any Rhode Islanders you think you may have met must have been just hallucinations.
Anyone else see a possible parallel (on a much smaller scale) to the GPS hacking done in the Tomorrow Never Dies? Lets say you want someone else's property REALLY bad... go mess with a GPS satellite and change the boundary lines by a few meters in your favor! Suddenly, the greener grass on the other side of the fence is all yours!
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
It would be an excellent PR thing for the people who draw these lines to simply redraw the line for extreme cases like this where they are cutting someone's house in half.
It would also be nice to have some sort of prescedent to settle total B.S. border disputes where parts of people's domiciles get divided in land quarels. I'm sure this has happened before, and in my opinion, unless the people that built thier house KNEW they were building on someone else's land, they should simply have to redraw the lines, or in the first case, pay a monetary supplement.
And if not, WHY not?
how would this be any different than cities/counties/whatever annexing land like they do now?
Borders change all the time - maybe not usually in a state border situation - but certainly often at lower government levels.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
If you want to get technical, your watch transmits information. But practically speaking, it doesn't. Same with GPS.
A GPS receiver has a clock in it. Every GPS satellite has a clock in it. (All of these are synchronized.) The satellites transmit the time they have continuously. The receiver gets that time, calculates the difference between it and its time, and calculates a distance based on that time. Do that for four satellites, and you have your position. (Note: you need more if your GPS receiver doesn't have an atomic clock)
They never used Latitude and longitude to judge where the limits were.
It was always
This road, that road and this road are the city limits. Simple and easy enough to judge.
~ kjrose
There has to be something to this......
OSU instate - 3K Out of state - 18K IIRC
Reminds me of that joke: "If a plan crashes directly on the border between the US and Canada, where do they bury the survivors?"
ummmmm hello. It's a GPS RECEIVER, not a TRANSMITTER.
Than obviously you haven't had to work with a lot of surveyers. Without any intention of maligning that industry, I can say that surveyers are as prone to error as any other profession. In the course of checking legal descriptions for clients, I have run the descriptions through computer programs that plot them and have found some of the craziest plots imaginable. In one case I found a closure error of over 5 miles - the legal description described a big open-ended U. And while a mere meter or two might not be all that bad out in the middle of nowhere, much smaller distances (even a few inches) can become very important in downtown metropolitan areas.
If a border has been agreed upon for 160 years it should be left alone. The markers their basing the new lines on seem to be doubtful and sometimes movable! Wouldn't it be better to use the established borders? It sure would save a lot of headaches and "wasted" tax payer money that would be spent straightening this thing out.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
This is actually a really common thing around there. I used to live about 10 minutes from North Stonington in Voluntown CT. I remember hearing stories of kids going to two different schools depending on where the kids bedrooms were. Interesting to see a story so close to where I used to live.
"In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats."
What about plate shifts etc.. the relative distance between two points on Earth does change, even if it's only a little bit.
Am I the only one thinking that this doesn't sound right? On most maps, a straight line on the (spherical) ground does not equate to a straight line on a map. I'm not going to work through the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes a few feet of difference on a line that's a few miles long..
Is it a big issue what state you live in? Uh, yeah, kinda. Who gets your tax money? How much tax money? If the border of Texas and New Mexico were redrawn, and I ended up on the New Mexico side (not likely, since I live in Austin :) ) I would suddenly have to start paying income tax. Will the world end? No. In fact, I would prefer it. But my neighbors (the ones with the tattoos of eagles and the gunracks on their trucks) probably wouldn't.
stripShow - Where WordPress meets webcomics
First off, c'mon RI is so small anyways, just let them have a little more land. You know that little chunk that Massachusetts has along the top of CT, I think CT is still pissed off about that and taking it out on RI.
The other amusing thing is this quote: "It bothers me giving up my low-number license plate with my initials on it." It's kind of a hobby, maybe even an obsession, of some people in RI to try and get a low number (or as they say in RI "low numba") license plate, for example if you had w-12, you would be all the envy in the state. License plates are typically two letters and three numbers in RI.
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
Rhode Island is already tiny! They can't afford to lose any ground. Maybe MA and CT are ganging up on RI to re-border them out of existance! :)
What information are they using to figure the lines? Do the old documents showing lines have lat/lon to 6 decimal places or something? Maybe we're talking about even number boundaries, but it seems like locating the corner of a barn with GPS and measuring 30 feet (or so) off of it is still inaccurate.
I live one town over from Hopkinton (Richmond). Hopkinton is not a bad place to live if you like living in the sticks. Connecticut and Rhode are different in terms of taxation and public policies so I can see why they might be upset.
Personnaly I wouldn't mind living in Connecticut since I work there and Connecticuts state goverment is far less corrupt than Rhode Islands.
Not entirely sure why're asking us Jesus People specifically, but yes, starving children are more of a problem. That doesn't mean the border shifting isn't pain in the tuchus for many, though.
Love in Christ,
David
www.oldwestchurch.org
like i'd tell you where I live on slashdot...
you'll just have to track me down by user #
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
...the receiver, which typically is portable, calculates its distance from the various satellites and triangulates to determine its own location within an inch.
;)
Typically portable? What use could a non-portable GPS receiver be?
Children starving in africa?
Is that REALLY such a big issue?
I mean, black holes are eating entire solar systems!
Then the real issue here is whether or not the government will pay attention to these new findings - I'm betting no.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
This may be a stretch, but some people affected by this discovery may benefit from the confusion. If you are in this situation and were arrested/convicted by the state that you weren't really in at the time, it is possible--though IANAL & YMMV--to have your conviction overturned due to lack of jurisdiction.
I'm just throwing that out there because a lot of people with DUI, indecent exposure, drug possession, etc... run-ins from their teen & college years will have an unfair disadvantage for the rest of their life because of the fanciful association potential employeers make between a police record and future job performance.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Not only are borders inaccurate, but the earth moves too. For exampe the San Andreas shifts two inches a year- sometimes in violent jumps all at once. This adds up to 16 feet in a century.
Boundaries based on waterways are prone to sfting also.
GPS is used a research tool to observe earth shifts on a minute scale.
When my home state was still a territory, the river that separates it from one of its neighbour states changed course. That boundary dispute is still in the courts more than a century later.
So those of you who think you've recently moved, don't rush out and buy new stationery just yet....
Well with that reasoning, my FM radio should be transmitting too.
My next door neighbor just moved after 25 years. I'ved lived in the same house for almost 15 years, no problem. When the neighbor went to have a survey done, he was told that all of the property lines in the area are off by 90 freakin' feet. There is now some question as to whether I actually own the land under my house or not. Technology is not always a good thing.
It's a shame. I'm a mile from the Hopkinton town hall, the post office, the police, two miles from the ambulance," says Mrs. Crider. "If they put this house in Connecticut, I'll have to sell. I can't go 15 miles [to town]. I'm in a wheelchair.
If you can't use a post office, police station or ambulance because you live in a different state, then you should really be worrying about who created a silly rule like that in the first place.
I used to work for a surveyor in RI, and this situation doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Surveying is really more than just right-angle trig, it also involves a careful assesment of existing markers, the path of previous surveyors, and "known-good" boundaries to measure from (ones whose choice will be accepted by a court). In a rural town like Hopkinton, there are no good comprehensive plans to reference-you have to search back in the title records (in some cases, back to the 1640s) when "legal deed" could be as vague as "my property is five rods by the Old North Road on the west, five rods by Farmer Joe's land to the North, seventeen-hundred cubits by the land of Cooper Ptarmigan III in the east, and finally five rods bordered on the south by the property of the Widow Fenimore, now deceased, to the Old North Road and the point and place of beginning."
The rest of the properties in town are similarly well-described, which means you have to start your measurements further away from the actual property you are concerned with, in some cases, starting in New York would be a good idea:) The local governments tax property on the assessor's best guess of how much land you own, so there is no incentive for accurate public land data. Hell, the City of Providence can't even prove where it's own north border is-most of the markers are gone and the records are non-existant.
Oh, and one final thing: until GPS receivers have 1/100" precision _and_ accuracy, don't expect measurements taken using one to stand up in court-adjudicated property dispute.
Here in Sydney. People get into A big hooha when suburb boundaries are updated/corrected/change & they end up with a less exlusive postcode. Take the leafy Northshore suburb of Wahroonga, some claimed their properties were devalued $40,000 because of the change from the Wahroonga postcode to the Turramurra postcode.
Last summer, my wife and I visited the Old Greenwich Observatory near London, site of the 0 degree longitude line. Naturally, I took my GPS. I found that the true (WGS-84) line lies in the park several hundred feet east of the ceremonial line marked at the observatory. The true line is not marked in any way, nor do you need to pay admission to stand on it. Switching to older British map datums brought the discrepancy down, but still didn't eliminate it completely. In fact I got better matches between the older datums and their older reference lines at the observatory than I did for the "modern" datum and reference line.
I really should post my photos to my website...
I always liked that quote.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Whatever happens, im sure that the tax each state gains or looses from this will soon be dwarfed by the ammound of money spend on meetings and dumb ideas(tm) that are cooked up to fix it.
Wars have been fought over less...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Maybe the hoi-poloi only have access to GPS RECIEVERS.
I'm got a GPS TRANSMITTER right here on my bench!
Know if I only knew where the hell I am.
some rocket scientist, in a lab -- somewhere
How the hell is this Offtopic?
Yeah, human-drawn artificial border line is a big mess, and can have a very negative impact on people's life.
I had a friend at college who could really tell his country of birth. It all depends on the season and the result of the guerilla war. He was born in a village in the Golden Triangle (the border of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand). He would be cambodian or laotian and thai citizen, depending on who controlled the area. And when the drug warlord controlled the area, he would be stateless (in a no-man's land, and had to pledge allegiance to whoever controlled the area).
Working for a GPS technology company I would say that if you can hack a GPS satellite then you DESERVE your neighbors property as well as the respect and admiration of hackers everywhere.
For certain ... supposedly land in downtown Tokyo costs more than US$250 per SQUARE METRE (!!)
They'd be able to track you down in the middle of Antarctica.
RMN
~~~
You had it right on up until the end. Four satellites are enough for any receiver regardless of clock type. You need three if you have a disciplined atomic clock available to the reciever.
Also, if you have an atomic clock and can make an assupmtion about your altitude you only need 2. Early GPSs on Navy submarines used that trick, since subs always carry (multiple) atomic clocks and since they could only get a GPS track on the surface their altitude was always 0 MSL. They could surface or get to periscope depth and get a super-accurate position fix in just 3 or 4 seconds then dive again.
Is there a way you can just be exempt from the new borders and cite the original declaration of land ownership from when you bought the property?
~ now you know
No one can really own land. They only have the right (temporary) rights to occupy and exploit it.
This whole situation just proves that people are deluded by magic spells written on pieces of paper. (The white paper and the green paper, too!)
One day the state survey team came through to check the border between Maine and New Hampshire. As it happened, one of the houses they passed in Maine turned out to really be in New Hampshire. When they informed the owner, an old Mainer, he gave a sigh of relief and said "Thank goodness! I don't think I coulda took another Maine Winter!"
I remember reading a newspaper article a few months ago about a town that straddles the US/CDN border. The article discussed specific people, such as a lady who lives on the US side but works on the CDN side (or the other way around), or neighbours who live across the street from each other and are in different countries.
The article then discussed some of the ramifications of this, especially in light of September 11. Before that, people were fairly relaxed about "crossing the border". Now, however, they can't afford to take such things lightly.
Moving more on topic, the article pointed to in the story mentioned a certain Iva Crider.
Iva Crider, 78, has more serious concerns. She and her husband built a house near the border 60 years ago. She'd always considered her house -- and five chicken coops -- in Rhode Island. The North Stonington survey would bump her into Connecticut.
"It's a shame. I'm a mile from the Hopkinton town hall, the post office, the police, two miles from the ambulance," says Mrs. Crider. "If they put this house in Connecticut, I'll have to sell. I can't go 15 miles [to town]. I'm in a wheelchair. After 160 years, I think they should just leave it alone."
This is someone who is facing her whole life being turned upside down for the sake of what must seem to her like purely arbitrary definitions.
Unfortunately, there's no simple question. Jurisdiction demands that these questions be defined precisely (especially in such a litigious society as America; what police officer is going to want to risk getting caught in a jurisdiction battle over disputed boundary lines when he is responding to a violent crime which may require him to draw his sidearm?). And simple politics demands that politicians protect their territory, valid or invalid, sensible or insensible.
correction... that's more than US$250,000 per square metre. Yes, I was off by a factor of 10^3 before.
I'm not saying that it is feasible, only that it is (remotely) possible. You may not even need to do something that complicated to get your way, just bribe a surveyor or hack the individual GPS handheld.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
If this was not the U.S., but just a hodgepodge of 50 or so countries?
And they go to war, not for land, not for mineral or 'natural' resources, but for fucking (pun intended) -people- and the taxes they represent.
Why can I see this happening?
Somewhere, on some planet or continent even more boneheaded than ours, this has, or will happen...
I am a science fantasy fan
ID technology is invading our lives very quickly. Hell, I already sold my children's anonymity to the government for a f'ing tax deduction. They've tied the birth certificate to SSN application. You can't claim child tax deductions without their SSN.
There's been ankle bracelets for home arrest prisoners for a long time now. With GPS, expect a *lot* more of this: once you've been caught on the wrong side of the law, government claims the right to shackle you with a device that allows them to know where you are, all the time. It will revolutionize the prison industry.
There's even people who VOLUNTARILY have their children fingerprinted for government files, "just in case" something happens. WTF? As if the government's knowledge of your wherabouts and identity isn't one of the most hazardous propositions there are!
How long will it be before we (well, Americans anyway) replace (or worse add) chip implantment for/to circumcision?
Trading your anonymity for 'security' is just plain stupid. Security is just an illusion - it does not exist. Any time you trade your freedom for security, you are selling your soul for vaporware.
I'm actually surprized that the government hasn't already required car manufacturers to install GPS tracking chips in all new cars. Wouldn't that stop car thieves? And do all kinds of other wonderful 'stop the bad guys' things?
Yeah sure, it would, BUT...
Get a clue, people, it's all relative! There's a distinct possibility you will wake up and find yourself on the wrong side of some law. Enemies are interchangeable; the only thing that stays the same is that people get hurt, lives get ruined, wars get fought. Our freedom, our anonymity, *is* our security, idiots!
And now we're already to the point that we've elevated technology to GOD status - trusting what some GPS receiver says more than our own common sense. For crying out loud, if you've spent 20 years living in a house in Rhode Island, paying taxes there, etc., can't anyone come to the conclusion that it's like common law marriage? This is a huge can of worms, and will throw the real estate industry into turmoil. And what will be the answer? Lawyers and more title insurance companies (that aren't liable for a damn thing, when you read the fine print)? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Ranting provides some stress relief, at least. Doubt it will do much more than that.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
"It's a shame. I'm a mile from the Hopkinton town hall, the post office, the police, two miles from the ambulance," says Mrs. Crider. "If they put this house in Connecticut, I'll have to sell. I can't go 15 miles [to town]. I'm in a wheelchair. After 160 years, I think they should just leave it alone."
Why do you have to go to a different town just because they change your border? I'm pretty sure the post office will still accept your mail.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Well, at one time you folks wanted it all, and at one time, you folks didn't want parts of MI or WI... Make up your minds!
(Actually, I'm not so sure where this fabled "inaccuracy" would come in, since the Canada/US border follows the 49th parallel through most of the countries, and bisects the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway for most of the rest of it.)
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
I don't think my magellan for my palm v has an atomic clock.
What I do think is that every satellite probably just transmits their time in a signal, and judging on when you get that signal, you can re-assemble where you are - I don't believe the unit even has to worry about time, other than "time between signals".
Karnal
Hmm...there is still a law on the books in Texas that says oral sex is illegal....perhaps my girlfriend and I can claim that we're technically in Oklahoma!
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
Never happen, but it's fun to think about. Throw a blur on those black lines on the map. "Well, you appear to live 70% in Israel and 30% in Palestine, please split your taxes, votes, political leanings, religious doctrines, prejudices, and so on accordingly."
My take: people live where they think they live. For tens of thousands of years, people have defined places using prepositional phrases. Now we can use coordinates, great. But if the numbers conflict with those definitions, it's the numbers that need adjusting.
Oddly enough, this is germain to my germaine to my half-baked, nowhere-near-ready-for-public-consumption personal project, which involves trying to represent places both with GPS coordinates and phrases like "down by the riverside".
His surveyor puts his bed, and more specifically his pillow, in Connecticut. Since courts base residency on where one sleeps at night, Mr. Kemp, who sells golf-course equipment, figures he might have to switch allegiances.
Its obvious that a lot of these surveyors got out of the wrong side of their beds this morning.
Because it insults Americans in a thread started to insult Canadians....nevermind...
Between 1820 and 1842, the boundary between Maine and Canada was disputed.
In 1903, the border between Canada and the US along the Alaskan "pan-handle" was finally decided.
In 1925, a treaty with the UK clarified the boundary through the Lake of the Woods (Minnisota), resulting in the transfer of a few acres between countries. US residents in this area actually wanted to secede from the US at one point due to fishing regulations.
Several towns straddle the New York/Quebec border, where the border can run through a library. That page also mentions that many people in the region have dual citizenship because they were born in the States.
So, it ain't that much of a joke.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
I live in Rhode Island.
I go to school in Connecticut.
It sucks to live either place.
Recommendation: Move to the middle of a large western state. At least you will know for sure which shitty state you are a resident of.
Of course, articles about GPS always highlight the fact that they are "military satellites" up front to suggest to the reader that some official military operation was involved. The WSJ article even calls GPS "new technology" -- which is really stretching the idea that "new" is a relative term. I used the same network of military satellites, "new technology" and a $100 device that runs on two AA batteries to drive from San Francisco to the Grand Canyon last year. Doesn't sound quite so official now, does it?
Neither team's findings would change the fact that the border established between the states 160 years ago was based on observations on the ground, not GPS. It would take an agreement between the two states or a drawn-out legal battle before the U.S. Supreme Court similar to the case that resulted in New York and New Jersey splitting Ellis Island right through the middle of an existing, historic building. Ellis Island was arguably more important financially to the states than a handful of houses, and I suspect the Supreme Court would rule that the indigenous residents of those houses have a greater right to choose their state than a bunch of abandoned buildings.
On the other hand, Connecticut and Rhode Island could always go to war over this. Yeah, let's do that. There's nothing good on TV tonight anyway.
Turns out we don't live in Hooterville after all, we live in Pixley.
I can't believe these "surveyors" are that bad. I mean it's not as if the states aren't all different colors! I live in central PA so it's all green. New Jersey, as we all know, is orange! Perhaps we should get some non-color blind folks out there to define the borders!
Hint: Black line=new state!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
From the article: The receiver, which typically is portable, calculates its distance from the various satellites and triangulates to determine its own location within an inch.
Uh, is there really such a thing as a non-portable GPS receiver?
That's just what THEY want you to think.
Just think, now I can move my family to Cape Cod without packing my family and belongings out of our apartment in Garden Grove, CA! What a way to get closer to my inlaws! Um, waitasec....
This sig no verb.
I thought GPS was only accurate to a few meters. Was there an upgrade? I would think even with a lot of satellites to do triangulation off of, measuring a distance that exact wouldn't be easy.
1) I like how both cities are planning on taxing the property owners - no free rides, even if you have to pay twice!
2) Oh my GOD I can't believe how small RI is - and they still get 2 senators. The whole thing should be squashed into another state. They do have the highest population/area ratio of any state, however, so I have to give them that. At 948 people per square mile, there's a lotta livin' going on in RI.
Hmm.. border disputes, Rhode Island... where have I heard this before?
Oh, yeah - Family Guy!
Man, talk about life imitating art..
Not only that. There are a lot of Canadian Connections in the Simpsons.
check this:
http://ccr.ptbcanadian.com/simpsons/
This site goes through all of the episodes and lists all of the Canadian connections in the Simpsons.
~ kjrose
I just found out I don't live in Central Florida, and that I am infact a TOURIST! Oh well I guess it is time to start driving like one.
-Josh
For surveying and high-precision positioning they switch to "carrier phase" processing, which is both more expensive and can be accurate to less than a centimeter.
More information on Magellan's site
fencepost
just a little off
Didn't even know it.... (Osage county is in Oklahoma), oh and that street also happens to be like the 96 degrees west meridian.
Illinois can frickin' have it! Bad enough to have to admit that Gary is in the same State that I live in. Come on!! Let's clean up Indiana!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
All superheterodyne receivers have some miniscule level of IF leakage. For a typical FM radio, it's at 10.7 MHz. TVs are at 45 MHz. AM radios are at 455 KHz. For commercial gear, it could be 30, 45, 70 or any other freq (or freqs) the designers choose. Many receivers have several IFs, therefore several possible 'transmit' frequencies.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
The people caught in the middle simply want to know where they'll send their kids for school.
Send 'em where you always sent 'em before.
It's like when the electricity goes out and the traffic lights stop working - don't panic, it's not the end of the world.
I'm a 2000 man.
Then it would be wise to take a picture of it, in order to enjoy it as you rot away in jail for the rest of your natural life :)
Hell, charges are being pressed against people for pointing out network vulnerabilities, imagine what the feds would do to you if you h4x0r3d their GPS sats and offset the coordinates. If you can do something like that, you should go for bigger things than your neighbor's petunias.
-R
I just found out that China is part of the U.S.!!! Holy geography Batman!
eTrade SUCKS
Finally the clue less people are even more so. The people that live on the border of a city are fucked. The people that want you slashdot lamers to rot in hell will rule the day thanks to uber precise GPS trilocation systems that make it a lot harder for you to stash your weed and get what you deserve: A nice hard ass reaming from tiny, buba, and sin.
See you in hell with me mother fucker
when I eat paper, I can do magic things.
Anything you say will be held against you.
No... And what's my name? Who are you!?! Where am I??? Arrrgggggg!!!!
I'd rather be sailing...
If my GPS tells me I'm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?
I always wondered how those 10/9 central programmes were broadcast ... what happens to those that live on the border of two time zones?
That's a very cool link.
In reality it's a problem with shoddy surveying during the 1800's. I've personally heard stories from people whose great-grandparents who were surveyers.
They would be out surveying, doing a good job, see a bunch of upland game, decide they're hungry, and voila! It turns out they would pack their gear and hurry off to bag a few birds. Unfortuneatly, back then not much was surveyed yet or only partial surveys. So finding the exact spot was not that easy in a sea of prairie or trees.
You'll see evidence of this as well the further north you go. Sections have weird shapes and aren't the trapizoid they should be. Southern states don't notice the inch missing from mile to mile.
As they came back to finish surveying they had to fill in the gaps, as it were. Unfortuneatly, It's nearly impossible to move a main survey marker once surveyers have been measuring offsets from it for YEARS.
This isn't the government out to get you. It's about using GPS to determine state lines. Jesus christ!
This story reminded me of a joke:
A New Orleans lawyer sought a FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down.
After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply:
Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin.
Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:
Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the U.S. from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the then reigning monarch, Isabelle. The good queen, being a pious woman and careful about titles, almost as much as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to fund Columbus' expedition. Now the Pope, as I'm sure you know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that He also made that part of the world called Louisiana. He, therefore, would be the owner of origin. I hope you find His original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our loan?
They got it.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
Hollywood born.
Santa Monica raised.
Santa Cruz resident.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
What on earth prompted you to pick this one post out of the rest of the 90% of off-topic posts to flame?!? Good gracious, you'd think that it was *that easy* for someone else to decide you're a bad guy! Oh wait... it is.
And I did mention that it was going to cause turmoil in the real estate industry, just in case you didn't read my whole rant.
Mod me down, mod me down, I'm outta control, I'm wearing a frown.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
They came out and surveyed the land and pounded stakes in the ground at the corners of the property. That's my land. I don't care if it moves over time. Or shifts from the earths plates moving. Everything inside those markers is mine.
Continental American National Arctic Disposal Area.
Sorry to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.
The old lady can't have an ambulance when she would need it.
Kids don't go to the same school as their neighbour's.
But what's the motive ?? MONEY. It is not CORPORATE GREED, it is STATE GREED.
Why can't we hear nothing about State greed ? br>Enron and else sank, but I guess in 10 or 20 years some cities or States will still spend $1.000.000 a year to extort a few square meters to the neighbouring State or city, therefore earning $10K in taxes ?
http://www.pageliberale.org
I bemoan the fact that fools have caused a good city to be divided for no reason.
I bemoan the fact that the bulk of Kansas City is not in Kansas.
But the actual CITY I like.
www.eFax.com are spammers
You go down to the courthouse and dig through a room of really old books. Last time I was there I talked with the librarian(?) and he mentioned that he was trying to figure out how to scan in all the documents so they wouln't have to be handled so much. That, he said, would have to be done out of his own pocket since the county didn't have the budget to do it.
If you ever get a half-day off from work you should take the ferry from Willimsburg to Surry. You can eat lunch at the Virginia Diner(be sure to eat some hush puppies) then walk across the street and look around the courthouse. Its kind of neat to read all the old legal papers.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Calvin: [Daydreaming]
Mrs. Wormwood: Calvin! What state do you live in?
Calvin: Denial!
Mrs. Wormwood: I guess I can't argue about that...
-mz
by my calcs this works out to over a billion $ per acre. it sure seems high to me. do you have a source? it's facinating if true.
GPS is informative.
A few years back (when I lived in San Jose) I got ahold of a GPS unit and a marine navigation software package (Cpt something).
The nice part of the package was that you could fire up the GPs unit (and since it was for marine navigation) it would plat your course over time on a map.
Well. This was too tempting.
So, (in my house) I set up the antenna and unit and began to plot my course.
Well. Hey, this was around the time of the recent earthquake in Oakland around 1992 or so, but still, my place is not going to move, right?
Wrong.
My place moved. Over a day or so, plotting my movement, my place moved as much as a quarter mile or so in several directions. No, I did not notice any more earthquakes during that time.
And, no, I do not think the military had their satelites set to the 10 meter or better resolution. But, a "quarter a mile".
Nice cruise is all I could conclude.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
"Do You Know Where You Live?"
Is this some kind of lame joke?
Hehe, "a brewery in Portland" doesn't narrow it down very much. Just counting the companys that actually bottle beer in Portland and not Hood River, Newport, or Bend, and none of the many brewpubs, we get"
Portland Brewing Company
Widmer Bros.
Saxer
Nor'Wester (now owned by Saxer)
and last and best Bridgeport.
Bridgeport makes a firkin IPA that is quite good, but I don't know of a Steam Pumper. I had a steamer (ale made with lager yeast) from a San Francisco brewery once.
Portland really ought to call itself the Beer City instead of the Rose City.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I would suddenly have to start paying income tax. Will the world end? No. In fact, I would prefer it.
Well go ahead then. What's stopping you? Send the government a check. I'm sure they'll cash it.
This space intentionally left blank
I lived on the corner of a county in a corner house lot. Snow trucks KNEW this and each county tried to mac MASSIVE hills of snow on my property on the "other counties" lot. We always tried our puny best to move it into traffic.
It sucks living on a border you have no benefits.
This gps issue messes up the rare curvier borber parts of canada-us the most but as waterways are USUALLY used, the specific lines thankfully ar moot.
Mexico is a different problem... Ever try to use a GPS phone along Mexicali city border? YOu can't. YOu need to call sprint.. The GPS in the phones seem to claim you are in Maxicon when you are actually 500 yards on US soil.
Canadian border cell phones switch over as soon as you cross bridges.
I know there is no "real" border with mexico... merely a continuum of illegal aliens for 300 miles north... but there is supposed to be a legal border, and sprints gps lines claim its firther north than we have built our fences.
No wonder mexican army has taken potshots from Hummers this year while on allegedly "us" soil.
I used to search land title for a company in San Bernardino County, USA, and I found a few errors in old surveys, maps, etc. that resulted in a slice of land that didn't pass along with the deed as intended. Usually there would be a triangular slice of land only a few inches at the widest point, sometimes a foot or so. There were other combinations, too. I'm suprised that the gps system has uncovered big parcels of land that were not surveyed correctly. I do know that if you do not have your transit level, then it shoots an arc. You have to mark several points along the line to detect this, and that was probably done in nearly all cases. I'm sure most of the old surveys were done by very competent folks, and they were, for the most part, error free. Bringing new technology in, can change things, however. ;-)
btw, here is a site that has some photos of antique surveying instruments:
http://www.antiquesurveying.com/
Equipment such as shown there was what they worked with.
Off topic: My website, linked below, is down, I have been told by aplus.net customer site that they are working on the problem. I inadvertently brought it down when accessing my directory with the ftp client. (It's not their fault, I did it.) Can't say any more than that, you know the new rules
Isn't technology wonderful?
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
My father worked on the first geosynchronous satelites (Syncom I and II). When examining the telemetry from the first bird to make orbit, they realized that an earth station on a certain island in the south pacific was NOT where they thought it was. It took some convincing for their conclusions to be accepted, but in the end they were proven correct. Now with GPS there are many more geeks who notice that things are where we thought they were, but satelites have been "changing" the world in this way for decades!
The borders in this part of the country are almost precisely aligned with major lines of latitude and longitude. Which can be fun if you have a GPS and are on a road heading directly towards (or away) from a border.
But if you get a very large-scale map, you'll see that the lines aren't quite straight. There are small jogs, just enough to include a mining claim or spring or other natural resource. It makes you wonder what sort of backroom deals occured to make sure that property was in Utah instead of Colorado, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I went through the state of misery on vacation.
...
Huh? mis-ERY?
...you'll be able to put on your Personal Heads Up Display (PHUD) that's tied into your city's building, planning, and zoning offices and see a representation of what should be superimposed on what actually is. Won't that be interesting.
Hey, that fire hydrent shoud be three feet north!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
...i must be on one of the poles... i'm POLISH!!! (no offence to Poles, especially ones that dont live on the pole, but i dont mean Poland, which is to say... AAARGGH)
It's been the Common Law (for those nations based upon the English traditions) for several centuries that a boundary voluntarily agreed to supercedes the written definition. That's why its considered so important to well mark the boundaries. In the case of governments, usually there is a commision established by both parties which supervise the surveying and placing of markers, and then maintaining them. It's also not unsual for the commissions to play fast and loose- the various jogs in the Tennessee-Kentucky border, for example, are there because locally influential landowners managed to get themselves on the "proper" side of the border. Some of the various jogs in New England boundaries probably have the same source.
You don't need a GPS to find boundaries that don't go where you think they should, any sufficiently detailed map will do. Such maps will also show that any border defined as a line of latitude or longitude won't follow that line exactly. (The curvature of the earth doesn't help, either.) Many of the surveys were in remote areas with too much to survey and too little time to do it right, so like most other government work, "good enough" was substituted. They also relied on a sound engineering principal-- without a systematic problem (like misaligned transits) all the mistakes tend to cancel each other out.
One reason the US went to the uniform Meridians and Base Lines of the General Land Surveys of the West was to avoid the problems such as in the article. By not basing it on local geography, there would be few problems when the geography (read rivers) changed.
For historic information about the borders of the US and its states, see "Boundaries of the United States and the Several States" USGS Professional Paper #909 by F.K.van Zandt.
And the data, btw, is to the umpteenth decimal place by longitude and latitude... for instance:
Here's the central longitude and latitude for Richmond VA
+037.531050
-077.474584
The long and lats that define the borders are as accurate, and they were done in conjunction with surveying which should thus make the postal service databases accurate as well.
Now on the other hand, I've had GPS's accurate to within 3 feet tell me I am a couple miles from a city I am already in, or that I have passed a town by without going through it, while I have just driven down Main Street of whatever town.
Joe Smith's house being innaccurately accounted for on a map is one thing, as inplausible as it would seem... but a whole city, or a decent sized (area wise) town? Unlikely... seems more like the GPS's are wrong.
For school, (at Carnegie Mellon U) a friend did some tests using 14 different satellites to take readings for a(n exactly) known location... you'd be surprised at the varied info. Yes, more than reliable enough to drive by, but not nearly the 3 feet some high end, super GPS devices claim, (and in some cases off by hundreds of feet).
FWIW, I doubt the gov't will even care especially considering the havok one decent sized "correction" would create (assuming this GPS data is correct).
- Robert
www.Hyperforce.com
WebMaster:
BinFeeds
XXX Thumbnailed Image Newsgroups but
I read it in a newspaper some years ago ... the Toronto Star I think. I did a bit of googling and it seems that this number is way too high. Perhaps the figure was in Yen. So basically, take the previous figure with a grain of salt. It's quite possible I got it wrong.
"His surveyor puts his bed, and more specifically his pillow, in Connecticut."
There's a 1958 French (or is it Italian)
movie about this very thing...
Considered harmful.
... the Board of Selectmen in each town is required, by state law, to walk the boundaries of their town at least once every five years to check on it. There are, usually, stone obelisks in place at each corner, assuming the corner is on dry land.
The northern border of NY and VT, by the way is NOT 45.0000 degrees north. It's actually 45 degrees 0 minutes 29.5 seconds North, as the result of a surveying error about 200 years ago.
In 1934, the US Supreme Court's Boundary Commission stepped in and settled a dispute between NH and VT, and erected an obelisk near town line between Pittsburg, NH and Canaan, VT to mark the exact line. And, yeah, this is along the only part of the border between NH and VT that IS surveyed (about 2-3 miles' worth) - most of it is the Connecticut River.
Bet no one here knows how the northern border of NH (and the US) is defined, either.
PS - don't go swimming in Hall's Stream - it's bugged !
I can never understand why the border between states in US would be so controversial. After all, what is the difference between one state and its neighbors? Same people, same issues and the same two political parties fighting it out.
Makes me curious, are there any neighboring states which don't get along very well? Any states that fight over water or any other natural resources?
All your favorite sites in one place!
This gem is probably from sometime in the century before last:
Surveyor: Do you own this farm?
Farmer: Ayuh.
Surveyor: Well, we have some news for you. We took a survey of your property and it turns out your farm isn't in New Hampshire after all.
Farmer: 'Taint?
Surveyor: No, we resurveyed the border and found out that your property is actually on the Vermont side.
Farmer: So you're sayin' mah fahm is in Vermahnt?
Surveyor: Yes, that's what we're saying.
Farmer: Good. Nevah could stand them New Hampshah wintahs.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I actually thought of this, strangely enough. But I think it's not relevent. Within Louisiana, they are well within their rights to use Napolianic code to setting common disputes, but a case about state borders, is for the federal courts, which is based off English Common.
Burn Hollywood Burn
After working in the cellular industry I know the there is an intrinsicly built error in to gps ( supposedly to prevent nuclear attacks) of about 20 to 30 meters ( how that would stop a nuke I am not quite sure but hey ...) so even with gps people woud still not know where they are :)
Don't worry! Everything is getting nicely out of control....
I live in Switzerland; every spring, each village here has what's called a 'Banntag' (no clue what it means.)
Essentially, all the villagers pack up large amounts of firecrackers and toy cannon and things and march the entire length of their community border, getting properly liquored up in the process.
A bunch of the local yokels always dress up in period costumes and spend the day shooting black powder muskets, inevitably blowing off a few fingers and bits--what else could you expect from a bunch of soused farmers with explosives?
The tradition stems from an age-old custom of every village making sure the bunch of foreigners (the next village) up the road didn't try anything funny with the border markers (big heavy engraved stones.) Best way to do that is to grab your flintlock and a few pints of the local jet fuel schnaps and to make sure your borders are respected...
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Check out Point Roberts, WA to see an example of an outcome of treaty-making without good surveying. The outcome of the war of 1812 caused the Americans and British to firm up borders. Finally, in 1846 the border between the US and what is now British Columbia was established at 49 degrees North. Apparently they didn't realize Point Roberts would be an isolated outpost of the US!
Apparently the border markers along this part of the world were done with 1800's technology, and the generally accepted border in the area is about 300m too far north. So there is some strip of "Canadian" territory being "occupied" by Americans just south of Vancouver. This is an academic joke because both countries have since agreed that the border stands where the markers are. However, the State of Washington, until fairly recently, had officially defined the border as 49 degrees North, and a number of court cases for crimes committed in this 300m strip, notably illegal fishing just off-shore, were thrown out due to lack of jurisdiction!
Anybody want a peanut?
My GPS receiver is accurate to about 15 feet. So, I can't tell if my property line has moved for at least 150 years. But since my zoning mandates a minimum of 400 feet of road frontage, it doesn't bother me that much. Folks crammed into cities or suburbs like sardines (why is it never anchovies?) would probably be more concerned.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)