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Australian Police Warn That Apple Maps Could Get Someone Killed
First time accepted submitter jsherring writes "Police in Victoria, Australia warn that Apple's glitch-filled Maps app could get someone killed, after motorists looking for the Victorian city of Mildura were instead guided to a wilderness area. Relying on Apple Maps to navigate through rural Australia seems rather foolish but it has become common practice to rely on GPS navigation. Besides reverting to google maps, perhaps Apple should provide strong warnings to use other navigation sources if navigating to remote locations."
As much as I enjoy a good old apple bashing, anyone who trust their gps without checking the plausibility of the route is an utter fool.
iLost? *ducks*
Apple would be leading us out of the wilderness, not into it!
Darwinism in action.
Wasn't Apple using Open Street Maps?
I come from near that area of Victoria. It is a scrub desert. The 4WD-only tracks are soft sand. No mobile coverage. No people. Very hot in summer. Amazing that anyone would start down one of these tracks trying to find a city of 30,000 people. Don't they think a city would have proper roads leading to it?
People managed to navigate without all this garbage.
Mildura is in the middle of a wilderness area. Not as remote as you can get, but well on the way out there. And Apple maps shows the city in the wrong place.
Care to spread some more dangerous ignorance around, fanboi?
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
and bringing just an apple for the trip... yes, Darwin
---
Best comparison is trying to get to Barstow and being directed off into the Mojave Desert ...
We are talking about a town/city of 30,000 people that 5-6hr from a major city and fairly obvious rural highways from place to place ... then being directed off into a national park of 1.5 million acres (approaching something like Yellowstone NP)
Yes - its rural and could get tourists into trouble but is still real Darwin Award stuff !
How exactly are they a "fanboi"? I don't seem them blindly praising one thing or another with this post.
Oh my... Now I can't stop picturing a naughty Siri giving me turn by turn navigation in the middle of nowhere.
"Take the next right."
[Stops and scratches head upon seeing it's a dirt road.]
"For real. Get onto that dirt road."
[Proceeds and drives a few miles.]
"At the next kangaroo, turn left."
[WTF?!?]
Before there is too much stupidity, if you've never been to Australia, please realise:
1. It's huge. Really huge. I live in one out of two of the closer-together cities in Australia, and they're about 800kms apart. In the other direction, the next major city is 2,500kms away.
2. It's mostly empty (in terms of civilization). Think of driving through rural Utah or Arizona, which are quite similar to the Australian bush.
3. It's mostly flat and full of similar looking landscape.
4. National parks and non-national park areas often look quite similar.
5. There's usually only one or two ways to get around in the country.
6. Mildura is a small town in the middle of bloody nowhere. If I was driving there from here I'd expect to pass through a handful of tiny settlements on the way.
So if you are relying on your GPS to get you somewhere outside a major city, it's actually quite plausible and reasonable that you might not have much idea that you're being led off in the wrong direction until you (don't) get there.
It's also quite plausible that you can die - it has happened before. People get lost, they run out of fuel, they don't have water, the temperature easily gets up into the 40-50C range and - dead.
Read Pynchon.
No there aren't any crocs in that location but there are drop bears.
for those that do care ... no crocs ... just emus, kangaroos, snakes, etc ...
pretty damn difficult to die there except from exposure to the heat
If you are trying to get to a residential area, and instead take a dirt road into a wilderness area, while blindly following your GPS, and you get eaten by a crocodile, you deserve the Darwin award you're about to get.
The problem is that in Australia you sometimes do have to take dirt roads through wildnerness areas to get to residential areas. Sometimes for hundreds of kilometres.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
EVERY I mean every year in Australia some tourists die because they did not pack any water and their 4x4 + GPS fails...
what happens is that the 4x4 is driven by the man/women that has no clue of driving in the outback... no nothing compares to the the great outback...
combined with
a blind faith in GPS...
leathal combination
what does not help here is TOM TOM
honestly speaking as someone living in australia the map makers from the netherlands who do a fantastic job in most other places... are frankly useless in australia
apple uses tomtom for routes combined with the fact apple cant get the POI in Australia COMPLETELY WRONG I mean there was the case of the apple store in sydney being in the wrong place (many streets away) and cairns being in the wrong place (this is a MAJOR town) I mean many 100 miles/kilometres wrong
honestly they need to get this sorted... just pay for the data apple wake up crowd sourcing is a fact check not the only source
regards
John Jones
for those that do care ... no crocs ... just emus, kangaroos, snakes, etc ...
pretty damn difficult to die there except from exposure to the heat
i.e. Pretty easy to die there from exposure to the heat.
I'm an Android user because I saw how costly owning Apple products would be. But if I were an Apple owner, paying a premium to be part of that elite clique, I'd be expecting the best of the best that's available. Not some second-rate beta maps app, that is not what I'm paying for (if I were an Apple user). IIWAAU, I'd be pissed.
And by Darwin, I do *not* mean the one that runs their iPhone ...
You mean... the capital of Northern Territory? Do they offer awards now for people lost in the outback?
(ducks)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
No crocodiles in that part of the country but Mildura is hardly the middle of a residential area, it is a medium sized town (about 30k or so pop) in the north west corner of Victoria in a country region that is farely sparsely populated if you stray from the main roads, with plenty of dirt roads around the area (though admittedly all the main roads there are definitely paved). It would be exceedingly easy to find yourself lost in the middle of nowhere before you realised if you strayed out of the farm areas into a national park.
The iCorpse app.
The root cause of this, and many of the other errors in city location observed throughout Australia, is actually quite simple and I don't know why Apple haven't fixed it yet. It was a bit of a facepalm moment when I realised what was actually going on with the Australian maps on iOS6.
Basically there are two problems:
1. Apple Maps is marking the centre of local government areas (analogous to a county, for American readers) as a point location, rather than a name for a large area of land (i.e. it's treating them as locations you can navigate to); and
2. In the case that a search query matches both a local government area name, AND a town name ... it preferences the local government area (which as mentioned, is being mapped as an exact point roughly in the middle of the area, generally in the middle of nowhere)
For example, follow the Hume Highway south from Sydney a little way and you will see a point marked as Wingecaribee, east of the highway, roughly in the vicinity of where the town of Moss Vale is (though, as noted, the GUI chooses to display Wingecaribee prominently, but doesn't mark Moss Vale or any other towns at all, unless you zoom in really close). The point marked as Wingecaribee is just a random spot in rugged forested terrain. Nothing's actually there. This is simply the centre of the Wingecaribee Shire. But there is no actual town called Wingecaribee so apart from looking weird, this doesn't hurt anything.
BUT ... keep following the highway south and you will soon come to the next shire, Goulburn Shire. Again, the centre of this local government area is marked as a point, called "Goulburn" and again, it's not anywhere near anything. It's in the middle of some random farmer's field somewhere. BUT THIS TIME, we have a problem, because within Goulburn Shire, there is actually also a town called Goulburn. But if you search for 'Goulburn', you are directed to the centre of the Goulburn Shire, NOT the town. This is completely retarded, as noone ever searches for things by local government area name in Australia (many people don't even know the name of their LGA ... they aren't as prominently known as counties in the US), and even if they did, wouldn't want to be directed to some arbitrary point near the middle of it with no regard for whether there's anything there.
This is what has happened in TFA too. There is a Mildura local government area. Within that, there is also a city called Mildura. But the city isn't marked; only the centre of the LGA. Which as stated, is in the middle of bloody nowhere.
Basically whoever processed the Australian mapping data has interpreted LGA (shire, county etc.) names as locality (town, city) names. And has given them prominence in both display and search results over actual localities. Should be simple to fix, surely. The data is there - it's just being used incorrectly.
Kinda like Wyoming, or North Dakota, or even British Columbia?
I'm a member of a forum, where a couple Canadians regularly contribute photo-documentaries of their trips. It's beautiful as can be, but the roads can be very primitive in BC.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
living in san francisco and going to starbucks together with apple maps might work, but actually in europe all the cities have incorrect street numbers, almost looks like they have managed to load the street number layer in mile units instead kilometres, the longer the street, more incorrect the numbers are. when i am home and click drive home from current location, i will get 2,3 km drive.... apple should say the following warning every time you start the maps: "do not trust apple maps, otherwise you might end up in serious trouble or die" as in the big city traffic, driving to the hospital on one way streets off 2-3 km can mean serious detour not to talk about the confusion. australia is just an extreme example, but the problem continues to exist everywhere in europe. and if apple says, just use it everything is going to be ok, our employees will eventually get the apple store addresses right, then it is misleading the general public. are not there some laws that you cannot sell a product, that does not do what you are claiming in your ads?
Bonus points if you actually wanted to go to Darwin.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
> The problem is that in Australia you sometimes do have to take dirt roads through wildnerness areas to get to residential areas. Sometimes for hundreds of kilometres.
Not to get to Mildura. Mildra is on the main National Highway road (named Sturt Highway) between Adelaide and Melbourne.
http://www.gomapper.com/travel/directions-from/adelaide-to-mildura.html
Apple Maps apparently sent people into the middle of the Murray Sunset National Park. Oh dear ... its a desert!
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Murray+Sunset+National+Park&hl=en&client=ubuntu&hs=ut2&tbo=u&channel=fs&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=6cfFUInbHa-hiAeb34H4BQ&ved=0CFAQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=650
One hundred or so kilomteres off course.
Darwin is in the Norther Territory: complete other side of the continent.
Care to spread some more dangerous ignorance around, fanboi?
Meh, I wasn't even defending Apple. I was just saying that people who blindly follow their GPS deserve whatever misfortunes they get as a result. There are just too many people who switch off their brains when driving with GPS.
It's certainly not restricted to people who have Apple devices. Stupidity is far more common than Apple gadgets.
Northern or Central British Columbia, yes. The southern part is pretty heavily populated.
Sorry to burst you bubble there, mate, but not all suburban roads are completely sealed.
Councils are still stingy bastards and would rather call in a grader to make a road than call in bitumen.
When I went to a national park here in the USA a few months back I bought navigon for my iPhone
It has offline maps and worked perfectly with no signal. It was $30 and well worth it
Its 1.5gb if you want to download every us state
Not as flashy as apple or google maps but an awesome program for what it does
Well, we are talking about Apple Maps...
Isn't Darwin further up north?
This seems like a non-story. Open Street Map correctly locates Mildura. When you do a search for Mildura on it, though, GeoNames offers three potential locations: Mildura, Mildura Airport, and Mildura Shire, which OSM locates where iOS6 reportedly locates Mildura:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-34.1770076751709&mlon=142.1488380432129&zoom=11
Put another way, it's as if mindless users followed Google Map directions to Arizona, instead of Arizona City, and ended up in the middle of Tonto National Forest, and issued a warning that Google Maps are inaccurate. Well, duh, how about suggesting to zoom in instead, so as to make sure you're not heading in the middle of nowhere?
No mention of local reporter named Toby Prime on the article? What a awesome name.
For goodness sake, what problem are people trying to solve using GPS?
I've driven around rural Australia for years (including Mildura and surrounds) and frankly nothing beats just having an old-fashioned foldout map. The roads between cities don't change THAT much and you can usually figure your way back on track if you get lost. Maps don't need a recharge (apart from buying a new one every so often or if you're going into a area you haven't been before.
Maybe there needs to be a short-cut built into these devices - label it "common sense" and have it direct it to your glovebox. Jeez.
Put another way, it's as if mindless users followed Google Map directions to Arizona, instead of Arizona City, and ended up in the middle of Tonto National Forest, and issued a warning that Google Maps are inaccurate. Well, duh, how about suggesting to zoom in instead, so as to make sure you're not heading in the middle of nowhere?
According to TFA this a case of the city being mislocated, and is more akin to people asking for directions to Arizona City and instead being sent to Tonto National Forest.
Isn't Darwin further up north?
not according to Apple
---
Readily accessible? BAH! I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Isn't Darwin further up north?
not according to Apple
Touché
... includes a purpose-built GPS with built-in maps that does NOT require a data connection - but I don't like to use it.
Part of the fun of wilderness travel is navigation by maps, compass, and the stars. When I take the 4x4 into remote, unfamiliar territory, I have a few compasses, and a complete set of maps (road, topographical, and aviation sectional) on PAPER. I also bring several means of traditional wireless communications for HF, VHF, and UHF, and an ELT.
Most of these tourists that go to Australia with delusions of adventure after watching the Crocodile Dundee movies, don't have the first clue how to properly plan for one of these trips. They think they can just get in a 4x4 and drive, with no driver skill training, no survival supplies, and no communications aside from their cell phones. It's pretty scary when you think about it, but they're "invincible."
They might be separate cities, but there is very little not-a-city between them.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
As a former resident of Mildura, while its not nowhere, its pretty close. Its not small enough that you would expect such a wildly inaccurate map.
Then again, having been involved with an apple reseller there, perhaps apple wanted to pretend the place didn't exist.
--ebola
... you're just colonizing your continent wrong.
> Kinda like Wyoming, or North Dakota, or even British Columbia?
Or Alabama. Or Mississippi. Or South Carolina. The main roads are pretty good and are well marked, but as soon as you get on a secondary road, it's VERY easy to get lost.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Not quite. The slight difference here is that Mildura refers to the City or the county depending on the context. If people frequently referred to Arizona City as Arizona, you would end up with the same kind of bogus police warnings.
This is not to discount Apple's fault (or Google's, for that matter), far from it. If you ask for directions to Mildura (respectively Arizona), then -- duh! -- you almost certainly mean the city; and if not you want to reach its border, as opposed to the precise middle of it.
At any rate, the sensationalist stories that surround this police report amount to click-hungry journalists who are collectively making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Last week I plotted a bike route from my house to a local establishment. The route it decided to choose had me riding on a train track for 3 kilometers. Had I actually taken that route, I would have been hit by a train within 2 minutes. It's not the GPS' fault you didn't verify the route for accuracy.
Tim Cook will sue you for illegal death appropriation.
This is called Darwinisim. And it's a good thing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
USE PAPER MAPS, they will never go out of style or lose value!!! I use Google Maps and GPS from time to time, esp. if I am in someplace I am unfamiliar with, but I never rely solely on digital directions.When I lived in the US (growing up in Virginia) I kept an atlas of the State in my car and now that I live in Beirut I also keep a map of Lebanon and a city guide of Beirut in my car...for those moments that Google/GPS fails or when I need to plan a route and don't have internet access (which is quite common here).
I have a good friend back in the States that I respect highly, but she depends on the GPS to get her around her own city (where's she's lived for 10+ years)...for crying out loud, it isn't difficult to memorize a few landmarks and road names and learn how to navigate!
Its sad that people are being put in some danger, but some planning, common sense, and basic navigation skills can solve this problem. Apple does need to address the issue but its not Apple's fault if someone who can't be bothered to check on a route dies due to getting lost.
--- b2b.mallaidh.org | www.mallaidh.org | www.kidsalive.org/article/kahlil-pfaff/
This site is getting worthless - all of a sudden today, I can't see any posts excepting mine. Who's the retard who tried 'improving' what's already working just fine?
Or here in Tennessee. Before you get to that point, ruts can be a foot deep and there's banks on both sides, so turning around isn't an option. After a good rain, the creek can be over a foot deep and if you're going the wrong way, your car will float downstream and you won't make the road.
Bolivia is the place with the worst road in the world. Seatbelts - optional. Parachutes - not so much.
The only manufacturer who seems to take this seriously is Tom Tom:
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/30/3362727/death-by-gps-in-desert.html
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Apple Maps don't kill people... I DO!
Is Apple on the way down? I'm surprised the problem has not been fixed.
>The problem is that in Australia you sometimes do have to take dirt roads through wildnerness areas to get to residential areas
Dirt roads might require vehicle more suitable than sedan.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I seem to recall a similar case in the UK (Wales, I think) where truck drivers were being forbidden (by law, IIRC) to use GPS devices (of any brand, make or model) to get to a destination. More often than not it would lead them to a narrow dirt/muddy road in poor condition where their truck could get easily stuck.
This was years ago, so the tech might have changed enough to avoid these situations but, more recently, Apple proved maybe not so much has changed.
Guns: The U.S. government's answer to a wide range of situations. Why? Because for people like Dick Cheney, violence is profitable.
I head of this one time where a GPS failed to show that you needed to stop for a ferry.
And don't forget about the tail of the dragon that some GPS try to send trucks down it.
I drive through there more than twice a year across the back of NSW up to the top of Queensland. Take the old Land Cruiser running LPG that way as there are gas stations along the A20 that have LPG at the pump. If I'm not driving that then I'd head up to Broken Hill then the drive through Bourke to Lightning Ridge. Be prepared, take an EPIRB, water, blankets, spare clothing and a spare battery + fuel. Great drive.
Task Mangler
Oh yeah, Siri should just come on every 5 minutes while navigating and say "Just to let you know, I have no idea where I'm going."
I love how this thread brought out all the Aussie expressions and in-fighting. Finally Aussie nerds get an excuse to be aussies on slashdot!
keep a current paper map in your dash to compliment devices that take away the thinking most the time. nuff said...
and that apple maps sucks. you're out of the loop as an iOS user. you should know that.
When my (ex)wife and I were married, she was living in Canberra and her family was living in Adelaide. My father-in-law, a retired long-haul truckie suggested we drive there in my wife's Datsun Sunny so that I could see the "real" Australia. He laid out the route plan for us on the "scenic route" (A20) through the small towns like Gundagai, Wagga, Mildura, etc. It was a mostly fun trip, but very hot, dry and dusty at times in the non-airconditioned Datsun. We actually drove for a time sitting on bags of ice to relieve the heat. It all becomes very clear now that maybe he was trying to get me killed.
All the really great sigs are already taken.
I work for a rural ISP, and it is pretty common for ALL maps to get you lost around county lines.
"County road 2? Which one?"
"Why does 157ave become 159ave when it reaches this state highway?"
Not only that, but most people, even people who do live in semi-rural areas, don't understand how directions are given by locals.
"Turn left by the broken tractor." -- I have seen the same tractor in the same place for close to 10 years.
"At the second mud road, turn right."
If you're fortunate enough to be driving near a river, directions get a little easier, because it's hard to mistake a river for anything else.
coming on Slashdot to blame the victim. Dozens and dozens of lock-step victim-blaming posts. Shocking. Great marketing campaign, Cook & Co. Hint - next time train your shills to use more variety in their posts so I can't see through your campaign so easily. Or quit using bots to do your posting for you.
which he described as the best part of the iPhone experience at the iPhone launch event.
I'd be much more worried getting lost in a place like South Central LA.
for those that do care ... no crocs ... just emus, kangaroos, snakes, etc ...
pretty damn difficult to die there except from exposure to the heat
The kangaroos will gut you, the snakes will kill you, and there isn't an inch of Australia that isn't covered with deadly spiders. It's pretty easy to die on the whole god forsaken continent, especially if you get lost. Shame that it's so beautiful.
As far as I know the emus are harmless.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Some tragic stories here from Death Valley, one of the most hostile places on Earth:
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/30/3362727/death-by-gps-in-desert.html
The directions to my house in Melbourne (capitol city of Victoria) actually include the step "left turn at the Giraffe"
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
Yeah but do they still say, I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd drop by?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Siri: "My fault detection circuits have predicted a faillyer of the GPS antenna array within 24 hours. I recommend an EVA to replace the component before it fails."
the lack of Genius Bars and Starbucks is far more likely to finish off the Mac cultists than any map errors. What would they be doing so far from their native urban hipster ecosystem anyway?
I disagree. There really isn't much of any of those states that is "out back". When was the last time you drove the speed limit for two or three hours, and didn't see a house, a service station, or any other sign of civilization? Someone once told me that they could get me lost in Arkansas. I agreed to blindfolded, and to sit in the back seat while I was driven to a secluded spot. That individual thought she had done a great job of getting me lost.
When I stepped out of the car, I could hear traffic rumbling a couple miles away, through the woods.
Lost? A short walk put me on a tertiary road, and fifteen minutes had me sitting at a gas station, sipping a Coca-Cola.
Out back means way-out-freaking-back!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Sounds like my ex-wife. That's one experience I don't need to see replicated by technology.
I clicked your link. Zoomed out a little. Highway 100 is only a mile away. Highway 48 twice as far. The municipal airport is just on the other side of Highway 48. A healthy man can walk to the airport in less than an hour, an unhealthy man can do it in a couple hours. That is hardly "secluded", nor am I aware of any special hazards that a buy might meet in those woods.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The problem isn't with Apple Maps... The problem was they weren't holding the phone right when they input their destination so Apple Maps got confused.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Is to be smarter than the GPS.....
Try driving a Semi and using even a truck friendly GPS!!!!
Rick B.
Well, this has been happening for years in the U.S., with all brands of GPS. But of course, if it's Apple, it's international news.
No matter whether it's the Australian Outback, or Death Valley, just because there's a line on a map does not actually mean you should drive there!
To spell it out even more clearly: when most people say "New York", they really mean New York City - specifically the neighborhood/borough of Manhattan - which is located in the state of New York in the country of the United States. This is like wanting directions to NYC/Manhattan* but only searching for "New York" and both you and your navigation app aren't smart enough to make the more common suggestion, and you end up driving to a point just outside of Adirondack Park upstate (i.e., near the center of the state of New York).
* Coincidentally, Google Maps will navigate you to the reservoir in the middle of central park if you search for "Manhattan", and to the Executive Office of New York City at 280 Broadway if you search for "New York," "New York City," or "NYC."
> There really isn't much of any of those states that is "out back".
Oh, I'm not comparing them to rural Australia, don't get me wrong. The big killer, in any event, is the lack of wireless phone service in a really remote area. You don't realize how dependent you are on that until it's not available.
And "lost" is a relative thing. You may have a great sense of direction (I do as well). Not everyone does. Hiking to the nearest road isn't easy when you're doing it through thick woods that are filled with briars, too. (Trust me. I speak from experience.)
I don't know about 2-3 hour drive without seeing any signs of civilization, but that stretch from Atlanta to Augusta, GA, is pretty barren. The run from Augusta to Columbia, SC is pretty sparse as well. Doesn't compare to the "sticks" in Australia, I know ... but I can assure you, there are backroads in SC with no signs, no markings whatsoever, and unless you DO have a great sense of direction and can count turns, you can easily get lost.
In this case, of course, the complaint is that Apple's Map application is sending people into the sticks, where their vehicles can become stuck. Not the same at all, I didn't mean to apply that it was.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
My wife and I were driving in interior British Columbia, and the GPS tried to have us take a left turn off a thousand foot cliff.
Don't trust your GPS, it may be suicidal.
It's also utterly foolish to:
* rely on electricity to prolong freshness of your food
* rely on stores to buy food instead of growing your own
* rely growing your own food without knowing how to hunt and gather, and properly butcher your pray
* rely on natural gas/oil/... to heat your house without having a backup wood stove with a year supply of hand chopped wood
* rely on cel phones/ landlines/post office to deliver messages without the backup of real life pigeons
* rely on modern medicine and doctors and ditching the good old wizard healing stuff
Of course the list goes on, but you started nailing the nail on the head (hopefully you didn't forget to stockpile a lifelong supply of carpentry tools and materials and mastered the use of them).
It's not just Apple, and it's not just Australia. Here's the first known incident of this sort. Happened in Oregon, years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim#Snowbound
Always important to ask locals.
We are skiers, and have driven mountain roads in states where we don't live. Once you've gotten lost in the snow, you will never drive off with only a map again! Also, why would anyone but an idiot assume that a phone based nav system would have cell coverage in a rural area they obviously were not familiar with?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Nope, Emu's can kick you to death.
A.I. Research. The peculiar science in which we know the question and we know the answer, but can't show the working
Just need to bring a costume.
In any case, GPS is good for cities, but if you are going anywhere seroiusly out of the way, get a map and learn to read it.
Guns: The U.S. government's answer to a wide range of situations.
Actually, it seems to me that guns are the U.S. citizens' answer to a wide range of situations.
GPS Scene
At first I was going to make a light hearted quip about the intelligence of Australians, but then this isn't like someone in Britain driving into a lake because their GPS told them to (or killing themselves because of a prank). Driving across many regions in Australia is not something to be taken lightly, and if a Map app puts you stuck in the middle of a desert, 100's of kilometers away from your destination, this is clearly a huge issue.
I don't think software companies should allow a EULA claiming they have no responsibility for injury or death caused by the use of a Map application. If Map applications cannot offer 100% correct directions then they should be yanked from use, period.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
... seems to have become a lost skill for many people (if they had it in the first place).
Someone getting into serious trouble due to relying on a computerized map isn't really news. Americans might recall that family travelling in Oragon (Washington?) who took directions from their automobile GPS and were directed onto a logging road during a storm. They were unable to find a cellular signal because of either the terrain or the storm had taken out the towers (probably the former). The husband died trying to backtrack on foot to the main road to get help. His wife either didn't make it or was nearly frozen.
GPS can be a great tool but I wouldn't venture into places like unfamiliar rural and, especially, wilderness areas without a decent topo map of the area and use the GPS position to find out where I am on the map rather than rely on some digital map. That takes planning though and it seems that the GPS maps are convincing people that they don't need to do that any more. Unfortunately, people will die until the lesson has been learned.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
No GPS is perfect---and Google Maps was just as error-prone in its earlier days as well. I have been personally given faulty directions by GPS many times---Google, Apple, Mapquest, Garmin, Yahoo, Microsoft---you name the map service, I've gotten something funky out of it at some point---but I've never ended up mislead or in the wrong state (near home, or in the middle of nowhere). I've been told to go down 1 way streets, go the wrong way on the highway for 60 miles, sent to non-existant roads, etc...
How have I avoided dying in a ditch in Death Valley? Why do I not end up wasting an hour of my life lost in the woods? I look at the directions before charging blindly ahead!!! I always check the map before going ANYWHERE. I don't care if that requires 30 seconds more of my time when I travel, but it guarantees that I end up where I want to and not a victim of my own reliance on technology that is accurate 99% of the time. That 1% will eventually get you---law of averages is not on your side here!! Learn to read a map and understand where places are, and you'll be able to avoid disaster.
I know that Australia is BIG, and that fact alone should make you even more careful towards the technology that you use. If it were 100% accurate all the time, then I'd say charge blindly ahead happily, but it is not, and every manufacturer and software developer admits that this is the case.
And all this time I've been worried about drop bears and hoop snakes.
Mildura is in the middle of a wilderness area.
Well, sort-of ... but there are good roads (sealed, with decent shoulders) going to it and it's a fairly important regional town. If you were driving there, you wouldn't expect to be taken down a sandy track and into a National Park ... and if you were taken that way by your GPS, you should stop and think as soon as you've turned off the main highway.
I'm still amazed that Apple Maps didn't know where Mildura was, though ...
No crocodiles in that part of the country but Mildura is hardly the middle of a residential area, it is a medium sized town (about 30k or so pop) in the north west corner of Victoria in a country region that is farely sparsely populated if you stray from the main roads, with plenty of dirt roads around the area (though admittedly all the main roads there are definitely paved). It would be exceedingly easy to find yourself lost in the middle of nowhere before you realised if you strayed out of the farm areas into a national park.
I'm sorry, but if you strayed off the Sturt, the Mallee or the Calder Hwy and headed into Murray Sunset, you'd know about it. I love the Murray Sunset NP, and yes, there are a lot of dirt roads leading into it. But ... here's the thing ... they're all tiny dirt roads! You would have to have a ridiculous amount of blind faith to think you were on the road to Mildura if your GPS headed you down one of them ...
What you have said is utter nonsense, and I have to call you out for it only because some moron modded you up. I don't understand why Dick Cheney is your figurehead for some gun violence; I presume it's because of one hunting accident that resulted in moderate injury. I mean, do you think he was trying to murder the man under cover of a hunting trip? You're insane, and you need some introspection to decide why you have some sick fascination with Cheney.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If there that bad they need to be taken of the market. Apple needs a good old fashioned recall of bad software
Jack of all trades,master of none
EEk!! I just died. Run down by a road train because I was on the wrong side of the road.
sorrry. Good thing u can just push whats left off the side of the road and bury it quick.
I was actually a little disappointed when I went to Australia. I went for a long walk and didn't see a single spider or snake. And we drove for thousands of miles and the only kangaroo we saw was in a zoo. I did think the Tasmanian Devil was pretty cool though.
I live not too far from there. Those are some great riding roads but I never take more than a bottle of water (unless I plan to picnic) and quite often, I will *deliberately* get lost just to find some new curves. Definitely not wilderness.
Thats true but if you don't know the way and the map directs you off the highway then you can get lost very quickly.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"Death by GPS" has been happening in the US for years (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/03/1910245/death-by-gps-increasing-in-americas-wilderness) and shouldn't be blamed entirely on Apple's poor implementation. A GPS is just a tool nothing more. If you don't know how to use that tool properly, then don't. You would be surprised at the number of truck drivers that attempt to deliver goods to our facility when the one they actually want is three miles down the road. They will actually argue with people that "This has to be the right place, my GPS says so".
I like my wilderness areas pristine, not contaminated with dead hipster poofters.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Apple is dying.
I, for one, will not believe it until the following two thing come to pass:
(1) Netcraft must confirm it; this is non-negotiable.
(2) You must be able to misquote, out of context, an email from Mike Smith, as to why he left; as of right now, Mike Smith is still working for Apple.
Only then will you be able to:
(3) Profit!!!
And "lost" is a relative thing. You may have a great sense of direction (I do as well). Not everyone does. Hiking to the nearest road isn't easy when you're doing it through thick woods that are filled with briars, too. (Trust me. I speak from experience.)
As a general rule of thumb for the US: hiking downhill will eventually bring you to water, the water will eventually bring you to a road, the road will evenutally bring you to a town. Far better to have a map, but that plan is better than no plan at all. Unless you're near swampland: then you're doomed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Nah, abbos. They'll chuck spears at yer, mate, and no mistake. And go skinny dipping with a white chick if you give 'em half a chance.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Crocodiles obviously drown their prey, and snakes poison or suffocate their prey.
Emus can kick and disembowel; kangaroos can kick, scratch or drown an attacker.
I thought people who owned Apple products didn't breed anyway?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As far as I know the emus are harmless.
Emus use their strongly clawed feet as a defence mechanism. Their legs are among the strongest of any animal, allowing them to rip metal wire fences.
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
If you live in an out-of-way or dangerous place then you make provisions for it. You bring along water and food to last more than a day, you bring weapons and other protective gear, and you don't rely on just one mapping application.
What do you think you'll need a gun for when you're lost in Australia dying of thirst in desperate need of fuel and directions? Shoot the next person you see for their car? Shoot yourself to relieve the boredom? Stupidly leave your vehicle and the road in search of an animal to shoot so you can get more lost and die of heatstroke quicker?
-30C conditions / +45C conditions
Tall trees / Tiny scrub
Logging roads / Sand tracks
Snow / Sun
Dead in 5 hours / Dead in 48 hours
Do you actually know what the most dangerous animal in Australia is, i.e., the one that kills the most humans? One that killed around 100 people in one year alone?
Drop bears. By far the most hazardous animal in Australia for humans.
Here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/10/apple_maps_ghost_mildura/
There is a place called Mildura whose location is given as exactly where Apple put it – at least, there is in an authoritative source for such a location. (...)
In this case, the Australian Gazetteer – the authoritative list of 300,000-plus placenames, complete with coordinates – includes two Milduras. One is the “real” town, the other is an entry for “Mildura Rural City”, coordinates -34.79724 141.76108.
Mountain out of a molehill...
When you do a search for Mildura on it, though, GeoNames offers three potential locations: Mildura, Mildura Airport, and Mildura Shire
The Apple map, however, automatically gives you a marker for the default result, which is the Shire as opposed to the town of Mildura, and labels the result "Mildura" instead of "Mildura Shire".
Open maps gives you both options, and the center point is labeled "Mildura Shire" and the town is labeled "Mildura". Google Maps gives you the town of Mildura as the default result, and if you type "Mildura Shire" it gives you a bunch of pins in and around Mildura, and nothing at the center of the Shire.
Put another way, it's as if mindless users followed Google Map directions to Arizona, instead of Arizona City, and ended up in the middle of Tonto National Forest
Not quite, the name of that city is actually "Arizona City", Mildura is the entire name of the town.
A better example is Los Angeles which shares the same exact name with the County in which it resides. In which case, if you just search for Los Angeles both Google and Open Maps will give you a location in the center of the city, you have to specifically look for "Los Angeles County" in order to see the marker at the centerpoint. I'm not sure if the Apple map behaves in the same fashion for the US, but if it does then searching just for "Los Angeles" will direct you to a location in the Angeles National Forest instead of the city.
Mildura is in the middle of a wilderness area. Not as remote as you can get, but well on the way out there. And Apple maps shows the city in the wrong place.
Well, yes and no. Mildura is located inside Mildura Shire. If you just search for "Mildura", it gives you a result for the center of the Shire instead of the city, but still just labels it "Mildura". So it's actually not showing the city of Mildura in the wrong place, it's assuming you wanted the Shire and showing you the right location, and not properly labeling the result.
It's like if you tried to go to Los Angeles and it assumed you meant to find the center of the entire County of Los Angeles, and gave you directions into the National Forest but still labeled it as "Los Angeles".
Note that both Google and Open maps assume you're looking for a specific location instead of a region when there's a town with the same exact name as the region, and will default to marking the city and not the region. So it's something with how their application decides to mark search results when there's a duplicate, as opposed to the actual raw map data having the town in the wrong location.
Here is the thing. Google has sunk serious money into the whole google maps project over a number of years. The value this creates is very apparent.
Apple have found out to there cost how much the value of google maps is the data itself and not the mapping app, and that no matter how well integrated or well designed the interface, it has their offering has a huge mountain to climb in terms of accuracy. There is also some pretty obvious cases of heavy dependence on automated methods by apple for assignment of location data, and these have failed occasionally in spectacular style. Unfortunately for apple, the only way forward is to bye in accurate map data or employ a good sized group of people to find and rectify these mistakes.
Google on the other hand have checked the accuracy over a number of years. For instance google streetview cars have driven down a huge number of the actual streets and roads, and I'm sure part of that project is verifying and improving the location data they have. They even made it to the driveway of my parents farm in rural Western Australia which is massively more remote than Mildura.
In the end this is the difference in company strengths and focus being contrasted in a quite interesting way. Apple is all about the integrated smooth user experience,and so they want to have control of what is now an integral application of all smart phones, the mapping app. Google on the other hand is all about data and information, and presenting the user with the most accurate and deep information possible.
Russian maps were purposely wrong to deter foreigners and spies. When the Wall fell, even citizens wanted to buy the American and European maps instead. The American system of Global Positioning Satellites is also inaccurate for similar reasons but not far enough to put you into a wilderness area.
;-)
Two things continue to remain true: the map is not the territory and you shouldn't trust the government (or any large organization) to give you correct instructions
Apple Maps not fully at fault over Australian Mildura confusion
Australian government's official gazeteer includes area called 'Mildura Rural City' at location previously shown on iPhones
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
that very terrible kazkuz
I think that technology can make a mistake, but we need technology after all modem and gadget
Find a water hole, you bludging drongo.
If it was Jenny Agutter, most definitely.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Only a mile away? Check the terrain... it's a 200+ foot climb out of that creekbed. Only a mile as the crow files, perhaps, but you'd need wings in that terrain. Your best bet is to follow the road, either back the way you came or pressing onward - it's about 4.5 miles either direction, and the airport and the highway are both at about 200-250' higher elevation than the creekbed.
Likewise, I'm not sure you fully appreciate the risks involved in hiking a mile or two across the Australian desert when the temperature in the shade is 110+ degrees.