[nylug-talk] OT - city wide GPS question???

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

From: "Peter C. Norton" <spacey-nylug at lenin.net>
> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 03:32:52PM -0500, R. Drew Davis wrote:
> > I took a look at MetrO last night.   Pretty spiffy, but it knows
> > connectivity, not schedules, and it doesn't know at all about the NYC
> > bus routes.   I asked it how to get from Penn Station to the
> > Metropolitan Museum and instead of sending me to the M4 bus at 32nd St.
> > that drops you off at 83rd and Madison, it sent me via subway, with 2
> > changes of train, to 86th and Lexington, a bit more of a walk from the
> > museum entrance on 5th Ave.   
> 
> But far faster. You can spend all day on the m4.

Yeah, I did that once.  There was a couple in the back row who weren't waiting for their honeymoon.  I wasn't the only one who went past my stop fascinated by what those two were doing with, for, next to, and occasionaly in spite of each other.

I really don't understand this conversation.  I'm from Los Angeles and live in Jersey and have never had a problem navigating in Manhattan or Brooklyn.  In Manhattan, the streets are numbered.  In Brooklyn they're either numbered (yeah, on incompatible grids) or sort of alphabetical, with the odd road with some silly historical or gratuitious name (who actually calls "Avenue of the Americas" that?).  It would _help_ if numbering had a standard origin.  In Los Angeles County, I can always find my way if I know which way is north and what the numbers are on the buildings (aside from a few "independent" municipalities like Pasadena) and know how far and what direction I am from the Los Angeles City Hall (what some of us call the Jack Webb Memorial).  1000 to the mile EW or NS.  Extends for as much as thirty miles way out in Simi Valley.
--
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

Carjacking or impoundment? We now have two vocabularies for wrongs, depending on whether private persons or government agents commit them. This is the difference between mass murder and national defense. Between extortion and taxation. Between counterfeiting and inflation. And so on. Other examples will occur to the astute reader.   Joseph Sobran