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The Yahoo Maps for China don't look very transformed.

http://maps.yahoo.com/#lat=39.8908713496569&lon=116.4246...

(This isn't a vote for Yahoo Maps, just an observation)


This is not a problem with using a GPS, the problem is the shift from using different mapping technologies.

Trying to get satellite and the map portions to line up is very difficult. Trying to do it on a global scale with data from multiple sources... you get the idea.

Now please get back to China bashing and don't let the facts get in the way of your political/religious feelings. Remember to include lots anecdotal evidence and use the word red. And as always bring up other countries that seem scary on fox news.


>Now please get back to China bashing and don't let the facts get in the way of your political/religious feelings. Remember to include lots anecdotal evidence and use the word red. And as always bring up other countries that seem scary on fox news.

I don't know if the author's analysis is accurate, but I'm pretty sure the author is Chinese. I doubt he is repeating what he hears on Fox News.


Trying to get satellite and the map portions to line up is very difficult. Trying to do it on a global scale with data from multiple sources... you get the idea.

Not really. There are loads of different projection systems & coordinate system around the world, so all GIS software is able to deal with converting coordinates and reprojections etc.

Satellite & aerial imagery always has to be georectified and made 'location aware'. Once you've done that, it's trivial to reproject it to whatever system you want.


While I understand your cynicism, my experience in Shanghai and Beijing suggests that Google Maps are some way off between satellite and streetmap modes. I have not found the same problem (or at least to anywhere near the same level) in the UK, Chicago, Michigan, Korea, Japan, Germany, Slovakia and many other countries. There does seem to be an offset applied.

An example in Shanghai: http://g.co/maps/m34n8 An example in Seoul: http://g.co/maps/4gk3t

Note the near perfect alignment in the latter, and way-off alignment in the former.


No where else has more sky scrapers than Shanghai and Beijing, which easily affects your GPS signal.


If you mean buildings over 100m, then no:

    1 	Hong Kong
    2 	New York City
    3 	Tokyo
    4 	Dubai
    5 	Shanghai
Beijing is #20.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_most_skyscr...


I suspect that Tokyo might well have more. Anyway, the loss of accuracy in such a case wouldn't cause a consistent effect like this - it's normally not in a consistent direction and generally doesn't put you off by so far.


While I agree - in different words - that it's probably just a projection error, it is always extremely off-putting when the Overbearing Defensive Cyber-Army makes its appearance to defend China from any and every possible criticism.

It really does much more harm to China than a simple misunderstanding about projection errors.


Most likely paid PR. Journalists are lazy and they already written articles.


Somehow I doubt a public relations agent on Dropbox's payroll wrote up a piece specifically from David Pogue's point of view, in the unique writing style of David Pogue, so that David Pogue could simply submit it to the New York Times, claim it as his own, and collect two paycheques.

I'm all for healthy skepticism, but not purely speculative conspiracy theories.


Maybe the app engine team just chose the one they had more experience in hacking.


>The backend shouldn't be more than about 150 hours of true programming...

Someone who can't program knows how many hours it takes.

I can't wait for opportunity to do half the work and get 3-5%, where do I sigh up?


I wrote the title so I could get programmers to help me understand. I used to program years ago and I respect programmers and understand they are the lifeblood to any project.

I've asked only 1-5 hours per week from this individual. I've managed our frontend dev from an outsourced team in Poland and based on my same "can't program knows how many hours it takes" effectively hit the deadline/hours budget with only about 10-20 hours over.

It's not half the work. At the end of the day I have to sell it. In order to put more features and offer more we need to sell it. We need clients, programmers don't care about that. Which I understand, why should they it's not their job.

I wanted to offer equal equity the same as my partner and I, but due to personality differences I don't believe we can. My partner and I invested $30k into the startup including paying him on a contractual basis, how do you give someone equal equity after this?


With that low a rate of engagement, depending upon the topic material I'd be concerned with the amount of time it will take even a very competent developer to refresh their memory and get back "into the zone" on this particular product.

Sometimes, it's easier to have more work, simply because you can stay focused on it long enough to get more done and/or to think about it more thoroughly/deeply.

It's just one item, but perhaps take a look at whether you could adjust your development cycle for this fellow to accomodate more useful, efficient sustained bursts.

(Again, I don't know what the specific work in question is. The pertinence of my comment is therefore unclear.)

P.S. Your use of the word "dick" indicates that you are already emotionally engaged in this topic. Beware. No one's Mister Spock, but if you're letting your emotions lead, you may be heading for a mess. Also, if I were the developer and saw your use of the word "dick", our relationship would be over.

In short, you seem to be dragging some of your own baggage and/or faults into this.


1-5 hours a week is really little. On a level of commitment that only implies cursory level...or am I missing something?


US immigration is just like a Monty Python sketch and contains some Yes/No questions, such as;

Have you ever committed Genocide?

Are you coming to the United States to practice Polygamy?

Are you coming to the United States to use or deal in illegal Drugs?

Have you ever been a part of a Terrorist organization?

Are you planning to overthrow the US government?

US immigration policy brings everyone down except maybe those from the Ministry of Silly Walks.


I found those questions fairly amusing when filling out forms. In retrospect, though, I'm guessing that they expect people who meet those criteria to lie. They're there to give them a legally simple way to throw undesirable people out of the country (you perjured on your entry application), should it come up in retrospect.


The email I received was titled "Google App Engine Leaving Preview". And it states "We plan to roll this out in the second half of September...."

The scariest part of looking at my billing history is "Frontend Instance Hour costs reflect a 50% price reduction active until November 20th, 2011"


Maybe Argentina should do what China does and block anything that resolves to ghs.google.com

By blocking ghs.google.com the blocking country won't be subject to any write ups on an official google blog.


Steal a loaf of bread and get sent to Australia...


Even going to Best Buy to try a unit does next to nothing. Pretty much everything that they sell has a flat battery, is stuck on a screen or suffering some other issue.

Except of course for the Apple display. All working. All looking good. All the time.


I'm going to guess that Apple's contract with Best Buy probably has specific requirements on how their products are displayed in every store.


Probably.

But if that's the case, why does no other company seem to use this approach?


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