Position Ambiguity [was] Re: [aprssig] findu.com....

[Joel Maslak]

On Jun 12, 2006, at 7:33 PM, Neil Johnson wrote:

> I'm not a lawyer, but in my opinion it boils down to: "The only  
> data you
> should trust is the government's. If you trust our data and get  
> screwed,
> then you can't sue us".

As someone who works in government, I'm not sure I'd trust government  
data either.  ;)  Many of the counties out where I am don't know  
where their own roads and other assets are, and are going through  
some painful processes to try figuring that sort of thing out - and  
if they have the geography right, they are often missing useful  
information like "how wide is the road?", "could a certain fire truck  
travel it?", and "is it plowed in winter?"  This "meta data" is often  
even more important than the exact geographical location of the road,  
and is a particularly challenging thing to figure out how to properly  
display to the user.

That said, the disclaimer that you see on your eTrex seems to apply  
to air navigation (the thought of someone using an eTrex to do IFR  
flight is, well, very frightening), where the charts do have to be  
approved to be used and where they expire every 6 months.