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Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

bbc.com

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Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#441

Post by baybal2 »

URSpider94 wrote: post #280
jrochkind1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory says that US government GPS at one point intentionally introduced reduction in accuracy/resolution as well, but they stopped, which was part of what led to the commercial GPS revolution (along with cheaper tech of course). Let's see... Wikipedia seems to confirm: > During the 1990s, GPS quality was degraded by the United States government in a program called "Selective Availability"; this was discontinued o…

This is different but related. China has no ability to influence GPS accuracy within its borders. What they do is manipulate all of the authoritative maps available so that GPS coordinates won’t map cleanly to the digital waypoints in the map. The GPS locations are very precise, they are just off by as much as a quarter mile in varying directions depending on where in the county you are.

> This is different but related. China has no ability to influence GPS accuracy within its borders.

FYI: And even far outside of them too

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#442

Post by three14 »

geofft wrote: post #371
woodpanel wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this question revolves around words and their effect… "most populated" > "crammed" > "jailed" > "the new warsaw ghetto" there must be a word that describes your question of why : The word you're looking for also describes what's enabling the cognitive dissonance of putting Gaza in the same category as a Singapur, a Tokio or Hong Kong without blinking: Economic powerhouses that draw talent from developing and de…

What's the phrasing you'd prefer? "Children were once again murdered in cold blood in Gaza, a metropolis that could be just like Singapore, Tokyo, or Hong Kong given its dense population and prime geographic location, were it not under constant military oppression from a country whose illegal nuclear weapons program is more successful than that of North Korea"? I think a lot of people would find that uncomfortably pa…

Whatever criticism Israel may or may not deserve over its current bombing campaign, you aren't going to convince anyone if you misuse phrases like "murdered in cold blood". That's just not what those words mean.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#443

Post by Uberphallus »

skyfaller wrote: post #388
URSpider94 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is different but related. China has no ability to influence GPS accuracy within its borders. What they do is manipulate all of the authoritative maps available so that GPS coordinates won’t map cleanly to the digital waypoints in the map. The GPS locations are very precise, they are just off by as much as a quarter mile in varying directions depending on where in the county you are.

Can OpenStreetMap or someone make non-authoritative maps, or is this impossible without the cooperation of people on the ground who cannot operate safely within the borders of China?

It's "impossible".

Private, independent geographical surveying is illegal in China. [0] So technically you can't do it even in the local coordinate system.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#444

Post by [deleted] »

austinprete wrote: post #431
GekkePrutser wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird though as a reason. KAL007 was so far off course that the distortion of SA wouldn't have mattered. It only distorted location by a couple hundred metres at most.

I read the GP as saying that SA GPS was originally made available as a result of the KAL007 crash, so presumably they didn’t have access to GPS at all on the flight? Then much later the SA restriction was removed, unrelated to a plane crash.

[deleted]

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#445

Post by boomboomsubban »

jussij wrote: post #355
plaidfuji wrote: post #342

This link title is extremely misleading to the point of being disingenuous and provocative. The title of the linked article is “Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps?”... because the entire Israel / Gaza / West Bank region is blurred in the exact same way. There is no preferential blurring of Palestinian areas. The clear answer is to prevent actors on both sides from using Google’s satellite imagery to…

Israel can get all the detailed imagery it needs by just launching a reconnaissance aircraft or drone. So on that basis I would say it only stops the Palestinians from getting imagery of the area. Now considering the fact Palestine only has rockets and not missiles, I doubt that imagery is of much value to them. Call me cynical, but I suspect the more important reason to keep these images blurred might be to stop the…

There was a post about this last week where someone said the reason is to prevent the widespread confirmation of Israels nuclear program. Everybody knows they have nukes, but officially the US denies knowing.

These images would provide fairly strong evidence of Israel's capabilities, hell Israel has spent years trying to claim satellite images of Iran prove they have a nuclear program.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#446

Post by benja123 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #419
slg wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops, I made that more confusing by trying to note everyone was a Palestinian when the place was called Palestine. By "non-Jewish Palestinians" I was trying to refer to the predominately Muslim and predominately Arab group that we now just call Palestinians. There was and still is a population of Christians in the area and there presumably was some larger population of foreigners in the area when it was under foreign…

Everyone is still a Palestinian nowadays though. The reason why there are less Christian Palestinians is because a lot of them were deported or fled shortly after the Nakba. A lot of them would come back if Palestine was restored, but most of them are legally prevented by Israel from coming back. Not even Hamas or Hezbollah wants Palestine to be a single religion or single ethnicity state, so I don't really understan…

The Christian population in the Christian towns of the Westbank (Bethlehem) and in Gaza have been decreasing steadily for the past 70 years - this has nothing to do with the occupation of the Westbank and Gaza and everything to do with persecution by the local population. This trend is not confined to just the Westbank and Gaza and is in fact a trend that is occurring across the entire Middle East where in the past 100 years the Christian population has decreased from 20% of the population to approximately 5% of the population.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#447

Post by khuey »

austinprete wrote: post #431
GekkePrutser wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird though as a reason. KAL007 was so far off course that the distortion of SA wouldn't have mattered. It only distorted location by a couple hundred metres at most.

I read the GP as saying that SA GPS was originally made available as a result of the KAL007 crash, so presumably they didn’t have access to GPS at all on the flight? Then much later the SA restriction was removed, unrelated to a plane crash.

Exactly.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#448

Post by AYBABTME »

ncpa-cpl wrote: post #339
xxpor wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a similar law to what's discussed here. The justification is protection from NK.

Could it be a licensing issue? Naver Maps has really good street view and very accurate maps in SK. https://map.naver.com/

My reading of the situation is that it's a convenient "national security issue" which happens to favor SK companies and insulate them from having to compete head-to-head with Google Maps.

Turn-by-turn navigation also doesn't work using Google Maps. Meanwhile SK navigation apps like Naver Maps or Kakao Maps have really poor navigation features if you compare to what you'd have using Google Maps on an American road.

The end result is that consumers suffer, since artificial market protection leads to an inferior product and no real need to improve and compete by players on the local market.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#449

Post by tomcooks »

sequoia wrote: post #416
mcguire wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israeli lives are worth at least $400 / year each to the United States, given the $3.3B annual aid and a population of 9M. Since 2007, when the US stopped economic aid, it's been entirely military aid. ( https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ISR ) In total, Afghanistan gets more, $4.9B, but that only comes to $129 per Afghan. (That's the "you break it, you bought it" plan, I guess.) The next highest is Jordan, $1.7B or $170…

Just to clarify: these are the neighbours that expelled all their Jews leaving them refugees in Israel and also tried to destroy the country and many of which have not stopped trying for its entire history. Getting along takes two.

Lol right, the rapist and the raped need to find a compromise

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#450

Post by ipv6ipv4 »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #97

Not really related to the article at hand, but I've been on a bit of a Google Maps binge the past couple weeks. I learned a few interesting facts, blurry Israel being one of them. Another strange thing I found that might not be super well known (I didn't know about it) is that all GPS data in China is offset by a nonlinear psuedo-random amount. If you turn on the satellite view in Google Maps and look at various citi…

I can't wait for the BBC to publish an article about the inaccuracies in China ...
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