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Why Bother with What Three Words?

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#301

Post by fredzel »

duskwuff wrote: post #289
rtkwe wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear in the article that the lists don't map so you can't even translate between them without going back to W3W and running it through their stuff. > So, if I want to tell a French speaker where ///mile.crazy.shade is, I have to use ///embouchure.adjuger.saladier > Loosely translated back as ///mouth.award.bowl an entirely different location!

It's no great surprise that the words don't translate . But what I'm asking is it's possible to infer a word-to-word mapping along the lines of English French ------- ------ mile = embouchure crazy = adjuger shade = saladier or if the mapping is weird enough that even that doesn't work.

Just checked that by changing last phrase in Polish, than changing language to English. It doesn't work:

"plomba.rewelacja.oczy" => "exclaim.mainland.engages"

"plomba.rewelacja.fasada" => "dare.lawn.sleepy"

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#303

Post by 7952 »

Anarch157a wrote: post #259
7952 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with those kind of numbers is that they are easy to get wrong by a couple of digits. Think about how difficult it can be to read a number over the phone. And guessing distances seems like a pretty unusual thing to do. Especially as latitude/longitude is a terrible system for that anyway. Small distances are very small numbers and hard to think about. It is possible to make a spelling mistake in what three…

> Think about how difficult it can be to read a number over the phone. Same thing is true for words, there are words in my native portuguese that are dificult to tell from each other even in person , imagine by phone. If some one misunderstands a word and it's valid on a combination? For example (in portuguese), Paca.Tatu.Cotia (Paca.Armadilo.Agouti in english) can be misheard as Maca.Tatu.Quati (Stretcher.Armadilo.C…

But because they are thousands of km away it is easy for a human to tell which is correct based on context. And the search screen works very well. It autocorrects, gives a distance and a country flag.

I understand the difficulty with speech, but that is true of any verbal communication.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#304

Post by benj111 »

turc1656 wrote: post #195

The author didn't touch upon what I think is the biggest issue with this. I can be pretty damn sure that 51.50799,-0.12803 is really close to 51.51799,-0.12803 and even closer to 51.50800,-0.12803 just by looking at the numbers because they follow a decimal precision style location system. However, I have no idea if mile.crazy.shade is next to mouth.award.bowl or if they are 1,0000 miles apart. If anything, they shou…

"1,0000"

You've also (inadvertently) pointed out that there's redundancy in written numbers.

Equivalent redundancy with W3W would require remembering spellings rather than a simple rule.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#305

Post by mlinsey »

Freak_NL wrote: post #298
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this will be the future of the USPS Online Mailing thing where you get pictures of your mail... Just register with an email, things are autoscanned and sent to you with a PGP key you provide.

That would be convenient, but it won't happen. What you will get is a web application you get to sign into to actually get your mail, and you will receive a notification mail in your regular email inbox stating that you have received mail (but not from whom, or what the subject is, because that is privacy sensitive information), so that you know that you should go and get it yourself via the web application. This is…

The USPS already offers a service that will scan and email the outside of your mail, so you at least can usually see who it is from.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#306

Post by [deleted] »

yorwba wrote: post #169
dragonwriter wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The formula might not be elegant, but if you have an exact description of tectonic drift, you can absolutely have a code that refers to a fixed location on its plate, rather than to a point on some imaginary sphere. Sure, but (1) is there a good way to get an exact description of tectonic drift?, And (2) does tectonic drift account for all shifts of surface features (intuitively, it would not necessarily for featur…

(1) By measuring the location of a few designated landmarks, it should be possible to extrapolate tectonic-level shifts to all other points on the same plate pretty accurately. (2) Changes on a smaller scale, e.g. due to a landslide, are probably less surprising when they cause a change in location codes. On the other hand, there might be some houses on a hill somewhere slowly sliding down, where the system doesn't w…

[deleted]

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#307

Post by huffmsa »

I'm trying to understand it, but I can't.

Latitude and longitude can be used without an internet connection if you can get a GPS signal.

If you're a boy scout or doomsday prepper or 1800s explorer who fell through a wormhole, and have a bit of time, you can use the sun, stars and a makeshift compass to get a good ballpark.

It's a system which only requires you and your counterpart to both accept the contract of the coordinate system.

As many others here have pointed out fuzzy.enlarged.testicles doesn't mean anything unless we both have access to W3W, and then the directions which come from me needing to get from hairy.baked.potato to you at fuzzy.enlarged.testicles uses GPS. Because giving someone a print out of all the W3W plots they need to pass through is useless, because those phrases don't mean anything, because the system isn't contiguous or addressable.

It'd be like every house on a street having a different, non-contiguous number, different name and different postal code (134 wallaby 53217 next to 5678 futon 44444). Or for the Londoners, if the postal districts didn't increase as you moved outward.

It's a bad design with too many assumptions.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#308

Post by huffmsa »

huffmsa wrote: post #307

I'm trying to understand it, but I can't. Latitude and longitude can be used without an internet connection if you can get a GPS signal. If you're a boy scout or doomsday prepper or 1800s explorer who fell through a wormhole, and have a bit of time, you can use the sun, stars and a makeshift compass to get a good ballpark. It's a system which only requires you and your counterpart to both accept the contract of the c…

Or for you mathamatican, it's as if every square on a Cartesian plane had some arbitrary value assigned to it.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#309

Post by mc_lovin_ »

How w3w solves the emergency problem ?

In case of an emergency you go to a link and read out your location.

If the gps is enabled shouldn't the location of the person in need be automatically logged when he opens the link ?

Why should he even say the name of the location ?

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#310

Post by sneak »

mindcrime wrote: post #264
delfinom wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently some African country bought into it I think. >Regardless, this is a shit system and I can't believe anyone even bothered to create it. Also, I've never heard of it prior to today. Who uses this crap? It's literally a con job designed to create a middleman where one isn't needed. It's the modern libertarian dream.

It's the modern libertarian dream. There is nothing libertarian about conning people or "creating a middleman where one isn't needed." If you believe that, you have been badly misinformed.

If people use it voluntarily due to marketing, then it appears to be one of the downsides of a free market and liberty of choice working as intended. Individual actors in the market are not always rational or well-informed.
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