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CNN just played a bit called "GPSs Gone Wild", where not one but two couples got stuck in the wilderness following their GPSs that showed them a "short cut" that would save them 40-50 miles. Those short cuts took them onto unkept Forest Service roads where they got stuck and one couple had a baby with them.

 

At first I was shocked, then realized that we have an idiotic society that is OVERLY trusting of its electronic gadgets. I predict deaths this year not due to GPSs gone wild but idiots trusting their lives to their gadgets. While I miss working SAR, i think they're gonna be busier than normal then next few years.

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There was an episode of "The Office" where Michael drove his PT cruiser into a lake following the instructions of his Tomtom.

 

Still laughing.

 

People need to (re)learn to follow maps and instinct.

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Ill keep my trusty compass and map. I Have seen shows about this type of thing too, whats bad is these people have no business being in places the gps might take them. Some of these people have never been in the "wilderness" and im thinking at any point do these people not have the common sense to stop and say. Ok look i dont know my way around here and this road obviously looks like we shouldnt be on it in our wanna be suv that will get stuck on wet grass. LOL then i realize.....no these people have no common sense...scary.

 

It doesnt take rocket science to figure out you are headed some place you nor your car can handle.

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I was borrowing a gps one time, should of heard the thing freaking out when i didn't follow it's directions because i know a better way to go then what it told me (I'm not going through DC during peak holiday traffic....) my wife and me like to piss off the gps by going our own way so we can listening to it freak out and try to recalcutate when we go some other route. I was driving to my parents for christmas this year and the thing told me to drive through one of the "better parts" or Harrisburgh PA late at night. cough cough, screw that!!! GPS is good for a refernece tool and nothing more, follow a freaking map and if it looks like a bad idea don't go there!!!!!!!

 

People are dumb!!!!!!

 

I can see it now, some poor cop will show up to a wreck and the person sitting there with a crushed car is going to say "the GPS told me too...."

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Rusty Truck- There IS no "better part" of Harrisburg anymore! We won't even cross the river if we don't have to go to Bass Pro!

 

Lemme guess- it wanted to waltz you up 13th street? Good call on following your instinct.

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After spending years on unfamiliar roads here and abroad, using roadmaps and relying upon the kindness of strangers to navigate, I think GPS is pretty damned neat!

 

As an early adopter, I started using DeLorme with a tethered GPS receiver (the size of my fist) on my laptop in the mid 90's. The one bad experience I had was as a result of taking a chance by using the shortest route function instead of staying on main routes.

 

Long story short, I ended up on in a blizzard on a Colorado mountain pass looking at twelve foot drifts between me and my destination for the evening. I turned around and got the hell out of there, and 100 miles, and an hour and a half or so later I was in my hotel room.

 

Had I run into a 12 foot drift or a snow slide on the way down, I'm pretty sure I would have spent at least the night up there.

 

Anymore, I don't bother with "shortcuts".

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I just bought 3... yes THREE Tomtom's within the past week...

 

They were on sale at Gander Mountain for 60 bucks... Yuppers... $60 bucks...

 

They only do USA maps, and you get one free map upgrade...

 

I got one for the mother of my children, as they drove to Florida Christmas eve... and then after playing with that one, realizing it tells the speed of the vehicle, I bought one for my truck, as the speedometer is funky... instead of a $400.00 fix at the dealer, I spent $60 and have a new speedometer...

 

The third, I gave to my mom cause she wanted one at that price to give to her hubby for his ( late) xmas present...

 

I admit, that when I program in routes, I will often choose an alternate road here or there than it does... It is SO RARE that I drive ANYWHERE that I am not familiar with my location... the chances of me being someplace I actually *NEED* the driving directions, I wont know the difference whether I am on the wrong road or not...

 

Plus I like to have a sexy British chick talk to me while I drive... :up::lol:

 

:smoke:

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My favorite are the ones who have their GPS units on all the time, for instance, when they goto the mall. Guess what fucktard, the mall hasn't moved since the last time you were there. :)

 

GPS is good for sometimes, like long trips or if you are in a delivery/taxi business, otherwise I don't see much use for them.

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Rusty Truck- There IS no "better part" of Harrisburg anymore! We won't even cross the river if we don't have to go to Bass Pro!

 

Lemme guess- it wanted to waltz you up 13th street? Good call on following your instinct.

 

I'm glad the wife and I LEFT Harrisburg a few years ago! We used to live in Enola, which isn't too bad, but I could still hear pistol fire at night sometimes from the city.

 

We live out in the country now, over 50 miles from there, and love it. Now if we hear gunfire, it's either mine, or one of the neighbors is out playing. "Odd" folk don't come out here!

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My favorite are the ones who have their GPS units on all the time, for instance, when they goto the mall. Guess what fucktard, the mall hasn't moved since the last time you were there. :)

 

GPS is good for sometimes, like long trips or if you are in a delivery/taxi business, otherwise I don't see much use for them.

 

They seem to come in handy dialing in coordinates for a remote hit on terrorists camps as well.

 

BTW, my favorite new GPS product is the one that gets you lost, and then calls in rescue to save your retarded ass....LMAO!!!

 

WS

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GPS should be just another tool for situational awareness. I see pilots, mostly the younger set and/or more affluent ones, who use the latest GPS navigation and just follow the line on the screen and cannot tell you exactly where they are on an aeronautical chart. No concept of constantly re-evaluating all parameters. My best navigational tool is my thumb on the map, and like some others have said, a bit of common sense.

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A couple years ago a SanfranSiscan techie type followed his GPS to his eventual death up a snow COVERED logging road in Oregon here (in a Saab!)... His wife & kid lived though....

 

People don't seem to realize, out here, when you get around the cascade & coast ranges, you can have all of the R.E.I. gear & electric toys that you want.... But if your head is up your ass.... You may very well die in the snow...

 

He was about 5 or 6 "dipshits dieing where they shouldn't have been in the snow" ago...

 

We get a few every year.

 

Just because you know how to dig a snow cave, doesn't mean you'll live.... Many times you just dig your own icy grave & walk into it yourself...........

 

 

EDIT: SHIT! now that I said that.... I walk outside & there is a bunch of snow!.... I drive good in it, but rear wheel drive TownCars don't...

Hopefully it won't be slick greased glass ice when I get off work. People don't know how to drive in it here to well & my traction control screws me when I try to fight my way uphill!

New cars & technology sometimes aren't all they're cracked up to be.

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ugh, new guys at work think the GPS is gonna get us to the call quicker, WRONG. I tell every new guy that steps on the ambulance to learn the mapbook and learn the area, cause if SHTF you need to know your area and exit points QUICK.

 

Nope. I can see all the time where my car nav system didn't take me the quickest route. I find its good for keeping me from getting totally lost in a strange city, and it keeps me going in the right general direction, and gets me there on a reasonably short route, but as far as depending on it in a life and death situation for the absolute quickest route, no way.

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GPS is cool and all until it has unupdated maps...

 

Yup. I had one take me to a gas station. Only there was no gas station when I got there. Only an empty lot. I'm half convinced there never was a gas station there, as it was a dead end road.......and I've never seen a gas station at the end of a dead end road.

 

 

Other than that, my girl's GPS (Garmin) came in handy when we visited SC. When our friend's were working, we would venture out & about to different random places. Once it was updated, it never led us astray. It also came in handy, because it has damn near every single restaurant, gas station, movie theater, mall, local attraction, bar, night club, recreational spot, park, store, etc, etc, etc, available to find and it's contact info. Again, the GPS being updated helps a lot here.

 

That being said...............a GPS is an electronic device. It can, and will, go dead/be incorrect/annoy you/etc.

 

I agree with DogMan's post above. He's got it right.

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My bro-in-law has a unit in his fancy shmancy SUV in Manhattan (NYC). He is so ADD/hyper that he cant bear to sit still in NY traffic and would rather spend an equal or more amount of time zipping up & down side roads in the belief that he is saving time :rolleyes:

 

I named his vehicle's GPS voice as "Alice"

 

One day when needing to make a stop in Brooklynn on the way to Long Island he followed Alice's directions to what turned out to be the wrong location. Turned out it was well over an hour in the opposite direction :lolol:

 

He got so pissed that he punched the dashboard and it shorted out the entire system.

I never did find out how much it cost him to get it fixed but it was plenty.

 

Whenever the opportunity arises I always ask; "So are you and Alice on speaking terms again?"

People will then ask; "Who's Alice?" He gets so pissed he still wont talk about it :haha:

 

HarvKY

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My bro-in-law has a unit in his fancy shmancy SUV in Manhattan (NYC). He is so ADD/hyper that he cant bear to sit still in NY traffic....

 

Traffic down in the city is horrendous. For the majority of your travels, you're better off walking or using the subway.

 

I braved the streets down there in my own car once..............once. I no longer take my own car down there.....ever. It's Greyhound or Shortline to get there, then once I get there, it's walking or the subway for the rest of my travels (with the occasional taxi).

 

Was he hyper before he moved into NYC..........or did the traffic make him that way? :D

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Many maps even show "unkempt Forest Service roads."

 

Once you decide that you are going to take unquestionable orders from any inanimate object, or person, you are no longer the master of your own fate.

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Oh boy...... I always love this topic, recently had this discussion at Christmas. Might have pissed off my brother in-law when I bought him a new GPS system because he had a shitty one.

Orienteering is a special skill that many people just can't get the hang of, I personally really enjoy it. I learned to read a map when I was pretty young and have always kept up on it for several reasons. The first being that there was no Fing GPS when I was younger, the second being that I've been on enough long "hikes" in my day, and last but not least if we left our first due when I was in the FD it was the only way to get around.

Really though GPS (if used correctly) is AWESOME!!!!!!!!! Most people who say "learn how to read a map", don't actually know how to read a map other than street maps. I've handed several people a topographic map on a hike and they just stare at it. Without a GPS they'd be screwed. I guess it's like everything else in life, you get what you pay for.

The best portable system I've seen is a netbook with GPS capabilities. It's small and portable yet the screen is big enough to allow for very fine detail. This will probably be my next system.

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... The best portable system I've seen is a netbook with GPS capabilities. It's small and portable yet the screen is big enough to allow for very fine detail. This will probably be my next system.

My next mod to my new CF-29 Toughbook will be an internal 20 channel GPS with an active antenna. It is hardly a netbook, but is a lot more heavy duty and up to the job for which I intend it! It is one of the reasons that I have not been hanging around here as much!

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... The best portable system I've seen is a netbook with GPS capabilities. It's small and portable yet the screen is big enough to allow for very fine detail. This will probably be my next system.

My next mod to my new CF-29 Toughbook will be an internal 20 channel GPS with an active antenna. It is hardly a netbook, but is a lot more heavy duty and up to the job for which I intend it! It is one of the reasons that I have not been hanging around here as much!

I wish I could get a hold of one of the newer Walkabout computers...Those things were bad ass in there day, not to many waterproof computers in the world! Jumped in the river with my old one to prove it to my buddy, he says it was the funniest shit he's ever seen, a grown man laying in the river searching the internet babbling about how bad ass his computer is to win a $5.00 bet....classic.

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I wish I could get a hold of one of the newer Walkabout computers...Those things were bad ass in there day, not to many waterproof computers in the world! Jumped in the river with my old one to prove it to my buddy, he says it was the funniest shit he's ever seen, a grown man laying in the river searching the internet babbling about how bad ass his computer is to win a $5.00 bet....classic.

Their day is today.

 

Mine is a 1.6 GHz Centrino and plenty fast enough to run WIN7 Pro and Office 2003 which it is currently. For this usage I am not interested in cutting edge gaming performance, I am interested in it working under harsh conditions. I have just taken it apart and resealed it and added a new backlit emmisive waterproof keyboard. I have upgraded it from 256 MG to 1.25 GB and added a new 320 GB HDD in place of the old 60 GB. I am also using 4GB of Sandisk Ultra III SDHC as a ReadyBoost cache and am very pleased with its performance overall.

 

It will not keep up with my quad-core desktop, but I do not need it to, just work. It replaced a old CF-M34 that was also still fast enough for most of my apps, just not video telephonery, and it was just a P3!

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Rusty Truck- There IS no "better part" of Harrisburg anymore! We won't even cross the river if we don't have to go to Bass Pro!

 

Lemme guess- it wanted to waltz you up 13th street? Good call on following your instinct.

 

I'm glad the wife and I LEFT Harrisburg a few years ago! We used to live in Enola, which isn't too bad, but I could still hear pistol fire at night sometimes from the city.

 

We live out in the country now, over 50 miles from there, and love it. Now if we hear gunfire, it's either mine, or one of the neighbors is out playing. "Odd" folk don't come out here!

 

We're right by the Navy Depot... I'm sure that'll tell you our 20 well enough. The hubby's family on his mom's side is from Blain... (Perry co.) Ever hear the name Dromgold?

 

His whole family fought in the first war for independence... Looks like this generation will get the chance to make their deposit into the Tree of Liberty also.

 

Mayhaps we should have a local range day sometime!

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We live out in the country now, over 50 miles from there, and love it. Now if we hear gunfire, it's either mine, or one of the neighbors is out playing. "Odd" folk don't come out here!

 

Perry County?

Based on your stated location... would that put you near Sgrove, or the other end? I have a friend from Ashland, and know a lot of patriots up your way!

 

It's beautiful, easily defensible country up that way! LOTS of choke points, if you know what I mean...

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my first experiance with a GPS system was blue force trackers...... Any one that has used a BFT know how amazing that POS is. I was back on the FOB one day and it still said I was 10 miles down the high way. I still preferre a good map, land marks and a compass to find my way around. Might not be able to get myself some where down to the .1 of a foot but I can find my way to most places. A GPS is good for scouting out a new area and you need a way to get pointed back in the right direction and back onto a major road after getting lost in suburbia because all the houses look the same and all those twisted winding roads have simialr, cute happy names that makes a grunt like me want to punt kittens......... that said I have no problems asking for directions from a local and if some where doesn't look right I'll turn around and double back to some where I've been and go around. In America the highways are pretty well labled so Gps is nice to keep track of distances driven and average speed. I still never believe the thing when it says you will arive in x number of hours because it's always some overly optimistic number that doesn't take life in to consideration.

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