Tag: opinion

GSM Abonnement: Wisselen of blijven?

Posted on By rolfje 2 Comments on GSM Abonnement: Wisselen of blijven?

This article is about selecting a new phone contract. Since this article describes a specific Dutch situation, it will be in Dutch. Sorry.

Dit jaar lijkt een constant “blijven of wisselen” jaar te zijn. Wil je de nieuwe zorgverlof regeling of blijf je spaarloon houden? Wil je een nieuwe Zorgverzekeraar of wil je bij je oude blijven? En vandaag is was mijn beltegoed voor mijn gevoel te snel op, en rees de vraag “Wil je prepaid blijven bellen, of wil je een abonnement?”. Gelukkig was de vraag bij welke provider ik wil blijven snel beantwoord, ik heb altijd goede ervaringen met Vodafone (als bedrijf) gehad dus het moet Vodafone blijven. Ik ben al lid sinds het nog Libertel heette, en heb ook nog steeds hetzelfde nummer.

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Wikipedia is not the truth!

Posted on By rolfje 2 Comments on Wikipedia is not the truth!

Wikipedia is not as good as you might think. Things written on Wikipedia are copied “verbatim” by other sites. By the time somebody checks the wikipedia story, he finds the verbatim copies and sees them as confirmation of the wikipedia story. And so the story stays on Wikipedia, spreading wrong ideas to schools, teachers, and you and I.

Spreading wrong information on the internet can have very big consequences, and John Seigenthaler knows this by personal experience.

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Where’s North again?

Posted on By rolfje 1 Comment on Where’s North again?

Lately, I’ve been collecting race circuit locations using Google Earth. It’s really nice to see the sometimes very detailed satelite images of race circuits. You can actually see the seperate kerbstone blocks of silverstone, and see how many cars there were parked at the time the picture was taken. You should try it.

What really started to catch my interest is the fact that the maps of circuits as they are used in logo’s or (worse) “how to get there”-maps are almost never of the “north pointing up” type. An example:
The circuit “Road America”, which is located a few miles north-east of Atlanta, Georgia, has a web-site which shows you a detailed map of the circuit, as well as pointers to the nearest highways. I have grabbed an image (because they only have these stupid noise making flash movie thingied nobody is interersted in after the second visit). It looks like this:

So, in my quest to find this circuit using Google Earth, I found the circuit to be along the 53, halfway from the I85 to the I985, just like the directions stated. But, the circuit seemed to be “turned around:

I have noticed this with a lot of ciruits. I understand the need of turning and simplifying the circuit to make a nice logo, but when the circuit is depicted next to driving directions, I would make the map “north side up” so nobody gets confused. In the first image, the I85 apears to be west of the circuit, while it is actually east of the circuit.

Google Earth location of Road America (so you can check for yourselves):

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<kml xmlns=”http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0″>
<Document>
<Style id=”khStyle662″>
<IconStyle id=”khIconStyle664″>
<Icon>
<href>root://icons/palette-3.png</href>
<x>224</x>
<w>32</w>
<h>32</h>
</Icon>
</IconStyle>
</Style>
<Placemark>
<name>Road Atlanta</name>
<LookAt>
<longitude>-83.81483349103033</longitude>
<latitude>34.14598906888146</latitude>
<range>2835.974155514713</range>
<tilt>-8.888997363646108e-012</tilt>
<heading>0.3186400317363279</heading>
</LookAt>
<styleUrl>#khStyle662</styleUrl>
<Point>
<coordinates>-83.81483349103033,34.14598906888146,0</coordinates>
</Point>
</Placemark>
</Document>
</kml>

Racing