JRS was given some links to read but chose not to as there was too much to read.
Because 99.99% of the information contained in the links would be utterly irrelevant and if you're persistently going to be too lazy to type out your damn arguments or justify yourself as I do, I see no reason to sift through all of that.
And what's the point in writing out the argument ourselves when you just ignore it anyway?
Who said anything about roads?
There are other options, like deserts. Also, did you notice the boat?
As for the angles, that would be visible landmarks, however if you are willing to use GPS, that makes it a lot easier.
How many people do you imagine have a fucking boat? I talked about roads because for the only accessible instance there, of cars travelling in straight lines, they're needed.
No. They're not.
Cars can travel in straight lines over deserts as well.
That wouldn't be remotely useful though, the handful of landmarks that are visible from a large distance away, you're just going to measure how steep the ground is, even in your own model.
You are aware that was how early mapping was done, and provided fairly accurate maps?
Using GPS would be a better option to get a coordinate system which you can them map to these distances.
Quite wrong! What you get is the coordinates of where you are as Latitude/Longitude. For example, where I am sitting the GPS I am using has no connection to any phone system and shows my location as 26.68009°S 152.04890°E. (I changed the degrees, so as not to publicise exactly where I am). If you look back at an earlier post on Feb 21, it then read 26.68008°S 152.04891°E - differing only by 0.00001° in each of Lat and Long!
Which it gets by measuring how far you are from a certain location. The GPS knows nothing else beyond how far it is from certain transmitters, it then works on the assumption that certain distances equal certain locations, and so gives you the lat/long.
Debatably, yes.
But what are these locations? The several satellites in orbit it is receiving data from.
So no, it isn't a certain distance from a certain location.
It is a certain distance from several locations, which it uses to determine your position in a particular coordinate system.
If you had been navigating boats before GPS, I think you would regard it near enough to "the holy grail".
Yes, because it's better than hoping the stars'll be out. No one's saying it isn't accurate, you're just turning it into something it's not. Small-scale distances are always going to be fine. Large scale ones are adjusted for within the GPS' error.
No. They aren't.
GPS is more accurate at larger scales.
It has the same error (absolute) regardless of the scale used.
So trying to plot 2 things 10 m apart will be somewhat inaccurate (depending on the equipment used), where for example (using your 6 m below), you will plot the distance to within 12 m, so it could be -2 m apart, or 22 m apart.
Trying to plot 2 things 10 km apart you will not notice any error, as you have the same 6 m error in each point and thus have a range of 9 994 - 10 006 m
If you can get 6m error just from sitting still (pretty sure I've had bigger on my phone, been read as close to two houses away), then over the time and distance that a long journey would be, a journey long enough for departure between RE and FE distances to be notable, that error is going to be add up.
No. It isn't.
That error will remain the same, due to the same error in determining your location.
As GPS naturally self-corrects and self-adjusts, certain distances = certain locations (made explicit in satnavs), any variation is just going to be handwaved away as error, and it's not given a chance to add up.
No. It doesn't.
It constant re-determines your position without any concern for where you were previously.
It doesn't go:
You were here. You moved 10 m. You should be there.
It goes:
I don't give a shit, you are here now.
You can keep on lying about it all you want, it wont make you any less full of shit.
This isn't anything grand, this is how any good system would be designed; don't create a situation where errors in reading could add up. That's true regardless of the shape of the Earth.
And do you know one of the best ways to get a system like that?
Have one which doesn't use your previous location, and instead just determines what your location is.
If it does that then it has the same error in location regardless of how far you have travelled, without any need for correction.
If you are using previous location data and trying to determine a new position from where you are, the errors will continue to add and after a short distance you will be in a completely different location to what it says.