Subject: Re: Silly way to waste bits.
To: Gilbert Fernandes <gilbertf@netbsd-fr.org>
From: Richard Rauch <rkr@olib.org>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 08/04/2003 19:25:09
Re. http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2003/08/04/0004.html

Weird.  Your post has me listed (on the mail-index site) as the To:
recipient, but I don't seem to have received it...


Anyway, I thought that when the terms "longitude" and "lattitude" were
used, one was always refering to the "traditional" system (someplace
in Greenwich at longitude 0, the equator at lattitude 0; I don't know
where they place the center of the earth for defining angles phi & theta).
Sorry for assuming that that was clear.

If you want to be any more precise than that, you will have to ask
mapsonus.com (or compare your coords to the coords that they say
represent you), which is what I pointed to in my original post.  I used
whatever datum they use when you ask for longitude and lattitude for a
map location.

In fact, until our private exchange, I never even knew about GPS/UTM
coords, so when I have heard of longitude and lattitude, I always took
them to be a well-defined convention.


Short of it is: I don't know.  I relied on an external site to transform my
street-address (refined by clicking on a zoomed-in map) to coordinates, and
naively assumed that "longitude" and "lattitude" as reported by them was
meaningful.  It's the best information that I can supply, without going
out to buy a GPS device specifically to get a few decimal places adjusted.


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/