[Linux-aus] Richard Stallmans Australian Speaking schedule - Mount Gambier Frivday 17 September 2010 - and rant

[Arthur Marsh]

Russell Stuart wrote, on 05/09/10 17:47:
> On Sun, 2010-09-05 at 17:14 +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>> The current plan is at the Brewery Theatre of the
>> University of Ballarat SMB Campus
>
> Thanks.  I've updated the calender, and will send you a URL via private
> email so you can edit it yourself .
>
>> You don't have the Mount Gambier talk in there.
>
> It's there, on the 17th of October.  The easiest way to see them all is
> to click the Agenda link at the top right.

The Mount Gambier talk was listed amongst the October speaking 
engagements, but actually lists Friday 17th September 2010 as the date.

Checking the URL:

http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=load&area=9005&temID=eventdetails&eveID=10178580874484

(all on one line) shows the date Friday 17th September 2010, but 
mis-spells Tenison Woods College, and fortunately gives a working URL 
for Tenison Woods College which indicates the address of the corner of 
Shepherdson Road and White Avenue Mount Gambier. (The electronic White 
Pages has various listings that appear whether the name Tenison is 
spelled correctly or incorrectly as on the web page at the above URL, 
and indicate either 105 Shepherdson Road or the corner of Shepherdson 
Road and White Avenue. Fortunately the electronic White Pages is 
sufficiently forgiving to find the right place with an incorrect 
spelling in the search term).

At the expense of flying completely off-topic into a rant, in the past 
both the White Pages entry for Tenison Woods College and the MapData 
Sciences maps (such as used by Australia Post) had mis-spelled 
Shepherdson Road. This might seem like a trivial error as any local 
would know how to find the place. At one time I had to give directions 
to Shepherdson Road over the phone from Adelaide to someone heading to 
the college where they had never been before to sit an exam, and the 
mis-spellings made it difficult to use an online map service, especially 
as there is also a Shepherd Street in Mount Gambier and my search was 
only finding Shepherd Street. Also, Sensis had mis-spelled Shepherdson 
Road as "Shephardson Road"

All told, it took from the end of July 2006 until the end of 2008 for 
the corrections to propagate through to all the online maps I had used. 
Email me if you want further details.

This left me wondering how accurate were the spellings of street names 
in the Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) used by emergency 
services when someone makes a 000/112 call and whether mistakes lead to 
emergency services being delayed in reaching their intended destination. 
I remain to be convinced that the geographical addresses in the IPND are 
as accurate as they should be.

Arthur.