On 7/1/14, 1:24 PM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
But isn't so that none of the firefox os devices have GPS? If so, I'd be sceptical about submissions from such devices.
The devices I have do have a GPS chip. Unfortunately, the Javascript API does not let you know that the data generated has come from that chip as against being itself generated from some location service. There is a work around (ask only for non-cached, high precision data) that generates data which is mostly from the GPS chip (though it seems even the GPS layers lie and give the last know position for a while when the GPS signal is lost). Someday we need to extend the Web API for GeoLocation so the position data structure comes with a tag about how it was generated...
Being 'sceptical' does not help the database; already, the data is flowing in. The database format does not tag the data origin (and you could not trust such tags anyhow) so we are left with being skeptical of the database itself. Then again, that is fine and healthy. Also, twenty years ago, when thinking about crowd sourcing location data, we were skeptical given all the errors in that process; OpenStreeMap has conclusively proved our doubts to be irrelevant. So here's hoping crowd sourcing can overwhelm inaccuracy...
cheers, ~adrian _______________________________________________ dev-geolocation mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation
