On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Adrian Custer <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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...

My scepticism is not about submission itself or even who gets to
submit data but the technology and accuracy involved. You should be
getting the accuracy of the fix at least and if that accuracy is more
than a few meters, you can safely assume GPS wasn't involved (I know
its not always the case) and therefore submitting data wouldn't be a
good idea.

Having said that, if you do provide accuracy in you submission
requests, server can decide what to do about submission then but that
would still imply  unnecessary network and server load.

-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
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