Talk:2547: Siren

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 14:05, 29 November 2021 by Seebert (talk | contribs)
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3 hr 5 min (170 miles) via I-88 W Snezzy (talk) 10:05, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Technically true, but I don't think Odysseus ever visited New York. The distance between Ancient Troy and Ithaca, Ancient Greece, is 565 nautical miles. -- Hkmaly (talk) 23:28, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

the title text reminds me of the arson murder and jaywalking trope 172.70.34.191 18:10, 27 November 2021 (UTC)Bumpf

Not strictly relevant, but...oh, knickers to it, I'll ask: I've always wondered what Americans (OK, and others, but it's American TV that got me wondering about it) use when asking GPS for directions. British postcodes are fantastically precise (i.e. they usually take you to the right section of the right street) so you can just dial in your six or seven characters then look out for the building number once you're nearby, but obviously ZIP codes (and other similar postal code systems in other countries) don't offer that precision. So what do you actually ask the satnav to look for?Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

United States Zip+4 is precise down to the building, the problem is most people don't know how to use it properly, and couldn't tell you their own Zip+4 if their lives depended on it (at best, they can tell you their 5 digit Zip Code, but that only gets you to the right post office, which might service 9999 addresses. It gets worse in rural areas, where those 9999 addresses might cover many hundreds of square miles. Remember, in Europe a hundred miles is a long way, and in America, a hundred years is a long time).Seebert (talk) 14:03, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Generally you would either type in the name of the street, or ask a virtual assistant where such and such place is. 172.70.98.57 07:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
In my car's built-in navigation (rather old) I have a few selection options. The one I use most often allows to select the country, city/town/village name, street name and either a house number or intersection with another street - all from searchable drop-down lists with history of recent selections, so it's quite convenient. But there are other options: geographical coordinates, previous destinations, and probably country and postal/zip code, I can't remember now. Postal codes in Poland are not very precise and designate irregularly shaped areas served by branches and sub-branches of national post offices which does not coincide with administrative divisions, so they're pretty useless both for navigation and even actual routing of mail. For years, I was giving out a wrong postal code for my address of residence, because it has been changed (three out of five digits were different), but the mail delivered fine all that time. Also, some villages, even quite big (hundreds of homes), have no street names, just house numbers, and the numbers are given out on the first come first served basis, so the distribution is completely random. I feel sorry for the newly-hired postmen...