GPS for Complete Dummies

basics of GPS

Content farms of the internet break down into two different families: in the sites such as HubPages.com, freelancers post about anything. At the other type of sites, such as the eHow.com niches, freelancers choose from a list of topics. We harvest most of our DotD nominees from the second group, which might lead one to think that freelancers at HubPages (or InfoBarrel, WritEdge, etc.) only write on topics about which they're knowledgeable. One would be wrong, as is ably demonstrated by M. Dee Dubroff (Marjorie Dorfman) from Catalogs.com in her post, "What Is GPS?"

We'll never know what led Dubroff to choose this topic. Perhaps she tried to publish it at WiseGEEK or Helium and it was rejected. Maybe "GPS" ranked high on search-engine scores for that day back in 2009. Whatever the case, though, Dee (Marjorie) failed miserably when it came to answering the question.

You'd think that when attempting to answer that question one would start out with the basics, and that's what Dee sort of did:

"The Global Positioning System is a U.S. space-based global navigation satellite system. It provides reliable positioning, navigation, and timing services to worldwide users on a continuous basis in all weather, day and night, anywhere on or near the Earth. It has been a fully operational phenomenon since April of 1995."

While we wouldn't call GPS a "phenomenon," most of the rest of that is correct – pedantic people (like us, we guess) would point out that the first satellites were launched in the '70s, the system became publicly available in the '80s, and civilians were granted full accuracy in 1995. But that's just us...  Since she wanted to sell stuff, Dubroff had section headers titled, "How to select the gps system that is right for you," "What is gps to the world of today and tomorrow?" "What is gps when used in a car?" "What is gps made of?" and "What is gps for you?" Let's take a look at some of her bushwa:

• The section on "How to select the gps system that is right for you" contains no criteria whatsoever for choosing a GPS unit.
• We were amused by a claim in "What is gps when used in a car?" that "GPS devices do not run on their own stamina..." Yes, this moron said "stamina," presumably because she couldn't figure out how to say that (she mistakenly believed that) car GPS units are standalone.
• Under "What is gps made of?" our intrepid freelancer reduced GPS to little more than satellites and receivers. She is so clueless about the technology that she can't even mention the words "radio" and "triangulation" anywhere in this tripe.

The idiot finished with some not-so-sage advice about choosing a GPS unit:

"Buying a gps is like buying any other gadget or appliance. The same rules apply. Shop around for the best buy in terms of what you need and be happy that the next time you go shopping a presence in your car will be telling you which way to go, making the location of foreign shopping malls so much easier to find!" What a load of horse-hockey. Small wonder readers of the website have rated it 1½ stars over the years! There is precious little in Dubroff's article about the technology, nothing in Dorfman's content about features that a shopper may or may not want to consider, and about half of what she says is of questionable veracity.

When we see content like this still published, we feel a need to reward the author. Here, M. Dee, here's your Dumbass of the Day award. Put it up with the other four!

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