Maybe just because I was hired originally as a cartographer by
DMAAC/DMA/NIMA I think there are some fun implications for scenarios
involving 'intentional errors' on the player's and figures maps. Anybody else
seen some use for these in a scenario?
Gracias, Glenn/Triphibious (American Mongrel)
You don't have to be French to be a 'frog', or even human!
Nektons - Real Marines! (Die, Ralnai, Die!)
Starguard, Dirtside 2, Ratner's Space Marines, Stellar Conflicts
and Uprisings, and Full Thrust/2nd. Resistance is everything!
--------- Begin forwarded message ----------
From: "Wilson, Glenn M." <WilsonG@nima.mil>
<snip>
Subject: FW: London Times Article
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 12:02:25 -0500
Message-ID: <8B9D41BEE275D3119E7E00805FBE64D3022ADB70@stlx4>
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-94712,00.html
TUESDAY MARCH 06 2001 Twists in the plot cost AA map cheats?20m BY JOANNA BALE
WHEN Ptolemy put together his wonky map of the world in AD 150, he was setting
a cartographic trend which persists to this day.
Only now, Ordnance Survey gets things wrong on purpose.
This alarming fact emerged yesterday when the Automobile Association
agreed to pay ?20 million in an out-of-court settlement after it was
caught plagiarising Ordnance Survey maps.
OS cartographers apparently put faults, such as tiny twists in rivers and
exaggerated curves in roads, in dozens of their maps to trap plagiarists.
These helped to prove that millions of published guides, which the AA claimed
as its own work, were straightforward copies.
Centrica, the gas company which owns the AA, paid up after admitting that it
had used OS originals as source material to create its own maps. In all, more
than 500 publications were involved, with more than 300 million individual
copies printed. The disclosures did not surprise the world of
cartography, where plagiarism has been endemic through the ages.
Ken Atherton, of the British Cartographic Society, said: "Mapmakers
have been pinching each others' work for centuries. Christopher Saxton
was one of the earliest British map-makers in the late 1500s. His work
was pinched by John Speed in the early 17th century who added bits then passed
it all off as his own."
The process of including subtle errors to catch out
the plagiarists has been a natural progression and is thought to be
widely practised around the world, he added. The dispute between the OS and
the AA began in 1996
when OS cartographers noticed close similarities between its
maps and the AA's road atlases. With the OS anxious to protect its?30 million
income from copyright royalties, battle commenced.
Previously, the AA claimed that its own cartographers
produced the travel guides for its customers. But unwittingly,
the AA had copied a number of the "fingerprints" - deliberate
and secret faults incorporated into OS maps to catch out
plagiarists. The identifying marks include kinks in rivers, the
addition of minor buildings or exaggerated curves in roads - any tiny
change which does not drastically alter a map but is easily
identified by those who have "planted" it. Sometimes, the mapmakers
deliberately miss out apostrophes in place names or add a
non-existent tributary to a river or an outbuilding to a farm.
Presented with the evidence, the AA admitted copying plans of 64
British
towns and cities - including its "home town" of Basingstoke -
and selling the rights to other companies, including Marks &
Spencer, WH Smith, Halfords and Thomson Local Directories.
Despite the spectacular row, the OS, the government
agency that compiles and updates a collection of 230,000 maps of
Britain, and the AA, Britain's biggest publisher of road atlases,
will continue to print titles under their joint names.
The OS declined to provide specific examples of its secret system, saying:
"They are not errors or faults, but subtle and secret ways of detecting
plagiarism, rather like watermarks. Every map issuer does something similar.
We would have had to reveal
them in court, so we are pleased an out-of-court settlement
was reached."
Tricks of the trade
An extra stream tributary Imaginary farm buildings Tiny kinks in rivers
Exaggerated curves in roads Missing apostrophes
<snip>
> Web address:
<http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-94712,00.html>
> [quoted text omitted]
***
Maybe just because I was hired originally as a cartographer by
DMAAC/DMA/NIMA I think there are some fun implications for scenarios
involving 'intentional errors' on the player's and figures maps. Anybody else
seen some use for these in a scenario?
***
Great article on two points!
I can well imagine a riverine-transport force, on it's way to meet up
with an 'overland' group, finding itself without the last leg of the journey
due to the imaginary tributary. That's from a vac head who wasn't even trying.
The other thing was that I found interesting: The Times uses the word 'wonky'.
Obviously, colonial naivete on my part!
On the other hand, as I can see lots of 'life or death' situations possible
with several of these changes, my naivete is shocked that cartographers would
do such things. It's one thing to alter a song recording...
The_Beast
-Douglas J. Evans, curmudgeon
One World, one Web, one Program - Microsoft promotional ad
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler
> Absender: devans@uneb.edu
> On the other hand, as I can see lots of 'life or death' situations
recording...
Seems copyright issues are now being taken as seriously as warfare ;-)
During the Cold War era, both sides regarded maps as classified information.
Published maps were missing militarily relevant information.
The Soviets were especially paranoid about it. It was impossible to get a good
street map of Moscow, and in larger scale maps, whole cities and roads might
be off by several kilometers.
In West Germany, airfields etc. might not only be missing from maps, even in
published aerial photographs, airfields might be replaced by woods.
All this in the era of satellite reconnaissance!
Greetings Karl Heinz
> ***
Anybody
> else seen some use for these in a scenario?
"Wonky" is a perfectly acceptable word, meaning bent, distorted or not
straight (in the geometric sense rather than the sexual-preference
one...)!
What does it mean to you (ex) colonials, anyway? ;-)
> On the other hand, as I can see lots of 'life or death' situations
IIRC, it was reported that the stellar cartographers for the Traveller 2300
starmap did the same thing to guard against other game publishers ripping
off all their hard work - the map is (mostly) as accurate as they could
make it, but there are just a couple of spurious, fictional stars or other
deliberate "errors" in there to catch the unwary copier and give their lawyers
the necessary ammunition....
***
"Wonky" is a perfectly acceptable word, meaning bent, distorted or not
straight (in the geometric sense rather than the sexual-preference
one...)!
What does it mean to you (ex) colonials, anyway? ;-)
***
Absolutely nothing outside of a bit of colo(u)rful British argot. My shock was
seeing what I thought was, well, a vulgar term, in the commonality
sense, not the sexual-preference one.
Ex-colonials have always heard the Times was rather staid. Sort of like
BBC English including 'wonky', which I've never heard.
The_Beast
-Douglas J. Evans, curmudgeon
One World, one Web, one Program - Microsoft promotional ad
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler
First) Wonky just wouldn't be used, marks you as a furriner as much as saying
Happy Christmas instead of merry Christmas, so it just sounds weird to us.
Closest word that is used usually is wonk, which is an expert, or alleged
expert, normally in a political, or economic sense.
So I guess it would be fair to refer to those types as wonky. :-)
Second) I recall just recently reading a short story about the capture of a
space ship by a piratical force. Needing to decide on where to go for thier
next attack, they discover a set of encyclopedias and the salesman for them.
He shows them an entry for a pleasant, unprotected, and rich planet not too
far from thier present location. After they leave to go after this plum. the
salesman reveals to the outraged crew that the place doesn't exist and in fact
was inserted into the book to catch plagarists. They inform the "space patrol"
types of the destination of the pirates, and they are caught. Might be a
useful start to a scenario design.
> On Thu, 08 March 2001, Ground Zero Games wrote:
> "Wonky" is a perfectly acceptable word, meaning bent, distorted or not
As an ex-Brit, now colonial, I can tell you that this is a British word.
Colonials don't usually utter the term "wonky".
There is the term "wonk" which originally used to mean "nerd" but has been
morphed into "expert, but in a really specialized or nerdy area". It can also
refer to people specialized in political spin. In Washington, the term
"wonkmeister" is sometimes used to mean someone particularly important in
spinning stories for the political machine.
And there's this black patch near a lake in California...
I can neither confirm or deny...
No Comment. <grin>
Gracias, Glenn/Triphibious (American Mongrel)
You don't have to be French to be a 'frog', or even human!
Nektons - Real Marines! (Die, Ralnai, Die!)
Starguard, Dirtside 2, Ratner's Space Marines, Stellar Conflicts
and Uprisings, and Full Thrust/2nd. Resistance is everything!
> On 08 Mar 2001 11:47 GMT KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de writes:
> On Thu, 8 Mar 2001 04:59:52 -0600 devans@uneb.edu writes:
<snip>
> On the other hand, as I can see lots of 'life or death' situations
Commercial cartographers have more freedom to set up copyright violators
then we do/did as DOD support Cartographers. When people's lives are on
the line it's harder to worry about some third world clown copying a chart
they aren't supposed to have or even the ones we have map exchange agreements
with...
Note I did not say we 'never' did - I just have never found such a
'intentional error' in the products I am familiar with... Heck, there's more
then enough subtle errors in a GIS (and more blunders) then the average chart,
IMO.
> The_Beast
> On Thu, 08 Mar 2001 10:50:36 EST JRebori682@aol.com writes:
<snip>
> Second) I recall just recently reading a short story about the capture
B-E-E-U-T-I-F-U-L!
I love it.
> At 03:40 PM 3/8/01 +0000, Jon T wrote:
I think there were also a few alterations to help fit what they wanted their
"arms" of exploration to look like to what would actually happen with the 7.7
ly limit on the stutterwarp. IIRC, the American Arm actually would truncate
like it does (though piggyback operations extend it right into the back of
Kafer space, where the remnants of... oh, nevermind, just in case
^_^ ) but either the French Arm or the Chinese Arm (or both?) wouldn't
be quite the same.
On the other hand, I definitely recall reading that they changed some stellar
types (not just positions) as well. And, of course, there's the
planetary systems.... ^_-
All in all, though, a great game for giving a decently fleshed-out
background without *too* much detail, though the Arms of exploration are
definitely dependant on having the 7.7 limit to the hyperdrive. If that
restriction were removed, the groupings of who-got-what would make a lot
less sense.
Wasn't this also one of Saberhagen's Berserker stories? Damaged Berserker,
directedto a 'plum' planet. A military officer is outraged, but then the
encyclopedia salesman reveals the deception.
The moral of this statement that our deceitful nature is a survival trait.
> --- Glenn M Wilson <triphibious@juno.com> wrote:
[quoted original message omitted]
In a message dated 3/8/01 11:04:19 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> imperialdispatches@yahoo.com writes:
> Wasn't this also one of Saberhagen's Berserker stories ? Damaged
Now that I think about it, I did reread a bunch of Berserker stories not too
long ago, Maybe that is where I remember it from. Still, I think it has
possibilities for the setup to a decent scenario, with one side expecting one
battlefield and finding something very, or even only slightly different. All
it takes is a suitably evil umpire to set it up.
> JRebori682@aol.com wrote:
> Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
> JRebori682@aol.com wrote:
After they leave to go after this plum. the salesman reveals to the outraged
crew that the place doesn't exist and in fact was inserted into the book to
catch plagarists. They inform the "space patrol" types of the destination of
the pirates, and they are caught. Might be a useful start to a scenario
design.
> Actually, that was also the general plot of one of Fred
More precisely, the encyclopedia salesman offers a list of worlds in the
general region to accompany the warship disposition recovered from one of the
escorts. A very rich planet is in the sector, but it is not mentioned on the
list of defended systems. The raiders immediately head off for that system, as
they need to go plunder an industrial world for
[quoted original message omitted]