Geocaching-
here now! 
Latest GPS and related News below:
21 December 2007 - A LEADING supplier of satellite
navigation equipment for cars and boats has been slapped with a
$1.25million
fine for its "aggressive and high-handed" price maintenance
strategy imposed on resellers of their products. The Australian
Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) brought the action under
Section
48
of the Trade
Practices Act. Federal Court Justice Peter Jacobsen said that Navman,
which now trades as AusHoldco, prevented or discouraged retailers
from discounting
prices for almost four years to the end of 2004. The judge said
the $1.25million fine recommended by the ACCC was "at
the very bottom of the permissible range", and could have
been justifiably higher.
The penalty imposed on Navman Australia last week is one of the
highest for resale price maintenance. In relation to its PCN (personal
consumer navigation) products, Navman particularly sought to prevent
discounting below specified
prices by retailers via the internet. Navman said it tried to stop
small retailers from cutting prices on navigation systems in order
to "avoid complaints from some of its larger retail customers,
about the prices of other (smaller and internet) retailers".
Justice Jacobson said Navman's attempts to force retailers to sell
only
at a price
level
set by the company was "a manifestation of price fixing among
retailers".
Beyond
the bounds of their own localities, and going literally
to the
edge, seamen transformed the known face of our world. Over
thousands of years, they have recorded the planet, and given
us the basis
for our modern positioning and mapping systems. In
Australia 2006, we saluted the forerunners to our modern
navigators
and users of GPS.
"Australia on the Map: 1606-2006"
(AOTM) commemorated the 400th anniversary of the first Europeon
contacts with the Australian continent. The discovery
of New Holland (now Australia) was propitiated by the
Dutch
East India Company, who purposefully sought new lands where
gold and other precious minerals and spices might be
found.
The first venture in 1606 has become a landmark in Australian
history, when Company captain, Willem Janszoon, mapped
a section
of the west coast of Cape York.
400 years since first European
contact was made with Australia.
The original Australians, the ancestors
of our current Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, were
here long before the 1600s. But historical records refer to
the voyage of Willem Janszoon in the vessel Duyfken to west
Cape York in about March 1606. Here he made a chart of the coastline.
A few months later Torres led an expedition through Torres Strait,
establishing that Australia was separate from New Guinea. Within
40 years, Dutch sailors had mapped the whole of the Australian
coastline from Cape York, westward to Arnhem Land (named after
one of the Dutch ships) and Port Hedland, south to Cape Leeuwin,
and east to Fowlers Bay at Longitude 132 deg, 30' E (now in
South Australia). By 1643, Abel Tasman had also charted much
of Tasmania, and went further to explore New Zealand and the
eastern end of Papua New Guinea. It remained for an English
sailor, James Cook, in HMS Endeavour, to map the eastern coast
of New Holland more than a century later, in 1770.
Note from Kimball Thurlow: As I have said
elsewhere, the advancements made in sea-going navigation, contributed
to the
explosion
of immigration and trade over the last two centuries. GPS,
while a truly global system, is creating micro-positioning
advancements. Just think of some current applications, like
using GPS to help your way around a golf-course, portable navigation
for vehicles even though you only travel in the suburbs, and
survey and engineering work where pegs are placed to an accuracy
of a few millimetres.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
One
of the operations most worthy of our support is the Royal Flying
Doctor Service in Australia (RFDS). RFDS is a not-for-profit
charitable service, and is dedicated to providing 24 hours Emergency
Service in many remote situations. Here are two of the fundamental
services. :
1. Provision of emergency health services to victims of illness
or accident who are in a serious or potentially life threatening
condition.
2. Primary Healthcare
Clinics at Remote Sites: Regular clinics at isolated sites are
conducted by RFDS doctors, flight nurses and other specialised
health professionals and in some cases State health practitioners.
Services include, but are not limited to, routine health checks
and advice, immunisation, child health care, dental, eye and
ear clinics.
Many people will
automatically choose GPS to assist them in outback travel, and
the RFDS uses aircraft fitted with specialist aviation GPS.
Because the RFDS has many years experience in long range travel
and knows the country better than most, they offer some travel
tips. I quote their web-site. "Exploring the beauty of
Australia away from the cities can be quite an adventure but
we urge you to pay attention to some safety tips and general
information which should make your trip more enjoyable and very
importantly - safer."
RFDS real life stories
The
Age newspaper on 24/11/04 featured a great story about the NSW/Victoria
border point near the head of the Murray river.
The
Age reported that the Institution of Surveyors had restored
the cairn marking the border point, and they had checked
the
position with new survey GPS. What the Age could not tell you,
(we have an exclusive), is that two Garmin Legend users were
at the famous spot at the same time as the surveyors. Here
are
their words (with acknowledgement to Izzy Perko of NSW). Photo
at left shows Collin astride the stone border line - with
one
foot in each camp- typical Gemini star sign?
A
group of surveyors were there exactly when we turned up. I
must admit it was a bit of a shock seeing all these vehicles
belonging
to the surveyors parked on a remote National Park fire trail.
One of them said that the modern day measurement were within
12mm of Black & Allen's (the two original colonial surveyors
commissioned to do the job in 1870) calculations. As
luck would have it, the original border marker (possibly from
stone carted all the way from Scotland) was uncovered from underneath
the 2m high stone cairn ("Cairn 1") on nearby Forest
Hill.
Also, too, with the Garmin, we have done a few confluence points
( www.confluence.org )
here in Australia. We were the first ones to capture and photograph:
15° S, 132° E, in the NT, see my story at this
link. We were also first at 29°S , 144°E (NSW);
28°S , 144°E (Qld); and 27°S, 141° E (SA) – all
with the Garmin Legend prominently displayed in all the accompanying
web page photos."
See
how position can be
recorded correctly.
Johnny Appleseed GPS