Offline iamcpc

  • *
  • Posts: 832
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #100 on: April 02, 2020, 02:54:44 AM »
Next we got onto the Sydney - Santiago flights...

Jay Seneca: "I tried to buy a flight, but I can't find any"
Me: "Qantas.com"
Jay Seneca: "I haven't checked, but the flight times look wrong"
Me: "I've checked for you, here are the times, they are all fine"
Jay Seneca: "You can't fly more than 50nm from land according to the rules which I saw somewhere, but can't lay my hands on anymore"
Me: "1) How would you get to Hawaii then? 2) Here are the rules, here are the aircraft, here's the equipment they carry, they meet the rules, the flights are legal"
Me: "Oh look, I tracked the 2 flights I picked out, outbound and return, here are all the details"

Silence, dead silence.

I get that people have lives and it's unreasonable to expect responses all the time, but I've seen this before. Once the scales start to tip irretrievably in the direction of the RE in a discussion, it dies silently.


The issue is that there have been a good 20 or so rebuttals to the claim that these southern hemisphere flights disprove FE model __________________. They are all already documented on this thread. It's not silence, it's more there are dozens of rebuttals other than "those flights are fake" or "those flights don't exist"

HERE:
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=15877.msg204803#msg204803


I couldn't agree more. I originally got involved in this thread talking about distances on Bing maps. After a lot of back and forth discussion, I finished with a post where I showed the line of code calling the Bing API to calculate a distance, showed the official Bing documentation for this code, where it tells you they use the globe based Haversine formula. In my view, that's beyond reasonable doubt - Bing maps under the hood is clearly based on a Globe model. Since then, silence, tubleweed, nothing, nada, no response.

I already gave my rebuttal about that. I'll give it again.

1. Anyone can put ANYTHING on a HTML document. Just because something exists on an HTML document does not make it true.

Since that didn't satisfy you here's more:

2. Without access to the source code from the Bing API there is no way to confirm or deny the claims made in an HTML document.
3. I only ever completed Calc2. I don't know enough about spacial geometry to know what formulas may, or may not, be used in these distance calculations and how they may, or may not, relate to a sphere/spheroid/oblate spheroid being projected onto a 2d surface.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2020, 03:00:52 AM by iamcpc »

*

Offline stack

  • *
  • Posts: 3583
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #101 on: April 02, 2020, 05:11:32 AM »
Next we got onto the Sydney - Santiago flights...

Jay Seneca: "I tried to buy a flight, but I can't find any"
Me: "Qantas.com"
Jay Seneca: "I haven't checked, but the flight times look wrong"
Me: "I've checked for you, here are the times, they are all fine"
Jay Seneca: "You can't fly more than 50nm from land according to the rules which I saw somewhere, but can't lay my hands on anymore"
Me: "1) How would you get to Hawaii then? 2) Here are the rules, here are the aircraft, here's the equipment they carry, they meet the rules, the flights are legal"
Me: "Oh look, I tracked the 2 flights I picked out, outbound and return, here are all the details"

Silence, dead silence.

I get that people have lives and it's unreasonable to expect responses all the time, but I've seen this before. Once the scales start to tip irretrievably in the direction of the RE in a discussion, it dies silently.


The issue is that there have been a good 20 or so rebuttals to the claim that these southern hemisphere flights disprove FE model __________________. They are all already documented on this thread. It's not silence, it's more there are dozens of rebuttals other than "those flights are fake" or "those flights don't exist"

HERE:
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=15877.msg204803#msg204803


I couldn't agree more. I originally got involved in this thread talking about distances on Bing maps. After a lot of back and forth discussion, I finished with a post where I showed the line of code calling the Bing API to calculate a distance, showed the official Bing documentation for this code, where it tells you they use the globe based Haversine formula. In my view, that's beyond reasonable doubt - Bing maps under the hood is clearly based on a Globe model. Since then, silence, tubleweed, nothing, nada, no response.

I already gave my rebuttal about that. I'll give it again.

1. Anyone can put ANYTHING on a HTML document. Just because something exists on an HTML document does not make it true.

Since that didn't satisfy you here's more:

2. Without access to the source code from the Bing API there is no way to confirm or deny the claims made in an HTML document.
3. I only ever completed Calc2. I don't know enough about spacial geometry to know what formulas may, or may not, be used in these distance calculations and how they may, or may not, relate to a sphere/spheroid/oblate spheroid being projected onto a 2d surface.

Regarding #2, it's Microsoft's HTML doc, you know, the creators and maintainers of Bing Maps, published on the Microsoft site, for coders to interface with it. What more do you need? If they published their entire source code in HTML, would you have the same argument. Or does it have to be a TXT file, PDF, stone tablet? I mean really, can we be adults about this. Microsoft states how Bing Maps is rendered and that isn't good enough? Seriously? You're making up things that don't need to be made up.

Offline iamcpc

  • *
  • Posts: 832
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #102 on: April 02, 2020, 07:17:25 AM »

I already gave my rebuttal about that. I'll give it again.

1. Anyone can put ANYTHING on a HTML document. Just because something exists on an HTML document does not make it true.

Since that didn't satisfy you here's more:

2. Without access to the source code from the Bing API there is no way to confirm or deny the claims made in an HTML document.
3. I only ever completed Calc2. I don't know enough about spacial geometry to know what formulas may, or may not, be used in these distance calculations and how they may, or may not, relate to a sphere/spheroid/oblate spheroid being projected onto a 2d surface.

Regarding #2, it's Microsoft's HTML doc, you know, the creators and maintainers of Bing Maps, published on the Microsoft site, for coders to interface with it.

This does not change the fact that without the source code from the Bing API there is no way to confirm or deny the claims made in an HTML document. This also does not change the fact that anyone can put anything on an HTML document.


What more do you need?

If I had the source code from the Bing API, along with training on the code from the engineering team that wrote it, along with a masters in math (or someone else who has a masters in math) who could help with the complex math involved with:

Surface area of an oblate spheroid and planar 3D geometry when projected onto a 2d surface
Surface area of a spheroid and planar 3D geometry when projected onto a 2d surface
Surface area of a sphere and planar 3D geometry when projected onto a 2d surface

If they published their entire source code in HTML, would you have the same argument. Or does it have to be a TXT file, PDF, stone tablet?

If I got access to their source code then I would just need to test it and hang out with someone who has a masters in math to determine if the claims made on an HTML document is accurate or not.


I mean really, can we be adults about this. Microsoft states how Bing Maps is rendered and that isn't good enough?
I prefer to find things out for myself than blindly accepting the words of others as fact.


Seriously? You're making up things that don't need to be made up.

Don't know what I made up. Care to elaborate on exactly what I made up.

« Last Edit: April 02, 2020, 07:37:38 AM by iamcpc »

*

Offline GreatATuin

  • *
  • Posts: 310
  • It's turtles all the way down
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #103 on: April 02, 2020, 10:14:07 AM »
If I got access to their source code then I would just need to test it and hang out with someone who has a masters in math to determine if the claims made on an HTML document is accurate or not.

You probably can't do that with Bing - Bing is closed source, it's unlikely Microsoft will ever give you their code. But you can do that with Openstreetmap. The data and source code of OSM are public. You can even run your own server. It would take a lot of time and effort, especially if you want to compile everything yourself from source code and not just download the binaries, but it can be done. You can see for yourself every line of code and every bit of data.

OSM and Bing both use a variant of the Mercator projection, which means their map will look reasonably similar.
Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

you guys just read what you want to read

Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #104 on: April 02, 2020, 11:30:52 AM »
Next we got onto the Sydney - Santiago flights...

Jay Seneca: "I tried to buy a flight, but I can't find any"
Me: "Qantas.com"
Jay Seneca: "I haven't checked, but the flight times look wrong"
Me: "I've checked for you, here are the times, they are all fine"
Jay Seneca: "You can't fly more than 50nm from land according to the rules which I saw somewhere, but can't lay my hands on anymore"
Me: "1) How would you get to Hawaii then? 2) Here are the rules, here are the aircraft, here's the equipment they carry, they meet the rules, the flights are legal"
Me: "Oh look, I tracked the 2 flights I picked out, outbound and return, here are all the details"

Silence, dead silence.

I get that people have lives and it's unreasonable to expect responses all the time, but I've seen this before. Once the scales start to tip irretrievably in the direction of the RE in a discussion, it dies silently.


The issue is that there have been a good 20 or so rebuttals to the claim that these southern hemisphere flights disprove FE model __________________. They are all already documented on this thread. It's not silence, it's more there are dozens of rebuttals other than "those flights are fake" or "those flights don't exist"

HERE:
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=15877.msg204803#msg204803

Setting aside for the moment that most of these rebuttals are of the form:

Tom Bishop: Yes it is
Everyone else: No it isn't

You are attempting a rebuttal of a point I'm not making. Nowhere in this thread have I tried to claim these flights prove or disprove anything. That's an argument for another day. In order to debate what these flights may prove or disprove, first we have to agree that they exist. That's all I'm doing here, providing evidence to counter the claim that they don't exist, or if they did then they would be illegal or the flight times don't make sense or that you can never find any tickets to buy.

So, out of interest, do you believe these flights exist? Do you doubt the evidence I've presented, if so, what part and why?

I couldn't agree more. I originally got involved in this thread talking about distances on Bing maps. After a lot of back and forth discussion, I finished with a post where I showed the line of code calling the Bing API to calculate a distance, showed the official Bing documentation for this code, where it tells you they use the globe based Haversine formula. In my view, that's beyond reasonable doubt - Bing maps under the hood is clearly based on a Globe model. Since then, silence, tubleweed, nothing, nada, no response.

I already gave my rebuttal about that. I'll give it again.

1. Anyone can put ANYTHING on a HTML document. Just because something exists on an HTML document does not make it true.
Of course anyone can put anything on an HTML page, I can do that myself. What I can't do (because I'm not a world class hacker) is bust through the security on Microsoft's servers to change one of their own pages. And let's suppose that I was lying and I am in fact a world class hacker and I did go in and change Microsoft's documentation. How come nobody notices it's changed and is now completely incorrect? Does nobody care? Please explain how that could happen.


Since that didn't satisfy you here's more:

2. Without access to the source code from the Bing API there is no way to confirm or deny the claims made in an HTML document.

Well how about this: Implement your own version of the spherical haversine formula in code according to the published algorithm. Generate a large number of random locations (say 1 million). Compare the distances given by your own version of haversine with the results from the Bing API distance calculation function. If all of the results are within a whisker of the same value (say 0.01%) then would you accept that Bing is (as the documentation claims) using the haversine formula?


3. I only ever completed Calc2. I don't know enough about spacial geometry to know what formulas may, or may not, be used in these distance calculations and how they may, or may not, relate to a sphere/spheroid/oblate spheroid being projected onto a 2d surface.

Well that's fine. A step at a time. All I'm trying to persuade you at this point is that Bing use the haversine formula. The documentation says they do, a handful of results checked so far happen to support that idea. I'm suggesting that you could extend that and verify that a million distance calculations from Bing would also agree with an independently implemented haversine function. If that would convince you that the Microsoft documentation is correct insofar as Bing using haversine, then the discussion can move forward and we can go on to discuss what that might or might not mean for the flat earth.

*

Offline GreatATuin

  • *
  • Posts: 310
  • It's turtles all the way down
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #105 on: April 02, 2020, 01:25:07 PM »
If I got access to their source code then I would just need to test it and hang out with someone who has a masters in math to determine if the claims made on an HTML document is accurate or not.

You probably can't do that with Bing - Bing is closed source, it's unlikely Microsoft will ever give you their code. But you can do that with Openstreetmap. OSM and Bing both use a variant of the Mercator projection, which means their map will look reasonably similar. The data and source code of OSM are public. You can even run your own server. It would take a lot of time and effort, especially if you want to compile everything yourself from source code and not just download the binaries, but it can be done. You can see for yourself every line of code and every bit of data.

Will you ever do that? I guess not. But it's definitely possible.
Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

you guys just read what you want to read

*

Offline stack

  • *
  • Posts: 3583
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #106 on: April 03, 2020, 12:39:01 AM »
Seriously? You're making up things that don't need to be made up.

Don't know what I made up. Care to elaborate on exactly what I made up.

Yes, what you made up is an invalidation of pretty much every post where someone cites an authoritative source. Based solely on the fact that HTML is editable. Your logic seems to be:

- HTML documentation from the authoritative maker/maintainer of a piece of software is not authoritative because of "the fact that anyone can put anything on an HTML document."
- Therefore, unless I am on the software product team and sit with someone and walk through the source code it remains unclear whether the authoritative HTML documentation is correct or not

Seriously? That means that if anyone cites anything from an authoritative source for their stance/argument/whatever and it happens to be in HTML you immediately reject it unless you are there to witness it?  Really? Do you apply this rigidity to all of your interactions with software, appliances, vehicles, the earth, etc?

Offline iamcpc

  • *
  • Posts: 832
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #107 on: April 03, 2020, 02:17:34 AM »

Yes, what you made up is an invalidation of pretty much every post where someone cites an authoritative source. Based solely on the fact that HTML is editable. Your logic seems to be:

- HTML documentation from the authoritative maker/maintainer of a piece of software is not authoritative because of "the fact that anyone can put anything on an HTML document."
- Therefore, unless I am on the software product team and sit with someone and walk through the source code it remains unclear whether the authoritative HTML documentation is correct or not

Seriously? That means that if anyone cites anything from an authoritative source for their stance/argument/whatever and it happens to be in HTML you immediately reject it unless you are there to witness it?  Really? Do you apply this rigidity to all of your interactions with software, appliances, vehicles, the earth, etc?

Questioning things that appear on an HTML document <> making things up. They are two totally different things.

- HTML documentation from the authoritative maker/maintainer of a piece of software is not authoritative because of "the fact that anyone can put anything on an HTML document."
- Therefore, unless I am on the software product team and sit with someone and walk through the source code it remains unclear whether the authoritative HTML documentation is correct or not

No My logic is simply this: Don't BLINDLY believe everything that you read on the internet without even questioning it's validity.


Seriously? That means that if anyone cites anything from an authoritative source for their stance/argument/whatever and it happens to be in HTML you immediately reject it unless you are there to witness it? 


No. But an HTML document published by an unknown person with an unknown background is NOT an authoritative source in my opinion. You can disagree but i'm still not making things up.


Really? Do you apply this rigidity to all of your interactions with software, appliances, vehicles, the earth, etc?

Nope. Just to things on the internet which may or may not be factually accurate with no sources cited whatsoever.

Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #108 on: April 03, 2020, 08:56:17 AM »
Seriously? You're making up things that don't need to be made up.

Don't know what I made up. Care to elaborate on exactly what I made up.

Yes, what you made up is an invalidation of pretty much every post where someone cites an authoritative source. Based solely on the fact that HTML is editable. Your logic seems to be:

- HTML documentation from the authoritative maker/maintainer of a piece of software is not authoritative because of "the fact that anyone can put anything on an HTML document."
- Therefore, unless I am on the software product team and sit with someone and walk through the source code it remains unclear whether the authoritative HTML documentation is correct or not

Seriously? That means that if anyone cites anything from an authoritative source for their stance/argument/whatever and it happens to be in HTML you immediately reject it unless you are there to witness it?  Really? Do you apply this rigidity to all of your interactions with software, appliances, vehicles, the earth, etc?

Unfortunately we are stuck at this point because iamcpc won't let go of this point, even though the rest of us think it's (to put it politely) invalid reasoning.

I'm attempting a slightly different tack, let's go ahead and prove that at least one very important part of the documentation is accurate. The Bing API calculates distance between two points using the getDistanceTo method in the SpatialMath module. The documentation for this says:

Quote
Calculate the distance between two locations on the surface of the earth using the Haversine formula...

And Wikipedia says the Haversine formula:

Quote
...determines the great-circle distance between two points on a sphere given their longitudes and latitudes.

So in my view, if we can demonstrate that this specific line of the Bing API documentation is correct, then the consequence is that Bing maps does use a spherical model.

Ideally we'd look at the Bing API source code, but that's not going to be possible, however I think we can use the API itself to demonstrate the correctness of the claim.

Choose a large number of random pairs of locations (latitude and longitude), e.g. 1 million. Use the Bing API to calculate the distances between each pair. Repeat the calculations using some implementation of the Haversine formula (for which we do have the source code) and my contention is that the two sets of results will agree to a very high accuracy (e.g. < 0.01% difference).

In my view that would prove the documentation correct and demonstrate that this Bing API call is indeed using the Haversine formula.

If you told me you could predict the throw of a dice and then correctly predicted 1 million throws in a row, I'd have to concede that you were telling the truth.

Whether or not iamcpc would accept this as a reasonable test, I don't know.
« Last Edit: April 03, 2020, 09:00:52 AM by robinofloxley »

*

Offline stack

  • *
  • Posts: 3583
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #109 on: April 03, 2020, 05:45:56 PM »
Really? Do you apply this rigidity to all of your interactions with software, appliances, vehicles, the earth, etc?

Nope. Just to things on the internet which may or may not be factually accurate with no sources cited whatsoever.

With no sources cited whatsoever? The information is published by Microsoft, the creator, owner, and maintainer of BING Maps. Microsoft is the source. How do you not get that? Do you need Bill Gates to hand write you a personal letter to attest to the fact that Microsoft is the source of its own products and how they work?

In any case, I did a little experiment taken from what robinofloxley said. He stated:

The Bing API calculates distance between two points using the getDistanceTo method in the SpatialMath module. The documentation for this says:

Quote
Calculate the distance between two locations on the surface of the earth using the Haversine formula...

And Wikipedia says the Haversine formula:

Quote
...determines the great-circle distance between two points on a sphere given their longitudes and latitudes.


So I punched in SFO (San Francisco International Airport) to HKG (Hong Kong International Airport) into a Great Circle Mapper tool on the web. Here is the result:


http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SFO-HKG

The Haversine great circle Globe distance is 6,927 mi

I then went to Bing Maps and measured the same, SFO to HKG, and got this:



And guess what, same exact distance, 6,927 mi

What more proof do you need than this and Microsoft's own documentation that Bing Maps is using Globe calculations?

Offline iamcpc

  • *
  • Posts: 832
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #110 on: April 04, 2020, 08:33:19 AM »

I then went to Bing Maps and measured the same, SFO to HKG, and got this:



And guess what, same exact distance, 6,927 mi

Because that is the distance between those points regardless of if the earth is a sphere, spheroid, oblate spheroid, or any other shape.

What more proof do you need than this and Microsoft's own documentation that Bing Maps is using Globe calculations?

I've already explained what I would need in order to believe something that a random person I've never met before typed on an HTML document.



With no sources cited whatsoever? The information is published by Microsoft, the creator, owner, and maintainer of BING Maps. Microsoft is the source. How do you not get that? Do you need Bill Gates to hand write you a personal letter to attest to the fact that Microsoft is the source of its own products and how they work?


Have you ever worked at a company that has more than, i dunno, like 200 employees? I have. There are things put on HTML documents CONSTANTLY that like 95% of the company is totally unaware of.

According to this HTML document listed below, which may or may not be accurate, Microsoft has 144 THOUSAND employees. Those 144 THOUSAND employees makes up Microsoft. Do you honestly believe that it took 144 THOUSAND people to make the website with the documentation about Bing maps?

That website was likely made by a web developer or maybe even two. Hell i'll be generous and say 4. That means 99.997% of Microsoft had NOTHING to do with that website.



https://www.statista.com/statistics/273475/number-of-employees-at-the-microsoft-corporation-since-2005/
« Last Edit: April 04, 2020, 08:43:59 AM by iamcpc »

Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #111 on: April 04, 2020, 10:04:34 AM »

I then went to Bing Maps and measured the same, SFO to HKG, and got this:



And guess what, same exact distance, 6,927 mi

Because that is the distance between those points regardless of if the earth is a sphere, spheroid, oblate spheroid, or any other shape.

Well no because that's impossible. The distances calculated by the Haversine formula match a sphere and no other shape. Imagine a desktop globe with the latitude and longitude lines covered by string, so you have a string bag fitting snugly over the surface. Take the globe away and try and fit this string bag perfectly to any other shape, especially something flat. It is not possible, it will always distort, end of story.

So if your Bing distances are always 100% in agreement with a Haversine distance for any two locations then the underlying shape used by Bing cannot be anything other than a sphere.

On a flat surface, if you have three points connected by straight lines of the same length then there is only one possible shape it can be - an equilateral triangle and all the angles will be 60 degrees. Measure enough lengths/distances of something and you can absolutely determine the underlying shape.

It looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it sounds like a duck and crucially all the measurements fit a duck. It's not a donkey.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2020, 10:06:08 AM by robinofloxley »

Offline ChrisTP

  • *
  • Posts: 926
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #112 on: April 04, 2020, 10:10:12 AM »
Your logic on this is completely wrong iamcpc. It doesn't matter if one or two thousand people were put on the Bing project, people check each others work. Your statement is rediculous. And not only that, even if it was edited tomorrow to say something crazy like the earth is actually flat, people can see the edit history and see what idiot put false information on their website. Stuff like this doesn't go unchecked and employees are held accountable for their actions. Microsoft would much rather check their work than lose face over easy to find misinformation on their own website.

When it comes down to it, people can get fired or even sued if they try to put false info out there representing Microsoft. Hell I've worked for a Microsoft company and under no circumstance was I ever going to put an easteregg in my work because I'd likely lose my job and possibly get fined/sued depending on what it is. It was even in the contract. I'm curious as to the places you've worked iamcpc, to go thinking anyone can do anything and have the world see it but not your boss.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2020, 10:13:07 AM by ChrisTP »
Tom is wrong most of the time. Hardly big news, don't you think?

Offline iamcpc

  • *
  • Posts: 832
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #113 on: April 04, 2020, 04:49:47 PM »
The distances calculated by the Haversine formula match a sphere and no other shape.

That is where part of the problem is. According to the RE model the earth is NOT a sphere. It is a spheroid or an oblate spheroid.
 If those overseas distances truly are accurate that it is VERY strong evidence which suggest:

1. The earth is NOT the shape that is claimed.
2. Someone made a mistake somewhere


So if your Bing distances are always 100% in agreement with a Haversine distance for any two locations then the underlying shape used by Bing cannot be anything other than a sphere.

Someone would need a pretty big sample size to start to believe that it's 100%. Even if it was 100% it's just more evidence that the earth is not the shape that we were told it was.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2020, 04:54:26 PM by iamcpc »

Offline iamcpc

  • *
  • Posts: 832
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #114 on: April 04, 2020, 04:56:22 PM »
Your logic on this is completely wrong iamcpc. It doesn't matter if one or two thousand people were put on the Bing project, people check each others work.


Your statement is rediculous.
This statement is ridiculous. Not only is it misspelled but it provides no productive input whatsoever and it's borderline insulting.


And not only that, even if it was edited tomorrow to say something crazy like the earth is actually flat, people can see the edit history and see what idiot put false information on their website.

Please show me where I can go to see the edit history.


Stuff like this doesn't go unchecked and employees are held accountable for their actions. Microsoft would much rather check their work than lose face over easy to find misinformation on their own website.

There are two retorts to this:

1. People still make mistakes. Books and newspapers go through editing many times and still are published with mistakes, errors, incorrect information or typos.  Just because something was checked does not mean that it is correct or accurate.
2. I worked for a decently large company with like 30,000 people. The CEO wanted documentation put onto a website which was incorrect. That order went like this:

-The CEO told a SR Vice President.
-The SR Vice President told my boss, the Vice President
-The Vice President told me to put incorrect documentation on the website

Here's how the conversation went:

Boss: "The CEO wants you to put incorrect documentation on a website:
Me: "Even though that documentation is incorrect/inaccurate?"
Boss: "Yep"
Me: "no problem! I'll get it done today"

It's abundantly clear that you never worked in web design or development because you would have had to do something which you knew was incorrect or inaccurate because your boss told you to. Out of thousands and thousands and thousands of people who worked for the company only a few people were aware of this.



Hell I've worked for a Microsoft company and under no circumstance was I ever going to put an easteregg in my work because I'd likely lose my job and possibly get fined/sued depending on what it is.

You sure as hell would have put an Easter egg if the CEO told you to.

I'm curious as to the places you've worked iamcpc, to go thinking anyone can do anything and have the world see it but not your boss.

This is not an isolated incident. It happens MANY MANY TIMES. Even for the company I work for now build this interactive graph for this client showing revenue trends. Here's the conversation:


Boss: "Build this interactive graph for this client showing these revenue numbers"
Me: "It's done but FYI those revenue numbers are incorrect and should not be published to the client"
Boss: "It's ok that they are not accurate. Publish them anyway"
Me: "no problem! I'll get it done today"
« Last Edit: April 04, 2020, 05:52:01 PM by iamcpc »

Offline phyllo

  • *
  • Posts: 9
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #115 on: April 04, 2020, 05:12:09 PM »
The distances calculated by the Haversine formula match a sphere and no other shape.

That is where part of the problem is. According to the RE model the earth is NOT a sphere. It is a spheroid or an oblate spheroid.
 If those overseas distances truly are accurate that it is VERY strong evidence which suggest:

1. The earth is NOT the shape that is claimed.
2. Someone made a mistake somewhere


So if your Bing distances are always 100% in agreement with a Haversine distance for any two locations then the underlying shape used by Bing cannot be anything other than a sphere.

Someone would need a pretty big sample size to start to believe that it's 100%. Even if it was 100% it's just more evidence that the earth is not the shape that we were told it was.

iampc:  You continually harp on this "sphere, spheroid, oblate spheroid" issue but the difference between the equatorial axis and the polar axis of the earth in RET is less than approximately 50 km.  This is less than one half of one percent.  For most calculations like the distance between Hong Kong and San Francisco the calculations will come out roughly the same regardless of whether you use a perfect sphere as your model or a spheroid.

In most conversations it's reasonable to call the earth a sphere in RET, even if we know it's not a perfect sphere.

Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #116 on: April 04, 2020, 05:19:24 PM »
The distances calculated by the Haversine formula match a sphere and no other shape.

That is where part of the problem is. According to the RE model the earth is NOT a sphere. It is a spheroid or an oblate spheroid.
 If those overseas distances truly are accurate that it is VERY strong evidence which suggest:

1. The earth is NOT the shape that is claimed.
2. Someone made a mistake somewhere


Nope this is not where the problem is at all. We're not arguing the true shape of the earth here, we're arguing the underlying model behind Bing. The Bing documentation emphatically does not claim to use a spheroid as their underlying model, they claim to use a sphere with a 6378137m radius, because it is accurate enough and it means they can then use the spherical Haversine formula which is very much simpler and hence faster in operation. If you want a slower, more accurate model, you can use Vincenty's formulae (there are two of them), which does use a spheroidal model. If you want to, you can tell the Bing API to use Vincenty, but it's not the default, Haversine is.

Nobody has made a mistake, it's all in the documentation. I know you don't trust the documentation, but I do. You can't call it a mistake if it's properly documented to work that way.


So if your Bing distances are always 100% in agreement with a Haversine distance for any two locations then the underlying shape used by Bing cannot be anything other than a sphere.

Someone would need a pretty big sample size to start to believe that it's 100%. Even if it was 100% it's just more evidence that the earth is not the shape that we were told it was.

Well I've already suggested that we can write a bit of code to check distances from Bing against an independant implementation of Haversine and do this for a sample size of 1 million random pairs of locations. Is that not a big enough sample size for you?

Offline iamcpc

  • *
  • Posts: 832
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #117 on: April 04, 2020, 06:55:04 PM »

Nobody has made a mistake, it's all in the documentation.

How do you know? If you're just making things up I could very easily claim that someone did make a mistake. Here you're making a claim without one shred of evidence.


Well I've already suggested that we can write a bit of code to check distances from Bing against an independant implementation of Haversine and do this for a sample size of 1 million random pairs of locations. Is that not a big enough sample size for you?

We can. This will just be more evidence that the earth is NOT a spheroid or an oblate spheroid. It must be some other shape.

*

Offline JSS

  • *
  • Posts: 1618
  • Math is math!
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #118 on: April 04, 2020, 06:56:55 PM »
Someone would need a pretty big sample size to start to believe that it's 100%. Even if it was 100% it's just more evidence that the earth is not the shape that we were told it was.

We can. This will just be more evidence that the earth is NOT a spheroid or an oblate spheroid. It must be some other shape.

You can't measure anything with 100% accuracy in the real world, nothing.

But nobody returns a glass sphere to the hobby store because they measured it with high precision laser scanner and found it's only 99.9999% spherical. No sane person would say they were lied to because it's not a PERFECT sphere, demand a refund and then sue for false advertising.

Nothing in reality is a perfect sphere, it's impossible. You can't even make one, no matter how hard you try. Even with super advanced technology that can build an object atom by atom, it will never be a perfect sphere, ever. I hate to repeat myself, but you can't ever make a perfect sphere, or a perfect cube, or a perfectly straight line.

That doesn't mean we can't measure things.  Doesn't mean we can't use measurements if we measure enough to get the uncertainty down.

Maps tell me the nearest gas station to my house is 3,451 feet away.  Of course that's not exact, it might be a few feet more or less, or inches, or fractions of an inch. But nobody is going to say I'm lying if they measure and find it's actually half an inch further away. Because if you're driving there, an inch doesn't make a difference.

The world is a complicated object, and gets more complex to measure the smaller scale you go. Welcome to reality.

Hope that clears up your confusion.

*

Offline stack

  • *
  • Posts: 3583
    • View Profile
Re: Are plane tickets real?
« Reply #119 on: April 04, 2020, 07:48:07 PM »

I then went to Bing Maps and measured the same, SFO to HKG, and got this:



And guess what, same exact distance, 6,927 mi

Because that is the distance between those points regardless of if the earth is a sphere, spheroid, oblate spheroid, or any other shape.

What more proof do you need than this and Microsoft's own documentation that Bing Maps is using Globe calculations?

I've already explained what I would need in order to believe something that a random person I've never met before typed on an HTML document.



With no sources cited whatsoever? The information is published by Microsoft, the creator, owner, and maintainer of BING Maps. Microsoft is the source. How do you not get that? Do you need Bill Gates to hand write you a personal letter to attest to the fact that Microsoft is the source of its own products and how they work?


Have you ever worked at a company that has more than, i dunno, like 200 employees? I have. There are things put on HTML documents CONSTANTLY that like 95% of the company is totally unaware of.

According to this HTML document listed below, which may or may not be accurate, Microsoft has 144 THOUSAND employees. Those 144 THOUSAND employees makes up Microsoft. Do you honestly believe that it took 144 THOUSAND people to make the website with the documentation about Bing maps?

That website was likely made by a web developer or maybe even two. Hell i'll be generous and say 4. That means 99.997% of Microsoft had NOTHING to do with that website.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273475/number-of-employees-at-the-microsoft-corporation-since-2005/

Why are you single-handedly invalidating every citation anyone has ever referenced? According to you, any reference made to any documentation from a source is suspect because there are potentially rogue authors and the format it is in is editable. Do you know on what side of crazy that sort of logic is?

The source documentation shows a Haversine calculation. In comparison to other tools using a Haversine calculation, Bing's calculations are identical. At this point you are simply trolling.

Why don't you call the Microsoft help desk and ask them to walk you through the code implementation if you are so suspect of their own documentations authority on their own product. Let us know what you find out.