An Imaginary Town Becomes Real, Then Not

174 点作者 dalek2point3超过 10 年前

16 条评论

cbd1984超过 10 年前

Reminds me of three of my favorite words: Nihilartikel, mountweazel, and dord:<a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nihilartikel" rel="nofollow">http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nihilartikel</a><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mountweazel" rel="nofollow">http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mountweazel</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dord" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dord</a>"Nihilartikel" is a German word for "fictitious entry", and it's amazing that a language which makes noun phrases into words has a specific word for this concept we express as a noun phrase. Let me gladwell on about how this tells me deep and profound things about sauerbraten and German psychology. Truly, we have much to learn from this peaceful, gentle, and thoroughly Othered group."Mountweazel" is a word which came from the name of a fake person used as a fictitious entry. It's just fun to say."Dord" is a genuine accident, which was supposed to mean density when someone misread an annotation about abbreviations: "D or d, density".

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defen超过 10 年前

See "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" for a fictional take on this.Meta-comment about the Borges connection: I'm continually astounded by how prescient his work was. "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" was published in 1940, so I suppose it's possible he, in Argentina, heard about this court case in New York, but I doubt it.Other examples:The Garden of Forking Paths: qualitative pre-figuring of the many worlds interpretation of QM, before that was a thing.Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote: A character's bibliography contains references to Descartes, Leibniz, and the work sheets of a monograph on George Boole's symbolic logic. Now, I don't know the answer to this one, but maybe someone can help: Was George Boole considered an important philosopher in 1939? Claude Shannon published his famous master's thesis applying Boolean logic to electric circuits in 1938 in " Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers." - so again, I suppose Borges could have known about it through that, but it seems unlikely, So, of all the philosophers he could have chosen, why George Boole?

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ggchappell超过 10 年前

> But then, just as this story was to be published, to be extra sure, we went to Google Earth, typed in "Agloe" one last time, and, whaddya know? It isn't there any more!> It was removed this week.Partially, perhaps.Start at any old place in GM, and search for "Agloe, NY", and I get Aglow Dermatology and Aglow Decorating Corporation, both in New York City.BUT, search for "Roscoe, NY", and then search for "Agloe, NY", and it finds the place just fine.Maybe the removal of the imaginary town hasn't been pushed out to all users yet. Or maybe it's just been given some kind of lower-priority status -- "of local interest only", or something like that.

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creeble超过 10 年前

Back in 1976, my girlfriend's mother had a friend who worked for a map company and was a graduate of the University of Michigan. The company made very popular maps, everyone had one in their car.Ohio State University, near Columbus, was the nemesis and rival of UofM. So this mapmaker stuck a couple of short texts accompanying two roads near Columbus. One said 'mgoblu' and the other 'beatosu'. They were pretty hard to find unless you knew where to look.But his bosses found out eventually and fired him. Haha.Agloe is a better story.

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tokenadult超过 10 年前

This has been going on for a long time. When I was in high school, in an English class unit on journalism, I learned how the United Press caught the competing Hearst news organization faking stories about the eastern front in World War I. The United Press reporters inserted details about a Russian government official named Nelotsky in their news stories, and watched the statements about Nelotsky get copied into reports from the competing wire service. There was just one problem with the Hearst plagiarists' journalistic procedure: there wasn't any such Russian official. The name "Nelotsky" came from reversing the spelling of the English word "stolen" and adding a Russian-looking "ky" ending.<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C07E7DE103FE433A25756C2A9679C946996D6CF" rel="nofollow">http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C07E7DE103FE...</a>Similarly, in the 1990s I noticed that a popular page on my personal website was being copied diligently by a college student for his personal website. I inserted a fake entry, based on the Greek word for "steal." I also put a link at that entry leading to the copyright notice page on my personal website, which has a distinctive filename unique to my site. When the student copied the page again, I was able to show the site administrator at the university that hosted his site that the student had plainly violated the site user agreement at that academic institution, which specifically required students not to plagiarize for their postings on the university site.I didn't do a lot of public outing of that student--but you had better believe I still remember who he was. Teachers do well to teach students early and often to use their own noggins and to do their own writing, giving proper credit with correct citation form to sources they rely on. That's a better education than just letting students copy whatever they happen to see, without any analysis or thought at all.

dctoedt超过 10 年前

Apple was involved in a similar 'honey pot' case in the 1980s [1], only with computer code instead of place names on a map.(The description below is from memory; I can't find the court opinions on-line, and I think the honey pot was discussed only in the trial court's opinion, not on appeal.)Back in the day, Franklin Computer Corp. made a clone of the Apple ][. Franklin claimed to have used a clean room [2] to develop its own ROM and OS, without copying Apple's code.Apple disassembled the Franklin executable --- and they knew exactly what they were looking for: One of the Apple programmers had created a no-op variable and set its value to be his own name. (He didn't just put his name into a comment in the source code, because of course that would have been stripped out during the build process and wouldn't have made it into the executable code.)So guess what Apple found in the Franklin code .... That's right: The Apple programmer's name in the no-op variable.Franklin then changed its position and admitted that they'd copied Apple's code, but claimed (unsuccessfully) that doing so was not infringement.[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Franklin_Computer_Corp" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Frankli...</a>. [Note: The period in the URL might mess things up when you click on the link.][2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design</a>

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freyfogle超过 10 年前

In Germany there's Bielefeld, a major city that, depending on your opinion, does or doesn't actually exist: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy</a>Then of course there's also the Republic of Null Island <a href="http://www.nullisland.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.nullisland.com</a>

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ytturbed超过 10 年前

Heh. Along similar lines I predict there will eventually be a teapot in orbit around Mars, placed there by philosophical pranksters.

josephpmay超过 10 年前

John Green wrote a book[0] about this town. It's a great book, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who likes adolescent fiction. I believe it's currently being made into a movie.[0] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ANSS5K?btkr=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ANSS5K?btkr=1</a>

mkhalil超过 10 年前

Interesting comment:"I am a travel writer. I was once speaking to a guidebook writer in Thailand who told me under pressure to hit a deadline he wrote a review for a guidebook for a German restaurant, though he had not eaten there. He fabricated a venison dish, describing the sauce in detail. A couple of years later, feeling badly about his fiction, he visited the restaurant. The dish was on the menu and the chef explained so many people came in asking for it he eventually had to add it."

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aaron695超过 10 年前

"AITCHANDAR ROAD, Ryde - previously Folly Road. The initials of Higginbotham and Robinson, a local publishing Company. Believing its maps were being pirated by an opposition publisher, and in order to prove this, they gave the then unnamed street a false name based on their initials, ie H-AND-R. They were proved correct when opposition maps were published showing "Aitchandar Road"."Funny how reality becomes what people make it to be<a href="https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Aitchandar+Rd,+Ryde+NSW+2112/@-33.8113632,151.1171226,808m" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Aitchandar+Rd,+Ryde+NSW...</a>

sbierwagen超过 10 年前

Wikipedia article on the general case: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry</a>Specific example: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street</a>

jbuzbee超过 10 年前

I recall working with a very detailed map of Germany a long time ago and seeing two nearby towns named something like "Herman" and "Munsterville". Years later I tried to find them again on a different map and failed. I often wondered if they were inserted as a joke by a mapmaker.

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brightsize超过 10 年前

This "town" is in no less than the USGS's Geographic Names Information System (GNIS):<a href="http://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=gnispq:3:0::NO::P3_FID:2747085" rel="nofollow">http://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=gnispq:3:0::NO::P3_FID:274...</a>Added in 2014![edit:formatting]

rumcajz超过 10 年前

Umberto Eco would enjoy this. Fiction becoming reality is his favourite topic.

dreamfactory2超过 10 年前

Does this mean google maps is using ripped off IP?

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