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Comment: Re:Comments from a Search & Rescue member (Score 1) 635

by WildFire42 (#33341686) Attached to: National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity

First off, in Yellowstone, there is no cellphone service in most of the park despite what the movie 2012 would have you believe.

Correct. The NPS can't and doesn't want to drop cell phone towers, cables, and guy wires to the 3500 square miles of rich unspoiled animal and plant habitat that is largely inaccessible to cell phone companies, so they've opened up the major visitors centers to service. Seeing as cell phone towers aren't what you'd call pretty, part of nature, or useful to bears, I'm actually okay with this.

Second, I have witnessed the ancient diesel noisy belching shuttle buses at the Grand Canyon blow right past people on the side of the road who may be injured or in trouble simply because they weren't standing at a designated pick up point.

As with many things in Yellowstone and the rest of the national parks, that was most likely not the National Parks Service, Forestry Service, or park rangers. That was probably Xanterra, or a similar organization. Xanterra is a private company that has contracted with the NPS to handle the tourism side of things, such as lodge/hotel rooms, tours, etc.

Furthermore, technology isn't the only thing that can get people into trouble. The US Forest Service often doesn't maintain roads that appear on published maps and GPS databases as good roads so people end up in trouble.

I'm sure the Forest Service could do so much about that, seeing as the roads themselves are largely under the purview of the Department of Transportation. GPS data, but only topographic, would be the U.S. Geological Survey, and road conditions, which are constantly changing, is data owned by individual companies like Mapquest, Google Maps, etc. Seeing as the Forestry Service has up-to-the-day road conditions, including construction and warnings of severe weather problems (such as ice and ice-related closings) for most, if not all of their national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, etc. posted on their website, maybe you should quit complaining about the rather limited resources of the significantly (not-entirely) self-funded NPS.

Comment: Re:Best paragraph... (Score 1) 635

by WildFire42 (#33341242) Attached to: National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity

I know you're trying to make a joke, but it's really not funny. If you're slinging a banana peel onto Old Faithful, or any of the other national monuments at Yellowstone, you deserve a nice heavy fine, along with a few minutes out back with some park rangers and a hose. Old Faithful is not something you can "accidentally" have a picnic around, nor are any of the other geyser basins. You'll know if you are there. Primarily by the fact that you're falling into a cavern filled with boiling scalding water that kills you (yes, this has happened, just not at Old Faithful itself).

But there are plenty of people who like to drop coins, trash, and other junk into pools, geysers, and fountains. It's horrible, because it degrades these natural wonders. Consider that Yellowstone is unique on the entire planet. Nowhere else has the diversity of geography, animal and plant life, and scenery, and now imagine that people are slowly destroying by being uncaring a**holes.

All of the national parks are suffering from largely the same problem, too. Yellowstone gets more press about this (as do a couple of others), because it's the largest, first, and most impressive of the national parks.

Comment: Re:This is wrong. (Score 1) 635

by WildFire42 (#33341056) Attached to: National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity

>who really wants to take an old school map with them. I support GPS and all the other tools fully, I think the problem this post points out is that when stupid people are given simple tools they find away to cause problems for everyone else.

I do. Google Maps does not a 7.5 minute quad topo map make. You can drive to a park with it. You cannot hike with it.

The most popular maps for hiking are the National Geographic maps, but there are others. If memory serves, this is all data from the U.S. Geographical Survey. It is relatively accurate, new date is always forthcoming.

Okay, so maybe "there's an app for that", but what happens if battery dies? What happens if you lose cell signal? The list goes on. When we go hiking, we purchase one of these maps. If we're driving around a national park that has roads and clearly marked driving areas, then I'll use Google Maps.

Comment: Re:They Never Would Have Made the Hike Without SPO (Score 5, Interesting) 635

by WildFire42 (#33340568) Attached to: National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity






Free Remote Access Tools For Windows and Mac Compared 152

Posted by timothy
from the wish-you-were-here-printing dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Keith Schultz provides an in-depth comparison of seven free remote access tools for Windows, four of which offer compatibility with the Mac. 'As you read about each tool, you'll notice that I put a lot of emphasis on remote printing. I rely on remote access tools on a daily basis, and in most cases I need to be able to print to my remote PC. For someone that just wants to check their home/office email account or view documents from outside the office, all of the utilities here will work fine. But for those trying to get some serious work done, remote printing may be the deal breaker.' Many of the free tools under review offer paid or licensed versions for access to additional features."

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