real location vs. fake location

hello everybody.

"Any good social geoapp will let you type in a fake position manually."

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/17-02/lp_guineapig

interesting article. we recently had this discussion about "just the 
current position" vs. "any position", and i guess the underlying 
question is, given the above statement, can i lie to my app, and/or can 
i lie to my device? there's a trade-off; if i can lie to my app, all my 
apps have to support lying, and i have to be consistent at lying. if i 
can lie to my device, i only have to do it once, and then all my apps 
will be fed the same lie. this in a way does not affect the API design, 
but i think if the wording in the draft implies (and i don't know that) 
that the position has to be the real and true position of the 
device/user, then this could be changed to saying something like 
"assumed position".

cheers,

dret.

Received on Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:21:02 UTC