Google Maps gets hit with racist White House listing Google is once again scrambling to clean up bad behavior by Maps users after a couple of mortifying pieces of online graffiti were found. An unknown user has tagged the listing for The White House with a racial slur, causing the presidential residence to show up when the phrase "N****** House" is searched. A second remark …
Long, long ago, (in a galaxy far, far away) I was setting up the first userid/password system for our mainframe. Certain religious elements were concerned that people might use 'naughty' words as their password, even though (in principle) only the individual user would ever know what their password was. I undertook that if they gave me a list of all the words they thought objectionable, I could arrange to screen them out. Never heard any more about it.
You've been in IT that long and you've never accidentally typed your password in the wrong place and had it display on the screen?
Rules are not always about someone imposing their will on someone else, they are often about protecting people from themselves, like road rules. Everyone should drive on the left because that rule helps prevent collisions. Stopping at a red traffic light isn't impinging on your freedom, it sets you free to live; it grants you life which you (and others) may not otherwise have.
Most password policies ban *all* single words, not just the naughty ones - perhaps you should have set that up? Most rules in companies which appear to be morality-based are in fact just an attempt to stop employees looking like juveniles which reflects badly on themselves and the company. Common-word passwords are easily recognised by shoulder-surfers. I did this once to someone. He was in the UK and his password was the name of a district of Colombo, Sri Lanka. I only caught a couple of letters, but I happened to live in that district when growing up - I didn't need to see it all to know what it was.
Google are restricting things because (surprise!) people do bad and stupid things. That has always been the case. "Certain religious elements" are not usually to blame for this sort of thing, despite your prejudices. It's just a (corporate, geographic, industrial, whatever) cultural norm and the rules are there to stop you making cultural blunders which can lead to causing an offence which causes disharmony and/or loss of profit.
Since the only person requesting the change was a member of an Exclusive Brethren church (bloody good analyst, though), I think it's safe to say that it was religiously motivated.
IIRC, TomTom used to have an issue where drivers trying to get from Stockley Park (former Apple HQ) to the M25 were directed down a farm track and onto the M25 via an emergency vehicle access gate. In slight mitigation you did have to have the 'most direct route' option selected for it to do that.
I don't even bother with the Apple Maps routing system these days since it has a really annoying habit of always choosing the longest driving or cycling route.
Well my experience with Google maps was perhaps worse. It thought the hotel I was staying in was about four miles from its actual location and made a similar error concerning the offices I was visiting the next day.
Generally, between the two, I find TomTom to be better but perhaps it depends on where you live and are traveling.
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