XPost: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.books   
   From: YourName@YourISP.com   
      
   In article , ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted   
   Nolan ) wrote:   
   > In article ,   
   > Doc O'Leary   wrote:   
   > >In article ,   
   > > ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan ) wrote:   
   > >   
   > >> >Not minding the big/little mixup, anyone who reads the full Wikipedia   
   > >> >entry will see that you are grossly mistaken.  To the extent that it can   
   > >> >be idealized as geographically big endian, it also exhibits a *lot* of   
   > >> >special cases that make it useless as a location designation:   
   > >>   
   > >> "imperfect" & "useless" are two different things.  For instance,   
   > >> advertisers target zipcodes based on location all the time.   
   > >   
   > >My mistake.  They're not "useless" in the sense that you *can't* use   
   > >them to refer to a location/area.  What I meant to mean is that, in   
   > >order to use them, you must be able to access the USPS database to know   
   > >what location/area a ZIP code exactly refers to.  I contrast it to   
   > >things like GPS, which use a predictable, open notation to reference a   
   > >location. For the purposes of science fiction, postal codes don't really   
   > >make much sense very far into the future, never mind when it comes to   
   > >people living on space stations, the Moon, or other planets.   
   > >   
   >   
   > OK, sure.  Agreed: Zipcodes have no intrinsic meaning.   
      
      
   In New Zealand the postcodes (the same as zip codes) have no real use at all.   
      
   New Zealand Post had postcodes for decades, but few people bothereed to   
   use them, then New Zealand changed all the postcodes and bluffed that mail   
   without them wouldn't get to it's destination, and still few people use   
   them ... and yet the mail still gets to where it's meant to go.   
      
   The issue isn't postcodes that mean mail doesn't arrive. It's that the   
   fool sending the mail didn't address it properly in the first place (no   
   street number, no city, etc.) and adding a postcode doesn't fix most of   
   those problems.   
      
   It doesn't help that the fools in New Zealand Post stupidly have one   
   postcode for street addresses and a differnt postcode for post office box   
   addresses in the same area (i.e. each post offce box building has it's own   
   postcode).  :-\   
      
   The only people who really use New Zealand Post postcodes are big   
   businesses who get a discount for bulk mail that is pre-sorted into   
   regions.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)