Typhoon Etang Angst

So, remember how I told the scary war stories in class about the Old Days and projections problems, coordinate systems problems, and all that?  Well, there is an error in GTK ArcGIS in Chapter 18 exercise b that will give you a little flavor of that.  The exercise has you doing something very important--importing location data from a text file.  You'll do this a lot in your own work with GIS, and it is a great way to exchange data among GPS systems and different remote sensing programs.  But, as you try the exercise, you run into a problem as you try and "Display XY Data."  You get an inscrutible error message and then no points come up on the screen like the book.

If you want to solve this for yourself, stop reading here.  If not, continue reading the post here.