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I think Aster is 15m world wide. http://www.gisdevelopment.net/technology/tm/tm001.htm

Delhi was the first city in India to have in-car GPS map systems available to the consumer. Further, an extremely detailed map of all locations in Delhi is available from several other sources. The only concern here is the resolution of the maps, Google Earth can provide. The potential hazard seems to be the ability to identify independent buildings which are usually less accessible. However, for maps from aerial photographs and satellite photographs, there are companies who claim to have had access to such information and provided services from them like Ridings India.

For one, yes - a Terrorist organisation would have had some difficulty in obtaining relevant maps of locations they target. Dr. Kalam believes that the issue is ease and speed of access to the maps of higher detail than normally available commercially, which might assist terrorists. There was a foiled attack on the Indian Parliament during the tenure of the last Government (in 2001) which was ill-planned.

However one can take a tour of the Parliament building and premises when it is not in session and therefore map it with sufficient ease, though he'll have to wait for sessions to be off. As for residential locations of the President (Rashtrapathi Bhavan) or Parliamentarians or Government Officers, they are almost known to anyone in Delhi. The trouble in a terrorist attack is usually penetrating the "Z-Class" security cover provided to those who are potential targets.

While strategic maps may be significant weapons in an openly declared war (particularly of military installations), in covert warfare methods used by terrorist operatives other factors including "surprise" and "stealth" play more importance; requiring intelligence operatives to monitor any possibilities and be prepared. Another recent attack on a Hindu Shrine in Ayodhya was also foiled due to tight security and collaboration between military, civilian and paramilitary security groups (although the miscreants had access to the maps). Satellite Maps of Ayodhya are yet to be provided on "Google Earth". I am quite surprised that Dr.Kalam has come up with such a comment, having been a scientist for ISRO and DRDO prior.

It seems ridiculous to me, to think that a person who intends to carry out an attack is going to give up because he couldn't find a map of the place, but that seems to be their logic.

Check out some data from the TOPEX mission with maps of the earth showing typical signifigant wave height here.

Naaa...there was no stereo satellite imagery before 1995.

Hmmm. Haven't found my answer yet, but it *might* be buried in this "Techinical features" document somewhere.

March 2004 - Government policy vs Spatial info markets

I don't know of (m)any mainframe worms.

This is incorrect. A DGPS transmitter knows its own location, and can therefore determine the error of each satellite in its view.

It then sends a DGPS stream out, and any GPS receiver capable of receiving that stream can remove the satellite error for satellites they share with the DGPS transmitter.

However, typical low end DGPS will only reduce the error (when SA is turned ON) to 10 meters or so. The receivers used by surveyers with DGPS can go to the centimeter level, longitudinally and latitudinally. Altitude is a different matter...

Garmin is using a system similar to DGPS called WAAS which also helps reduce the error.

The encoded GPS signal the military uses along with high end receivers will, IIRC, go down to the meter without any DGPS. The reason they can't get any better than to the meter is that the atmospheric effects on the signal can't easily be corrected for in real time.

A decent tutorial can be found here

-Adam

GPS will aid GSM, but you can do without it.
In cities, GSM can give you position information in with an accuracy of about 100m. Which suffices for several location based information.
PHS systems will provide an accuracy from up to 100m, too.
Telcos currently know in which cell you are and how far you're away from its base station. Sometimes, they even know your distance from a second base station.
This is already used to offer differentiated price schemes and (e.g cheaper rates in your home cell (no pun intended)) location based services in at least Japan and Germany, and BT has invested quite a amount for wcities, some location-based information service provider (a new buzzword, rejoice).
As you may see it's not far fetched, it's already (to some degree) there and it is considered as the next goldmine (or at least the investors hope so)

This doesn't necessarily requires advertisement as it can be seen as a advertisement in itself.
The providing telco can use it as argument to differentiate itself from other telcos.

Nonetheless, I think it'll surely lead to advertisement. The whole thing reminds somehow of yahoo.com.