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One of the things that has consistently impressed me about Google is their willingness to look at old problems in new and innovative ways. Of course this is one of the hallmarks of a successful company, but it is not always successfully implemented. One example is their Google Earth application that made huge waves in certain agencies like NIMA. The interface made more than one NIMA/NRO/CIA analyst/project manager smack their forehead in stunned recognition of a superior way of layering and interacting with diverse types of data.

The other thing that really impresses me about the company is the flat egalitarian structure that at the same time allows for tremendous independent freedom while also making much of the management fairly transparent which does tremendous things for morale. I also respect the encouragement of discourse including criticism. Not many companies can tolerate that sort of structure because they are built upon protectionism of management structures and establishment of castes of a sort. It shows that Google is one of the few companies like Apple that are succeeding because of their inherent talent. Google knows this and I would encourage them to resist the pressure to devolve into management structures that are having negative effects on tech companies as diverse as SGI, HP, Dell and Microsoft.

As an aside, Google has shows a tremendously insightful ability to pick and choose product development talent at all levels over the years. I've been impressed by many of their hires. Whoever is heading up their HR dept. is talking actively with the Google special sauce R&D folks and they know their stuff.....

I have calculated[1] that in 1000 years a leap second will be required about every two months. It's likely that at that time we would still be using time standards similar to those in use now.

You're off by a bit, and are making some invalid assumptions to start with.

Steve Allen of the Lick Observatory has a great paper explaining the the fundamental clock problem and also exploring effects and impacts on society. It's really quite fascinating, and considerably more complex than most people imagine. I've read papers on the other side, but agree with Allen that nailing the world's time to TI (atomic time) breaks what has never been broken before in all human history, and that letting a bunch of bureaucrats push this through will have serious global consequences.

This is a real problem, and one that will have huge consequences if we let the "science weenies" redefine clock time. As the article points out, the fundamental problem is that "what time is it?" is a qusetion that has two different answers, depending on what you're trying to do. The vast majority of the time, that question means "What time of day is it?" (which is why replacing UT1 with TI/TAI is unwise), but other times (especially to scientists) it means "what interval in invariant time units (seconds, we hope) has passed since I last looked at the clock?" Of course, seconds haven't always been of the same length, or even, for that matter, of fixed length: as recently as 1971, the world's master clocks used "rubber seconds" instead of leap seconds to keep clocks properly in sync with the real world. (This is mostly why Unix/Posix clocks don't know about leap seconds: because leap seconds were only a proposal until a year after teh epoch.)

There is a fundamental incompatibility between time-of-day and time intervals. Keeping clocks aligned is extrraordinarily difficult, and breaking the lock between the clocks and "earth time" has hideously expensive and insidiously far-reaching consequences. (Not least of all to navigation, which is already complex enough, but becomes even more difficult if you let the day slip around the planet. If you don't understand celestial navigation and how determining longitude is *exactly* the same thing as having a clock that is rigorously synchronized to the sun, then spend a while reading Bowditch.)

Drop the "R" from the title, it was just NIMA. Never understood why they changed the title, but their site is still at www.nima.mil.

Our government and NORAD monitor everything and know what's going on.

Are you sure that NORAD is responsible for this kind of surveillance? They may track missile lauches and satellites; but detecting and analyzing "mushrooms" would be probably done by NIMA.

The Defense Mapping Agency, which now appears to be called the National Geospacial-Intelligence Agency, has been making detailed maps of the Earth for about half a century now. You might be able to put in a FOIA request for satellite images and maps in the possession of the agency. Technically, these maps and images made with public money should be free for any citizen of the US to obtain.

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• Office of Naval Intelligence World Wide Threat to Shipping

Top secret? Heck, such data is commercially available.

SPOT
Ikonos
Indian Remote Sensing

Or, if you insist on US Government products, see the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (which used to be the Defense Mapping Agency).

For the rest of the audience, and this includes the overly-dramatic space.com author, NGA (nee NIMA) is not a 'spy' agency---they are an intelligence agency. There are no NIMA spies, and they don't collect intelligence; they analyze and interpret intelligence (images, in particular). They're not "super secret" in any way, but they sure as hell aren't going to show you their pictures and how they analyze them. As an example of how they work, pretend it is the early 1960s: the CIA takes U2 pictures over Cuba and gives them to NIMA (or more technically, their predecessor) who analyze and marks them up (such as identifying the Soviet missile sites, identifying the types of missiles, etc) and gives the pictures back to CIA (who analyze them from a political standpoint), who then pass them along to the President.

Check out their web site. Real "super secret." They've even got a slick "NGA Kids" page.

I not sure how you got it into your head that you're an authority on this subject, but you're 100% wrong.

I didn't claim to be any kind of authority, I'm just writing what I know from my own experience and research. My original post was from memory, but this time I did some quick Google searches to backup my claims with some evidence. Anyone could learn this information on their own. However, I do know a few things about GPS:

• I've used several civilian GPS receivers, from handheld models for hiking or hunting, to a marine model mounted on a boat for fishing, to aircraft mounted models. In a geography class I took in college, we did some labs to observe variation in GPS readings, both over time at one location, and at the same time at different locations. It was very interesting.
• I'm a surveyor by trade, and have used different types of differential GPS surveying, like post-processing, telemetry-based, and now real-time kinetic.
• I'm an Air Force veteran, and have training and field experience with the Rockwell PLGR handheld (the term handheld being used very loosely) GPS receiver, which can decode the P signal when using the decryption key. (Read this [scroll down to multi-color highlighted paragraph] to see how carefully the key is protected.)
• While I was in the Air Force, I took the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) course called: Mapping, Charting and Geodesy for the Warrior (scroll to bottom of page).

I still don't claim to be any kind of expert on GPS, but I probably know more than your average person.

I'm not about to give out anymore information than is publicly availible on the 'net, but I suggest you start with those two sites. The Zyfer site has a number of highly informative PDF's.

My point is that they DO give out military GPS receivers (and codes, duh) for select non-military applications. The first site was one which sells these revievers.

Did you actually read any of the PDFs on the site you reference? The very first PDF on the page has this to say:

• Under FEATURES -> GPS Reveiver:
  • Standard 8-channel C/A
  • Optional SAASM PPS (for approved users)
• Under the model description: the FEI-Zyfer GSync can provide you with either Standard Positioning Service (SPS) GPS or the very latest in GPS technology SAASM PPS GPS receivers (for DoD authorized users only).
• Under SPECIFICATIONS -> Reference Options: Standard GPS (SPS C/A) 8 channel, (L1)
  SAASM GPS (PPS, C/A P-Y) For approved users (L1/L2)

So the evidence you're citing actually undermines the point you were trying to make.

If you look at the lists on that second page, you can see a list of projects which have these recievers.

The projects listed on that page are DOD projects. Obviously, the corporations manufacturing the devices need access to the decryption key to test their products. But, like all defense contractors working on classified projects, every employee who needs access has to obtain the appropriate DOD security clearance.

That you'

The J-STARS ground surveillance system is designed to use radar to detect and track slow moving or semi-fixed land targets like vehicles and relay the information to ground units. The system consists of aircraft with high energy radar and advanced signal processing combined with ground stations to receive the information.

Combined with a 3-D map of the battlefield, the location and movements of enemy forces beyond visual range would be a powerful asset. Even if it's as simple as a "red area" on the map to show pilots where *not* to go, that's a huge value. Assuming the system could be extended to ground troops, this type of information could make a huge difference in, e.g., urban areas where troops can't see past the buildings around them. I can think of plenty of Special Forces applications.

Imagine having a monocular on your non-dominant eye showing you a wireframe map of a city in both 2-D and 3-D space with estimated locations/movement of enemy units so you can navigate without making contact. The National Imaging and Mapping Agency has quietly been acquiring and processing high-res 3-D maps of most of the Earth, so it looks like we're well on the way to a totally geographic-aware force.

The Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR). Google for "Shuttle Radar Topography Mission".

My company, Sycamore Associates, does a good deal of government work, and we use OSS products whenever possible (including Linux, Apache, perl, and JBoss, among others). It seems, though, that it's easier to convince government clients to use these products when they're outsourcing and we agree to support the products - that way, it's transparent to them, and we take care of any problems.

What's harder is when we have subcontractors on site and we try to convince them to use these things internally. They're concerned that the subcontractors will move on and they'll be stuck with something they don't understand or know how to support. I suppose this is a valid concern, but a little education would go a long way to alleviate this.

Right now, I'm working as a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin on a NIMA contract. They still use Sun and SGI servers, but they run Apache, Tomcat, and Samba, as well as many GNU tools.

NOAA provides Bathymetry data and electronic navigation charts (vectorized) and NIMA (that's right, .mil, -- NIMA used to be the Defense Mapping Agency provides city lists and populations for all the countries in the world, as well as DEMs (digital elevation models--i.e. gridded topography). The National Atlas project provides boundaries of federal lands, outlines of states, locations of major cities, stuff like that.

ENJOY!

Genuinely I think you can say that the FARC is a terrorist organization because they have been responsible for military attacks on civilian targets. ... And you might even imply, by extension, that the US government is a terrorist organization since they back the columbian government.

"By extension", heck. The US Government
has
repeatedly
bombed
civilian
targets.

I'm not arguing whether or not the attacks linked above were justified, simply that they were in fact civilian targets. If that's your only criterion, your analysis applies to the US government as much as anyone. No need to split hairs after all.

I'm not rusty on the JPEG algorithm.

I read through the legalese wording of the first 40 claims and even though it describes an algorithm that uses run lengh coding and huffman-like coding (more generic), the algorithm that is described in this patent is not part of Baseline JPEG as standardized in ITU-T T.81, ISO 10918-1, and MIL-STD-188-198A

Sony never should have paid. I guess that's what happens if you let lawyers run the world and bluff their way around court rooms. IANAL and I feel sorry for those who are.

I'd sell my Forgent stocks asap.

The second significant peak will begin around 12 noon EST and last until 2 pm EST on the 18th of November. The best viewing for this peak will be over Australia and the Far East. The level of activity for this event could be anywhere from 7000 to 15000 meteors per hour!

Anybody who can corroborate..

No need to sound paranoid. In fact, major funding for this mission was provided by NIMA, primarily for the purpose of generating maps for cruise missiles. However, JPL (who ran the mission) managed to get the condition that somewhat lower resolution data would be released to researchers. Actually, I believe US data will be released at full resolution, because high resolution is already available anyway.

Leeward - In mission control, Houston, for the SRTM mission (but not now a NASA employee).

Jeezus... all they do is make maps and catalog satellite imagery... it's not like they are the CIA... they make maps for the most part, having formerly been the DMA (defense mapping agency)... very informative web page for a "top secret spy agency."

Look at it here

OK, let's do a search... Aha! www.nima.mil. The site seems relatively sparse of information, but not surprising for a site that claims it is 'representing a fundamental step toward achieving the Department of Defense vision of "dominant battle space awareness." ' :)

You have to think that while there are several experts in the world who can probably spot this kid of thing from a photograph using the human eye, a lot of what they do is computer based. I wonder if "working in their spare time for fun" involved putting the highres files through their supercomputers during some spare CPU cycles...

I'm not surprised that most of the people at JPL are going "Yeah, right". I'm assuming the image analysis people at NASA are mostly geologists. Picking out small objects in that kind of picture is a completely different skillset. It's going to take a while for NIMA to convince JPL of what they may have found.