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EU and US Agree on Galileo

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the be-a-shame-if-something-happened-to-your-satellites dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The EU and USA have reached an agreement over the Galileo satellite positioning system, ending several years of negotiations." We had some good Galileo information in a story last month.

6 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Its about time by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's about time that the US give up on what was clearly becoming an impossible task: stopping the surge of demand for high accuracy civilian GPS. Kudos to them for reaching an agreement. :)

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    I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
    1. Re:Its about time by Alsee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Kudos to them for reaching an agreement. :)

      Bah. The entire spat was the US (my government) bitching about wanting control high resolution signals for military use and being able to shut down or jam the normal public signals.

      The US failed to stop the EU from putting up their own system, but did get the EU to "compromize" by redesigning the system the way the US wanted - to be a clone of the US design. That way the US and EU can either agree and both shut off the public signal or the non-encrypted public singnal can be unilaterally JAMMED.

      It was never about preventing interference or improving features of the public signal. Why the hell would you need to pressure the EU to "compromise" about improving the the system?

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      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  2. Win-win scenario by zeux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a win-win scenario because Galileo will greatly improve GPS accuracy and Galileo will benefit from the experience of the GPS system.

    Too bad it took so long to reach an agreement and too bad the US never stopped to criticize a project that they are finally supporting.

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    Iraq: war to save the U
  3. Re:Why duplication? by Damiano · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The base reason is that US wants the ability to turn off civilain GPS when they want to. If Europe puts up a system that US doesn't have control over than turning off GPS becomes useless and they lose )what they believe to be) a tactical advantage.

  4. Here's to more US/Europe co-operation by pubjames · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Europe and the USA acting together could do this world a hell of a lot of good. Shame things have been so negative of late.

    What I'd really like to see is co-operation on reducing arms sales globally. The USA and Europe are currently the world's biggest arms merchants. And the mad thing is, we're selling them to countries that could easily turn around and bite us on the ass. Saudi Arabia for instance. If they turn against us - which isn't outside the realms of possibility at the moment - they will be able to put up one hell of a battle because we've been selling them advanced weaponary for decades. Madness.

  5. Dual Band by chaffed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This will be interesting because I think we will see dual band recievers. Often for one reason or another (interference most likely) GPS will give you incorrect position or non at all. However if you have a reciever that can switch over to galileo then this could greatly help all who use GPS. Just think of all the current applications currently using GPS. Shipping, personal aircraft, recreation, wardrivers! Suddenly WiGle will become a lot more accurate.

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