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How GPS Is Killing Lighthouses
sakshale writes "Spiegel Online has an article about the impact of GPS systems on Lighthouses.
They claim that the popularity of the satellite-based global positioning system has led to the closure of lighthouses along the German coast." As the article says, "critics question whether the new system is reliable and safe enough to warrant the closure of these historical beacons of safety."
How e-mail is killing the sales of postage stamps.
"There is no spoon."
Lighthouse makers just need to move to a new "all-lawsuit" model of revenue like the music and movie industry has. GPS is denying lighthouse makers their constitutionally protected right to obscene amounts of profit. If you're using a GPS, you're stealing from lighthouses*. It's as simple as that.
* or, if you prefer, copyright infringing from lighthouses.
"Is that dad?"
"Either that, or Batman's really let himself go!"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
the moment satellites or the gps system fails, we'll get something like: Believe it or not...this is the transcript of an actual radio conversation between a US naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995. The Radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on Oct. 10, 1995. US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision. US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course. CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course! US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA*, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!! CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
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It is official; Netcraft confirms: Lighthouses are dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered lighthouse community when IDC confirmed that the lighthouse market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all navigational assistance tools. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that lighthouses have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Lighthouses are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Ship Admin comprehensive navigational test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict the future of lighthouses. The hand writing is on the wall: lighthouses faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for lighthouses because lighthouses are dying. Things are looking very bad for lighthouses. As many of us are already aware, lighthouses continue to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. A river with no lighthosue.
FreeLighthouse is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time lighthouse developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: lighthouses are dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Openlighthouse leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Openlighthouse. How many users of Netlighthouse are there? Let's see. The number of Openlighthouse versus Netlighthouse posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Netlighthouse users. lighthouse/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Netlighthouse posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of lighthouse/OS. A recent article put Freelighthouse at about 80 percent of the *lighthouse market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Freelighthouse users. This is consistent with the number of Freelighthouse Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Freelighthouse went out of business and was taken over by lighthouseI who sell another troubled OS. Now lighthouseI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *lighthouse has steadily declined in market share. lighthouses are very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If lighthouses are to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *lighthouse continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, lighthouses are dead.
Fact: Lighthouses are dying
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
I know how most of you are all fro new technology, but we need these failsafes. What happens when your computer fails or your keyboard, mouse or display systems are no longer functioning. It's far too dangerous in my opinion to allow sliderules and other (now secondary) computation aids (like abacuses) fall to the wayside b/c of newer technology.
;^)
I propose that every computer science major be forced to learn how to use a slide rule and an abacus...
And we should require every gps unit to be equiped with a pendulum and a sextant as backup...
Uhm, yeah, right
The pirates who build false lighthouses to lure ships onto a lea shore!
Piracy is never far away!
you kill a lighthouse!
Please, think of the historical beacons of safety.
Would Jesus have relied on GPS?
No way.
He got lost in the desert on purpose.
... or did anyone else imagine laser beams from GPS satellite's aiming down at lighthouses blowing them to pieces?
?
I guess it was just me.
Not if the location of the lighthouse is off a bit, and the location of the big-ass underwater rock was mapped relative to the lighthouse. :-)
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
...who sent a love letter to this girl three times a day for three years?
She married the postman: He was always there.