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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."
Isn't GPS run by the United States government? Are other countries sure it's a good idea to be relying on that?
Lighthouses have been obsolete since radar came to be. GPS is hardly the starting point for this. At any rate, I'm a fan of lighthouse preservation efforts as I think they're a very interesting part of our evolution of navagational technology, and, in some cases, quite beautiful. Lighthouses have been pretty well obsolete for 40 years.
As such, the U.S. military can turn off the satelites or scramble their signal whenever it deems appropriate. So, before our friends the Germans decide to become overly dependant on U.S. technology, they ought to ensure that the world is a stable place otherwise they may find themselves hung out to dry on the reef.
Although the lighthouses really aren't needed, do they really cost so much for upkeep to where it's not cost effective to keep the system running as a backup? I would imagine that it would be very nice to still have lighthouses should a ship suddenly find its GPS no longer working.
...as tourist attractions. In fact the actual light and other equipment has been automated for years. Many navigational beacons are solar powered, and almost maintenance free.
Lighthouses are like the RIAA. The conditions that allowed them to flourish have changed, leaving them superfluous. At least in one way, lighthouses have an advantage over the RIAA; they are charming and endearing to many people, and they provide nostaligic pleasure. No one will miss the RIAA.
I think most people prefer to have an analog backup of some sort, especially when safety is concerned. We still don't trust our digital resources, so why should we rely on them wholly in navigation?
...and in other news computers are killing the typewriter...
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.
They have been de-activating lighthouses in the united states for decades now. From way before GPS. A prior post mentioned radar and there are other advanced technologies being used (GPS is more accurate).
The ones that aren't deactivated are mostly automated.
There are some fairly serious lighthouse preservations groups here.
says money isn't the only reason, the shipping companies and possibly governments have no reason other than money to want to see them gone.
And for what? 400k euro/year? Granted, that's only for 15 lighthouses, but that's peanuts compared to what is spent on other things.
I wonder what a supertanker spill would cost to clean up, after there's a power failure onboard and the GPS nav systems are offline, and there aren't any lighthouses to use as backups.
FTA: "For one thing, GPS can never be 100 percent reliable -- extreme weather conditions like hail or snowfall or even solar winds are known to disrupt service."
I'm just wondering - couldn't those same factors affect a captain's visibility to a lighthouse?
I don't think that all lighthouses are in immediate danger of closure. This from the The National Lighthouse museum:
"With all of the advances made in electronic navigation over the last half century, the use of lighthouses as aids to navigation has certainly waned. The Global Positioning System (GPS), in particular, has transformed the art of navigation to electronic methods. Lighthouses are still used by ships as a back up to their satellite navigation aids, however, and they are used by small boats that aren't equipped with the necessary navigational electronics. Some lighthouses, which are used as range lights are still as important today as they ever were."
The Staten Island Lighthouse, for example, is the rear range light for the Ambrose Channel Range, the primary deep-draft channel into New York Harbor, and remains of vital importance to New York marine traffic."
Here's an ironic twist too: Using a GPS to find a lighthouse.
And: The GPS coordinates of many lighthouses.
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
Maybe they'll get less opposition to closing light houses if they forced german ships to use the new EU galileo system instead of GPS.
On the other hand, if this happens, perhaps the lighthouse preservation lobby will force the EU government to cancel Galileo to save historic lighthouses. Stranger things have happened in Europe...
I hate hearing stories about how a new technology is killing an old industry. Well no shit, that's the purpose of them! How many people feared computers would destroy a billion different industries? Well, they did! And they created a trillion new ones. This is the point of technology. To destroy old ways of doing things by creating more effeciant, reliable and cost effective technolgies to replace them.
Unfourtunatly we have numerous companies that fear technolgy as well (auto, oil spring to mind) as it could potentially kill their business model. Certainly if any of the CEO's were as smart as they liked to believe, they would see they better adobt new technolgy before someone else does and crushes them with it.
That's the beauty of general technolgy I think; It allows new empires to crush old ones by being more effeciant, cost friendly and reliable.
I really believe in the end, new technology benefits people. Fearing it will, at best, delay your inevitable demise by a fraction.
It's called an evolution.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Define "better". GPS doesn't have the reliability of the lighthouse.
GPS receivers shipboard can fail; severe weather - including "space weather" solar events - can prevent a clear signal; and the Pentagon, operator of the GPS system, reserves the option to degrade or eliminate service at their whim.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
HD Trailers
Ocean Navigator carried an article a few years ago about how the number of people "lost at sea" reported by the US Coast Guard had *increased* since GPS was invented!
The typical response to was "the batteries went flat...". Hmmmm. Point taken re postage stamps and email but this is a lives-at-stake situation.
BTW, this is also why the US Navy still teaches celestial navigation and morse code.
Stevo
Forget the truth. Science is fact.
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
The GLONASS system - operated out of Russia, isn't even run by the United States. NavStar, or the United States GPS system, is run by the department of defense.
... but lets not go bashing the US for something they aren't responsible for. GLONASS != NavStar.
These two systems tend to not be compatible with each other too well, so if you buy a nice GPS unit in the states, you can't just plug into the Glonass system and expect it to work.
I think it is rash that they want to close the lighthouses down, since a defunct satellite or a malfunctioning landbased correction system (Those are ground based stations that intercept GPS transmittions and make certain they are right before they hit the GPS device like the StreetPilot, Mystic, or Roadmate.) I don't know how widespread this system is in Europe, but it has to be used in the US (Also known as WAAS)
I think it is a very bad idea they are getting rid of the lighthouses, and agree with the concerns brought up in the article...
-- RJ
... is what Europe came up with, as an answer to your question.
l ileo/index_en.htm
...but the yanks are not happy....
http://www.esa.int/export/esaNA/galileo.html
http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/energy_transport/ga
China seems to agree
3 meters? Are you kidding me? I did survey last summer and we used GPS. With a triangulated system we could be accurate to withen 1/100 of a 10th. That's apx. 1 mm! And trust me, we had to be sometimes. GPS is great stuff. Finally math books can spew out real world examples of geometry (mainly trig, subset of geometry anyways) that the students might use one day.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I thought light houses usualy signaled hazards such as rocks, currents, and most inportantly, land.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
And for the people who want to do it, we'll put them in cars, outfitted with the latest in radar-avoidance technology, and GPS. We'll then put that car on the autobahn at 100 mph (or, since this is Germany, its equivalent in kph), and take out the steering wheel, accelerator, and brake pedal. These will be obsolete and just add to the cost of manufacturing the car, and since the reliable new digital...
Oh? What's that? That's a bad idea, because...sometimes electronic systems fail? Well, none of us users of a computer knew about that!
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
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!
Lighthouses have been obsolete since radar came to be. GPS is hardly the starting point for this.
As a boater I can tell you that neither radar nor GPS makes lighthouses obsolete. Nor did LORAN before them.
Sure, if you've got it and its working you can tell where you are. Within a football field if selective-availability is on, much better if it's off.
And the big commercial ships have them and they're usually working.
And the small commercial ships in well-to-do countries (like fishing boats for instance) may have them and they may be working.
And the more well-to-do pleasure-boaters may have them and they may be working.
But there are a LOT of boats out there that DON'T have them. The BULK of them, if you're talking numbers.
Fishermen may not have them - and may have other things to deal with than watching a screen. Most pleasure boats are small fry, not millionaires' giant toys. (A small ocean-capable cruising sailboat, for instance, may be considerably less expensive than an RV of a similar size.)
Even if they have them, any bets whether they're working when you're coming in after a month at sea, two years after they were purchased? Salt spray is HELL on electronics, and gets into everything.
And even when they do have them, and they are operating, a boater may think he's far out to sea when he's actually almost onto a hidden hazard, and not be looking. (A lighted nav marker, among other things, is the idiot-light of boating.)
Saying GPS obsoletes lighthouses is like saying GPS-based navigation systems for cars obsolete stop signs, curve signs, and the blinking lights associated with them.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Once, according to my GPS I was doing 500km/h somewhere in the northern hemisphere. I was actually sitting on the top of a big hill. Resetting the GPS unit didn't change anything. I checked with a friend (we were hiking) and his GPS was doing the same thing. Maybe we were recording a de-orbit of one of the satelites.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Back under the bridge, troll. I've certainly seen historic preservation efforts supported by more than "socialists", and sometimes such preservation really is in the interest of everyone. Should we tear down the Parthanon, the countless Roman buildings left in Italy, or other historical gems, just because they aren't cost-effective anymore? Is that really the kind of world you want to live in?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
This is an issue dear to my heart. As an avid lighthouse photographer (http://www.pbase.com/ldkronos/lighthouses)S /sanduskypierhead.JPG h tID=138
I really hate to see these things being abandoned. I think their different styles and architectures are quite interesting. However, some of them are beginning to disappear. Non profit organizations have formed to try to preserve and restore the bigger and more popular ones, but then there are those that have just been left for their own, several of which have collapsed or been torn down and replaced with simple (boring, IMHO) light beacons (for example, this lighthouse:
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/WEBLIGHTHOUSE
has been replaced by this:
http://www.us-lighthouses.com/displaypage.php?Lig
)
That's not a 'free' service in my book.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
After being a quartermaster in the US Navy and navigating a large ship through some particular odd parts of the world where the GPS saturation is not enough to use, so that it is as reliable enough to pinpoint within a meter, I can say that lighthouse triangulation is way more accurate, and electronics will eventually fail. The Navy still uses sextants just incase all power is lost and there is no land available.
... or more relevant... pseudolites. These are pseudo GPS satellites that can be used to add more "satellites" to the GPS solution.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What's that? They don't?
I guess if an EMP frotzes the electronics on their aircraft carrier, they'll have bigger things to worry about. Like what'll happen to the nuclear reactor with all the control systems fried. That's assuming they were far enough away from the blast to survive the nastiness that you usually get from one of those. I doubt a modern ship could operate under those conditions anyway.
Anything less than that (Navigation system got infected with crapware?) I'm sure you could find 1 guy in your 1500 some odd crewmembers that has a portable GPS unit and you could find your location on paper charts or something. It'll give you something to do while you're flogging the bozo who was browsing the web on the navigation computer...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The prudent mariner will not rely solely on any single aid to navigation.
Natianiel Bowditch (as best as I can recall the quote)
Among many other reasons for retaining fixed aids to navigation, the GPS system uses the WGS-84 datum. Many charts, in particular many harbor charts, still use local datam references.
Check with the former Commanding Officer and Navigator of the USS LaMoure County for their opinion regarding over-reliance on GPS positions with respect to local chart datums.
Visual and radar piloting have the benefit of being independent of the local coordinate system. Visual aids to navigation, in particular, may seem to be "obsolete" but they are wonderfully helpful in real world piloting situations.
Been there, done that, didn't get relieved for cause.
Trusted by cats.
Really. Intriguing. How about writing an actual argument (what exactly does "badmouthing" consist of, and who exactly did it?) so that I (or someone else) can tear it apart. As it stands now, it's barely worth replying to and purely a flamebait.
The US government is free to try and restrict GPS usage - especially with Galileo around the corner - but even if it could, something tells me it's not about to stop its closest military and political allies from using it. The economic consequences alone are enough.
As for yourself, try finding a more suitable way of coping with criticism.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
...I doubt the pyramids were filled with GPS to prevent their obscelesence.
Funny how peole love anything that is old.
I bet ya, in your "preservation efforts", you will meet many people, that get just as upset, about windturbin installations, with the argument "of ruining the landscape with phalluses".
Though I agree, there is something romantic about a lighting house, wouldn't mind living in one. Imagine the views....
Though humorous, this is a fictitious story.
http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthse.htm
"Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose." --Douglas Adams
A while back, a plan was exposed regarding how the DOD or DHS would shut down the GPS network of satellites. I don't recall where the artical was (I believe it was in Slashdot) or when it appeared (I'm guessing within the last 6-12 months).
Anyway, my question is this: How do they propose to maintain shipping safety, by dropping the sole navigational fallback in the event that such an event takes place?
Also, don't lighthouses occasionally perform the duty of keeping watch for any suspicious activities, such as smuggling drugs/contraband/immigrants (and mind you, since it's the rage, terrorists)?
Or maybe my memory's a little rusty on that, I may have watched "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" too many times.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
If GPS is safe enough for guided missiles, then it's safe enough for me...
Is GPS accuracy supposed to be measured in lives saved, or lives lost per error in calculation?
You lose big Karma points for posting a Snopes story as truth.
Snopes... if it sounds too good or too funny to be true, you should probably check Snopes. Otherwise, those of us who have will mercilessly mock you.
One word:
Fallback.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
And it's a shame the US threatened to shoot down the alternative european/asian Galileo system if the US military couldn't have the right to shut the new system down when it wanted, and has also applied as much pressure as it can to stop countries getting involved with Galileo at all.
And you wonder why other governments disagree with US policy sometimes?
Clinton had a much better policy - let people use the satellites free and non-degraded, leading to massive civilan commercial adoption - and given only US companies were allowed to make GPS receiver components, it had a massive benefit for the US economy directly as well as indirectly. But hey, it's far better to make your allies so suspicious of your actions that they'll invest over a billion to get their own system not under your control, huh.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
I've had to pilot a boat that the GPS went out on, due to a manufacturing defect. Basically, the screen just went blank. We got home, but it was not fun.
Try eMusic. DRM free, legal, MP3 downloads.
Besides the places where it may still be useful to be able to tell at a glance where a point or rocky shoreline is, without looking at a screen or GPS, you've got the obvious "tradition" and historical value of most of these light houses.
Where I live, we have all these fancy satellite things and infrared imaging to keep watch on forest fires. But they still man a few old fire towers during the height of the fire season. And the ones that aren't manned are generally still preserved.
Most places probably have a Historical Society or something similar that would prevent the destruction of the lighthouses, even if the economics of the situation dictated that the light was "turned off". I have a summer home that they won't even let me put a metal roof on because it would change the nature of a "historical building".
I submit that GPSr will only serve to modernize that type of navigation. I'm not seeing that GPSr mounted in vehicles will ever do away with street signs...seems like kind of the same thing to me.
you kill a lighthouse!
Please, think of the historical beacons of safety.
We'll just flick the lights on and off and see if those crazy Germans run into stuff!
WWII ended 50 years ago... Unless they start hiding terrorist camps in the Black Forest, they probably have nothing to worry about.
You hardly need to blame GPS for the demise of the lighthouse. More culpable was that great innovation, the harbor buoy. This is a worthless story even for slashdot.
an ill wind that blows no good
GPS consists of two separate signals: PPS and SPS. PPS is encrypted and is what the military uses to blow stuff up. SPS is unencrypted and can be turned off or "degraded" at will either globally or over certain geographic areas. SPS is what all commercial GPS is based on. If all they were concerned with was blowing shit up, they wouldn't have SPS.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Modify to suit. Think about it, it applies lighthouses too.
If you can navigate with GPS, Radar, sonar, etc. You probably don't belong on the open ocean. Certainly not in anything big enough to be dangerous to the rest of us.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Somehow, I doubt you were filled with brains to preserve your intelligence.
I find two (out of two) things wrong with your statement. One: Egyptian pyramids were pathways to the heavens for, and monuments to, the pharoahs who were buried in them. They were not in any way related to lighthouses. Two: Last I checked, the Egyptian pyramids date back, oh, several thousand years or so. The first GPS satellite was launched in 1978.
Firstly GPS is unlikely to be ever turned off at a global level for civilian users. There are so many unanticipated benefits of it that it is now an intimate part of our every day lives. GPS for instance provides the clock synchronization for most modern communications systems, it guides automated machinery on farms, it is (recently) approved for aircraft navigation by the FAA in the US. There are so many more examples. The US DoD now persues a strategy of selective denial where GPS will be denied only locally in a war theatre to non-authorized military/gov users.
On another pro-euro point, the EU is gearing up to launch its own GALILEO system, which is very comprehensive and modern and will include special provisions for "life critical" applications where reliability is key.
My somewhat limited sailing knowledge suggests that in Northen Europe other vesels pose a much greater navigation threat than the coastline these days, especially in the area of the english channel. Frankly boats without, radar, LORAN and GPS etc have no place to be out in conditions that require instrument navigation, these technologies are not so expensive, especially weighed against the cost of a boat.
So saying all of that, keep the light houses, hell there historical value alone merits 400K euro's year.
What about the smaller boats that dont get GPS for say fishing boats. I can see the oil rigs and other large ships not needing lighthouses. Its the small boats that still need the lighthouses.
Did he say it was true?
AFAIK far most jokes on Slashdot aren't marked as such, unless the poster thinks people won't get it.
Great idea, and while we're at it, why not kill all those pesky lights on airport runways. I mean, honestly, all the planes have GPS right? They can land just fine in the dark.
I've been sailing most of my life. GPS does not replace aids to navigation, but rather supplements them. Any boater who is 100% reliant on electronic navigation is a hazard. GPS can be finicky. A hand bearing compass and a chart, along with the skill to make use of them, are extremely important to this day, but can only function when one has objects such as lighthouses to make fixes on. I hope Germany's actions are not a precursor to similar changes in the rest of the world.
Large ships no longer use lighthouses for their navigation. For the most part the lighthouses mark points of land and ships tend to avoid points of land. Navigators on ships use a combination of radar and GPS (often combined into one collision avoidance device) to stay within traffic "lanes" that are often only shown on charts (no buoys or anything).
While working on drill ships, tankers, fishing trawlers and other large vessels I can only remember using a lighthouse one time; to calibrate the compass on a drill ship for a USCG inspection (it had to be in the log).
On sailboats, in kayaks, and other small vessels I've used lighthouses a lot. But I don't think small vessels count. Shipping companies pay more taxes and donate more money to politicians than kayakers and yachties do, so my guess is that as soon as they are done with a technology it'll be on the blocks despite any possible uses for the small-boat seaman.
So lighthouses, along with sextants, will fall to the "I'll take two - one as a spare" GPS mentality (you would be amazed at the numbers of sailors who head for Tahiti with no knowledge of navigation other than reading their GPS). Not much use fighting it and, with any luck, they might even be right. Most lighthouses have been decommissioned anyway and the few that are active tend to be automated so it's not like any jobs are at stake.
Just that they are nice to look at and, in the fog in a kayak, they're nice to listen to. But governments don't much care about kayaks.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Surveyors can let a GPS "integrate" and use other techniques that don't work on a moving boat.
Also in many parts of the world knowing your exact possition to within meters is not as good as it sound because the charts are not so good. For example if the big rock is charted 1/2 mile ast of where it really is. This is common. Radars and lighthouses will still be needed for a long time.
Every book and navigation class will tell you to NEVER depend on only one source of navigation data. Always use at least two and cross check.
I typically use simple techniques from the pre-electronic era to comfirm the GPS. I've punch ed in a wrong number on the GPS and would have gone off in a totally wrong direction
So anyone who now believes in a "public good" is a socialist? It's not about "charming lighthouses", it's about backup technology when the system fails. GPS receivers, while cheap are not infallable. The GPS system, while reliable is still vulnerable to solar storms, politics, and failed satelites.
Obviously lighthouses aren't 100% reliable either, but they aren't a single system like GPS that has the potential for the whole system to fail. Lighthouses don't rely on equipment in boats that can fail. All you need is a pair of eyes.
AccountKiller
And lighthouses can fail. A heavy fog can set in over the water. Etc. etc.
the namespace grows ever more crowded.
Even if so, it is far more accurate than navigation via lighthouse.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://www.silva.se/kampanj/film/captain_win.wmv
But yeah, from what I've heard it's just an urban legend.
I think you are missing the point. The point is to have more than one method of navigation, not a match-up for exclusivity.
I went on a Lighthouse tour last summer in the Straights of Mackinac (Lake Huron / Lake Michigan) And many of the Lighthouses there are being either purchased or maintained by The Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association. If it werent for them many of them would be torn down or dismantled. None of them house any people any longer, however they are used for fog horns, and they do have transponders which tell the freighters how far away from them they are etc. One (Round Island Light) is even used as an airplane transponder to guide aircraft. I can see them being replaced by GPS guidance, but i would hate to see them go...
-Kacy
Psh, now I guess they can't "Leave a light house on for you."
Makers of buggy-whips outraged at newfangled "horseless carriages."
The only reason why Europe has GPS service is that the US military wants the ability to accuratly blow up any location on the planet.
It sucks when the military can't do it accurately and has to blow up all kinds of extra stuff to get the job done.
Now, we can argue wether the job 'needs doing' but are you really a carpet bombing enthusiast?
the namespace grows ever more crowded.
By including details, which happen to be common to other tellings of the story, yes. The USS Coral Sea, a real ship, never had any such encounter.
GPS is great until you don't have it or unless you never did. How are small boaters going to navigate without beacons?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I once worked with a bunch of pilots when GPS was still in its infancy. I never heard any of them, nor have I heard of any to this day, ever say they were interested in, say, getting rid of their VOR receiver once they ever put a GPS receiver in their plane. Why make mariners navigate without a backup system? I can't imagine that they're in favor of this. Can't imagine the companies that offer insurance are crazy about eliminating the lighthouse system either.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Was that using Standard Positioning Service (SPS) or Precise Positioning Service (PPS)? The SPS is used by both military and civilian. Anyone who can purchase a $100 receiver can use it to detect their location within an accuracy of 100 meters (95 percent) horizontally and 156 meters (95 percent) vertically.
;)
The PPS is used by the military and users authorized by the U.S. P(Y) code. Not anyone can use this one. It provides provides a predictable positioning accuracy of at least 22 meters (95 percent) horizontally and 27.7 meters vertically. Not to mention that most PPS GPS devices are hard to come by. PPS is typically used in military, aviation, and marine usage.
The only way I can figure you got ~1mm accuracy is if you used a ground station as a known point of reference to correct the skew. Either that or your triangulation is wrong
GPS also uses, I believe, up to twelve satellites at a time to improve accuracy. Very rarely do they only use three satellites to obtain its coordinates.
Link
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
as a boater, you should
first learn to use a chart and compass, and recognize the lighthouse signals.
then get a marine radio.
then get a gps.
the first is a must
the second is a good backup
the third is for verification
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Lemme guess. GPS makes it much easier to hit lighthouses with precision -guided missiles?
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Ye olde slight-of-hand standard: Keep their eyes on the obvious stuff, and they won't notice where the real work occurs.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
"critics question whether the new system is reliable and safe enough to warrant the closure of these historical beacons of safety."...
Only as long as your electrical system/batteries hold out. Once the GPS/LORAN system becomes a boat anchor, you better damn well hope the lighthouse is still in operation.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
LORAN, radar, etc. are all pretty expensive and more dificult to use. GPS is very cheap, and easy. Even for small lakes, such as the one that I grew up on (wonder lake, IL), We did not need these. Or so we thought. My parents and some neighbors were coming back from a party in a heavy fog and ran the boat on an island (not inhibreated). A GPS would have prevented that. After having taken a trip in my fathers current boat, down along the florida coast line, I think that we used GPS for about 99 % of all nav. and found it so much easier.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Please elaborate on how you did this. Because results like this are practically unheard of.
What ephemeredes were you using (an what models did they use)? How many states was your kalman filter? What antenna technology were you using? What were you multipath correction algorithms? How long were you collects? Any DGPS source? What were your atmospherics? What about you clock drift corrections?
Was this a static or dynamic location?
Even if you know the position of you ground station down to that level, it is nearly impossible to converge a solution using any GPS source using traditional filtering techniques (that is unless you weight the known position to 100% I mean, changes of the antenna temperature and the density of the troposphere due to humidity can cause errors of a centimeter.
Please elaborate. If you can tell us how you did this, you'll have a wonderful, cushy job at the IGS (http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html) for the rest of your life...
It was a GPS system made by Trimble. The 5800 model I believe. But yes, you are correct on how it is used. First we set up on a control spot we know the exact coordinates to. Our system we use to gather data then uses radio link to communicate with it and the satelites. We use something like 8 satelites, the more the better, as well like you guessed. So what happens is what you think also, with the known position, the position we get from the GPS is then error corrected to be precise. Depending on the kind of plot you're doing you have to hold the rod longer to get a really precise reading.
It was really beautiful to plot the points of this pipeline and then upload the data into a CAD program that would generate the pipe we just shot.
As for the person above who made a comment about not trusting one source, you're right. The main guy I was with had a map upside down when he took a quick reading and basically had everything messed up. Turns out we cut down a few of some guys trees. Needless to say he wasn't too happy. I thought it was hilarious.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Read the grand parent.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I guess I worded that rather poorly. I was talking more on a highschool level. You know how they are always trying to show a real world example to keep interested. Also, it was a joke.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Was it from George Carlin? It sounds familiar, but I can't place it for sure.
Sigs are for the weak.
While I recognize that there are real issues here, I must say that my first reaction was: I wonder if GPS might be able to kill off paintings of lighthouses...
From what I remember of the few PLGR units I used in the gulf, military GPS units use what is basically a one-time pad type system. The crypto key is good for 6 weeks. When that key expires, you load the next from a secure data transfer device. The military has a serious belt-and-suspenders approach to key management. The keys are large enough to realistically take decades to brute-force, and they change them very frequently.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Correction: they were SLGR units. PLGR's are the nice hand-held ones we WISHED we had.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Already being done.
Another poster mentioned that "Unfortunately, pretty much half of a cell tower's radius would be in mostly-unoccupied ocean." Considering the pervasiveness of cell phones, boaters could use their phones for 911 calls in emergencies on the water. The use of cell phones for marine communication is becoming more the norm. The ability to reach a local tower would aid those dialing 911, enabling them to go directly to emergency services, thereby avoiding delays during emergency situations.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
At two or three embarked atomic clocks the US or the EU can send them into space, but they are probably still a bit expensive for local communities to be installed on a roof (NTP comes a bit short here).
Local radio-localization is probably much cheaper and has the advantage of being redundant in case anything goes wrong. Just like traditional ILS for planes.
So maybe we should turn off all the runway lights? Cause airplanes have GPS too.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Even so, you don't want to tempt fate, and 1million geeks working at it part-time are far more likely to find a way to game the system (if there is one) than 25 high-security spooks working in Moscow.
There's nothing you could do about the 25 spooks in Moscow, but if giving the 1million geeks a 'good enough' toy to play with is enough to keep them at bay, it's really cheap insurance (and good PR to boot).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
See, this is stupidthink. I cannot call it liberal, as it is giving liberalism a bad name. Bombs fell, bombs are targeted so to mimimize casualties as much as possible in a war zone.
Off course all this anti-war talk (I'm not so much anti-war, as against being lied to) seems to center on a false ideal. That the Iraqi's really were better off under Sadam. I mean save all this "We are really horrible stuff". We don't you know, gas people.
Before you even say anything, yes we supported them. The alternative was what exactly? Support the leadership that took Americans hostage, and constantly threatened it's neighbors? I'm not proud of our past on the Middle East, but doesn't give us an even greater moral perogative to right the wrongs we did?
When have the last major deployments of US forces occurred?
2001 - GWB
1991 - GHWB
1975 - Lotsa folks
WWII, WWI...
When's the last time the US invaded a country with no probable cause?
2001 - GWB
And that's it. Iraq made zero, ZERO, NULL, nada, zip, rien... I could go on... military threats against the United States.
Hmmmmm...
Good point though. You're a genius! Just like your idol.
oh wait that already happened.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
I forgot the forgotten war, Korea, and he invaded in 2003, not 2001.
It was a young trap in Plato day.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
If you are a captain, it is up to you (not "they") to do what's needed to make sure you are safe. That means you have a mechanical chronometer, a sextant and an HO229 with you when you take command. And you know how to use them, plus your common sense and coastwise skills, to navigate safely. Celestial navigation is not subject to governmental fiat and it is the ultimate fallback, if you know how to use it.
Celestial navigation is not that hard to learn. You don't have to be terribly talented to get a fix that encompasses a couple square miles of ocean. If you are out in the middle of the north Pacific that is generally good enough.
If you find an un-lit shore you stay the hell away until you can see what you are doing.
Navigation to this standard has been done for hundreds of years, there is nothing stopping anyone from being a competent navigator except perhaps blindness or terminal stupidity.
And it's a shame the US threatened to shoot down [spacedaily.com] the alternative european/asian Galileo system if the US military couldn't have the right to shut the new system down when it wanted
Alright, that phrasing's just a bit overdone. The US didn't threaten to just shoot it down arbitrarily, they just said they might have to if it were used by a foreign power that was at war with the US.
Ah yes, the old "personal responsibility" excuse... Tell you what: I'll be personally responsible for my course corrections; if you'll be personally responsible for the weather, wind, current shifts and any of a dozen other unforeseen events that delay my sailboat an hour past expected arrival with sunlight? What, you can't be personally responsible for such events of nature that are beyond perfectly accurate prediction according to chaos theory?
Think of actual circumstances before you foist this "enlightened" crap on people, whom I'll wager, have spent more time boating than you have.
here endeth my rant.
I gave a lot of thought to this while I was in Cape Cod last Fall...
:)
They paid a few million dollars to relocate highland lighthouse hundreds of feet because of beach erosion in 1997. Admittedly anyone who sails around highland (Cape Cod) lighthouse is well aware of that spot and GPS does a far better job than that lighthouse... But the historical significance outweighed the price.
GPS is more accurate and any vessel that uses it for navigation darn well better have a fail-safe. I don't think reliability is going to be too big a concern...
Light houses will likely stay in operation purely for the atmosphere in the future. The new bulbs are extremely high efficiency and cost of operation is minimal, it's relocating the darn things because of beach erosion that might do them in... At that point it probably becomes a publicly funded situation, with local residents pitching to save their historic landmarks rather than tax dollars.
I for one would pay to keep them in operation, you really have to experience a night in Cape Cod to understand
It's not GPS that is the story. It's The German government saving money by closing down lighthouses. The first ecological damage caused by a ship running aground will show how short sighted this is. I am surprised the Greens are allowing this. Perhaps this is one way of dealing with the 5 million unemployed in Germany?
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
... 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.
Korea - Goddamn communists!
Vietnam - Communists again!!
Panama - Oust Noriega (restore order around our canal)
Bosnia, Kosovo - Stop Genocide
Somolia - Stop famine, warlord battles
Iraq 1991 - Stop Invasion of Kuwait (we need their oil)
Instead of preventing genocide in Darfur, we're in Iraq for no reason. Instead of getting rid of our deficit, we're in Iraq for no reason. Instead of installing true order and security in Afghanistan, we're in Iraq for no reason. Instead of fighting fucking terrorists, were in Iraq for no reason.
When the next terrorist attack does occur, and it will, I'll be glad to point to the tenure of GW and say, "If we hadn't been waving our dicks in the air in the Iraqi desert, sputtering bombs over more Muslims and creating more terrorists, we could have done something like install a secure democracy in Afghanistan instead of falling over each other for something as stupid as oil."
Ending terrorism is easy.
1. End the military sponsorship of Isreal.
2. Get our troops fuck out of the Middle East.
3. Peace!
No money in it though. Thus, no republican support.
They announced several years ago that they were going to discontinue teaching the new officers how to navigate using the old celestial tools, since GPS was now reliable and common enough that they could, well, rely on it. It's not like you're going to be able to make the aircraft carrier go if all its electronics get toasted, anyway, and if the nav system fails for some reason there's always hand units. I'd be surprised if you could manage to get as accurate coordinates from a sextant as you could with a GPS, and I bet the GPS costs a lot less too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The only way I can figure you got ~1mm accuracy is if you used a ground station as a known point of reference to correct the skew.
Bingo. If you're anywhere near a Coast Guard beacon station (which is to say most of the continental U.S. and outlying waters), you can simply use a unit that supports DGPS and still get 5 meter horizontal resolution on a really bad day, although 1-2 meter resolution is more likely for real-time performance. I would imagine that the almost all of the GPS units used by survey crews are integrating DGPS units, and if given enough time to collect data I have no doubt they could be accurate to within a very few millimeters.
I've got a DGPS-capable Garmin, but haven't really seen the need to fork over the $500 or so that they want for the external DGPS antenna.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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
...you have lost your character.
You choose right every time. Under no circumstance do you support the mass murder of any human being. Under no circumstance is torture "okay." Under no circumstance is "minimizing casualty" moral when you're still killing people.
America has simply become a self-interested empire, not a beacon of freedom. It's a sad truth, epitomized by government actions after September 11th, when they said... don't stop buying things!
I'd rather be stupid and retain conscience and morality - and I'm not referring to the kind you think you're buying in church on Sunday.
Well, despite the fact you don't have the guts to post under your own user name, I will join in the fray here.
Going back to the hiker analogy, hikers are also fased with the same kind of delays yet you don't see precautions like that being taken for people hiking in the woods.
It's very easy to underestimate the hike time, get caught in some bad weather, roll your ankle, get stuck somewhere, and all kinds of unforseen circumstances that can occur while on hike. Hell, it can get dark and you walk off the edge of a cliff. You don't see any kind of light houses being put up for individuals performing that kind of activity. I don't think there's enough to justify the cost of keeping all these lighthouses operating just so a bunch of people can float around in their pleasurecraft after dark.
One can also argue there are far more hikers than there are boaters (due to the lower cost on entry no doubt). No doubt a lot more accidents too, I only hear of boating accidents here once in while, yet every week there's several stories in the papers of searches for lost hikers.
I'd love to have been a lighthouse keeper. Just imagine it, no having to deal with stupid plebs, not PHB's, no moronic customers who don't know the difference between "Ancient Eygpt" and "Ancient Greece" (seriously). You'd only have to talk to people once a month (or two, or three) when supplies are delivered.
That would be perfect.
...how cool would living in a lighthouse be??!? Rip out the lamp and put a desk up there...sit up there coding all day long and get to exercise on the way to work....mad+
(cf. anthem, ayn rand)
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
Actually, all of what he said is correct. I've been on two lighthouses. My dad is a lighthouse keepers, so is an uncle, and two others have been the past. What is said is very much true, and very much correct.
Be relentless!
The Europeans have Galileo, their own GPS, but that can also get turned off presumably for similar reasons as the U.S. one might. One might imagine a lighthouse transmitting at another wavelength in addition to visible light so that airborne objects could automatically find out where they are. But wait isn't that what aircraft normally use to navigate by? So maybe radio beacons and lighthouses could merge, but lighthouses would also provide socially and environmentally useful tasks (safety and observations as others have posted). If the lighthouse was tall enough a ship at sea could see it (in some wavelength) and so you might want to consider kites or weather balloons as providing lighthouse-like tasks, at least in an emergency. Don't go too high though or you'll end up a (presumably GPS) satellite..
Well they may be going out of business for a good reason but it seems silly to let the small number of lighthouses disappear when they could play such an important role in navigation especially in the event of damage to the GPS network, intentional or not.
Going back to the hiker analogy, hikers are also fased with the same kind of delays yet you don't see precautions like that being taken for people hiking in the woods.
Yes, you do. They have trails, warning signs, and even maps on posts in national parks. If someone goes missing and you report them, the park service will go out and look for them (and won't even charge for it! Imagine that!)
In the states, ingredient labels are required on many foodstuffs so that people don't eat things that they don't want to or are allergic to.
They also have lifeguards in pools just in case someone gets hurt, and railing around the ledges of popular tourist places in case people fall over. What's more, if you have a pool you're required to put a fence around it, or you're legally liable for someone who goes and swims in it and hurts themself. It's covered under 'attractive nusiance laws.'
Even going back as far as talmudic law, if you have a roof (which in Babylon, were typically solid enough for people to walk on) you were required to put a railing around it.
You may not like all this, but it is how things are done, and how they've been done for quite some time. People are thought, by law, to have a basic responsibility to warn others of danger and prevent accidents related to that danger.
You may disagree with this, but your assertion that lighthouses are some kind of legal anomoly which should be un-funded lacks support.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
they just said they might have to if it were used by a foreign power that was at war with the US.
Considering actions of US government in the last few years there is a very high probability that it would be shot down as soon as it came to life. After all, who knows which country is next on the "Axis Of Evil".
Move Sig. For great justice.
I don't know about you guys, but I keep candels in my drawer for when my light bulbs go out.
Light houses might just be a good thing to keep around.
Bart: Hey look - is that Dad?
Lisa: Either that, or Batman's really let himself go.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Really recorded conversation on the frequency of marine emergency
c .php?t=24948)
on channel 106 to wide of the coast of Finisterra (Galicia),
between galiziani and Americans, 16 October 1997.
Spanish: (bottom noise)... speaks the A-853 to you, please, tackings 15
degrees south in order to avoid to enter in collision with we. Been you
directing exactly against of we, distance 25 miles nautical.
Americans: (bottom noise)... we suggest you to turn 15 degrees north
in order to avoid the collision
Spanish: Negative. We repeat, tackings 15 degrees south in order to avoid
collision
Americans: (an other voice) speaks to the Captain about one ship to You of the States
United of America. You intimiamo to turn 15 degrees north in order to avoid
collision.
Spanish: We do not consider it possible, of convenient, suggest to you
to turn of 15 degrees in order to avoid to meet to you with we.
Americans: (animated tone) SPEAKS CAPTAIN to YOU RICHARD JAMES HOWARD,
TO THE COMMANDO OF AIRCRAFT CARRIERS USS LINCOLN, NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES
Of AMERICA, The SECOND SHIP FROM GREAT WAR PIU' Of the FLEET AMERICAN.
2 BATTLESHIPS, 6 ANNIHILATORS, 5 CRUISERS, 4 NUMEROUS SUBMARINES ESCORT US And OTHER SHIPS Of SUPPORT.
"I DO NOT SUGGEST TO YOU I ORDER" TO CHANGE "YOU" TO YOUR ROUTE OF 15 DEGREES NORTH. IN CONTRARY CASE WE WILL LOOK AT OURSELVES FORCED TO TAKE
THE MEASURES NECESSARY IN ORDER TO GUARANTEE THE EMERGENCY OF THIS SHIP.
PLEASE INMEDIATAMENTE OBEYED And ARE REMOVED From OUR ROUTE!!!
Spanish: Juan Manuel Salas Alcantara speaks to you. We are 2 persons. Us
they escort our dog, the food, 2 beers, and a canary that now is
sleeping. We have the support of the radio station "Cadena Dial de
Coruña "and channel 106 of marine emergency.
We do not head from no part, inasmuch as we speak from the firm earth,
we are in the beacon A-853 di Finisterra on the Galiziana coast.
We do not have the more pale idea than that place we have in it classifies
of the Spanish beacons.
You can take the measures that considered opportune and to make those haul
that it seems to you in order to guarantee the emergency of your ship of merda that
sfracellerà on the cliff.
Therefore we insist of new and we suggest you to make the thing sensata
and to change to your route of 15 degrees south in order to avoid the collision.
Americans: Well, received, thanks
---
(couldn't find translated version, here's the original - http://www.tizioandcaio.com/public/forum/viewtopi
So when someone uses Galileo to pilot a tanker with a dirty bomb into new york harbour (as opposed to using a lighthouse) can we expect galileo to be shot down then?
The grandparent was complaining about how dissenting governments were using GPS without paying for it (and didn't mention the US ability to turn it off when it chooses it it wants). I'm pointing out that even when such governments help fund a largely civilian funded alternative system, the US STILL wants control of it, to the extent of saying to politicians it's negotiating with about it that it reserves the right to shoot it down if they feel it's necessary.
You really think threatening your allies with blowing up over three billion's worth of infrastructure (and god knows how much damage to civilian life when their critical ship navigation systems go down permanently) if they can't turn it off is a fair negotiation tactic?
What's next? The US threatening to bomb the london jails if the British don't extradite suspected terrorists fast enough (israel bombed a palestinian one, so maybe the US might follow their example)
How would you feel if say, France told you to give them override access to the GPS system or they might have to shoot it down next time they were at war with an african nation (who happened to be using GPS to direct their guerilla units to french bases)?
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Without a doubt there are situations (allthough probably more and more seldom) where ligthhouses are beneficial. But the disadvantages of other navigation mentioned in the article pretty much all hit ligthhouses just as much, or even more. For example:
Exactly. My dad is a sailor/shipwright, and I remember an example he gave me when commercial GPS was still really new. His ship was docked when he happened to check the GPS (I think he was in either Sydney or Christchurch NZ). The GPS showed the boat was sitting on land in the middle of one of the big streets that ran beside the pier, a few hundred meters from the actual location. The GPS turned out to be far more accurate than the charts. This is getting to be less and less of a problem as cartographers use GPS to update their maps, and admittedly the error was still small enough that it wouldn't be a problem in most situations. But, again, your GPS is only as good as its maps, and cartographers are only human. Also, my dad later ran a marine electronics shop in Seattle. That's a whole other can of beans. After helping my dad try to fix GPS/radar/other navigation systems and seeing just how screwed up they can get, I would highly recommend that all aspiring sailors learn how to use the sextants in their emergency kits.
Never trust a physicist further than his DeBroglie wavelength.
I would highly recommend that all aspiring sailors learn how to use the sextants in their emergency kits.
Reminds me of a story about someone copmparing the accuracy of a sextant and GPS. The first night, it was overcast, so there were no stars. The same on the second. The third night, he managed to get a very accurate position, but this did require he knew what the time was. He got this from GPS.
Try doing a pure GPS measurement the next time they declare an orange alert. I wouldn't be surprised if it was off by 10s of metres. Probably the same situation if you're in the vicinity of Iraq (or any other 'hot' zone).
I know that the US has promised to not mess with the civilian system any more, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that you're on the limits of the error allowance in delicate locations/times.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
As a former astronomy major who did a research project on a 30" scope, I know the feeling. : ) Didn't they make a sextant to navigate by on the Apollo 13? I seem to remember something like that from the movie. The principle, at least, seems useful for navigation by space probes. Actually one of the indispensible tools in the observatory was the GPS. The time signal was used to calibrate the equatorial mounting.
Never trust a physicist further than his DeBroglie wavelength.
You know what the "*" behind the USS CORAL SEA means?
*Note: USS Coral Sea (CV 43) was decommissioned and scrapped 2 July 1993. Other ships' names appearing have been USS Missouri (BB 63) which was decommissioned on 31 March 1992 and USS Nimitz (CVN 68) which is an active ship.
Which is fine until some unfriendly blows your boat out of the water and you're stuck in a little life boat trying to navigate 800 Miles to the nearest friendly coast. Although I suppose the lifeboats may be equipped with GPS as well.
critics question whether the new system is reliable and safe enough to warrant the closure of these historical beacons of safety
Critics still believe the world is flat. I have no truck with critics.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
..wheres that lightho- *crash*
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Whoa Ho Ho Ho!!!! HA HAHAAAA! Yea, sure! Hold your breath while that happens. Hey, I've got another good one; my government (and the media) says there might be peace in the Middle East! Whoa Ho Ho Ho!!!! HA HAHAAAA!
More people (in general, not necissarily the parent) should watch a little less news and read a little more history. It's like having a sports almanac from 1985 when you live in the 50's. Oh well, hope really does spring eternal.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
lighthouses are a good redundancy incase GPS/Radar fails on the boat, as far as i know they dont get paid for by passing ships either so why are they being 'forced to close' ?
If it wasn't for Lighthouses, then Puff
the Magic Dragon wouldn't have found
a place to live where a young kid next door
to him could feed and love him.
Save these structures that are known
to promote safety to animated magical beasts
everywhere!
And they said zombies weren't real!
...who sent a love letter to this girl three times a day for three years?
She married the postman: He was always there.
They might want to keep those lighthouses around. If they don't, it'll be mighty hard to navigate the shoreline after the American government decides to jam their GPS system.
mbbac
Especially coastline areas that tend to have an inordinate amount of shipwrecks historically.
For example, the Cape Haterras lighthouse in North Carolina definitely should stay, not only as a historical landmark but also as a warning for ships to be careful travelling near the lighthouse due to the many shipwrecks that have occurred off the coast of Cape Haterras.
GPS - Batteries dies, loose signal in rainstorms
Lighthouse - Light burns out, can't see light in hail storm
The more things change...
Why GPS wins is control - you have your GPS with you where ever you go, Lighthouse are where someone else decided one was needed.
[sarcasm]
BUt don't forget the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow'- should the early happen to stop revolving on its axis those lighthouse beacons will come in _real_ handy
[/sarcasm]
Realistically- that theory was proven impossible a LONG time before that movie... Made watching it that much less interesting.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
...Knows that the Great Lighthouse is rendered obsolete by Magnetism.
I remember seeing an NSA honeypot a couple of years ago that suggested GPS signals are deliberately skewed in combat situations. It would be interesting to know if Al Jazeera's GPS receivers work like Fox News'. Given the history of U.S.-German relations in the last 90 years (or 48 months), it seems oddly shortsighted to rely exclusively on U.S. aids to navigation along Fatherland beachfront.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Last time I was night sailing (in pre-affordable-GPS-time), I mainly navigated using lighted buoys. They can have powerful strobes that are probably seen as far as any lighthouse beam.
He said we choose Iraq over Iran as the lesser of two evils. I made the point that you should choose neither, which might involve invading both countries, or staying out of it entirely (like we did during the Rwandan genocides, the slaughter of East Timor, and currently genocides in Sudan).
WWII was a necessity, and there are few who deny it. WWI was the result of age old alliances, and WWII was the result, as Woodrow Wilson foretold, of punishing Germany too harshly for their actions. Vietnam was unnecessary, as was Korea, and the second Gulf War (Iraq '03.)
The point in every instance I can think of in the 20th and 21st centuries, except for WWII, war is unjustified. America has deployed troops around the world since 1950, claiming that instability can strike at any time. That's why we pay nearly the same taxes as some socialist countries, and reap far less benefits. It seems to me that we stick our nose in too much business, and when complain when someone punches it.
Look at the current "war on terrorism" which we are "winning." Terrorism has existed since weapons have existed, and is really just a part of warfare. We don't think it's fair that they rig bodies with bombs, or plow their explosive filled vehicles into checkpoints. Well, what did the French Resistance do? What did the Belgians do? You fight with what you have, and I'm sure Iraqi Baathists would love to have tanks, humvees, satellite guides missiles, carriers launching ICBMs, and night vision.
The real reason for our military stance is simple. We don't want to be bombed, so we bomb someone else - preferably a non-caucasian, poverty stricken country that doesn't really fight back. All of these imminent dangers fund our military research, and make sure we're the big kid on the block.
War is peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is strength.
"There's a lot of war talk these days, as there should be, but it's all aimed at making sure the world is peaceful." -GW Bush
"There ought to be limits to freedom. We're aware of this site, and this guy is just a garbage man, that's all he is." -GW Bush
"I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves." -GW Bush
Have a good day!
Email and the postal services do not have that type of interoperability.
And yes, I am aware that most maritime accidents are related to human error and not to the navigation aids themselves.
We were vacationing up there last year (we live in St Louis, MO, USA). We always do a light house tour. That year we were also informed all the houses were being closed to the public and sold. Most were being sold to private developers but some made it into the hands of Lighthouse fans/organizations. My girls, aged 7 and 9, loved the tales told by the folks who lived and operated them. We really enjoyed the tours. Luckily I have a few photos of us near and in them from the years we were up there. I guess I will keep them next to the ones of me by the World Trade Center.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
that just doesn't work. GPS is providing a service similar to what lighthouses provide, and boat owners are paying for that service when they buy and use GPS products.
Your analogy would only work if, say, the music and movie industries were suing people who bought independant movies and records. In that case customers are turning to alternative product offerings to satisfy similar needs. Note that in both cases they are still paying for a product.
I know you're trying to be funny, but it only works if it makes sense. Thankfully for you Slashdot hardly *ever* makes sense.
It's the year of Linux! To celebrate I have x free hotmail accounts to give away
Hmm, lots of folks making the buggy whip comparison here... only we're talking about life and death warnings not what kind of accelerator your transportation has.
In life-critical systems, redundancy is good.
Then there's the point of failure question, with GPS you have a single point of failure: the button that turns the system to "wobbly" (ie the interference they used to inject) can also turn the system to "off". If you were in the oval office and got word of a missile attack on DC... how long would GPS signal be up in that area? Buttons aside, the satellites have limited redundancy and lighthouses, in comparison to deploying hardware to space, just aren't all that expensive to run.
To preserve the way of life of Lighthouse hermits, we should provide current lighthouse keepers certificates for operating a lighthouse and receiving a subsidy - only there is no need for the lighthouse - so the lighthouse need not be operated - the certificate is then negotiable as an entitlement subsidy, and can be traded to bankers as a long term income instrument.
I know this makes no sense - except that is exactly what we have done with water rights and sheep farming rights - so why not?
Farmers have more votes than regular ol' people, (see electoral colledge) so why shouldn't they get whatever the hell subsidy they want?
Enjoy
AIK
Given that the accuracy of non-militarized GPS is 10 meters at best- I'd think killing the lighthouses WILL kill some German Sailors who don't have the backup method of rekoning position. Heck, my GPS unit can't even tell which side of the street my house is on from position alone.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"Hell, even over a long enough period of time, plate tectonics will move the position of your ground station by more than a couple millimeters."
That's an interesting comment and something I asked the civil engineers about. A funny thing is if a plate does shift a bit, where ever the national geological survey markers remain are the official spots for them still. Go figure.
But, the residual was accurate to withen 3 decimal places of a 10th which is 1000th of a tenth. So OK, maybe it's a centieter.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
The chance of the GPS system failing is almost precisely the chance of general war
Or the chance of a large solar storm affecting radio transmissions. Wars also actually DO happen. You've also conveniently ignored the fallibility of GPS receivers. Don't act like this is some kind of pork-barrel project that costs billions of dollars (or in this case German Marks). Maintaining an automated lighthouse has to be about dirt cheap.
AccountKiller
There is zero probability that it would be shot as soon as it came to life. It would destroy NATO, irreparably damage relations with both Europe and China, and quite possibly lead to war. US foreign policy is bad enough without exagerrating.
How e-mail is killing the sales of postage stamps.
...recieving spam e-mail, free
...identity theft, $2574
...sending a parcel full of viagra via e-mail, priceless.
What? Is it priceless to send parcels full of viagra and other stuff avertiesed via email?
Oh, it's priceless alright...
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I thought we used directional radio already to guide ships in on a beam. It's just that GPS is much less expensive and more accurate, but, the technology to replace light houses has already been around since the 1960s and in America most lighthouses I believe are museums.
This is my sig.
Lighthouses, aside from being valid navigational beacons, are also more often than not historical structures. Cape Hatteras, St. Augustine, Boston Harbor, etc. -- all are of historical significance and have preservation societies to keep them in good condition for future visitors. Also, given that the U.S. Government has indicated that it might "turn off" freely-accessible GPS in future conflicts to prevent the system from being used against the U.S. Armed Forces, it might be wise to keep those lights turned on just in case you happen to be off some shoals the next time some middle eastern country gets invaded.