Europe Building Their Own GPS

An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that Europe is planning to build their own satellite-navigation network that will be backward and forward compatible. There's going to be 5 levels ranging from free (1m accuracy) to commercial (1cm accuracy)! Provision is also being made for a search and rescue mode where a signal can be sent to confirm that help is on the way. The system will supposedly even work with existing US network after upgrades to the network."

Comments

... and the reason is:

[Troed]

(To stop all US comments about why we Europeans don't need this)

GPS is a military-run programme; its signals can be degraded or switched off. Yes, the service is free, but its continuity and quality come with no guarantees

Galileo will be a civil system. It will be run by a private consortium and will offer guaranteed levels of service

(from the article)

Re:... and the reason is:

[goaliemn]

I like one of the systems..

" Public regulated Encrypted; Continuous availability even in time of crisis; Government agencies will be main users "

So they can shut down the public free systems.. or degrade them "in times of crisis" or they wouldn't put this in the system.

I wonder who will decide this?

Re:... and the reason is:

[franois-do]

Er... including terrorist organizations ?

I wonder what would happen if (if!) Pdt Bush decided this satellite set were a menace, and had it destroyed, the same ways Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor. I doubt whether it would be considered as a casus belli in Europe. On the other hand, they could decide to do business with just Asia from that moment on, as the only thing still built in the USA seem to be microprocessors, and they can easily make the move to any new (compatible or not) architecture now that Open Source software is mature.

Re:... and the reason is:

[saterdaies]

While I agree largely with what you've said, it does raise some issues. First, it's not just Europeans that need Galileo. Everyone in the world will reap the benefits of a civil-run positioning system that isn't controlled by the Pentagon. Second, I think it is well within the bounds of sanity to question if it is needed. Yes, the reason you quoted is quite valid: the US government could mess with the GPS in the future and it's always nice to have an alternative system to balance it. But how much are we willing to pay for said alternative system? I believe the article said that it was going to cost $3-4bn. That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while. Think of it like you think of a computer purchase (since this is Slashdot). With Dell, you have two notebook options: the Inspiron which is cheaper and less reliable, and the Latitude which is more expensive and more reliable. Which do you buy? For my use of GPS (which is limited to car navigation), it's not a big deal if the accuracy degrades and it really isn't even that big a deal if it is turned off - so, I'd have to go back to Mapquest like most of the world (or is it Google Maps that everyone's using today). I, as well as most people I would suspect, would choose price over the small possibility of degraded accuracy or a system lockout. While Galileo is free, nothing is free. It's being paid for with government money and the government money comes from people. Oh, and the article does mention that Galileo might be degraded or shut off in the most extreme circumstances and, to my knowledge, the United States hasn't been messing with GPS much if any. I hate a US hegemony as much as anyone, but Galileo is expensive (I think those billions could be better spent on thins like, say, treating Aids) and the US hasn't done anything (to my knowledge) with the GPS yet to make me too worried and even if the US does mess with it for non-mission critical things (like my car's nav system) temporarally, it isn't a big deal (not a big enough deal for me to want to spend $3-4bn on it). Yeah, using the GPS puts us all at the will of the Pentagon for our navigation needs, but creating an alternative is expensive and in my opinion more expensive than the freedom from the Pentagon's management is worth.

Re:... and the reason is:

[sfeinstein]

You must be new here if you think that the U.S. military will find it any more difficult to degrade or disable Galileo than it does the U.S. GPS network.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Scarblac]

GPS was also expensive, but it made the investment back several times over in benefits to US industry. That is expected for Galileo too, for instance by the commercial service. It's an investment.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Everyone in the world will reap the benefits of a
> civil-run positioning system that isn't controlled by the Pentagon.

How would it be different from the current system, except for some marginally useful increases in accuracy and the inability to shut it off during a war if it's being used by enemy missles?

An almost non-existent advantage and a huge disadvantage don't sound like good justification for the pithy comment of "that isn't controlled by the Pentagon."

Re:... and the reason is:

[JanneM]

How would it be different from the current system, except for some marginally useful increases in accuracy and the inability to shut it off during a war if it's being used by enemy missles?

One big benefit (as the article clearly stated; I can recommend reading it), is the much improved accuracy - 1m or so on the open, free channel, 1cm with error estimation for subscribed service, whereas 5-10m is normal for GPS.

A second benefit is that it works better in restricted environments, like beneath a forest canopy, or among high-rises. As anyone using GPS to navigate big cities know, accuracy can rapidly drop to 20 meters or worse, which is frankly no longer all that useful when you're trying to locate a particular adress. A third, associated benefit is that the system takes a lot shorter time to lock on when you start your receiver. Again, in a city, you may have to wait for upwards of five minutes, moving around all the while, before the receiver finds four satellites and figures out where you are.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Murphy Murph]

But anyone tracking both L1 and L2 can get that kind of accuracy today with GPS.

This is a fix for a problems which doesn't exist.

Re:... and the reason is:

[falcon5768]

you must be new here.

The US has a military budget that dwarfs most of EUs counrys entire budgets. They will find it no more a hardship to jam whatever the EU sends up there than they would flicking the switch on the GPS system. And the EU wouldnt know a damn thing about it, and if they did, there wouldnt be anything they could do without making it look like a threat which none of them would be willing to back up since most of the countrys dont even have a real army.

They could threaten trade sanctions, but there is honestly very little in needed items that come out of europe that we couldnt get elsewhere. Most of europes trade is in luxuries.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

My memories of these things from the uni are a little hazy, but that 1 cm accuracy is probably a lie (except if the error estimates are in the range of +-100cm for 95% certainty). Just the atmospheric errors prevent you from measuring your position to the accuracy of under half a meter.

There is another big benefit however: Galileo might just be an economic success. GPS certainly is and competition mostly doesn't hurt, right?

Re:... and the reason is:

[Scrameustache]

Yeah, using the GPS puts us all at the will of the Pentagon for our navigation needs, but creating an alternative is expensive

Freedom ain't free.

Re:... and the reason is:

[CAPSLOCK2000]

[quote]
For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while.
[/quote]

That may be acceptable for you car-computer, but not for my countries cruise-missiles. I do not want any other country (including the US) to control them, or their navigation-systems.

Unfortunatly Galileo can still be controled by the US. Europe more or less was told to hand over the controls, or the US would shoot the sattelites down.
That kind of force is exactly why Europe should have an independant positioning-system.

Re:... and the reason is:

[richlv]

you don't get acceptable accuracy in europe. for example, garmin etrex legend is off by 5-30m while driving in a car, so plotting your trip in a map later shows that you misteriously have jumped over the river, continued some time on the other cost, then driven on the river and then back on the road.

oh, and actually independence from usa _is_ a big deal today. this technology is beckoming too important.

Re:... and the reason is:

[sjwaste]

"On the other hand, they could decide to do business with just Asia from that moment on"

Dream on, no major economy in the world, the US included, can decide to just "not do business" with another major economy. Both would come crashing down. I'll assume you're European, so let me ask, why do you get off so hard fantasizing about screwing the US? You can't do it, just as much as we can't do it to you. That's enough fairness out of me, though. Now let me point out your rampant unemployment, over 8% is it? Please, solve that first before dreaming of your "derail the US" fantasies. So much for planned economies, huh?

I'm an American and have nothing against the EU nor its citizens, and I think that's the sentiment of most of our population here (I even invest in your markets!). The anti-American attitude coming out of Europe, though, is sickening. You need us as much as we need you, so its probably about time you drop the attitude. I could easily say "well, if you're going to be a moron, I'll just take my money out of the European markets" but that isn't a solution. Whining and complaining just doesn't solve anything.

Re:... and the reason is:

[richlv]

seems to be a mistake in summary - in article i could find only "High accuracy at the cm scale" which isn't exactly 1cm

Re:... and the reason is:

[egburr]

As anyone using GPS to navigate big cities know, accuracy can rapidly drop to 20 meters or worse, which is frankly no longer all that useful when you're trying to locate a particular adress.

If it can get you within 20 meters (or let's say even 50) and you still can't locate a particular address, I don't think that problem is with the GPS system.

An error of 50 meters or less should put you on the right street or really close to the intersection of the right street. If you're in a residential area, look at the numbers on the mailboxes, curbs, or houses. The numbers are generally in order, odds on one side of the street, even on the other. If you're in a business area, look at the numbers on the buildings, or even just read the signs identifying the businesses.

Re:... and the reason is:

[aaronl]

You can get this kind of high accuracy from GPS, if you do a little bit of engineering. The more satellites that you can hear, the more accurately you can fix your position. If you incorporate a ground station into your network, you get more substantial improvements in accuracy.

The main problem that I see with GPS is the same with Galileo, or any other satellite system: it doesn't work when the sky is obscured. You really want line of sight to a satellite to communicate with it. That's why GPS has issues in vehicles, cities, and dense forests. To compensate for the forest and vehicle issue, you need to either boost transmit power, or use more sensitive receivers. To deal with the city issue, you need to have more satellite in your constellation. This will work better, until you're in a dense area where the only visible sky is directly above you. The EU isn't going to be able to transmit through buildings...

If Galileo was really about public use, there wouldn't be a private subscriber channel. The system would just put out accurate data to begin with. Why would the EU citizens accept paying billions for this network, just to have to pay for a subscription to actually use its full capabilities?

Re:... and the reason is:

[MadEE]

Unfortunatly Galileo can still be controled by the US. Europe more or less was told to hand over the controls, or the US would shoot the sattelites down. That kind of force is exactly why Europe should have an independant positioning-system. There is a large and blatantly obvious gap between shutting down (the accuracy) of a free service and committing acts of war. Actions like that are likely to be met with reciprocity which really is to no one benefit.

Re:... and the reason is:

[franois-do]

Dream on, no major economy in the world, the US included, can decide to just "not do business" with another major economy.

I am sure you have a demonstration at hand, so I shall wait for it. As a european, I have grown accustomed to people telling us that free trade was the solution for us, while taking severe protectionist measures from their own side, Japan and USA included. "Do what I say, not what I do !" ?

Both would come crashing down. I'll assume you're European, so let me ask, why do you get off so hard fantasizing about screwing the US?

Who cares about that ? We are just looking to protect our own interests. Dosn't everybody ?

You can't do it, just as much as we can't do it to you.

Well, that has been done with steel and foie gras, just to qote these two examples. Don't you agree ?

Now let me point out your rampant unemployment, over 8% is it?

Yes. Which is what you has, as far as I remember, at the beginning of the Reagan era. Unemployment rate come and go, and buying things elsewhere while selling one's capital (and/or making a huge debt, which is not very different) rather than employing one's own people can hardly be described as a good solution, or even as a solution at all.

So much for planned economies, huh?

I spent 25 years in a multinational corporation, and while I hate to deprive peoiple of their illusions, I have to inform you that none of them works withour not one, but two plans : a short-term (2 years sliding) plan and a strategic (5-year sliding) plan. As theses corporations are slightly taking the world over (I guess you saw the movie "The corporation"), we shoud assume that planned economy is efficient, when it occurs in a strongly darwinian world.

I'm an American

I guess you mean that you are a US citizen. "American" would refer as well to Canadians, Mexicans, Bresilian, people from Argentina and so on)

and have nothing against the EU nor its citizens, and I think that's the sentiment of most of our population here (I even invest in your markets!)

Join the club ;-) So do I (and in fact it does not mean much to say that a Corporation belong to one continent or another. Sooner or later, it will flee where the taxes are smallest, anyway). I am rather gald at the way Air Liquide has been performing in the last 30 years.

The anti-American attitude coming out of Europe, though, is sickening.

I shall not enter this arrière-garde fight. Please read "The Economist" of this week (Christmas special), and everything you could say and I could answer is already in it, pages 41-43. Thank you.

You need us as much as we need you

But you just do NOT need us. When there was no much cross-border trade between continental Europe and the USA, not only did the USA survive, but they got finally out of their crisis, remember. The only thing that is needed is international cooperation to achieve the right momentum for big investment, no matter with whom. Presently, the cash is in China, and the only reason we are not dealing only with them is their poor management, to say the least, of human rights. On this point, I a pretty sure you will agree this is a valuable reason.

Re:... and the reason is:

[sl3xd]

If it can get you within 20 meters (or let's say even 50) and you still can't locate a particular address, I don't think that problem is with the GPS system.

Careful there; youre asking geeks to look away from their shiny for a few seconds.

Re:... and the reason is:

[JanneM]

If it can get you within 20 meters (or let's say even 50) and you still can't locate a particular address, I don't think that problem is with the GPS system.

You haven't been to Osaka, I understand. Or Tokyo, for that matter (though my own experience with that city is limited to a few weeks). 20 meters off is plenty of margin to get lost.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Verteiron]

That may be your etrex. I've got one of those as well, and it does the same thing even when it's got 6+ locks and WAAS enabled. If you turn off the "lock-to-roads" feature it seems to work a bit better.

Re:... and the reason is:

[JanneM]

You can get this kind of high accuracy from GPS, if you do a little bit of engineering.

And you can get better than 1m with Galileo with a bit of engineering.

The fact is, in dense cities, GPS sucks hairy monkey balls. With Galileo, and with receivers able to read both systems, things would improve immensely even if Galileo was only a copy of GPS (which it isn't) since there'll be more satellites in view.

If Galileo was really about public use, there wouldn't be a private subscriber channel. The system would just put out accurate data to begin with. Why would the EU citizens accept paying billions for this network, just to have to pay for a subscription to actually use its full capabilities?

I posted an answer about that below; basically, you're paying for the guarantee itself. You can use that data for potentially critical applications, knowing that there is someone with their reputation (and bankbook) on the line if the system borks due to lost position.

Note that the emergency channel gives you just about the same accuracy, and with a low-bandwidth communication channel, for free; it's the guarantee itself that is the difference

.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Verteiron]

Why would the EU citizens accept paying billions for this network, just to have to pay for a subscription to actually use its full capabilities?

The same reason you put a tollbooth on a new bridge. In 5 or 10 years, when it has paid for itself, open it up. That may not happen with the Galileo system but there is certainly a rational justification for providing a subscription service.

That said, the EU is not in the business of providing free gifts to the world. The Galileo project is global by definition; why SHOULD they provide it for free to everyone on the planet?

Re:... and the reason is:

[Alioth]

You may like to accept the degraded (or non existent signal) if the US turns it off, but pilots aren't. Already, there are plans in the US to get rid of most ground-based navaids. Currently, in Europe, GPS is not valid for IFR (instrument flight rules) navigation, because no European country has any kind of guarantee on quality-of-service. It wouldn't be too great, for example, if you were on an instrument approach and >poof, GPS is degraded or turned off just when you really really need sub 5-meter accuracy. Until Europe has its own satellite navigation system, its commercial airlines and private aircraft must rely on many expensive and inaccurate ground-based navaids (for example, you still need an ADF receiver - truly pre-historic, inadequate and inaccurate - to fly IFR in Europe).

Re:... and the reason is:

[Dun Malg]

seems to be a mistake in summary - in article i could find only "High accuracy at the cm scale" which isn't exactly 1cm

Indeed, "high accuracy at the cm scale" has a specific meaning, and that is "accuracy at a scale of less than one meter". The summary writer is a dunce, as they usually are. I mean, come on! The antennas for these devices are bigger than 1 cm! You're not likely to have accuracy greater than the size of your antenna.

Re:... and the reason is:

[MadEE]

The US has a military budget that dwarfs most of EUs counrys entire budgets. They will find it no more a hardship to jam whatever the EU sends up there than they would flicking the switch on the GPS system. And the EU wouldnt know a damn thing about it, and if they did, there wouldnt be anything they could do without making it look like a threat which none of them would be willing to back up since most of the countrys dont even have a real army.

Anyone with basic physics knowledge should be able to tell when something is being jammed and add a highly directional antenna to the mix and you can tell where. Having a large investment in the military really isn't all that relevant in a technological war (don't kid yourself disabling someone's infrastructure is an act of war however to dice it) such as this as jamming technology and missiles able to shoot down sats aren't that expensive relatively speaking particularly countries with huge commercial space investments. Even the most naiive commanders should expect reciprocity from actions you describe.

They could threaten trade sanctions, but there is honestly very little in needed items that come out of europe that we couldnt get elsewhere. Most of europes trade is in luxuries.

It is very unlikely this would happen but... That is just foolish, sanctions regardless of where would drive the cost of products everywhere. However more damaging would be the lack of investment as the US economy is based heavily on outside investment.

However all this is discussion is really unnecessary since the US could/would simply place local jammers where coverage isn't wanted and would probably meet little or no resistance from the EU.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You, my friend, are the reason why Europeans regard Americans as straw-chomping, sister-fucking dullards.

I thought it was because of penis envy... It's true that is why all the beautiful people live in the US

But seriously...(the above was a friendly jab by-the-way)

Despite any public grumblings, the US and EU are still strong allies and all the US would have to do is ask and the EU would be more than willing to help their friend.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Dolphinzilla]

Just as Europeans might not like being dependant on a US made system (and DoD run at that) We in the US may also be wary of using a European system for exactly the same reasons. Assuming that the system is ever actually deployed the winning products will be those that are hybrid systems and can utilize both systems (there actually were some hybrid GPS/GLONASS systems a few years back). I for one welcome our new European Navigation System Overlords !!

Re:... and the reason is:

[CAPSLOCK2000]

Sorry to wake you up, but this is what really happened.
And Europe just swallowed it.

When Europe announced plans for an independent positioning system it was told that the USA would not allow it unless they were given full control over the off-switch.

Europe is thankfull for being allowed to use the GPS network, but it's getting to important to be dependant on a foreign country.

Re:... and the reason is:

[aaronl]

Hopefully the reality of the system will match with what they are saying. I'm not sure how they expect to have enough satellites to get a signal into dense cities, but more having satellites in view is certainly welcomed by me.

The thing that I'm surprised nobody has mentioned is that GPS is aging and losing satellites from the constellation. Those sats haven't been replaced, and so the reliability of the system is going down. I hope there will be a maintanance plan for Galileo.

Re:... and the reason is:

[aaronl]

Nah, the reason for a tollbooth is increased revenue. There is never a government expectation of removing the toll from a road. Public funds already paid for the project, so you can't really justify putting a toll on it to "pay for it". The closest you get is by trying to say that you're paying off bond interest and/or project maintanance with the toll. Galileo is very similar, in this way.

The other poster that replied to me gives a good rationale for having the subscription service.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Rakishi]

There are already a number of backup GPS sats in orbit, and baring some really high failure rates the current rate of replacement will nicely deal with the failures that do happen (in the sense of sticking another backup into orbit to replace the one that replaced the dead sat). It's stupid to put sats into orbit faster than they fall down, you lose money in the long term for no benefit (sats begin aging as soon as you send them up, sending them up too soon means you will need to send up another sooner as well, etc.).

Re:... and the reason is:

[adsl]

GPS is both a fantastic tool and a potentially dangerous tool. Having two independantly controlled services increases the "risk" of one being kept live under a future potential "attack scenario". Yep this is the worst case scenario, but everyone thought that 911 wouldn't happen and it did...sadly... I really don't see the rationale for Europe building what already exists, on the premise that "Europe" made need to keep "their GPS" UP, when the US militarily shuts their's down. Spending billions of Euros beacuse of NIH seems a waste IMHO. Couldn't Europe invest that money in a new "free for all" technology which would benefit Europe, the US and the rest of the world?

Re:... and the reason is:

[kimvette]

Actually both general aviation and commercial aviation are becoming increasingly dependant upon GPS and while it's not considered a critical system for aviation yet, when the "highway in the sky" system is implemented (probably around the year 3000 with all of the bureaucratic bullshit that has to happen so lawyers can get their pay) GPS is going to be the single most important element of that system. Also, the Loran system is being phased out and has been threatened with an immediate discontinuation for over ten years (much like analog TV ;) - many have been pushing to save Loran, at least as a backup navigation system), so marine navigation is pretty much 100% reliant on GPS now, and anyone buying a new Loran system is potentially throwing money away. Not only that, civilian emergency systems such as police, ambulance and fire fighters rely heavily on GPS - life-critical systems. Lastly, the latest generation cellphones use GPS to pinpoint victims for assistance when calling 911.

So yes, GPS is a critical for civilian use, and for the military to mess with it since Clinton's ordering the induced error be discontinued now would be foolhardy (to put it lightly), and much more than a minor inconvenience. It's much too late for the military to turn back and shut off civilian use or to introduce errors into the system again.

Re:... and the reason is:

[amliebsch]

Nah, the reason for a tollbooth is increased revenue.

It is also to prevent over-utilization. The tolls are set high enough to discourage casual crossing, making sure that traffic remains flowing for productive activity.

Re:... and the reason is:

[kimvette]

Mod parent up +5 funny :D

Re:... and the reason is:

[The Lynxpro]

"I am sure you have a demonstration at hand, so I shall wait for it. As a european, I have grown accustomed to people telling us that free trade was the solution for us, while taking severe protectionist measures from their own side, Japan and USA included. "Do what I say, not what I do !" ?"

That's funny considering its been the French Government that has been the obstacle to better transatlantic trade and cooperation over the past 25 years, not the U.S. France and its love/dependence upon CAP farm subsidies is the very reason why the U.S. and the formerly E.C. did not come to a free-trade agreement back in the early 90s. Certainly the U.K. and others within the E.C. wanted it but France had to kick up its heels because it wants to believe that it will control the destiny of the Continent despite the fact that the Germans are the actual paymasters. We are talking about the same French government that tries to counter *Anglo-American* influence in the EU every chance it can get, whether it means subsidizing "European" (aka "French") cinema/television, replacing commonly accepted words/phrases like "email" with French equivalents, launching a government-funded French language version of CNN, trying to create a "Euro" army independent (aka "French" dominated) of NATO and in competition with NATO, trying to block Iraqi debt forgiveness because most of Saddam's foreign debt was owed to France (to pay for weaponry and such) and not to mention the whole Iraq war because of the fear of losing Saddam's client-state status, and responding to Google's digital library plans with another government sponsored program in opposition. Oh yeah, not to mention that French intelligence in the 80s and 90s was mainly concerned with spying on American and British corporations and providing French companies (many of which were state owned "national champions") with trade secrets instead of, oh, I dunno, helping to win the Cold War? I had to mention that since France has been known since the time of the Clinton Administration to complain about Echelon and Carnivore snooping on French/EU business when turnabout is considered to be fairgame.

Re:... and the reason is:

[milkmage]

if you can get within 20 meters of a address in a metropolitain area then get LOST because you lost signal... you probably shouldn't be allowed to drive.

Re:... and the reason is:

[goaliemn]

You can do this with GPS. They have something called RAIM calculation which calculates the quality of the GPS signal at your destination, as well as along the flight path.

There are also higher accuracy IFR landing procedures being put into place around the US using WAAS technology, which is available in some areas in the EU as well.

Re:... and the reason is:

[SalsaShark42]

GPS is a military-run programme; its signals can be degraded or switched off. Yes, the service is free, but its continuity and quality come with no guarantees

Is this still an accurate statement to make? There are a number of high-speed rail systems that leverage GPS for proactive safety controls...the success of those systems is heavily influenced by GPS availability and accuracy.

Aren't there some applications where an SLA is put into place? I'd be a bit scared at knowing someone like Union Pacific or Lockheed was basing their safety systems on an "at-will" service...

Re:... and the reason is:

[drinkypoo]

If it can get you within 20 meters (or let's say even 50) and you still can't locate a particular address, I don't think that problem is with the GPS system.

With sub-1-meter accuracy, you can determine which lane someone is in, so you can tell them they need to be in a different one to catch their freeway entrance/exit.

I find your lack of imagination disturbing.

Re:... and the reason is:

[pizpot]

The USSA attacks other countries for profit and out of fear. If they attacked Europe then Europe will need its own system. Period.

Re:... and the reason is:

[doublecuffs]

[Rant] So because the Pentagon has "intelligence" that the US is under threat, the rest of the world has to suffer degraded GPS operation. The problem is that the Americans seem to think that America IS the world. I used to work for an American computer company and the number of times that an invite to a local event in California was sent out globally was ridiculous. The rest of the world, which the Americans seemed to call ROW as if it was a colony belonging to them, need to be independent of the gun crazy, megalomaniacal Americans, lead by that lunatic Dubya Bush. BTW, I don't live in EMEA, I live in the UK if you must use acronyms. [/Rant]

Re:... and the reason is:

[badmammajamma]

rofl...why the fuck would we attack Europe when there's millions of arabs with oil we can kill?

Seriouly, get your head out of your ass. If anything, we should be more concerned about Europe attacking us rather than the other way around (based on polls on how much we like each other). You dislike us and we like you. At least that's how it plays out according to the polls I read a month ago.

However, if England ever discovers a giant fucking oil field underneath Liverpool or some shit like that, be warned. Mr. Bush wants your black gold and he's more than willing to kill you for it.

Re:... and the reason is:

[pizpot]

...like the USSA's economy isn't going to crash.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Zak3056]

GPS was also expensive, but it made the investment back several times over in benefits to US industry.

Sure--but are the benefits of Galileo over and above the already existing GPS system going to provide a similar payback? My guess is: probably not. Still, I'm a firm believer in redundancy, and it's not like the EU is going to be spending my money on this, so you won't hear me complaining.

Re:... and the reason is:

[egburr]

"lack of imagination"? I don't agree that needing to know which lane the car is in is a necessity. Instead, when the car is a mile or so away from the exit (or more for many-lane highways during rush hour) just announce "Your exit is approaching on the right (or left if that is the case). Take exit number NNN in one mile." A 50 meter error at that distance will be so insignificant it will be irrelevant.

In your case, suppose the right lane was temporarily closed, say for an accident. I'd get very irritated at the GPS driver screaming at me "I told you to get in the right lane! Do it now or you'll miss your exit! Move over! Move! Move! MOVE!" Okay, it'd probably be more like every 10 seconds "You are in the wrong lane. Please move to the right lane as soon as possible." but that would have me muttering "I can't you stupid computer. Shut up." and getting irritated that it keeps repeating that.

Re:... and the reason is:

[flinkgutt]

European industry will, as far as I've gathered, have a tad larger/broader access to Galileio as US industry apparently has on the GPS system. Which makes it easier to compete with US industry, a fact that we all should enjoy. "Free" market and so on.

And I really can't understand why it's not allowed to say "we want our own shit", when the US _seems_ far more likely to build it's own "shit" than to depend on others. ;-)

Now let's all be friends and get along with our new toys :-)

--
Christian
Kan du lese dette er du smartere enn flesteparten her ;-P

Re:... and the reason is:

[Moofie]

Well, it's not your money, is it? When you pay the bills, you can call the tune. I think a parallel, independent system is a superb idea.

Re:... and the reason is:

[drinkypoo]

Just having the message be situational would be well worthwhile. If you're already in the exit lane, it can tell you "stay in this lane and exit right on blah blah blah street." If not, it can tell you that the far right lane exits. If we would ever actually start using the construction site beacons as a nation (practically every radar detector supports them; virtually no one uses them) then the system could detect those, too, and automatically route around them and stop the stupid lane-closed problem from even occurring.

Re:... and the reason is:

[susano_otter]

The USSA attacks other countries for profit and out of fear. If they attacked Europe then Europe will need its own system. Period.

Dude, if the "USSA", attacks Europe, then Europe is going to need a lot more than their own GPS system.

They'll need a world-class army, for one thing. Which raises an interesting point: a world-class army has many different methods of getting accurate-enough positioning data. Thus, if Europe had a world-class army, their own GPS system would be a useful, but not mandatory, addition to their force. Conversely, not having a world-class army, their own GPS system will do Europe little good in a violent conflict with the "USSA".

Also, was that extra "S" deliberate, or accidental? If deliberate, what does it mean? United Soviet States of America? Unilateral Super Seiyan Asshats? Underpants Still Sag Alarmingly? If accidental, please disregard and carry on.

Re:... and the reason is:

[susano_otter]

Doesn't European industry have the same access to the U.S. GPS system that American industry does?

And wouldn't American industry have the same access to the Galileo system as European industry?

If the first is true, than Galileo will have no impact on the current competition situation, unless the second is untrue, in which case it would be Europeans that is trying to get an exclusive competitive advantage, not the Americans. If the second is also true, then Galileo ends up having zero net effect on the current competition situation.

Re:... and the reason is:

[alphakappa]

" That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that.."

Well, it isn't as easy as that. What you don't realize is that GPS has applications far beyond simple travel routing for the average person. There are applications that you never see, but are critically dependant on GPS. For example, a GPS system is at heart, a very accurate time-telling mechanism. It is used in any application that needs precise time, for example network routers, or even your mobile communication system. Then there are aircraft that depend on GPS for their navigation, and surveyors and a host of other industries that need a reliable GPS system. An investment of $3-4 billion is very tiny when you look at the number of industries that are dependant on this system.

Re:... and the reason is:

[bjheu]

First off... Yes GPS IS a military program. And as such we will not hand over any kind of control. Thereby giving incentive to every country in the world to attempt to develop their own. Glonass was the Russian attempt and it didn't fare as well as they had hoped but it's still there. The EU wants to build Galileo to the same accuracy as the restricted signal that the US military and allies have access to. Our fear (a very reasonable one) is that our enemies will have the same accuracy against us that we enjoy. You can't denay that any other country wouldn't feel the same.

As for decreasing accuracy/turning off the civil signal altogether, that is a fairly moot issue. Yes we may degrade accuracy in any area in which we are engaged in hostilities. But the US government acknowledges that doing that anywhere else puts lives needlessly at risk.

Now if Galileo comes online and becomes as widely accepted as GPS is then the risk of harm becomes more negligible and you may see the signal degraded or turned off in extreme circumstances.

As for cost, I don't know about the ESA but here in the U.S., space program budgets tend to skyrocket after the contract has been signed and supposedly sealed.

As nice as this discussion is, this is hardly breaking news, Galileo has been in planning/negotiations for at least 5 years.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Drakonite]

But if sub-meter accurate navigation systems start to become common place in vehicles, I'd like to think we'd be smart enough to start having emergency vehicles (as well as road construction crews) equiped with some sort of beacon which would alert your navigation system as to the situation, causing you to get a message along the lines of "The lane you are currently in will be closed in 300 meters due to a traffic accident" Even better yet will be having it suggest another route to avoid the problem.

And one day we can hope to see major road ways being smart enough to report traffic levels to navigation systems, which can then offer a different route if the one you are taking is too congested.

None of this is out of the question, and sub meter accuracy would go a long way towards making it happen. When you start getting into 20m-50m error ranges in a downtown area, the system wouldn't even be able to tell what street you are on for sure, which just doesn't cut it. Otherwise all the technology is here... it's just a matter of getting it cheap enough to get enough saturation in the market to make it worthwild to setup the systems.

Re:... and the reason is:

[srite]

Does the same arguement hold good when china sends more man to space!

Re:... and the reason is:

[BgJonson79]

>> I'm an American

>I guess you mean that you are a US citizen. "American" would refer as well to Canadians, Mexicans, Bresilian, people from Argentina and so on)

This has been beaten to death, but what is the correct name for a citizen of the US? In every dictionary I've ever read, it's American. Like the name for a citizen of Canada is a Canadian (just like ya said).

Really, I do want to know the answer.

Re:... and the reason is:

[cheesybagel]

Uh, sorry dude, but the USA has plenty of farming subsidies of its own. Namely for milk and sugar. USA intelligence has also been known on occasion to be doing little more than corporate espionage, the USA government doing "marketing" and "persuading" other countries to deal with USA companies on, let us say, more than reasonable terms. It probably all started even before Admiral Perry shot his cannons in Japan to persuade the Japanese to open commerce with the USA.

Re:... and the reason is:

[pizpot]

I meant the extra S. The new USA is much like the stories I heard about the USSR as I was growing up. My grandparents fled from their. "You need that like a hole in the head" was an expression of their.

Re:... and the reason is:

[susano_otter]

The new USA is much like the stories I heard about the USSR as I was growing up.

Really? Did you have any specific stories in mind? The "new" USA strikes me as being radically different from the stories I heard about the USSR as I was growing up.

Re:... and the reason is:

[snero3]

Yeah, using the GPS puts us all at the will of the Pentagon for our navigation needs, but creating an alternative is expensive and in my opinion more expensive than the freedom from the Pentagon's management is worth.

Arrh no! For 2 reasons

1. The company I work for has a fleet of mobile vans that we need to know the exact (within 10 meters) location off at all times. If the system is turned off to the civilian devices because of some attack on the other side of the world we can no longer do business efficiently(it will actually cost us money to keep running). I would much prefer a civilian system that we pay for and thus get guarantied service.
2. I personally do a number of a out door activities which rely heavily on GPS to navigate accurately and speedily. I really DO NOT want to be 500kms from the nearest human when the US decides it is time to turn off GPS!

I think for those reasons it is well worth the effort and the expense to build another alternative.

Re:... and the reason is:

[jericho4.0]

How 'bout "Upper Mexican"?

Re:... and the reason is:

[Snaller]

...and, to my knowledge, the United States hasn't been messing with GPS much if any.

The reason they started devloping it was because the US degraded performance.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Kanasta]

Hate to say, $3-4bn is nothing. Look at any western country and their spending. This is 3-4bn shared by the whole EU!

Re:... and the reason is:

[Weedlekin]

England (or rather, the UK) already has a "giant fucking oil field" in the North Sea (it is shared with several Nordic countries). It's been under heavy commercial exploitation since the 1970s, and is a big source of revenue to the UK government.

Re:... and the reason is:

[strikethree]

two things:

First, learn to ues paragraphs.

Second, you can not have commercial reliance on a system that could possibly be taken away at any point in time (unreliable). New business opportunities will arise because of the guaranteed reliability.

strike

Re:... and the reason is:

[Murphy Murph]

I mean, come on! The antennas for these devices are bigger than 1 cm! You're not likely to have accuracy greater than the size of your antenna.

Sure you can.
I often use a 16" groundplane antenna for GPS surveys with SUB-cm accuracy.
It is all a matter of having modeled exactly where you phase center is. (and of having a stable phase center regardless of the elevation of sats, but that is a different matter.)

Re:... and the reason is:

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack ... my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while

Thanks to American capitalism, this is unlikely to happen. During the Persian Gulf War, the Armed Forces had trouble getting enough military GPS receivers - but soldiers could easily buy commercial GPS receivers through the normal channels. So the US ironically opened up the military signal to commercial use for some time during the war.

In the event of a protracted attack, the US will probably turn off GPS in a panic, then realize that there's plenty of systems like commercial jets that neet GPS to identify their location accurately, and turn it back on quickly.

Re:... and the reason is:

[dara]

Dun Malg wrote that "high accuracy at the cm scale" has a specific meaning, and that is "accuracy at a scale of less than one meter".

I read the BBC article and poked around on the net to find the accuracy potential of Galileo. So far, I've found a figure of 10-45 cm (http://www.eurescom.de/message/messageMar2005/Gal ileo_The_European_satellite_navigation_system.asp) which seems to corroborate the definition above. I have to admit that when I first read "at the cm scale", I thought of an accuracy of better than 10 cm.

Though it doesn't match matter to me - I'd be only using the free service. If that service can accomplish an RMS accuracy of 5 m under moderately dense forest canopy (or if it can work at all under very dense canopy), I will definitely be looking forward to an upgrade to my Garmin etrex. Heck, maybe by then I can get something that runs Linux even - either a smart phone or a more general pocket computer.

Dara

Disclosure: I work at one of the aerospace companies involved with GPS III.

Re:... and the reason is:

[AK Marc]

I'm an American
I guess you mean that you are a US citizen. "American" would refer as well to Canadians, Mexicans, Bresilian, people from Argentina and so on)

I wish I had mod points to mod you down. Every time I hear someone whine about this, I never hear anyone give a reasonable reason why it shouldn't be used. You obviously knew what he meant. It is a term you understand, and it is clear and unambiguous. The alternative is what, United States of American? That sounds good, but lets just shorten that to American. Or crap, we are back where we started. "US citizen"? What other place do you talk about then being a citizen? Occassionally when talking about it when their actual citizenship is an issue, but a person would be referred to as a Canadian much more often than a Canadian citizen, and everywhere else has something that doesn't have "citizen" tacked onto the end.

So, since you object to the term that you obviously recognize, is clear and concise, what is the alternative you would suggest?

Re:... and the reason is:

[richlv]

well, we don't get much waas coverage in europe and a default map for this region is rudimentary at best - there are almost no roads to lock to anyway.
on average it caches 4 sats, 6 is GOOD :)

of course, i suppose getting help from egnos/waas and whatnot helps to get a good accuracy, but if you see these only for brief moments on a good day in a middle of the field...

i want gallileo and devices that can simultaneously track all available positioning systems (with some weighting, ability to switch them on/off manually etc. and cheap, which might not be so impossible if the demand for this technology once gallileo is up increases enough.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Chreo]

And agian you prove his comment correct. Imagine that the content is constantly updated with actual condition or road work etc. Just because it is pure static today does not mean it will stay that way.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Chreo]

"...most of the countrys dont even have a real army."

Most of the special forces in Europe will tear your US equivalent apart. What will your air craft carriers do against our stealth ships that are already operative? We have years of experience of air-independent submarine tech. Just talked with a sub officer that said your ships could not locate our subs during joint training and that the depthcharge marks was way off.

Just because each independent country might not have the sheer numbers does not mean we lack in equipment and where it really matters.

That said, I'm a pacifist and I find the idea apalling between a US/European conflict. That would be a humanity ender for sure. Military spending in the year of 2005 is a utter waste of money and I feel sickend of what all that money could do.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Matje]

There is never a government expectation of removing the toll from a road.

your government != all governments. A 5 mile bridge in the Netherlands, the Zeelandbrug, was converted from tollbridge to free after the cost of the bridge had been earned through the tolls. The same will happen with a new tunnel, the Westerschelde tunnel, that has been built in that area. In Belgium the same has happened with the Lievekenshoek tunnel, if I remember correctly.

Public funds already paid for the project, so you can't really justify putting a toll on it to "pay for it".

Sure you can justify that. I think two criteria should be met:

- the expected economic benefit is insufficient to justify paying the project out of the regular tax income.
- The project cannot be funded through commercial entities, for whatever reason.

If these criteria are met and there is a strong wish to execute the project, then the payback-through-toll option is a very valid one. For instance, the projects in the Netherlands I mentioned are located in sparsely populated areas. It would not be fair to pay for them with regular tax money, since 90% of the population will rarely if ever make use of them.

Re:... and the reason is:

[de_valentin]

There is more to it than just that. Galileo will have a steeper inclination wich means the satelites will be passing the poles closer, meaning that there will be a significantly better accuracy on the poles. And that makes it possible to monitor the polar icecaps. Everyone here is talking about military purposes of the system, or the satnav in their car or yacht. But there is a very big third market that really needs the high accuracy of Galileo. Civil engineering heavily relies on GPS at the moment, to get the much needed millimeter accuracy for building bridges and railways, you now need to use a system with a base station setup on an "known" coordinate, that will then calculate the differences and send them on to your handheld receiver. Furthermore i wonder what the big deal is here that the americans are trying to stop this system the russians have had GLONASS for several years now, and the Chinese are already started on their own BEIDOU system. Which by the way will not be a thread to the US since it is a geostationary system, with 4 or 5 satelites over China

Re:... and the reason is:

[Bloke down the pub]

So much for planned economies, huh?

I spent 25 years in a multinational corporation, and while I hate to deprive peoiple of their illusions, I have to inform you that none of them works withour not one, but two plans

The fact that you confuse a company having a plan with a planned economy indicates that you haven't got a clue what you're talking about.

Re:... and the reason is:

[zaphle]

Think of it like you think of a computer purchase

Talking about comparing apples to pears...
A notebook is something used by 1 (that is one) person. Comparing that to something like a satelite navigation system is just stupid. Whoever modded you up for that is now also officially stupid.

That being said, let me put this in another - a social - perspective. What happens when a lot of people are unemployed? Right, there's an increase in crime. What would many nations - wrongfully - do when there's an increase in crime? Spend more money to police forces and overall security (which is obviously countering the symptom, not the cause). Now, from TFA: Galileo will create some 100000 new jobs. Here we have a drop in unemployment and therefor a drop in in closely correlated things like crime. There's less need for security measures and - however few will realize this - you countered a hidden cost.

When a government spends money, they are investing the taxes that YOU ALREADY PAID OR WILL PAY ANYHOW in order to improve society. Kudos to that, friends!

--

I can't think of a sig right now. Maybe later.

Re:... and the reason is:

[zaphle]

We have brains, we don't need large funds.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Hektor_Troy]

Actually - no.

You just don't use the L1 or L2 codes for anything more than about a meters accuracy. What you do do, is do phase measurements. Using the phase on both L1 and L2, and the position from the code as a base, you can achieve about 2 mm precision in static measurements and non-real-time calculations. Kinematic and you can get down to about 5 mm non-real-time. Static realtime is 2.5 cms (depending on the power of the processor) and kinematic realtime is 15 cms (again depending on the power of the processor).

During my course in GPS in college, we did about 2mm static non-real-time. Static over 15 minutes, I was able to hit 50 cm with differential GPS (which only uses the codes, so no fancy phase measurements) in flat open landscapes.

Re:... and the reason is:

[franois-do]

since you object to the term that you obviously recognize, is clear and concise, what is the alternative you would suggest?

I cannot give any suggestion concerning new English words. That is a need that has to be solved internally by the english-speaking community. In France, the neologism étatsunien has been created and is widely used in the Wikipedia.

I am sure you would be surprised if Ukrainian people decided that from now one they would call themselves - and deny to anybody else - the europeans :-)

Re:... and the reason is:

[pizpot]

oh dear... let me put it this way to quote a recent article of news that I guess you would not read: "There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship."

Re:... and the reason is:

[susano_otter]

If the best you can do to support your claims is to quote one editorial, without evidence, supporting arguments, or even proper attribution, then I must conclude that you are fundamentally unserious about these issues.

Re:... and the reason is:

[susano_otter]

I mean, I thought you would say something like "last year, when Bush transported several million Americans to death camps in Alaska, I was powerfully reminded of the USSR under Stalin".

Or maybe, "when Bush closed our borders in 2002, to prevent any word about the horrors he was perpetrating on America from reaching the outside world, I realized this was just like when the Soviet leadership did the exact same thing."

You know, something like that. Something compelling. Something basd in reality.

Somehow, the fact that the Executive Branch is wielding the traditionally and legally broader wartime powers that are his responsibility to wield, and that his political opponents are stirring up controversy about it, and that the whole thing is being debated in public, at all levels, strikes me as clear evidence that you are completely wrong in your assessment.

If this country were in the grip of a dictatorship even remotely like the USSR, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, because you'd be dying a slow and horrible death in the Siberian Gulags, and there would be no record of your existence.

The fact that you are able to communicate your concerns freely, in wide range of public and private forums, strongly suggests that your world view is severely mistaken.

Re:... and the reason is:

[TuringTest]

Surely you will enlighten all of us with the differences?

Re:... and the reason is:

[AK Marc]

I cannot give any suggestion concerning new English words. That is a need that has to be solved internally by the english-speaking community.

Then consider it solved, and the proper word is "American" to refer to people from the USA. That you might not like the answer will not negate the validity of it.

Re:... and the reason is:

[pizpot]

OK how about this.. GWB has siezed control of the US in order to fight an enemy that his government created. He is using that as an excuse for his actions. The media is no help as they have been bought and lied to. When the media does rat on him, he deals with it by appearing to change course, but doesn't actually. This strategy is working with the general population. The gulag system is already in place, and if a revolt does start to happen, its leaders will be treated as terrorists because otherwise they could weaken the gov't and then the enemy can attack. Think tanks have a plan to bribe, lie or deal with any internal or external threat to this power. The last election was a threat and that was dealt with just like the next one will be. They can't just start up gas chambers, instead they use techniques like chipping away at policies word by word, and letting time heal wounds. I don't know the motivation for this or what is really in control. Maybe it is just a cooincidence, and he will hand back the reins. Or maybe Jeb will be next in the White House.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Bloke down the pub]

Mod parent -1: too stupid to use google and/or wikipedia.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Wooden7Dummy]

They'll need a world-class army, for one thing.

It really does crack me up how we view our "world-class" army.

Re:... and the reason is:

[susano_otter]

They can't just start up gas chambers, instead they use techniques like chipping away at policies word by word, and letting time heal wounds.

So your complaint is that instead of using violent, illegal, and tyrannical methods to wield power and change policy, they're using peaceful, proper, democratic methods? Isn't that the whole point of politics, though? To enact change without violence or oppression? To use words instead of guns? To use the passage of time to change opinions, rather than the rise and fall of a club? If you won't accept violence as a legitimate means to bring about change, and you won't accept politics as a legitimate means to bring about change, then what do you propose? What else is there?


I don't know the motivation for this or what is really in control. Maybe it is just a cooincidence, and he will hand back the reins.

So if he does "hand back the reins", will you consider the possibility that you were wrong about what's going on right now? What about if he's replaced by another Republican? Will you consider the possibility that the opposition faction has no compelling ideas or credible plans, or will you assume that the better candidates are being kept down by some shadowy conspiracy? Or will you simply assume that the majority of Americans are too stupid to agree with you?

Re:... and the reason is:

[WhiteWolf666]

AFAIK, the satellites aren't failing, its really kind of a myth:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d308/

That's an article from last year, but still; satellites are failing at a rate of 1-2 a year, but thats how many we launch; there's no need to launch anymore.

The real advantage of having a second "GPS" (Galileo) system is dual band receivers. Twice as many satellites=better redundancy, and better accuracy.

Use both! You can bet your asses that U.S. military equipment will be designed to take advantage of both if at all possible; GPS primarily, but any and all secondary singles that may be avaliable.

I'm thrilled about Galileo; the more global positioning data/signals out there, the better. Glonass, Galileo, GPS; keep 'em coming!

Re:... and the reason is:

[TuringTest]

Mod parent -1 troll: too stupid to support his/her beliefs in a rational discussion.

FYI, Google Calculator doesn't return anything for the following difference:
"company having a plan" - "planned economy".

Re:... and the reason is:

[WilliamSChips]

As an Ameri-I mean, US citizen, I'd prefer "Lower Canadian" myself.

Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys

[Anonymous Coward]

After many years of trying to convince europe its unnecessary, the US still reserves the right to shoot the satellites down if it wants http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=vie wArticle&code=20041026&articleId=557

Re:Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys

[Anonymous Coward]

yah, so we'll shoot yours down too, nya nya..

Re:Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys

[jcnnghm]

Unless there was/is a successful black project that can defend our satellites.

Re:Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys

[saifatlast]

Do you really need the right to shoot something down? I mean, either way, you can do it, you just have to deal with the consequences.

Re:Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys

[sstidman]

Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys

I think it's a bit unfair to assume this is simply about having the coolest toys. From the article you pointed to:

The European delegates reportedly said they would not turn off or jam signals from their satellites, even if they were used in a war with the United States.

So even if Galileo were being used against the US, Europe has declared that they will not shut down the system. It shouldn't be too hard to understand that such an extreme position leaves little negotiation room for the US.

And for what's it's worth, I REALLY question this source of information. I don't think any reasonable person would believe that site offers a balanced perspective.

Security

[parasonic]

Reading the frelling article, I don't see what keeps anyone from hacking and getting the 'commercial-grade' service. What sort of blocks are there? Will this be like DirecTV which becomes very easily decodeable after a few years and millions of deployments, or will this be like some of the military satellite signals whose keys change every day?

Re:Security

[JanneM]

Reading the frelling article, I don't see what keeps anyone from hacking and getting the 'commercial-grade' service.

I think a major point of the commercial-grade service isn't the precision itself (which will more or less become available anyway), but the fact that paying for it will guarantee the service. As in, if an incident happens, it's the service operator's fault if the accuracy was degraded. Of course, the service comes with an error estimate; if the signal is degrading and the user (or their equipment) ignores the warnings, the ball is back in their court.

But that implied liability probably does far more to make the service palatable than any technical specifications. In a way, the provider is putting its corporate head on the block as a guarantor of the service.

Re:Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading the frelling article, I don't see what keeps anyone from hacking and getting the 'commercial-grade' service. What sort of blocks are there? Will this be like DirecTV which becomes very easily decodeable after a few years and millions of deployments, or will this be like some of the military satellite signals whose keys change every day?

For obvious reasons, I'm posting anonymously.

The keys are changed every forthnight, so it is _not_ easy to crack. And if you have a key, it'll give accurate datas for 14 days. It's not that difficult to obtain a key I guess, they're in use by many including Norwegian Royal Military Forces. But obtaining one every forthnight is difficult. So, forget the cracking idea. If they suspected it, they'd change it more often. The Military services have nearly limit-less resources for such things. Especially if it improves perceived security.

Re:Security

[erik_norgaard]

I don't know if it is easily hackable, but with a 1m accuracy for the free version I have difficult to find the ones who see a market in hacking this. Of course it's a question of price of the commercial grade version also, but still.

very old news

[Phil246]

We've known about this for at least a year...
do people not remember the bush administration threatening to use anti-satellite weapons unless europe gave the US the power to interfere with it, jam the satellites and/or switch them off or to a lower resolution mode for certain areas of the globe which they were fighting in?

Re:very old news

[Keebler71]

do people not remember the bush administration threatening to use anti-satellite weapons unless europe gave the US the power to interfere with it, jam the satellites and/or switch them off or to a lower resolution mode for certain areas of the globe which they were fighting in?

Uh...no, I don't recall that... would you care to back that up with a reference? Otherwise I'll just assume you trolling.

Re:very old news

[click2005]

Try here http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-04zc.html

Re:very old news

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/368/1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1718125.st m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1862779.st m
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/spac-j25 .shtml
http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_44a.html
http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/fa/fa_mayjune01a.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/22/163821 2&tid=215
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/2 5/1356202&tid=160
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/12/16/1324209.shtm l?tid=126&tid=103
and in particular : http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/01/122620 7&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=126&tid=99&threshold=-1

just what i found with a little effort....

Re:very old news

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Of course, people forget quickly. Before the start of Gulf War II, people were whining that Iraq had 6 Rooski-made GPS-jamming devices. Oooooh!

A few hours and 6 radar-homing rockets later, they were gone.

Re:very old news

[Keebler71]

Thanks but the GGP post appeared to be suggesting that the US would shoot down Galileo for merely being deployed. The story you link to has a few more "ifs" in it - namely that the US was concerned with a non-European power (China in the example) using the Galileo system militarily against the US. The article then goes on to say that the US would prefer to use a "reversible" [read: jam] method of denying the signal to an enemy.

Recall that at the time, the Galileo system had been intentionally designed to use the exact same frequency band as GPS to prevent just this sort of jamming as it would simultaneously deny GPS to US forces.

Also note that the linked article quotes the European delegates as specificly stating that the Galileo signal would not be switched off or degraded even if they knew it was being used by a third party against the US

Incidently, the system was eventually redesigned so that it uses a different frequency, allowing both the US and the Europeans the ability to jam the other's signal - avoiding exactly this issue.

Re:very old news

[Keebler71]

Wow... lots of good info on the subjects of US militarization of space and on the US's opposition to an unjammable version of Galileo (which was eventually changed as you point out in one of your links). Actually what I was looking for was a reference that the US would specificly shoot down Galileo satellites merely for being deployed, which is what the GGP seemed to be suggesting. Interesting, another comment in this thread found an article that was pretty close.

Re:very old news

[Keebler71]

after reading the GGGP more carefully, he does state the constraint on the weapons being used to deny the signal during US military operations -my bust

Re:very old news

[Barsema]

Well, the real news is they are launching the first satelite tomorow

Re:very old news

[Control Group]

The US is just like any other country: if at war, it's going to attempt to disable whatever weapons the enemy is using. This is not an unreasonable stance to take, really - in fact, it's sort of the definition of the word "war."

With this in mind, if the EU puts up a GPS constellation that can't be jammed/shut off without simultaneously doing the same damage to the US' GPS constellation, and if the European GPS system is being used by an enemy during an active military campaign, then the US would shoot down the satellites. Alternatively, the EU can design the system such that its use can be denied an enemy without actually destroying the system.

Which do you suppose is preferable?

Is this a "demand?" Sure it is: it amounts to "we can do this the easy way, or the hard way." But the demand is just a reflection of reality, not of malice. If actual open war broke out, the US would do everything within its capacity to win. One of the things in its capacity is shooting down satellites.

By contrast, the alternate position is not reflective of reality. That is: we're going to make available to everyone this neat weapon, and if it's used against you, we expect you to just grin and bear it despite being able to prevent it, because the rules say you should.

Of course, if rules were being followed, there wouldn't be any war...so expecting the combatants to follow rules while engaged is a bit Pollyana-ish.

Re:very old news

[Anonymous Coward]

with Russia on board, the European system can always bring out the old MAD policy - Russia had satellite-shooting technology before America did.
It seems that the US is saying, "we'll try to take reversible action, but will take irreversible action if necessary" and the Europeans are saying "fine, just be warned, if you take irreversible action against our system, yours is going down too". This is the perfect system. The US is not entitled to have the only working GPS system with no consequences for trying to prevent other from taking that monopoly.

Re:very old news

[Control Group]

Exactly.

I hesitate to say this is the way things should work (in an ideal world, none of this would be necessary), but it's as close as we're likely to come. The EU agreeing to shift their frequency off the US' is the best apparent way to acknowledge the MAD-like reality of the situation while simultaneously decreasing the likelihood of it ever happening.

Re:very old news

[terrymr]

The russians have their own satellite-based positioning system ... it's called GLONASS

Re:very old news

[IgnoramusMaximus]

A few hours and 6 radar-homing rockets later, they were gone.

Which only goes to show the laughable incompetence of the Iraqi "army". How about a hidden system with a set of cheap, disposable antennas connected to it at a disatnce? Antenna: $50, anti-radiation missile: $300k, continuing jamming of GPS signals and completely pissed off USAF personell dropping bombs on orphanages and thus helping to sustain a 20-year long guerilla campaign, $200 billion in costs and finally a lost war: priceless.

Come to think of it, I am told the Russians are perfecting devices made out of cheap, sub $50, Chinese microwave ovens for the purpose of attracting US warplanes on anti-radar missions and adding a few billion, give or take, to the costs on the US side of the equation.

Re:very old news

[AnotherBlackHat]

Satellites are extremely vulnerable.
If any power decided they wanted to shut them down, all they would need to do is launch a ton of marbles in a counter geosynchronous orbit.
Give them a little push after launch, and you've got thousands of objects moving at a relative velocity of 13,500 MPH.
If they miss on the first pass, then they get another chance every 12 hours, and the field slowly widens.
You can't even launch new satellites, because the garbage will stay up for years.

If there ever is a space war, there will be no winners.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

Re:very old news

[Weedlekin]

If the US is so concerned about what China may or may not do in a military sense, then why is it letting the Chinese gain such strong control over its economy? They are already in a position where they could do significant amounts of damage to the US by simply dumping all those bonds on the market, and then calling in the debts they're owed: if the US didn't pay up, they'd be classified as effectively bankrupt by international markets, who would start dumping bonds and dollars like there was no tomorrow. The dollar would be worthless within weeks, giving rise to massive domestic inflation because the country has become so dependent on imported goods and materials (what price would a gallon of gasolene sell for if there were $300 / Euro?).

So why would the Chinese bother with something like a war when they could do at least as much effective damage without firing a shot? Is the US government so locked in to an obsolete cold-war mentality that they're actually blind to where China's real strength lies, or is all this martial drum-banging an attempt to blind the public to it? Whatever the case, the fact of the matter is that China does not require the Galileo system to throw the US economy down the toilet, so why are nearly all the arguments about the strategic threat that it presents to the US so sino-centric?

Re:very old news

[AK Marc]

If any power decided they wanted to shut them down, all they would need to do is launch a ton of marbles in a counter geosynchronous orbit.

And how would this affect the GPS satellites, which are not in geosynchronous orbit?

Re:very old news

[DerekLyons]

do people not remember the bush administration threatening to use anti-satellite weapons

How can people remember something that didn't happen? (Not to mention the fact that the US doesn't *have* any anti-satellite weapons.)

Re:very old news

[witte]

I'd expect them lower the resolution of the Galileo system or even shut it down temporarily if
1) there is good reason for it
2) the US administration asks nicely

That's two issues right there :
1) Good reason :
It's not that we don't like Americans citizens; it's just that we don't trust your leaders to tell the truth next time around. (eg. I remember a rather embarrasing episode in the UN - Iraq debacle with sattelite imagery of supposed WMD installations.)
2) Asking nicely :
Politeness costs nothing.
Threatening to blow the Galileo sattelites out of orbit in times of conflict is not the best way to go about this imho.
The whole "Don't tread on me" act is not about having the biggest cojones but about respect, and that cuts both ways.
The US gov't can't expect the EU to build this neat positioning system and then just hand them the keys to the kingdom so they can shut it down whenever it pleases them.

In the end, they'll probably hammer out some kind of agreement/protocol after everybody has had a chance to beat their chest and make a lot of noise for the home front. Feh, politicians.

Re:very old news

[ArtStone]

The article can be summed up from these two quotes:

"Galileo is largely a political project, aimed at asserting Europe's independence"

"Giove-A will not be part of the final 30 satellites that make up the Galileo network. It will try out new technology developed for the project and ensure that the European Space Agency claims the frequencies reserved for Galileo."

Europe already has access to a second GPS system - the one built by the Russian Military.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/constellatio ns/glonass_consum.shtml

Re:very old news

[AnotherBlackHat]

And how would this affect the GPS satellites, which are not in geosynchronous orbit?

Oops. A slight modification then, but the basic principle is still the same - launch the marbles in the same orbit as the satelite you want to take out, but rotating the opposite direction.
(Six bags of marbles, with one chance every 6 hours of a hit for the current crop of GPS satellites)

-- Should you believe authority without question?

Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that this is a good move by the Europeans. The USA (who controls GPS) can shut it down whenever they please.
The European counterpart is governed by an independant organization, so no government can shut it down without notice.

By the way, this isn't a pure European project, other countries such as China, Israel, Marocco and Saudi-Arabia joined the program too, others may join later.

Re:Good...

[The Lynxpro]

"I think that this is a good move by the Europeans. The USA (who controls GPS) can shut it down whenever they please. The European counterpart is governed by an independant organization, so no government can shut it down without notice."

That is, unless Torchwood actually operates it in secret. :)

Re:Good...

[badmammajamma]

I find it amusing that people think that because it's going to be run independently that it is not subject to being shut down. I can promise you that if any european country feels that their Gallileo system is about to be used against them in a terrorist attack, that it will be shut down faster than you can say, "God save the queen!"

Will it come with a backpacking guide?

[Jim in Buffalo]

They should bundle on of those GPS gizmos with the backpacking and tour guides. C'mon, it's only 0.496 KM to the Eiffel Tower!

Re:Will it come with a backpacking guide?

[will_die]

Most modern GPS already come with the mapping software to do this already, or you can purchase it.
If I am in an area with with Garmin I just select attractions and it brings up a list of all the nearby ones I can look for a name that looks interesting and select map and I am given directions and distance to it.

Re:Prediction

[Richard_at_work]

Galileo is not a new development, its been under development for a few years and both the Russians and the Chinese are involved. The US demanded, and got, a kill switch for it in the event they need to disable it during military action against someone. Great eh?

long scale or short scale billion?

[eelke_klein]

Are that long scale or short scale billions? Large scale is 10^12, short is 10^9.

Re:long scale or short scale billion?

[burni]

when you read a european text the meaning is (mostly)

- mega - million - 10^6
- giga - billion - "Milliarde"(german) - 10^9 (less used B.E. "milliard")

"Billion"(german as most other countries do) - 10^12

in Great Britian through the US influence the "trillion" can be used for both 10^12 and 10^18 so a reader must pay attention or a writer whos aware of this
pre/postfix multipliers should add the equal exponent, so it will be easy to understand for readers from all countries.

Re:Prediction

[JanneM]

The United States is going to perceive this as a military move. Or, at least, extreme reactionary war-hawk conservatives will. (i.e. the sorts of people who label all of Europe as Socialist or call Europeans "EUroweenies").

Ahh, a cloud chock-full of silver linings...

Seriously, would the US want to rely on a navigation service controlled by France, with the express ability to shut it off at any time for any reason they want? Why expect Europe to accept such a situation?

a VERY OLD dupe wtf?

[deadweight]

Not only is this a dupe, but I think it is one several times over and also several years old. BTW, if the EU wants to spend billions on a duplicate navigation system, all for the good. I will have a more accurate and more redundant nav system paid for by SOMEONE ELSE for once. Thanks!

Re:a VERY OLD dupe wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4555298.stm

Europe launching first Galileo demonstrator spacecraft ...on Wednesday

This would appear to be far from a dupe...

"The demonstrator, built in the UK by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, will test key components in the Galileo network, notably its atomic clocks. It also has the job of securing the radio frequencies allocated to the project under international agreements" etc etc...

Re:a VERY OLD dupe wtf?

[moosesocks]

Given Europe's 2000 year history, I have a pretty good idea that the rest of the world is going to be forced to pay through the nose to use this thing.

Coincidentally, the USSR had its own navigation system that is still partially active today (ie. a few of the satellites haven't crashed back down to earth yet). A bunch of GPS receivers can use it to enhance accuracy when 3 GPS satellites aren't in range.

Re:a VERY OLD dupe wtf?

[deadweight]

Pay for Galileo or use GPS for free? I can't really see a huge market for Galileo here. I like the "GPS not good for applications like aircraft navigation becuase the USA could turn it off" quote. I am sure the 10s of thousands of people who have bought GPS units for their aircraft would be suprised to hear that!

Seems reasonable enough

[Mike1024]

I can see why governments would like the idea of more accurate GPS; vechicle navigation.

Knowing a location to plus-or-minus-10-meters might be fine for a guided missile, but for navigation it's pretty lousy; it couldn't tell which side of the road you were on, let alone whether you were in the right lane. With centimeter-level accuracy, though, you could practically make a car drive itself.

Michael

Re:Seems reasonable enough

[Trolling4Columbine]

If people need to look at a computer screen to determine if they're driving on the correct side of the road, an accurate GPS system should be the least of their worries.

Re:Seems reasonable enough

[sig226]

Do you really think we have maps are accurate to 1 cm?
Imagine a mistake in the map and the autopilot puts you
into the other lane. Thanks, but no thanks. The day we
start implementing autopilots on cars is the day I stop
driving.

Re:Seems reasonable enough

[yarbo]

"The day we start implementing autopilots on cars is the day I stop driving."
yeah, that's the point.

Re:Seems reasonable enough

[Mike1024]

Do you really think we have maps are accurate to 1 cm?

Were anyone looking to implement an automated driver system (and it seems unlikely they would in the immediate future, since quite advanced technlolgy would be needed in addition to GPS in order to make a safe system) they could gather 1cm precision data by attatching a GPS reciever to thier vechicle and driving the route in question. Future cars would simply follow the same route.

Granted, driving down every road in the world would be a challenging proposition, but it wouldn't be an impossible one, considering the amount of money an auto-drive system could make.

Just my $0.02,

Michael

Re:Seems reasonable enough

[LostBurner]

Correction: If people need to look at the screen to determine what side of the road they're on, then an accurate GPS system is suddenly the greatest of their worries.

Answer: European billions: 10^9

[Flying pig]

I haven't seen any other kind of billion in use in Europe for many years.

Re:Answer: European billions: 10^9

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

10^9 is used in english speaking countries, most others actually use 10^12. I assume you meant UK when you said Europe.

Anyone else worried about Vehicle Monitoring?

[duguk]

Doesn't anyone else see why this would be useful to the Police when they're passively monitoring EVERY VEHICLE?

See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/15/21 59244&tid=158&tid=219 if you don't remember!!

I wonder if its worth building a GPS Spoofer like the one on http://gps.hackaday.com/entry/1234000843061178/

DugUK

Re:Anyone else worried about Vehicle Monitoring?

[pnewhook]

Just because you have a GPS receiver doesn't mean a 3rd party can use it to track you. A GPS is receive only, you need additional hardware to rebroadcast your position for someone to track you.

Re:Anyone else worried about Vehicle Monitoring?

[hhghghghh]

Cars are monitored by tracking their license plates using overhead cameras. The locations of these cameras are well known to the police, no need to track those, they're in a fixed place.

Re:Anyone else worried about Vehicle Monitoring?

[duguk]

Ok, yeah, you're right, I'm overreacting :)

We're already screwed. :D

DugUK

Re:Question:

[pnewhook]

How is this news? Galileo was old news years ago. Why is the blurb suggesting that it's this "new" planning thingie?

Probably because the US perceived the old Galileo proposal as a threat and had it killed off years ago.

Re:Prediction

[Caspian]

Can you provide a link to a (reputable, please) source stating that the US has a kill switch for it?

Re:Prediction

[ZeroExistenZ]

Ofcourse, now the US has the control to disallow access in a warlike state with any country depending on the GPS tech for warfare or anything really. Which gives them ultimate control.

The US always has been nervous with anyone being able to dominate them or to get from under their control, even if such a move of the EU wouldn't be directly motivated by military purposes (the EU has been going away from an offensive army a long time ago and formed towards defensive and humanistic purposes), but maybe more by independance from US's powers. It's a pure dominating position the US strives to embody it seems. If it'd be looked like that (a military move) the US really should start to do some self-reflecting.

Useful for Britain to Track its drivers per Mile

[tezza]

Alistair Darling, the UK Transport Secretary has said that the future of driving is pay per mile.

There has been a lot of comment about how to pull that off with the limitations of the current GPS.

This new system will in my opinion be designed to have features to support this.

Should haves:

Double blind identification. Your receiver in your car will not be personally identifiable.
Works better in cities with tall buildings
Better accuracy
European control.

Nice to haves:

Downloadable content:
- Congestion alerts
- Emergency Warnings a la radio interupt
A government certified connection signal that must be displayed when they ARE tracking you.
Triangulation compensation with terrestrial mobile masts. If we're gonna have big brother, why not make it accurate?

My 2p.

Re:Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

They did not get a "kill switch". What did happen was that the operating frequency was moved further apart from a common US military band so that the US could jam the signal (locally) without inadvertantly jamming their own military communications.

Answer: European billions: 10^12

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that means you have not been in (central) Europe at all.
Milliard (or the equivalent in the language used) is almost exclusively used for 10^9 and billion for 10^12.

Re:Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

The US demanded, and got, a kill switch for it

...at least, that's what we told them.

Re:Useful for Britain to Track its drivers per Mil

[vertinox]

If we're gonna have big brother, why not make it accurate?

I have always thought one of the downsides to having Big Brother was that if you monitor every single detail of everyone single life then you just end up not seeing anything important because it is physically impossible for a small group of person to keep track of it all.

And then you get to the problem of keeping track of the people keeping track to ensure they aren't doing anything wrong...

Of course if you record every bit of detail and say well X crime happened on X date on X location lets see where X person was.

On the upside, if you were innocent then you'll have the proof of technology on yourside saying "hey look at my car it was on the other side of town the whole time..."

On the downside, a less than truthful government could mearly make up the figures and say in court "We have proof that via Galieo that his car was in the general area of the suspected crime that has not been commited but was with the others we are trying on conspiracy to commit high treason!" and the poor sap replies "But I don't even own a car!" and the government lawyer replies "Lies... I would like to present bill of sale dated a few months ago of the accused's car! Be careful of the wet ink your honor!"

Good for Europe

[nharmon]

I applaud them. They could have went to the United Nations and demanded that the U.S. give them control over the US's GPS system. Instead they are building their own. Good for them.

Re:Good for Europe

[deadweight]

They could have. The USA could demand that the UN hand over Airbus, Paris, and Monte Carlo to the USA. I could demand that Euro-Trash chicks blow me daily. In all cases, the result would be much laughter and then NO.

Re:Good for Europe

[PFI_Optix]

The hypothetical US response: "No, you can't have GPS. But we're willing to compromise and allow you to form a powerless UN committee to 'advise' us."

Re:Good for Europe

[bjheu]

ROFL If I had Mod Points I would mod this funny as hell :)

Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[Hamster Lover]

and terrorists. What, exactly, could a terrorist do with GPS technology? They don't have access to cruise missiles or ICBMs. I can understand degrading GPS signals when facing a standing army equally equipped, but I just don't see how even marginally accurate GPS could help a terrorist.

If a terrorist wanted to find the locations of water facilities, nuclear power generating plants or other critical infrastructure they would need to find it by other means before GPS would be useful (if GPS would be useful at all).

About the only way GPS would help a terrorist is to save him the $5 locals want to charge for directions to Staples Center in Los Angeles when you're already across the street from it (don't ask).

Honestly, though. The only scenario that occurs to me where GPS might be critical to a terrorist attempt would be a proximity based bomb using GPS technology to identify the proximity to a target.

Anyone have other ideas (and keep your eyes peeled for Staples Center)?

Re:Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[Disoculated]

The issue really isn't terrorists, it's stores of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons delivered via missile/rocket/guided shell. Using GPS makes it far, far easier to make precision weapons that will accomplish the goal with far fewer delivery vehicles and smaller warheads.

If you're off by a few feet with one of these weapons, it's no big deal. But if you're off by a quarter mile, you've just wasted a very very expensive/scarce piece of technology (which you probably were *REALLY* counting on, considering the scenarios these weapons are used in). Being off a quarter mile when you're firing something into an orbital ballistic arc isn't all that improbable either, unless you've got extremely precise target locations and the vehicle can precisely make corrections in-flight.

A very large part of the nuclear megatonnage gap between the US and the USSR in the 80's wasn't so much that the US was getting out-produced, but that the US didn't have to build as many warheads to be effective. With it's technology, the US could very precisely put an ICBM re-entry vehicle wherever they wanted, using a smaller warhead (allowing for more warheads in the rocket, fewer rockets, less overall cost, etc) while the Soviets had to use larger warheads, more rockets, more cost, to accomplish it's military missions.

Galileo will make it cheaper for other nations to make NBC weapons deliverable to remote targets, possibly encouraging their development. This makes the American military very unhappy, especially since they're not doing so hot (for various reasons) on the ballistic missile defense front.

I guess it's possible that a terrorist could cobble together a home-made buzz-bomb cruise missile and use GPS to guide it, but from a military standpoint terrorists are just very minor annoyances. Industrial nations with cost effective NBC delivery systems are dire threats.

So the whole 'terrorists' cry, like you're saying, doesn't make a whole lot of sense in a global sense. It's not like the accuracy of GPS now isn't something a terrorist could use and nobody is going to know to manipulate the funcion of a single terrorist-employed GPS unit before it does it's work. This is just something US officials can use to sway Western opinion while clouding the real, and politically distasteful, issues.

Re:Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[Bucc5062]

And this will only cost you 3$

[Staples Center] http://www.staplescenter.com/content/default.sps?i type=6776&icustompageid=10017

or did you mean [Staples Centers] http://stores.staples-locator.com/staples/?

What terrorist needs GPS when they have mapquest, google map, and many other direction finding tools. A compass and a good topo map can get you where you need to be in the wilderness. Terrorists are not about accuracy, they are about terror and terror does not care if you are within a cm or 3 meters of the target.

What country with missle capability would even consider a guided missle using GPS against a US target. We invaded one country with a set of lies, the truth (we attacked the USA) might bring out the nukes. I feel the whole idea of degrading accuracy of GPS to be quite silly. Typically, the only ones who suffer are the civilians and unknowing bystanders because the people who will use this technology to kill other people will figure others ways around the problem. How about laser guided to name one. Get an operative clsoe enough to the target, light it up, fire off a non-GPS laser guided missile and boom. How nice it would be to have our goverments, milirtary, and intelligence working on ways to stop the people assets instead of trying to stop the bombs.

Re:Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[drinkypoo]

You can get a scale model of the US Predator UAV for $9000 with GPS control that allows it to fly waypoints and take pictures. A cruise missle might be overly hard, but something similar is commercially available.

Re:Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[msoftsucks]

I guess you're really clueless about world events. Iran today with North Korean technology has ICBMs that can attack Israel. At the current rate and with the lack of a spine by the French, the crazy Mulahs will have the capability to attack the US within a year with nuclear weapons (if not already).

Re:Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[Ironsides]

I feel the whole idea of degrading accuracy of GPS to be quite silly.

So did the military after some thought. They stoped degrading the signal of GPS years ago when they realised they could turn off the civilian portion with the "flick of a switch". The only reason the civilian portion of the system is only accurate to 10 meters is due to the low cost manufacturing of the electronics and not being able to detect mroe satelites. Want a more accurate GPS unit? Be prepared to pay more for it or get a better signal.

Re:Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[theLOUDroom]

What, exactly, could a terrorist do with GPS technology? They don't have access to cruise missiles or ICBMs.

The thing you need to understand is that the guidance system is the hard part.

Any determined and well-financed individual can get 1000 lbs of explosives and a small airplane to transport them. It would cost less than 100,000 USD per bomb. The hard part is not ending up miles off course.

Without some sort of GPS-like external correction factor, the error in your guidance system integrates over time.

Keep in mind that the V1 and V2 rockets are 1940s tech.

People are building things of that caliber today for fun. They aren't being built for military purposes because it's well known that the US can flip the switch on the GPS system at any second and all their bombs would go crashing into the ground.

It is important for Galileo to have simlar functionality for this very reason.

Re:Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[vidarh]

Your point being? ICBM's with nuclear warheads hardly needs GPS to do sufficient damage.

Re:Never understood the paranoia with GPS...

[calidoscope]

Even with nuclear warheads, you still need to get reasonably close to your target. Preferred method for ICBM's is inertial (or astro-inertial) guidance - which is tricky enough that I doubt if there is even a dozen organizations capable of producing such a beast. The rest of the missile is childs play.

Re:Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

The US demanded, and got, a kill switch for it in the event they need to disable it during military action against someone.

Not quite...

Re:Prediction

[Keebler71]

The US demanded, and got, a kill switch for it in the event they need to disable it during military action against someone. Great eh?

There was no "kill switch" as you describe. The original design of Galileo had it operating in the exact same frequency range as GPS. This was an intentional (and arguably malicious) design decision that would have prevented the US from jamming Galileo without simultaneously jamming GPS. What was negotiated was for the European system's frequency to be moved slightly, such that the US or Europe could jam each others signals without interfering with their own.

As long as your starting assumption is that at some point a country might deem it necessary to degrade (note necessarily deny) full position fixing accruacy to a given region or theater of operations, this is actually a "play fair" agreement.

Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CodeShark]

Some folks dislike the idea of the US military having the ability to downgrade the GPS system not -- as some posters have mentioned -- as a response to terrorist threats, but in the more realistic context of a full scale war.

Given that a GPS guided smart-bomb is only as accurate as the GPS signal, do the folks in Paris, France, or {name your own favorite freedom-allied European municipality and country} really want to give another foreign and presumably malignant military power the ability to bomb down to one meter accuracy? Talk about the ultimate terror weapon "country X, give up ________ or our GPS guided weapon will hit elementary school Y", etc., etc.

Somehow I don't think that the free world --or even the non-free countries of the world, for that matter -- has much worry that the US military is going to ever do or be allowed to do something like that, do you?

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[PatrickThomson]

Don't try to draw terrorism into it, there are just as valid counterarguments of equal feasability about emergency services crumbling because the GPS has just been switched off.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Talk about the ultimate terror weapon "country X, give up ________ or our GPS guided weapon will hit elementary school Y", etc., etc. Somehow I don't think that the free world --or even the non-free countries of the world, for that matter -- has much worry that the US military is going to ever do or be allowed to do something like that, do you?

US: "Iraq, give up your WMD or our GPS guided weapons will hit everything".

Iraq: "Dude, We don't have any! You've had people here looking for 10 years! We'd gladly turn them over if we had them but we don't. PLEASE DON'T BOMB US!!!!

US: "Whatever! You have till the count of three! one..two..BAMMMMM!

Nope, your right nothing to worry about. The US would NEVER do anything like that ;-)

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[retrosteve]

Please mod parent up. I was watching when that exchange occurred and thinking the exact same thing...

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[InfraredEyes]

Somehow I don't think that the free world --or even the non-free countries of the world, for that matter -- has much worry that the US military is going to ever do or be allowed to do something like that, do you?

Up until a few years ago, most people, even outside the US, would never have believed that a US government would set up extra-territorial prisons for the express purpose of evading its own law and constitution, or that a US vice-president would lobby vigorously against the banning of torture. The US has lost a lot of credibility in the last few years -- damn' right Europe needs an independent GPS system.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[hey!]

We have come to rely on GPS for so many purposes that turning it off would for practical purposes be an act of terrorism. Ships would lose their way and founder. GPS based emergency services would be crippled. Not to mention tremendous economic impact on systems that are based on having real time positional information for proper operation.

The main thing you'd get with the new system is greater precision on consumer devices.

In a GPS guided bomb, this would enable precision attacks. Typical consumer unit RMS error according to manufacturer specs is within 17m 50% of the time, although in practice 10m is typical with a clear sky (may not happen in urban situations). In most cases, since terrorists are going after relatively soft targets such as civilian buildings or public places with many unprotected civilians, this probably doesn't make much difference.

If you did have a system that needed this accuracy on the order of 1m, you can get it in most places with a free differential signal, by getting a slightly more expensive unit.

Even if GPS is turned off completely, there are many other ways to do the attack, the simplest being a suicide attack. Another method that has been perfected by Iraqi insurgents is using what amounts to a forward observer who triggers the bomb by a cell phone.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[diegocgteleline.es]

really want to give another foreign and presumably malignant military power the ability to bomb down to one meter accuracy?

May be we should also shutdown internet, spy phone talks, and stop scientific research - since that research can be used for evil purposes.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[Xugumad]

> Talk about the ultimate terror weapon "country X, give up ________ or our GPS guided weapon will hit elementary school Y", etc., etc.

Because terrorists have had so many problems hitting the right target so far, what with the bombs being delivered by hand most of the time. Hitting a specific target in a built up area for terrorism purposes is also completely nonsense - if you can deliver the weapons in any way, you're going to scare people, irrespective of what you hit. The only advantage to GPS guided weapons is where precision is of high importance, like, say, making sure you hit the military installation near a built up area.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

BTW, thought I'd pick apart your post (even though it is irrelevant to my point about need to worry about US use of GPS).

kept up a pretense of having WMD for over ten years

If by "kept up pretense of having WMD" you mean he repeatedly stated he had gotten rid of all the WMD the US gave him and Iraq no longer has any WMD then you may have a point.

and it was Hussein's unwillingness to submit to the UN resolutions to open up his former WMD plants, etc. for inspection that triggered the invasion.

The best rebuttal to this has to be the UN Quarterly report on weapon inspections just before the invasion. Have a read. Not saying Saddam never had some fun screwing with the inspectors, but if the threat of invasion was enough to get him to stop and all this was going forward so well, why invade?

Had the prior Iraqi regime complied without even the months long final warning process (let alone the ten plus years prior), no bombs, tanks, or other assorted objects that go boom would have ever been needed.

According to your own president, this isn't true. Even though they now know there was no WMD, the invasion was still needed because some day Saddam might have decided to maybe make more WMD.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[Loki_1929]

"Iraq: "Dude, We don't have any!"

Which, of course, everyone knew was a lie. They may have not had any anymore, but there is no doubt whatsoever that Iraq had WMD. After all, it wasn't fresh air and sunshine that killed all those Kurds. So when a regime that kept beautiful records on everything from the people it tortured to the illegal missiles it purchased claimed it had no record of what happened to its massive quantities of extremely deadly substances (but that it thought it may have dumped some into the ground), people were most certainly a bit concerned that they had something serious to hide.

I've always disagreed with the timing of the war in Iraq due to the fact that North Korea is, and has been, a much graver threat to the national security of the US and the stability of the entire region, but one cannot argue that most of Iraq and its neighbors are far better off without Saddam in power.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[The Lynxpro]

"Iraq: "Dude, We don't have any! You've had people here looking for 10 years! We'd gladly turn them over if we had them but we don't. PLEASE DON'T BOMB US!!!!"

I really dislike this viewpoint. If Saddam had no WMD, why did he not fully cooperate with the weapons inspectors over the years? He defied them all throughout the Clinton Administration. If he had no WMD, why didn't he cooperate?

Look at the world's scientific community. They've spent half a century trying to look for/discover a cure for cancer. They still haven't found it though, after all of these years and billions (upon billions) of dollars spent. Using the "no WMD/anti-Iraq War" formula, one would have to conclude that the whole process has been a waste of time and no cure for cancer exists. I'm not willing to accept that hypothesis, nor the faulty one involving an enlightened Iraq under Saddam's rule that not only had no WMD but also no intent to acquire such technology.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

I've always disagreed with the timing of the war in Iraq due to the fact that North Korea is, and has been, a much graver threat to the national security of the US and the stability of the entire region

I'm sorry, but that statement just made me laugh so hard soda almost came out my nose! ;-) You must be the American version of a pacifist ;-) Your against the war 'cause there is another country you want to blow the hell out of first ;-) Man, I'm still laughing ;-)

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[imsabbel]

>really want to give another foreign and presumably malignant military power the ability to bomb down to one meter accuracy?

No.
So please turn of GPS, as the united states fullfil this desctiption quite nicely.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[Loki_1929]

"You must be the American version of a pacifist ;-) Your against the war 'cause there is another country you want to blow the hell out of first ;-)"

We have plenty of pacifists here. I'm just a bit of a realist. When a nuclear-armed nutcase talks of turning his neighbors's countries into a "sea of fire", and then starts showing off the weapons capable of doing so, then starts developing ICBMs, I think we should take notice. We've tried diplomacy since 1992, and it just plain hasn't worked in North Korea.

I swear, if some of you people were around in the later 30s, you'd have been protesting against going to war with Germany well into the 50s. He'd have secured the main European continent and rebuilt his offensive forces to the point of being fully prepared to take Britain, and perhaps eventually the rest of the world. Thankfully, men who saw war as the sometimes necessary evil that it is stood up and did something about it. How quickly we forget history, and the necessity of force against those who would do you harm.

Just think of how different a place the world would have been if everyone responded to Hitler's attack on Poland with an immediate and devastating attack on Germany (which was still well within reach at the time). The Nazis war machine would have never had the chance to rev up into production capable of sustaining a long, drawn-out war, and much of Europe would have been spared the hammer of German military power. But keep flashing that peace sign; the tyrants and madmen of the world love ya.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

I'm not willing to accept that hypothesis, nor the faulty one involving an enlightened Iraq under Saddam's rule that not only had no WMD but also no intent to acquire such technology.

OK, who do we attack next?

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

When a nuclear-armed nutcase talks of turning his neighbors's countries into a "sea of fire", and then starts showing off the weapons capable of doing so, then starts developing ICBMs, I think we should take notice.

You mean when people like this say things like this?

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[The Lynxpro]

"According to your own president, this isn't true. Even though they now know there was no WMD, the invasion was still needed because some day Saddam might have decided to maybe make more WMD."

I'd say that in most Anglo-American legal jurisdictions, if you have the *intent* to inflict harm/kill someone, you can be charged with that as a crime and receive punishment. Saddam had the *intent* to acquire WMD and that alone was enough justification. France, Germany, and Russia all protested against an invasion not based upon humanitarian grounds or international law but upon their own greed in the fact that they did not want to lose Saddam's regime which had been operating as a client-state of those three countries for many years and in fact owed those three countries most of its foreign debt. Had France and Russia obstained (like China did) from the vote at the Security Council, the invasion/occupation/overthrowing of Saddam's regime would have been completely "legal" and "valid" in the eyes of the United Nations. This is a concept that is lost upon the majority of the kneejerk peaceniks/anti-Iraq war people.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[The Lynxpro]

"OK, who do we attack next?"

I'd like to nominate France. Considering they supposedly issued French passports to leading Ba'ath Party members to escape from the Coalition Forces, I think they should be listed as an enemy regime and should suffer the consequences. Maybe it is time for the Sixth Republic, or a return to a constitutional monarchy under an Orleanist regime. Come to think of it, the Second French Empire seemed to behave itself with the Anglo-American world so perhaps we should find another Bonaparte to lead them.

But in all seriousness, North Korea has not/cannot be(en) attacked because that would require the consent of China. Which is something the United States would not receive without selling out democratic Taiwan in the process.

Iran just needs a little smacking around (sanctions and some carefully targeted installations destroyed for demonstration purposes). Their youth will not tolerate their regime for much longer. Perhaps covertly aiding the interest in the Zorastrian religion (the native religion of Persia) might bring about change within Iran by decoupling the country from the whole Middle Eastern issues surrounding Islam, and without a full-scale military solution.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Lots of random allegations there. Don't suppose you have any facts to back them up?

I'd say that in most Anglo-American legal jurisdictions, if you have the *intent* to inflict harm/kill someone, you can be charged with that as a crime and receive punishment.

Interesting point. Wouldn't you also say in most Anglo-American legal jurisdictions that there is a presumption of innocense until *proven* guilty? Some Iraqi dissitent who wants to be in power telling you rumors would be hersay and not admissable right? Actual concrete proof should be required before something like... I don't know .. an invasion of a another soverign nation right?

Now obviously, all the legal nicities of the Anglo-American legal systems cannot always fit in international relations like this in reality. However, if you want to use certain parts of such a system as an excuse for invasion are you allowed to just ignore the other parts?

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

If someone goes around carrying something covered-up that looks like a machine gun, refuses to show it to anyone when asked, and gets tackled by police and arrested, it's their own damn fault. Especially if it's someone that broke into a house a while back.

I wouldn't really have a problem with that, but it doesn't really seem a very good fit for what we are talking about to me. With all the inspections and "collateral damage" which comes with an invasion it seems the following would be more fitting.

The guy is known to have been an arms dealer in the past, but every day for a year the police see him carrying this thing which looks like a machine gun and every day the check it and find that it in fact isn't a machine gun. He has also been under constant survalance for the past year and he has never been observed with a gun. Then one day a new rookie cop on the beat (think Dubya), sees this guy with the thing that looks like a gun and asks to see it. The guy is pissed 'cause he gets harrased like this every day and tells the rookie to go eat shit. So the rookie cop sprays down the entire street with gun fire killing tons of innocent people. Then he tackels the guy to arrest him.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[Pantero Blanco]

"The guy is known to have been an arms dealer in the past, but every day for a year the police see him carrying this thing which looks like a machine gun and every day the check it and find that it in fact isn't a machine gun."

Saddam kicked the UN inspectors out whenever they thought they were going to find anything. By the time they were ever able to search a building, the Iraqis had had months of time to remove anything that had been there. There were articles about that just about every month in the news, both online and on paper.

Bush also wasn't the only one who took military action towards Iraq. Clinton ordering bombings and missle strikes against targets plenty of times; he just didn't send in troops: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9812/16/iraq.strike .03/

Note that his reasons behind them even included hindering Iraq from making "weapons of mass destruction".

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[The Lynxpro]

"Interesting point. Wouldn't you also say in most Anglo-American legal jurisdictions that there is a presumption of innocense until *proven* guilty?"

The "innocent until proven guilty" is when the person goes to trial. That's not the concern at arrest. So under that scenario and applying Anglo-American criminal law to the Iraqi invasion, there would still be reason for invading and then putting Saddam on trial to sort out the details thereafter. Which is kinda what is happening now, although the trial has nothing to do with WMD and Saddam is just grandstanding. Perhaps he should be taking Charles I's rather dignified approach to being placed on trial instead of making a show of it. I would imagine that Saddam's fate is going to be similar to Charles I. After all, both men were responsible for inflicting much harm on their subjects...

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[bjheu]

Not to mention the fact that Iraq violated almost every UN sanction leveled at them between 1991 and 2003. Many of which stated the use of force would be used to ensure compliance. That fact alone Obligated EVERY UN member nation to at least back, if not participate in the removal of Saddam's regime.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[vidarh]

So Israel should have been first then, holding the all time record in ignoring UN resolutions.

But in any case you have an extremely twisted idea of the obligations of UN members. The UN charter does not allow pre-emptive strikes except in self defence against imminent attacks. If you believe even for a second that Iraq in any way was a threat to the US at the time of the attack, then you seriously need your head examined.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[drouse]

You still have to know the coordinates to be able to bomb it. If you can obtain the coordinates of your target and know that they won't move the target, then you can already attack it without using GPS (most of the time).

GPS for weapons targeting is really only relevant with fixed targets attacked with airplanes, and then only when you want all-weather capability (i.e. can't aim with laser or video).

The hard problem in strategic or tactical bombing is attacking something that moves, then you need laser or video terminal guidance and hope that the weather is clear enough. Oh, and you need to find the thing as well (Google "SCUD Hunt").

As for the terrorists, they have been doing quite well without investing in expensive smart-bombs and high-performance aircraft.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[Loki_1929]

That's correct. The difference, you seem to be unaware of, is that the US attacks when its national security or the security of its allies is severely threatened militarily. A country like Iraq attacks because it wants more land and/or oil (see: Kuwait), or because it has a whole bunch of new WMDs to test and a whole bunch of people who need killing (see: Kurds, late 80's). A country like North Korea attacks because it wants more land, more power, more money, and/or more prestige for its tyrant/dictator. If North Korea would stop building nuclear weapons and ICBMs while threatning to annihilate Japan, South Korea, and the United States, we wouldn't have to consider pre-emptive military action against them. Had Saddam Hussein's government ceased its obstructionist tactics and simply allowed UN inspectors to do the job they'd been trying to do for the past 10 years, and had Saddam Hussein's government and family stopped raping, torturing, and murdering their own citizens en masse, military action against them would have been unnecessary and unsupported by virtually everyone in the US.

See, we're learning from the mistakes of the past vis-a-vis appeasement of tyrants (see: 1930s Germany). You and others seem to be stuck in the 1920s, blissfully secure in the 'knowledge' that no tyrant, no matter how bad, ever hurts anyone any time, and that nothing ever justifies military action anywhere for any reason. Usually people like that are the first ones that get run over and stuck to the treads of a tyrant's tank as it rolls forth to conquest.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

If North Korea would stop building nuclear weapons and ICBMs while threatning to annihilate Japan, South Korea, and the United States, we wouldn't have to consider pre-emptive military action against them.Well your whole argument seems to boil down to US is good and others are bad. Of course thats ridulous and completely subjective, but lets just look at your support for pre-emptive strikes. So the US is justified in taking pre-emptive action against other nations to avoid possible national security issues right? So if the US is justified in this, we can assume this is a right which all nations share right? OK, so we know pre-emptive strikes are OK if you see potential threats to national security. Now the US has labled North Korea and Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and all options are available to deal with them. Now if I was North Korea or Iran, I'd certainly consider this coming from the worlds most powerful military as a pretty serious threat to my national security. So CERTIANLY North Korea and/or Iran would be 100% justified in pre-emptively attacking the US right? So you fully support North Korea and/or Iran taking such action and defend it as completely justifiable right? No?

You and others seem to be stuck in the 1920s, blissfully secure in the 'knowledge' that no tyrant, no matter how bad, ever hurts anyone any time, and that nothing ever justifies military action anywhere for any reason.

Not at all, but there is a middle ground between not defending yourself and/or your allies and killing anyone who looks at you funny and makes you a bit nervous. I supported the first Gulf War and even Afganistan. Its just the concept of pre-emptively waring with other nations to avoid waring with other nations which I find illocical and unjustifiable.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[Loki_1929]

"Well your whole argument seems to boil down to US is good and others are bad."

No, my argument boils down to the fact that the world is not an inherently peaceful and sunny place, and that not every situation is black and white. My argument is that, in the three situations we've spoken of thus far, the United States is within its inherent rights as a sovereign nation.

"North Korea and/or Iran would be 100% justified in pre-emptively attacking the US right? So you fully support North Korea and/or Iran taking such action and defend it as completely justifiable right? No?"

Considering they're the cause of the potential military threat from the US, I'd consider such reasoning as circular logic. They cannot justify a response to a situation which their own actions have created. The United States was not a threat to Iraq until it began brutally murdering its own citizens en masse with chemical weapons and attacking its neighbors. The United States was not a threat to North Korea until it began developing nuclear weapons and long-range missile technologies, selling those technologies to other nations (Iran, for instance), and threatening its neighbors with complete obliteration. Now that the US has moved in to put pressure on all fronts for them to stop such activities (and succeeded in stopping Iraq's activities via military action), they cannot turn around and say that the US' response to their actions justifies a response of their own.

Of course, if Iran or North Korea wishes to engage the United States military in a massive conflict, they're welcome to give it their best shot. You realize, of course, that it is only by the mercy and humanity of the United States that there is anyone left alive in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea; yes? If the US were anything like the nations of old in its response to threats, North Korea would glow from space and Iran and Iraq would be layered in burnt shards of glass. Imagine, if you will, if the Romans had nuclear weapons, and what their response to attacks from Carthage would have been.

"Its just the concept of pre-emptively waring with other nations to avoid waring with other nations which I find illocical and unjustifiable."

Let me ask you this: with hindsight available, would a pre-emptive stike against Germany by Europe's nations prior to the invasion of Poland be justifiable? Again, assume all the knowledge of WWII and beyond in making the decision. Once you arrive at that decision, ask yourself, what good is the study of history if we don't learn from our mistakes? If it was a mistake to allow someone like Hitler to spread throughout Europe essentially unopposed, then how is it not learning from mistakes when we contain threatening tyrants like Saddam as much as possible, and then act pre-emptively when it's shown that containment is failing? How many nations must fall, and how many people must die, before a war against an Iran or a North Korea becomes justifiable to you? If we're going to have a war anyway, let's get it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. I'd rather have our troops going against someone like Saddam before he's got nuclear weapons strapped to mid-range missiles taking out everyone in sight. Doesn't that make sense?

"and killing anyone who looks at you funny and makes you a bit nervous."

How long, honestly, have we been trying to deal with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea without military intervention? You supported the first Gulf war after just a handfull of years of trying to contain Saddam's forces without military force, yet after more than 10 years of failures in keeping Saddam's hands clean, keeping banned weapons out of the hands of his forces, enforcing the no-fly zones set up to protect his own people from getting killed en masse once again, and ensuring verifiable proof that he possessed no banned weapons, you now say you can't support the most recent war? We've dealt with Iran non-militarily since the early 1980s, but now we're threatning to attack them because

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Considering they're the cause of the potential military threat from the US, I'd consider such reasoning as circular logic. They cannot justify a response to a situation which their own actions have created.

Exactly!!! And that is the point, the whole concept pre-emptive strikes is based on circular logic. Now you seem to think this logic is only valid for one interation (which is makes no sense if you have the right to pre-emptively defend yourself than the underliying cause of the threat is pretty irrelevant). So lets look at North Korea. You say the first iteration begins with them wanting to build up thier military (included WMD) and because of that they started it only we have the right of pre-emption. But from thier point of view, the most powerful miltary the world has ever known has been sitting on thier doorstep that last fifty years saber rattling and activing disueding reconciliation with the South. So to them this may be the first iteration so they have the right of pre-emption but the US doesn't. Or for Iran, the fact that the US is funding disetent groups with the express goal of over throwing thier government might be the first iteration. Or maybe it was our funding and supplying of Saddam during the Iraq/Iran war that was the first iteration. The whole concept of pre-emption leads to nothing but these rideculous infinate loops of logic and since they are based on pre-emption this logic strucutre also has a built in claw-back mechanisim. So now we've invaded countries after strong warnings. The next time our enemy will have to pre-emptivly strike as soon as those warnings are given (and be justified). So the next time we'll have to attack before we give strong warnings (and be justified), etc, etc, etc. This kind of logic only leads to disaster.

Of course, if Iran or North Korea wishes to engage the United States military in a massive conflict, they're welcome to give it their best shot. You realize, of course, that it is only by the mercy and humanity of the United States that there is anyone left alive in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea; yes?

And this is the other major issue with the policy of pre-emption. That somehow might makes right. So China is an up and coming power with a stated goal of taking back Tiawan. Since we have a treaty with Tiawan, this will quite likely take us to war with a global power. This is certainly a national security threat, so certainly we should preemptively take them out now, before they get too powerful. But they are already pretty powerful and it would be one hell of a mess, so we'll let them go. OK, so if you are a strong nation which threatens us, you're OK but if you are too weak to defend yourselves from us you better be careful.

This logic is nothing short of school yard bully discusting.

If the US were anything like the nations of old in its response to threats, North Korea would glow from space and Iran and Iraq would be layered in burnt shards of glass. Imagine, if you will, if the Romans had nuclear weapons, and what their response to attacks from Carthage would have been.

Yes, we all thank our old US overlords for allowing life to continue on this planet. Isn't it at all troubling to you that anyone should be thanking a powerful country our thier own very continued existance? This is the logic that leads people to fly plans into buildings, not the fact we let women drive cars.

Let me ask you this: with hindsight available, would a pre-emptive stike against Germany by Europe's nations prior to the invasion of Poland be justifiable?

Absolutly NOT justifiable. It wasn't a lack of pre-emption that caused WWII to be the size and scope that it was, it was lack of action by the allies once Germany took action. Germany was to powerful and scared everyone (your thinking about might makes right is much more a culprit here). They didn't want to challange Germany for fear of the results. So they decided taking Poland was OK, just leave me alone. As soon

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Sorry forgot to make one more point.

The United States was not a threat to North Korea until it began developing nuclear weapons and long-range missile technologies, selling those technologies to other nations (Iran, for instance), and threatening its neighbors with complete obliteration.

In the above statement, replace North Korea with Pakistan and it will be factually correct. Of course, Pakistan is useful to us for the moment so all those activities are fine even though Pakistan won't even arrest the man responsible for selling these things because he is a national hero. Sorry, got lost for a moment. Whats the problem with North Korea again?

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[Greg@UF]

  >>OK, who do we attack next?

Washington.
In the name of Democracy, you yanks need to depose the greatest threat to world peace and stability!

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[0xA]

The United States was not a threat to Iraq until it began brutally murdering its own citizens en masse with chemical weapons and attacking its neighbors.

Maybe I just haven't been paying attention or something but that whole gassing his own people bit happened 15 years before the US invasion. Took your sweet ass time to do something about it didn't you?

Maybe that wasn't the reason for the invasion after all, I mean even people from the CIA say he didn't do it on purpose, they were probably attacking the Iranian troops in the town at the time.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17 79.htm

But hey don't let actual history get in the way of your arguments, your government doesn't.

Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data

[mean pun]

If Saddam had no WMD, why did he not fully cooperate with the weapons inspectors over the years? He defied them all throughout the Clinton Administration. If he had no WMD, why didn't he cooperate?

He did cooperate, but on his own terms. It was a balancing act. He had to deter (real or percieved) local enemies, and at the same time do something about those annoying UN sanctions without giving in too openly and look weak. His solution was to destroy all WMD himself (so no propaganda victory for the UN), allow the inspectors in on strict conditions (give in but look tough), and darkly hint to his enemies that he wasn't defenceless. In the end he swallowed his pride, and even allowed inspection in his palaces.

Of course the Bush administration didn't have the inclination to acknowledge his (reluctant) cooperation, even when it became very clear to everyone else that he wasn't lying about the WMD.

Nieve or deceptive?

[amightywind]

(To stop all US comments about why we Europeans don't need this) Galileo will be a civil system. It will be run by a private consortium and will offer guaranteed levels of service

Such statements are either naive or deceptive. I expect more from you sophisticates. What do you think China will do with 1 cm accuracy? Track Pandas? No, they will develop Galileo guided weapons and giving them further options in Taiwan, Kashmir, and even Siberia. All possible for a pitance of a few $100M. Galileo creates a strategic threat to the US and countermeasures will have to be developed. I can assure you there will be nothing guaranteed about service levels if the system is used to attack US interests.

Re:Nieve or deceptive?

[guile*fr]

do you really think that a 2kt war-head need a 1cm accuracy? actually, tracking pandas or whatever scientific experiment will benefit from the 1cm accuracy

Re:Nieve or deceptive?

[shawn(at)fsu]

But you have to apprciate the level of effort. It comforts me to know that thier are people out there that are working overtime to hit the bulls-eye when hitting within 50 metters or so is just as good. I for one welcome our overachiving overlords.

Re:Nieve or deceptive?

[Xugumad]

Your right, I feel so much happier knowing that China has to hope its missiles hit the target they're aiming for, rather than something vaguely in the area...

</sarcasm>

Re:Nieve or deceptive?

[justsomebody]

What do you think China will do with 1 cm accuracy? Track Pandas? No, they will develop Galileo guided weapons and giving them further options in Taiwan, Kashmir, and even Siberia. All possible for a pitance of a few $100M. Galileo creates a strategic threat to the US and countermeasures will have to be developed. I can assure you there will be nothing guaranteed about service levels if the system is used to attack US interests.

And US uses it now for what? To track desert rabbits? Look from the other side. US system poses just as much of a threat to other coutries as you say EU system poses to US. No one likes having one above his head. Times when US played that role are over, at least most of the world would like it like that. The only problem I see here is that US constantly enforces its right (without any basis) to that role.

Just first question in the row of questions about weapon reselling. Who put Saddam on position and who funded his warfare? Oh, yes martians did it.

Secondary question. Most of the attacks on US happened for one reason only. US government is sticking its nose where it doesn't belong (and be that its political or military nose). Note that I completely disagree with any kind of even so simple violence, but sometimes I find it hard not to see the reasons for some their actions (although I don't agree with their way of responding, in my opinion hitting back with a hammer just leads to return hit with a bigger hammer, and so on. Just hammers are getting bigger and bigger without any results but so called collateral damage as seen by both sides. Violence is stupid, but it is predictable and it is in human nature).

As history tells, violent interferring calls for violent response.

In short,
1. if US has so many enemies as it fears, there must be a reason why there are so many. It is a simple: "action / reaction" with a little bit of human psychology. And please no relations how you make peace. I saw one such peacemaking from up close enough and last thing I would like to hear is *explanation* of what I saw
2. nobody likes "Big brother", dislike is even greater if that "brother" is a foreigner. You don't like stranger to come to your house and tells you how you sleep and work either. See, I don't agree with that either.

Re:Nieve or deceptive?

[terrymr]

Assuming they can get all 20 of them to launch in the first place.

http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/ptr20010110.pdf

Re:Prediction

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Plus we have "kill rockets", anyway...

good to have a backup

[digitaldc]

in case the US GPS is disabled or malfunctioning

Real Reason this FAQ is up...

[PPGMD]

Europe just launched their first bird into orbit.

Anyways never really got the hub bub about this system, the US discontinued the use of SA in 2000, because aviation has become utterly dependent on GPS (the current FAA plan includes only supplements to GPS when the current VOR system is decommissioned). Also our birds have many of the same capabilities, I believe we have 12 in orbit currently that are of the new spec, we just don't have different scales for pay use and such.

Re:Real Reason this FAQ is up...

[coofercat]

I'm not 100% sure about the "official facts" around this, but it was my understanding that the US abandoned SA in 2000 because the entire world's best mathematical brains were succeeding in defeating it, by "smoothing" out signals (never mind surveyors who were getting millimetre accuracy back in 2000 with SA switched on!). If SA had persisted, that smoothing technology would (by now) be as good as GPS is without SA (indeed, in the UK (in 2000) a national radio station was going to broadcast differential signals by RDS, meaning everyone would have got 1m accuracy quite easily). Thus, SA would have had as-good-as no value. Switching it off demotivated all those activities, once again making SA useful if ever used.

Further, the US gave Haite a big warning about it's impending invasion when all of a sudden, SA was switched off (because the US army didn't have enough military channel receivers to drive their invasion, so nipped into Walmart to stock up with civilian receivers). Possibly not relevant to their decision to turn off SA, but it happened just a few months before the decision was made.

Further still, aviation in general can continue with SA in place. All "friendly" aircraft (ie. those in the US and possibly a few ally countries) can be quickly outfitted with military receivers, if indeed they don't already have them (just as 747s get fitted with missile ECM systems etc). As for "foreign" aircraft crashing into US runways - it's my understanding that all GPS based airport systems also use differential signals from a fixed point on the ground (because even 1m accurate positioning is way too far out). I can't see that changing, even with the European system in place.

However, as has been mentioned already, and is plainly obvious, numerous very important things require GPS to function correctly. Rescue services rely on GPS quite a bit, so having that work regardless of the US/European relationship seems like common sense. Even if both the US and Europe switch on SA, it's possible that European interests can continue (like the aviation example above). This sort of thing still freezes out other countries, so it's only a matter of time before China starts wanting the same thing...

Re:Real Reason this FAQ is up...

[LabRat]

The "hub-bub" of the system is that, while SA hasn't been used in a while, the DoD still encrypts the P-code of the GPS system, thereby denying the high-precision capabilities to everyone except the U.S. military (and other government agencies, I assume). High-precision navigation with GPS for everyone else requires the use of differential GPS systems. The new European system will allow high-precision navigation to all who pony up the cash.

Re:Real Reason this FAQ is up...

[PPGMD]

The European system is bring based on the WAAS supplementation system.

Re:Real Reason this FAQ is up...

[PPGMD]

The GPS system isn't used for anything other than long distance navigation, and even then, normally only secondarily to more traditional navigation aids. When it comes to aircraft moving around airports, and taking off and landing, that 20m inaccuracy can become very dangerous. The 1cm accuracy is closer to what would be needed to be "safe".

Correct, but dated, WAAS approaches are being certified down to CAT I levels. Word is that LAAS approaches might allow CAT IIIb level approaches.

Re:Prediction

[Richard_at_work]

Thats exactly the change made that I meant when I referred to a 'kill switch'. During negotiations with the US it was determined and agreed that a change of frequency was required to allow the US to block Galileo without blocking GPS. This change was made specifically in response to US concerns. Tell me thats not a concession to a party unrelated to the project?

You forget that GPS has had recent changes making it near impossible to jam military receivers, while Galileo does not have these modifications. Thus Galileo could be jammed totally while GPS remains usable to the military with compatable receivers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,110 2126,00.html

Re:Eclipse

[honeypotslash]

So now I can track all of the people over in Europe too?
--
Get your Free MacMini here

Re:Question:

[sjasja]

Probably because the US perceived the old Galileo proposal as a threat and had it killed off years ago.

Not really. The Wired article you quote is from 2002 and no longer reflects reality.

Galileo was almost dead in the beginning of 2002, but it got resurrected within a couple of months. It has been very much alive and active for almost four years now. Launches and ground segment construction to commence in 2006. See Wikipedia for Galileo history.

Still begs the question: why is this news now?

Who's escalating this, again?

[ianscot]

What do you think China will do with 1 cm accuracy? Track Pandas?

Um, actually, yes, that's one thing they do use GPS for now...

Your entire post begins from the premise that the US must continue to keep absolute control of GPS systems to defend itself. Back in the days of the Soviet Union/Empire, the same rationale was used for the iron curtain.

I do agree, the US will anticipate use of any rival system by hostiles. The air force already has policies to do with that, obviously, and to do with hypothetical hostile satellites for that matter.

But if you want to ask why the Europeans are doing this, perhaps you might look at the radically unilateral actions and rhetoric of the current US administration. This is a pretty good example of a practical way in which even our closest allies have responded to W. Bush exiting the multilateral world.

Re:Who's escalating this, again?

[shawb]

There would be a large number of reasons for the EU to do this which simply are not mentioned

1)Pure national pride
2)Response to getting shut down over the DNS root server control issue
3)A stepping stone to getting their act together in terms of outer space technology and exploration
4)A backup plan in case some satellites of the US GPS system experiences problems, which could be technologically related or politically motivated: a diverse system is more robust.
5)Profits: A large amount of the investment is to be private, and those companies expect to get their money back. The EU would probably like to see some of the money that is currently going to American companies in terms of liscensing fees, etc stay in the European economy as well as bring in money from other countries which use the Galleon system.

Re:Who's escalating this, again?

[Wellspring]

OK let me start by saying that the two parents are being a bit absolutist and silly. YES, an EU-controlled GPS rival is a strategic threat to the US. This doesn't mean that we need to jam it or destroy it. French nuclear weapons are a strategic threat as well, but we don't propose to destroy them, either. We're the strongest power, but not the only power, and the EU (quite rightly) is working to increase their power relative to ours.

Similarly, this isn't some ham-handed reaction to the current administration. European attempts to counter and triangulate against American power date back to, well, the beginnings of American power. Even during the Cold War, European interests occassionally clashed with American interests. France's withdrawal from the NATO command structure in 1966, the Suez crisis, German attempts at appeasement vs the USSR, the "European Approach" to terrorism pre-9/11, conflicts over flyover rights during the Libyan attack, approaches to mid-east peace.... any of these sound familiar? In the 80's, American and Italian soldiers had an armed standoff on a NATO base. We stuck together and papered over our differences because of a larger enemy, but things haven't always been roses.

Post-Cold War, things have changed a bit. In the past, a larger common enemy (the USSR) kept the US and EU mostly at common purposes. Lacking that, ties began to fray. The Clinton Administration didn't initiate any major new foreign policy changes other than good relations for their own sake (for which the EU nations extracted diplomatic and trade concessions). Even then, however, a long-term goal of the franco-german alliance was to assemble a counterbalance to the US.

What's developing isn't emnity; it's just the kind of wary maneuvering that friendly nations normally practice. So of course the EU is rolling their own GPS system. And of course we'll invent countermeasures. This isn't because we hate them, or they hate us, or either of us expects to ever fight. This is the normal hedging of bets and accretion of power that nations practice. The structural issues of power are far more important than disputes of the moment.

Re:Who's escalating this, again?

[kylegordon]

EU Galileo may be a strategic threat to your GPS, but it doesn't stop yours being a strategic threat to the EU.

We don't have to increase our power either, we're already larger than the USA and Russia combined. Have a look at http://www.gallup-europe.be/release/GE040607releas e.pdf and Wikipedia for the rest. 450million vs 300million population, and a 12.8trillion economy compared to 12.3. As much as I disagree with a lot of the things the EU stands for, I do think it helps keep the USA at bay.

Re:Who's escalating this, again?

[jandrese]

The problem with those numbers is that while for the most part the US acts as a single entity politically, in the EU there is a tremendous amount of infighting that undermines their aggregate power.

Re:Who's escalating this, again?

[Wellspring]

EU Galileo may be a strategic threat to your GPS, but it doesn't stop yours being a strategic threat to the EU.

Absolutely. That's exactly my point. This isn't a case of a marriage gone bad, it's responsible nations covering their vulnerabilities and advancing their capabilities.

We don't have to increase our power either, we're already larger than the USA and Russia combined. Have a look at http://www.gallup-europe.be/release/GE040607releas e.pdf and Wikipedia for the rest. 450million vs 300million population, and a 12.8trillion economy compared to 12.3. As much as I disagree with a lot of the things the EU stands for, I do think it helps keep the USA at bay.

Here I'd disagree. Power is multidimensional and tough to measure directly. But there are a couple broad categories you could use:

1. Economic: Two numbers pretty much rule this equation: GDP and per-capita GDP. In GDP, the US is behind by a bit (Wikipedia puts the EU's number a bit below your estimate, but either way it's close). Per-capita, however, the roles reverse, and the US is less than double the EU's. In both cases, EU enlargement is a major factor.
2. Demographic: Raw population. The EU beats the US hands-down. However, India and China in turn beat both of us. As NATO commanders used to say about Russia, quantity has a quality all its own.
3. Military: Here the US triumphs. Other world militaries can put up a fierce fight, and might even win in a regional conflict. However, no military comes even close to the US in term of raw power, and projectable power. Of course, the existence of nuclear weapons limit the stakes in such a contest, but in this area, too, the US has a massive nuclear deterrent.
   In comparison, the EU has very little military capability. France's nuclear aircraft carrier has barely left port due to reliability problems. Many European forces are still saddled by conscription, lowering their overall quality. Finally, the EU lacks the political will to use force. The US still has large numbers of troops stationed in Europe. The EU does not occupy the US, unless you count Quebec as a French occupation of rightful US territory. :)
4. Political: The EU has significant political power, perhaps less than the United State's, but is a formidable competitor. Mostly, the limiting factor on the EU's influence is still their own internal structure more than outside competition. The Franco-German axis tends to dominate EU affairs, while the British lead a dissenting group, backed by new-entrants from eastern Europe. This internal conflict (over the common agriculture policy, the EU budget, and of course foreign policy) saps the EU's power. This didn't stop them from successfully opposing explicit UN sanction of the war in Iraq.
5. Culture: Culturally, the EU is very powerful. I'm not up on the specifics, so I'll leave it at that. Movies, music, literature, academic leadership-- all these are very strong.
6. Technology: This is a mixed bag. The US is ahead in aerospace (though the EU member countries are spending like mad to remedy that). We're also ahead in software (though here again the EU is making a strong showing). In hardware, I'd say that they're ahead, but we're both behind the Asian tigers. In biotech, I have no idea-- certainly the EU free-rides on many US biotech advances, but I don't know if that's a procedural, economic or technical imbalance. I know very little about materials science.
7. Resources: The US is the all-time agriculture champion. Much of the EU's trade policy is dedicated to defending their farmers from cheaper, higher quality US imports. The EU has stronger environmental protections, but many former Soviet bloc countries provide it with greater environmental disasters to clean up, as well. Both countries are

Re:Who's escalating this, again?

[bjheu]

WOW! At bay from what? Last time I checked the USA wasn't trying to take over the world. They aren't attempting to push everybody into a one world government. There is no design for an American empire. The U.S. just happens to be the tall poppy at the moment. If any other nation were to rise to a higher position they would find the same amount of vitriol and hatred leveled against them.

And if you are referring to a certain action the U.S. and quite a few nations undertook about 2 years ago that a few EU and UN nations opposed. I will remind you that the UN charter obligated every member state to take the same action in the given circumstances. That is why nobody took action to stop the coalition. They just blathered to the media about it and how they opposed it but wouldn't do anything about it.

Re:Who's escalating this, again?

[badmammajamma]

Your assumption is that Gallileo actually gives them the means to do something that they don't currently have. However, if there ever was a war the first thing the U.S. would do is destroy or jam the Gallileo satellites. I'm not saying that the EU shouldn't have their own system. Hell, go for it. I might use it myself. But don't think that it offers some kind of military asset in regards to a U.S. attack.

Re:Who's escalating this, again?

[Snaller]

This isn't because we hate them, or they hate us, or either of us expects to ever fight.

Don't bet on it.

Is it time ....

[The Mgt]

... for the annual transatlantic GPS flamewar already?

Cost of commerical grade use

[XMilkProject]

I didn't see anything in TFA about what the commercial level would cost. If the 1cm accuracy statement in true, it would be pretty darn cool!

Did I miss it in the article? Or has someone else seen the price somewhere else? Or has it likely not been determined yet?

Re:Cost of commerical grade use

[will_die]

There are actually 3 levels of service: Free version, Commercial version where you must pay, and government level where the 1cm will be available.
as for pricing since it will be close to a decade before they are ready for use prices have not yet been released.

Here's to hoping

[Luscious868]

It works better than the Beage 2.

Premium service

[Anonymous Coward]

There's going to be 5 levels ranging from free (1m accuracy) to commercial (1cm accuracy)!

In an effort to protect its valuable property, the satellite consortium has already started sending take-down notices to parties who are using workarounds to share high-precision location information.

One recipient of these notices was the Greenwich Observatory, which was recently forced to replace its narrow brass strip on the prime meridian with a 2m-wide piece of ragged carpet in order to keep freeloaders from pirating highly accurate coordinates.

Re:Premium service

[jeremyp]

Actually, the brass strip is in the wrong place, at least with respect to the WGS84 datum used by the existing GPS system. In fact, in common with the rest of the UK, the brass strip is moving North Eastwards.

Re:Prediction

[sjwaste]

Seems to me as though it was a move of courtesy. Does it HARM the EU by moving the frequency? Not really, it just prevents it from interfering with military operations. If we're at war, we want to keep as many of our guys alive as possible (if you ask me, all of them), and being able to jam an enemy's positioning signal is part of that. I don't see it as a concession, its not like Europe couldnt go jamming GPS if an enemy was using it, and as a plus, they could still use their own system. How is this at all a concession, when the same benefit received by the US is also received by the EU? It's not one-sided, no matter how much you hate America.

Re:Naive or deceptive?

[Senior Frac]

Of course! Having 1cm accuracy is oodles better than 20m accuracy for tactical nukes. They're such precision instruments donchaknow.

Yeah? Well...

[DoktorSeven]

I'll build my OWN GPS! With hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget the GPS and the blackjack...

Re:Prediction

[adamh]

Try any of these links.

wired

GPSWorld

US Mission to the EU

Re:Question:

[cj5500]

Like pnewhook said Galileo is old news. First of all why is everyone so worried about European GPS, GLONASS has been around for years and you don't hear about anyone making a fuss about that. I actually work for a company that right now sells a GPS manufacturer that incorporates both the US GPS and Russian GLONASS. The addition of Galileo will make GPS as we know it entirely more effective. We are talking close to 80 positioning sattelites in the next 5 years. Plus I've known about equipment for the construction industry at least that is already developed that will be able to reference all three systems for the last year. This is old news and also nothing to worry about, actually we should all be excited to see how this new sattelite system is going to change the positioning industry.

Re:Prediction

[jacksonj04]

Not only does this allow the US to jam the Galileo frequencies without taking out GPS, it lets the EU jam GPS without taking out Galileo.

Galileo is still in development, and I suspect that those un-jammable modifications to GPS will find their way into Galileo's (currently technically superior) technology. The whole thing will prompt another arms race with more and more satellites of higher accuracy until the whole thing is an esentially unjammable mess.

Re:Question:

[shawb]

It's news because they're about to launch the first satellite. Although now that I think about it, that should have been posted instead of what we got.

Re:please

[nnnneedles]

"We could unleash our nuclear arsenal and flatten Europe."

Well, your post (and others) actually makes it very clear that americans are still scary people and that we should build our own positioning system.

Back to the cold war?

[gotan]

It's really amazing how all this cold war rhetorics is dug up again (or has it never died?). Only Russia is no big threat atm so now it's China. I mean, what is it, is it paranoia or is it that US-Politics needs that big evil enemy to distract their people from the problems at home? It's a never ending story, China, Terrorists, evil Communists ... did anything change since McCarthy or do we need to relive all that crap because of 9/11?

Sure, 9/11 was a tragic event, but even more tragic is what was done to the american ideals of freedom and democracy in the name of the "war on terror".

Now what has all this to do with Galileo vs. GPS you may ask. Well, GPS is under US-military control. ATM they're acting like they could throw a fit of paranoia anytime and switch off all civil GPS functionality. Sory, but that's the picture the US government is sending out into the world: self centered control freaks with tunnelvision that might jump anytime for reasons only they know.

Now you wouldn't trust someone like that with a system your life depends on, but that's exactly what we need: GPS- (or Galileo-) guided navigation systems for planes and ships, fully automated systems relying on accurate GPS-coordinates for positioning, you name it. If it isn't lives depending on these systems it's at least big money.

And no, noone trusts the US to provide a reliable GPS service. They might switch off the system without prior warning because of some perceived terrorist threat (thereby doing more damage worldwide than any terrorist could), they might do it to damage european economy or threaten to do it in some kind of blackmail-scheme, who knows.

And that's why we need Galileo.

Re:Back to the cold war?

[Sir Holo]

It's really amazing how all this cold war rhetorics is dug up again (or has it never died?). Only Russia is no big threat atm so now it's China....

We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Go read some of the old newspapers in the library to confirm this.

Re:Back to the cold war?

[lemaymd]

...self centered control freaks with tunnelvision that might jump anytime for reasons only they know.

Well, they've got 295,734,134 people to guard from threats across the globe and within their borders, so you should be able to understand why they might seem a bit sensitive at times. :-)

That's just the way of the world, every nation should always be constantly advancing their defense technologies while at the same time trying to maintain the best relations possible with the rest of the world. To open up everything and start subjugating military technology (GPS, at least originally) to commercial and civilian interests is one way to allow your military, commercial, and civilian interests get whacked simultaneously. However, most military technology eventually matures and becomes a part of the civilian landscape, like crypto, computers, etc., and I think GPS is at that stage now.

Re:please

[diegocgteleline.es]

The only thing is we just don't do crazy things like that (shame on the first person to replay using Iraq as an example)

So wait - you do what you did in Iraq, and then you expect to have any credibility outside your country?

GPS vs Galileo

[kfstark]

The more interesting part of the story is the difference in accuracy between GPS and Galileo. By the time Galileo has enough birds in the sky in 2014, GPS will have included L1C ( GPS Modernization ) which will have accuracy on par with the galileo satellites. Having gone to the planning meetings on the L1C project almost 18 months ago, I can tell you that Galileo was a big topic of conversation and that it drove the choice of signal modulation for the new code.

This is really old news and extremely complex. The galileo/GPS compatibility was negotiated between the EU and the US State Department over a very long period. The EU deliberately picked an incompatible code to force concessions from the US before the EU consented and went with the better frequency.

This is a great example of technology driven politics.

--Keith

Re:GPS vs Galileo

[The Lynxpro]

"The more interesting part of the story is the difference in accuracy between GPS and Galileo. By the time Galileo has enough birds in the sky in 2014, GPS will have included L1C ( GPS Modernization ) which will have accuracy on par with the galileo satellites. Having gone to the planning meetings on the L1C project almost 18 months ago, I can tell you that Galileo was a big topic of conversation and that it drove the choice of signal modulation for the new code."

Is there a possibility that Galileo technology could be easier to implement in a future refinement of GSM mobile phone tech than existing GPS standards?

Re:GPS vs Galileo

[kfstark]

I would highly recommend skimming this report on the L1C signal and its application to both Galilieo vs. GPS and cell phone integration issues.

L1C Short Report

--Keith

Re:instead of paying $4bn for their own GPS

[ledow]

Trust?

Thinking forward, what happens when the US decides to do to their GPS what they're trying to do to the Internet, i.e. dictate all possible uses and laws, from music downloading to what you're allowed to say on Wikipedia? What if the US disapproves of a war that the EU takes part in (in the same way that some EU nations disapproved of the Iraq war)? Would the US demand that the war stop or else they'd turn off their GPS system?

Were the situation reversed, would the US pay the EU for such a contract? Not a chance in hell.

Secondly, if you're going to use GPS for it's primary purpose (military), you want redundancy, not a single point of failure for all allied nations. If you'd be willing to pay another country for it, you'd be better off putting that money into another identical system.

And yet again, why should EU companies that require GPS to perform their business be paying a GPS tax to America when they could be paying that tax to the EU instead?

Re:please

[EoinOL]

We could even invade and take control of Europe.

The US (with help) is currently stretching itself attempting to control Iraq and Afghanistan, and that's after removing a dictator from power and so on and so forth. Invade and control Europe? Maybe in an alternate neoconservative fantasy version of Earth, but otherwise, completely unthinkably ridiculous.

Computer...

[Rob Kaper]

GPS with an accuracy of 1cm.. sounds pleasant. Maybe I'll live to see the day when "computer, locate keys" actually gives a proper response.

Re:Computer...

[engagebot]

Eh... That means you've got a reciever AND transmitter small enough to go on a keyring. Which means small enough to put in somebody's pocket. Or in their shoe. Heck, glue on a magnet and you can stick it to the undercarriage of a car, or even a commercial plane.

Re:Useful for Britain to Track its drivers per Mil

[nr1]

This is exactly how the truck toll system works in Germany. There has been some talk of expanding this to all streets and all vehicles in the future.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Prediction

[OrangeTide]

That sounds like a "kill switch" (in quotes) to me.

Re:instead of paying $4bn for their own GPS

[stewwy]

name a contract, deal or treaty that the US hasn't broken when it's in its interests to.
note: you can replace US in the above sentence with the country of your choosing

Re:instead of paying $4bn for their own GPS

[grimJester]

Because
a) The ability to scramble signals in wartime is worth much more than two billion dollars to the US
b) Nothing could guarantee that the US would keep such a promise, and
c) Galileo is an upgrade to more accurate technology.

Economic benefits far outweigh costs

[FreeUser]

But how much are we willing to pay for said alternative system? I believe the article said that it was going to cost $3-4bn. That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while.

First, 3-4 billion is chump change when it comes to government spending, and particularly so when it comes to international consortia spending. The economic value far outweighs the cost, by orders of magnitude.

Second, while you may find it merely inconvinient to have your GPS stop working, try telling that to a pilot (or 300 passengers) on a plane that is landing on a GPS precisions approch with weather at minimums and terrain all around, when the government decides to get into a tizzy and "disable" their approach. WAAS is intended to counteract that, but the point remains: they are having to deploy another multi-billion dollar system to offset the deliberate design issues and unreliability of the first multi-billion dollar system.

The Europeans are spending the money once, and getting a better, more reliable system they, instead of we, control. It makes all the sense in the world, and will probably allow their planes to land in near zero-zero conditions (unlike GPS+WAAS), and certainly with more precision than GPS (1 cm accuracy!).

Finally, fuck the US if we don't like it. We have no business, and no right, to dictate to the rest of the world what technology they may, or may not, deploy. As for our "reserving the right" to shoot down their satelites, I'm sure they (and the Russians, and the Chinese) reserve the "right" to nuke us back into the stoneage if they feel sufficiently threatened. That so-called "right" (talk about orwellian doublespeak!) to destroy something or someone suddenly becomes a lot less appealing when one is on the receiving end, doesn't it?

Re:Economic benefits far outweigh costs

[AlienGoods]

Not to start a flame war, but I don't want to fly with ANY pilot that relies exclusively on GPS for navigation. What if his receiver breaks? We crash. Sounds like a pretty bad pilot to me.

Re:Economic benefits far outweigh costs

[drinkypoo]

When the chips are down, you may not have a choice. It's better to land on GPS in zero visibility, than to just guess where the airport is, and then guess where the runway is...

Re:Economic benefits far outweigh costs

[terrymr]

This is one reason for a commercial high accuracy positioning system, right now GPS in not accurate enough to allow planes to taxi in zero visibility, which means while you can land, you can't get off the plane until visibility improves enough to see the terminal. A couple of meters either way on a landing doesn't matter, but a couple of meters wrong on the approach to the gate is unworkable.

Re:Economic benefits far outweigh costs

[toddestan]

There are lots of technologies available to pilots to assist them in low visibility situations. Glidescope, ADF, Loran, DME, as well as GPS to name a few. Any decent pilot will be able to land the plane just fine if their GPS unit craps out.

Re:Economic benefits far outweigh costs

[drinkypoo]

Some or all of those solutions are not very helpful. Loran in particular has an accuracy of about .1 nautical miles, which will help you find the airport but not the runway. ADF can be distracted by lightning, a not-unlikely issue to crop up in zero-visibility conditions. DME is only expected to be within 3% or 1/2 mile of being accurate, whichever is greater (less accurate.) And I can't even find a site selling glidescope systems, although a lot of used planes seem to come with them. What's that leave? Out of the options you provide, only GPS. Current handheld GPS systems give you accuracy to about 15-30 meters, depending on who you talk to and which unit you talk about. At worst that's 1/20 of a mile accuracy, which is twice as good as Loran at its best (1/10) and ten times better than DME (1/2). The new commercial system will be 1cm resolution, which is so much better it's not even worth discussing a comparison.

Re:Economic benefits far outweigh costs

[thesupraman]

>But the truth is if the bombs weren't dropped Europe would be a facist state

For god sake go and ready just a tiny bit of history.

'The nukes' were dropped to help american interests in the pacific (and thats being generous, to a large extent japan had stopped any meaningfull external warfare by then anyway, and russia was rapidly destroying what was left, it was a minour threat, but the devices needed testing and demonstration after all..), and were in no way related to the war in europe, in any way at all.

VE day (victory in europe) was 8th may 1945.
hiroshima was bombed on 9th august 1945, 3 months LATER.
VJ daywas 15th august 1945.

At least it will be compatible

[OrangeTide]

I would normally expect Europe to discard the current GPS standard because it was entirely developed without European contributions. (Well other than many of the contractors that developed it were Europeans on work visas)

What's with all this anti-US flaming. The US made GPS and let everyone use it, true it was a political manuever to allow an obvious military technology into every backyard on the entire planet and it worked out amazingly well, but hey everyone got something for (almost) nothing. The cost being that it's a little easier for the US invade to occupy your nation.

The only problems I see with a European GPS is that the US might not agree with EU on who gets access to the really accurate technology. (Like getting reasonable accurate at a 1000kph) Who knows some company in Cuba could get the technology, EU is on much more friendly terms with Cuba than the US is.

Re:At least it will be compatible

[xadhoom]

you're right.

but the US own the GPS, thus can restrict it's use to others except themselves in case of .
And the US will complain (as did with Galileo Project) since has no more control on the navigation system,
dropping to the same level as others...

control is the power... and not having it is the issue...

I hope that EU will have it's own GPS system, as US will have it's own... better if both will be the very same and integrated, without giving total control to only 1 country.... something like the Internet... no central node of control.

cya

Re:At least it will be compatible

[OrangeTide]

Well I think the US is mainly interested in GPS for it's own tatical use. Not as a tool to control other countries. Basically GPS is free to use for civilian use, because the military cares little about what civilians do.

Now you're right on the money with not having power being an issue for the EU. For EU military, aviation, and other critical enterprises it can be quite uncomfortable (or downright foolish) to depend on a technology entirely controlled by someone else. I would expect in the near future that China and India setup their own GPS. And possibly that Australia and Canada pushes the EU and US to put together some sort of international agency or even a simple treaty.

GPS has been a powerful tool for the military in the past, but it's quickly becoming a necessity in the private sector. If a cellphone's mapping features don't work during some conflict or something, that's no big deal. I don't need to find the nearest bar while my country is being invaded. But if the GPS goes out while an unmanned aircraft (metro shuttle or airmail) is up in the sky that could be catastropic.

Re:Prediction

[Freexe]

From my undertanding, they also made them limit the Frequencies to those the US has/can block

Re:Prediction

[Erwos]

"Tell me thats not a concession to a party unrelated to the project? "

I know you Europeans have totally forgotten, but we're actually a non-inconsquential military ally of yours. It's called NATO. The US is hardly a third party to all of this.

-Erwos

Re:Prediction

[networkBoy]

"more and more satellites of higher accuracy until the whole thing is an esentially unjammable mess."

Or:
more and more satellites of higher accuracy (that start to bump into each other clogging Geo orbit) until the whole thing is esentially a log jam. ;-)
-nB

Re:Prediction

[Morlark]

Well, a 'kill switch' kinda implies the ability to take down the entire network at once, whereas this is just local jamming. If they want to jam the signal is a small area, then I don't see why they shouldn't be able to, so long as they make sure they only do it in places that they can afford to piss people off. And anyway, we can always trust them to make careful and judicious use of this jamming, naturally... right?

Re:please

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe so. But you could think that instead of destroying Iraq, we saved it. In that case, we saved Iraq and have the world's respect and admiration.

Re:Prediction

[jacksonj04]

I live in fear of the day you need to fit spaceships with indicator lights to let satellites know which way they're turning. Could you imagine trying to merge into a lane full of geostationary satellites?

Re:Prediction

[networkBoy]

While I was mostly joking, there are sections of GEO that are already quite crowded. All things considered it's the most prime realestate in the universe (as far as humans are concerned). Almost all comm sats, tv sats, GPS/related sats are in GEO orbit.
-nB

Re:please

[pe1chl]

You may be interested to know that the US has implemented laws to allow an invasion in the Netherlands, home of the international court of justice, in case an American has to appear in front of that court. They don't approve this court and want to free their citizens in case they are brought to it.

At the same time, the US is sending requests to Dutch courts to have Dutch citizens appear in American courts for claimed offenses.

Of course, that is ridiculous. But it is the factual situation.
Others are seeing this as well and do not trust the Americans as much as they did 50 years ago.

News!!??

[BBird]

This is news? This project is at least 2 years old,
codenamed Galileo.

The nerds did not notice?

Re:please

[jcnnghm]

So I guess the United States lost all of the credibility gained in saving Europe multiple times by invading, of all things, Iraq. We should have let Europe totally fall to the Germans.

Re:instead of paying $4bn for their own GPS

[jcnnghm]

Who hasn't?

Old News ... Very Old News

[buk110]

Old News, anyone in the know knows about the various countries that are in the process or have already started launching satellites for Global Positioning. The United States has their famous GPS, Russia has GLONASS, Europe is working on their thing and I believe China has something going too. Deff not slashdot material.

Re:Old News ... Very Old News

[BBird]

afain China is partnering with EU for
the Galileo project. This was one more
infuriating thing for Bu$h&Co.

Re:Old News ... Very Old News

[buk110]

GALILEO! THank you, I couldn't remember the name of that project for the life of me. But ya, like I was saying this is most deff old news. Mid-Earth Orbit Satellite systems are old news, anyone that's in the SATCOMM industry or has read up on it knew of this. Ah well, atleast it gets some attention

Re:Old News ... Very Old News

[lordholm]

Not really, the news is that the first Galileo satellite was launched yesterday.

Re:Old News ... Very Old News

[buk110]

The launch date and how long the project has been in development are two seperate issues.

For instance, we've been talking about Ultra Wide Band for a long while now; and let me guess...when people start using it and it's common place that will not be big news.

It's all how you look at things

Re:Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like this is being spun as a way for the U.S. to jam their signal without affecting their own... couldn't they jam the U.S. signal without affecting theirs?

Re:It's likely

[The Lynxpro]

"A significant shortcoming of the EU in my very humble opinion is that it lacks the will to do things other than pass directives and laws. When it comes to spending money on infrastructure, it will come down to either Germany funding it, or endless debate."

Or reform the bloated Common Agriculture Policy, the very source of contention with the U.K. and the BBQ/Budget Rebate that the rest of Europe wants them to surrender, with or without those crucial reforms the U.K. wants implemented.

One of many GPS systems...

[t_allardyce]

Im guessing what will happen is that the US will deal with the EU - GPS will be turned off entirely or severely crippled over the EU and Galileo will be turned off or crippled over the US in return. There are gonna be allot more of these systems in the near future, as the technology becomes more commoditized people like Iridium are going to say 'hell why not'.

The only thing in their way will be government action. But even if satellite navigation is strictly controlled, there are so many other forms of navigation you might as well give up trying. Mobile phone networks are starting their own form of positioning (and no viable terrorist target is going to be outside of a mobile network anyway!), you've got aviation VOR/ADF beacons and we're more or less on the verge of a device that you can just program "these are transmitters, theses are their carrier frequencies, these are their co-ordinates, now tell me mine". In the near future everyone will be able to know their position within less than 1 meter using one system or another, there will be a dozen ways to do it, they will all be affordable and no government will be able to stop it. We have to just accept it and move on.

Re:One of many GPS systems...

[t_allardyce]

What did I get wrong?

Re:One of many GPS systems...

[t_allardyce]

So is that spelt "Im anal" or "I'am anal"? I believe thats a contraction of your anus, or is it "that's"?

What did I get wrong in terms of GPS?

Re:Prediction

[mumblestheclown]

the EU has been going away from an offensive army a long time ago and formed towards defensive and humanistic purposes.

Yes, Europe now prefers to cause ruin and misery throughout the developing world via its common agicultral policies and willful statist blindness rather than the good old american way.

Re:Prediction

[Keebler71]

This change was made specifically in response to US concerns. Tell me thats not a concession to a party unrelated to the project?

I'd argue that the US is a party related to the project in the sense that (a)they are a member of NATO (as are most EU contries) and (b) Galileo signals could (and will) be used against the US military at some point. Almost certainly not by an EU member state, but by some even more unrelated party (China and Iran seem obvious potential candidates). Note that EU delagates have specificly stated that they would not selectivly degrade Galileo's accuracy, even if it was being used militarily against the US. That is a pretty bold and reckless statement. If a US ally was attacked by an adversary that was exploiting GPS in its efforts, I'd wager that the US would be happy to degrade the signal if asked.

Re:please

[Loki_1929]

There's a world of difference between normalized extradition procedures (which occur back and forth every day around the world) and some self-proclaimed 'international criminal court' trying Americans while riding on anti-US sentiment. We allow our citizens to be tried and punished for crimes in countries all over the world every single day. The US doesn't try to skirt reasonable laws and reasonable judicial actions for its own citizens. However, if this 'international criminal court' starts picking up Americans (soldiers, for instance) and putting them up for ridiculous show trials where they're convicted of nebulous crimes sans evidence by anti-US judges, then of course we're going in to get them. To not do so would be absurd. What would you have us do? Write angry letters to the UN saying how we don't think it's fair that John Smith is rotting in jail because some court lacking any rightful authority whatsoever decided something he may have done three thousand miles away warranted it? Heh, civus romanus sum. Deal with it. :)

On treating AIDS

[Slinky Saves the Wor]

Yes, Galileo is expensive. As for using the money on AIDS: WASHINGTON (AP) -- In an unusually candid admission, the federal chief of AIDS research says he believes drug companies don't have an incentive to create a vaccine for the HIV and are likely to wait to profit from it after the government develops one. I think you can draw your own conclusions.

And yes, the crux of the issue is about freedom and control about your own tools, and about not having to live at the whims of another entity, no matter how trusted the entity at the moment is.

$3-$4 billion is not really that much money. The data retention of data communications within EU will likely cost way more per year, altogether, even though the proponents say it won't. Or, to put it the other way, 4 billion dollars is about a month of the Iraq war. If I had the option of where to spend such money, I'd rather take the Galileo system.

Re:Prediction

[c_forq]

I think you need to start putting a disclaimer in your post that you work for Fox and friends, and that your opinion doesn't necessarily represent your employer.

Oblig. Simpsons

[Wilson_6500]

"To start press any key... Where's the 'any' key?"

My Goodness,

[delcielo]

I'm really not sure where to start...

To begin with, the Galileo system is reputed to have better accuracy. Positional accuracy is, after all, the point of the whole system. So why wouldn't they do it. Furthermore, your reaction to them merely setting up a separate system not controlled by your own government seems to me to be good evidence that were the shoe on the other foot, you'd likely be extolling the virtues of a system not controlled by a foreign country with even more fervor.

As for unleashing our nuclear arsenal, I know you must be kidding. Mutually assured destruction, despite my admitted characterization of it as lunacy during the Cold War, works. France, Germany, England, Russia, etc. have nukes too my friend. All of that is, of course, an argument beyond the simple absurdity of your statement.

As for invading Europe, we can't even control a country with less land area than Texas. What makes you think we could successfully invade Europe and prevail?

And how would the U.S. shut down the internet? Cripple, sure. But I don't imagine there's a big red button in the White House that simply shuts down the internet. We may have developed the core of the internet; but I think that saying we control it is a bit ridiculous.

Finally, you can shake your finger and say "shame on you" all you like. We just did invade a country without provocation or necessity. I'm all for our presence in Afghanistan; but Iraq is a lark. It was the personal agenda of the President, misrepresented and sold to the larger public as a defense of our national security and freedom in general.

Really, take a pill. The Europeans are launching a satellite positioning network. It doesn't rate talk of nuclear war and ground invasions.

Re:Prediction

[Hrdina]

GPS are in MEO, not GEO, for various reasons.

Expected time of arrival: 2055?

[kermitthefrog917]

All I know is that I've seen European efficiency and i would not be surprised if a project like this took 50 years to complete. (No I didnt RTFA...So don't correct me with the expected date... It will take 50 years regardless of the estimate already made) By that time even this accurate technology will be a day late and a dollar short.

Re:Prediction

[networkBoy]

my bad then. . .
What are some of the reasons anyway?
-nB

Russian System

[tomherbst]

The US vs Europe debate fails to notice that there exists an
operational alternative to the US GPS system. Russia has had a
working system for years. There are shipping chipsets that do both
GPS and GLONASS.

http://www.glonass-center.ru/

Europe should just slip the Russians a few Euro to keep it running
and get a contractual agreement on levels of service.

Re:Russian System

[Strolls]

I'd have modded you as interesting for that posting - I didn't know of this system, I'm interested to learn about it and it's really cool that you can get chipsets that support both it & GPS - but I've already posted in this thread.

...Oh! I nearly forgot...reading the link you provide states that the Russian system is accurate to 70 metres, which is plenty less than GPS, nevermind the proposed Galileo. That's why I didn't mod you as informative. It was close tho'.

Stroller.

Re:Russian System

[EnglishDude]

Also they've only got 11 satellites in space - can't be all that useful anyway?

Re:Russian System

[Reservoir Penguin]

Please aceept my aplogies . As a Russian I apologize for whoever made this horrib;e looking site. Especially the front page with images turned of...

Re:lol slashdot is amusing

[drinkypoo]

This is a really silly comment. Existing GPS provides enough accuracy to usefully track whatever you want to track already. Granted, it doesn't work well in urban environments, but I have had good results in cities as well.

Re:It's likely

[The Lynxpro]

"do you mind adding "thank you europe" for financing all those years of discount ? If you don't like Europe, please get out of it and pull the plug on your tiny island."

I'm American so your statement about my "tiny island" only would be an insult to my ancestors. The whole point of the BBQ/Rebate was to make up for the excess monies the U.K. had to pay into the EU budget due to the CAP which the U.K. objected to. The rest of the EU wants the U.K. to do away with the rebate without any reform to the CAP which is the very thing the U.K. wants done and will then surrender the rebate. So if you want to place blame somewhere about the British rebate, lay it at the door of the French government who is responsible for the lack of reform of the CAP.

As for losing the U.K., considering it is the world's fifth largest economy (as well as one of the best performing European economies as of late), it would be more of a loss for the EU than the other way around. Much like if California were to leave the rest of the United States. So perhaps you should be thanking the U.K. for staying part of your rather stagnating supranational economy that it does not receive much back from other than criticism of its foreign policy and illegal immigration.

Re:please

[pe1chl]

You may think that the international court trials are show trials and do not use reasonable laws, but I do think that keeping a lot of people in a camp in Cuba without trial and without telling them what they are accused of is very unreasonable. The way the US is currently "fighting a war agains terrorism" is clearly showing that its freedom and justice values are very flimsy. Send a couple of planes in US buildings and it breaks down all the values that it claims it stands for.

Also, the laws the US uses to extradite people (e.g. drugs laws) are not very reasonable or realistic. Note that the whole problem of drugs and drug criminality is primaly caused by drugs being illegal. The US tried it with alcohol as well, and it was a complete failure.

As US soldiers are fighting wars that do not obey international war treaties, it is very reasonable to send them (and their principals) to an international court for it.

Re:please

[The Lynxpro]

"Well, your post (and others) actually makes it very clear that americans are still scary people and that we should build our own positioning system."

If America is so scary to you Europeans, why don't you support building a missle-defense system to protect yourself against stray American nuclear missiles? After all, with the exception of the U.K., the rest of the EU pretty much does not want a missile-defense system built to protect itself (and America) from those traditionally freedom-loving Russians...not to mention the Chinese. Heck, if anyone should be concerned about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, it should be the European Union countries because Iran's missile technology is only capable of striking Europe (and of course, Israel), not the United States. Gosh, why does it seem like America (and the U.K.) are the only countries that are concerned with protecting Europe from a nuclear strike?

Re:instead of paying $4bn for their own GPS

[The Lynxpro]

"Treaties are supposed to be iron clad, written in stone contracts. The US government has broken so many treaties, why would any one trust them again?"

What treaties? If you are referring to treaties with Native American tribes, then yes, we are guilty. If you are referring to treaties with transnational organizations of dubious respectibility, then maybe so as well. But with bilateral treaties? Name one.* The US didn't even violate the ABM Treaty because it withdrew from it, which Russia consented to after grumbling about it publically.

*and if the Canadian "soft lumber" argument is actually brought up, I will refer the reader to the fact that Canada is violating the Kyoto Treaty it signed in terms of the current rate of carbon emissions it is producing. The same treaty that the U.S. refused to sign because it claimed the treaty was unenforceable which is being proven to be factual since Canada is violating it. The US does pay its fines when the WTO rules against it.

Galileo has been in the work for 10 years

[GnuPooh]

OK I realize not everyone know about Galileo, but please understand this has been in the works for at least 10 years. This is not "news" per se. As we get closer to launch it gets more press.

Re:Oh really?

[dfenstrate]

Refresh my memory, when did the US aquire the right to shoot down their sattelites?

The same time everyone else lost their ability to stop us.

If we think it's time to start shooting down europe's sattelites, we're hardly going to be concerned with what European nations consider what we have the 'right' to do.

Not that I think we'll have cause to shoot down any satellites any time in the forseeable future, but your post implied fantasies about 'international law' that just aren't so.

Re:please

[d_strand]

Oh man, I barely know where to start. How about here:

We could unleash our nuclear arsenal and flatten Europe.

Indeed you could. And 1 minute after your missiles left the grund. France, England and probably Russia would retaliate, flattening the USA with their nuclear arsenals.

We could withdraw all our trade and let Europe flounder on its own

I suppose you could but are you aware of the trade balance between the US and Europe? I suggest you look it up before embargoing.

We could even invade and take control of Europe

Oh dear. Considering that your entire army cant control two 3rd world countries with a total population of around 50 million, where the governments are your puppets, I seriously doubt you could "invade and control" 400+ million people with high tech weapons, well organized armies, and fully developed infrastructure.

While we could shut the internet off at any time

Indeed you could shut down your root servers. And the internet would probably stop working outside of national nets for all of 30 minutes before everone had repointed their DNS.

Re:please

[moz25]

Uhm, the reason the U.S. doesn't do "crazy things like that" is because it would be tremendously stupid and amazingly harmful to the U.S.. Just look at how much time, money and trouble it's costing to invade even a third-world country like Iraq. Do you seriously believe that the U.S. can invade an entire continent that actually does have nuclear and military capability? This is the MAD principle (mutually assured destruction).

I don't you which "we" you are referring to, but for some reason I very seriously doubt that some slashdot kid called "breadboy21" has the authority to come even remotely close to the people and equipment to make choices on that magnitude. It would be more accurate for you to refer to "the guys who run the country I happen to live in".

On a more positive note, given the newer technology that's going in this project, I think it's very good for all parties (countries) involved. The U.S. has taken the initiative in this project and everyone profits... it's right for Europe to contribute as well.

Ever Heard Of Jamming?

[Long-EZ]

I can very much see the EU perspective, not wanting a global navigation system based on the free, popular, ubiquitous, and well established US military GPS system. But, I have a question. What's the difference between using the existing GPS system that can be degraded or made unavailable based on perceived US security threats, and using a new EU system that the US military will jam based on perceived US security threats?

I suspect the difference is several billion euros for the development of the new Gallileo satellite navigation system, and several billion dollars for the US Department of Defense to develop and deploy the technology to jam it. Jamming a low power signal such as the signal used for global satellite based navigation is very easy. The $1B price tag reflects the fact that the US DoD doesn't order a box of paperclips without turning it into a billion dollar military program with plenty of pork for every congressional district.

Try to remember.... If you build it, they will jam it.

I agree in principle with the EU position, but in the real world, the Gallileo navigation system will add little useful capability, and will be mostly another standard. Gee, I love standards. We should have at least ten satellite global positioning standards. That would be a big help.

On the plus side, 1 cm accuracy would be cool for some odd applications like earthquake prediction. The current GPS system has 1 cm accuracy, but only when augmented by ground based transmitters in a small local area.

In other news: EU alternative to Slashdot

[vk38]

Given the possiblity of VA Software manupulating the accuracy of Slashdot ratings, the EU decided to embark on a $1B project to replace it with a Pan-European alternative.

Re:please

[moz25]

The U.S. was one of the last countries to get into WW 2. Of course U.S. involvement was welcome, but without it, Germany would have fallen too. Their military was too stretched and their economy was getting worse. Except then, it would be to the Russians and the Cold War would have been even less pleasant for the U.S. In short: it would have been totally against U.S. interest to NOT get involved.

They need to do this

[IntelliAdmin]

At any time the US government can reduce the usability of GPS. Why would you want to put the security of your country in the hands of another country?

Re:They need to do this

[Retired Replicant]

Nope, I would not want to put the security of my country in the hands of another country. It is also the reason why the United States should not to accede to European interests when deciding the best course of action for defense of the US.

Re:They need to do this

[IntelliAdmin]

Yep. I agree too. USA should do the same.

Re:They need to do this

[chawly]

Indeed, George Bush does not inspire trust. Neither do a number of other American politicos - Freedom Fries anyone? France needs to do this - but France is not alone.

Re:please

[pizpot]

"We could unleash our nuclear arsenal and flatten Europe." ...and the fallout would kill all human life on the planet most likely. Duh.

remeber France vs USSA

[pizpot]

France alone has reason to want this system the way the USSA gov't hates them. Hey, can CANADA join the EU? Please?

Re:remeber France vs USSA

[bjheu]

Boy, Flamebait If I've ever seen it.

Re:remeber France vs USSA

[EnglishDude]

USSA = United Soviet States of America?

Re:instead of paying $4bn for their own GPS

[pizpot]

What on earth do the words "US" and "Kyoto" have to do with each other?

Re:please

[The Lynxpro]

"Ok, it has impressive accuracy and stop ratio, but it fails because in real conflict there would be far too many targets. And even if US would be able to shoot down the nukes, they are made so that they can triggered to
detonate when shot. Which would mean that just the fallout would be bad enough to make the target country and rest of the globe unliveable."

How do you figure there'd be too many targets to shoot down? I'm not talking about a full-scale nuclear conflict with Russia's 5,000 + nuclear missiles; I'm talking about shooting down at-the-most 20 nuclear missiles from a country like Iran. That makes it completely possible to achieve...not much more difficult than Atari's old arcade classic *Missile Command*... :)

As for fallout, me thinks there are plenty of people living in Hiroshima today, despite having suffered an atomic explosion in WWII. Shouldn't they be living under the threat of giant cockroaches or awaking Godzilla? Aside from China, the only threat Japan has to worry about is an aging population sinking their retirement system because they aren't reproducing in sufficient numbers (much like most of Western Europe except for Ireland). Get to frakking, people! :)

Re:Prediction

[kfstark]

Your understanding of politics is a bit limited.

The US supported the building of Galileo. The EU specifically chose a frequency to get political concessions from the US in unrelated areas (ie. agriculture). The US has every right to get upset when their defensive systems are held hostage by allied countries as a negotiating ploy.

--Keith

Re:please

[diegocgteleline.es]

...except that then the world was in risk, and that Hussein is FAR from being Hitler.

Bush and Blair have accepted publicaly that the reasons they gave to start the war (Alqaeda links, WWD) were WRONG. They have admitted it. In my book, that means "We fucked it up". That they've been able to convince people that they're the one fix to such fuckup - EEUU certainly can't abandone Irak until they fix the fuckup - is another problem.

Re:Prediction

[MoronBob]

Hey that reminds me, Whats the exit plan for US troups in Germany? Is it 70 years or 100? Wheres all the "Sky is falling if we dont get out of Germany" claptrap?

Talk about overreaction

[kylef]

Well, your post (and others) actually makes it very clear that americans are still scary people...

Whoa, wait just a minute. Any student of modern European history would find this statement incredibly ironic. Pot, kettle, black. Get over your self-superior European selves.

News Flash: Americans do NOT want to flatten Europe with nuclear weapons. The funny thing here is, the OP brought it up as an example of an absurd idea. You did an excellent job of demonstrating how to overreact and take things out of context. Bravo.

Re:please

[Strolls]

The United States is unlikely to change or shut down GPS... We could even invade and take control.... The only thing is we just don't do crazy things like that (shame on the first person to replay using Iraq as an example)

Yeah, shame on anyone who easily refutes you. It'd be much harder than that if you were a peace-loving nation.

Stroller.

Re:Prediction

[thesnarky1]

Ya, don't think for a minute that the US is the only country that would jam signals. That's a fiarly important part of war, disrupting enemy command/control and shutting down comms and any other eletronic gizmos you can. So, this is just as good for the EU, who can now jam the US signals without hurting themselves.

Good deal for $3-4 Billion

[Dr. Spork]

Just to put things in perspective: $3-4 Billion is what it costs to occupy Iraq for 20 days. Yes, this is another giant piece of government spending with money coercively collected taxpayers.

If you think of the pricetag of this awesome navigation system as being an Iraq occupation which is shorter by 20 days, it begins to sound like a very good deal!

Re:Good deal for $3-4 Billion

[camiel]

You're exactly right with your comment ! The U.S. Department of Defense spends $5 bn. every single month for having troops in Iraq. $3-4 bn. for Galileo doesn't seem that much when you put it in perspective.

Nope

[lommer]

Here's a better reason: 1cm accuracy combined with guaranteed service quality will mean that the system is a lot more useful in many industries than GPS. I'm a pilot, so I'll use that example: while the grandparent's car's nav system isn't critical the instrument system used to perform zero-visibility landings on 800-passenger airliners is. DGPS with WAAS is already being used to perform non-precision instrument approaches, but the Selective Availability (currently disabled by the pentagon, but could be turned back on at any moment) and accuracy are what's holding it back from being adopted for Cat. IIIC instrument landings. A system with Galileo's proposed features would be way cheaper to install and operate than the ILS systems currently used, would be more accurate, and could even be used on the ground for taxiing in zero-zero conditions (a current major weakness for airliners).

If one uses one's imagination, one can also imagine 1cm Galileo signals taking car navigation systems to the point where they are completely autonomous for highway driving...

Re:please

[vidarh]

One of the key concerns about a missile-defense system is control (or lack of it) and the effect it has on the principle of mutually assured destruction. The rest of the world don't want to be in a situation where the US is free to use nuclear weapons without the treat of retaliation (nor would we like China, Russia or any other nuclear power to be in the same situation).

A missile defense system that is guaranteed to protect everyone would certainly be welcomed by most people. But that would require shared control, as nobody would trust it if control was in the hands of a single power.

This is exactly the same issue as with the GPS alternatives - practically nobody are willing to trust the US to not use these capabilities selectively. While Europeans are unlikely to think the US will selectively degrade GPS (or a missile defense system) against us, many of us do consider it likely the US will use such systems to selectively disadvantage countries we may consider friendly or may not support military action against.

Not leaving control over such systems in the hand of another country - no matter how friendly - is prudent planning. You don't know if they'll still be as friendly 10-20 years down the line, or if you have different strategic objectives that may lead to dramatically different approaches to third parties.

Re:uhm

[bjheu]

Because the french and russian built jammers that we found in Iraq turned out to not be that effective. Oh and if you're not inclined to do the math... GPS came into its own around 1990 ish. Trade sanctions with Iraq began around that time. Most GPS jammers weren't even conceived until a few years later. So how did Iraq manage to get that kind of military technology from France and Russia?

Re:instead of paying $4bn for their own GPS

[LookAtTheMonkey!]

There's no GPS tax. Neither for French people, American people, or French-American people.

Leave it to the Euro-trash to think of taxing their own people for a service that's paid for in full by foreigners.

Maybe it would be a good idea for the French citizens to pay a "Marshall Fund" tax to the French gov't too.

Re:Socialism != High unemplyment rate !!!

[smithmc]

  what was the unemployment rate in the 1920s and the early 1930s again? Was America at that time socialist?

Maybe not exactly socialist, but the prevailing economic viewpoint is that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression, which otherwise would have been a recession from which the market, left to its own devices, would have recovered in due course.

Re:please

[Loki_1929]

"You may think that the international court trials are show trials and do not use reasonable laws"

I didn't say that was necessarily going to be the case. What I said was, in the event that such a thing were to come to pass, don't think for a second the US wouldn't intervene.

"I do think that keeping a lot of people in a camp in Cuba without trial and without telling them what they are accused of is very unreasonable."

They're granted annual reviews, in addition to the battlefield reviews they're given long before they make it to Cuba. They're granted far more due process than any other detainee in any other war I can think of. If this were WWII, many of them would have been hanged by now. None of them would have gotten half the due process they've gotten already, and they certainly wouldn't be entitled to annual review.

"The way the US is currently "fighting a war agains terrorism" is clearly showing that its freedom and justice values are very flimsy."

While I agree with regards to limited aspects of the WoT as it related to US citizens' rights, I think the vast majority of what has been done has been well within the rights of a nation attempting to defend itself from a worldwide asymetric threat never before faced by any nation on Earth.

"Send a couple of planes in US buildings"

You make it sound as if a couple of remote controlled childrens' toys were bounced into an abandoned building. I won't even respond to this line until you address what really happened. Don't downplay a horrendous mass murder and expect a reasoned response from anyone.

"Also, the laws the US uses to extradite people (e.g. drugs laws) are not very reasonable or realistic."

Extradition between nations is done by treaty. In other words, other nations must agree before the extradition even takes place.

"Note that the whole problem of drugs and drug criminality is primaly caused by drugs being illegal."

You're insinuating that if Heroin were legal, no one would die from it, no one would get sick from it, no one would get hooked on it, and everyone who's currently a heavy addict would suddenly feel right as rain. Again, this is absurd.

"As US soldiers are fighting wars that do not obey international war treaties"

Heh.. What, pray tell, is an "international war treaty"? An agreement between two nations on how they're going to kill each other? We don't, as a matter of policy, mistreat prisoners. When those among us break that policy (Abu Gharib), they are tried before their peers per the UCMJ and punished accordingly. Meanwhile, those we fight against (the foreign terrorists in Iraq, for instance) take peaceful civilians prisoner and behead them on television. We employ a professional fighting force, which does its job well and does it by the book. That's how it wins wars. The terrorists we're fighting don't obey any rules. That's why they're losing every battle they fight, and why they're losing the war.

"it is very reasonable to send them (and their principals) to an international court for it."

When our soldiers go off to battle, they are subject to the UCMJ and no other authority on this planet. Unless and until we change that via treaty, no court on this planet has jurisdiction over them other than those operating under the UCMJ. Anyone attempting to change that by force best have something better than the entire military might of the United States armed forces.

Re:Prediction

[Hrdina]

The two primary reasons, I believe, are that GEO would leave some locations at high latitudes with poor or non-existent coverage, and having vehicles visible in different directions relative to the user provides better geometry for calculating the user's position. If all of the vehicles are in the same direction (ie, toward the equator), there is a higher error than if the vehicles are widely spaced.

The orbit is designed so that each vehicle's ground track repeats (almost) exactly, twice per sidereal day.

I am sure that there are other good reasons, such as trying to avoid having the navigation signal go through some of the nastier regions of near-earth space.

Yes, you are correct

[Flying pig]

I have wrongly assumed that the French term "milliard" is the French equivalent of "billion". I now learn there is a French billion which is 10^12. (Echelle longue). It also appears that Russia is unusual in using the 10^9 billion.

So I apologise for the misleading post, and at least I have learned something new from Slashdot.

FleetRADAR - New technology

[ggenung]

Europes signaling is going to be great for company's that are getting into the GPS arena in the US. A large emerging market. There is a new real-time vehicle GPS tracking product out that is called FleetRADAR which combines 1 meter accuracy 90% of the time, web-based tracking, customer specified sensors (RFID, emissions, tire pressure monitoring, door-open sensors, and other custom sensors to create an awesome GPS tracking platform for any business... Check it out at http://www.karta.com/products_fleetRadar.asp

Re:please

[pe1chl]

Your posting shows very clearly why it is a good idea not to rely on the US, in this case for a positioning system.
No need to elaborate about the "treaties and justice are fine as long as it is on our terms" part.

W.r.t. drugs, the problems caused by addiction to alcohol and tobacco are far more widespread and severe than those caused by drugs. The production and sale of alcohol and tobacco is viewed as a healthy commercial activity, but the production and sale of drugs is seen as a crime.
As a result, large amounts of money going around in the drugs scene is kept outside of normal financial traffic, and this causes many problems (even terrorism is financed using this money).
Furthermore, those addicted to drugs have to pay the elevated prices, and are becoming criminal to get the money they need.

Legalizing drugs would probably kill some people because they get addicted, but it would also reduce financial and street crime enormously.
There are many legal activities that kill some people. Even people who did not make that choice themselves.

Don't always believe what you hear on NUMB3RS

[Andy Dodd]

Yeah, the (previously) great (despite the lame 1335speak name) CBS show about the mathemetician who helps the FBI solve crimes is what I'm talking about. Let me guess - you thought that GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit because you heard it on NUMB3RS? Well, guess what - the guy who they were consulting for technical accuracy in the first season clearly hasn't been involved in the second season. Among other things, there was a claim on the show that the GPS satellites are in geosync orbits, which is FALSE.

The actual GPS navigation satellites are in highly elliptical orbits. There is no way the system could work well if they used geosync satellites - Since all of the satellites would be above the equator, it would be difficult if not impossible to obtain good north/south positional accuracy. The only part of the GPS system (and it's arguably not even part of the NAVSTAR GPS system - it's an addon which the military has no involvement with at all) which are in geosync orbits are the satellites used by WAAS (EGNOS in Europe) to broadcast differential corrections data.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:please

[Goalie_Ca]

And after you've all nuked each other us Canadians will gladly take over :D

Re:please

[The Lynxpro]

"One of the key concerns about a missile-defense system is control (or lack of it) and the effect it has on the principle of mutually assured destruction. The rest of the world don't want to be in a situation where the US is free to use nuclear weapons without the treat of retaliation (nor would we like China, Russia or any other nuclear power to be in the same situation)."

That's comforting. I'm sure that sits well with countries like Taiwan that depend upon the American military to protect them from totalitarian aggressors like China. Without a missile defense system, America's ability to protect a democratic regime such as Taiwan from a hostile large neighbor (who is also nuclear capable) is seriously degraded.

Ancient news...

[Snaller]

... the EU started working on this after the US started to reduce accuracy in certain areas...

Re:Prediction

[Snaller]

What was negotiated was for the European system's frequency to be moved slightly, such that the US or Europe could jam each others signals without interfering with their own.

Of course we all know which country is mostly likely to do it first...

Commerical use

[grahamsz]

IMHO smaller accuracies tend to be better for relative measurements, rather than world-scale ones.

With a 50cm accuracy it'd be practical for landscape contractors to use GPS to measure out how much grass they need to plant.

From a pile of raw material, say coal, if you walk round the outside and roughly know the height then you could take a pretty good guess at the volume of the pile.

You could leave a buoy floating in a lake and measure the water level from the GPS altitude

Also the ability to signal to a particular unit that help has been dispatched could be a life saver. I presume it's just a unidirectional signal, but that'd mean if i go missing hiking then i'll know if my wife has alerted authorities to my disappearance, which might well change my plans.

Re:Commerical use

[egburr]

Responding to your examples...

landscape measuring: Don't they already have a close estimate from simple measurments, such as walking the perimeter? Are you trying to buy exactly, to the seed, the right amount to plant? If you spill a cup when opening the bag, will you then have to go buy a new bag?

pile volume: A measuring wheel could give you more accuracy than a GPS with a half meter (50cm) margin of error. Do GPS devices have an option for figuring out the radius, circumference, or area of a circle you just walked? I can't find that option on mine.

buoy altitude: Most lake reports I see don't offer a measurment with a +/- half a meter error factor. I'm not quite sure what the point of this one is, anyway. The water level (altitude of the water surface) will be practically the same across the lake, for all except maybe the largest lakes. What I'd be more interested in is the water depth at any specific point.

search/rescue: While I'm sure that having the GPS unit report within an error of 50 cm would be really nice, I doubt the searchers will call off the search if they land and you aren't sitting on the reported location. A 50 meter error would leave a small bit of area to search, which may be difficult depending on terrain, but I'd bet that the searchers will have to drop further away than that anyway and work their way toward you. Even in open terrain, a helicopter landing within 50 meters will blow a lot of dust and small debris around, something they wouldn't want to do to an injured person.

One thing I can see highly accurate GPS being useful is for survey teams determining the property lines. However, with continental drift occurring, those numbers would have to updated every few years depending on the accuracy of the measurement. Besides, don't surveyors use existing known points as references, something that would typically move with the rest of the land?

Re:Commerical use

[grahamsz]

Some counter-points...

landscape measuring: It could be done more accurately using a measuring wheel, but most landscape guys i've met struggle to work out the area of a triangle, let alone a more complex curved shape.

pile volume: my GPS doesn't, but i know someone who does use GPS to estimate the volume of very large piles of material. There's no reason why a GPS couldn't calculate the area enclosed by a path.

buoy altitude: the water level in lakes seems to change quite frequently with the season. GPS seems to be as good a way as any to monitor it.

search/rescue: The new system will provide a means for my wife to call up S&R and say that her husband, carrying GPS serial 1234567 has gone missing. The S&R party can then give that number to the positioning system, which will in turn broadcast it to all units. That way my GPS will be able to tell ME that people are looking for me. As a result, I can avoid wasting a flare before anyone knows i'm missing. Similarly i can (presumably) know when the search is called off for the night and take shelter without having to worry about staying exposed where i can be seen.

Re:Useful for Britain to Track its drivers per Mil

[EnglishDude]

The pay per mile thing isn't a fixed amount - you pay more for using certain roads at certain times of the day - so I guess back roads at 3am in the morning will be cheap compared to using the M6 or the M25 at peak hours. Hard to see that from the odometer! Good point re: petrol tax but if they're going to raise it up even further, the government will be burnt down faster than you can say "Petrol strikes!" :)

9/11 was within your rules Right?

[ghoul]

O why is it suddenly against the rules to blow up a building housing the financial nerve centre of your enemy but its not against the rules to bomb car factories and TV studios in Serbia and hospitals in Iraq,Libya,Afghanistan and Sudan.

Americans are such pussies. When they are stomping on other peoples rights and generally being dicks it is OK but the first moment somebody hits back they start squaling " Mommy Mommy Terrorist!!"

Face the facts. In war everyone will use whatever they have available. The US has nukes. Their opponents have suicide bombers. The Americans changed the rules of war to win WW2( according to most estimates Japan had 80% of its army intact when the atom bomb was dropped. In a conventional invasion of Japan the US would have lost). The US knew to fight by the rules would lead to defeat and so do America's opponents so they are fighting to rules which benefit them specifically small unit actions behind enemy lines and with no clear rear areas which the enemy can hit. And this is a war America is losing. America can be as pigheaded as Japan and finally surrender or make peace right now. Making peace for America would be very simple. Give up on the artificial idea of Israel and let all the Jews settle in US. Problem solved in one stroke and the country would even save 4 Billion dollars a year which it gives to Israel as aid. Incidentally this is more than the cost of Galileo which people are saying is too expensive.

Re:9/11 was within your rules Right?

[calidoscope]

The Americans changed the rules of war to win WW2( according to most estimates Japan had 80% of its army intact when the atom bomb was dropped. In a conventional invasion of Japan the US would have lost). The US knew to fight by the rules would lead to defeat and so do America's opponents so they are fighting to rules which benefit them specifically small unit actions behind enemy lines and with no clear rear areas which the enemy can hit. And this is a war America is losing. America can be as pigheaded as Japan and finally surrender or make peace right now.

"In a conventional invasion of Japan" the US losses would have been horrendous and the Japanese losses even more so - read up on what happend in Okinawa. While the Japanese army had most of their personnel, they certainly did not have the supplies (food, ammunition and fuel) to sustain a long defense.

The Japanese were in no position to complain about treatment of their civilians - their record in China shows that they could be as brutal as the Nazi's.

Re:9/11 was within your rules Right?

[Chreo]

Japan was on the virge of surrendering. The bombs was dropped to make a point, not out of trying to save lifes. Conventional bombs would've made Japan surrender eventually. The explanations was already thought out before the bomb was dropped. It was more a signal to Stalin than anything else.

Re:9/11 was within your rules Right?

[Control Group]

You know, I'm not sure what that had to do with my post, which basically asserted that neither the US nor anyone else will follow rules when at war (unless they can afford to), but I'm glad you got it out of your system.

Glonass

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

What about buying the Glonass system from Russia?

Re:Glonass

[chawly]

Who's ass ?

OT, Toll Roads

[monkeydo]

At least around here, toll roads are built using money from the sale of bonds [i]backed up[/i] by public funds. IOW, public funds don't pay for much of anything unless the toll authority defaults. The bonds are repaid from the tolls. This serves both to shortcut the funding process and to shift the burden from the general population to those who actually use the road.

Re:please

[dcam]

However, if this 'international criminal court' starts picking up Americans (soldiers, for instance) and putting them up for ridiculous show trials where they're convicted of nebulous crimes sans evidence by anti-US judges, then of course we're going in to get them.

As opposed to biased US courts trying other foreign nationals?

What recourse do other nations have when the US illegally detains and trys their citizens? Not everyone is able to resort to force the way the US does.

This post of yours (and others in the article) smacks of two attitudes:
1. The US is a white knight and what is right is defined by its actions
2. Might is right

Re:please

[BlueHands]

We could even invade and take control of Europe

Oh dear. Considering that your entire army cant control two 3rd world countries with a total population of around 50 million, where the governments are your puppets, I seriously doubt you could "invade and control" 400+ million people with high tech weapons, well organized armies, and fully developed infrastructure.

But you see, you have Frace hence you have no hope for victory.

reliable... Until

[Firethorn]

Sure, it'll be reliable right up to the point that the USA decides that it needs to jam or shoot down the satellites. Or the operators decide that in the interests of keeping the system more operational, degrades it at the US's 'suggestion'.

Re:please

[Loki_1929]

Any nation has the right to defend its citizens against what it considers illegal or unfair judicial acts. In most cases of this, the US will go through all diplomatic channels to try and help its citizens in countries where the legal system is generally considered to be somewhat lacking. In no case that I can remember has the US gone in militarily to extract a citizen from a court case or judicial punishment laid down by a recognized government, except in times of war (as in the case of POWs). The 'international criminal court' is a new and different animal, and all we're doing is keeping our options open. It's a shame that not all nations are able to defend their citizens, but we shouldn't limit ourselves to the options of a country like Kuwait just to make things "fair". The world isn't fair, and the US isn't Kuwait. We have the ability and the option to protect our citizens from show trials in jurisdiction-lacking pseudo-courts.

Re:please

[calidoscope]

Do you really want to play a game of thermonuclear war?

Using whose thermonuclear weapons? Unless you have had a lot of experience in designing and building these weapons, you would probably want to test first - and testing isn't something that is easy to hide.

Re:please

[calidoscope]

and that Hussein is FAR from being Hitler.

At the time the US got involved with the war in Europe (and the ONLY reason that the US formally declared war on Germany was that Germany declared war first - the US attention was focused on Japan) - Hitler was a piker compared to Stalin - and look who we allied ourselves with... Remember that Stalin had killed off millions of Ukrainians before Hitler even came to power.

For the history impaired - the European theater of WW2 started when Poland was invaded by Germany AND the Soviet Union. Unfortunately the war became pretty much a certainty when Europeans decided that it was better appeasing Hitler than standing up to him over Czechoslovakia in early 1938.

Re:Prediction

[Richard_at_work]

China isnt, and they are a large player in the Galileo project.

Re:please

[Reservoir Penguin]

But you have Loisiana!

1cm rock!!!!

[willtsmith]

I would settle for 1 foot. I would like to use GPS to map trail systems (for the purpose of creating maintenance maps for planning). At 9m resolution (even worse in the woods), GPS just doesn't cut it.

1 foot however would be plenty accurate.

Though I believe that it would be wise for Galileo to have selective availability. GPS is a cheapo missle guidance system. I have no desire to allow certain countries to take shortcuts. If they know the system can be switched off or degraded, than they will have to do the work with gyros.

It's not the size of the antannae ...

[willtsmith]

It's the doppler shift and strength of the singal.

The more satellites you get, the more accurate the reading can be computed. The stronger the signal, the more satellites you can get.

Will a longer antannae help receive more signals? Sure it will. But I hardly believe that your relationship between accuracy and antannae size has any basis.

Re:It's not the size of the antannae ...

[Dun Malg]

Will a longer antannae help receive more signals? Sure it will. But I hardly believe that your relationship between accuracy and antannae size has any basis.

True, the accuracy of the antenna is largely unrelated to the antenna size. I meant more along the lines of "where on the 3cm by 3cm patch antenna or the 1cm by 4cm do you set the '1cm fix' point?" To put it another way, if you were asked to locate your car with 1cm accuracy, where do you measure to? A point directly below the geometric center of the car? Centered on the center of mass? The point directly below the radiator cap? "Location" is largely constrained by the size of the smallest square that can hold the item being located. In the case of satellite location devices, that's essentially the antenna.

Commercial use ... Canine control ...

[willtsmith]

With a sub 1m accuracy, you could make it into "wireless electronic fence" with ANY configuration. You could even define exclusion zones to keep your pooch out of your garden.

At 3M acccuracy, you cannot do this. It would be impossible to train the dog as they end up learning their boundries by the scents on the ground.

Nah ...

[willtsmith]

England is already in on the deal. However if FRANCE found an oilfield, they would be in trouble ;-)

BTW, my joke is not intended to imply I have anything against the French. I'm just making fun of Bill O'Reilly and his ilk.

From the perspective of the US ....

[willtsmith]

From the perspective of the US, it's Senators and Congressman, the US is indeed the world because foreigners typically cannot vote. Politicians in Euro countries act in the same way. It's just that they seem more multi-lateral because they HAVE to band together.

BTW, I hate Dubaya too. But if France was as big and powerful as the US, they would probably behave in the same manner.

China doesn't need GPS too invade Taiwan ...

[willtsmith]

They need a navy.

But I have no doubt that the promise of an "always on" GPS would allow China and a whole lot of other countries (North Korea) to develop long range missle guidance on the cheap.

It really is important for your nuke to hit it's desired target. Being off by 100 miles will still cause lots of carnage, but it won't produce the desired effect of leveling a major US city.

Perhaps an ICBM launch would be one of those "extreme circumstances".

I beg to differ ...

[willtsmith]

The US has been pushing proxy government by corporation abroad for a good 80 years. We have deposed countless democracies in favor of tyrants because the tyrants were perceived as more "manageable".

Today, we've owned up to it and we're pursuing a new plan ... fake democracy. That is, like the fake democracy we're trying to install in Iraq (and we're not succeeding).

I would argue that if we had pursued REAL Democracy for the last 80 years, the world would be a lot better off and a lot happier. We may have even avoided a few world wars.

Unless you're England, there is good reason for countries to be wary of US foreign policy. Likewise, there is good reason to be wary about pretty much ANY countries foreign policy. MOST of the Eurpopean countries had colonial possessions. And pretty much every country has interests overseas and disputed territories.

Do ya know that the group "La Raza" actually proposes taking back the SW United States and ceding it to Mexico? Do you know that some Russian politicians favor "taking back" Alaska?

We all have to be wary about one another.

Re:Socialism != High unemplyment rate !!!

[smithmc]

  That's exactly my point. If you are a socialist country you don't have to have high unemployment rate and if you have a high unemployment rate it deosn't necessarly mean you're a socialist country.

You missed my point. Central control of the money supply is one aspect of a managed economy; i.e. socialism. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the US is a socialist country, but there are aspects of its economy that are indeed socialistic in nature.

Re:Oh really?

[dfenstrate]

Depressed? That's rather common on the left, truthfully. Why is it that the right is so much more full of optimists? Because the leftist mentality is inherently de-humanizing and depressing?

blah blah blah blah I'll get you next time batman blah blah blah blah

Really, I had a paragraph written or two on how you've got me and international power all wrong, but I decided to delete it because it would be lost on you.

So I'll give you this:
Nations do what they can get away with when it suits their interest.
It was ever thus, and it ever will be.

Re:Prediction

[IvyKing]

Rather ironic that no-one else has replied to your post - you brought up a very good point.

I've seen a few references stating that the major reason that there hasn't been a major war in Europe is due to it being occupied by the US and Soviets for 45 years (1945 to ca 1990). Strangely enough, the war in Bosnia started just after the occupation was winding down.

Then again, the European theater of WW2 wouldn't have happened if France wasn't so hell bent on punishing Germany for WW1.

Just how many lives were lost in WW1 and WW2? Remember that the US did not want to get involved in either WW1 or WW2 - and probably should have stayed out of WW1.

Re:Prediction

[witte]

If some punk hits with a stick, you hit back with another stick; the same principle applies.

Everybody has their own agenda; negotiation power lies in knowing what the other party's agenda is and having the ability to realize their goals, or, the other way around, make it very costly for them to do so.

Basically it's bartering for services and goods, but on a larger scale :)

Ya want flame, I do flame :-D

[franois-do]

It is because the Academie française exist that we can read La Fontaine and Molière exactly as they wrote, while our british cousins have trouble understanding Shakespeare as he wrote. C'est la vie :-)

Greeks also took the evolution of their own language in hand. Homere's greek, while perfectly undestandable by Pericles citizens, is not Pericles' greek, the latter being much more rich in verbal forms as in vocabulary. Of course, I expect only people who would not say "It's Greek for me" to understand that :-D

Evolution of a language, whether a computer or natural one, should always be backwards-compatible for user-friendliness reasons. Because many other countries have already understood this, they grinded their own version of this institution. Oh, also we dropped the use of inches and feed a little more than 200 years ago. You might be interested... in some future; like all the rest of the planet, though with a little slowness, as usual ;-)

(Baladeur is a perfect word for french pronunciation, as well as informatique, télématique and logiciel. As far as I know, English has no word for informatique, as it seems to consider that data processing and computer science refer to very different disciplines; one of the reasons why Dassault's CATIA replaced Boeing's CADAM... including at Boeing!)

Re:Ya want flame, I do flame :-D

[AK Marc]

Evolution of a language, whether a computer or natural one, should always be backwards-compatible for user-friendliness reasons.

Like French is backwards compatible with Latin?

It is because the Academie française exist that we can read La Fontaine and Molière exactly as they wrote, while our british cousins have trouble understanding Shakespeare as he wrote.

You seem to misunderstand. There is not much in Shakespeare which people do not understand. It is almost completely understood. However, it is no longer in the language of the commoner, as it was at the time. Many words fell into disuse and are not the flowing language of the time, but a stumbling block to appreciation of it. I have seen many presentations of Shakespeare done with original (well, as close as they come with Shakespeare, since arbuably few, if any were actually written by him) scripts, and never have I seen someone walk away confused as to what was happening. Occassionally, someone would miss a word or two, but nothing that greatly affected their undrestanding. Most Americans I know would have a harder time with English accents than the words used, were they to watch Shakespeare on BBC.

Or are you arguing that most British people are incapable of understanding something like this?

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

That seems plain enough to me. Perhaps it is your understanding of Shakespeare and your British cousins that is in error? Or, if you are correct, please point out the word or phrase which the British would be unable to understand. Perhaps you should go back to Chaucer for your next comparison. For that, most words are not the same as now, but it was considered a different language (Middle English, as opposed to Modern English, which is what Shakespeare wrote in and we speak now).

Hey! Stupid Americans! Stop complaining!

[WhiteWolf666]

Caveat: I'm an American, and a avowed capitalist.

Some points:

1. WAAS plus proper GPS equipment can be as good as Galileo, note that the article claims 10-35cms, not 1 cm accuracy. That's 6+ GPS satellites and WAAS levels of accuracy. Galileo satelites may start out better than GPS, but keep in mind that both constellations require (will require) constant replacement. GPS (and Galileo) will receive constant improvements, but higher accuracy is more a problem of physics (atmospheric interference) and computing power on your device (that 10 year old ARM chip in your handheld GPS can only do so much).

2. The U.S. government has sworn off Selective Avaliability. At the same time, the U.S. government has developed ability to do regional jaming of GPS. *shrug* This is a concern, but a marginal one; I doubt that they'll be turning off GPS signals over London, Paris, or New York anytime soon. Not without having grounded all the planes first.

Having said that:

Galileo is another "GPS-like" system that will be avaliable for FREE. The U.S. government will not have to spend a DIME on it, but we'll have TWICE as many positioning satellites avaliable for our use.

Uhh... Sweetness? Free-stuff? Be happy?

The real advantage will be dual-band receivers that are able to use the signals from both systems. In areas where you can only get 2-3 GPS satellites, you'll get 2-3 of each, which may (or may not) be enough to get you 10> or even 1> meter accuracy.

How, exactly, is this NOT in an American's interest?

And we don't have to pay for it?

Ummm... Groovey?

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth!

Redundant, complimentary systems that don't cost us anything more are a godsend. I'm thrilled that Europe is doing this, and everyone not in Europe should be thrilled as well.

The Europeans should be thrilled, but they are permitted a (very slight) grumble at the cost, similar to the grumbles we (Americans) made when the GPS system was developed. Europe is providing a service to the entire global by putting up this system.

Would people complain the same way if Europe (or the U.S.) developed a world-wide free WiFi system?

I think not.

Can "to be" be "not to be" ? ;-)

[franois-do]

"that's because [data processing and computer science] are two different things"

Well, they have things in common (hence the french term informatique, that you probably translate by the locution information technology), and they have differences, hence the different words too in every language I know.

But what does the verb to be mean in operational terms, if any ?

Along every sentence (except of course a definition) saying that X is Y, you can write another sentence equally true saying that X is not Y ("man is an animal" is true as a given projection of reality; "man is not an animal" is also true in another projection of reality).

A is A, A is not non-A, I guess we all agree on that. As concerns the verb "to be", let us be cautious with any other king of usage - except of course definitions :-)

Re:Prediction

[OrangeTide]

What does Fox have to do with anything?