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Galileo Sends Its First Signals
VVrath writes "Galileo, the European answer to the US Military-owned GPS has sent it's first signals to ground stations in the UK and Belgium. The first satellite in the Galileo system, Giove-A was launched on December 28th 2005, and is set to be followed by a further 29 satellites by 2010. At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
...it's always a good idea to have redundancy.
Life is not for the lazy.
What happened with the usa requesting that they can jam the sat network when needed?
Did they get this denied or incorporated in this network?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
it not 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency it's 'you cannot prevent us from using this one USA' by the European Space Agency.
this isn't a chance for the EU to show off...it is just another way for the EU to become more independant, because remember, the US can shut down GPS service to the EU at any time. >tg
Yeah, because God forbid those Europeans act unilaterally on a technological matter involving their self-interest. You would think that five years of the Bush administration would have convinced the rest of the world that we always have their interests at heart. OK, that's all I wanted to say, time to cook up another batch of Freedom Fries.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
What the hell is this?? More like anybody with more than 1/2 a fuckin brain realizes its a BAD idea to have the only positioning system run by a country who has made it blatantly obvious they don't care about what any other countries feel.
Not to mention that it won't be turned off or degraded in times of war, or on the whim of one country's military - quite a necessity for a technology that people and corporations will come to rely on more and more.
Argh.
At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
What the hell is news of a new satilite navigation system passing it's first tests doing in the Politics section? Competition does not hurt, the lack of it does. Doing something better than the competition and never tolerating monopoly, Isn't that in the best traditions of a modern market economy? I cannot for the life of me imagine why it should be in our interest to allow the US-Military to monopolize the satilite navigation business. Please let's not turn this into another US vs. Europe pissing contest...
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Why include such idiocy in the story? One very obvious advantage over GPS that is stated in the fucking article is that the USA reserves the right to switch GPS off. And, with ten seconds over at Wikipedia, you could find out that Galileo has a much better resolution than GPS. So mod entire story as -1, Flamebait - because there's no -5, Fucking Idiot At The Wheel option.
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how Americans get a bad reputation as arrogant fools. I was agreeing with this poster until the "The United States of America is the greatest country in the history of the world. This Earth belongs to the US, the rest just live here." line.
Yes, the US does do great things. Yes, the US does make some mistakes (as does any country.) But to say that the world belongs to the US is just pure arrogance.
-Mike
A proud citizen of the United States of America
You know, any geek worth his salt has heard of the importance of redundancy in a high-dependency system.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Americans conveniently overlook the fact that Europeans have chosen to be a bit more socialist in their economic policies in order to build kinder and gentler societies. Just compare the crime rates between the USA and Europe. The Europeans have largely succeeded.
This Galileo system launched by Europe also demonstrates that Europe continues to be technologically competent and that slightly socialistic economic policies have not diminished Europe's ability to compete.
The Europeans should continue to build competitive national projects to demonstrate (1) that they can continue to compete with the USA and (2) that you do not need a huge military budget to spur innovation. Civilian budgets work just fine. The military industrial complex be damned.
If by "workaround", you mean centimeter-level accuracy, sure. Differential GPS is already being used by many people who require insane levels of accuracy - I've seen it in action, and it's damned impressive. You can also use it while moving, so the idea that GPS isn't good enough for aircraft is kind of stupid. P-code is not the end-all, be-all of accuracy, in any case.
Reading these posts, it's pretty obvious that the last exposure some people had to GPS information was in 1997 or something. Low-res selective availability? That got turned off in like 2000. And "turning off GPS for Europe" sounds kind of stupid, too - are American pilots just going to fly into the dark all the sudden? A little less paranoia, and a little more education, please...
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
...France, Germany and the U.K. start argueing over trivial issues.
Trivial issues, you mean like theEuropean Constitution or farm subsidies, which are a substantial portion of the EU's budget?
The EU has been arguing over very, very substantial issues for a long time. The question is whether or not the Union will survive them. My money used to be on no, and is slowly moving towards yes. This is mainly because I believe integration will slow down; we'll have a European identity, and a great deal of cooperation, but I do not think Europe will ever become a superstate.
Personally, I think that's a good thing.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I was in Italy last month installing some equipment on a commercial vessel. The guy I was working with has been in the marine communication industry for over 30 years (he is 74 years old, and still enjoying his job?!?). Anyhow, he was telling me that some time last year, he was getting hundreds of phone calls from angry customers saying that the navigation systems he installed were not working. All the systems had an error factor of 20KM because the US government decided that it would be best for US citizens. He was telling me that Europe does not trust US to control technology that Eurpeans rely on, and I don't blame them. It isn't about the accuracy, it is about Bush having his finger on the "off" button.
Whatever the merits of these points, I'm not sure how reimplementing GPS 27 years after the analogous US satellite was launched demonstrates them.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Whether it is the Internet you are surfing on now,
Where is Tim Berners-Lee from? Which research organisation was he working for when he invented HTTP/HTML?
--paulj
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
We were once willing to go nuclear to avoid secret prisons, torture, and indefinite detention. What happened?
Somewhere America lost "more free" as one of its goals and replaced it with "more safe". I realized this when the DEA accused Canada of being too loose with its laws and spending too little on police. At that point we lost the title "Land of the Free", to be replaced with "Land of the Not Quite As Free As Those In Canada".
Yea, yea, it's off topic. I didn't write this for the benefit of the moderators.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Fighting wars to prevent wars - is just plain idiocy.
Sure. But fighting wars to prevent potential enemies isn't. Eliminate all dangerous states and replace them with democracies structured in such a way to make it very difficult for them to wage war. Then advocate free trade, with disputes mediated by an international organization and you take away a reason for other powerful states to make war on you. Then you can get buy with a minimal army.
Just look at history and you can see the value of such a plan.
The US *government* (note: not the PEOPLE) are a bunch of fairly dangerous hippocrites at best.
"We want free trade!" (unless of course, we're talking subsidising our farmers so that they can produce "cheaper" than 3rd world countries.
The US is a democracy ruled by a congress full of people both for and against free trade. On some issues one side wins and on other issues the other side wins. This isn't hypocrisy, it is democracy. And if it is so hard to pass laws that hurt a few farmers in a democracy, how hard would it be for a democratic Iran to nuke Israel and bring about a response sure to kill millions of Iranians?
When an Iranian president calls out for wiping Israel off the map - "What an outrage". When Pat Robertson calls for the US to assassinate Robert Chavez "He's just a loony"
Pat Robertson is just a guy with a TV show that says crazy things because he seems to be suffering from some sort of dementia. Just this past year he has said things offensive to Venezuela, Israel, and Pennsylvania. He asks God to smite people all of the time. Now, the Iranian president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) is a crazy old man who participated in the holding of the hostages from the American embassy when he was younger, and is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. If Pat Robertson did either of those things, he would be thrown in jail in two heartbeats.
And Pat Roberstson's comments have been sparking outrage in the US for years... to claim that more than a small percentage of Americans aren't outraged by him is a gross distortion of the truth.
And while I AM absolutely grateful that the US helped free Germany 60 years ago...
I guess the US freed Germany from fascism and communism, but neglected to light the beacons of logic and reason. How the hell is Pat Robertson as big a threat as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad??
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
It is amazing that switzerland apears to have a larger crime rate then the US. This site http://www.gunowners.org/sk0703.htm apears to say that gun ownership has the oposite effect in crime then what is popularly taunted too.
It's funny how ignorant you are. Your sources are highly biased and you even succeeded to counter your own assertions.
Switzerland and Finland have most guns per person in Europe. In Switzerland many of the guns people have are military grade. That's because militia personnel are required to keep their guns at home as part of their military obligations. So how do you explain that even though people in Switzerland have powerful guns at their homes, there's still according to your sources a higher crime rate than in US? Weren't the guns supposed to lower the crime rate?
In Finland guns are mostly hunting rifles. Virtually nobody in big cities owns a hand gun. I'm from Finland, and can guarantee you that the low crime rate is not because people in the country side own guns, it's mostly because Finland is a very socialistic country when compared to US or even Switzerland. We take care of our poor, so they don't have to steal from other people to make a living. We also give a decent education to our poor, so they have a chance to get a decent job.
History is loaded with great countries which don't exist anymore.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
What's really stupid is that, fundamentally, the two systems aren't that much different. Europeans spend a great deal of money on social welfare, which the conservatives here say makes them non-competitive. I can actually, to some degree, buy that argument.
However, you can't say that America is better in any significant way. Instead of spending huge amounts of money on social programs, we spend absolutely obscene amounts of money on the military. Money we don't even have... we are borrowing incredibly heavily to finance our war machine. (and you people are giving us the wealth to do it!) Both are consumption items; money spent on welfare or the military is just gone, consumed. It can't be used for investment or research. And it's no longer in the taxpayers' pocketbooks for them to use themselves. Our taxes, in essence, is organized theft of the population at gunpoint.... to make more guns.
The only reason the US standard of living isn't a lot lower is because we're borrowing from our children to live high on the hog... we'll have guns AND butter, dammit. Somehow, I don't think our kids are going to be willing to pay our debts.
There's an old aphorism, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." Europe seems kind of stuck in the fish-giving stage.
The US, on the other hand, appears to subscribe to the theory, "If you have the biggest guns, you can just take all the goddamn fish you want."
Perusing the DoJ report you linked to, it shows that in 1999, you were about 1.5 times more likely to have your house robbed or car stolen in the UK, but twice as likely to be raped and 4 times more likely to be murdered in the US (using the reported/1000 population rates). While the totals of all these show an overall rate in the UK as 1.45 times higher in the UK, the difference is nearly entirely in property crimes.
What was your point again?
-- Cerebus
So were do we stand on this? We are both right but you apear to be countering an argument I didn't make. Less murders doens't make less crime it makes less murders. Maybe the reason i used propaganda sites was because a google seach showed them when i was searching for crime rates and not murder rates. Now in case you werent' following this thread long enough, i will elaborate on why i was commenting. The GP made the statment So i lookeed at the crime rates and found them to be the oposite of what we should think acording to that statment. Only focusing on portions of the crime rate doesn't change the entire position of the crime rate is larger per capa in some (most)EU countries then USA.