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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.
... and that's why it's better.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
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?
Galileo has a bunch of advantages over GPS, like being designed to work to a higher degree of acuracy and to work inside buildings and in built-up areas. Take a look at this article http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDe tail.jsp?id=61295 for more information.
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.
Military grade GPS hardware is accurate to within a few centimeters as well. Consumer equipment isn't, but this isn't due to technical limitations of the satelites.
Much of the equipment has been upgraded in recent years, too. Signals were originally intentionally inaccurate because the military didn't want Kim Jong Il to have a $99 missle guidance system. Recent upgrades have allowed the military to distort signals based upon geography: selectively, certain "hostile" areas are subject to this distortion.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
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.
One of the points, besides accuracy, is independence. Such a system is important for military uses. As the U.S. are getting more idiotic with the day, and can turn off GPS when they want, Europe has decided this is a thing worth having for yourself. And I wholeheartedly agree.
I remember reading (In PhysicsWorld published by the IoP [www.iop.org] that the political reasoning behind the GPS workalike system was basically that the United States cannot be trusted to provide GPS functionality (as happened on 9/11) in emergencies and during exceptional circumstances. As more and more businesses (and most transport) depend on GPS functionality the European Union has decided to build something more thrustworthy and the improvements are just a side-effect. In the end, both parties will benefit. There was something about jamming eachother's networks but I can't exactly remember it... anyone?
I would think the reason is completely obvious: It's a really bad idea to have your critical infrastructure depend on something external you can't control.
In a data center, do you trust your ISP has full redundancy and will never, ever fail, decide to disconnect you or go bankrupt? Or you you use several ISPs, have an UPS and a standby generator just in case some day something does go wrong?
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.
When the provider is US Government, it may be the only way... Still, there is no reason for Galileo to be incompatible with the existing GPS clients, that's just evil...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Had this been put in the proper category, like Hardware or Science, I'd say: Great, maybe I could get 10cm accuracy with this, GPS and GPRS combined.
But since it's politics we're discussing here, I say: how long before France, Germany and the U.K. start argueing over trivial issues. This whole European Union thing is too de-centralized, it's only a matter of time before it's torn apart.
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
Now the wording of an article already tries to whip up nationalistic frenzy. What happened to this site? Am I the only one who remembers that /. used to be about cool open source technology? Technology that brings us together across all borders rather than drive us apart.
Doesn't anybody remember that our GPS system is on the brink of failure? Who knows, maybe soon we'll be borrowing their system!
There is a more accurate "workaround" for civilian use called differential GPS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS
like be in denial about evolution AND global warming? Yeah I would have thought that impossible in 2006 too.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
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.
Tilting at windmills, I know, but please see my sig. Grammar matters. The smart people you're supposedly trying to reach when you write are tuning out and moving on when you make errors as basic as its vs. it's.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Yeah, that'll come in handy for Chinese missiles.
e tail.jsp?id=21977
http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleD
I really wonder what the implications of this are if the US squared off with China over Taiwan for example. I don't really have a problem with the EU wanting to have an "ndependent defense identity" or whatever, the problem is if it ends up giving a leg up to China or North Korea, or even Iran in a future conflict with the US. Since EU countries would either be on the same side as the US, or neutral this would be seriously self defeating. Actually, I do have a problem with the EU buereacracy's implicit assumption that the US is a strategic competitor, since it could develop into a very dangerous rivalry in the long run, and no one in the EU has ever voted on this policy.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
People mention the "jamming issues" -- here's the scoop... GPS transmits signals intended for both cilivian and military use, in distinct frequency ranges. The military one is encrypted and can (theoretically) thus only be used by the US military and its friends. In a war zone, the US military can "jam" the civilian bands while leaving the military signal intact, which from a military perspective is a Good Thing.
The originally proposed Galileo design was such that the frequency range used by Galileo's equivalent to the US civilian signal overlapped the GPS military one. Thus, if the US wanted to jam or block Galileo's civilian signal, it would also have to jam the GPS military one -- which (to the US military) is a Bad Thing.
I don't know if/how this situation was resolved. Anyone?
/* "Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein */
Slashdot should really not post simple minded flame-bait like this:
"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?"
Yeah the system will offer major advantages and they are the following:
It will work when the the US decides to turn off, or disrupt the GPS. The US has never promised that it will always keep the GPS working, and why should they -- we paid for it with our tax money and the US government will always turn it off or disrupt its operation when suitable for American interests.
For example, the civilian GPS has signal has an intentionally added error in order to prevent it from being used for military purposes. Also, the civilian GPS signal gets further disrupted over war zones (such as iraq) to make it especially useless for anyone that is not the US military. Apparently, the military uses another GPS signal which is not useable by other parties.
And thats the reason why Russia already has their own alternative GPS system in place and the Europeans are building their own. It seems pretty reasonable to me.
According to a newspaper I read (its swedish, sorry folks) http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=597&a=513 113&previousRenderType=2 the systems can work together. They pretty much said that twice the satelites means better coverage.
l ileo/international/cooperation_en.htm
l ileo/international/global_en.htm :
Another clip here: http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/energy_transport/ga
"This includes, quite naturally, co-operation with the two countries now operating satellite navigation systems. Europe is already examining a number of technical issues with the United States related to interoperability and compatibility with the GPS system. The objective is to ensure that everyone will be able to use both GPS and GALILEO signals with a single receiver. Negotiations on co-operation scenarios with the Russian Federation, which has valuable experience in the development and operation of its GLONASS system, are also ongoing."
Also, from http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/energy_transport/ga
"Once again, the GALILEO system will be fully compatible with the existing American GPS system. The objective being pursued by Europe is to reinforce the satellite navigation infrastructure by providing an additional, state-of-the-art system ensuring a more robust, precise and continuous service to users worldwide."
So basicly, they will not compete, more like complement each other.
And we know this how, exactly? The EU has "assured" us that they won't be as petty, vindictive, and politically motivated as the US, even if the US does something the EU doesn't approve of?
Will they cheerfully sell centimeter-accurate receivers to all buyers, even Iran and North Korea?
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
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.
...that having one satellite in orbit does little if anything for you, even if it is just a test sat. You need multiple satellites to do any real navigation, since only with multiple fixes can you eliminate errors in tracking, not to mention what you get when the satellite is on the other side of the world. This is a good sign, but it's just a test sat, and only one, so let's not get too excited just yet. Jules Verne (another ESA project, for the ISS) has been due for a long time, and was late even before Columbia.
Also, while Galileo receivers in general may be more accurate than, say, the GPS receiver in your PDA, high-grade GPS receivers used in military and commerical research applications can get centimeter or finer resolution - and that's with the current generation of GPS sats. There are two new, next-generation GPS sats in orbit now, with the entire constellation to be replaced over the next few years. These new sats promised even better performance. Plus, the signal of GPS that was previously military-only was recently (past two or three years) opened for civilian use, so given time to produce new receivers, I don't think you'll see great accuracy differences between GPS and Galileo (unless of course the DoD decides we can't have GPS, but I think that's more the point here anyhow).
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.
My neighbour has a swimming pool which he says my friends or I can use any time we like (unless there's an emergency), but we're decided to put our money together and build our own swimming pool, which will be slightly better than his. For some reason he accused us of showing off when we told everyone about this, we just thought that it was best to have our own in case we're not always friends.
Very insightful cut-through-the-BS post. And...
Competition does not hurt, the lack of it does.
That sums up the whole issue quite nicely. Thanks.
Paranoid? Why think "war"? How about a simple matter of "security" on the part of the Europeans? The fact that the US of A has invaded another country is more than enough to give Europeans pause.
Galileo offers:
- Higher accuracy for commercial subscribers than offered by GPS.
- Non-military, muli-national control. No one country/entity can turn it off.
- Availability on Arctic and Antarctic waters. While not useful to most, apparently including the US military, it is useful for shipping and search and rescue for many European countries.
- Interoperability/compatibility with GPS. One can back up the other to offer higher availability and/or accuracy.
The only problem I can see is that they use the same frequencies. If some one jams one they are also jamming the other. Given the military capability of the countries funding both systems I can imagine such jamming will be very short lived.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
By behaving in a high-handed manner and ignoring human rights at home and abroad, the US administration has given China the right to do the same. We are no longer in a position to preach to anyone else about their behavior. The result is that when China is the great world power, they will treat the US the way the US has treated everyone else.
There was a time when we had the chance to make the world a better, more civilized place. We have squandered that opportunity.
The USA are lame copycats and Russia owns the Earth. After all, isn't the fact that the USA merely copied Russia, who launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, proof? "Nothing like following the leader", eh? </your-logic>
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...
Not to worry a bucket of ball bearings in a retrograde orbit takes care of them [the EuroGPS satallites} in an emergency
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Who exactly is plausibly going to attack Europe if we didn't have the US to 'shield' us?
The USA has always been a bit crypto fascist but it really is insane how much it seems to have *increased* since the end of the cold war.
"we believe in freedom and peace yet also we must also spend 4 times as much as china on our military per citizen"
It is also to cover Europe better, I work with surveying in northern Europe, and our gear uses a combination of GPS and GLONASS satellites, only relying on GPS signals will give you too much downtime. The GPS satellites do not come far enough north. Hopefully this European system will give better accuracy and allow us to use it with centimeter accuracy in more dense forests and other areas where we can not use these things yet.
Now wait until they get together and rule the world.
Have you ever listened to conservative talk radio? That's pretty much the party line with them... I don't think you can call yourself a conservative if you don't look down on the European way of doing things.
I'm living in the South, a transplant from California... and let me tell you, the OP's assertion is pretty darn good.
A cursory review of the literature leads your statements to be fatally incorrect. Crime rates are in fact lower in the US than in many European countries.
Burglary rates for Scotland, Austria, and England and Wales are reported as higher for the entire period of 1980 through 2000. For England and Wales, this difference is as much as 50% higher crime rate per capita than the US after 1993.
Don't believe me. Check the figures yourself. I should also point out that these figures come from a UK authority, not another "American urban legend".
Nuclear missiles, as presently deployed, are largely ballistic. You don't need much of a guidance system... you throw them way, way up, nearly to orbit, and let gravity take care of the rest.
...it is always a good idea to have redundancy.
Why don't you hate America? ;)
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Will they cheerfully sell centimeter-accurate receivers to all buyers, even Iran and North Korea?
Probably.
But even if they don't, EU will license the tech to the PRC, and the PRC will sell it to them..
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Well, if there are two independently-controlled GPS-like systems in the world, it drastically decreases the incentive for the people controlling one of them to turn it off, because it would do very little good to turn it off if there were an alternative available. Also, the US is one country (albeit a very large one), and the EU is lots of countries, so it would be harder for the EU to make the decision to turn Galileo off (or more likely, severely degrade the accuracy) than for the US. So yes, having an alternative to GPS makes a big difference in the reliablility of navigation systems. (For that matter, it probably makes a difference in the reliability of GPS itself, since the US would no longer get much advantage from restricting it.)
Galileo, however, also allows for hardware to send data to the sattelites, and this opens up a number of possibilities.
I do love "!" but not as much as I love "..."...
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.
Will GPS still work if the receiver is in low earth orbit? Say 60 to 100 miles up? Would it be reliable as far as the 3d positioning?
Now check the figures for murder and violent crime between the EU and the US and I think you'll see a somewhat different picture. Then look at how many of the deaths in the US were caused by guns and then have a think on why the burglary rates in the US are lower. I think I know which of those I would rather have a lower rate of.
There is indeed a lot of anti-US sentiment in the rest of the world. In part, the reason for that is just the unbelievable amount of paranoid non-sequitur reasoning, just like the one you just produced here, coming from the direction of USA on all levels (technology, politics, art - you name it). It is rather frightening to see how strange the reasoning of an average American is, given that you have the hugest and the most sophisticated army in the world, and that you are not reluctant *at* *all* when it comes to sending that army to wage wars in other parts of the world.
The parent says it's a good thing not to depend on the good will of a single country's military, and your reaction on that is that he must hate America. He doesn't (or, at least, you can't tell he does judging on his posting).
Of course, there is always a possibility that you cracked a joke which just swooshed over my head, but I somehow doubt it.
The blog you point to seems to choose the figures that back its theory up. From the same papers it cites as source[1], you can read:
e venth.html
Homicides / 100.000 inhabitants 1999
US: 4.55
France: 1.63
Germany: 1.22
Italy: 1.4
Switzerland: 1.25
[1]http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_s
That's a joke, guys. "Why do you hate America?" is the archetypal ignorant talking-point-fixated Republican response to the slightest criticism of US foreign policy, so that's what I posted. There's an excellent Tom Tomorrow cartoon on the same theme.
Jeez, I somehow got the idea people here were smarter than that.
Guess not.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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.
Well... how about checking some official and non-propaganda sites? I was really wondering (as a european feeling possibly overly safe at home?) wether these statistics might actually be true. Go check for yourself:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm which is from the US department of justice and claims the murder rate in the us for 2002 is 6.1 cases per 100.000.
A little more difficult to understand might be the official german site (as its in german...), but easy enough: the word "mord" means "murder", and the number of cases for 2002 in the table is cited as 873. As we have 80 Million people in Germany that amounts to a rate of 1.1 per 100.000. So the US has nearly 6 times the murder rate of that in germany. Here is the link to the official german statistics (the BKA is the german version of the FBI): http://www.bka.de/pks/pks2002/p_3_01.pdf
Btw. the table on the top of the page includes the number of attempted homicides in red, the number of sucessul ones in blue. Without so many guns available, obviously (and luckily) most murder attempts are doomed to fail.
Phew. So I can still feel safe here ;-)
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.
It is important to note that Giove-A is NOT the 'first satellite in the system', it is only a TEST satellite, for TESTING purposes. As the system stands, no useful navigation can be made with just one satellite (as you need multiple signals to correct errors).
The original intentions of ESA was to make Giove-A a testing satellite providing signals back to ground stations throughout the life of it's 2 year mission. This particular satellite will not be part of the fully functional Galileo system.
On another note, we need a moderation system for articles: -1, Flamebait; -2, Wrong Section; -3, Submitter-knows-fuck-all-about-the-subject.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
- Galileo should offer greater accuracy - down to a metre and less
- Greater penetration - in urban centres, inside buildings, and under trees
- Faster coordinate fix
- It will be able to tell users if there are major errors that could compromise performance.
- Users will also benefit enormously from the agreement between Europe and the US to make their sat-nav systems compatible and "interoperable"
No, it's just political maneuvering....This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Don't be ridiculous. It would be the height of folly to base our infrastructure and security on the "promises" of the US. Perhaps in past it would be conceivable that we rely upon GPS, but in the Bush era, such actions are reckless.
The Iraq fiasco has shown Europe that the US cannot be trusted, nor relied upon. Therefore we must build our own network of satellites.
It's like the Cold War all over again.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
Wrong. GPS vertical error is around 20m/95%. However, vertical accuracy is affected pretty profoundly by latitude, if you get greater than around 65 degrees latitude accuracy quickly degrades.
History is loaded with great countries which don't exist anymore.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Thank-you for proving my point.
It is a bit of a mystery indeed what China can or will do if the Taiwanese strive towards independence.
The Chinese military will be in favour of starting offensive actions, this is to be expected from the military of course. But what will the communist party do? Who will be in control?
Catastrophe looms, but before this escalates into a Third world war....
Escalation can only occur if western governments decide that Taiwan is worth a good fight, which can debated. The pro's of going to war is that it is a nice thing for the military to show of their muscle, but the drawback is most certainly huge losses of lives (that dwarf Iraq / Afghanistan), cost, economic downturn.
China is changing really rapidly and the Chinese government is on some aspects quite a lot weaker then say 20 years ago.
The last 20 years have shown the Chinese continously and aggressively developing their economy, a single war could destroy all that.
About France's international policy: people pay too much attention, really.
I find it really strange (ridiculous) that people in the USA, a country multiple times the size and much more powerful than France, are offended when the French don't support their Iraq war plans.
I mean come on, the French sometimes appear to be arrogant, but that is nothing.
Here in Holland we are used to it, a couple of years ago we had a conflict with the French over our (soft) drugs policy. The French really did their best to end our liberal soft drugs policy... we didn't listen, nothing changed in our policy.
The French sometimes appear very arrogant, I don't know why that is, but you can safely ignore it. They seem nationalistic, and tend to rationalize according to their own logic, but that is more of a cultural thing. I don't think they have really that much power on the level of international politics.
Traditionally when France and Germany agree then the other European countries will comply and support E.U.'s policy.
Now with the larger E.U. and a more involved Britain the Franco-German axis is less powerful.
--[rosso bright]--
Wou mean, as good of a version as the replacement GPS satellites that the US putting up are?
Yes - why on earth is the US doing that? They can just use Galileo after all.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Yes I can see that the when faced with the precision, needle like, payload of ICBMs aimed at the constantly moving American cities and military establishments you'd want to deny cm accurate guidance systems to the aforementioned ICMBs.
Thank goodness we don't live in a world where nuclear missiles can cause damage over many square miles and cities are anchored in one place and even, god forbid, have their locations marked on maps which are widely available throughout the world, oh the horror.
I'm actually surprised that the EU isn't planning on using all those thousands of cheaply available Iranian and North Korean intercontinental missiles to help launch their satellites in the first place.
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."
So you basicaly say that it is ok if US has GPS, but not ok if China has. Yep, fair and square.
Funny, non-US people mostly don't agree with that. If you have enemies there's probably a good reason for that. But still, it is funny to listen to you how whole world is your enemy. Just why? Does anybody know?
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
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
we avoid the crime-ridden inner cities where most gun-crimes occur. And if we do go there, we can defend ourselves; we haven't been made impotent by our government and are not defenseless.
20-and-some million people disagrees with you and it doesn't avoid New York, hell, they live there.
Do you really feel impotent witout a gun? In the rest of the world we have dicks, we don't need guns to avoid feeling impotent.
And you can believe me. If people don't have a gun, you don't need it either. Problem starts when people own a gun, not before. Actualy, psychologicaly the one with a gun is sooner to be scared than one without (but the other side is armed too as you pointed out), which often causes sensles shooting. Hey, that sounds like US description.
Take car as some kind of natural selection. There are accidents in US too, or do you avoid roads as well as NY.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
This is silly bickering. All nations contain people, which all suck just as bad. Europe's histroty is nothing but countless wars, most of which were pointless. The US has a history shorter but comparably bad (wiping out natives, proxy wars, etc.). The only completely true statement one can make about one being better than the other is that the US is more involved with the world right now, so we fuck up more, but also do more good things. Europe doesn't do much anymore, so they fuck up less, but also don't do as much good. The US is alot bigger than most other nations (in terms of power and money) so all of the charicteristics that all nations have are simply very exaggerated in the US. For an interesting site on how countries and other groups view themselves, see http://zompist.com/amercult.html. As a Texan, please look at the Texas part of it, we do get a VERY unfair international image (Since when was being a cowboy bad? They were supposed to be heroes, fearless enforcers of peace in a land of lawlessness).
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Ballistic missiles are largely, well, ballistic as you say. But modern ICBMs do need sophisticated guidance systems.
MIRV systems, multiple warheads delivered by one missile, do deviate from a purely ballistic course during the midcourse phase (sub-orbital flight between liftoff and re-entry). This is to help deploy the multiple warheads on different targets. The warhead bus uses small rocket engines to follow its pre-programmed course. Navigation was originally via inertial guidance or celestial tracking, but newer warhead buses use GPS.
Even single-warhead weapons need some sort of guidance in order to compensate for the effects of local gravity anomalies. Again, military-grade GPS is the preferred method.
Tactical ballistic missiles need guidance packages, too. The Scud, considered crude by modern standards, uses intertial guidance to control moveable surfaces on its fins during boost phase. Once its motor shuts off, however, gravity is in charge, as you have noted. Still, more recent tactical weapons have terminal phase guidance systems, so even these deviate from a purely ballistic mode of operation.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Of course, there is always a possibility that you cracked a joke which just swooshed over my head, but I somehow doubt it.
Holy shit! The GP was an obvious joke. A cliche even. Your touchiness and complete lack of a sense of humor makes me glad that we have the big army and you don't (unless you're Chinese). What frightens me is the number of people from other countries that think they know what the average American is like. You only know what your media shows you, and your media, like ours, shows sensationalized bullshit. Chill out, and knock off the America bashing, will you?
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
P.S. If you don't, we'll turn off your GPS signal.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
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.
I don't know if you realize this, but GPS can't just be turned off for only European citizens, and not Americans. The satellites are either broadcasting the common carrier and p-code, or they're not. If what you're saying is true (and, frankly, I'd like to see some sort of documentation on it), it screwed over any American shipping in the area as much as everyone else. US citizens aren't _always_ in the US, and many US companies have holdings overseas where they use GPS.
The idea that the US would just unilaterally, without warning, turn off GPS to Europe is insane. Are you guys getting that paranoid? We're your MILITARY ALLIES. We stick tight with our allies. Don't panic. I really can't believe the amount of FUD Europeans are swallowing on this topic.
That said, I really don't care at all about Gallileo. The more, the merrier, in my opinion. At the very least, if something goes catastrophically wrong with either system, there's still something in the sky to handle navigation for a while.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The GPS as we know it is US military controlled. GPS is needed now, everywhere. US is not what is used to be. Hence, need for European GPS clone.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
You are correct, I did not really counter your argument, I merely responded to the contents of your links. Please let me explain my train of thought to you, so you might see, why I did that:
When following your links (I take the first one as an example), first there are the number of total crimes and I could not imagine how you would count that and what kind of crimes such a broad statistic would include. Everything from speeding to murder? Obviously, that might depend heavily on local laws. And as another poster pointed out, maybe some types of crimes are more likely to be reported in one society than in another. But thats a whole different story and I only wanted to point out, why I retreated from comparing total crime numbers to murderers.
Your first link immediately goes on to quote homicides, and there I had one easily comparable crime, which would be defined equally in probably all societies. So I easily compared those.
Also, especially the gunowners link refers most prominently to homicides. So mostly the contents of those links made me post my answer...
And, by the way: I definitely prefer a society where things were stolen from me 5 times and I were killed 0 times, to one where I only lose 1 item to theft while being killed in the process... but that kind of argument is quite inflammatory, so I should immediately apologize for it :-)
Another 'trend' in US property crime statistics is that often unless the victim can prove that the property was intentionally stolen, the police are systematically and fraudulently classifying the thefts instead as 'lost property' to reduce their reported crime rates.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
WTF?
"Each other, for starters. You Europeans were a goddamn bloody bunch, with major wars going back every decade for as long as history has been recorded. This ended when the US came along and cut your balls off by crushing the Axis powers and parking our military all across Europe."
1: In 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland (Sept. 1st), America was working out how it was going to manage a relationship with a Nazi controlled Europe as it only expected Britain to hold out for 3 weeks after the "inevitable" defeat of the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Hitler's biggest mistake, if anything, was to turn and attack the Soviet Union (22nd June 1941) splitting his forces across another front on top of the Western and North African wars that were already in progress. If Britain had fallen in 1939, Europe would have been fucked anyway so the phrase "This ended when the US came along and cut your balls off by crushing the Axis powers and parking our military all across Europe" which negates the contributions of all the other allied powers is an insult to the millions of non-Americans who died in that war as well as being an expression of an obscene level of arrogance.
Your tone also suggest America's involvement was a totally selfless act despite the fact that America entered the war wholesale after it had been attacked by Japan and Germany had made a declaration of War against it. You also neglect to mention the arrangements from which America benefited, i.e. technology transfers including Radar, the jet engine, the cavity magnetron, Azdic, etc. and, post-war, faster than sound technology (developed by Miles Aircraft Corp and used by Bell to build the X-1, sideways looking terrain following all weather radar (developed for the BAC TSR 2 Nuclear strike aircraft - used in the cruise missile) and more that I can't be arsed to list. On top of this, America gained access to a global span of British territory for military use as part of Lease Lend as well being in a position to isolate itself from Communist Russia by transferring any fighting with the USSR away from Alaska which would be a bitch because no-one wants to fight a war at -40 in an environment where everything that moves leaves a trail that can be spotted from the air and into region that could form a handy missile launching platform close to the intended target.
"This made engaging the US a prerequisite to starting any European war, and defeating the US military was too high a bar for anyone to really consider trying."
Er, Nope.
The world's leaders understanding that there were enough thermonuclear warheads on both sides to blow the entire planet up stopped another war from starting.
"As a consequence, most of Europe has allowed its military to degrade into near-uselessness."
The ex-Axis forces were deliberately prevented from having an army large enough to cause any trouble while what was left of allied Europe had been so bombed to shit that it was bankrupt and couldn't have supported the kind of Army needed to fight a war. One country is notable as having actually come out of WW2 richer than when it went in primarily through selling arms to it's allies under the guise of Lease Lend opening up potential lines of argument as to whether it was an alliance or a business arrangement.
"Muslims are usually looking for wars"
What the fuck are you on? That is just the sort of statement made from a position of such supreme ignorance that it borders on being not worth answering.
Muslims and Christians have existing next door to each other for several thousand years. In fact, when the christian crusaders commissioned to fight a "holy" war in the middle east arrived, the cities they found under Muslim control contained mixed populations of Christian, Muslim and Jews and the laws enacted within the cities prevented anyone from attacking a holy building of any denomination. The rulers of the Muslim lands also endorsed the crusaders activities as a holy war and offered them food and shelter within the hous
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
About 10 years ago, when visiting an air force base in Australia (as a journalist) I asked about the clear navigational dome on some of the older aircraft. I expected to hear a response about how the aircraft in service were all so old that they predated more modern navigation methods, but was suprised to hear,
"The US government may be able to turn off the GPS system, but they still can't turn off the stars".
They were serious. This pretty much illustrated to me that most countries don't trust the GPS system for critical purposes.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
The idea that the US would just unilaterally, without warning, turn off GPS to Europe is insane.
Are you sure???
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-04zc.html
London (AFP) Oct 24, 2004 The United States could attack Europe's planned network of global positioning satellites if it was used by a hostile power such as China, The Business weekly reported Sunday.
Well, in fact you can't compare crime rates between countries with different laws and different "crimes"... A crime in USA may not be a crime in Spain (e.g. downloading copyrigthed music over the Internet for personal, non-lucrative use is legal in Spain and not in USA (not sure if it's a crime but it's not legal)), as well as a crime in Spain may not be a crime in USA (owning a gun).
So, if you want to compare apples with apples, you should compare equal crimes. Murder is a good choice, rape or sexual aggression would be ok, too.
English is not my native language. Corrections are not only welcome but encouraged. Thanks.
-Walenzack.
Independence of the US system?
Where have you been for the last 10 years?
Even commercially available hand held units also have the capability of using the Russian system.
Fud pushers! Can't live with them, and you can't shoot them!
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
One of the reasons why the US pays a lot more money than the Europeans do for defense is that the US is also paying for the European's defense: we shared a somewhat more equitable share of the load back during the Cold War when there was a functional German army which would have comprised much of the first line of defense against the Soviet armored spearhead, but after the Soviet Union collapse Europe decided to pare defense budgets down substantially and spend the savings on further increasing the size of the welfare state. Its currently so bad that Europe would be just structurally incapable of, e.g., removing a local tin-pot genocidal dictator (Milosevic, etc) without US assistance, to say nothing of actually mounting a significant campaign overseas. The Brits are probably in a better shape than the continent (marginally), and France can still push around impoverished African nations which have air forces which would fit on a municipal airport in Idaho and leave room to spare, but by and large Europe is incapable of providing for its own defense.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Who invented packet switching, the premise upon which IP builds?
You think ARPANet was somehow the *only* packet-switched computer network in the 70s/80s? Ever heard of Cyclades? You think the internet was the only widely deployed computer information network? Ever hear of 'Minitel'?
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Yep, hanging back was exactly what the USA did in World War II. You say there were 250,000 American casualties in the war? The Russians lost 17 million people; the U.S.'s mere quarter million is chicken feed in comparison.
In fact, it has been argued that the U.S. stayed out of WW II until it became obvious, a year and a half after the destruction of much of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Stalingrad, that the Soviet Union was about to win. And then the U.S. finally invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944 -- to stop the Soviets from taking over Europe, not to defeat the already stumbling Nazis.
Pro-Nazi sentiment was actually pretty strong in the U.S. in those days, believe it or not. IBM was a noted collaborator. So was George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, who was convicted for helping to finance Hitler's rise to power.
So American triumphalism about WW II really grates on those of us who know the truth.
Like you stuck to the USSR or the Iraq/Saddam Hussein? At one time, even Osama bin Laden was an "ally" (when he was running a Taliban Group for the CIA). Not to mention Ho-Chi Min when he was still fighting the japanese occupation during WW2.
The term "US ally" has come to mean "Youe are -Temporaryly- useful for us, but we'll drop you like a hot potato when
Realizing this (and acting accordingly) is not paranoid.
> If a battle between the US and China goes nuclear, then we're all completely screwed anyway.
Yes. The US knows this, and China knows this.
> It's possible that they could back down after a few ships are sunk, but I wouldn't bet on it.
I don't view that as a possibility. Political pressures in China are weird and quite different from in a Western nation. I don't just mean that the political pressures are for or against different things, but that they *work* differently. Also they come from different sources; most political pressure in the US and Europe comes from the mass media, from allies, from vocal citizens, and from public opinion (both locally and internationally). China has some of that sort of thing going on, but not to the same degree, and the strongest political pressures there are internal to the government itself or come from tradition. In a situation wherein the US has been forced to sink Chinese ships (something that, believe me, would not be done lightly), I am not convinced that the Chinese government would be *capable* of backing down. Even suggesting it would be (at minimum) political death for any government official. Remember that the thinking in China is Eastern thinking, much like Japan in WWII -- a nation whose government believed, among other things, that surprise-bombing the US was the best way to keep us *out* of the war (a mistake that will not be repeated by China, because Easterners have since come to the understanding that Westerners think differently). They believed this because in an Eastern culture an outmatched power will avoid conflict at all costs, because engaging in some conflict and then backing down is unthinkable. Japan in WWII did not back down even after their borders had been pushed back and pushed back and pushed back (thousands upon thousands of their men dying) to the extent that they had seen a US plane fly over Tokyo. Backing down was unthinkable, and it took something equally unthinkable (repeated atomic bombings and the threat of more of the same) to convince them to back down and step up to the negotiation table.
China will not attack the US. China will not attack Taiwan, militarily, as long as the US is backing Taiwan. They will posture and threaten and froth at the mouth if Taiwan makes declarations they cannot stand, but they will not attack with military force, because if they did, it would be the end not just of their government but of their civilization, and they *know* this.
The US is capable of backing down under some circumstances, but in that scenario we would be protecting a (relatively, militarily) helpless ally from a big bully, and furthermore we would (as things stand at this time) have the upper hand, so that raises serious questions about whether we could, in that scenario, back down, especially since most Americans would naively expect China to be capable of backing down and would expect to be able to call their "bluff". I am almost sure, however, that the US leadership understands, or at least has advisors that understand, the differences between Eastern and Western mindsets. (I don't mean just the current administration, but US leadership in general; this has been generally understood for decades now among people who study world politics.) The US government knows not to push China too hard or in the wrong ways. I do not believe there will be war between the US and China any time soon. Non-military conflict of the competitive sort, sure, and the usual "We won't support your UN resolutions" type of political opposition, and posturing, and press releases, and all that sort of thing, yeah. But I don't see actual war in our future, and China is not a nation I am worried about, from a military perspective.
Actually, of all the nations currently believed to currently _have_ nuclear power (as opposed to merely being in the process of attempting to develop it), the only one that scares me even a little bit is Pakistan. All the others I'm pretty much certain are too sane to start a nuclear w
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Uhhh....Weimar Germany experienced an even more disastrous depression at THE SAME TIME we did in the US. And really, Roosevelt's make-work bullcrap didn't get us out of the depression, World War 2 did.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Real Americans keep guns for fear of the government, not the populous.