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GPS Transitions to New Control System
gsfprez writes "It took us a long time, but the Air Force has finally moved off of the 1970's mainframe GPS control system and is now running on a new Unix-based Control System called AEP — Architecture Evolution Plan. It's important to remember that current GPS satellites are basically solar powered iPod shuffles with atomic clocks that simply playback whatever we upload into them at a precise rate. They don't actually have any idea where they are — its the control system at Schriever Air Force Base that does. The new system will be a lot cheaper to support and modify since Sun stocks things like SATA drives - while digging up Saturday Night Fever-era DASDs isn't simple. AEP will also allow us to be ahead of the curve: we're basically good to go to fly the new IIF birds."
.. but whatever Zonk started smoking lately, I want some.
Over twelve hundred distressed calls to 911 service occured around the same time. A common thread is that they were all geeks screaming something about geocaching, their GPS isn't working and they are LOST!
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.