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Galileo To Be Europe's Answer To US GPS
judgecorp writes "Two Galileo satellites that will signify the start of the European Union's answer to the American Global Positioning System will be launched into orbit on Thursday aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. It's using Soyuz because it is cheaper than the French Ariane — and the satellite system is supposed to free Europe from dependence on a U.S.-controlled positioning system."
.. more redundancy is always better. This is probably some of my tax money that has been spent the best. Aside for those used to repair the roads, teach the children, take care of the sick and so on and so forth.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
This is the first Soyuz launch from French Guiana.
(And so this is the first launch of a possibly man-ratable launcher by ESA).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
References? First time I hear of this...
I'm sure it isn't impossible that this is a reason, but then taxing on actual road usage would be the fairest anyway. ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
A bit off-topic, but anyway...
Are you talking about the Dutch proposal? I thought it was dead after the new government came into power a year ago. In any case, with the exception of the Orwellian nightmare points this generates, it is a pointless waste of money exercise since people already pays per km by paying high petrol taxes. If the government needs the money, raise the petrol taxes! If it is to reduce car traffic, it will not be as efficient as raising petrol taxes since I see this every day. If I get a bill at the end of the month/year for my driven km, I will most likely not think of it in the meanwhile.
This will also generate huge headaches when planning your own finances, since the bills will be very difficult to forecast.
I suppose, you may want to reconsider when every single car runs on electricity, but I am not sure about whether that is needed; when that happens all that oil money that was payed to foreign powers, will stop flowing out of the country and most likely be available for local investments (assuming electricity is produced domestically).
I would really like to see some independent review of these proposals, do you know of any?
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
And what would this do that GPS wouldn't?
Sounds like scaremongering to me. If they want to put a blackbox in your car, they just need to make it law. The technical way they do it is neither here nor there and does *not* require Galileo in any way. Hell, they could do it the same way London runs the Congestion Charge Zone, or the way the DART tag works for the Dartford tunnel, or a myriad European countries manage their motorways charging, or just putting 10p on petrol.
Stop spreading bullshit. Road taxation is a completely separate issue that does NOT require (and never has required) Galileo. Hell, it doesn't even require GPS.
OK, I'm a European and not massively fond of the US military, but I am going to take exception to this.
The Galileo *civilian* band originally overlapped with the US *military* band. In other words, you could buy an over the counter device that could guide a weapon to a specific grid reference in an area the US was fighting a war. Remember the rocket forces Hezbollah were able to deploy against Israel? Imagine that with GPS targetting that you can't jam without blinding your own forces.
The US asked ESA to pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top not make consumer devices that had dual uses killing US servicemen. ESA said 'ooh, go on you old rascal' and moved the band.
Now, the situation is that both Navstar (the actual name for US GPS; GPS is just the generic name for such a system) and Galileo have civilian and military bands that don't overlap. Either the US and Europe can jam each others signals, completely, without affecting their own military band. Just as the US can achieve exclusive GPS access in Iraq and Afghanistan, France can do just the same when it unilaterally intervenes in one of its old African colonies.
All the change did was move us from a situation where we were screwing the Americans with our network, to one where we have equal power to screw each others network. This doesn't seem massively unreasonable of the US to ask for.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Feeling a bit sore? America is neither our enemy nor our bestest friend ever. America is just a friendly nation; well, mostly friendly, and you guys have certainly always known how to look after your own interests, friendship or not. Which is why it makes sense for Europe not to be too dependent on America. We have our own interests to look after, and a closer relation with China ought to be very much in the cards for us. Being too dependent on America might be a hindrance.
Bad news - this likely won't mean it gets a lock on its position any quicker, due to technical reasons. Essentially, the device has to listen for a few seconds to receive the complete signal.
Worse news - each network will require its own proprietary chip, so increased access to GPS networks will come with increased cost, complexity, heat and power issues.
Good news -- you have been misinformed. Single chip GPS/Galileo IC with sub-1-second acquisition and similar power usage to current GPS-only chips.
Wow -- what a facetious and ignorant comment.
Actually, Europe would be quite happy to sponge off our GPS satellite network, except for the fact that it's run by our military and we reserve the right to downgrade it's accuracy or shut-off civilin use completely, at any time and for any reason.
So yeah, when you have the majority of the world living OUTSIDE the US and with no control, you can't fault them for wanting to come up with a system they can control.
Of course, just to show what good chums we are, we already stated we'd shoot Galileo NavSats down if we even suspected China (a galileo partner nation) was using them in any military action against our interests. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-04zc.html
AMERICUH FUCKYA!
our local OWASP chapter had a great demo from a Cambridge university (UK) researcher who could effectively jam GPS signals and make the GPS receiver believe it was somewhere else. Very cool tech, using GNU-radio and a whole lot of talent. The basic theme was that the GPS protocols are not trustable and todays society places way too much trust in the system.
This also coincides with a major naval exercise off the north coast of Scotland (where extensive GPS jamming was taking place) which ended up with a fishing vessel unable to make a distress call using the automated "big red button". The exercise was hastily stopped as islanders services stopped working (including internet) - it turns out that a lot of civil infrastructure relies on GPS.
With a foreign power in control of GPS, the EU had to respond. The USA is not the closest allie to European countries (including the UK) as you would think. The USA stood by for 2 years whilst france & belgium were invaded and also stayed neutral when the UK administered Falkland islands (Islas malvinas) were invaded in 1981 by the argentians.
next job: Internet.
Galileo is better (kind of inevitable, being about 30 years newer). Also, I believe the idea is that a GPS system can get back its launch and development costs by licensing receiver chips. This is a profit making enterprise, which hopefully will mean more money in the long run available for other European space endeavours.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The Galileo system is also an important part of the new car taxing scheme... Where you basicly pay taxes from the distance you drive
Which is a very sensible way to do i, since you are going to pay road tax anyway. To me it makes a lot of sense that Mr and Mrs Peterson, who drive about 5 miles every day, would pay less, whereas lorrydrivers and others who drive tens of thousands of miles every year whould pay a lot more. After all, they pollute more and they wear the road surfaces dwn more.
It seems so typically American to roll out the big scarecrows of "The Evil Government" and "The Evil Taxes" instead of stepping back and thinking about things. (I know, most Americans actually do exactly that, but you never hear from them).
You know, in Europe people are not 1) paranoid about the government - possibly because we actually believe in our democracy, and 2) we are not against paying tax, even high taxes, if we can see that it is fair.
"GPS" based toll systems are occasionally floated and shot down. They will pass eventually: People who stand to earn billions from such pork barrel projects can be quite tenacious. (Most recent attempt that I know of: German Greens politician Winfried Kretschmann wants a GPS based toll system for passenger cars.)
I don't mind paying taxes, in fact I think the UK could do with a bit more tax at the higher end, but I don't trust David Cameron at all. Largely because he wants to privatise the NHS instead of raising taxes on the wealthy (low by European standards atm).
Also, he is a fucking lizard.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Didn't the US push the EU to allow them to be able to downgrade the Galileo signal, effectively giving the US a Galileo veto?
At least that's my memory from, I think, 2004.
What’s especially funny is that by the time these toll systems gain wide adoption, they will become irrelevant.
I believe that in the next two decades we’re going to see really autonomous automobiles, i.e., self-driving cars. They will mark the beginning of the end of the era of a personally-owned vehicle, as well as parking space issues. These cars will have all it takes to become public transportation (also, automatic carpooling via mobile phone), with cars being owned by municipalities instead of individuals. Which will also mean the downfall of taxi drivers – however, used car salesmen will get screwed too.
Taxation by distance traveled will therefore become obsolete; you will be paying by distance traveled anyway. Though I guess not only municipalities will purchase those cars; taxi companies might purchase them as well (same income, albeit with no need to pay any drivers!), but I don’t really care how exactly they are taxed.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Ever watch Air Crash Investigations (called Mayday in some countries)? Even with redundant GPS, getting rid of air corridors would be a terrible, terrible idea.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
China has their own GPS network already up and operating. Why not use them, as they're Europe's new BFF?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I really hope so. I think it will take longer however, mostly for liability and perceived safety reasons. People are just happier if it was another person that stuffed it up and killed them or their loved ones. They get all stuck on punishment and revenge and blame when its a machine.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
That is a general policy document, it does not mention the use of GPS or Galileo at all. Most of the document also only apply to freight, rail and air transport.
Some parts of the document is about personal vehicles, but there is nothing concrete mentioned except that congestion charges should not be avoided by non-local cars. Essentially they are in some cases when they are based on ANPR tech like in London and Stockholm.
The document does say the Union will develop guidelines for states that wish to implement certain measures for congestion / pollution taxes, but it does not say anything about forcing this on the member states. This is harmonization for the states that want to, not a top down directive forcing the member states to do something.
If a state want GPS-devices in cars, they can do so (though this hasn't been tried with the human right courts, I am only looking at the document itself), but the EU will not force them to. I suggest that if your state wish to implement GPS-devices, you take up the issue with your MP.
Essentially, the doc says something like this: the Union should develop rules so that if a state wish to do X, then X must comply with Y, but the Union will not force the state to do X if they do not want to.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
internet stopped working because of no GPS? Citation required. My BS meter is off the scale.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Thanks for debunking the whole "push-over" politicians angle. Let me just add that those old rascals over in the US are, after all, our allies. I for one, don't think avoiding needlessly killing our allies is the same as bending over to give them better access to our backside.
I would say the in Europe people have a healthy paranoia about the government. But we are far less adverse to taxation if it makes sense. If we really are serious about the externalities caused by CO2 then it needs to have regulated cost. Just as one example.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
"China has their own GPS network already up and operating. Why not use them, as they're Europe's new BFF?"
What part of his post did you not understand? If it makes sense not to be too reliant on our friend the US, it sure does not make sense to be too reliant on our new "friend", China.
The Galileo *civilian* band originally overlapped with the US *military* band. In other words, you could buy an over the counter device that could guide a weapon to a specific grid reference in an area the US was fighting a war. Remember the rocket forces Hezbollah were able to deploy against Israel? Imagine that with GPS targetting that you can't jam without blinding your own forces.
No you can't. Both GPS and Galileo civilian devices are speed, acceleration and altitude limited. No rocket would work with it. Even our armature rockets had too high acceleration and too high speeds to allow for GPS tracking through most of its flight trajectory.
However they did not ask nicely with the overlapping bands. The US was aggressive about it. Very aggressive. I didn't track the debate to its conclusion. I was still under the impression that the bands still overlap.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
See the UK Department for Transport publications on Road Pricing
A quick search through documents, e.g. "Issue 4, dealing with potential fraud ... " reveals the "European Electronic Toll Service".
General reading through the documents will reveal this is a scheme for taxing road use via the use of a "black box" with a positioning system and a GSM cellular modem. I've seen other DfT documents which I can no longer locate which are clearer on the matter of integration with a European system.
Of course, any such system also provides the capability of snooping where any vehicle in the target area travels.
Some back-of-napkin costings also reveal that a system like this is an order of magnitude more expensive to both install and run than mandatory active RFID tags in license plates and pickup loops at the ends of target roads (the original justification is that this will reduce congestion at peak times on these roads). On the other hand, RFID systems do not have the advantage of tracking your every movement.
I might be mis-remembering it, but I recall that Galileo specifically mentioned for it's improved performance in urban areas as compared to GPS.
With a foreign power in control of GPS, the EU had to respond. The USA is not the closest allie to European countries (including the UK) as you would think. The USA stood by for 2 years whilst france & belgium were invaded and also stayed neutral when the UK administered Falkland islands (Islas malvinas) were invaded in 1981 by the argentians.
That's not quite fair. The WWI and WWII invasions of Belgium and France were pre-NATO and the USA had no obligations to intervene. The Falklands war placed the US in a pickle, firstly Argentina had some support in S-America and they could hardly intervene without creating a diplomatic mess, secondly any help from the USA for Britain would have been deeply humiliating to the latter. As it was the British succeeded by the skin of their teeth so no harm was done. The US also provided diplomatic help behind the scenes by securing either the cooperation or neutrality of several S-American nations in favor of the Brits.
Having worked on GPS type things in the past both systems are very similar and the electronics is not hard to do these days, and because they are so similar the development costs won't be high. Hell someone on Makeit did their own GPS receiver *without* a gps chip. Very cool.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
I read somewhere that Galileo is 10x more "accurate" than the U.S. GPS. Aside from what exactly does that mean (absolute positioning, relative positioning) does anyone know if this is true? I can think of a whole host of new applications or applications that could be made a lot cheaper/easier (like autonomous vehicles) if this is true.
And if it is true, how do they achieve it? Better atomic clocks (in orbit presumably)? Better algorithms? Better knowledge of the satellites positions? Better receivers?
Some telecom gear uses GPS for time synchronisation, so when that disappears, things can break.
Even if you can't work around speed limitations, just make a GPS guided drone from a model aircraft. Its still a danger in the hands of a competent and imaginative asymmetric opponent
It was quite an aggressive move to make our network attack the military utility of theirs in the first place. IIRC the whole thing was part of the spat between Bush and Chirac, both of whom are now out of office. Unsurprising that the issue is now resolved, then.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
...but if the ESA wanted to, they could have just told the US to get back to them when they had an actual situation where Galileo might be used for military purposes against the US, and they would have a look at it and, maybe, degrade the signal themselves. Unless they disagreed with the assessment. The way they did it now means that the US can make those decisions entirely on their own.
Two points:
1. An overlapped would not have tied the hands of the US military that much anyway; in the face of any serious threat, if Galileo satellites were functioning as an enemy asset, they could fire ASAT weapons at them.
2. EU nations don't want to interfere with US military operations out of a sense of moral duty (at least their governments don't.) They want to secure deals they have made with enemies of the US. None of our governments asked for a mandate to engage in what would basically be proxy warfare against the US.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Why couldn't they just have required that for GPS rather than spending billions on new satellites?
Indeed, it is sensible. But the even more sensible thing would be to administer the km-tax though petrol tax as this is already implemented as part of the infrastructure and reduces the administrational overhead by only falling on the petrol sellers that are far fewer than the consumer. It is also automatically punishing cars that burn too much fuel.
And guess what, this is already done...
By the way, you don't need Galileo for km-tax. You could do this reasonably well with the GPS system or without the GPS system. Or, by placing a black box in the car that is read out when you pass a border and yearly at your car inspection (also, every car keeps track of the km driven as it is), administrationally, this is a lot easier and cheaper than placing a GPS plus cellphone device in every car.
But wait... now comes the standard objection to doing a simple system for this, what if people manipulate the system? Well, it turns out that it is easy to jam a GPS receiver, and it may also break easily. In both cases you need to check the GPS logger against the mechanical km logger that is already in the car; and the manipulation of this meter is already illegal and more cumbersome than jamming a GPS.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
You do know that France was the world's foremost military power in 1940 and everybody expected her to beat the Germans handily, right? Furthermore, any theoretical American Expeditionary Force would have been routed by the Nazis just like the British were, and just clogged up the beaches at Dunkirk. I suppose that whole "liberating France & Belgium four years later" thing did nothing that deserves any credit.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The US can disable Galileo in time of war. Europe can disable GPS in time of war. Europe wasn't screwed here.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Cars will continue to be owned by individuals so long as we have drunks and vandals to make publicly-owned vehicles dirty, nasty, and unpleasant. Especially if there's no driver in the car to stop them. Not only that, you can leave things in the car - from small objects like sunglasses, to large packages while shopping.
Not just some, almost all. Stratum's tied to GPS signals are standard fare in a switch room at Sprint PCS and Nextel. Everything in the realm of high speed digital data transmission needs reliable timing. GPS is a free, easy reference that's accurate to a nanosecond. Those that don't go down will start to drift in timing. Modulation that's not time-reliant will be ok, but others will have issues.
You can pay a per-mile tax by increasing gasoline taxes, too, and in the bargain you don't have to hand the government a list of every single place you've driven in the past year.
citations for the chappie who called BS. These are quite isolated communities and so when the comms went down it caused chaos.
1. BBC, Jamming suspended
2: The Scotsman, mentions telecoms + internet problems
sorry, haven't found anything remotely tech from the comms companies.
It if were a profitable enterprise, then we wouldn't have to pump billions of Euros of taxpayer money into it.
He said a profit-making enterprise, not a profitable enterprise. Infrastructure is rarely profitable to operate, but it can generate a lot of profit by existing. The amount of profit that I make by being able to easily work for companies on the other side of the world, for example, is a lot greater than the profit that my ISP makes from me. Decent roads between industrial and residential areas make it easy for companies in those areas to recruit workers and increase profits, but the roads don't make a profit themselves. There are lots of activities that benefit from accurate positioning information.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
With the much higher accuracy Galileo could be used for things other than navigation.
Both these problems are circumventable.
Vandals etc. can be taken care of with some monitoring – even if the state of the vehicle were only photographed after a seat has been emptied, since each passenger would pay for the ride either by credit card or by mobile phone, it would be trivial to find the offender and fine him.
Leaving small objects in the car will die out as people can keep them in their bags as well, and any non-driving related objects will seamlessly find their place there. Larger packages while shopping – simple. You just reserve the vehicle, paying some amount per hour, and free it after shopping. What’s more, you could actually fill the vehicle with packages and send it home without you (providing there’s someone there to unload it), while you go on with whatever else you were doing, or take another car in another direction.
Change is inevitable.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Can human-kind, for once, knock off this nationalist crap and make a universal system that everyone can use? Instead of turning everything into a weapon? Come on, this is getting old.
Yes, I do, and I also read the official air crash investigation reports as part of my work. Getting rid of air corridors isn't necessarily as bad an idea as you think if it's done right.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
To track cars all the time seems extremely intrusive. I expect there is a huge potential for datamining for the public good (e.g. figuring out where new roads need to be based on traffic patterns, where to put public transport etc) but also huge potential for harm, erosion of privacy etc.
We already do tax on road usage, we just do it through petrol consumption.
I like your thinking but as long as most people commute every day at pretty much the same time we are going to need one car per commuter which probably means individual ownership.
Sure it does. It means all that superficial crap that we export to the rest of the world hungry for almost anything American. I guess it's not like it used to be, but we still put out a lot of crap that you folks eat up. So yeah, it means what I think it means.
The US doesn't have the capability to shoot down its own NAVSTAR GPS satellites never mind the GLONASS, COMPASS and planned Galileo constellations. They're not in low-earth orbit but high up in long-period orbits which keep them above the horizon for several hours at a time, altitudes which would be difficult for manoeuverable hunter-killer spacecraft to achieve.
The large number of satellites planned or already in orbit would also require lots of H-K launches to intercept enough units before the positional data received on the ground would be noticeably degraded.
I'm at work so don't have the time to look it up, but look at tech's on Nortel DMS 100, 250, etc for their switches, base site controllers, etc. For the other "biggie", Lucent 5ESS. Those were (at least 5 -6 years ago when I was still in telecom) the two biggest switch networks deployed in the US. For T1s, look up Alcatel, and Tellabs for digital cross connect, and...ok hit brick wall.. there's one other I'm forgetting.
I saw it coming years ago and I'm a little surprised it's not happening faster. We have seen where China, India, Brazil and Russia are forming their own little trade group leaving the US dollar out of the equation. We see increasing instances of heavy resistance to US politicking, law-peddling and bullying. Now we are seeing a pulling away from US controlled global systems.
Expect to see some new form of DNS and other internet services followed by increased instances of segmentation on the global public internet as well. It's just going to get more and more ugly as the various parties in the US involved in this continue to deny it is happening at all.... kinda like global warming.
You know, I'm going to have to try sticking my head up my ass ... they make doing so seem comfortable and awesome somehow.
One car per commuter is both impractical and unnecessary. And I am quite certain ordering a ride via your mobile phone would allow for some damned efficient scheduling, as well as collecting passengers en route.
Commuting should be fairly easy as it’s constant.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Having worked in telecoms before and respective fiber networks and associated equipment and with a lot of friends still working in with ISP etc, I am not convinced. They need good local clocks with low drift *just like a gps receiver needs* not absolute clocks (in fact the requirement is far less that local clocks required for GPS). So GPS adds nothing that a PLL + TCXO doesn't give you except better *absolute* time base which is completely unnecessary. I'm with the original citation required. And no, a few news paper articles that say everything more advanced than a wrist watch is going to stop working is just not credible.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
After looking up the first 2 I can find no references at all to a GPS signal reception requirement. Considering some of these things will be installed in locations that a external GPS antenna would required. You'd think it would be mentioned, somewhere. I will ask a few workmates who still work on this sort of thing for more details. I am however very skeptical. There is just no *need* or *advantage* to using a absolute time base of GPS over lower drift local time base. About the only thing I can think of for such a requirement is for billing, which hardly needed much accuracy.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
It means we make movies, music, and television and you buy them. You even bought our top beer company, despite insisting that it tastes like watered down urine. You can pretend that you hate American culture, but you import it on a massive scale. We get BMWs, Belgian chocolate, and French wine, and you get disposable media. Seems fair.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I call bull. Mostly because you can already do this with the Navstar GPS and secondly, because it would be way more cost effective to do that using terrestrial means.
Galileo GPS does not enable the uplink of data (even though the rescue channel will be supported for SOL devices, this channel already exists and is part of another satellite constellation). And besides, there is not enough bandwidth to monitor every european car from space using 1 W transmitters and low power receivers on the satellites, any monitoring of car positions would have to be done using the GSM network. This is already possible by using Navstar GPS receivers (which can pinpoint your position to within a few meters) and GSM transmitters.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
If the EU believe the benefits justify the lifecycle costs, then they should go for it, and good for them. Of course, if their choice of incompatible standards introduced into a mature market reduces demand to below profitability thresholds, then too bad, so sad. Good luck friends.
there's a wiki about euroscepticism in the UK . Several numbers around 50%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroscepticism_in_the_United_Kingdom
I thought you needed to license the protocols in order to use it. Has the EU changed it's mind and made it a proper public infrastructure?
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
In some places there's these things like long cars with maybe 40 seats in them. Peopletrucks. I think they're just a fad.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Motorola M12+ Timing Oncore GPS Timing Module
Gotta run back to work
The point that I was responding to was that just because cars can drive themselves we might still need the same number. The poster was suggesting that we could all share cars as they could move between people on their own, I was pointing out that people tend to commute at the same time.
Your point about buses added nothing and wasn't funny. If buses were the answer, we'd all be using them now.
The more satellites in view, the better the fix. The military actually redirects our satellites so more are available over areas where accuracy is needed, such as war zones.
i am sure the GPS industry is quaking in its boots.
GPS is a question?
Actually, buses might become much more prevalent for commuting. Buses are a part of the answer; yes, there’d need to be more of them (but not more drivers, mind you!), and given some more incentive, more people might start using them. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I’ve gathered, riding the bus seems to carry a slight social stigma in the US. Is it really true?)
It’s all fairly simple math, as long as you don’t focus just on one aspect. Which is what you did do, and wrongly so.
People now justify car purchase with, among other things, the need to commute. With this kind of system, they might need to commute only to some bus stop or other, because cars could then go off to pick up other passengers. This would reduce congestion, so you might get same or slightly shorter commute time even with passenger transfers.
All in all, it’s doable. It’s economically feasible. However, the automobile industry might show some resistance as it would reduce their sales.
I predict marketing ploys akin to those that made diamonds so valuable; stuff like “you’re not a real man if you let a machine drive you” (see Sly Stallone in “Demolition Man”). Still, there are very few buggy whip manufacturers around nowadays, aren’t there?
Ignore this signature. By order.
"supposed to free Europe from dependence on a US-controlled positioning system"
You know, they dont have to use the system if they don't want to.
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.. or retrofit expensive equipment to older vehicles. And what do you do about foreign vehicles?
GP is a retard.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why would you have to buy a new satnav? The GPS satellites aren't going anywhere.
The fact that it is possible to live a nomadic life in which you carry everything you may need around with you doesn't mean that people want to live that life. And once you start paying for the car to sit there, empty, it rapidly becomes less and less appealing vs owning your own.
The social stigma of riding the bus is not slight. It's huge. Almost nobody who can afford other means uses buses - despite their theoretical advantages, they're slow for point-to-point travel, meaning that you have to put near-zero value on your time in order to make them worthwhile.
I'd love self-driving cars. They'd be great. But I don't want to ride in a bus. It beats walking, but that's about it.
Worse news - each network will require its own proprietary chip, so increased access to GPS networks will come with increased cost, complexity, heat and power issues.
Apparently, the problems are not as big as this makes them sound, since already most of the upcoming batch of smartphones is boasting dual GPS/GLONASS support - most importantly, iPhone 4S.
Why is that so? You are mostly paying for your own car to sit there, empty. Whether you need it or not.
I don’t really see people carrying anything they might need in their cars, either. They’re mostly empty space. And so are the cars.
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My car isn't empty; it contains my sunglasses (multiple pair; I've been known to lose them from time to time), a stereo preset to my preferred radio stations, and seats that are heated, cooled, and covered in my choice of fabric. It contains a first-aid kit of my own construction, jumper cables, a flashlight, $20 in emergency cash, a pocketknife, a Space Pen (writes upside down and under water!), a full tank of gasoline, a cigarette lighter, small containers of hand sanitizer, a Bluetooth system that is already synced to my phone, and a few other items.
I'm certainly not going to carry all of those around with me - indeed, in the case of the pocketknife I sometimes can't. I don't have any interest in carrying a box containing "stuff you'll need eventually when you're in the car", so there is one in my car and one in my wife's. I don't pay for my car to sit there; I pay for it to be three feet from my back door whenever I want, on zero notice, for my exclusive use. Car-sharing doesn't offer that. It's not that car-sharing never makes sense; it's just that it only makes sense in very densely populated areas where owning a car is a real pain.
You're working on the assumption that they can only carry one person at a time. I've seen those. Halfcars. I don't understand why they don't fall over.
I said they'll never catch on. And that kind that run along a metal ladder, they're just insane.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Banks, cellular network operators and airports are a few examples of the businesses that rely on accurate GPS timing for a variety of applications. Accurate GPS timing provides a fundamental building block needed to coordinate data and information flow securely through various systems, on a daily basis. By tagging data packets with a time and date stamp, it's transmission time and hence integrity can be monitored.
In other words its a high layer thing not a transport layer issue at all. That is, it is not needed to keep a network ticking over(aka internet). But only specific applications that are in all probability *not* running over TCP/IP. Since if it was the micro and milliseconds of delay and jitter with packet delivery would render any such high accuracy time stamp irrelevant. It is also a module, aka not needed for basic operations judging from the text.
There is really no reason to require a absolute time base for network transport, and with modern packet ques nothing is getting sent anywhere that accurately anyway. As for digital transceivers, it would be a disadvantage to not self time to the signal itself. Talking to my friend working for a big ISP laughed at the idea no GPS would mean no Internet. None of their equipment uses it and though they are not the biggest ISP, they still have well over 5 million customers.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
The launch has been delayed because of fueling problem on Soyuz.
They will retry it Friday at 10:30 UTC.
Direct broadcast: http://www.videocorner.tv/videocorner2/live_flv/index.php?langue=en
"There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark."
I don't know digital high speed data at the physical layer levels, but keep in mind when we talk about these circuits, you're talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of circuits that are moving meg's of data per second, up to terabytes per sec (OC-192 for example). They're using Timing for modulation (timeslots). So although there may be some in or out of band signaling (I don't know), it's far easier to just hook everything up to a GPS Stratum. Everything is sync'd within a nanosecond. If you're a backbone (like Sprint), your ATM syncs up to your trunks going out to telcos. For the wireless data, it's sync'd to the ATMs going out, or the T1/DS3/OCxx (12...192), along with your base site controllers, echo cancellers (I'm stretching on that...since echo cans don't really care about sync)... etc Hopefully you get the idea. I do know I always see a GPS sync in every wireless switch I've been in (Nextel, Sprint PCS) and everywhere high speed data passes. If you have time, which it seems you do since you're still pursuing this, look up Tellabs 532L and 5500 installations. See if they have GPS. These are the devices that mux and demux DS0s (little 56k slots) all the way up to DS3, etc.
GPS is not to the nanosecond. Even from your link. 2ns is 1 sigma. The chip rate for GPS is really slow, what GPS gives you over normal local TCXO is *absolute* time, ie lower long term drift, and by long term i mean mins to hours (TCXO are very good over mins, drift is a problem over hours and days). Claiming there is a way to use GPS and make a network depended on it is not the same as it is, and that its the easiest way, or even sane. From your link its adding time stamps to packets, not using it for network timing. That makes some sense (security apps do need a *secure* absolute time reference, but to the ns). Even with the old 2Meg circuits that where TDM, the "clocking" is still done on the line itself, not some absolute external clock. Since absolute time is totally irrelevant. The faster you go the more important it is to be locally synced.
Getting GPS to have a ns absolute clock accurate timer is really hard. See the recent deal with faster than light neutrinos. Note that Ionospheric effects with dither GPS more than ns as well. So at the very least you going to need military grade GPS for at least first order ionosphere corrections. Hell normal coaxial gets all sorts of errors bigger than that and change over time. In 1 ns light travels just 30cm. I don't recall the deal with fiber, but a small temp change will definitely be changing delays on the order of ns over km of fiber. So now even corrected ionosphere GPS is still drifting differently in different locations and the cables/fibers have different drift as well. So what was gained?
None of this adds up. From my own time in the field to the people i know in the field to just 101 electronics digital electronics TX. It just does not make sense. Also lets not forget the OP said internet. Not just some fringe protocol on dedicated lines. There is no direct reference other than a news paper. Note I have full access to IEEE publications and i only really get anything with cellular stuff. Not internet stuff (packet switched networking).
I remain very skeptical.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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A stereo preset to your favorite radio stations is irrelevant; that’s mere personalization that can be keyed to your mobile phone or any other sort of identification. The jumper cables, full tank, and Bluetooth system are irrelevant: they are either standard equipment or unnecessary. Remember, you do not really need a Bluetooth system if you’re not driving.
As for densely populated areas where owning a car is a real pain – you might remember I was talking about cities buying cars for such sharing. Last I checked, cities were densely populated areas where owning a car is a real pain. But what do I know, I only live in one.
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If you can get a vehicle whenever you need it or want it, do you still need to own it?
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Actually, you talked about "municipalities", not "cities", so I hope you'll forgive me for thinking that West Podunk was going to deploy a fleet.
You keep talking about what people do and don't need. I'm trying to point out that what they want is much more important.
People often have no clue as for what they want. For instance, you keep listing things that are nothing to worry about because you can’t wrap your head around a different concept.
Besides, Apple made a fortune by giving people not what they wanted, but what they needed from a product. And then made them want it.
What people want largely depends on what’s offered to them.
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Well, in all fairness, not even vehicle ownership guarantees that as your car can be stolen at any time.
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