Slashdot Mirror


The GPS Wars Have Begun (techcrunch.com)

Where are you? That's not just a metaphysical question, but increasingly a geopolitical challenge that is putting tech giants like Apple and Alphabet in a tough position. From a report: Countries around the world, including China, Japan, India and the United Kingdom plus the European Union are exploring, testing and deploying satellites to build out their own positioning capabilities. That's a massive change for the United States, which for decades has had a practical monopoly on determining the location of objects through its Global Positioning System (GPS), a military service of the Air Force built during the Cold War that has allowed commercial uses since mid-2000 (for a short history of GPS, check out this article, or for the comprehensive history, here's the book-length treatment).

Owning GPS has a number of advantages, but the first and most important is that global military and commercial users depend on this service of the U.S. government, putting location targeting ultimately at the mercy of the Pentagon. The development of the technology and the deployment of positioning satellites also provides a spillover advantage for the space industry. Today, the only global alternative to that system is Russia's GLONASS, which reached full global coverage a couple of years ago following an aggressive program by Russian president Vladimir Putin to rebuild it after it had degraded following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Now, a number of other countries want to reduce their dependency on the U.S. and get those economic benefits. Perhaps no where is that more obvious than with China, which has made building out a global alternative to GPS a top national priority. Its Beidou navigation system has been slowly building up since 2000, mostly focused on providing service in Asia.

210 comments

  1. All for one, and one for one. by Ostracus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Kind of funny that the Chinese don't trust the Russians either otherwise they'd be using theirs.

    --
    Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
    1. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The multiplication of satellite positioning constellation is about securing access to the military-grade signals and chips.
      Europe has spent 10B€ to avoid depending on ITAR control of military GPS and how access to these devices, and fair price competition, is critical for many arm sales.

    2. Re: All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's not really funny. No country wants to depends on another for critical infrastructure

    3. Re:All for one, and one for one. by nojayuk · · Score: 5, Informative

      The US GPS, Chinese Beidou and Russian GLONASS are all positioning systems intended primarily for military use but which offer a degraded lower-accuracy signal for commercial and private users. The EU's Galileo navigation system offers precision to within a few cms, effectively military-grade accuracy, to paying commercial users as well as open but less-accurate position data similar to the "free" GPS, GLONASS and Beidou systems.

    4. Re:All for one, and one for one. by LBt1st · · Score: 2

      If I recall correctly, Clinton disabled the lower-accuracy for non-military. Possibly because civilian devices were being used by troops.

      Also the US is currently deploying satellites for it's own next generation GPS system with higher accuracy than anything out there.

    5. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Clinton" didn't disable or even decide anything about this. Learn it's from its.

    6. Re:All for one, and one for one. by tsqr · · Score: 2

      "Clinton" didn't disable or even decide anything about this. Learn it's from its.

      This is so easy to check, you have to be an idiot to post a comment like that.

    7. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Entrope · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not really true any longer that the military signals provide better accuracy. DGPS approaches, including SBAS (FAA's WAAS being the first), can provide approximately the same accuracy as the military PPS, while also providing integrity assurances (in that domain's jargon, integrity means you have a bound on how wrong your calculated position is). The main advantage of the military signals now is improved availability, both in terms of anti-jamming and anti-spoofing measures.

      There is some advantage for military receivers in that they can use L2 to estimate dispersion due to the ionosphere, which is easily the largest source of errors for SPS receivers, but an increasing number of satellites transmit civil signals on a second frequency or use "codeless" approaches to make the same estimations using the military encrypted signals on L1 and L2.

    8. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      President Clinton ordered SA disabled in 1996, and his administration implemented it in May 2000. He decided to disable, and his administration did it as his direction.
      So yes, "Clinton" disabled, after deciding to do so, the GPS restriction on accuracy for non-military receivers.

    9. Re:All for one, and one for one. by nojayuk · · Score: 4, Informative

      Selective Availability was a deliberate degradation of the non-military positioning accuracy, "fuzzing" the reported position data. This has been switched off but the most accurate GPS signals are still encrypted and intended only for military and government use, even in the new more accurate GPS satellites being launched.

      The Galileo system provides that level of military-grade accuracy (to within a cm or so) to commercial customers, not just the military forces of participating countries and allied forces. It is still encrypted and requires payment and vetting of customers. Galileo's Open Service is accurate to 1 metre, a lot better than GPS' equivalent free service.

      It's entirely possible commercial pressures will mean higher-accuracy GPS signals might be made available to civilian users in the future but at the moment only Galileo can provide that sort of service over-the-counter.

    10. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Strider- · · Score: 1

      The funny part is that civilian users need more accurate systems then the military. When you're dropping a 2000lb GPS guided bomb, 6 for accuracy is more than enough. When you want to know what Lane your car is in, it ain't.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    11. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Kohath · · Score: 1

      How about when you use them all at the same time? The accuracy of the position must improve considerably, right? (I don’t know the details on how they work, so I’m only guessing.)

    12. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's entirely possible commercial pressures will mean higher-accuracy GPS signals might be made available to civilian users in the future but at the moment only Galileo can provide that sort of service over-the-counter.

      As it turns out this is not entirely accurate. It is actually possible to obtain high accuracy algorithmically by leveraging multiple GPS systems simultaneously.

      Ionospheric response is inherently frequency dependent. By analyzing differential characteristics between system frequencies you can build an image of real-time ionospheric conditions effectively removing ID uncertainty from equation.

      Additionally exploiting inter system timing/phase increases effective resolution of receivers. The end result is the more systems the more accuracy mortals get for free.

    13. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Entrope · · Score: 3, Informative

      All else being equal, if you use N times as many satellites to compute a position/velocity/time solution, your expected accuracy improves by a factor of sqrt(N). But it's not quite that good when you have a multi-solution due to uncertainties in the system clocks between the constellations.

      Even in the ideal case, you can usually get more improvement from other techniques than just averaging more inputs. The first thing to attack is ionospheric delays, then a suite of several other errors that are similar in magnitude: GNSS ephemeris (position and velocity) errors, errors in the satellite clocks, other atmospheric delays, etc.

      Simple differential approaches use a receiver at a known location to compute (the sums of) several of those errors at each time of interest. Because a single receiver can't distinguish certain errors from each other, those corrections become less accurate over distance. More sophisticated approaches use a widely separated set of receivers to break the errors down into the individual components, so that the corrections can be applied over a wider area.

    14. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but less-accurate position data similar to the "free" GPS, GLONASS and Beidou systems.

      For Beidou, especially when in China (don't know if using Beidou in Taiwan, one would experience this issue, but probably).

    15. Re:All for one, and one for one. by mlyle · · Score: 1

      Not to mention that more overdetermination is good-- lets you average out more non-systemic error.

      There's also the whole issue of commercial providers offering high quality differential corrections that get centimeter or better accuracy out of theoretically less-capable signals.

    16. Re:All for one, and one for one. by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      In military terms, GPS is in reality pretty useless because the single band is well known and can be jammed across a broad scale. In defensive only terms to secure a country, satellites are a waste of money, radio towers make more sense, defensively you only care if it works in your country and along your coast. So cellular network systems can be tweaked to provide very accurate data, with the persons phone handling the processing. This lets you run local positioning for local needs and when a citizen leaves the country they can access international systems, whether they be satellite or similar radio towers or making use of the cellular network, time for response to various towers and triangulation.

      Satellites aren't us useful as land based system, fibreoptic in conjunction with wireless transmission, due to reliability, servicing, lack of upgrade ability, and short life. Sure higher capital cost initially but way cheaper over the long term, that backbone quite readily capable of surviving a century, dependent upon quality of parts and care during installation.

      Satellites are flash but have real limits of worth, except for looking at the earth or looking into space. The best satellite we can make use of is course the moon, you can do reliable stuff up there they will last a century, be upgradeable and repair able. Satellite communications work best in the age of copper and of course upon the high seas but on land, fibre optic is the only way to go, reduce harmful atmospheric radiation (stop with the bullshit of only looking a one source at a time, not just your phone but every phone and tower in range, plus wifi, plus radio, plus TV, plus power lines, plus airport radars, plus even worse military radars and even xrays, you get can be subject to all of them at the same time and hence the affect compounds unpredictably but without doubt negatively).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    17. Re:All for one, and one for one. by mlyle · · Score: 1

      > All else being equal, if you use N times as many satellites to compute a position/velocity/time solution, your expected accuracy improves by a factor of sqrt(N)

      To the extent all the errors are uncorrelated. If there's something that's equally wrong with all observations, e.g. the ionosphere delay model is bad for a direction, adding more observations doesn't eliminate that error.

    18. Re: All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did Clinton order it or generals ask him to do it?

    19. Re: All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If someone's jamming it you fire a missile that homes in on the signal. The military has missiles for this purpose.

    20. Re:All for one, and one for one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whenever something looks funny or weird, it means we don't fully understand it.

      It's the first step to a wider perception.

    21. Re: All for one, and one for one. by jeremyp · · Score: 1

      Those two options are not mutually exclusive. The generals asked him to order it, and then he did order it.

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
  2. Who cares? by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We just pay for our own satellites with our taxes and use all the other ones for free, just like everybody else.
    More satellites, more precision.
    I miss the 'war' part of the article.

    1. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh me too. Use satellites for free. You say that right up until you actually need the satellite and you realize it is not free. Hah hah hah hah hah hah

    2. Re:Who cares? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      The "war" part comes due to national mandates, such as China demanding that any device sold in China use the Chinese sat network. Or the US actively prohibiting the inclusion of Chinese chips due to national security concerns. This may mean fragmentation in certain markets, which creates problems for vendors wishing to sell a single device to both markets.

      From a technological standpoint, there's no real problem, of course. The issue is political. Then again, if the issue *weren't* political, we wouldn't need multiple GPS constellations in the first place.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    3. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "one notices"? Who are you, the fucking Queen?

    4. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm the Queen of France!
      *squiggly arms extend and retract*

    5. Re:Who cares? by novakyu · · Score: 1

      You clearly missed the point about the Chinese having ability to shoot down satellites some while ago. /sarcasm

    6. Re:Who cares? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      Not a very big problem, though, since there are 2 systems currently in active worldwide use: GPS and Glonass.

      PLUS, there are at least two systems in development, scheduled to be fully deployed by 2020: China's Baidou and UK's Galileo.

      Current (newer) chips are already able to make use of GPS, Glonass and Galileo.

      The West really doesn't need Baidou. At all. GPS by itself was pretty good but now we have 3 systems we can use, even without it.

    7. Re:Who cares? by digitig · · Score: 4, Informative

      I miss the 'war' part of the article.

      Back in the 1990s, the US DoD put out a statement that in the event of a conflict, GPS augmentation systems (which would now include things like the EU's EGNOS) would be considered a valid military target whether on friendly soil or not. It's part of the reason other States started to develop their own systems (except Russia, which was already well established with GLONAS by then).

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    8. Re:Who cares? by digitig · · Score: 5, Informative

      Thanks for crediting us here in the UK with Galileo, but it's an EU project, not a UK one, and we appear to be shut out of it because of Brexit.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    9. Re:Who cares? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      Oh, I'm not disagreeing with that assessment. I certainly don't think this is a big problem by any means (and as I said, there's literally no problem from the technology side). Calling it a "war" is rather overblown - just pointing out the potential area of contention the article was postulating on.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    10. Re:Who cares? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The people who have great jobs in France supporting Ada doing new "space" work for France and the EU.
      Precision and bespoke rockets from France.

      Thats decades of new work making GPS French.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    11. Re:Who cares? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There are a few of issues.

      When it was just GPS it was easier to jam/spoof. Now we can compare data from multiple systems to detect spoofing. Other services can provide greater precision than the US wishes civilians to have, or remove other restrictions like the maximum altitude and speed limits.

      It's a good thing.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    12. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      The 'war' part is because the U.S. is involved. They often try to decide that the world can't do what it wants, unless they give their permission first. In the 21st century, the U.S. has grown so paranoid that it has begun looking at the world as its enemy.

    13. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Glonass is not a Global positioning system at all. It has 100% coverage of Russia and environs, but much less as you move out from there.

      Beidou-1 is low-resolution coverage of western China and environs only. Beidou-2, which is still being built, is supposed to have the entire East Asia-Pacific region covered. It is not supposed to have full global coverage.

      Galileo will have quality coverage only in Europe and the rest of the northern hemisphere. It will proved the best location capability for the northern latitudes, in fact, when it is finally complete. The southern hemisphere, however, will suffer enough that calling it a global system may not be accurate.

    14. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sucks to be you. Our muslin atheist gay bombs are gps guided and delivered very cheaply through the USPS, but you wont read about it in the failing new York times because the illuminati are hiding the laws of the lizard kings.
      #butheremails

    15. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I cannot believe you understand what you wrote or that you even keep this kind of trivia in your head. Nobody wants to hear more. Not soon.

    16. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speed limits? That would be dependent on a GPS receiver's programming or interface with a vehicle, and nothing to do with the GPS transmitters. GPS sats are eitehr transmitting or not, they can't "block" based on how fast an object is moving.

    17. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the future, we might want to have a Geneva Convention against targeting autonomous transport systems over civilian areas and over economic and protected areas of the seas when carrying hazardous loads.

    18. Re:Who cares? by Immerman · · Score: 1

      > This may mean fragmentation in certain markets

      It may, by I don't really see any reason it should in most cases. Since a GPS receiver is basically just a radio receiver + computerized signal analysis, it makes multi-network compatibility really easy - all you need is a receiver that can receive signals across all the frequencies used (probably not an incredibly expensive upgrade), and somewhat more complicated software that can calculate your position from any of the networks (which has no inherent per-unit cost at all).

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    19. Re:Who cares? by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      Other services can provide greater precision than the US wishes civilians to have, or remove other restrictions like the maximum altitude and speed limits.

      These are generally intentional artificial export restrictions necessary for US companies to make chips with GPS capabilities available outside the US.

      It's perfectly legal to get GPS receivers without the restrictions in country. It costs too much to differentiate just for US market so most everyone ends up with lowest common denominator crap in their cell phones and computers.

    20. Re:Who cares? by wooferhound · · Score: 1

      So, soon there will be 4 or 5 GPS systems operating simultaneously.
      How many Satellites will this be in total ?

      --
      We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
    21. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a good thing.

      Until someone starts throwing stones.

      "Oh you want to degrade the accuracy of our missiles? Well, how about manual aiming then?" Normally, I'd say the US wouldn't shoot itself in the foot like that, but given recent events I'd say they are incredibly likely to do so if an issue of it is made in front of the wrong person.

      Best get those new systems up ASAP. While you're doing so, you might want to consider putting defensive sub-systems on them as well. It's not like the US wouldn't pull out of that treaty too.....

    22. Re:Who cares? by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      GLONASS is global. Do you even know what the acronym stands for?
      The network had coverage issues because they did not launch new satellites at a fast enough rate to replace broken ones fast enough after the fall of the Soviet Union. But this is not the case anymore.

    23. Re:Who cares? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      Glonass is not a Global positioning system at all. It has 100% coverage of Russia and environs, but much less as you move out from there.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      The system requires 18 satellites for continuous navigation services covering the entire territory of the Russian Federation, and 24 satellites to provide services worldwide. The GLONASS system covers 100% of worldwide territory.

    24. Re:Who cares? by johannesg · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually the UK is being shut out because _the UK_ demanded that non-EU nations would not have access, back when Galileo was being set up. In other words, it is the UK's own bloody fault for making that demand in the first place.

    25. Re:Who cares? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      More satellites, more precision.

      Nope, doesn't quite work like that beyond a certain (rather low) number of satellites.

    26. Re:Who cares? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      It seems a large amount of the shitshow is our fault. If you find that one grain of truth in the owner of less abouth about bent bananas, you'll find that it was actually British rules that the EU as adopting. Apparently this is reason to leave.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    27. Re:Who cares? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Even if the bananas rule was suggested by British supermarkets, the EU was under no obligation to comply.

      What if they'd suggested jumping in a lake?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    28. Re:Who cares? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      But they did comply which made it easier for our industry to trade in Europe.

      Vegetables generally have a class 1,2,3 or unclassified rating. For better or worse people like buying nice looking vegetables. Most countries in Europe had standards for such things. This is good because if you want to buy a box of veg for general sale, you can buy from anyone (rather than a known vendor) and you know what you'll get. Likewise if you're putting them in things instead, you can buy a lower grade and not overspend.

      Common standards make trading easier.

      Since the EU is a common market, they decided to unify all the existing standards into one, essentially by picking our standard. This is good, because then you can buy class 2 veg from anywhere in the entire EU and you'll know what you're getting (fraud aside). It's particularly good for us because we didn't have to make any changes and with zero effort our companies could easily sell EU wide.

      Somehow this got translated by Brexiteers into a drooling "herp derp Europe si teh evul and morans".

      What if they'd suggested jumping in a lake?

      Yes trade bodies routinely entertain stupid non trade related requests from piss artists. Seriously what point are you trying to make?

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    29. Re:Who cares? by digitig · · Score: 1

      The "banana" rule isn't actually a "rule" at all, it's a classification scheme so purchasers know what they're getting sight-unseen. Bananas can be as bendy as the buyer likes, as long as the buyer knows they're bendy.

      More importantly, it's a WTO scheme, not an EU one, so it will still apply after Brexit, if we manage to join the WTO.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  3. "Owning GPS has a number of advantages" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Owning" - https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/07/12/google-maps-gps-hack-takes-victims-to-ghost-locations/

    https://www.techworm.net/2016/11/gps-spoofing-dangers-gps-data-hacking.html

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7734296/russia-hack-nato-wargames-gps-signal-norway/

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2143499-ships-fooled-in-gps-spoofing-attack-suggest-russian-cyberweapon/

    1. Re: "Owning GPS has a number of advantages" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's called pwning now...

  4. Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 0

    Because, if not, the US “owning it” doesn’t really put anyone at the US government’s mercy - it’s a passive service.

    Sure, you can jam the clients... but that messes up both friend and foe.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, civilian (unencrypted) GPS could be turned off while the encrypted signal remains on. Unlikely, the civilians would be very unhappy. But if a large enough event occurred and the government thought it was a good idea, yes.

    2. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      GPS has the ability to degrade or disable service to non-US military receivers. In the past the public version was always degraded but they quit doing that a while ago. I know they have regionally degraded the signal for big events like the olympics.

    3. Re:Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Sure, you can jam the clients... but that messes up both friend and foe." Jamming is local... and targetable in specific ways. Spoofing allows a lot of things that rely on GPS to be messed with. A lot of things.

    4. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahhh. No.

    5. Re:Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Yes the US mil can make sure long range repurpose dual use "consumer" products do not get the needed accuracy in time of war.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    6. Re:Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Yes, of course there is an off switch. There is also a "degrade" switch that can make it less accurate for anyone without the proper encryption keys.. Furthermore, both of these switches can be geographically selective, so GPS could continue to work over most of the earth, but be degraded over, say, Southwest Asia.

      GPS-guided munitions are much cheaper and more accurate than the laser-guided munitions they replaced. Furthermore, they are fire-and-forget. There is no need for an aircraft or vehicle to stay on station to guide it to the target.

    7. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by digitig · · Score: 4, Informative

      That is just *so* incorrect! The satellites send precise timing signals, along with two sets of orbital details: the almanack, rough positional information so the receiver knows which satellites to search for if it knows its approximate location and time, and the ephemeris, precise orbital information, for the actual position calculation. It works by measuring the time taken from the satellites to the receiver and triangulating from that (it actually does that in 4 dimensions, needing at least 4 satellites, because the receiver's clock won't be accurate enough to use the timing signals directly to work out the distance from the satellites). When it was introduced, the DoD only made one of the frequencies, L1, available and deliberately degraded it (which was called "selective availability"). That degradation was turned off in May 2000, and further enhancements to the civilian availability have been made such as the introduction of further signals that are easier to detect, make the satellites easier to locate, and compensate better for atmospheric effects.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    8. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sure doesn't go by signal strength lol.

    9. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by mrclevesque · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Each GPS satellite continuously transmits a radio signal containing the current time and data about its position. Since the speed of radio waves is constant and independent of the satellite speed, the time delay between when the satellite transmits a signal and the receiver receives it is proportional to the distance from the satellite to the receiver. A GPS receiver monitors multiple satellites and solves equations to determine the precise position of the receiver and its deviation from true time. At a minimum, four satellites must be in view of the receiver for it to compute four unknown quantities (three position coordinates and clock deviation from satellite time)."

    10. Re:Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Do some research, please. GPS can both be made less precise and be switched off for a relative coarse target area.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    11. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh yes it does. Ima check later

    12. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I can slap four on a mast and drive around the desert broadcasting at a higher power while jamming out weaker signals. If you lock onto those you are wherever I say you are, according to your GPS.

      I can also put them on the roof of buildings next to enemy embassies in case you think it is as simple as firing a missle at the source.

    13. Re:Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Strider- · · Score: 1

      The degrade/selective ability function was deleted from the design after Clinton signed the executive order turning it off. They can shut it off in certain regions, but that also harms military users.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    14. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good. I really donâ(TM)t want to be spied on but if they are going to burst in on a sidewalk cafe and interrupt excessive derping I will kick their butts. I intend to overderp my way, GPS or whatever variant the current tower wants provide or not announcing my presence, right to wherever I want, and I dare the evil military to suggest otherwise. I have no weapons so, ya know.

    15. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ummm.... the whole point of military capabilities is that you cannot research it. The worst thing you could do is research what it was like before it was classified and guess what way it may have evolved. That will never work.

    16. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      GPS goes by signal strength...it doesn't read any data. Just uses multiple signals to do triangulation...

      Even LORAN, an analog nagivational system that's been in use since the 1950's is more sophisticated than your belief of how GPS works. GPS signal timing is so precise that general relativity is used in the calculations.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    17. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      The assurances GPS gives are public. They are pretty bad. The usual reality you get is pretty good. Also there are documented instances of GPS having been degrades. So actual reality does handily destroy your theoretical argument. Not that it was really good in the first place.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    18. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bog cheap Chinese GPS receivers that make use of ALL satellite systems are out there. Australian scientists have worked out how to get precise measurements over 24 hours so they can watch the Australian continent move - how dare continental plate movements mess up accuracy!

      More amazing is some mobile phone systems wont work without GPS signals,so some countries refused to by telco gear that could be so easily disabled. A good question to ask is could foreign GPS systems broadcast packets that contained a payload to infect/disable dependent systems. And in a time of war, only the constellation in line with that country?

      What if 5G networks received a GPS code that said shutdown at 3am?

    19. Re: Do GPS satellites have an off switch? by digitig · · Score: 1

      Bog cheap Chinese GPS receivers that make use of ALL satellite systems are out there.

      I wouldn't call them bog-cheap, but I know such receivers are available.

      Australian scientists have worked out how to get precise measurements over 24 hours so they can watch the Australian continent move - how dare continental plate movements mess up accuracy!

      20 years ago I was working on GPS fiducial networks that could do that. WGS84 coordinates are good enough for most applications, but fiducial networks have to deal with the coordinate system not being fixed for just that reason. They wouldn't work so well if the DoD decided to degrade the signals, though

      More amazing is some mobile phone systems wont work without GPS signals,so some countries refused to by telco gear that could be so easily disabled.

      A good question to ask is could foreign GPS systems broadcast packets that contained a payload to infect/disable dependent systems. And in a time of war, only the constellation in line with that country?

      What if 5G networks received a GPS code that said shutdown at 3am?

      A good question to ask, but the answer is an unequivocal "no". The packets are purely data, there is no executable content, and receivers don't have the capability of executing anything in the satellite broadcasts (at least as far as the civilian side goes - the DoD doesn't tell us what the military has). So there's no way properly designed 5G networks could receive a shutdown message. The nearest I could think of would be if some malformed packet could cause a data buffer overrun in buggy network software; that would be specific to the particular buggy software, so it's up to the developers to design robust systems.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  5. Wrong story headline by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Funny

    Begun, the GPS wars have...

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    1. Re:Wrong story headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Boring, the nazi propagandist referencing star wars prequels is.

    2. Re: Wrong story headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh hi sistah girl!

    3. Re:Wrong story headline by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Midichlorians! No more Star Trek references or I'll say Midichlorians again. I'm serious.

    4. Re:Wrong story headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How does it feel to have your geek card revoked for confusing Star Trek and Star Wars?

    5. Re:Wrong story headline by Kohath · · Score: 1

      How does it feel to have your geek card revoked for confusing Star Trek and Star Wars?

      Worse than that time General Grievous took his star destroyers into the neutral zone.

    6. Re:Wrong story headline by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      No, this is the one where Conan pursued the Doctor to the safety of the Battlestar Galactica before he was smote by Gandalf. Get your Sci-Fi/fantasy right...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    7. Re:Wrong story headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're still a boring nazi faggot even if you watch too much TV, yellow fever fatass.

    8. Re: Wrong story headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You missed the thundercats

    9. Re: Wrong story headline by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      After Scooby and the group chased them from Fraggle Rock, and Elmo left the show, it was all down-hill...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    10. Re:Wrong story headline by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      Thank you! It's when you have your own little hate group following you around that you know you've made it... Thank you for adding validation to my statements!

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    11. Re:Wrong story headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Group? I'm the guy that's going to cut your non-functional yellow stained cartoon fever balls off and feed them to your wife in a "pork" dumpling before I fuck her to pieces and make a cage with her bones, lol. Group? Lol.

    12. Re:Wrong story headline by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      Wasn't GPS the original system, thus making the others.... clones?

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    13. Re:Wrong story headline by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      Pray I do not extend these references further.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    14. Re:Wrong story headline by tepples · · Score: 1

      this is the one where Conan pursued the Doctor to the safety of

      Was this before or after Conan's fight with Jay Leno?

    15. Re:Wrong story headline by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      Had to be after - before, the world was run by Johnny...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  6. GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by satsuke · · Score: 2

    The synopsis left out a critical detail .. the fact that the US can either intentionally degrade the accuracy of the resulting signal by hundreds of meters.

    Or they can disable its functionality completely over a certain area.

    That's all on the whim of the US government. They haven't degraded the signal for decades, but they can and would in areas like a war theater or over an arbitrary "enemy" nation / region.

    Under normal circumstances I would never expect the US to do so, but with the current government being as erratic as it is, you never know, and that uncertainty is certainly enough to have other nations redoubling their efforts to build competing systems.

    1. Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by Brett+Buck · · Score: 1

      Why is this such a terrible thing? Of course they are going to degrade the civilian signal in a war zone, so the enemy can't use it to target them. Why is that in any way surprising? If you are in a war zone, the last thing you should be caring about is getting your fucking cell phone location services to work.

            I absolutely, positively, guarantee that the Russian and Chinese systems have the same capability.

    2. Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >"Under normal circumstances I would never expect the US to do so, but with the current government being as erratic as it is, you never know"

      ? The "government" is really no more "erratic" now than the year before, or the year before that, or before that, on and on. There is zero reason the GPS signals would be switched off or to "degraded mode" unless there were a credible threat.... and even then, you can bet it would be cautiously seriously considered before doing so, and then probably only under areas that are needed. Thinking otherwise is just silly paranoia.

      BTW- GPS signals are *incredibly* easy to disrupt because they are so very weak. A terrorist can have a device that could jam the signal for many hundreds of square miles in a single backpack/location.

    3. Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by digitig · · Score: 1

      Why is this such a terrible thing? Of course they are going to degrade the civilian signal in a war zone, so the enemy can't use it to target them. Why is that in any way surprising?

      It's not surprising, but part of the issue is how precisely they can define the area over which the degradation can be applied. If you're a friendly State near a war zone, and the US cripples your aviation and/or shipping as collateral damage because you're in the degraded area, you might not stay friendly for long.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    4. Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is this such a terrible thing? Of course they are going to degrade the civilian signal in a war zone, so the enemy can't use it to target them. Why is that in any way surprising?

      You are making assertions 180 degrees out of phase of well known public statements from the US government on this topic.

      If you are in a war zone, the last thing you should be caring about is getting your fucking cell phone location services to work.

      There are a number of non-obvious dependencies on GPS. GPS is frequently used as a time source for clocking in communications and power distribution systems.

    5. Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by Altrag · · Score: 1

      It's a terrible thing if you aren't the American side of the conflict.. it means they'd have accurate data (the high-precision encrypted signal would still work) but the other side would be stuck using civilian grade signal.

      Countries that are potentially hostile to the US don't want to be put in that situation, and putting up their own system is a hell of a lot easier than breaking strong encryption (especially if they have to do it repeatedly, which they almost certainly would since the US military isn't stupid enough to use the same keys forever.)

      Russia already has a system and now China wants one as well. It's hardly surprising given the current state of US/China relations.

      The other side of the coin is that if all of these systems have civilian usage available, then the US (or whoever) would need to not only shut off their precision signal, but convince all of the competing systems to shut theirs off as well. This is of particular interest in places like Iran who may not have their own system, but convincing China to shut theirs off while the US is in Iran may not be plausible.

    6. Re: GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A few bits on GLONASS...

      First, it is not global. It covers mostly just the Russia border and interior. You aren't going to be able to use it to navigate Paris, New York, LA, Tokyo or Sydney.

      Second, it is less accurate than modern civilian GPS based systems. It is about as accurate in north/central Russia, because they needed to have more satellites to get it to cover the region, because each satellite of theirs covers less territory.

      So basically, GLONASS is a way to drive around Russia without having to rely on the nearly nonexistent road signage, since they scavenge their own infrastructure the same way a meth head stole copper wire a decade ago during the "spike" in metals pricing.

      Russia is falling apart, Putin stole too much and it's mostly parked in banks where he can't actually access it anymore. The bankers will end up keeping most of it and Russians will once again face near starvation as food prices continue to increase. Most of them can't even afford "luxuries" like strawberries and oranges anymore due to the long, slow, collapse of the ruble during Putin reign.

    7. Re: GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wouldn't ay of the powers we're talking about target GPS satellites in a theoretical wold war 3 anyway ?

    8. Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 2
      If you are in a war zone, the last thing you should be caring about is getting your fucking cell phone location services to work.

      I would not dispute that. However, degrading the accuracy of the enemy's weapons is likely to have the effect of killing a lot more people on my side. It is the kind of foot-shooting we have come to expect from Trump supporters - so, yes, we do need to worry about this kind of thinking.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    9. Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      expect from Trump supporters

      The fuck?

      Okay, we get it, orange man bad. But you realize this capability has been there since the Reagan years, right? The fact that you would even bring Trump or his supporters up in this show that you are.....not....rational.

    10. Re:GPS can be arbitrarily degraded by the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yea ORANGE MAN Bad!!

      some peoples children. you are the problem.

  7. Re: Derp derp derp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yawn. If I need to go someplace I have never gone before, sure GPS is handy. Usually I go places I already know where they are or people come to see me who already know where I am. It isnt like I am playing some game where I need to surreptitiously meet people and buy stuff in the down low. Here is a sample conversation: Hi Fred I just got out of jail can you pick me up and get me a nice lunch? Sure Wilma, let me get my rock wallet and driving shoes. See you in a few! Next article?

  8. Another fine example by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 2

    Another fine example of how competition leads to duplication of effort: the world only needs one constellation of positioning satellites, but has more than that already, and with more to come (because WE can't trust THEM. Insert your own candidates for WE and THEM)

    This also demonstrates how the idea of a nation state is not compatible with space faring civilisations: we need to have more that one of everything because we can't trust the other groups on this one planet.

    How would that look when we occupy more than one planet? USA.Earth vs China.Earth vs Muskia.Mars vs Bezostan.Mars all fighting over the same space rock containing vast amounts of water ice?

    Will all the nations of one planet band together to fight/compete with the nations of other planets? Everyone.Earth vs Everyone.Mars?

    1. Re:Another fine example by Solandri · · Score: 2

      You talk like duplication of effort is a bad thing. Having just one constellation of positioning satellites leads to a single point of failure. I dunno what the "correct" number of positioning systems is, but it's not "one" like you seem to think.

      Having different systems is also necessary for redundancy. The Japanese incorrectly thought having multiple backup generators at the Fukushima nuclear plant constituted redundancy. It does not. If your backups are identical, they're all vulnerable to a common failure mode. In Fukushima's case, a tsunami flooding the basement where all the generators were located. What they needed were multiple generators with different construction using different fuels located in different locations (the generators for the two newer reactors at Fukushima were located further up on a hill, and operated correctly when power went down).

      So if it turns out that GPS is vulnerable to a y2k38 bug, chances are the other systems won't be affected because they were designed differently. We'll be able to switch off GPS for a few weeks to deal with the problem, relying on the other systems during the downtime, instead of everything relying on positioning satellites going to hell. Redundancy is good.

      Believing you've been able to think of every possible scenario or failure mode so you can design a single best system is stupid. GSM would've crippled cellular data speeds because it was based on TDMA - each phone takes turns talking to the tower. That worked fine for low-bandwidth phone calls. But once phones began slurping high-bandwidth Internet data, it became a handicap. Fortunately the U.S. didn't go along with GSM, and allowed competition which came up with CDMA. In CDMA, all the phones talk to the tower simultaneously, and you rely on orthgonal codes to tell the signals apart. The phones see the transmissions of other phones as noise, so the total bandwidth automatically gets divided evenly between all phones which happen to be transmitting at any given moment. It was so superior to TDMA that in less than 2 years, GSM threw in the towel, and licensed CDMA as the official method for transmitting 3G data in GSM (HSPDA uses wideband CDMA). That's why GSM phones could talk and use data at the same time. It wasn't because GSM's design was superior, it was because GSM phones had a TDMA radio for voice, and a separate CDMA radio for data.

    2. Re:Another fine example by couchslug · · Score: 1

      Competing systems provide REDUNDANCY.

      If you've three alternative GPS signals and one is shut down, you still have two alternative systems.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    3. Re:Another fine example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So if it turns out that GPS is vulnerable to a y2k38 bug,

      Seriously? GPS doesn't even have the same epoc as unix time.

      We'll be able to switch off GPS for a few weeks to deal with the problem, relying on the other systems during the downtime, instead of everything relying on positioning satellites going to hell. Redundancy is good.

      Personally I think just shutting down all GPS periodically would be way better as it's really the only way to address brewing GPS dependency crisis.

      Believing you've been able to think of every possible scenario or failure mode so you can design a single best system is stupid.

      If you were to come up with an example specifically engineered to illicit a desired outcome you would only succeed in fooling yourself. There is nothing inherently wrong with building one thing to be robust vs spending time on duplicate but less robust components. The tradeoffs require careful statistical analysis and specialized knowledge not utterly worthless blanket philosophical notions of how to approach reliability by someone with no relevant knowledge or experience.

      GSM would've crippled cellular data speeds because it was based on TDMA - each phone takes turns talking to the tower.

      Each phone still ends up doing the same thing either way.

      That worked fine for low-bandwidth phone calls. But once phones began slurping high-bandwidth Internet data, it became a handicap.

      TDMA's ridiculous inductive interference was so fucking annoying. It also generally required higher signal level to perform at the same level as CDMA yet there was nothing inherent precluding it from working across wider bands and higher frequencies.

      Fortunately the U.S. didn't go along with GSM

      Verizon and Sprint didn't go along with GSM. Everyone else sure as F**** did.

      That's why GSM phones could talk and use data at the same time. It wasn't because GSM's design was superior, it was because GSM phones had a TDMA radio for voice, and a separate CDMA radio for data.

      Utter hogwash.

    4. Re:Another fine example by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your entire response is a blind reaction to someone telling you that competition isn't always a good thing, built upon the strawman that redundancy does not feature in what I'm talking about, because I didn't explicitly write it down for you.

      This was an opportunity to think outside your box and you opted not to, so I'm going to break it down for you:

      The point I was trying to make is: "Competition can be counter productive for certain use cases", and this is one of those use cases.

      If your GPS goes down today, and for example you think everyone can just switch to a competing platform, go ahead and switch to BeiDou, Galileo or GLONASS right now and see how that goes. It may or may not work, depending on satellite coverage and/or the manufacturer of each device (most will likely be phones where they all support GPS but only a subset support a competing standard); therefore, your competing location services idea might not work for you as an individual, and certainly does not work for the entire group of people who depend upon GPS today. When shit happens, you'll find yourself using printed maps from a convenience store.

      Now for an alternative example that might work if the competitors could trust each other enough to collaborate, and if these collaborators could operate in a non malicious manner (the non malicious and trust aspects are the root problem):

      Instead of redundancy from many networks built around the premise that one could just switch to a totally alternative network, consider that at the hardware level a failure might look something like a satellite going down over one region, but there can be many replacements already in orbit ready to serve the exact same purpose for the same region, built by many different companies and/or governments, but built to work on the same communication protocols.

      Once that's in place the next step might be for the collaborators to design a "Next Gen" service together that may or may not be backwards compatible with their existing system. Some of the competitors might even want to start supporting some other frequency as a form of "let the market decide which technology is better" by having their new satellites support both the global standard and their own side show project.

      Consider how many satellite launches would be needed for such a system vs doing the same thing over and over for competing systems, along with all the other requirements for supporting it (such as ground stations for managing the satellites)

      Your internet is already a collaborative system that works (in the sense that you send bits on a wire without thinking "My bits can only go on the Verizon wires" ) yet you are arguing for the equivalent of this for your location services. The same applies for your road network (The Fords and the Teslas share the same road) and for your airlines (Different planes and airlines share the same airports)

      Your Fukushima example doesn't even make sense within the context of competing, or for preventing that specific failure in a reactor. Would multiple generators of the same bad design at Reactor A all failing at the same time, be solved by having Reactor B next door built by a competitor with a better design? No, Reactor A still fails and causes an environmental disaster. Your redundancy example only serves to provide backup sources of power if Reactor A goes down

    5. Re:Another fine example by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 1

      Competing systems provide REDUNDANCY.

      If you've three alternative GPS signals and one is shut down, you still have two alternative systems.

      As stated above, try and toggle between BeiDou and GPS for example and see how that works out for you. If that idea is going to work during a failure it ought to work right now. It should work on Pixel 2 for example, but your phone manufacturer may not have included support for the other systems

    6. Re:Another fine example by dryeo · · Score: 1

      My older cheap Moto E handles all 4 systems, or at lest sees all their satellites. Currently sees 18 satellites of which 6 (4+2) are not GPS. Once all the competing systems finish coming on line, it should work good enough.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    7. Re:Another fine example by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Another fine example of how competition leads to duplication of effort: the world only needs one constellation of positioning satellites, but has more than that already, and with more to come (because WE can't trust THEM. Insert your own candidates for WE and THEM)

      Could you give an example using last mile internet service providers?

    8. Re:Another fine example by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 1

      Down in New Zealand there was an incumbent phone company called Telecom that provided phone and internet access. It was split into two parts: a company called Spark that serves as a phone company / ISP, and an infrastructure company called Chorus which provides most of the network infrastructure in the country.

      All the other ISPs provide internet access on the Chorus network as well, and in the past few years Chorus has been building out their fibre network. The current state of things is that you could get fast uncapped fibre at a range of prices

      For example, 1000mbps up / 500mbps down is about NZ$135

      A key part for all of this to work is that the organisation providing the infrastructure is not allowed to also gain a competitive advantage by being a service provider upon that infrastructure, which is why the telecom company had to be split into two parts.

      New Zealand is also a good example for this sort of thing because it is a fairly large area, with both high population density cities and sparsely populated towns of the sort that some telecoms companies like to claim are too expensive to provide decent service in.

  9. How does this put anyone in a tough position? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Phones can only use the services their chipset supports, and when it supports more than one it can use them in tandem to get better accuracy (plus resistance to problems, whether political or technical) The more GPS services there are, the better off we'll be.

    If some country like China decides "we want phones sold here to only use our positioning service" then it is a simple matter of software to only use the results from the Chinese system if you are running in the Chinese language, have a Chinese SIM, are inside China's borders (all depends on what their law is) which isn't a problem. So you get slightly less accuracy, it is just a phone.

  10. Re:UK by gweihir · · Score: 1

    You are a brexiteer? Fascinating. It is rare to watch people commit economic suicide and be proud of it. Free-trade areas are something you move heaven and earth to get _into_. They are not something you ever want to leave.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  11. Re:UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Something's wrong with your head, Dave.

  12. Re:UK by digitig · · Score: 2

    Sure, we could build our own satellite navigation system, to rival Galileo. But it needs a bit more than just launching bits of hardware, and we certainly did not provide all of the satellite technology - the work was deliberately spread all around the EU. Still, I'm sure those EU-based companies will happily sell us back the technologies we already partially paid for anyway - and all because of May's fit of pique, in saying that we're not even to get the access the rest of the non-EU will get to Galileo.

    --
    Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  13. Re:UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    fuck off ivan

  14. More the merrier by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    GPS systems are like clocks. The only wrong number of competing GPS systems is two. If China makes three that's great.

    It will be interesting to see if receivers from Russian and Chinese markets are intentionally nerf'd similar to export grade crap most of us end up with.

    Best thing about having multiple GPS systems is ability to use frequency spread between systems to characterize ionospheric delay in order to massively improve accuracy.

  15. Re: UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This reminds me of a famous quote:

    As a patriotic American, I think my citizenship in France is unnecessary, so like any good Berliner, I oppose the building of walls, but as a true Scotsman I understand the need for the Protestant Reformation in the north, though my Irish roots make it clear the Catholic Church is right on the issues of the day now more than ever, so we must vote to kick the UK out of the EU and Brexit forever.
    Allah ahkbar, God save the queen!

    - George Washington, atheist king of the Confederation of Soviet Socialist China.

  16. Re:UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We provided all the sat tech

    No, you didn't.

    but we had to partner with places like France...as they had the colonies near the equator to do the launches

    First and foremost, they have the launch vehicles and you do not. But also, "had to partner"? It's an EU project. You didn't HAVE to partner with anyone, you could have simply not participate had you wished to do that. It's that simple.

    The UK has the important bit - the satellite tech - we can get any old fucker to launch it.

    Well, feel free to go ahead!

  17. you'd be an idiot to think it Clinton's idea, yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yeah I agree, you WOULD have to be an idiot to say it was Clinton's idea - instead of reading it, where it directly says it was the direct recommendation from the Department of Defense which wrote up the entire thing and proposed it to him.

    "Statement by the Press Secretary
    RSS Feed White House News

    Today, the President __ __ __accepted the _recommendation_ of the Department of Defense__ __ __ to end procurement of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites that have the capability to intentionally degrade the accuracy of civil signals. This decision reflects the United States strong commitment to users of GPS that this free global utility can be counted on to support peaceful civil activities around the world.

    This degradation capability, known as Selective Availability (SA), will no longer be present in GPS III satellites. Although the United States stopped the intentional degradation of GPS satellite signals in May 2000, this new action will result in the removal of SA capabilities, thereby eliminating a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide."

    I suppose if Clinton were Trump (a total retard who didn't listen to expert advice from the Defense Dept generally) you could call it a significant decision to read and sign off on a complete and well-backed DOD proposal / request.

    But Clinton, unlike the current idiot, knew he had to take recommendations from experts from time to time, that was part of the job - at that time, YMMV.

  18. Good for them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No foreign government should trust the US government given its track record in spying.

  19. Re: Derp derp derp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All of the above. That first point is clear enough. The rest of what you said is indeed derping. At what point should we bother to ask you questions and at what point cut you off?

  20. Payment by JBMcB · · Score: 1

    Well the UK put $1.4 billion pounds into the project which, apparently, isn't good enough to have any say or special access. If it were me I'd ask for the money back but apparently May isn't interested.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
    1. Re: Payment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      May was treated so well by the EU through all this and their system does not even work. It works in Scotland and Umbria but not in Portsmouth or anywhere around the channel. How is that for a working system?

    2. Re: Payment by guruevi · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The whole Brexit debacle is being handled by people that are bungling it purely out of spite. The UK is to the EU as the US is to NATO - pay for everything all the time but get bullied by your only reason and biggest dependent - Germany

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    3. Re: Payment by digitig · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The EU has, quite properly, been looking after the EU's interests. May still doesn't seem to have worked out yet what she wants. And Galileo isn't scheduled to provide full operational capability yet, so it's no big deal that it doesn't.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    4. Re: Payment by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Informative

      The UK is to the EU as the US is to NATO - pay for everything all the time

      Uh, what? Yes, the UK does net pay into the EU, as one would expect from one of its richer countries. Germany however, has a net contribution over twice that of the UK (larger as a share of its economy, too). France, too, gives more. This is largely due to the fact that the UK gets two-thirds of its net contribution back as a special rebate. In fact, if you look at net contribution as a share of the national economy, the UK comes in ninth.

    5. Re: Payment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, it was the UK that previously insisted that only EU members would get to use Galileo (for military purposes). Little did they know they would be the ones to leave

    6. Re:Payment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We have put a great deal of money into a great many EU projects, and then we decided to lay a great big steaming turd on top of all of that. Why should Galileo be any different? Oh, and BTW, the fact that the EU27 would fling that turd back in our faces comes as a surprise only to brexiteers.

    7. Re: Payment by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

      The whole Brexit debacle is being handled by people that are bungling it purely out of spite. The UK is to the EU as the US is to NATO - pay for everything all the time but get bullied by your only reason and biggest dependent - Germany

      Talk about deluded. The Brexit negotiations were done by professionals on the EU side and by unprepared amateurs on the UK side - no wonder they got their ass handed to them. And what you call "spite" and "being bullied" should have been the simple realisation that the EU negotiators act in the best interest of their member states - and the UK isn't one.

    8. Re:Payment by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      isn't good enough to have any say or special access.

      Of course it's good enough, but the problem is not what's logical, it's what the two world leaders in bureaucracy defined in legal contracts at a time where no one expected someone to leave the EU.

      It's not a case of "wants, or asks" it's a case of piling through a metric shitton of legal documents to see what at all is even possible.

      I will bet you a dollar that within a few years the UK is back in the Galileo program as part of the post Brexit trade agreements.

    9. Re: Payment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We get the rebate, because our land mass is so tiny. 40% -> 50% of the EU budget goes to CAP (farms). Which France and German have a lot of.

    10. Re: Payment by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Even with professionals the UK couldn't have got a good deal from the negotiations, simply because of the political situation in the UK.

      The UK didn't know what it voted for or what it wanted. All sorts of nonsense was proposed before the referendum, none of it at all realistic except for the "Norway model" that was immediately rejected within hours of the result. So all the UK had left was cakeism - the strategy document literally said "have our cake and eat it".

      Naturally the EU simply stuck to the basic principals of the Single Market and the procedure laid out in Article 50 (which was written by a British guy). Given that the Single Market is vastly larger than the UK market they were never going to compromise it just to help the UK out. So the British government pissed away the two year negotiation period trying to find something that the EU would accept and that it could sell to its own MPs, failed and now we are in deep, deep shit with the clock ticking.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    11. Re: Payment by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Tiny? The UK is #8 in the EU by the area. Larger, in fact, than the very agricultural Romania.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    12. Re: Payment by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      So it's fine for the EU to look after its own interests, but when America does the same it's the end of the world. Typical.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    13. Re: Payment by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Yes, because typically the US uses methods that are dickish at best.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    14. Re: Payment by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      May still doesn't seem to have worked out yet what she wants.

      I think what she wants is besides the point.

      Half of her party are fucking nutcases who'd be happy to crash out with no deal. Even the most assholeish of those, Reese-Mogg, has conceded that we'll et benefits in 50 years (i.e. never). And yet he wants to leave anyway, because personal power is the number one goal.

      The other half won't accept a deal which makes us worse off which in practice means no deal.

      Oh and Corbyn and his fucking idiotic "6 tests": he's just as bad. He knows full well that no exit deal could ever pass. But he wan't the chaos of a hard brexit since he knows that's the only chance he has of winning power.

      And the nyou've got the idiots who insist it's undemocratic to ask "the people" what they actually want. The government held a referendum and listened to the result. They filed Article 50, and neotiated the best deal they were capable of.

      But somehow it's wrong to ask people if this is what they had in mind even thouh they never specified it?

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    15. Re: Payment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the UK complains that the EU parliament doesn't have enough power, but was the nation that insisted on it being ring neutered twenty five years ago. Of course, if it had more power, Brexiteers would complain about it having too much power, much as they complain about the banana regulations the UK insisted on. Hoist by own petard.

    16. Re: Payment by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      bullied by your only reason

      WTF is that even trying to mean, you fat cunt?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    17. Re: Payment by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      The UK didn't know what it voted for or what it wanted.

      It wanted Vera Lynn singing in a Spitfire piloted by John Mills while Bobby Charlton stands on a cliff sticking two fingers up.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    18. Re: Payment by Azaril · · Score: 1

      Germany, yes, but according to the EU's website France contributes less.
      https://english.eu.dk/en/faq/n...

    19. Re: Payment by Azaril · · Score: 1

      Actually misread that, you are right for the last couple of years.

  21. Re:you'd be an idiot to think it Clinton's idea, y by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, you're saying that because someone else proposed it, and it was an expert opinion, Clinton didn't make the decision?

  22. Re: UK by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Iâ(TM)m sure various USSR satellite states would beg to differ.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  23. Commercial uses since mid-2000? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really? Civilian GPS systems have existed far longer than that. Early 90's or so for handheld models you could pick up at sporting goods stores, probably even longer for commercial "breifcase" sized systems, and SA has been turned off since the mid to late 90's giving civilian GPS accuracy to a couple feet.

    1. Re: Commercial uses since mid-2000? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the military wants to use its own tech first - hardly surprising since they paid for it

    2. Re: Commercial uses since mid-2000? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It did use it's own tech 1st. GPS was developed in the 70's. It wouldn't have been till the late 80/early 90's that the costs came down enough for commercial interests to be able to afford receivers and early to mid 90's for your average joe blow to go pick up a receiver for camping/hiking at the local sporting goods store in the several hundred dollar range, and these units were not even mapping units, literally all they did was tell you your current coordinates, and point an arrow in the direction of an entered way point.

      https://mashable.com/2014/05/25/commercial-gps-25-anniversary/
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_navigation_device

      Both of these show very early GPS units

    3. Re: Commercial uses since mid-2000? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The military pays for jack squat. It's the American People through taxes that pay for all of the Dod's expensive toys.

  24. Waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why can't we all share

  25. Dollar Pounds by JBMcB · · Score: 1

    Heheehe I just realized i said $1.4 billion pounds. I guess that's like £1.4 billion dollars.

    --
    My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
  26. Re:you'd be an idiot to think it Clinton's idea, y by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Saying "Clinton disabled GPS" or "Clinton decided" without mentioning the horde of worldwide civil engineers, scholars, military planners and strategists who saw the problem up front and proposed that very solution before Clinton even took office is yes intentionally misleading as written - and then for you to double down as if it were a "gotcha" point in your need to repeat pedantically it was his "decision" __ __to accept the long-studied DOD recommendation__ __ and do what everyone had investigated and signed off on the proposal and listen to those experts, letting their expertise stand without him injecting his "gut" and overruling them, it just shows how truly desperate you Trumptards are these days for any straw or floating jetsam to grasp onto as he sinks further into the 8 concurrent major felony investigations into every aspect of his treasonous Presidency from start to finish. Mueller will see you now, if you "decide" to grow balls and face him honestly.

    I guess that "decision" is partially yours, Trumptards, as you continue to support a cowardly traitor who lies to your fat willingly-gullible faces daily and in fact hourly.

    Yes, I'd say it warranted clarification to say degrading GPS wasn't actually Clinton's idea, it was the idea of a shitload of people both in and out of government, and he didn't fuck up putting his ego in the way of that expertise.

    Clinton was never an engineer or GPS expert or even lay-reader. If Jimmy Carter had been the one with his naval nuclear propulsion physics/engineering background, that notion would be considerably more plausible.

    Any other pedantic inquiries, Drumpftard? Mail them to the White House, I'm sure they'll be thrilled to get something in the mail that isn't a freshly unsealed Grand Jury indictment of a sitting co-Conspirator #1.

  27. yes its a good thing to compete... by johnjones · · Score: 1

    all of the systems currently are VERY easy to block

    hopefully the UK system might have some Point to Point information or mitigation
    being able to get to the raw sensor data on a receiver is crucial as well as calibration

    you can see a list of android phones and their capability here :
    https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/gnss

    Apple need to step up in this regard and offer L5 Support, SBAS and BeiDou with offsets
    Currently apple supports GPS (GALILEO which is compatible) GLONASS and augmentation from QZSS and wifi/bluetooth

    regards

    John Jones

     

  28. My four year old supports herself by raymorris · · Score: 1

    Taking care of my four-year-old daughter costs about $25,000/year.

    I spend about 25% of my salary on stuff for her ($25,000).
    She spends 100% of her $12 income on herself.

    By your reasoning, I'm not supporting her, she's supporting herself.

    1. Re:My four year old supports herself by cheesybagel · · Score: 2

      The UK has not done that poorly with their deal with the EU. It is the countries in the Eurozone that are in the shitter. The UK is not in the Eurozone.

      In fact the UK, since it joined the EU, has finally become independent in food production, thanks in no small part to EU farming subsidies. Which is quite a feat consider that was not the case like over a century.

    2. Re:My four year old supports herself by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      By your reasoning, I'm not supporting her, she's supporting herself.

      Not in the slightest. As I mentioned, Germany is putting in over twice as much in absolute figures. So the analogy would only hold up if she was spending about $12,000 on herself. (there are other holes in the analogy, but that's the biggest one).

    3. Re:My four year old supports herself by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 3, Informative
      In fact the UK, since it joined the EU, has finally become independent in food production, thanks in no small part to EU farming subsidies. Which is quite a feat consider that was not the case like over a century.

      This is utterly incorrect. We import 3/4 of our food (the official figure is 66%) - which corresponds to 100% in the winder and 50% in the summer. Britain has not been self sufficient in food since the industrial revolution, and prior to then depended on large scale starvation to keep the population down. Our climate and geography make it impossible to grow food for much of the year.

      Most of the imported food (by volume) comes from the EU (on account of the Americas and Australia being a long way away).

      The main consequence of a no-deal Brexit will be no food in England. However, Boris and Rees-Mogg will be away in their holiday homes abroad, so they don't care. The impact on the rest of the EU will be fairly minimal except in a few industries. (Eg Farming in Spain will suffer a bit).

      Disclaimer: I spend 10 years working in food distribution in the UK.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    4. Re:My four year old supports herself by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      By your reasoning, I'm not supporting her, she's supporting herself.

      The UK got pulled out of the deepest of economic shits by joining the EU and now just wants no part of it.

      Think of it this way. Your daughter rebelled and left home. Then when she got into financial strife after being kicked out by her boyfriend she came home for support. You put her on her feet, and then she buggered off again.

      That bitch!

    5. Re: My four year old supports herself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is see neither math nor logic are your strong suits.

    6. Re:My four year old supports herself by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Let's face it, the biggest hole is the person who made it.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  29. Re: you'd be an idiot to think it Clinton's idea, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't go shoot up a school bro.

  30. Re: you'd be an idiot to think it Clinton's idea, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dude, what is wrong with you?!? Go take a chill pill or seek some help.

    Most people understand that a President or any leader isn't qualified in anything he is actually leading. That they don't make decisions in a vacuum.

    So in that real world context, the poster's post on Clinton making the decision is far more accurate than your drivel. As a leader, he made a decision. This isn't a situation of Bush Sr raised taxes when it was actually Congress.

  31. Interesting. Rather be engineer than farmer by raymorris · · Score: 1

    That's interesting. On the other hand, I'd rather be a senior software engineer than a subsistence farmer. Growing your own food is good if and only if it's better than what they had been spending their time and resources on.

    You mentioned it's largely because of subsidies - the taxpayer paying them more than the value of the goods produced. That sounds like an inefficiency, a bad thing.

    1. Re:Interesting. Rather be engineer than farmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The USA has substantial food subsidies too.

    2. Re:Interesting. Rather be engineer than farmer by dryeo · · Score: 1

      It's better to be inefficient then depending on a foreign power for your food.
      Previous government here was arguing that we could buy our food from China (how the world has changed) and that the free market would take care of food safety, those Chinese would never have unsafe food as it would be bad for business. Now, half a dozen years later, the Chinese are really pissed off at us and would possibly cut us off if we were that dependent. Our allies such as America are undependable as well.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    3. Re:Interesting. Rather be engineer than farmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The farming subsidies enabled farms to invest in better equipment. This should have a lasting impact, provided the UK doesn't mess it up again.

  32. Re:you'd be an idiot to think it Clinton's idea, y by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, it was a really long winded way for a communist pea-brained libtard to work in his 143rd "Fukk Drumpf" post of the 5:00PM PST hour to earn his soup ration from Soros.

  33. The war metaphor is inapplicable here by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

    Because each new GPS satellite adds accuracy to the existing set of constellations, it’s technical cooperation, not war. The only reason why any country needs to add its own GPS constellation is to assure that it can never lose the ability to navigate, whatever other countries do.

    1. Re:The war metaphor is inapplicable here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is a retarded thought on your part given how trivial it is to jam the signal, derp. Stick to being best, Trumpy. Fighting is for Marines, not the Space Farce.

    2. Re:The war metaphor is inapplicable here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ORANGE MAN BAD!

  34. Re: UK by gweihir · · Score: 1

    No, they would not. The USSR was not a free-trade area. But your attempt at cheap, dishonest propaganda is noted.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  35. Galileo vs the UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To be clear, the UK is not deploying a GNSS, despite what TFA implies. The EU is, and the UK had a hand in that, but any talk of a post-brexit UK GNSS is pure bluster. The notion that we will blow billions of pounds in a fit of pique because the EU won't let us play with their toys is laughable.

    1. Re:Galileo vs the UK by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 2
      The notion that we will blow billions of pounds in a fit of pique because the EU won't let us play with their toys is laughable.

      Politicians are involved. Laughably stupid for reason of pique is the most likely outcome.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  36. Re: UK by guruevi · · Score: 1

    The USSR was indeed a free-trade area, at least according to the USSR. Now whether agreement within the zone was coerced or if someone flexes their muscle to set prices (like the EU and US often tries to do as well) is another thing entirely, but then you can throw out pretty much every 'free trade zone', especially the EU where every country/area has been granted monopolies on 'their' exports.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  37. Re: you'd be an idiot to think it Clinton's idea, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Hahaha... How's your Healthcare? Kept your doctor? Premiums went up 200% or down?

    How's your privacy? NSA weaponized against you? Ruled unanimously unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?

    How's your unemployment rate? Best in over 50 years?

    Fuck yourself.

  38. Completely dependent on a singl foreign power, yes by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > It's better to be inefficient then depending on a foreign power for your food.

    Certainly you wouldn't want to be dependent on a single foreign power for the majority of your food. That does NOT mean it's bad to buy bananas from India and coffee from Brazil. The United States imports more food than it exports, we are not self-reliant. We are also not at the mercy of any other nation for our food. Choose any country and we could stop importing food from them and it wouldn't hurt us much - and it would probably hurt them a lot more.

    If a country currently does a lot of technology and engineering work, outsourcing farming to poorer countries, reversing that is probably bad. The country that does engineering and technology development is probably better off than the country based on farming.

    So while agree you wouldn't want to be dependent on a single foreign power, agricultural economies are frequently third world economies. You don't want to be more like them.

  39. Re: UK by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

    You mean like Turkmenistan or Tajikistan that are far poorer than they have been during the Soviet times? Yep, go ahead, ask them. Almost all former Soviet republics and satellite states that are truly better off nowadays are EU members.

    --
    "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  40. Re: UK by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    No, they would not. The USSR was not a free-trade area. But your attempt at cheap, dishonest propaganda is noted.

    USSR was theoretically[1] free-trade within the entirety of the USSR.

    [1] They claimed it was, I wasn't living there at the time but for all anyone can tell, it was indeed free-trade.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  41. Galileo? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Today, the only global alternative to [GPS] is Russia's GLONASS

    Galileo hasn't deployed all satellites yet but is already operational worldwide. Beidou is planned to attain global reach in 2020.

  42. Re: UK by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

    It was not a free trade area, but a federation with planned economy.

    --
    "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  43. Re:UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are a Euro-Islamofascist. Brexit is in the best interests of the citizens of the UK, no doubt.
    The European Union is doomed to fail, and the sooner it fails, the better for all those who are currently member states. It's run by un-elected bureaucrats who think they know best how to run everyone else's lives. You DO want to leave a centrally controlled socialist-fascist power hungry organization such as the European Union.

  44. Re:UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All the difficult parts of the sat tech was done in the UK.

    We don't need our own fucking launch vehicles.. didn't you read? Space launches are commoditised.

    Fuck Ariannespace.

    It's the UK that is in the driving seat here.

  45. Re: UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Neither is the EU, dipshit.

    Name another "free trade area" that has a supreme court, parliament and demands to control your law making, and imposes free movement - and doesn't consider itself a state.

    I can wait.

  46. Ukraine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yea, just ask Ukraine. 50+ million killed due to starvation under USSR rule. They had it GREAT back then.

    Why is it moron liberals think communism/socialism is great and ignore the 100+ million killed in the 20th century because of it? If it helps liberals/progressives get into power they are for it, no matter how many are killed off. After all, those being killed off were against them being in power and deserved it.

    Liberalism/Socialism = killing of people against you is acceptable to get you more power.

    1. Re:Ukraine by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      You do realise that Ukraine never had a population this large? 50 millions Ukrainians killed due to starvation would be killing them all twice over. How is that even possible without resorting to necromancy?

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  47. Btw, weather happens in the UK sometimes by raymorris · · Score: 1

    It also occurs to me that sometimes the UK has a draught (comparatively, for the crops they grow), severe storms, or other other issues that cause a growing season to be largely unproductive. The land area devoted to farming in the UK is small enough that a bad season can affect most of it.

    I would much rather have diverse food sources.

  48. Re:Completely dependent on a singl foreign power, by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

    That does NOT mean it's bad to buy bananas from India and coffee from Brazil.

    But what if the huns start with the U-Boats again?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  49. I shouldn't have said "your reasoning" by raymorris · · Score: 1

    I should have worded that differently. I shouldn't have said "by your reasoning". I should have said "by percentage of her income".

    Of course you're already aware of the problems with the "as a share of their economy" reasoning.

  50. Re: Derp derp derp by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 1

    This is really about military applications. Weapons like missiles can use GPS for guidance to targets. Currently the US can and does turn off GPS or scrambles it over war zones, or to mess with NK and China.

  51. Re: UK by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    The USSR was indeed a free-trade area, at least according to the USSR.

    And the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere really did bring prosperity to all, according to the Japanese.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  52. Got it Wrong by BrendaEM · · Score: 2

    No, the GPS wars will begin with an enemy destroys GPS satellites, leaving driver-less cars stranded.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
  53. Re:Completely dependent on a singl foreign power, by raymorris · · Score: 1
  54. Re: you'd be an idiot to think it Clinton's idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yet the govt is in gridlock because of a fucking wall that was promised to be paid for by Mexico. Mexico is laughing their asses off right now.

  55. Re:Completely dependent on a singl foreign power, by dryeo · · Score: 1

    As Hognoxious implied, things can change making shipping food half way around the world very inefficient, and air lifting food for 10's of millions of people is not efficient. Even a small country like the UK has tons of land suitable for food production and I'm a firm believer in diversity when it comes to the economy.
    America is a bad example as your well situated to feed yourself, perhaps without bananas but with stables including lots of vegies.
    Doesn't hurt to keep trade open as droughts and such do happen. Eventually there is going to be something big, as in a huge volcanic eruption, which will really strain our food production.

    --
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  56. You pre-bungled it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For a start, "Brexit means brexit" means as long as Britain exits the EU, the government have done EXACTLY as asked. Secondly, the politicians for brexit ran like a nude sprinter in a nun's convent when the egg whisks were on sale, and they could have done it, they said what would result on leaving and then when their claims about what would happen could actually be tested, they fucked off.

    But as far as the current government is concerned, as long as they exit the EU, BREXIT has occurred 100% as demanded. You fuckwits never said WHAT you meant by brexit. Just "Brexit means brexit!".

  57. Corbyn was pilloried for not wanting brexit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And now your tirade is that he wants chaos in brexit???

    He's letting the fuckwits who said nothing more than "BREXIT MEANS BREXIT!" get what they demanded.

  58. Re: UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And that federation enforced free trade within that federation.

  59. Re: UK by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

    That doesn't make sense. A federation is a single country and there is no free trade in a planned economy.

    --
    "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  60. Re:Completely dependent on a singl foreign power, by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Since airfreight apparently costs the same as sending stuff by sea, perhaps you can explain why we bother having all those container ship thingies.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  61. You were serious? by raymorris · · Score: 1

    You were serious?

    FYI the huns were absorbed into other conquering peoples in the sixth century. Most of their DNA seems to have ended up in Russia, Ukraine, and Romania.

  62. Re: Derp derp derp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This might be the dumbest thing I've read on the intetnet. Dumber than "it was cold this morning so global warming is a hoax". But not by much.

  63. 200 countries, 200 gps clones? by h00manist · · Score: 1

    Seems a bit of a waste for each country to get their own gps system. There are about 200 countries. How many systems do we really need? One.

    How hard can it be? Just make one international system, that simply sends out the highest precision signal, all the time - no signal degradation options whatsoever.

    --
    Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
    1. Re:200 countries, 200 gps clones? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      At least it'll be good for global warming. All those satellites will block half the sunlight from getting through.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."