Good News!
 

The EU and the US have signed an agreement which means that the EU's planned Galileo system will be compatible with the US Global Positioning System (GPS).

When fully deployed, Galileo’s 30 satellites will more than double the number of satellites providing the American GPS, and that will increase the accuracy and reliability of navigation and timing signals receivable around the world.

There are important military features to the agreement, but from the civilian perspective, the agreement allows the systems to be seamlessly integrated, providing better accuracy, especially in built-up areas where the current GPS signal can be patchy.

The Galileo project is scheduled to orbit its first satellite in 2007.

Good, now I wont have to pull over and ask for directions anymore.....wait I never did anyway.

^^^^ Men. :p


<~~~ Does not like to ask for directions either

I don't ask, either. I just smoke more cigarettes and bite my nails and try to find landmarks.

Maybe a better vehicle with GPS would help . . . naaaaah, I get lost in my tiny apt.

It's great to have more satellites...as long as "the ground crew" updates their systems acordingly. For example...my phone has a integrated GPS system, but it'll only work in an emergency if the police station I call has a GPS device as well! I think of this stuff when I hear about women being kidnapped and stuffed in the trunk or something...and using their cell phone to call 911 and leaving an open line while the operator[s] try and figure out where they are. I don't dwell on this stuff...it's just that my directions for honing my GPS say it's only as good as the systems set up to receive it.

Holy crap Lixy...that was cynical.

Lixy, what a half-baked system.

Trucks fitted with a GPS can tell their home stations where they are every

15 minutes, why can't a GPS phone SMS a location to a non GPS phone.

This system is being touted here as a way for parents to keep track

of their kids.

Fast forward to some point in an Orwellian future (2007?) when all newborns are implanted with a microchip containing a unique identification number, a GPS receiver, and a small transmitter that broadcasts both your idenity and location.

Who would/could use/misuse that?

thedog,

Ah, what a Brave New World!

I know....you're right...it does sound rather cynical. You all have to remember I live in the land of the lost...where we don't update anything around here till tens of years after the fact. For example...this New Year's eve...we'll be shivering in our boots to see if, at midnight, all the computers (the four that some folks ventured to buy...including mine and the new fangled one at the bank) go dark and the looters come out in droves!

LMFAO!

But seriously...if, for some strange reason, I need to dial 911 to have a cop dispatched to my area (not just me, but anyone around here), it could take an hour or more till we see one and it's usually a state trooper. We don't have local police cruisers. And, if they did try to locate me from my GPS...I'm thinking that I'd be dead before they could decypher the signal or even figure out that a signal is being sent to them.

I'll just rely on my attack dinosaur...TYVM!

I witnessed a horrible accident on a remote stretch of interstate last Thanksgiving and when I dialed 911 on my cell, the reply was " are you calling in reference to the accident on I10?" I said ...yep and they said TY.


I was very surprised to see how well the system works whether I am aware of it or not.