Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Friday, July 3, 2015

Another Vampire Company Resurfaces; LightSquared Ed.

LightSquared, a company that was willing to effectively shut down the entire GPS network in order to make a profit, is back. And they want the companies that make and use GPS equipment to reveal all of their proprietary information to LightSquared.

It would be fun to write a response in which the first letter of each paragraph would spell out something really rude. Companies are amoral sociopathic entities and LightSquared is a shining example of that.

GPS has been integrated into modern life. It would be governmental criminal negligence to let a pack of corporate greedheads fuck with it just so some rich clowns can make even more money. The FCC's response to LightSquared's application should be a legal and technical argument that boils down to "fuck off and die, already".

UPDATE: To launch off of Eck's first comment, below, the signal output of a GS satellite is 27 dBW or 500 watts.

The signal strength of a cell tower is 12 watts, or if I have it right, 13 dBW.

The received GPS signal, is, at best -155 dBW, which should be 0.0000000000000031 watts.

Imagine, if you will, that somebody was whispering to you on one side of you and, on the other side of you, 25 yards away, someone else was running a jet engine at full power. You couldn't hear the whisper at all and you'd be crazy to think that you could.

Well, the difference in power levels is less between the jet and the whisper and between a GPS signal and a cell tower signal.

LightSquared's threat to GPS operations should be viewed as a national security issue.

1 comment:

Eck! said...

Its an effort to extort money that simple.

Its technically very simple to buy a GPS and make your own measurements.
However what every you get does change the fact that a strong (relative)
transmitter next to a receiver listening to a weak signal is an incompatible
case when the frequencies are too close. They don't need ot know about the
down line code and esoteric stuff when the receiver at the most basic level
is blinded by overload rendering the signal as nothing but noise.

These douchbags have not done the basic work to say if X is done it can work.
And over several hundred million GPS system in cars, farm tractors and
airplanes cannot be refitted or changed because a few of them are stomping
their feet and throwing a fit.

Eck!