From rhoskins@home.com Tue May 2 06:26:33 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id GAA18566 for ; Tue, 2 May 2000 06:26:31 -0700 Received: from mail.rdc1.wa.home.com (imail@ha1.rdc1.wa.home.com [24.0.2.66]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id GAA32175 for ; Tue, 2 May 2000 06:26:31 -0700 Received: from c501552a ([24.5.121.123]) by mail.rdc1.wa.home.com (InterMail vM.4.01.02.00 201-229-116) with SMTP id <20000502132630.BGIJ2501.mail.rdc1.wa.home.com@c501552a>; Tue, 2 May 2000 06:26:30 -0700 Message-ID: <006f01bfb43a$05e21a30$7b790518@olmpi1.wa.home.com> From: "Dick Hoskins" To: "MapInfo-L" , "Bill Thoen" , Cc: "WAPHGIS" , "GIS-L" References: Subject: Re: MI RE: (GIS-L) Wide open GPS - no more SA, starting tonight! Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 06:26:28 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 You got it right, but I will celebrate. When government does anything right we need to congratulate them, sometimes even if just as we do when finally our kids can empty the dishwasher after school without being reminded (more than one day in a row) ! Also sometimes "better late than never" and "never look a gift horse in the mouth" etc. still have a little value. I suggest we write our congress people and thank them (although likely they have no idea what has happened) and encourage them to do more of the same. Dick Hoskins rhoskins@home.com GIS uses in public health summer course: http://healthlinks.washington.edu/inpho/gis/course.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dimitri Rotow" To: "Bill Thoen" ; "MapInfo-L" Cc: "GIS-L" Sent: Monday, May 01, 2000 10:49 PM Subject: MI RE: (GIS-L) Wide open GPS - no more SA, starting tonight! > > > > > More details about's president's order today to discontinue SA on > > GPS satallite system: > > > Hi all, > > In the midst of rejoicing I think it is important for professionals to speak > clearly to non-professionals about what has happened. Here's a quote from > one of the publications in the official sites: > > "In plain English, we are unscrambling the signal. It is rare that someone > can press a button and make something you already own worth more -- but > that's exactly what's happening today. All the people who've bought a GPS > receiver for a boat or a car, or whether they use one in business or for > recreation, will find that they are ten times more accurate as of midnight > tonight. Policemen, firemen, and emergency crews will now be able to respond > faster and more accurately to where help is needed. Before, you could be > somewhat certain where something was with a couple of hundred feet. Now, you > can pinpoint it precisely down to tens of feet." > > All of this could have and should have happened many years ago. Continuing > SA as was done was a crime, pure and simple. For many years, "policemen, > firemen, and emergency crews" have risked life and limb with unnecessarily > imprecise accuracy because a smug, stupid, self-centered bureaucracy > continued to degrade GPS against the interests of the people of the United > States. Let's not forget all those fisherman entering foggy harbors in > storms, or simply ordinary people unable to reap the benefits of precise > GPS. All that harm was done to people in the name of bogus "national > security" justifications backed by unshakable determination to ignore the > physics of modern military technology as well as tactical common sense. > > In those intervening years, hundreds of millions of dollars (if not > billions) have been wasted as the Coast Guard and FAA built a network of > differential correction transmission beacons aimed mostly at countering the > effects of SA. I'm not so foolish as to think those dollars would have been > sensibly spent if not budgeted for differential correction beacons, but just > think, if we had some common sense in government in the US there just might > have been the chance that those funds might have been spent on, say, > textbooks in schools. If you have kids in the public school system in the > US you know what I mean. > > SA was so intensely foolish and wasteful and harmful that turning it off now > is fine, but only fine in that it is the cessation of a crime. It's like > celebrating that a rapist has finally stopped his crime, the victim can > relax and the local health department no longer need hand out condoms to > protect against the effects of rape. The quote noted above has the > morally-corrupt effect of somehow elevating the cessation of a crime into a > noble, original move on behalf of the community. > > Why raise all this now? Why not just celebrate? - Because people who > commit crimes should not be praised for the mere act of stopping. It is > important to remember the depth of the crime, to counter the effects of > propaganda that no crime occurred and to ultimately strive to prevent the > recurrance of such crimes. > > Sorry to lay so much moralism onto the List, but I felt we should temper our > celebration with a resolve to remember what it is we are celebrating. > > Cheers, > > Dimitri > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to majordomo@csn.net and put > "unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact bthoen@csn.net .