From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed May 3 10:44:53 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from apollo.backplane.com (apollo.backplane.com [216.240.41.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 01CE537BC31 for ; Wed, 3 May 2000 10:44:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dillon@apollo.backplane.com) Received: (from dillon@localhost) by apollo.backplane.com (8.9.3/8.9.1) id KAA63550; Wed, 3 May 2000 10:44:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dillon) Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 10:44:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon Message-Id: <200005031744.KAA63550@apollo.backplane.com> To: Subject: GPS heads up Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Ok, this has nothing to do with FreeBSD, but I just had to post something since nobody else has. By presidential order, on May 1 the error introduced into the GPS system, called 'SA', was turned off. This means that your GPS receivers are now around 5-10 times more accurate then they were before May 1st. And I have to say, I am totally amazed! My handheld Garmin now tells me that it is accurate to 14 feet, rather then 100 ft. It is so accurate now that I can tell which side of the street I'm on! I had to drive from Berkeley to Sunnyvale yesterday... drove down in the morning, drove back in the evening. The tracks on my GPS (one going down 880 in the morning, the other going back up 880 in the evening) are perfectly parallel to each other, whereas before they would have been wildly different. Tracks for roads I travel now overlap almost exactly whereas before they were wildly different (sometimes up to half a mile off!). I am well and truely amazed. It's impressive to see the thing recognize when I take a few steps in one direction or another using a bunch of satellites sitting thousands of miles away in the sky. It's even more impressive to see the government do something right for a change! -Matt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message