Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 10:44:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: GPS heads up Message-ID: <200005031744.KAA63550@apollo.backplane.com>
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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
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