Good news on the U.S. infrastructure front: The FCC has approved a weird new national wireless system that will maybe create some new jobs! The bad news, according to USA Today, is that the powerful new cell towers “will create vast zones where motorists can’t find GPS directions, smart phones will lose functionality, and 911 emergency systems will be confounded.” And jetliners will fall out of the sky once they run out of fuel, as pilots will lose their GPS bearings while trying to land. Maybe we should just stop trying.
Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission gave a license to a Virginia company called LightSquared, authorizing the construction of some 40,000 cell towers nationwide. But the GPS industry and other government agencies (including the U.S. Air Force Space Command) say this new LightSquared network is going to overwhelm the GPS signal wherever people and cities and airports tend to be — over a million square miles of America.
Luckily, LightSquared and all the GPS industry players and the affected government agencies and the airports and airlines have come together in a working group, hooray? And according to the industry newsletter GPS World, it’s not like this clusterfuck is a surprise to anyone:
Also, in March of 2010, it was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that called for 500 MHz of spectrum to be found and made newly available, as part of the National Broadband Plan.
In June 2010, President Obama further directed all executive branches of government to do just that: find it! This directive included the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation, which might otherwise have resisted attempts to enter what they consider their spectrum territory; they were firmly told to assist. In February 2011 — after the FCC granted the conditional waiver to LightSquared for ancillary terrestrial transmitters — the President reiterated this commitment.
As this recent history was reviewed for the audience at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit, some attendees felt a distinct chill as the political muscle behind this move swam more clearly into focus.
So now the FCC says they’ll maybe make this Virginia company maybe test this new network and the signal strength and all that, maybe — even though the FCC already granted the license, because why test a new nationwide cell network that will wreck all location-based electronics? [USA Today/GPS World]
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So its either 2012 the movie or 1974 the time?
Will it also cause those moronic bluetooth headsets to violently explode? Because, if so, it might still be a net positive.
Besides, think of all the jobs this will create in the "cleaning up mangled wreckage" and "notifying next-of-kin" fields.
But then I'll no longer be able to play my favorite guessing game: "Bluetooth, or Crazy Person?"
Tin Foil: The fashion look for 2012
That Faraday guy is cagey alright.
The new, sleeker, 4 oz tin-can phone, ridiculously good-looking.
WTF is this fresh hell? When do they start coming door to door to just gun us
down in our sleep??
Can you hear me now, Virginia?
I didn't think so.
I think these people work at my employer's IT department. Because every "improvement" causes two other fuckups.
Private industry knows best, so anyone poo-pooing this idea is a socialist or a nazi. maybe both.
Hell, I've got an iPhone on the AT&T network, so I don't anticipate any loss of signal strength. You can't lose what you don't have.
iPhone, AT&T, and in San Francisco. I haven't had a cell signal since 2006. Can you not hear me now?
P.S. Ken–What's up with this new late-night schedule of yours? Insomnia?
And if he's posting, why not something for us to cry our bitter tears about the evil bullshit in Wisconsin.
Check the Wonkwire column on the right. I just don't have a lot to add, other than the usual "Jesus fucking christ," which is not perhaps so helpful? This twitter post is interesting, though: http://twitter.com/ClaraJeffery/status/4568066303…
Skynet? That'd be too obvious. But then there's this: "Some attendees felt a distinct chill as the political muscle behind this move swam more clearly into focus." Cthulhu? I think so.
some attendees felt a distinct chill as the political muscle behind this move swam more clearly into focus
Easy to forgive a few mixed metaphors when the author is comparing Obama to Jaws.
Hahaha I read that as "comparing Obama to Jews," because the meeting in question was in Munich? I should probably go to bed now.
Nah stay up and get drunk with us.
More gin.
As long as it's Victory Gin, I'm on board.
Or comparing Obama to Juice–as in OJ Simpson. I expect to see it on Faux News any day.
On the bright side, we are edging ever closer to total financial collapse, so no one will have jobs to drive to or money to fly anywhere, so, problem solved.
Story: http://bloom.bg/ftRN4D (H/T: Drudge!)
I suspect there's a Koch behind all of this.
Fuck me, I read the FCC Daily Digest (DON'T JUDGE ME!) every day, and I missed this whole thing. Goddamned 10-56 has clouded out everything else.
shit!
I thought Preznit Boner got rid of the FCC.
The Federal Cash Cow? But why? With the exponential growth of bandwidth demand that may be their golden egg layin' revenue goose.
Right. Maybe the problem could be solved with more down to earth technology. Everyone knows light does the wave. It does the particle too, but that just confuses things. But if light does the wave, what if all of America does the wave?
Just think of all libtarded and teatarded 'Muricans some 330 million strong all doing the stadium wave 180 degrees out of phase the Light Squared's bad juju waves. Some of the teatards might need fork lifts to get those upper arms up, but hey.
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people doing the stadium wave 180 degrees out of phase with Light²? They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day doing the wave 180 degrees out of phase with the noxious Light². And friends they may think it's a movement.
And if we Wonketteers get 300 million they'd know its a movement. And that's what it is , the Light Squared GPS Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is
sing itdo the wave the next time it come's around on the guitar.Thanks for the wonderful news in the evening…fuck
All this to make sure Muslims can't use GPS to find their way to our critical dams / power plants / corn syrup factories.
My tinfoil hat always gets me better reception with my analog maps, so fuck it.
At least the people who think they hear voices in their heads may actually start hearing voices in their heads.
All this dicking about a slice of digital radio spectrucm, while analog talk radio persists.
Well of course Obama was firm about this. Without this new technology the Muslim hordes will not be able to communicate as their invasion forces consisting of columns of armored camels spread across the country to establish the Kenyan caliphate.
Glenn Beck said this would happen!
“…will create vast zones where motorists can’t find GPS directions, smart phones will lose functionality, and 911 emergency systems will be confounded…”
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
For some strange reason Project Xylophone seems to make more sense than this one does.
Cyber warfare is the way wars will be waged in future. We are so dependent on computers and networks that it has to be a target for DOS and other mass lamming of vital networks. North Koreans have some sort of cyber warfare ability. Pakistan and China have been practicing indirect warfare by defacing some sites of their neighboring country. Better we be prepared than getting caught unaware and then running around in circles to thwart and reduce consequences of the attack. interconnected world makes it equally difficult to identify the source of attack.
Who gives a damn if I can't find my way home, as long as my internet porn will download onto my I-phone faster.
What could possibly go wrong? Seems like a pretty ham-handed response to their displeasure with NPR, though.
Cool, it's like they legislated a new Y2K! (Ask your mother.)
You can hear a pinhead drop.
Where is the nearest tower to Wonkette? Use the wireless much? Cell Phones?
Looks like the beginning of the end or is it the end of the beginning?
Whut?
The best testing is just throw it up and see what happens. If all the women grow another tit and birds loose their feathers… who cares. Run with this fucker.
I don't care what LightSquared does as long as they can disable the cell phone of that asshole who keeps swerving into my lane.
Good thing I held on to them carrier pigeons.
And thanks to rising gas prices, my stock in Horse and Buggy Whips, Conglomerated is going to SHOOT THROUGH THE ROOF! Why does the future look like we've been here before?
Plane go up, planes go down, never a miscommunication……Wait! Nevermind.
You know, the tenor of the linked article from the Reg is that the incumbent cell-phone operators (e.g., Verizon) are using this as FUD to undermine LightSquared's efforts to raise capital.
The Reg author states that the FCC license for LightSquared contains a provision that says they cannot begin to build the network until they prove that it will not cause interference with GPS.
Not sayin, just sayin.
The Amish are looking smarter and smarter every day. Pretty soon, they'll be the highest tech out there, with the way we keep fucking up. I say we steal their butter churn technology now and drive 'em out of the country.
Does GPS World have any articles about Lady Gaga?
This LightSaber company does sloppy design work. Probably outsourced years ago.
Also, would love to know which GOP politicians are fucking gay investors in this company….
BECUZ THEY ARE RAMMING THIS DOWN OUR THROATS…
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