Article: 161377 of sci.geo.satellite-nav Message-ID: <3A9F133A.52857B27@sympatico.ca> From: Edward Paterson Reply-To: edward.paterson@sympatico.ca Organization: Paterson R&D X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en]C-SYMPA (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en,fr-CA MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: sci.geo.satellite-nav Subject: The more things change ... Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Lines: 165 Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 03:23:03 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.228.27.48 X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 983503383 64.228.27.48 (Thu, 01 Mar 2001 22:23:03 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 22:23:03 EST Path: news.meer.net!sea-read.news.verio.net!dfw-artgen.news.verio.net!dfw-peer.news.verio.net!phl-feed.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu!panix!howland.erols.net!news3.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: news.meer.net sci.geo.satellite-nav:161377 Port Bradburry, Mars March 31, 2073. Dear Karen, I have just joined an internet Special Interest Group on Global Positioning Systems. It has taken me quite a while to read through from the beginning to find out what it is all about. You might want to check it out as there could be some information in it for your thesis on emotional attachment to inanimate objects. One of the first things that I noticed in the newsgroup was the big hew and cry over the announcement that Trans Solar Space Lines has banned even the carrying of GPS units aboard its ships. Interesting. When you start looking into something you begin to notice references to it popping up everywhere. After reading a few pros and cons in the newsgroup about this, I spotted an article in the paper outlining the cause of it all. The ban is not in response to some worry about the GPS unit=92s affect on= navigation but, get this, =93..to prevent further Space Rage.=94 Actually= it is in response to an incident of Space Port Rage if you can believe it. Apparently one John Fofawn III, or something like that =96 I didn't get the whole name, deliberately trampled some poor devil who had stopped to look at his GPS unit in front of one of those YOU ARE HERE signs in the spaceport. You know, the ones donated by Fugawi to answer that so familiar question of every tourist group. The trampled fellow, who had a number of bruises, scratches, and a mild concussion, spent the night under observation in the hospital and was released the next morning. The kind hospital staff had re-taped his glasses with fresh adhesive tape and he left on the next flight. Fofawn; meanwhile, is serving six weeks at the Phobos Rehab Center. When questioned about the leniency of the sentence the Judge cited precedents from back in the first decade when the beating of Cell Phone users in public buildings back on Earth was excused as Justifiable Irritation, which carries a much lighter sentence than Assault and Battery. He further indicated that he would have been even less severe had John not proceeded into the shuttle where he trashed several of the passengers=92 carry-on bags. Some chap by the name of Martin Ness-Mehaffy started one of the threads in the newsgroup. This guy is going on and on about the rumors concerning his Great Grandfather Joe. Apparently Joe Mehaffy, who was one of a handful of North American experts on Australian rural electrical transmission, was electrocuted back in the early part of this century demonstrating some obscure difference between 1, 2, and 3 phase currents. Despite the fact that the inquest ruled he had mistakenly put his tongue and a finger from each hand into the slots of a 3-phase 240-volt receptacle, the rumor keeps surfacing that he committed suicide. Martin vehemently claims it was purely coincidental that his Grandfather's death came within hours of the news release that Garmin had been purchased by Magellan. I read in the paper yesterday about the case of one Marie Sanders-Glickman and her common-law companion Benito who were picked up on Venus for allegedly admitting to the unauthorized copying and resale of mapping software. Benito was unable to defend himself as his knowledge of the English language was barely past the, =93The pen of my Aunt is on the table.=94 stage and Marie was advised to get a lawyer as her use of English had the ring of concocted unfamiliarity that was likely to prejudice the jury. They were subsequently released in a bizarre turn of events. Defense lawyers from the firm of McIntyre, Ellestad & Mehaffy were able to show that all 12 of the jurors were using Word Perfect 13.8 for which there were only 6 valid licenses on the entire planet. The judge might still have proceeded with the trial had he not been embarrassed to discover that he was using Dragon Naturally Speaking software to make out his rulings, that had been lent to him for =93trial purposes=94 sever= al years ago by a neighbor. In lieu of his rather questionable interpretation of the word =93trial=94 and the disclosure that at least 5= 0 % of jurors were using pirated software themselves, he ordered the case dismissed. The pair has since emigrated to Earth. Word has it that while they were in quarantine on Luna they got an idea about reviving some traditional corn fermenting process and have settled somewhere on a farm in Tennessee. Amazing what these special interest groups reveal isn't it? Here is something else I learned. One guy wrote in for some information on a small dongle. I was going to write and tell him that small dongle was a contradiction in terms and that he was in the wrong newsgroup anyway, but you know how it is when you first join a group; you don't like to speak up for fear of sounding stupid. It is just as well that I did not write. It turns out that a dongle is an external computer component and not at all what I thought it was. Tomorrow is Lawrence Glickman day for GPS insiders. I had to do quite a bit of research to get to the bottom of this one. It seems that in the early part of this century, the GPS newsgroup was the model of international cooperation. Apparently Lawrence Glickman single handedly soured relationships - to the embarrassment of some of his own countrymen. Mind you he was abetted by a number of people who probably should have known better, not the least of which was the =93Sniper=94. No= ne the less damage was done and things might have gotten out of hand had someone not discovered the secret identity of the =93Sniper=94 and threatened to give it to Glickman unless an undisclosed amount of money was forthcoming each month. That put an end to the Glickman baiting by the Sniper but the blackmail did not last long. Later that same year Glickman had a mild stroke while screaming obscenities at a professor who was giving a lecture on mid twentieth century military history. During his recovery Glickman had some sort of religious revelation, joined a Trappist monastery in upstate New York where he took the vow of silence under the religious name Frater Xenophobe and effectively removed himself from the gene pool. At about the same time all this was going on, the =93Sniper=94 changed pseudonyms. He took on the more appropriate moniker, =93Ross Ewage=94, a= nd continued his crusade against crime and evil. Meanwhile I discovered that one J. Ostermann-Glickman, a second cousin once or twice removed, works here on Mars at the John Carter Institute. Spurred by the behavior of his distant relative, this cousin has spent his life developing the National Embarrassment Relief Constant. Given the vantage point of being off-planet he has been able to prove that the formula PPT =3D 1.3 is in fact country independent. In other words the number of pricks per thousand is 1.3 no matter where you travel on Earth. Did I mention that the Fugawi Software Company was sued by the lost or formerly lost Fugawi tribe for unauthorized name use? The lawsuit virtually bankrupted the software company and they were rescued by the Ozi corporation in a friendly takeover. Between them they worked on map-editing software that could be uploaded into GPS units. For years only Lowrance units would allow this so the company finally marketed its own GPS unit. It was called the OziSkippy. It had a waterproof pouch that accepted a program cartridge jokingly referred to as a Joey. Cartridges could be programmed with maps modified on a computer and slipped into the pouch as needed. It used both the United States GPS satellites and the Russian GLONASS satellites for very accurate fixes. It would have used the EURASS satellites too if they had been in orbit at that time. The OziSkippy was eventually replaced by the OziWizard. It had all the features of the Skippy plus the use of the EU satellites. Add to that the software-editing package that came with it and you could modify any map or aerial photograph and upload it to the OziWizard. As long as you had two coordinates and the distance between them, the unit would figure out where the map belonged on the world base map and what scale it was and so on. Of course they kept that little message =93YOU ARE HERE=94, th= at popped up whenever you got to a marked waypoint. Mind you there is still that annoying bug in it. Every so often you have to turn the screen upside down to read it. Sadly, none of that is of much use to us here on Mars. As for me, it's obvious that I have way too much time on my hands. I have looked at my grandfather's notes and my father's notes and I still have not found a GPS unit that will do everything I want; although the OziWizard sure comes close. Best of luck on your studies, Mich. PS. If you do join the newsgroup and ask for some information, I wouldn't mention that you are a PHD student if I were you. That seems to touch some sort of raw nerve and is more likely to evoke a series of lectures than answers.