The Crandall Surf Report 2.0
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Tuesday, March 25, 2003
 

Paul Krugman offers some comments on Clear Channel.

Apart from issues of political influence, I would claim that Clear Channel has driven many (especially the record buying young) from radio and may represent a more damaging threat to the music industry than file sharing on the Internet.
6:29:22 AM    


Yesterday there were complaints that the Iraqi government had acquired GPS jamming equipment from the Russians.

Reality check time

It should be easy to jam commercial GPS signals as the signals from the GPS satellites are quite weak. I don't know the exact differences between military and commercial flavors, so it is possible that some magic has been built into the military flavor, but since both deal with very weak signals, jamming is always a potential issue.

Finding the most efficient technique would be some work, but signal strengths at the receiver are so low that many techniques should work. This wouldn't be beyoner a EE or Physics undergrad - probably at the level of a junior project.

It is frightening to think that you should be able to build something inefficient that would destroy commercial GPS for a hundred meters or so for perhaps $100. It certainly isn't legal to operate such a device, but there are people with other motivations.

I would hope that no one relies on GPS for safety critical needs (eg .. airplane navigation should always have backups). I also hope that military GPS is very different, but it doesn't seem unthinkable that one could build serious countermeasures.
6:23:30 AM    


Thanks to Linda for pointing out this great fashion accessory for dogs.
6:18:37 AM    


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