Wednedsay July 4th 2001 Press enterprise Metro C3.

Redlight tickets!

ACME car rental agency is being suide. A man rented a car in Atlanta Georgia last month and he received a $450 charge for speeding on his credit card. ACME has a GPS in each one of it's rental cars. And the contract says that if any client speeds, ACME has the right to leavy a find. Non of the finds go to the local police ageny. They go directly to ACME.

Washington DC. Police agencies trying to lobby suport for a bill to require all new cars to install GPS in order to catch stolen cars.

We all know why the police agencies want GPS's installed in new cars!

I've been called my congressman every day to stop the "Photo traps" and I just heard OC may get rid of them. Sometimes I think I'm the only TRUE American posting here. It's a good think you guys spend so much time in Mexico. Because you belong there!!!!!!!!
If it wern't for mongers like me. The Americans wouldn't only be getting fucking Mexico, it would be the U.S. too.


Westfargo...

WestFargo;

You're tripping me out with the GPS thing...

I experiment a lot with GPS and Amateur Radio - Hams have got a system(APRS) that will broadcast and show your location anywhere in the US... here is the main page, which has an example of Miami:

http://www.aprs.net/javAPRS.html

The main use for this system is as a poor man's Lojack, although it has other uses. The military LOVES this kind of shit - EPLRS is the military equivalent to this system(although those fuckers pay $25,000 per system, versus about $250 for a ham radio-based system):

http://www.raytheon.com/c3i/c3iproducts/c3i017/c3i017.htm

Anyway, the reason you make me laugh with this subject, is in regards to IDAHO. When you look at the national APRS map - there is NOBODY in Idaho! Those fuckers REALLY DON'T WANT ANYBODY TO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE!

WestFargo; I'm curious, have you ever considered moving to Idaho?

Hate to burst your bubble, but GPS by itself isn't going to tell anyone where you are.

A GPS is a receiver. It doesn't send out any signal. Now, there are many systems out there that can be used for tracking a vehicle, and some do rely on a GPS to determine the location of the vehicle, but a GPS all by itself won't tell anyone anything about your location.

Now a cell phone, on the other hand...

A cell phone? What are you going to do, burn one of your precious "anytime minutes" every two minutes, just so you can "call in" to report your position? Just use a radio, and an existing position reporting system... it is free.

While you are right about the GPS units just being receivers, I think what WestFargo was alluding to was the ABUSE of such a system if it became standard on vehicles.... just like in the case he mentioned, you would be subject to some kind of "inspection" to download all your "violations". He has a point, if you are willing to think it thru.

Everybody,
Why don't you guys write to the Press_Enterprise and ask for their source. I just type whats in the paper. I didn't make the technology possible to track vehicles. I do know the Trucking and Railroad industry has been using GPS Sender/Receiver systems for years to keep track of intrasnit shipments. However, as of 1994 it costed $2000 per unit. I was programming for a Trucking company in 1994. But I remember GPS's in 1994 weighed 10lbs and were only in boats and costed $1000. Now there $100...

Westfargo...

My point is that in order to locate or track your position there MUST be some kind of transmitter at your location or in your vehicle. A GPS does NOT transmit anything - it only receives signals.

A cell phone that is turned on, however, IS "in contact" with the cell providers system, even if you are not talking. How do you think their system knows where to ring your phone when someone calls you?

They don't send out a signal from all the cell sites in the world just hoping your phone will happen to pick it up....

So their system knows where you are, roughly, whenever your phone is turned on. Given some not to difficult adjustments and the software to exploit it, it is a fairly simple matter for their system to then triangulate from multiple cell sites and establish your approximate position based on what sites "see" your phone, and the relative signal strength from each site. This is because your cell phone is actively transmitting a signal to the cell provider, even when you are not talking on the phone. Only the cost of such a system has kept it out of widespread use.

Of course as of October all new cell phones, per an FCC mandate, will include a GPS in the phone, so there will be no question of exactly where you are. This was started so that the 911 services could locate you in an emergency, but.... I suggest reading a web site at: http://users.ticnet.com/bertpool/Invasion.html if you are at all interested in your personal privacy.

And as for abuse of a tracking system - my point was that a GPS by itself is NOT a tracking system. It would take additional hardware to create a tracking system. A tracking system REQUIRES some type of transmitter from your location to send a signal - like a cell phone does, but something a plain vanilla GPS does NOT do. Trucking companies, taxi cabs, delivery services often do use such a system along with a GPS, but a GPS by itself does nothing to tell anyone except you where you are.

A: Truckers systems. Qualcomm runs the nations largest system and it is based on satellite transmission/reception.
B) Most phones are GPS enabled. If your phone automatically changes time when you change time zones it is GPS enabled.
C) The GPS signal is a time signal from a clock in the satellite. You need three satellites to do a triangulation to set position.
D) New phones will report position. GM and BMW have GPS based positioning and car phone reporting built into some of their their cars.

Westfargo's rental car story is true, but it was a man in Connecticut, not Atlanta. I read the story yesterday. The guy got three $150 speeding fines from being tracked by the GPS in his car, but he won his lawsuit and the fines were declared unconstitutional.

-Superman-

Anyone ever beaten a highway patrol freeway radar ticket?

I've read the defenses on the websites referenced but none of them are for freeway radar tickets for excessive speed.

Hey Merican,

Mine wasn't related to the cameras and stuff discussed here. It was a speeding ticket based on the radar gun of a bike cop. Go back to the Ticket Assassin site, there's a strategy that applies to your situation.

Curious sed;

"Of course as of October all new cell phones, per an FCC mandate, will include a GPS in the phone, so there will be no question of exactly where you are."

Bullshit.

By October, all cell phone manufacturers must OFFER GPS AS AN OPTION... this doesn't say shit about them HAVING TO HAVE GPS IN EVERY PHONE! How many assholes are going to pay $100 extra to have GPS in their cell phone? Not me! I want to be able to hook my GPS unit up to my Palm or Laptop, to see exactly where I am on the map, or to transmit it to a public position location service - not to let the FUCKING GOVERNMENT AND POLICE know where I am thru and expensive and limited Cell phone and/or Lo-Jack system!

Besides, as usual, the FCC had their heads up their asses on this one. You CAN NOT mandate technological advances. Besides, this was all put in place by Democratic appointees to the commission, who were trying to cash in on stock in the only company they allowed to have exclusive rights to some of the new GPS technology allowing it to FIT IN A CELLPHONE.

Fucking thieves.

Now that there are Republicans in charge of the commission, this shit will all get thrown out the window(or "waived")... as it should. I hope those assholes who mandated this shit lose their shirts.

Anyway, Curious, I LOVE talking about radio stuff and the FCC...

Redongdo,

Mine was for going over 100 on the freeway, but all I can hope for is to get it reduced to less than 100 based on the curvature involved and the six lanes across with multiple cars in the field of view.

The website had a lot of good info but nothing mentioned about what the odds were of getting the judge to reduce sentencing.

Currently the ticket is worth $500 plus no chance for traffic school and probation status for six months, AND two full points on my record (which is the real issue here).

My insurance will not skyrocket if I can get the speed reduced below 100 and then qualify for traffic school.

I was hoping someone might have had a similar experience with the CHP.

could someone please repost the website addy again- i cant find it on the thread. thx.

http://www.ticketassassin.com/

Doncha feel silly now? HAH!

Merican,

My infraction was 52 in a 35, so nothing as outrageous as yours. However by following the Ticket Assassins guidance perhaps you can get it reduced at least. Follow his guidance for doing a Trial By Written Declaration instead of making an appearance in court. That way you can contest the verdict if it goes against you. Apparently if you go in person you're stuck with whatever the verdict is. It was real easy, I basically just did a copy and paste from one of his sample declarations and subbed all the relevant info.

GPS in phones? No way. Almost no phones are "GPS enabled," even if the phone changes time when you change time zones.

The reason that your phone changes time is that it receives a time signal from the phone cell site, which *IS* GPS enabled.

Also note that as Diego said, there is no mandate to force GPS into every phone. What IS required is to be able to pinpoint a phone's location so that the user can be located during a 911 emergency call. Most carriers are going to handle this through triangulation based on relative signal strengths on different antennas in your area.

^C

All Qualcom CDMA have GPS chips in the phone. These may have Sony stamped on them or Kyocera. My phone changes time zones where there are no cells, like in an aeroplane at 33,000'. I checked out of interest.

The original posting on this subject mentioned the October deadline to have GPS enabled in new cell phones.

This is not to say that existing cell phones have GPS, only that new ones will be required by law to incorporate GPS.

Explorer;

It is NOT to say new ones will. I'll say it again - there IS no new fucking law saying that new phones HAVE to have it, just that manufacturers have to offer it as an OPTION. Criminey. Curious was wrong, and he will probably even admit it.


694me sed;

"All Qualcom CDMA have GPS chips in the phone."

Bullshit.

You remind me of a housewife talking about the workings under the hood of her car... you don't know what the "bleep" you're talking about... If a phone is more than a few months old, it certainly DOES NOT have GPS "on board" - even a "Qualcomm" phone. Your statement was inane - how can all Qualcomm CDMA phones have an ability that wasn't even considered until recently? Sheesh.

The only way your phone would have GPS, is if you just bought the God Damn thing AND it came with the new Qualcomm GPS technology(GPSone/Snaptrack)... maybe it does... but that DOES NOT mean that all Qualcomm CDMA phones have GPS chips in the phone. Anyway, I seriously doubt yours has it, because you said you "had to check"... if it really had it, you would have known, wouldn't you?


Shit. I can see why Westfargo split... many of you guys are fucking hopeless.

Here are the facts, Jacks...

Excerpt from "Semiconductor Magazine", May 2001 Vol. 2, No. 5:

"According to the FCC requirements, carriers choosing a handset-based solution must begin offering GPS-enabled handsets by Oct. 1, and 25 percent of all new handsets activated by Dec. 31 must be ALI-capable. That requirement rises to 50 percent on June 30, 2002, and 100 percent on Dec. 31, 2002. So far, about half of U.S. carriers announcing their plans have chosen a handset-based option."

Translation(for those of you with reading comprehension problems, and/or lack of ability to deal with reality and facts): GPS does NOT have to be in ALL cell phones by October - in fact it doesn't even have to be in one cell phone by October.

100 percent by Dec 31, 2002? So, I guess we weren't completely wrong, the phase in begins in October of this year, and becomes complete at the end of next year.

Explorer;

Even you know that was NOT the original subject; as you stated yourself...

"The original posting on this subject mentioned the October deadline to have GPS enabled in new cell phones."

Anyway, do you really believe that ALL cell phones being sold by 12/31/2002 will have GPS in them?

If you do, I've got some ocean front property in Arizona...

Look, here is the scoop... we will see very few cell phones with GPS in them by the October "deadline", and I expect only a few rich, "look at me" mentality, fat bastards to have them by 12/31/2002.

Furthermore, there are technological obstacles to overcome. Foremost is that the technology will be too expensive and too hard to integrate in the short term, so "waivers will abound". Secondly, manufacturers may opt for the "non-handbased solution", in which case THEY DON'T HAVE TO DO SHIT WITH GPS. Furthermore, as I've stated before, all this shit was mandated by a nincompoop Democrat-appointed commission, who didn't understand that you can't mandate technological breakthrus, and at the same time were trying to line their pockets by mandating a certain technology be used so that they could make money on inside trader issues. Now that a Republican-appointed commission is in charge, they will make money off the situation the old-fashioned way... by taking compaign contributions from Motorola, et. al., so that they will make the problem "disappear", or at least get delayed a reasonable amount of time, so that some "Johnny come lately" can't make money by developing a technology that allows GPS to actually work in a cell phone for a reasonable price.

You see, Explorer, just because "GPS-enabled Cell Phone" sounds so good rolling off your tongue, doesn't mean that it is so easy(or cheap) to implement. There is the little problem that Cell Phones and GPS operate at different frequencies, with different receiver gains. I'm not saying that these problems can't be overcome, with enough time, money, and patience. But why? Just so we can line some asshole's pockets, and drive up the cost of pussy even higher? And for what end?

Look, I like the idea of cheaper and smaller GPS receivers... but that was going to happen anyway. What I DON'T like is the government mandating technology - so now you have people wasting TIME trying to develop a smaller, cheaper GPS receivers that will ALSO work in a Cell Phone. That is fucking assinine. Like Ada, Electric Cars, conversion to the Metric System, and Bomb Shelters, this is just another government-backed mandate that is probably DOOMED TO FAILURE.

DOA.

But Al Gore would have liked it... cause it just kind of gets you right there(pound your chest), doesn't it?

Diego:

GPS enabled cell phones are trivially easy to implement, given a platform that already has power and an antenna (if you have doubts, check out the Qualcomm GSP-1600 Globalstar phone that has been out for several years, and has pseudo-GPS built in). Since the GPS portion is just a passive receiver that outputs to the cell phone, the additional overhead is significantly reduced.

Its a policy question, not a technical issue.

I can't resist to join in the fun. GPS is passive, it just listen to the satellites. What you choose to do with the position information, other than displaying it, is more challenging than the positioning part, which is a mature technology.

I guess the car thief will not turn on the lo-jack for you. So imagine if every car is transmitting it's position all the time, and LE is able to receive it in all of insured USA land, what a scale! Or that the lo-jack can receive an enable signal, as well as transmitting to, anywhere in USA. Or that lo-jack is a scam, LE and the insurance companies all get kick-backs. You have to enable the lo-jack and receive the position if you are within 100 yards of the car!

Cell phones are easier, since there are already cells covering the land. Manufacturers cannot agree on a single standard and hence the deadline is a bit of a problem. There are several standards benefiting different camps. The usual way out is to write in all the standards into one big dog. But writing a dog is easy, to build one is difficult. Worst still is the analog network, since they won't go away and hence they have to have positioning as well. The guys there just sort of gave up.

Actually cell phone reception is very good on-board a plane. The only problem is that your phone will see many cells with more or less equal strength, the signals all junked up and your phone had a hard time deciding on the cell to hook up to.

Last time I turned on my cell phone in a plane, my signal interferred with the electronic signals used to steer the plane (yes, unfortunately it was an airbus), all outgoing communications were blocked by my phone, including the intercom, and the anti-collision radar of all nearby planes are also jammed solid. The pilot can't steer on visuals, nor tell anybody. The only thing he could do was to find me, seat to seat, without knowing who I looked like. I was in one the cheap seats by the toilet at the very end of the plane. By the time they found me, the plane had collided with another 747. I died.

HAR HAR Loser8, nice story!

Can someone explain to me the Cell phone on aircraft thing? I understand that the phone may pick up multiple cells, I don't think the broadcasts are designed to go up, more horizontal than anything...

On European airlines we are banned from using or even turning on mobiles. A man from my home town languished in prison for having his phone turned on. I can understand the possibility of interference with aircraft systems; but...
Why is it that Aeroflot allows mobiles to be turned on during flights. Now before everyone says that Aeroflot is a third world airline and such stuff, I am sure they don't want planes falling out of the sky...
SO why is it OK on Aeroflot and yet not on other airlines?

Thank you, I was just amazed that anyone dare to turn on their mobile phones or computers in flight when they are constantly warned against that.

After the story, I live to see a movie on HBO. They come down to 10,000 ft to make a call.

I can offer my explainations. For the current generation of base stations, the antenna are not directional, so the coverage is circular, hence the name cell. But I would say it's actually a sphere, so it goes up as well as down. For directional antenna, you need a lot of cones to make up a horizontal sphere coverage. You don't waste much power for transmitting upwards, but a lot more money to avoid it. For analog cells, the cell size is quite large, and the upside is the easiest way - no obstacles. So a 1 mile cell will go several miles up. New technology brings smaller cells and directional antenna for large concentration of users.

Most planes and aviation system were designed when there was NO mobile phones. There are 747 20 year old but still flying. So what do you expect. Do you remember not so long ago, the music come from acoustic ear plugs that enlarge your ear holes and sound awkard? They use mechanical signal instead of electronic signals. When in doubt, jail them. And mobile phones did caused problem in cars, see some old lawsuits. You are not supposed to use cell phones without installing an antenna for your mobile. It's not just for a better signal, it's for safety. Most people just use the phone, but in the car I will, not in a plane.

I think Aeroflot brought a new plane that was designed and build after everybody have a mobile phone.

Sure it's no big deal turning on a phone in the plane. But the phone is the noisiest little thing in human history. I will turn on anything I have except for the dam phone. Communications used to be tele, like you TV is very far from the transmitter tower. But you don't carry a transmitter tower in your hands. Now everyone do just that. And the cancer thing - you know how powerful these little things are. Early analog cells are larger and the phones transmit more power. That would be the best reason to get a digital one. But then they use microwave...

You don't suppose the airlines don't want you using your cell phone on the plane instead of the credit card phone they have on most planes?

Just a thought , since most "rules" seem to be profit motivated

I also wonder if the older planes still have the older avionics on them?

still running tubes in the hf comm sets for overseas flights?

Pretty scary thought

I am again offering my explanations (i.e. guess). I don't represent airlines and don't know about the profit of credit card phones, but I guess not much since I never use them. Even if you are allowed to make cell phone calls, the plane is way too high most of the time.

Old electronics is not a bad thing, they burn much more power, and they are much less vulrunable to electromagnetic interference. I remembered one USSR fighter doesn't use solid state electronics, designed to fly after a nuclear war.

The safety and reliability reqirement of air planes is much more stringent than say consumer electronics. Outside the plane, they are designed to with stand lightling and solar storms etc. They probably haven't tested the enermy within - the high power transmitters everybody have.

There is little requirement for the safety and reliability of cell phones. A failure can mean many things. The phone may emit frequencies used by other services. I don't know if the plane offers any shielding. If not much, sure the phone will jam any frequencies it transmits at because it is so close and hence powerful. Newer electronic circuits are denser and hence more phrone to electromagnetic interference. The phone is a good source of that. A plane designer will not know and bother about the reliability of cell phones. Banning it will be the easy way out. Phone manufacturers won't agree to standards that will make phones safe in planes, because of cost and you can't make reliable calls anyway.