Monday, March 18, 2002
The EU has recently approved a plan to make a European competitor to GPS. On the one hand, the US military has been holding GPS close to its vest. GPS allows a person or object to be located, with pinpoint, accuracy, anywhere on the globe. For years, however, the US government only allowed a degraded subset to be used for civilian purposes. President Clinton loosened those rules in May of 2000 to get nearly the same positioning accuracy as the US military.
This reluctance to make full GPS universally available probably was a part of the European decision to fund their own GPS system. However, given the petulance of European regulators defending their decision to go ahead with their own system, one has to question if this is the only reason (one went so far as to claim "We don't like monopolies, as you know." Guess those state-owned monopolies don't count). So much European policy these days seems institutionalized schadenfreud. Yes, America has the biggest military in the world AND the biggest economy. Whose fault is that, America's or Europe's?
A pox on both houses I guess is the fairest response. America should have opened GPS to civilian uses long ago, and Europe shouldn't be wasting its time creating another GPS.
This reluctance to make full GPS universally available probably was a part of the European decision to fund their own GPS system. However, given the petulance of European regulators defending their decision to go ahead with their own system, one has to question if this is the only reason (one went so far as to claim "We don't like monopolies, as you know." Guess those state-owned monopolies don't count). So much European policy these days seems institutionalized schadenfreud. Yes, America has the biggest military in the world AND the biggest economy. Whose fault is that, America's or Europe's?
A pox on both houses I guess is the fairest response. America should have opened GPS to civilian uses long ago, and Europe shouldn't be wasting its time creating another GPS.
