

China's Beidou GPS-substitute opens to public in Asia - soupboy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20852150

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fossuser
There are some bizarre comments in this thread. Does China have PR people that
are paid to just comment on random news articles about them with praises in
broken english?

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seanmcdirmid
Are you familiar with the wu mao dang (五毛党 or 50 cent party)?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Mao_Dang>

Anyways, just one of the strange things about living in China, but they are
mostly harmless and uninfluential on English boards (now on Chinese
boards...).

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fossuser
Weird I had no idea about that.

How are they worse on the Chinese boards?

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seanmcdirmid
They are more effective at subverting a discussion, they don't come off as
obvious trolls like they do on English boards.

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kalleboo
I don't know why anyone would trust this system. China already requires maps
to be "fuzzed" for location (if you use Google Maps on your phone in China,
your location on the map will be up to 1km wrong), so there doesn't seem to be
anything stopping them from doing the same here when they feel it's a
sensitive time or area.

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kamjam
This was my initial impression too, but I got the feeling from the article
that the Chinese government probably really don't care if no one else uses it,
it's for use by their own military and as a means of "protection" against thew
US shutting off GPS services to them - highly critical if they want to build
those drones which rely on GPS.

As an aside, how does the US government make money from the GPS? As a
consumer, I pay no money, so I can only assume the GPS chip manufacturers pay
some sort of royalty fee?

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modeless
The US government does not make money from GPS. It was built by and for the
military, with civilian use as an afterthought. Once civilian use took off,
though, the government decided to basically give it as a gift to the rest of
the world. <http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/05/36021>

The military retains control (which is why other nations are still working on
their own systems), but this really was a remarkable act of generosity by the
US government.

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kamjam
Thanks. It did make me wonder when the article said China were planning on
launching 40 satellites there must be a pretty high cost associated with that.

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kqr2
For information on the various satellite navigation systems available:

    
    
      GPS (United States)
      GLONASS (Russia)
      Galileo (European Union)
      Compass/ Beidou (China)
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation>

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vivaforever
This is just another example of ignorant westerners demonize China. 1km wrong?
are you fucking serious? I use GPS everyday and didn't find any problem.
You're just kind of idiots who think anything related to China must be evil,
without any reason, and think the Chinese government has nothing better to do
but vandalizing anything.

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kalleboo
It's true, and at least it was still in effect last time I was in Beijing.
Google Maps even disable their map+satellite view overlay above a certain zoom
level to mask this (only in China - cross the border to free Hong Kong and it
works), but you can still see it if you turn on Traffic view.

Domestic GPS devices have a reverse transform to mask the effect, but the
result is you can never be sure exactly where you are. Seems like Baidu maps
have fixed their map+satellite overlay now, but when I visited, they had the
same problem.

[http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20081109_all_maps_in_c...](http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20081109_all_maps_in_china_are_transformed.htm)

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jtl09
why are you interested the sensitive region of other country? why area 51 is
blocked from GPS? why can't countries outside U.S check how many Massacre
weapons in this country? why this domestic country arise the most the wars in
last 60 years?

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kalleboo
The thing is China has a pretty funny idea of what constitutes "sensitive".
Such as free speech and human rights.

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jtl09
is this related GPS? But ask yourself first, does it make sense ? do you know
the entire story but just Plagiarized from you media?

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kalleboo
When the Chinese government is frivolous with blocking access to websites and
services, it's not a huge leap to worry they may be frivolous in denying
access to other services they provide. Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square
massacre? Maybe we'll bump down the resolution in that area to make protests
more difficult.

Not saying they're going to do it, but just the smallest uncertainty means
you'd rather trust one of the 3 other competitors in the area.

edit: I wonder if putting keywords on this page will get them denied access to
these comments 六四事件 天安門廣場抗議 天安門事件

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chrisringrose
Haha, it looks like putting in those words maybe did block the Chinese.

Nothing frightens me more than a society with no freedom of speech, except for
one that gleefully has none.

