• TomTom hit by GPS 'leap year bug'
    7 replies, posted
[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-17599701[/url]
How does a leap year bug show up on the 31st March?
[QUOTE=Hruhf;35411741]How does a leap year bug show up on the 31st March?[/QUOTE] I'd guess because the system thinks it's the 31st when it's actually the 1st of April because of the additional day. Maybe the updates are made at the end of the month rather than at the beginning or something. [editline]3rd April 2012[/editline] That or they screwed up and are really striving for an excuse.
TomTom doesn't have its own satellites right? They are roughly all shared? My guess is since the satellites and receivers have to be in sync so well to be accurate that the leap year shifted the measurements wildly. I mean satellites have to actually account for Einstein's relativity due to the gravitational differences up in space. This shit is precise.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;35414965]TomTom doesn't have its own satellites right? They are roughly all shared? My guess is since the satellites and receivers have to be in sync so well to be accurate that the leap year shifted the measurements wildly. I mean satellites have to actually account for Einstein's relativity due to the gravitational differences up in space. This shit is precise.[/QUOTE] GPS is the name for the 30 or so satellites controlled by the US government that anyone is available to access, so anything that uses GPS is using the same set of satellites, there are many other countries that have their own equivalents though. The issue here wasnt with the satellites or the GPS system, it was with some of the TomTom devices themselves not being able to handle a leap year.
[QUOTE=Cushie;35415108]GPS is the name for the 30 or so satellites controlled by the US government that anyone is available to access, so anything that uses GPS is using the same set of satellites, there are many other countries that have their own equivalents though. [/QUOTE] Uh, not really true. GPS is the gold standard. The Russians have a similiar system which is (recently) back up to worldwide coverage but it's not nearly so used and is basically unproven, whereas GPS has been used successful in MANY commercial and military applications. The Chinese also have their own little dinky system (somehow), but it only covers China. If you want real GPS, you go through the US gov't. The civilian portion of GPS which is publicly available is pretty open, but if the US wants it can scramble that signal to give accuracy only at 50-100m (useless for military reasons, painful for civilians) while still maintaining full accuracy to devices with select codes and protocols. So yeah GPS rocks shit, all other systems suck. This is a problem with the devices' firmware, which means how they handle the data. GPS still going fine.
[QUOTE=scout1;35424140]Uh, not really true. GPS is the gold standard. The Russians have a similiar system which is (recently) back up to worldwide coverage but it's not nearly so used and is basically unproven, whereas GPS has been used successful in MANY commercial and military applications. The Chinese also have their own little dinky system (somehow), but it only covers China. If you want real GPS, you go through the US gov't. The civilian portion of GPS which is publicly available is pretty open, but if the US wants it can scramble that signal to give accuracy only at 50-100m (useless for military reasons, painful for civilians) while still maintaining full accuracy to devices with select codes and protocols.[/QUOTE] GPS is the name for the system run by the US, if something says 'This uses GPS!' then it uses the one by the US, but there are other alternatives. That is what I meant in my post.
[QUOTE=Cushie;35425518]GPS is the name for the system run by the US, if something says 'This uses GPS!' then it uses the one by the US, but there are other alternatives. That is what I meant in my post.[/QUOTE] There is [I]1[/I] alternative and good luck finding a primary carrier for it in the US, especially for cheaper than a GPS unit
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