Comment: Re:Military using common GPS? (Score 1) 647
Comment: Re:Somewhere in the engineering process (Score 4, Insightful) 647
A compass and some accelerometers(or even a view of the sun and an RTC) are a lousy substitute for the accuracy of GPS; but they do provide a sanity check that could keep you going in approximately the right direction, at least enough to hard-land somewhere nominally friendly, if GPS cannot be trusted...
It's almost certain that this drone DOES have an inertial navigation system - the problem is, how do you know when to use it? The way they usually work is that the navigation system computes two solutions: a hybrid GPS/INS solution to use most of the time, and a backup inertial-only solution. The inertial-only solution doesn't get used by the flight computers unless GPS is out entirely or there's some other very obvious problem. If you spoofed a GPS signal with real coordinates and slowly guided it away, how could the nav system see there's something wrong?
Comment: Re:Military using common GPS? (Score 5, Interesting) 647
One would think that the GPS the military relies on would be encrypted or something, y'know? How difficult is it to spoof military GPS?
Very. The military GPS signals are encrypted with some pretty large keys that are changed every 24 hours IIRC. However, the nav systems will probably fall back to using the civilian GPS if the military signal is unavailable for some reason. My guess is that you could drown out all the real GPS signals with noise, then feed the target some spoofed civilian signals to get it to go where you want.
Comment: Re:They already knew (Score 1) 663
Comment: Re:This seems to show the government doesn't care (Score 1) 933
Norman Borlaug, credited with saving over one BILLION lives through increasing food supplies, was a biologist. Tell me, how many lives has poetry saved?
Comment: Re:Stop the clock now! (Score 1) 292
"Buy from us, we're more expensive" doesn't work, no matter which country you're from, sorry.
Oh really? Apparently no one told these guys
Comment: Re:40 Beers! (Score 1) 222
We can, we can, we can, we can demolish forty beers,
Drink rum, drink rum, drink rum, drink rum,
Drink rum, and come along with us,
For we don't give a damn for any damn man,
Who don't give a damn for us.
Comment: Re:Am I just too young to be fond of this stuff? (Score 1) 662
Comment: How is this news? (Score 2) 202
Comment: Re:Hunt down the original developer (Score 1) 532
C'mon, this is
Comment: Re:*sigh* (Score 1) 224
As someone who was looking forward to seeing what the LHC would teach us about physics, let me be the first to say "Get off
(No hard feelings, I just couldn't pass up the joke. Please don't aim your black-hole machine at my house.)
Comment: Re:Slashdot browser shares?? (Score 1) 575
These numbers are faked. If your stats were accurate exactly 11.7% would be showing Emacs/w3m. Of course, you cold just be a jealous vi user who has no web browser or Rogue client built in to your text editor.
Text editor? When did they add a text editor to the Emacs OS?
Comment: Re:Your view of "reasonable" is WARPED (Score 1) 392
Hell, why don't we go back to sending kids who steal bread to Australia while we're at it.
Because we have laws against cruel and unusual punishment now and even the RIAA would concur that an island that full of poisonous things is a crime against nature.
Comment: Re:The value of secrecy (Score 1) 130
You're not doing it right!
Internet meme: You're doing it wrong.