LightSquared Files For Bankruptcy 138
fallen1 writes "Wireless broadband company LightSquared has filed for bankruptcy. In filings with U.S. Bankruptcy court, it was revealed that LightSquared had assets and debts of over $1 billion each. The decision followed a year-long fight between LightSqaured and GPS users — including some heavyweights like FedEx and UPS. Apparently Boeing and Alcatel-Lucent are heavily invested, but it would be interesting to see what the old Bell Labs could do with the technology."
Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Informative)
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This is rather the failing of government to enforce proper frequency use and shielding by lazy engineers, i.e. the GPS industry.
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There are no effective shields that wouldn't also block the GPS signals themselves. Even though you don't know what you're talking about, you are thinking of high pass filters, and guess what, sunshine? There are no such things as filters precise enough to isolate the GPS signals from the Lightsquared signals. Not even close. They don't exist today, and they can't be made with today's technology.
Come back and make this kind of foolish statement after getting your doctorate in electrical engineering, and
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> There are no such things as filters precise enough to isolate the GPS signals from the Lightsquared signals. Not even close. They don't exist today, and they can't be made with today's technology.
Not true. It is possible make a filter precise enough to isolate GPS signals from Lightsquared signals with today's technology, but it's expensive and bulky to do so. A number of higher-end GPS units had no problem with Lightsquared signals for just that reason. Lightsquared used those results to try and bl
Ok, scratch that business plan... (Score:5, Funny)
2) Use political influence to get around the laws of physics
3) PROFIT!
Re:Ok, scratch that business plan... (Score:4)
It's Step 2.
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Yepper-de-depper!
Um, no... (Score:3)
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Or any of the legion of ham radio operators worldwide.
Hams know all too well that their transmitter can easily overpower their neighbor's TV reception.
I know when I did ham radio as a teen, some of the exam questions were about how to deal with neighbors who are angry that you're ruining their reception.
Re:Ok, scratch that business plan... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or it could be that the executive staff just received some of the worst engineering advice ever. High-power terrestrial transmissions anywhere near the GPS band are forbidden not only by US law but also by international treaty, for reasons that could have been explained if these clowns had bothered to ask any qualified RF engineer.
Translating for the MBAs out there: "A lot of people who knew what they were doing agreed not to do stuff like this."
Lack of due diligence on Falcone's part does not justify making exceptions to the laws the rest of us have to follow.
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Or it could be that the executive staff just received some of the worst engineering advice ever.
Maybe they should have omitted the "capable of delivering worst engineering advice ever, with a straight face" requirement from their job descriptions. Because I get the distinct feeling that their work instructions from management to engineering did not include having engineering deliver any good advice.
It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved. (Score:1, Interesting)
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Just buy different spectrum.
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The spectrum they bought was probably dirt cheap. No way to make a profit with spectrum that is more in demand.
Dirt cheap because nobody else would touch it (for good reason).
Re:It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved (Score:4, Interesting)
The spectrum they bought was probably dirt cheap. No way to make a profit with spectrum that is more in demand.
Dirt cheap because nobody else would touch it (for good reason).
Did you miss the part in TFA where it explained that "LightSquared invested $4 billion in airwaves"? 4 Billion is still a lot of money, at least where I come from. I suppose for a nationwide network it probably pales in comparison to what AT&T or Verizon hold, but it is still a substantial investment. I wonder if the FCC will give them a refund on all those unused EM rays?
Re:It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved (Score:5, Informative)
Did you miss the part in TFA where it explained that "LightSquared invested $4 billion in airwaves"? 4 Billion is still a lot of money, at least where I come from. I suppose for a nationwide network it probably pales in comparison to what AT&T or Verizon hold, but it is still a substantial investment. I wonder if the FCC will give them a refund on all those unused EM rays?
Oh sure, 4$ billion is a lot of money. Problem here is Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc spent even more for spectrum space allotted for high power use and Light Squared was trying to buy cheap spectrum and then get the rules changed. There was no way they could afford spectrum allotted for this kind of use and make their business model work. The licenses they have purchased can be sold to pay their creditors, but I don't think the FCC is going to give them a refund.
Bye Bye Light Squared...
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A modulation technique that didn't crater GPS would have been a start. If you look at the filing, their CFO still believes that they can get a deal with the FCC. So it proves the Insanity Law, 2x. Entrepreneurs will try to defy physics, then do it again. Good luck with that.
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It's not about modulation, it's about power levels required to make their receivers work at usable data speeds totally swamping the front ends of the adjacent GPS receivers.
They could lower power levels, but you have to obey Physics by giving up your data rate and wiz bang modulation techniques are not going to fix the problem for you. I suppose one could get a some pretty low data rate stuff (like under 300 baud) to work at some really low powers. But it's going to be very expensive for the data rate yo
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It's really not modulation technique here. You could simply put a plain carrier with no modulation on the air and swamp the front end of the GPS receivers in the area which are trying to receive the small signals available from the satellites. Unless you can keep the power at or below the level that de-senses the GPS receivers operating in the adjacent band (i.e. following the FCC's established rules for the spectrum) you are interfering with GPS. So what kind of modulation technique are you suggesting
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The band Lightspeed bought is low-power ground/space. Lightspeed is free to use it for low-power ground/space communications all they want, in accordance with its current usage rules.
Lightspeed gambled they could con the FCC into allowing conversion to a different use, and to hell with the harm to anyone else. The FCC never promised that they would do so, allowed experiments to see if it could be made to work, and the experiments failed. Well, Las Vegas doesn't give refunds to gamblers either.
Re:It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved (Score:5, Insightful)
Lightsquared wanted to provide wireless internet at a price (not give). They also wanted to do it on the cheap so they could make money hand over fist. They failed.
Had they wanted to offer wireless at a fair price for a reasonable profit, they would have licensed spectrum appropriate for that application.
Re:It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved (Score:5, Insightful)
What?
They purchased air to ground spectrum and tried to re-purpose it as ground to ground spectrum. They sued when the FCC told them to go take a running jump.
Then tried to claim that GPS vendors were at fault for not having perfect notch filters in their equipment (hint such a thing is not physically possible)
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"(hint such a thing is not physically possible)" thinking outside the box!!?
Re:It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, since I've started applying this principle in my daily life I have been able to do all sorts of things that the average guy wouldn't think are possible, such as levitate, wall through walls, bend spoons with the force of my will, and build perfect notch filters.
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"(hint such a thing is not physically possible)" thinking outside the box!!?
My employer tells me to think outside the box but then sticks me in a cube...
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"(hint such a thing is not physically possible)" thinking outside the box!!?
We eagerly await your perfect notch filter. You're gonna be richer than Zuckerberg!
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then i will buy instagram for 100billion dollars....
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Lightsquared anted to "SELL" internet to everyone, they certainly didn't want to give anything away.
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Most people just see the GPS side of this fight, afraid of losing GPS in the continental U.S. In rreality it would have mostly affected those who needed extreme precision,
You mean like land surveyors and engineers. Yeah, people whose livelihoods depend on accurate GPS, because they build useless things like highways, bridges, airports, power plants, and other useless shit like that.
Get the fuck off of Slashdot.
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BMO
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Have a look at (a href="http://trl.trimble.com/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-140079/022543-079K_TrimbleR8GNSS_DS_0412_LR_sec.pdf"> this. Positioning to 3mm. These are not hand-held consumer units.
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Grr. Corrected link [trimble.com]
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Thank you.
>3mm
About the width of a tack.
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BMO
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Read the footnotes - nobody is going to use that for a quick survey to lay out the foundations for a building. For example, mode 1 - +/- HALF A METER (not 3mm)
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No-one on this thread made any absolute but factually incorrect statement except you. YOU are the one who flatly said 'surveyors don't use GPS'. That is a false statement. Some surveyors DO in fact use GPS. A simple Google search shows many examples. Since that time you have been trying to weasel out of your statement by making it sound as if 'urban settings' or 'doing a quick survey to lay out the foundations of a building' or 'working in a large unfinished metal warehouse' are the ONLY types of surv
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That is not "factually incorrect" in any shape matter or form. That *some* surveyors use GPS in *some* situations doesn't make anyt
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Why the hell are you guys still going on about this?! Original posters that started this still has a point in that the people who should be concerned about GPS interference are geeks of Slashdot and are often expecting accurate GPS to be accurate do what they want to do with it.
Back on topic?!
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Re:It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved (Score:4, Informative)
>Last I looked, (a week ago, but hey, maybe it's changed in the last 7 days) surveyors used transits and lasers, not GPS
You would be wrong.
Surveyors were using GPS before the "fuzzing" and after the fuzzing, surveyors were using Differential GPS (google this). Because the fuzzing was in one magnitude and direction it was trivial to correct for. Set up on a known point, correct for it, bam, your GPS now works like it did before the fuzzing.
Now that the charade of fuzzing is over, everybody uses GPS. Everyone. Especially now.
What you are also ignoring is the fact that the longer an antenna is left in one position and more satellites fly over, you get better and better resolution. Swinging a machete and cutting line takes time and costs money. If you can get a location by setting up on a point and gathering data for half a day instead of cutting line and running a traverse to get to it for two days, then you've come out way ahead.
The ultimate goal of land surveying is to be able to reconstruct a piece of land and who owns it even if it is vaporized by a nuclear explosion. GPS gives you this cheaply.
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BMO
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In order to reply to myself as a follow up
Land surveyors are involved in land disputes and building. All the way from your 100x100 lot to nuclear reactors, bridges and roads, etc.
There are tools in the toolbox spanning from clapping your hands at 90 degrees, wooden beenies and stakes, handheld levels and stadia rods, to steel tape, to total stations to GPS. Just like a programmer has more than one language under his belt, the toolbox of a land surveyor has more stuff in it than most people think, especia
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What part of that is congruent with my "is not good enough in an urban setting"?
A transit is quick to set up and get working within a minute
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What part of that is congruent with my "is not good enough in an urban setting"?
Since when is land surveying restricted to urban settings?
A transit is quick to set up and get working within a minute or so, doesn't "get more accurate as you wait for more satellites to pass overhead", etc. Also, a transit will work fine in a warehouse or other strutural building where the steel walls and shielding would cause problems with GPS, as well as underground, where GPS absolutely cannot work. Or do you have a neutri
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My post referenced urban settings, for which GPS is not the quick+best solution, compared to a simple transit+laser (which also works great using a laser-controlled blade on a bulldozer, if you've ever seen a Cat D9 doing finish grading inside a large metal-clad building, which your GPS solution wouldn't work in). You then post something totally off (machetes in a jungle) and when I point it out, you again go "since when is la
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Everywhere around here for residential use, surveyors use GPS to locate existing reference markers, and from there, they use transits to locate the needed points. However, I think the commercial/road builders use GPS as their primary source, because they need speed more than they need high precision. They can't spend time continually hunting for stakes; and when a road is off by an inch but is well within its right of way, it just doesn't matter.
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You can certainly use a gps to find an existing marker to start from - you just can't use the gps as the only tool. You still need to do the actual measurements the "old way" - in part because GPS is too accurate.
When a humungous plot of land is repeatedly sub-divided, it's very rare that the land is perfectly flat, so you have "slop" - an accumulation of inaccuracies because you're measurement includes slight slopes up and down.
For example, you have a plot that was laid out as 10 miles, 250', 4" wide o
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Stop it. They wanted to sell wireless Internet access to everyone in the US. Internet access based on spectrum which they paid satellite rates for, but wanted to use terrestrially.
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It would've also affected cheap GPS receivers which can barely pull in enough signal to get a fix as is. Like the ones in your smartphone, and showing up in cameras and a gazillion other gadgets. Dedicated GPS units like found in boat and car GPSes probably would've been ok. But the reason GPS has spread to gadge
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Let's hope there's more to driverless cars than that.
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I'm sure the google car system uses everything that your average android device can use to determine it's location.
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That's the kind of "prank" that will have the army knocking on your door.
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Extreme precision is the key to automated driving vehicles, so without that you can forget letting the car drive itself.
And probably the best use of a self-driving vehicle is in the middle of nowhere on a limited-access freeway (i.e., an Interstate highway). If you limit the precision of GPS then forget about letting the car drive through Nebraska.
Of course that is the best use, why if you were to fall asleep and have your car crash itself, it would surely be best that you do it in a location so remote that your body wouldn't be found for hours or days.
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ummm.... why? Current driveless car technology may use GPS for some data, but it's hardly necessary.
Google's driveless car can keep track of the road and oncoming obstacles just through a laser system within a tens-of-meters range which gathers data on close objects and then uses that data to extrapolate the position of further objects from a video feed.
I see no reason why a driveless car would ever really NEED GPS. The computer is perfectly capable of keeping track of the available turns which it has
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In fact, cheap, ubiquitous, and wireless internet is far more useful for automated driving vehicles, as you would need a lot of bandwidth for cars to effectively keep track of each other.
No need for internet as cars would only need to communicate with other cars that are near them, not with cars on the other side of Earth. Short range wireless communication is easier to do that internet access, which requires access points while the car network may be mesh without an access point.
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I don't think normal WLAN ranges would work for that anyway, WLAN has a range of what, 30 meters? If you really want to give cars internet connections you'll have to use cellphone networks instead.
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The range depends on the power used, antennas and the data rate. As cars most likely do not need 50mbps connection, the range would be longer. Also, in a mesh network, a node can forward packets between two nodes that are too far from each other to communicate directly.
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No need for wireless access between cars either as the only data you need and can trust should be collectable from the system itself...
Driverless car 1: I'm going 30 and you're going 20, I better slow down...
Driverless car 2: No carry on, I'm going 30 too...
Driverless car 1: Oh, okay then...*^*&(^NO CARRIER
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But it could be useful if the safer option is chosen. For example, in your case car 1 should have slowed down. On the other hand, if, say, car in front detects a pothole it can announce its intention to slow down before applying the brakes.
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Except its intention to slow down is irrelevant and its slowing down should be evident when it hits the brakes... after all this thing needs to be able to drive with vehicles and pedestrians which cannot relay such information. The driverless car shouldn't need advanced warning.
Also, the safest thing is for the vehicles to slow down and stop - if you're expecting to listen to that, its a DoS attack
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What technology? (Score:3)
Did these guys have any significant technology? (Just askin, I really don't know. Even the Lightsquared Faq [lightsquared.com] is fairly useless at explaining what they have that hasn't been done before)
And if they did, why not move it somewhere else to some radio spectrum where it will not interfere, such as, but not limited to some of the bandwidth Verizon is finding un-useful in the 700mhz band that they can't pawn off on anybody. [slashgear.com]
It seems to me that the only problem they had was a dependence on the wrong block of spectrum. On the other hand, any company that wants to push ahead with a spectrum usage with total disregard for existing spectrum use and the safety concerns of the entire GPS community probably isn't a company you want setting up this type of service in the first place.
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You know, you may be right in that they did not necessarily have "new tech" to try and take advantage of the spectrum. Perhaps I should have worded it "see what the old Bell Labs could do with the idea that fostered this company."??
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Coming soon to a venture capital fund-raiser near you - DarkSquare!
They'll take all those wires that nobody's using and push the Internet through them!
It'll be *HUGE*. Be the first sucker^W savvy investor to get in on the ground floor! What could go wrong?
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What's wrong with the old UHF-TV spectrum (700 Megahertz)? They made use of the higher-UHF bands (800/900 MHz) for cellular expansion in the 80s.
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>>>It's in use, currently broadcasting TV.
hahahahahahahahahahaha. No. The 700 MHz band (channels 52 to 69) stopped broadcasting TV in 2009. And some fool moderator marked you +1 informative??? Wow.
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And if they did, why not move it somewhere else to some radio spectrum where it will not interfere
The answer to this question is simple they went cheap. They couldn't afford the spectrum they needed to make their business work so they purchased the cheap space next to GPS and they tried to use politics to get the FCC to let them re-purpose the cheap space for their use. They don't have any huge technology advance, they where just betting on the FCC changing its rules so they could get spectrum on the cheap. Without cheap spectrum, their business model wasn't going to work.
The really sad thing here
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I have only seen bits and pieces as this story came up so I'm curious, why were they allowed to license the spectrum in the first place and why was the space so "cheap" if it is so important that it not be used in the way they intended? Was it licensed for a particular use and they wanted to use it in a different way?
Re:What technology? (Score:4, Informative)
It was allocated for satellite communications. They wanted to use it for terrestrial communications. The FCC didn't think that would work, so they gave them a provisional license so they could demonstrate that it would not interfere. They failed.
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Very informative.
So my initial assessment was correct:
1) they did not have any novel new technology, (using terrestrial radio to avoid satellite hops is basic; carriers have been doing this since dirt)
2) they simply had the wrong spectrum
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Had the FCC said yes, you can bet AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc. would be eyeing vairous bits and pieces of the satellite band to purchase - it's that much cheaper.
Not likely. Telcos already have better spectrum. 700/800 to get the broad coverage and 1900 to get higher capacity. And then there's Clearwire up in 2500 with the bandwidth capacity of a train. 1600 will work, but it's mediocre at best. The noise that wireless companies are making is because it's expensive to refarm existing spectrum. You
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Did these guys have any significant technology?
Lightspeed: the Enron of RF Spectrum.
Hope they sprung for the Buyer Protection Plan... (Score:2)
...on all those bribes, er, "campaign contributions".
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There's the problem. Instead of insuring the bribes, PayPal kept them and froze LightSquared's account. Result: debt!
I've heard the government wanted failure (Score:1)
I've read various articles over the last year that the current administration wanted LightSquared to fail, in order to eliminate competition for a preferred provider (the company that gave campaign donations).
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Before LightSquared failed, the conspiracy theory was that LightSquared had bribed the current administration to let them in even though it would break everyone's satnav.
Personally I don't think either of them are true; this is just your typical "venture capitalist thinks laws of physics can be bent to meet his business plan; bankruptcy ensues" story, with incompetence filling in for corruption as usual.
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>>>Before LightSquared failed, the conspiracy theory was that LightSquared had bribed the current administration to let them in even though it would break everyone's satnav.
Oh okay.
Thanks for clarifying.
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Citation please. Because that sounds like just the sort of thing some jerkoff would say to get back at an administration that thinks that having solid domestic GPS resolution for defense purposes is more important than this company's new technology.
Re:I've heard the government wanted failure (Score:4, Informative)
It's all conspiracy bullshit. Their engineers had to know it was going to cause serious interference, and had to know that neither the FCC specifically, nor the US Government in general would ever let anyone trash GPS. It was an idiotic idea from the get-go, and now the company goes down the crapper for it.
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It is certanly a case of the boss not accepting a "no" from the technical team. I can imagine how they hired outside consultants to tell them their engineers are wrong, and after negotiating a price, they told.
I also can imagine the engineering boss having pointy hair.
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Yeah you're right. I don't need a "guburment" conspiracy. The ~300,000 dead persons lying in Iraq plus Afghanistan plus Libya plus Yemen plus Pakistan are enough to damn the current & last presidents to a Nuremberg-style trial for crimes against humanity. And it's impossible to pretend the corpses don't exist.
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Are you planning on doing that with all presidents we have had so far?
I can't think of one in recent memory that did not kill a bunch of people.
duh (Score:2)
It seemed obvious to me that this wasn't going to work out for them. I suppose this is an example of confirmation bias on my part as I'm sure I wouldn't be posting this if it had gone the other way, but seriously I gave this a 0% chance of success in my minds eye. One wonders why the investors thought that GPS users, the military among them, would roll over and have their devices cease functioning or even risk the interference...
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The only explanation I can think of is that the investors were morons. But hey, lots of people but SCO stock too, believing they'd be making big bucks from licensing fees for every guy downloading a Linux distro.
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Of course you're correct - this is just another OPM (Other_People's_Money) investor scam.
Dear Soulskill (Score:3, Informative)
If I can spot a major typo in the summary 2 seconds after seeing it for the first time ("Litesqaured" in this case) the you are not doing your fucking job.
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If I can spot a major typo in the summary 2 seconds after seeing it for the first time ("Litesqaured" in this case) the you are not doing your fucking job.
It's pretty clear that you're OK with minor typos.
Re:Dear Soulskill (Score:4, Informative)
They are not moderators, they are not editors, all they do is choose which stories to post, do not expect anything beyond that from them.
Yes, they are listed as Editors, but I think that is just that there isn't really a good word for what little they do.
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Sounds like a The Who cover band.
Moral of the story? (Score:2)
Don't buy cheap satellite spectrum to re-purpose for terrestrial use unless you've really thought it out.
None of this would have happened if he had bought more expensive but less problematic terrestrial spectrum or bought a patch of spectrum farther away from the GPS band.
His idea doubtless seemed clever at the time. And it was... if he didn't interfere with GPS. He did though even if it was all the fault of the GPS devices.
Food for thought.
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I believe it was all the fault of physics, not the GPS devices.
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Apparently LS was right to the extent their machines were not interfering with those frequencies. But older and cheaper GPS devices were not shielded from powerful signals in other frequencies and so it interfered with them.
So, it's not entirely LS fault... it just doesn't matter.
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You're right that it doesn't matter, but as a point of clarification it was not the 'cheaper' devices that had problems, it was the very expensive high-precision ones. If those devices had any steeper filters the precision would go right down the toilet and the device would be useless.
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It didn't help that the guy made "arrangements" with powerful people to get the way greased. Powerful people have powerful enemies. And by using those powerful people you acquire their enemies.
They would have done better to keep their heads down and avoid involving themselves in political power struggles.
That said, if you need powerful allies simply to get the FCC to give you a f'ing license then that speaks to the inefficiency of the organization.
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Bell labs? (Score:2)
".... but it would be interesting to see what the old Bell Labs could do with the technology."
This is a strange question. What 'technology' did LightSquared invent? Bell Labs came up with many of the fundamental ideas that are still used in wireless communications today, so it's difficult to see what they could learn from LightSquared.
Protection, not liquidation (Score:2)
They're filing chapter 11 bankruptcy, not chapter 7.
Not promising regardless, but they're apparently not giving up yet.