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"We [science fiction writers] always wanted to believe in "private sector" space -- hucksters make better characters than a government does."
- Larry Niven
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| GPS Sunglasses | ||
| Sunglasses that contain both global positioning system components and cell phone services. |
Okay, so your sunglasses ring, you open them up and put them on. You see, projected on the lens of your sunglasses, whatever the other person is seeing (and presumably vice-versa). Not only that, the other person knows exactly where you are thanks to the GPS device built in to the sunglasses.
| …She slipped him a pair of Brazilian GPS sunglasses, with inbuilt phone and AM-FM radio. |
| From All Tomorrow's Parties,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1999 Additional resources -
|
Do you need these? Maybe not. But the people in William Gibson's endlessly inventive novels, this is the sort of urban nomadic stuff you need. And, if you're a true urban nomad, knowing where you are with GPS is perfect.
You're an engineer and you want to know it works? By all means, read this dense PDF - GPS Signal Availability in an Urban Area Receiver Performance Analysis.
In a hurry and you'd prefer to cut to the chase? Okay, it turns out that in urban environments subject to lots of signal shading, GPS signal availability can vary by 60%. You want details: try this:
"The results demonstrate the effectiveness of narrow correlator spacing technology in reducing the position errors caused by multipath from buildings in urban canyons."
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