GPS Flaw: Security Expert Says He Won't Fly April 6

Tom's Guide ^ | Paul Wagenseil

[ByteMercenary]

Magnum, I totally understand all your points as I have written a fair number of assembly language interfaces wherein flags are buried in bytes, etc. Please notice that I did not say everything had to be on a full byte boundary, just something as dynamic as a time-keeping component should have it’s own little chunk. Besides 6 bits is not going to bring down the kingdom. Look at it this way: in the code the 10 bits that make up the timer have to extracted from the byte (word, whatever) and placed in a work area. Then the timer is incremented. The 10 bits are then masked back into the storage byte (word, ...). That takes 6 or more (minimum) machine level instructions. If the timer had it’s own byte (word, yadda-yadda), 3 instructions tops. So cramming a few flags into a word with the timer is slower as well as more complicated.

I know it seems that I’m picking nits a bit but I really do understand these things. IMHO this was a poor design decision.

Anyway, stay cool ... and Spring Forward tonight!

[Magnum44]

Not defending the design, but just the way it is. As a software guy, you are probably used to having to take someone else’s less than perfect design and make it work. If each of us had total design control, everything would be perfect, right? 😆 Cheers,

[Magnum44]

And this just goes to show that while commercial entities understand and can keep up with their customer needs, government fails again... See article at the link.

GPS Rollover Hamstrings New York City Wireless Network and a Handful of Other Systems

https://insidegnss.com/gps-rollover-hamstrings-new-york-city-wireless-network-and-a-handful-of-other-systems/

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Yep. With my GPS products, I didn’t notice so much as a blip. Of course Garmin doesn’t want service to drop for 40 kazillion of their customers. Govt., on the other hand, can’t get out of its own way. In an effort to DO SOMETHING, govt. usually does the wrong “something” and makes the problem worse.

I remember during the whole Y2K thing. I was in college and I had a good friend that worked IT. For the Unix computers in the College of Engineering, the only thing that needed fixing was a single line of code in the operating system. I was running Windows 98 and it never had a problem (probably received the right patch program(s) a year in advance). Govt. on the other hand was putting out these public “service” announcements that contributed to the outright stupid rumors running rampant. I don’t know how anybody could think that washing machines, microwave ovens, and other things that had absolutely no date function whatsoever were suddenly going to go wild. There’s a weird segment of the population that wants that to happen.