On 26/10/2007, Geoffrey S. Mendelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 08:46:51PM +0000, Amos Shapira wrote: > > > And how would having street names in Google Earth or Google Maps change > the > > situation? > > It allows them to find out where the rocket hit by reading news reports > and SMS's from people nearby. > > They use the "point and shoot" method of aiming. The rocket is loaded > with enough fuel to go an approximate distance, aimed in the right > direction > and and angle and fired. When it hits, they use that to aim better.
Unless you have more info about this than the average person in the street I assume we are both speculating on how they do this but as far as I'm aware: 1. Those rockets are far too inaccurate to aim - two rockets fired from the same spot, direction, angle etc. (even ignoring atmospheric differences) will land at pretty wide circle of target. 2. This still doesn't say how the Israeli users missing on a convenient service prevents the terrorists on the other side of the fence from finding out the location by simply opening up a map, as they already say that they do in the news item that you brought. Knowing where it hit helps them aim better. During the first gulf war, > people stopped reporting on where the scuds landed on mailing lists and > Usenet because the information was used to aim them. > > This was not new even then, the Germans used it to aim V1 and V2 rockets. > I'm still not with you about why not having street names on Google Maps (while being able to get them on mapa.co.il, ynet maps, GPS software etc) will prevent or even hinder their attacks, while at the same time people who live in Israel miss out on the greatest mapping tool I've seen. --Amos
