Ten years ago today, President Bill Clinton gave the green light to the U.S. military to stop intentionally scrambling satellite signals, thus paving the way for civilians to use GPS with the same accuracy as the military had long enjoyed.
A decade later, mobile navigation is an indispensable part of many people's everyday lives, both in the U.S and around the globe. GPS receiver prices have dropped sharply, costing a few hundred dollars or less where they used to cost thousands. Devices have also gotten more compact and feature-rich, now routinely including access to real-time information from the Internet during route calculation--the latest traffic reports, online points of interest, and so on.
Clinton's order, which kicked into gear at 8 p.m. EDT on May 1, 2000, effectively increased the pinpoint accuracy of any consumer-grade satellite navigation receivers from around 100 yards to just 10 yards.
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