You know me, I don't like to complain

So there is an article on Wired News
that Momus wrote about “Hell Phones” and how mobile devices are horrible.

But the interesting part about the rant is this:

“A hell phone is a device you carry that, when switched on, tells a satellite exactly where you are every few seconds.”

I don’t think Momus knows how GPS works. You aren’t transmitting anything to a satellite. GPS devices on the ground are only receivers. If we had mobile phones that could reach satellites with ease, don’t you think we could have stopped building towers every couple of miles?

There are very few options for actual satellite communications on the ground—and mobile phones with GPS functionality most certainly are NOT sending that up into the sky.

A lot of people in the media don’t seem to understand this, so it isn’t exactly a new problem. I just find it odd that someone would use it as a reason to avoid using a mobile phone, when a few seconds in Google or Wikipedia would tell you how GPS works.