Regardless of who would pay for any necessary tweaks to new products, however, it wouldn't do anything to protect existing GPS hardware against interference issues. There would need to be a significant upgrade of global airline systems, for example. Firmware updates might be able to address the issue but, again, the question of who will pay for the work is unanswered.

At the consumer level, GPS device users are perhaps less likely to upgrade firmware than users of other mobile equipment like cell phones, and older devices might not even offer a method of updating the software.

Keir Thomas has been making known his opinion about computing matters since the last century, and more recently has written several best-selling books. You can learn more about him at . His Twitter feed is .