Slashdot Mirror
Domain: eham.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to eham.net.
Stories · 7
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A Ham Radio Software Company Has Been Blacklisting Users For Leaving Negative Reviews (theregister.co.uk)
Gandalf_the_Beardy quotes a report from The Register: The Register reports on the story of Jim Giercyk, an amateur radio enthusiast who had his copy of the popular Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) software revoked after posting a negative review. Other radio hams have followed up with us regarding claims that this was not an isolated incident and others may have had their license keys blacklisted for being publicly critical of the company. And just to be clear: by blackballing keys, installed copies of the software stop working. Giercyk, a professional musician in South Carolina, U.S., says that after his dealings with HRD Software (which has since reinstated his software key) and the statement made by the developer's co-owner Dr Michael Carper, he takes issue with claims made by the company. Giercyk, aka N2SUB, told us on Tuesday: "The issue is not the refusal of service, the issue is that HRD disabled my software, and then offered to enable it in exchange for the removal of an online review of their product. It's extortion, not refusal of service." Giercyk also said that since he went public about his blacklisting last week, he has received messages from other users who have stories of their software keys being revoked by HRD without their knowledge for speaking up about having a bad support experience. A number of other readers pointed out a collection of bad reviews posted on hobbyist site eHam by customers who had their license keys blacklisted. HRD told us some of those users could have written their assessments after requesting a refund and deactivating their software, thus their licenses will appear revoked. Meanwhile, Reddit threads and follow-up discussions to Giercyk's catalyst forum post reveal similar stories of keys being revoked after critical comments about Ham Radio Deluxe have appeared online. Other sources allege some amateur radio forums have in the past deleted posts critical of HRD. -
Ask Slashdot: How To Build a Morse Code Audio Library For Machine Learning?
New submitter mni12 writes "I have been working on a Bayesian Morse decoder for a while. My goal is to have a CW decoder that adapts well to different ham radio operators' rhythm, sudden speed changes, signal fluctuations, interference, and noise — and has the ability to decode Morse code accurately. While this problem is not as complex as speaker-independent speech recognition, there is still a lot of human variation where machine learning algorithms such as Bayesian probabilistic methods can help. I posted a first alpha release yesterday, and despite all the bugs one first brave ham reported success. I would like to collect thousands of audio samples (WAV files) of real world CW traffic captured by hams via some sort of online system that would allow hams not only to upload captured files but also provide relevant details such as their callsign, date & time, frequency, radio / antenna used, software version, comments etc. I would then use these audio files to build a test library for automated tests to improve the Bayesian decoder performance. Since my focus is on improving the decoder and not starting to build a digital audio archive service I would like to get suggestions of any open source (free) software packages, online services, or any other ideas on how to effectively collect large number of audio files and without putting much burden on alpha / beta testers to submit their audio captures. Many available services require registration and don't support metadata or aggregation of submissions. Thanks in advance for your suggestions." -
Ham Operator Sets New Miles-Per-Watt World Record
DoctorPepper writes "A ham radio operator in New London, North Carolina correctly copied an 80 meter CW beacon in Wappingers Falls, New York, a distance of 546.8 miles. The kicker is, the beacon station, an Elecraft K1, was putting out 40.6 uW (40.6 millionths of a Watt) -- which works out to 13,467,980 miles per watt!" -
FEMA Opposes Broadband Over Powerlines
Curmudgeon Rick writes "According to eHam.net, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has put a submission to the FCC strongly opposing the use of powerlines for broadband distribution. The report can be found here [PDF link]. IMO, vendors should let powerline broadband die. They keep defibrillating it only because of the dollars they poured in; but it is and always was a dead duck." The submission concludes: "FEMA has concluded that introduction of unwanted interference from the implementation of BPL technology into the high frequency radio spectrum will result in significant detriment to the operation of FEMA [emergency] radio systems such as FNARS." -
Privacy - Ham Callsigns Lookups on FCC Database?
catchy_handle asks: "In the US, all amateur radio (ham) call signs are public record. Anyone with a decent police scanner can listen to the local hams on the 2m and 70cm bands. Given an operator's call sign, one can search the FCC databases which will return the licensees street address, among other data. As a future ham, I found this thread on eHam.net somewhat alarming. The majority of respondents stated that it's always been this way, that they have nothing to hide, and to stop being paranoid. [I disagree.] As a victim of ID theft, the less joe-crack-head knows about me the better. I'm pretty sure of the typical Slashdot reader's angle here, but my question is to the hams: Does this bother you? Or is it part of tradition and something a good operator should be proud of? Is it too late since these guys already know all?""I was surprised by the resistance to reconsider the status-quo, to adapt to the new reality of criminals with computers.
I suggested that the portals to the public databases be replaced with a challenge/response system such that if someone wanted my address, I'd get a notification from the QSL bureau, or the FCC that so-and-so was requesting access to my data. I could then decide to grant or deny that request. One person said that California's DMV works this way already (very cool). Another option: anyone is allowed to provide a PO Box to the FCC, instead of a street address, but that's an extra expense to many. " -
America's Hams Embrace Linux
Anonymous Coward writes "The current survey question over on the eham site shows that around 40% of Amateur Radio operators that responded to the survey are using Linux/Unix as an operating system in some form or other. Part of the ham radio charter is to 'experiment and innovate'...seems the tradition is alive and well in ham radio. Some of the comments are interesting as well ...What's Amateur/Ham Radio? See www.eham.net/newham/" -
America's Hams Embrace Linux
Anonymous Coward writes "The current survey question over on the eham site shows that around 40% of Amateur Radio operators that responded to the survey are using Linux/Unix as an operating system in some form or other. Part of the ham radio charter is to 'experiment and innovate'...seems the tradition is alive and well in ham radio. Some of the comments are interesting as well ...What's Amateur/Ham Radio? See www.eham.net/newham/"
