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U.K. Pirate Broadcasters Steal Car Radio Listeners
Ant sent it: A BBC News story about how illegal stations in the U.K. are exploiting the new Radio Data System (RDS) standard that is now used in Europe and South Africa, and is coming soon to Australia, China and the US, by using RDS signals to force nearby motorists's car radios to tune automatically to their stations instead of legitimate ones.
RDS has been around for a long time in Europe.
Every time I turn on the radio, within 5 minutes I'm listening to an old navy ad.
--Shoeboy
... and what are they broadcasting?
The article seems to be implying that normal radio stations are doing this to get listeners. Of course, that doesn't seem likely. What would pirates want to broadcast anyhow?
Intolerant people should be shot.
RDS is a somewhat cool idea. I think limiting it to traffic reports is a waste of a really great technology, enter the pirates of radio. I'm a fan of pirate radio just because I have radio experience, and I like the little guys who don't have to worry about sponsors and Arbitron ratings and all that schmuk. Their stations just plain sound better. Hijacking my radio isn't too cool, but more power to the radio pirates :-)
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
These people who are forcing station switching should be dragged into the street and shot. I mean come on, you need traffic information. Suddenly you here "Baby baby, how was I supposed to know..." and end up in a traffic jam that could be avoided if only someone wasn't overriding your radio. True, this whole system is a stupid idea to begin with, so obviously open to abuse, but those who are taking advantage of it are certainly in the wrong.
If this thing is possible with RDS I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner but I thought it was only the RDS signals from the station you were listening to that could change the frequency.
For those of you unfamiliar with RDS it is a feature built into most european car radios that allow additional data to be broadcast along with the audio. Most stations broadcast the stations name so if for example you were listening to Metro FM the display would say that rather than it's frequency. It also can transmit other data such as the type of music the station plays and alternate frequencies for the station so if it goes to a weak signal it can try for a better signal as well as the frequencies for related neighbouring stations. It can also interrupt tape or CS's when a traffic announcement is broadcast.
Those of you in Europe or UK, how aware have you been of this 'feature' in car radios?
Are there any laws specifically regarding the abuse of the RDS system (as opposed to just plain unauthorized transmissions)?
I can see the benefits for civil defense, but the abuse potential is staggering.
3 station can not please the nation! -- Shabba Ranks
...though it seems that once a hack is employed by one commercial entity against another (at least for potential econimic gain of any sort), the prack aspect suddenly becomes criminal.
I more (or less, depending on your point of view) beneign prank would be a "War of the Worlds" style broadcast...
"We interupt this broadcast to bring you a live broadcast from our new alien overlords..."
(c:
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
I'm from Finland and I had my first RDS-radio in 1991.
*static*...."I am God and I have taken over your radio you shall now drive through that building up ahead at a very high speed, I will remove it for you" *!crash!*
I'll finally be able to find the pirate stations!
Much better listening then the prefab, spoon fed crap that consistantly spews out of the "legit" choices...
OB - What is it with the quality of radio nowadays? I heard the word f**k 3 times on my way to work, pity when I can't even listen to morning radio with my kids in the car...Not that I would listen to the pirate stations when my kids were in the car, due to the above, we just enjoy happy disny tunes or *gasp* have "conversations"
(conversation: to converse, to exchange packets in meatspace)
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
I can't help but believe that even though there is a legitimate reason to go after these "pirate" radio stations (their broadcast is in effect, a false claim to being a local traffic report) that the reason that will be put forward for arresting them will be "You hacked our proprietary format" or "You need to be licensed to broadcast radio signals" (at least the licensing one is probably a real law.)
O well...
Yes, it happened a feq years ago, it was not a pirate radio station but a legitimate station that was doing so! Not the best way to promote themselves, when it happened I wish I could eradicate from the face of the FM world... The countermeasure was to turn off the 'swicth to traffic announcement' feature.
- Trying to shut down as many hijackers as is cost-effective, and
- Making this "feature" optional.
If I had a radio which forced a station on me, I'd probably rip it out and put an old-fashioned radio in its place.-- $SIGNATURE
I really think that RDS could be used that way. In fact it could be sometimes a pain in some regions, seeing your radio receiver trying to decide which signal is the stronger and continuously switching between two different frequencies. But the system is however cool, you can transmit info about the songs you are listening to and other important short data, and of course you always know which radio station it is (I think in Italy they know what I am talking about!)
I'd prefer listening to Britney Spears than a traffic report any day. (Or is that looking at her.......)
This looks to me like yet another example of technology that looks like a panacea to the let's-protect-people-from-themselves nanny governments, who adopt these things as requirements without considering all of the ramifications (cf. GPS-enforced speed limits, earlier this week). I could be way off base here, as the article wasn't really clear about the technology: is this an always-on feature, or something the driver switches on when he wants to know why there's a traffic jam? If it's the latter, I don't see that these pirates are such a huge problem (and as a voluntary thing, I can see where it might be a useful feature); if it's the former, why haven't I heard anyone objecting to the adoption of this technology before now?
I refuse, on principle, to have a
My stereo-set contains tuner that support RDS, and most new stereo sets also support RDS, so it's not limited to car radios.
Without making everyone buy a new car stereo, that is. Seems like if your radio accepts a certain signal as an order to change to frequency X, the only "countermeasure" would be to jam the signal. And if they could do that, the pirates would be out of business already.
This is great! I've always dreamed of something like this so I could tell off that bastard in the next car. I gotta get it!
I can see this as being usefull for true emergency broadcasts. Imagine you are driving down the road in your car listening to a CD or tape, normaly I don't want to be bothered, but for example if a tornado had been sighted 10 miles away, there would be a very good reason for letting everyone know *NOW*. but the set of cases in which you would want this to be used would be very limited.
Mostly things like "A Tornado has been spoted at place X if you are near there get to cover NOW!" ofcourse this is just a more fancy version of the EBS system.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Step 1: Come out with closed specifications for a "revolutionary" protocol that will allow people to have their radios jump to any "bulliten."
Step 2: Include no authentication, "ignore traffic broadcasts" buttons, or common sense auto-ignore if > N requests per time slot are made.
Step 3: Go after "evil radio pirates" who are abusing your "security, what security?" technology.
Yes, Viriginia, there are stupid beurocrats.
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"legitimate ones"? You paint a picture of right vs. wrong, when the situation is more like broadcast station(s) that have, by whatever means, gained a "license" from the organization(s) granted jurisdition to give licenses and are emitting signals into our shared environment vs. another set of organizations who also emit signals aforementioned shared environment. However, those "legal" broadcast station(s) don't have *my* permission to broadcast, nor does the government have my permission to give permission for that. (There isn't too much i can do though, so i leave it, and focus on other, more important issues to me... It's a matter of opportunity cost) So illegitamate from the perspective of the government and select individuals only, but not from the rest of us. Even more so, I prefer to have so-called pirate radio stations, as they tend to have superior, commercial-free, actually interesting content.
Question: How does this work? It seems to me that you have to have a compatible radio that will decode these bits and switch to the appropriate station. Off topic: Arent we supposed to be all digital radio soon?
I woke up to my clock radio today and the DJ's were talking about some list of the top 100 songs this century and complaining about some of the selections of artists in various places, but that same radio station would not deviate from their play list if you beat them with a fucking stick (I know, I've tried.) Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. At least there's one radio station around here that has some semblance of personality. Unfortunately even on that one there's no escape from the Old Navy ads.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
All you need to do to make it impossible to hijack an RDS radio would be put an "off" button to the feature.
I was just wondering whether there could be a better solution than RDS. I find it a bit too limited, in fact you can just trasmit very few bits of data. Seeing what is now possible with digital TV, I think there could be better solutions and digital radio is now becoming a reality in most parts of europe
Is this the first case of an electronic denial-of-service attack that isn't computer or internet related? :-)
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I swear a while back I saw RDS working on my friend's aftermarket car stereo. This was in Tampa, FL. Could it be that some stations aren't waiting to deploy RDS? I know it's available in many aftermarket recievers (in the US), from the likes of Blaupunkt, etc.
After gps is used to track down us speeders a broadcast message is sent with your tag numbers to any local police car on the same road alerting them to your exact location, speed etc...
This'd probably be really easy to implement in hardware - drive the cost of the radio up a couple bucks, at most.
What's that? I'm from the US, so (obviously) I've never heard of it before.
[Seoman] "A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking."
Why just help the broadcasters? How about coming up with countermeasures to help the listeners? Forgive me for sounding like an over-zealous culture-jammer; but does anyone else feel that maybe they should be concerned about the listeners that are having something they didn't ask for forced upon them? Rather than the corporations that are having business stolen from them?
There seems to be a bias here. More of a concern for businesses then human beings. If a rep from Pepsi stole my Coke and forced me to drink a Pepsi (no offence intended to Pepsi) I'd like to think the police would arrest him and press charges on my behalf rather than Coke's. They sound more concerned that a company is losing business than they are about people's rights being violated.
If they can do this for the RDS system, why has no one done it for cell phones? Create a pirate cell that rings the phones of everyone in range and sends some recorded message. I expect it has to do with equipment costs, but does anyone know for sure?
3 station can never please the nation...
-- Shabba Ranks
Just tune in at Radio Data System(RDS) WWW interface website and enjoy...
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
The problem is: do you know what type of stations transmit throughout the entire country? Only the big corporate ones. So all RDS gives is to listen to the same Top40 hits as you travel across the country. The only other stations that transmit nationwide of government stations like the BBC in England, RAI in Italy, etc... Those stations are also worthless (hmmm, wait, I actually like BBC!).
The only good use for RDS in America is to listen to NPR. Other than that always listen 'left of the dial'. That is where all the good music is.
Peace!
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
In Sweden a lot of stations are using RDS to send small commercials which show up on the radio-screens... wonder who has time to read them while driving :)
Why go thru the hassle and risk of heavy fines and conficated expensive equipment by the police, all for a lousy pirate radio station??? Most pirate signals have a lousy signal anyway,i'd try a streaming mp3 server (running linux of course :)) before i went to a pirate radio station
What's the current state of wireless Internet? How soon will I be able to have a small monitor/keyboard/trackball in my car so that I could listen to mp3 radio and check out the latest news in traffic? How much does it currently cost/what's the bandwidth? How fast is this changing?
Once this technology gets wide acceptance, all these "pirate" problems will become obsolete...
I must say, i like the comment Those of you in Europe or UK...
;)
Last time i checked, the UK was in Europe. Although lately i wish we wern't
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I assume you haven't used RDS. It provides many functions, all of which can be disabled. In it's most basic mode it will simply display the station name your tuned into (and it's content type), which in itself is handy on the ever crowded bandwidth. Switch it into traffic mode (which what this story is about), and it will interrupt whatever your listening too (CD/MD/Tape/Radio/MP3) as soon as another station starts broadcasting a traffic report. If it's not of interest you can press a button, and it cancels, returning you to whatever you had on before (it does this automatically after the broadcast too). Press the button again, and it switches off completely.
It does other things too, like synchronize your clocks.
I seem to be tragically uninformed about this RDS technology. Before I read this article, I had never before heard about RDS, so this may be a knee-jerk reaction here but....
This technology seems to be one of the worst ideas I have ever heard of. From the article:
"When a local traffic announcement is being broadcast, a signal is sent and the car radio switches to it."
On the surface, this technology seems to be harmless. In the event of an emergency, it can be used to quickly inform the public of important information.
The problem here is that it does not seem to be optional. (correct me if I am wrong, as I said, my knowledge level on this is VERY limited.) If this 'switching' is not optional, it can very easily be used to control what information is allowed on the radio. If there are any 'incorrect viewpoints' being expressed, well, simply tune all radios to a special frequency that is broadcasting a recording saying that radio services are temporarily unavailable. Then track down whoever is making the unacceptable broadcast.
No wonder the government is so upset about this break of their (non) security...Imagine, someone other than the govt telling people what it is ok to think!
From the article:
"the radio stays tuned in until the car goes out of range or the driver switches off the RDS feature."
So, it's easy to fix this problem:
Step 1. Notice the signals' been hijacked (hmm... I don't remember my Classic Rock station ever playing 'N Sync before....)
Step 2. Hit the "RDS Off" button (or equivalent)
doesn't seem so tough to me....
An audi I got last May. The RDS doesn't do much for me. Some stations make the display say "PUBLIC" then "K..." or "JAZZ" then "K..."
it's an old stlye 4 colour broadcaster provided information service put into the signal... you jump to text mode and enter 3 digit page numbers with your remote.
i think that the system transmits all the pages in a cycle for when pages have dynamic content... and when you jump to a new page it takes a random length of time to switch.
it was way cool.. tv info, captioning, recipes, contact details, horoscopes and hideous mazes of advertising on commercial stations.
fastext had 4 hotbuttons that could be assigned to words on screen and would link to other pages. really primitive but it did have blinking text...
:: Sinister voice ::
..."
"There is nothing wrong with your radio
Do not adjust your radio set.
We are in control of this transmission
-=- SiKnight
Maybe I could finally get the dee-jay to play some Zappa for me...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When will people learn to always think a "feature" through completely?
Any feature, on any system, can be used and abused. You have to think of the possible aspects of a feature before you design it.
Example: Macros in MS Office having so much power.
Reason: you can do some pretty amazing stuff with the right programming in a macro.
Actual usage (abusage?): Macro Viruses
This is just another example of someone not thinking ahead.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
UK as opposed to Sweden f.ex. has a live and kicking undergrond radio culture, with lots of interesting shows.
In Sweden radio SUX SUX, even in 'larger' cities. I hope this RDS hijacking doesn't give the UK government an excuse to start a major campain against pirate radio, given this new 'concern'.
BTW, I own an RDS car-radio, and you can disable traffic-information-override as well as other RDS features. What intrigues me is that in Sweden RDS is extensivley used for broadcasting commercials, like 'TV $999 at SEARS' so I would imagine RDS becoming an instant success in the US, and was very surpriced to hear it wasn't common.
Moral 1: Pirate radio is probably superior in content to licenced equiv.
Moral 2: I hope this doesn't lead to a crackdown of stations in the UK.
Moral 3: Digital radio? well not in the piss poor DAB implementation that we have in europe anyway.
This type of thing isn't much different than the old trick of using a powerful FM modulator and overriding the radio in a nearby car.
A few years back, a friend of mine had a modified FM modulator that could override anything within 50 yards. Imagine the shocked faces of 4 black guys in a slammed Sentra hearing "I'm a little teapot.." thumping in their system...
Sunny and warm with--
We interrupt this broadcast
for sex pistols live!
is whether a station is commercial or pirate they have no right trying to force themselves upon the public in the way being described here. Although then again I can't imagine pirate stations wanting to risk advertising (that's if they could afford it)
1. RDS and RDS EON (Extended Other Network) is a great system for it's time. ie about 1981. That's why there is no security built-in - it just wasn't a design consideration (should of been, maybe?).
2. Very limited info is delivered to the user, including:
Station name
Station music type (Blues/Jazz etc)
Station Freq's
Traffic Flag
3. 'TP' (Traffic Programme) is OPTIONAL. You just hit the TP button to turn it on or off - it's not totalitarian! We're not that bad!
The Traffic signal is broadcast by any station delivering traffic info. The radio detects these signals and switches to that station, if you have selected TP 'ON'. The signal is not broadcast by the station you are listening to.
Absit Invidia
Well, depends on the point of view. I have often heared british people talking about the "europeans" when they mean the people on the continent.
It's just another option, like Dolby sound. You hit a button, and it shuts off.
It's not really useful yet, but hopefully as more stations start using it it will be possible to quickly scan the radio stations for a specific type of programming.
I'd rather have something I can still build a reciever for without excessive numbers of chips. I *really* hope that the up-and-coming digital radio doesnt push the old analogue FM & AM stations.
You can make an AM reciever from some wire, some sheets of tin foil, a plastic bag and a lump of coal. Of course, you need headphones and a verra big antenna.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I also wanted to mention that this feature can easily be turned on and off by one of the buttons on the radio. This would be helpful in avoiding situations like those mentioned in the article.
:) Oh well.....
I also noticed a bunch of typos in the first message
Great, now listening to the radio is turning into a damned war. I don't mind pirate radio stations, but auto-switching my radio to their station is just un-cool...
And I don't know what body or committee came up with the idea for the RDS, but did they not think if this possibility ahead of time?
"Ok, we're going to make it so car radios can have their channels changed automatically for emergency broadcasts and such"
"Cool, but what aboout people taking advantage of this such as radio pirates and evyl [subliminal]microsoft[/subliminal] corporations?
"Nah...they wouldn't do that..."
"Ok, lets do it..
Guess I'll just have to settle for my cd-changer...until I can score an Empeg player anyway :)
Ender
Nothing to see here
What I'm curious about is, what were the pirates transmitting? Top 40? Polka? Advertisements? Audio pr0n? Given the sorry repetitive state of most radio stations in the US (I imagine the situation is much the same in the UK, after all, they did give us the Spice Girls) I'd probably thank the radio pirate who let me listen to some off-the-beaten-track tunes. Please, no more Britney Spears!
(sorry if a blank comment got posted before this)
RDS has been in use for at least two years in Bend, Oregon. A few stations have it, notably KSJJ (a country station, of all things, and had RDS first here). I'm using a Grundig YB 500 world receiver.
I've seen several other people say that they have RDS in other cities in the U.S., mostly major areas (Boston, L.A.), but Bend is a city with a mere population of 50,000. So, perhaps it's not that you don't have RDS in your area... you just don't have a receiver capable of using it.
Too bad, because it's kinda cool. Can't wait to hear a pirate radio station hijack the country stations. :)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Radio data system info (in german I'm afraid, but it seems very informative... maybe this is a case for babelfish?)
RDS forum
Ner lbh sebz gur HFN? Gura lbh'ir whfg ivbyngrq gur QZPN!
If the end-user has switched on a function that will change frequencies based on the claimed content by the new channel, then the opportunities for abuse are wide-open.
Did the article really say This will allow them to find out precisely how the pirates operate their listener-stealing trick. Gak! The article says that there is a code you transmit to tell the recipient's radio that you are transmitting an announcement. Is the "how" any more complex than it looks on the surface?
Whether or not they come up with a spamblock technique at the regulatory level, the radios should have killfiles anyhow. "I want to listen to priority traffic announcements except for those on 102.7 MHz"
there'd be nothing to listen to in the uk...
The RDS TP (Traffic Programme) CAN be turned off. My home tuner has this feature, my car deck and my DTS reciever also has it. It's very standard in Norway. Whenever this feature is turned on, it says TP in the display.
...and NTSC for that matter. ;)
Also, there's a restriction here, a radio station cannot use this feature, unless it really involves a critical traffic situation.
There are several other interesting features to RDS, here's an example of what the Norwegian Broadcasting company (NRK) programme 2 contains: FM modulated sound (Duh!), GPS ground beacon time correction signal (For the naval traffic, it's used to adjust the signal from the satelites.), RDS (With RDS Text for displaying what the channel contains, RDS time, RDS PTY Programme Type (It can be Pop, Opera, Talk etc.), Channel ID and other digital control signals for special pagers etc..
Quite a lot, that is. I'm actually amazed that USA still use AM radio.
I think most people in Europe are aware of this feature, it's been impossible to buy a radio without RDS for around 5-6 years and I think the system has been in place for around 10.
m l
The traffic reports and retuning the radio to the current station as you wonder the country is useful.
Another nice feature are station titles and genre's, so you actually know what you're listening too, this feature has made it into home system's too. It also allows radio's to auto configure their own presets, etc.
A more important system called DABS (Digital Audio Broadcasting System) has also been running since 1993 I believe, I think most of the BBC stations were available on this, however for a number of years the receivers have been horrendously expensive.
However, a revised version which works on mpeg compression was completed in 98, this also includes a data stream which contains news updates and all kinds of meta data, e.g. the name and artist of the current song playing, it's kind of like RDS + PointCast combined into one. (Remember that old push technology?).
Anyway, they're really trying to push DABS into the mainstream market now much like they've done with Digital TV. You can find more info at : http://www.bbc.co.uk/digital/html/radio/index.sht
For the people who were asking about TeleText check out http://www.teletext.co.uk , this system has been in place for years now (12 years +) and has been replaced/suplimented with an updated Web based service on Digital stations.
The government are really backing digital and are hoping to kill off the old analogue systems by 2006 so they can license the ether off to mobile phone networks (GSM) for a pretty penny.
Last time i checked, the UK was in Europe. Although lately i wish we wern't ;)
... (eg I "heard somewhere)
I heard a preliminary news item about reports of a rumour
suggesting that Britain was opening negotiations to try to get into NAFTA (or whatever we call it these days). Any reports on that side of the Atlantic?
When I saw the title, I thought it'd be an article on how Spamford Wallace had found a way to bug people with commercials without stealing the network bandwidth the victims pay for.
Well the character set used for teletext is the one used on the old BBC Micros... infact the resolution/colours was probably the same as one of the text modes on the BBC..
You also used to beable to receive programs that where transmit over the TV signal with a special piece of kit.
They haven't arrested the pirates, and now, they are telling us that they are close to catching them. *hint hint*, pirates move your operations.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I have a Pioneer deck in my car - model DEH-P835RW to be exact. It does RDS. You can also set it to "listen" for traffic advisories on a given station. The thing is - you set this feature by finding a station that's flying a certain flag, then you just leave it there.
In this little hick town in Colorado, a few stations do RDS for cheesy call letter IDs, but NONE of them do the TA/TP stuff last I checked. So, I leave it off.
My point is - how can this hijacking stuff be happening? It must either happen to luser radios that scan the WHOLE band looking for traffic programs, or they are using some other trick.
Actually, it was in limited use here in the states. A station here in Tampa used it some years back to broadcast news and weather blurbs. A very few televisions were built with teletext receivers in them (I think Zenith built one). But you'll never see it again here. The vertical blanking lines that were used by teletext are now allocated to Closed Captioning.
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
can some one point me to a resource for more info on RDS ???
well, Texas is part of the USA, but just try to get anyone to admit to it, on either side :)
I've fantasized about this for a long time: sending messages to other cars! Not forcing peoples stations to change, but maybe sending a little "beep" and displaying on their radio display "Your left turn signal has been on for the past 30 miles grandpa"
E.
http://wber.monroe.edu
:)
Give 'em a listen. It's listener supported radio, the djs are all volunteer, the music varies pretty widely (mostly alternative/modern rock, but thats what I like so...)
and they have an 80k real audio feed
Search first, ask questions later.
Anyone remember that Nickelodeon show, "Pete & Pete"? This story sounds like a bad episode of that. I can just imagine people hooking up walkie-talkies to signal amplifiers and taping down the transmit button...
Typo Daemon
Not very closed then, eh? So your step one is kinda off.
So there is an "ignore traffic broadcast" button, huh? Guess that means your step two is off, too.
*sigh* Try reading the article.
This sig is false.
http://www.rds.org.uk/rds98/mainpublications.htm This links to the publications of the RDS standard. After all, it is an open standard. Anyone who wants to can read and find out how they are doing this.
Public radio is pretty much all that is worth listening to. for another cool station check out KCRW Los Angeles. Mix of talk and music, but they have a music only stream too, very eclectic mix. Unfortunately it is only a 16k RA stream, they need to upgrade.
:)
Everybody needs to support your local public radio stations. Or hell just pledge to one of the ones on the net that you like.
Q.
Geez. Whats with you people? This "feature" is optional. It has a frickin off button.
You don't have to turn it on if you don't want to.
If you're afraid of being sucked into a pirate station, or even a legit station, *you can turn it off*.
Please return to your normal comment posting.
This sig is false.
I may be interested in learning, from first principles. Harder for some, but pretty damned effectively learning method.
And maybe I don't *want* to. Maybe I *NEED* to.
High power AM transmitters and crude little 'crystal' recievers are freedom's friends. They aid the spread information. Cellphones and faxes and internet also do that - but radio did it first (ok, printing did come earlier, but radio waves don't care about borders).
China used to (I think they got over it, finally) send people to 're-education' camps if they committed a horrendess act...like making shortwave recievers that worked. That's how scared despots are of crude little receivers.
I'm so happy we have state-run radio in Canada as well as the commercial stations...
; }return(0);}
They keep eachother more-or-less honest (ok so both commercial and government radio are inherently biased) and the government radio (CBC) has no advertising. None. No crappy programming to grab listeners (stern) and some of the best people in the radio business (shelagh rogers and peter gzowski)
the us public stations are public, not state-run, and have those obnoxious we-want-money-from-our-listeners things.
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
This may seem silly, but as our vehicles become more computerized in nature, wouldn't it be likely that exploits like this could become even more harmful than changing a radio station? Some cars today can receive satellite signals from the manufacturer to unlock their car doors...what if someone found a way to spoof that? Same with the proposed system to control a car's speed using GPS from government satellites. How hard would it be to hack into it and suddenly make thousands of cars stop? I know very little about the actual technology involved in this sort of thing, so any one who actually has knowledge of this would be doing us laypeople a favor by explaining it all. What are the chances of Very Bad Things happening as a result of computerized cars?
(nt) means no text
Teletext is pretty lame. You have to wait until the page you want happens to be broadcast. It might have had its day, but the world has long since passed it by.
Just drive around with an FM kit from ramsey electronics (or several and a combiner) and use the capture effect to your advantage. Now everybody can not only here the thump from you car, they hear the tune through their radio. Course it helps to have an 88-108 MHz amp (heh heh heh heh heh). Pirate radio forever!!!!
you just did.
but then I'll bet you're going to say that you're not from the U.S., right?
Insert mind here.
RDS sounds like a great idea. Like all great ideas it will take time for it to sort out. Perhaps by the time it arrives to mainstream America, our European brethren will have debugged the system properly. Regarding Pirates, I would not be overly concerned given the homogenization of commercial radio. In some ways perhaps they would infuse some spontaneity and fun back into radioland.
First off, DrewMIT, who would hijack a classic rock station to broadcast nsync? :)
:)
Anyhow, back when I was incarcerated in high school (jonkatz fodder) a friend of mine rigged up a little transmitter that overrided the signal of FM radio. It cost a whopping $20 to build, it ran off the car battery and was about the size of an 8mm tape, not counting the little antenna he attached to it. We would amuse ourselves by driving on the interstate and scaring little teenyboppers in their VWs listening to (back then) nirvana or butt err pearl jam. The look on their faces when that would cut off for "Hey, you! You in the black VW!..." or something cool like underworld. Though the signal was mono and had a dynamic range worth shit, we mainly kept it to vocal hijinks. Now that you mention it, even "legit" FM has a horrible sound both from a technical and a musical standpoint. Hijacking a signal like this RDS thing isn't all that new, RDS just makes it easier
Which unsurprisingly is a mandatory standard feature for any RDS radio. The button is usually marked "TA" (Traffic Announcement). There is usually another button for switching automatic programme tracking on and off; for instance I can set my car radio to seek local news bulletins, classical music, drama, rock music etc. The programme categories are pretty similar to MP3 genres. If you just want to stay tuned to your favourite station, you just switch these two features off and the radio acts like a normal dumb American radio. Normally the radio comes installed with traffic anouncements switched on and programme tracking switched off.
You can usually also make RDS radios less prone to switching to stations very far away by adjusting the "local" feature; usually this has two or three settings which allow you to adjust the sensitivity of the set, useful if for instance you drive around on the tops of hills and tend to pick up traffic bulletins from a hundred miles away or so (which may be local to Americans, but it sure as hell ain't local to us Brits). In my experience RDS will only switch you between stations on the same network (BBC will only switch to BBC, commercial will only switch to commerical). Therefore I suspect the piracy element of RDS is just pirates stealing listeners off other pirates.
Frankly the digital backwardness of the USA never ceases to amaze me, for a country that is always thrusting itself down our TV sets at the model of the western world. You don't have RDS, you don't have digital mobile phones in rural areas, you'll be telling me next you don't have digital terrestrial TV through an aerial!
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
RDS isn't meant for normal stations to *force* you to listen to their music format - Top40, whatever - but just to zoom you in when they're broadcasting TRAFFIC reports. I doubt any station would get away with constantly broadcasting the RDS signal along with their normal one 24 hours a day, trying to hijack listeners. People would revolt. Transmitters would be torn down, DJs lynched.
:)
Hmm... there's a thought...
I can't disagree with you on the "left of the dial" comment, though. But consider that many of those stations, who broadcast traffic, will probably also spit out an RDS signal... though I can't think of any stations of that sort in my area that DO broadcast traffic... *shrug*
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
The Original Bobski dun said:
Actually, if US-based teletext is the same thing as "text mode" on modern closed-captioning equipped TVs (all TVs with diagonal screen measurements of 13 inches or larger built since 1993 must have built-in CC by law; every CC-equipped TV I've ever seen has the "text mode" in CC along with regular mode, and usually two to four channels of both regular and text mode per TV channel at that) then not only is it not dead but has sort of been blended in with CC in general.
The largest use in most areas for "text mode"/US teletext seems to be in program listings for the hearing impaired (I know ABC occasionally lists these in text mode); in Kentucky, the public broadcast system works with University of Kentucky ag-school and county extension offices in running AGTEXT which is a full system for providing agricultural info (everything from weather to stockyards prices to insect infestation alerts to farming tips) on KET stations. (I discovered it accidentially on Louisville's main KET affiliate when I got a TV with CC [when they were first requiring them by law] and was playing about with the different modes--and was quite suprised to see the teletext in text mode on WKMJ-68 :)
I don't know if anyone else is doing anything similar to AGTEXT anymore, but I'd imagine so in states which are still largely rural and also have statewide public broadcast networks and/or big ag-schools like UK has. I think AGTEXT is neat as hell, anyways :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
I've been considering getting an Empeg of late, and just went and checked on their site - the Empeg has RDS capability. I do hope they set it up as an option and not a required thing - and I figure they did.
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
I don't ever think i've heard a song i like on this station...but to each his own. The Nerver (95.1/95.5) USED to be a cool station, in 95, but they sucked out when they changed their format last fall. thank god for the cd player in my car :)
I hope we never get RDS in the US! What has not been mentioned yet is that also interrupts tapes being played on the cassette player. The interruption contains COMMERCIALS of course! When it happend to us in Italy, the "important traffic information" contained a list of all incidents in the northernn half of Italy! It was at least a two or three minute interruption to our tape.
I see a lot of people saying something to the effect of "When will RDS be available in the states" (I thought they had it already a long time but hey).
:)
RDS is pretty cool because you get extra digital info. But wait! DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) is already around the corner. DAB is already broadcasting in pilot projects in Europe (and probably in other places too) and has interference free "CD quality" (mpeg layer 2 200kbit/s) audio. Of course, there will be a host of other goodies (and not so goodies) like the ability to incorporate "pay-radio" etc.
The fun part is this: (taken from the dab faq)
What are 'additional services'?
DAB was developed with the aim of improving radio reception. This is why audio transmission was at the forefront of the development process. But DAB, as a digital transmission system, can transmit other data as well as audio. In principle any type of information can be transmitted by DAB, provided simply that it is available in digital form and does not exceed the maximum available DAB data rate (approx. 1.7 Mbit/s). Examples of such additional services are still pictures accompanying radio programmes, digitalised traffic messages (Traffic Message Channel), electronic newspapers, software updates and even animated video. This process leads to 'multimedia broadcasting' in which all forms of information can be conveyed via the common transmission medium DAB. In this context DAB could be described as the 'cordless information highway'. In contrast to multimedia applications via TV/cable, DAB additional services can also be received in-car and with portable equipment.
I wonder how long it will take for pirates to tap into this flexible resource, full of possibilities
look at http://www.worlddab.org for more
Well, no. CC bears no resemblance to teletext. Teletext in the States followed the same protocols as used in Europe. At its best it looked no better than ANSI graphics in DOS (which, I must say, in its time was pretty cool). At its worst it was just a bunch of colorful text.
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
hey, i live in tampa too. what TV station was this??
Supposing it is a digital medium couldn't they use some type of authentication or encryption? I would think that that would be the most obvious solution.
There are a few stations that already support RDS in Australia (eg: TripleJ), and systems are available here that support the RDS standard. It's been running here quite a while, it's just that not many radio stations have picked it up. I have already accidently tuned into one radio station here that was transmitting someone elses RDS signal. It didn't last long though, they vanished pretty quick.
RDS is a very old technology, and it's a real wonder this hasn't happened before. RDS is carried on a "subchannel" on the FM signal, and digital data such as the station name, time signal, etc, is transmitted. My car syncronises the inbuilt clock with that of the radio station every 2-3 minutes. (It did take TripleJ about a month to adjust to daylight savings however).
But it's not hard to fake another stations RDS signature. If a station transmits someone elses RDS signature, and your radio is set to tune to the strongest station with the same RDS sig, well.. you can guess the result I think. The original idea is to allow for movement between different locations/states that have the same station broadcasting on a different frequency, and having your car radio follow the signal automatically and seamlessly. It's just an abuse of the system that no one bothered to cater for, and even if they did, it'd be hard to implement, as the data is all one way. You could capture the data and simply re-send it, or even receive their signal and then re-transmit it. It may have even been considered, and deemed simply not worth the trouble of worrying about it.
If anything, this will lead to more publicity for pirate stations, but that also means that the people designated for tracking down pirate radio stations might hear about it a lot sooner than normal. And if they have a list of authorised frequencies that a particular RDS signal is transmitted on, then it's just a matter of singling out the ones that have a valid RDS signal but the wrong frequency. For the pirates, I'd count this as a two-edged sword.
I'd been lead to believe that RDS had been used in Australia for quite some time - though only by TripleJ (an Aussie youth [U/25] oriented station) can anyone confirm/denie?
At least we have toothpaste, soap and hot water and WE use them all.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I have had every new Pioneer Unit that they have come out with since '93 (ex-dealer perks), and they were the first in the US to use IDlogic and RDS. Too bad here in NY it really isn't used for what it was designed for, the stations just display call letters and tag lines.
Pioneer Car Stereo w/ RDS @ pioneerelectronics.com
BTW: They do have on/off settings
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
In the UK if you are tuned to a BBC station it will automatically switch to another BBC local or national station when they broadcast traffic information. This seems to use something called EON but I've no idea what that is.
Sig is taking a break!
Traffic news is good but there is an increasing amount of advertising and promotion of their other shows creaping into the traffic announcements and I would hope their licenses prohibit this.
Sig is taking a break!
and it was on the BBC news.
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
In Italy it often happens that some stations send the signal quite a lot prior to the traffic news, so YOU HAVE TO listen to their ads, instead of the real traffic message. That's quite annoying, so I always set my radio to not receiving the TP (traffic programme), while other RDS services are still working: transmission of alternate frequencies (AF) or the name of the station.
But, do Americans really not know about RDS? Is Europe here more "futuristic"? I used it for at least 10 years now! But then, the Web was also invented "here".
ms
In Perth at least, Triple J is already broadcasting on RDS I believe. My Mum's car radio picks it up.
harshbutfair: you know it makes sense
www.harshbutfair.org
HA! It was bound to happen. Already some stations in the Netherlands use the car radio displays to not only display the station name, but also the weather and ads. These ads even have phone numbers in them! Imagine driving at 100Kph, steering with your knees, eyes fixed firmly on the car radio display and taking down a phone number. Talk about road safety...
Half a year ago I heard about a related application of RDS: the Dutch police are dicking around with automated speed cameras that can read your license plate. They wanted to combine this with RDS to warn speeders: "Hello RB-VH-97, you were just caught doing 140KPh in a 100Kph zone. The Hfl 450,- fine is in the mail. Have a nice day". Kinda cool isn't it?
This news article bears a great resemblance to the current DVD crypto debacle. They're both examples of engineers assuming that no one will figure out their proprietary scheme because they're proprietary, instead of using a good design with strong crypto.
But if you think that the RDS situation is bad, wait until someone figures out the EAS system. This is the emergency warning system in the US that replaced the old EBS system. Having worked in college radio, I've had a small amount of experience with it. From what I understand of it, the network is basically a big tree structure with the FCC on top. They have a super secret code that can transmit across the network that will allow the President to interrupt all TV and Radio broadcasts and transmit what he wanted. I'm just waiting for a modern-day "Captain Midnight" to figure this out and hijack every single broadcast across the nation. Heh.
For more info on the EAS check out:
http://www.fcc.gov/cib/easfact.html
Didn't he have another song about this?
dem a call us pirates
dem a call us illegal broadcasters
just because we play
what the people want...
RDS is new? OK ..... I am never going to belive posts on slashdot about a new kernel or anything again ;)
EON = Extended Other Network. It's what adds the "extra" functionality - stuff like Traffic/News switching, clock signals, Radiotext, and the PTY (programme type) searching.
qube
how hard is it to turn off the radio? I like dave.
Thats not true. Look for the college radio stations near your area. Especially after about 2:00AM when they let the extra-weird students DJ. Its the most entertaining thing on the air.
Society of Broadcast Engineers:
http//www.sbe.org/eas/eas.html
Risks Digest:
Emergency Alert System interrupts Hurricane Announcement, and crashes
Also, a real hoot... after the government mandated the system (and the broadcasters bought the requisite equipment), an outfit named Quad Dimensions announced that they owned a patent that covered the entire system, and sent out royalty requests to all stations(!) Wasn't able to find a link covering this, but maybe someone else can...
I have worked as a presenter on a UK based RSL (restricted service license) station. We were running the RDS system (unusually for RSLs), and were all told "*never* flick the traffic flag switch unless you are giving traffic info". The license conditions are quite clear about this I think.
X.