I stopped fighting that fight a long time ago and just roll with it. Besides, while it not be an acronym it helps differentiate from the bacon variety. I usually leave qrz.com feeling hungry.
While you are exactly correct in this assessment, the legality is currently very fuzzy and is only used in a couple specific circumstances. For instance, if you were to use 'insert band here' and 'insert digital transmission method here' to establish an SSH connection with computer system hooked up to a radio, you would likely end up being in violation of multiple rules. For instance, anybody stumbling across the signal would not be able to decode it. They will likely figure out which method of digital encoding you are using fairly easily but would be unable to decode the contents. Even if you have the keys posted on a website somewhere, who will know where to get them? Further, you must still identify yourself roughly every 10 minutes. That means you either break your connection and transmit in the clear every ten minutes, or you attach it to your packets... Only the first method would really be viable as in the second, your callsign is again, obfuscated.
People in my club have gone back and forth on this as a side project to setup a packet BBS in the local area. What we have determined is that it is fine as long as we don't encrypt anything and manage the system locally. Anything else just gets too convoluted and fuzzy in regards to the regulations. Further conversations on the topic brought up the same points I did above and we have come to the conclusion that it is for the best to keep encryption out of Amateur radio with only a very few small, specific instances.
As an Amateur Radio operator, I have mixed feelings on this. For one, being able to use encryption would be pretty neat. Being halfway around the world and being able to have a secure conversation with my wife (also a licensed HAM) would be awesome. On the other hand, the hand allocations we have right now are already pretty small and allowing encryption is just begging for more pirates to show up and splatter all over the bands. An earlier comment was right on the mark that part of the reason us HAMs study so much for our licenses is that it allows us to experiment with our radios. People who have not done this level of study will more than likely have spurious emissions or cause interference. Just look at the CB frequencies right now. When the license requirement went away for CB, the band was 'okay' for a while. Now though, you have guys cranking out thousands of watts and splattering all over the place. On the other hand I know how to transmit a 1500 watt signal while keeping all that power limited to within 100 Hz.
As for the comment asking how relevant Amateur Radio is, I would say that it is still extremely relevant. Most advances in radio communications both on the HF and the microwave frequencies for the last 100 years have been done by amateur radio operators. Lets not forget the constant tinkering we do with our antennas and coming up with new antenna designs, several of which are now in common commercial use.
The last ATI card I bought was an HD5970 shortly after it was released. The card worked... fairly well... Performance on some games was pretty good but others were full of artifacts and/or crashed outright. Various driver releases alleviated some problems but not nearly all of them. Most problems required some "creative" solutions on my part to get my programs to work correctly. After finally getting fed up with the whole situation, I finally caved in and bought an NVidia card. Performance increased and I never had any problems with it. As long as both card companies stay roughly on par, I'll stick with NVidia.
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I stopped fighting that fight a long time ago and just roll with it. Besides, while it not be an acronym it helps differentiate from the bacon variety. I usually leave qrz.com feeling hungry.
While you are exactly correct in this assessment, the legality is currently very fuzzy and is only used in a couple specific circumstances. For instance, if you were to use 'insert band here' and 'insert digital transmission method here' to establish an SSH connection with computer system hooked up to a radio, you would likely end up being in violation of multiple rules. For instance, anybody stumbling across the signal would not be able to decode it. They will likely figure out which method of digital encoding you are using fairly easily but would be unable to decode the contents. Even if you have the keys posted on a website somewhere, who will know where to get them? Further, you must still identify yourself roughly every 10 minutes. That means you either break your connection and transmit in the clear every ten minutes, or you attach it to your packets... Only the first method would really be viable as in the second, your callsign is again, obfuscated. People in my club have gone back and forth on this as a side project to setup a packet BBS in the local area. What we have determined is that it is fine as long as we don't encrypt anything and manage the system locally. Anything else just gets too convoluted and fuzzy in regards to the regulations. Further conversations on the topic brought up the same points I did above and we have come to the conclusion that it is for the best to keep encryption out of Amateur radio with only a very few small, specific instances.
As an Amateur Radio operator, I have mixed feelings on this. For one, being able to use encryption would be pretty neat. Being halfway around the world and being able to have a secure conversation with my wife (also a licensed HAM) would be awesome. On the other hand, the hand allocations we have right now are already pretty small and allowing encryption is just begging for more pirates to show up and splatter all over the bands. An earlier comment was right on the mark that part of the reason us HAMs study so much for our licenses is that it allows us to experiment with our radios. People who have not done this level of study will more than likely have spurious emissions or cause interference. Just look at the CB frequencies right now. When the license requirement went away for CB, the band was 'okay' for a while. Now though, you have guys cranking out thousands of watts and splattering all over the place. On the other hand I know how to transmit a 1500 watt signal while keeping all that power limited to within 100 Hz. As for the comment asking how relevant Amateur Radio is, I would say that it is still extremely relevant. Most advances in radio communications both on the HF and the microwave frequencies for the last 100 years have been done by amateur radio operators. Lets not forget the constant tinkering we do with our antennas and coming up with new antenna designs, several of which are now in common commercial use.
The last ATI card I bought was an HD5970 shortly after it was released. The card worked... fairly well... Performance on some games was pretty good but others were full of artifacts and/or crashed outright. Various driver releases alleviated some problems but not nearly all of them. Most problems required some "creative" solutions on my part to get my programs to work correctly. After finally getting fed up with the whole situation, I finally caved in and bought an NVidia card. Performance increased and I never had any problems with it. As long as both card companies stay roughly on par, I'll stick with NVidia.