We had a 5.29 repeater in the SF Bay area that took years to pull, but got pulled. It turned out the control operator had moved away! He said he'd left the repeater in someone else's care, but if that person existed they did not police the repeater.
If you care about this, start writing letters to FCC. They really do enforcement if pushed, the letter file is here.
It might make sense if governed properly, but the filer didn't propose any means of governance and didn't even know about HSMM-MESH when he wrote his proposal. He's a winlink node owner and his intent was to use GNUPG to encode text messages, and did not consider the abuses that could happen with TCP/IP. So, I am spending the whole day to write an FCC comment and hopefully fix this.
They get surplus business band radios, mostly. One reason is that the Federal Government has required several frequency, bandwidth, and mode changes of municipal radio users, so almost-new radios that were too wide or didn't run APCO-25 became available at low prices.
For the most part, commercial radios are really overpriced. It is not unusual for a police car transceiver to come in at $5000. FCC certified GMRS radios seem rather overpriced for their performance. There are cheap chinese radios for land-mobile which are not certified for GMRS, these are really just broad-banded ham radios.
Actually, it would be a simple matter to gateway https back to http. And since the rule prohibits encryption for the purpose of obscuring information, authentication through encryption is OK. Your password need not be transmitted in the clear. Just don't obscure the message traffic.
In general, though, the web doesn't belong on ham radio just because it's private use. There are lots of other services for private communications. There is also of course the fact that advertising isn't allowed on ham radio, because the rules prohibit commercial use.
CB? Just read Slashdot at -1 level, and consider whether you really want to hear goatse, racial slurs, etc. every time you try to have an intelligent conversation on the radio.
Any time you hear characterization of hams in general by a non-ham, that is shorthand for "I resent that there's a written test on radio theory and rules, and I'm too lazy to study for it". Just ask a CB-er or freebander sometimes. "Hams are snobs" is always the excuse.
It's not dead. Actually, there are more hams today in the US than at any time in history.
But if you want to kill it, making it just like the internet might be a good way.
A lot of us don't consider swear words useful traffic. Just annoying immaturity. And we can send any useful traffic that we don't want to hide. Stuff you want to hide belongs on the ample resources already provided for that.
As it happens, you can authenticate using encryption and have digital signatures within the current rules. You just can't use encryption to obscure the message.
How can we tell that an encrypted message is an emergency communications drill, or anything else?
Don Rolph, the filer, wasn't even aware of HSMM-MESH before I introduced him to it yesterday. So, he missed a whole lot of implications that he's only discovering this morning.
Actually, your ham license does not grant you "rights to the airwaves". It grants you the right to operate within a shared resource which is held for the public interest.
One problem with allowing encryption is that it would allow you to usurp that shared resource for a private communication to which nobody but your in-group is admitted. How would you like it if you were locked off of the air by other folks doing it?
Good luck with your upgrade. It might be a good time to read Part 97, especially the justification for the Amateur service right at the start.
Thanks
Bruce Perens K6BP (Extra Class license, back when there was a 20 WPM code test, thank goodness you won't have to take one)
The public comment period runs until July 7. There is no need to wait until the FCC issues an NPRM before you say everything there is to be said about encryption on the Amateur bands. They would like to hear from you now.
What was the problem with unloading Symphony on consulting support based upon LibreOffice? Given that this is a business they want to be rid of, I would expect they would not need to bolt proprietary stuff on to it any longer.
Regarding MariaDB support, I think you're correct that they're treating it as a competitor. This wasn't really the case for MySQL. IBM provided a supported version of MySQL.
IBM is most visible around Apache OpenOffice. What they are doing around MySQL v. MariaDB is tacit support through inaction. They didn't turn to supporting MariaDB or another MySQL version when Oracle de-supported MySQL on IBM platforms. They did something similar during Oracle v. Google - they chose just that time to abandon the Harmony project and commit to Oracle's JDK.
If they own the copyright, they are free to relicense a piece of data
Sorry to be pedantic, but replace "a piece of data" with "a work of authorship". If there isn't the creative work of a human being involved, it's not copyrightable. And then we get to this:
17 CFR 102(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
And that means that even when the hand of man is involved, a lot of things are still not copyrightable.
Let's look at what Oracle is doing. I'll start the list of moves that appear to be intended to alienate the community around the very software they're promoting and cause the Open Source community to create viable forks that end up absconding with the product and its market. You guys contribute additional examples...
Oracle v. Google regarding Java and the premise that APIs are copyrightable.
Apache OpenOffice v. LibreOffice (which has a full-time negative publicity generator in Rob Weir).
MySQL v. MariaDB.
IBM isn't known for dumb moves, but partnering with Oracle on this sure is one.
For years, we have had a cut-out in ITAR 121 that applies to Open Source, it is due to a lawsuit that Phil Karn brought against the Federal Government. Thus, you can implement with impunity, and export to anywhere, as long as it's Open Source.
Rather than an encryption gateway, having your email client handle encryption avoids the problem of man-in-the-middle attacks between the gateway and the client.
I don't have much reason to encrypt, but Thunderbird has my certificate installed and does my digital signing. This is not unusual for a modern email client.
Slashdot Mirror
Fines of over $10,000 are not unusual. I have seen a number of pleadings in which the fine is reduced to $6000 or so on surrender of the license.
We had a 5.29 repeater in the SF Bay area that took years to pull, but got pulled. It turned out the control operator had moved away! He said he'd left the repeater in someone else's care, but if that person existed they did not police the repeater.
If you care about this, start writing letters to FCC. They really do enforcement if pushed, the letter file is here.
It would be legal to send a message in the clear, with a digital signature along with it. You can't obscure the message.
It might make sense if governed properly, but the filer didn't propose any means of governance and didn't even know about HSMM-MESH when he wrote his proposal. He's a winlink node owner and his intent was to use GNUPG to encode text messages, and did not consider the abuses that could happen with TCP/IP. So, I am spending the whole day to write an FCC comment and hopefully fix this.
They get surplus business band radios, mostly. One reason is that the Federal Government has required several frequency, bandwidth, and mode changes of municipal radio users, so almost-new radios that were too wide or didn't run APCO-25 became available at low prices.
For the most part, commercial radios are really overpriced. It is not unusual for a police car transceiver to come in at $5000. FCC certified GMRS radios seem rather overpriced for their performance. There are cheap chinese radios for land-mobile which are not certified for GMRS, these are really just broad-banded ham radios.
I have worked really hard to fix that D-STAR issue. See FreeDV and Codec2. We expect to have that on VHF/UHF soon.
Actually, it would be a simple matter to gateway https back to http. And since the rule prohibits encryption for the purpose of obscuring information, authentication through encryption is OK. Your password need not be transmitted in the clear. Just don't obscure the message traffic.
In general, though, the web doesn't belong on ham radio just because it's private use. There are lots of other services for private communications. There is also of course the fact that advertising isn't allowed on ham radio, because the rules prohibit commercial use.
OK, since you are not interested in supporting censorship, I will give you some uncensored material.
You snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of eldeberry! I fart in your general direction!
Now, that really contributed to the conversation, didn't it?
CB? Just read Slashdot at -1 level, and consider whether you really want to hear goatse, racial slurs, etc. every time you try to have an intelligent conversation on the radio.
Any time you hear characterization of hams in general by a non-ham, that is shorthand for "I resent that there's a written test on radio theory and rules, and I'm too lazy to study for it". Just ask a CB-er or freebander sometimes. "Hams are snobs" is always the excuse.
It's not dead. Actually, there are more hams today in the US than at any time in history.
But if you want to kill it, making it just like the internet might be a good way.
A lot of us don't consider swear words useful traffic. Just annoying immaturity. And we can send any useful traffic that we don't want to hide. Stuff you want to hide belongs on the ample resources already provided for that.
As it happens, you can authenticate using encryption and have digital signatures within the current rules. You just can't use encryption to obscure the message.
We really like that it's not like the internet.
How can we tell that an encrypted message is an emergency communications drill, or anything else?
Don Rolph, the filer, wasn't even aware of HSMM-MESH before I introduced him to it yesterday. So, he missed a whole lot of implications that he's only discovering this morning.
Hi Nimbius,
Actually, your ham license does not grant you "rights to the airwaves". It grants you the right to operate within a shared resource which is held for the public interest.
One problem with allowing encryption is that it would allow you to usurp that shared resource for a private communication to which nobody but your in-group is admitted. How would you like it if you were locked off of the air by other folks doing it?
Good luck with your upgrade. It might be a good time to read Part 97, especially the justification for the Amateur service right at the start.
Thanks
Bruce Perens K6BP (Extra Class license, back when there was a 20 WPM code test, thank goodness you won't have to take one)
The public comment period runs until July 7. There is no need to wait until the FCC issues an NPRM before you say everything there is to be said about encryption on the Amateur bands. They would like to hear from you now.
What was the problem with unloading Symphony on consulting support based upon LibreOffice? Given that this is a business they want to be rid of, I would expect they would not need to bolt proprietary stuff on to it any longer.
Regarding MariaDB support, I think you're correct that they're treating it as a competitor. This wasn't really the case for MySQL. IBM provided a supported version of MySQL.
IBM is most visible around Apache OpenOffice. What they are doing around MySQL v. MariaDB is tacit support through inaction. They didn't turn to supporting MariaDB or another MySQL version when Oracle de-supported MySQL on IBM platforms. They did something similar during Oracle v. Google - they chose just that time to abandon the Harmony project and commit to Oracle's JDK.
I can't say I've had that much to do with them. HP, on the other hand, I could rant about for a while...
Sorry to be pedantic, but replace "a piece of data" with "a work of authorship". If there isn't the creative work of a human being involved, it's not copyrightable. And then we get to this:
And that means that even when the hand of man is involved, a lot of things are still not copyrightable.
I think it was the general perception that Oracle got MySQL for free, as part of the overall Sun purchase.
I graphed them next to NASDAQ as a whole for 20 years, and the graphs were very similar. Check it out for yourself, and consider the implications.
Let's look at what Oracle is doing. I'll start the list of moves that appear to be intended to alienate the community around the very software they're promoting and cause the Open Source community to create viable forks that end up absconding with the product and its market. You guys contribute additional examples...
IBM isn't known for dumb moves, but partnering with Oracle on this sure is one.
Bruce
Mounting things to light poles is 10,000 times more practical.
For years, we have had a cut-out in ITAR 121 that applies to Open Source, it is due to a lawsuit that Phil Karn brought against the Federal Government. Thus, you can implement with impunity, and export to anywhere, as long as it's Open Source.
Rather than an encryption gateway, having your email client handle encryption avoids the problem of man-in-the-middle attacks between the gateway and the client.
I don't have much reason to encrypt, but Thunderbird has my certificate installed and does my digital signing. This is not unusual for a modern email client.
Yes, the German one looks a lot more impressive, with a real person in it (piloting using the remote control) rather than a mannequin.