91–100 of 140 posts
(serious business to do now. The new Muppets show is on.)
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> they aren't prohibiting operating systems, they _might_ be prohibiting installation of operating systems that are not approved on certain types of devices that ... "prohibit installation" means to ban. "operating systems that are not approved on certain types of devices that ..." means specific operating systems. So, the FCC "might ban specific operating systems"; you've paraphrased what the title says.
Are you being obtuse on purpose? The headline is intentionally worded in such a way to make people believe the FCC is going to ban OSX, Linux, or Windows. If the author believes it's an important issue, he should be intellectually honest about it, because otherwise he risks having people write him off as a quack. It makes it look appear as if there aren't many valid arguments in his favor, so he has to resort to FUD.
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Just to fill in the context that's missing here: 1. If you have a single radio unit, you can easily do the "software" implementation where you look at what you're going to be broadcasting and cut it off if it's not legal. The problem comes when you have separate radio and amplifiers - the amplifier has no idea what whether you're feeding it 10M or CB frequncies. It will amplify either just fine, so the FCC really pre…
Thanks for the info, cbhl and paulmd. I'm afraid I still don't quite get it, probably because I don't understand EE and radio as well as I ought to. Why is there significant expense in putting a ROM chip between the radio and the amplifier that cuts out certain frequencies? I can see where that's not as simple as mandating software that is simply incapable of generating bad frequencies in the first place, but it intu…
Adding a protection device merely shifts the problem (being discussed) from the radio to the protection device.
It achieves exactly nothing.
I was slightly surprised about a week ago when I came across the NPRM by accident and realized the comment period was already over. But, I'm more taken aback though by the reactions here to this guy's (admittedly alarmist) thoughts... From reading the comments here, it sounds like only a couple people scanned past the headlines. TL/DR, Eric (Who is actively involved in the OpenWrt project), makes a very good case tha…
There are still major manufacturers that recognize the enthusiast and tinkerer market, and they'd be missing out if they didn't sell hardware that has a radio separated from the SoC in order to comply with the proposed regulations.
Unfortunately I can count these manufacturers with only one hand. Buffalo is one of them. Hell, they even sell their hardware with DD-WRT already installed.
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As I recall, they got around this by not being FCC licensed - in other words, HackRF is classified as a kit/developer component, and is not legal to operate unless you hold an independent license from FCC (e.g.: if you're a Ham you can use it on Ham frequencies you are licensed for). Read the disclaimer at bottom > HackRF One is test equipment for RF systems. It has not been tested for compliance with regulations gov…
What harm does listening on a frequency cause? If radio waves travel through my house I'm not allowed to listen to them?
If light travels through my telescope into my house I'm not allowed to watch it ?
Seriously just because something is "in your house" does not mean you some inherent right to it.
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Did you miss the conversation about how this fucks over people who want to install custom firmware on their routers for legitimate administration and traffic-shaping? There are plenty of uses for radio software that don't involve going outside approved frequencies.
I agree - but this rules doesn't apply to anything except SDR and modular systems that are also consumer devices - which are not most consumer devices. That said - I am not condoning the FCC policy at all - I'm actually against it - I just don't really care that much because it impacts nothing I do and so few use cases I care about.
You sure have spent a lot of time ITT explaining to everyone, advocating, practically that the FCC ruling is unimportant because you think that your own interests will be unaffected. Well, congratulations, but if we were all so short-sighted we'd eventually be reduced to only the hobbies and activities that a majority of us approve. We get it. You don't care, because you don't think it affects you.
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In the past that's exactly what they've tried to do, and this usually ends up clobbering the law-abiding users in the process. Most of these bands are pretty close to each other - the 10M HF band is right next to the CB band, the 2M band is right next to the emergency services bands and pretty close to both the aviation bands and the weather radio bands, and so on. Gear from one will pretty much just work on the near…
> There are radios and amps that use a frequency analyzer to automatically cut out when operated out of their intended bands, they're just very expensive compared to most of the gear that's out there. Why is that expensive? It obviously can't require fancy hardware if it can also be done in software.
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I agree - but this rules doesn't apply to anything except SDR and modular systems that are also consumer devices - which are not most consumer devices. That said - I am not condoning the FCC policy at all - I'm actually against it - I just don't really care that much because it impacts nothing I do and so few use cases I care about.
>"I don't care about X, because I never X." You sure have spent a lot of time ITT explaining to everyone, advocating, practically that the FCC ruling is unimportant because you think that your own interests will be unaffected. Well, congratulations, but if we were all so short-sighted we'd eventually be reduced to only the hobbies and activities that a majority of us approve. We get it. You don't care, because you do…
In this thread my only point is the FCC hardware restricting instead of requiring software restriction neuters SDR to begin with so is a dead end. It's all or nothing insofar as "protections" go. My view is still it should be nothing, but I don't think it is as big a deal as its being made out to be.
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But the FCC regulates a great deal of equipment, and this is only targeting a very specific subset of that equipment - not all of it. I was initially pretty concerned as I'm a Ham radio operator, but this really does not concern me overly much now that it's clear it's: A) SDR/Modular only B) Consumer only
Quite a bit of "consumer" equipment is halfway to an SDR already, and a ruling like this would mean you could never write or release FOSS firmware for a wireless card. (Note that wireless cards with FOSS firmware exist today.)
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> they aren't prohibiting operating systems, they _might_ be prohibiting installation of operating systems that are not approved on certain types of devices that ... "prohibit installation" means to ban. "operating systems that are not approved on certain types of devices that ..." means specific operating systems. So, the FCC "might ban specific operating systems"; you've paraphrased what the title says.
I disagree - saying they might ban operating systems, with no context, leaves out the fact they're only talking about modular radio systems or software defined radio systems. Edit: also to be clear, as another comment pointed out, this doesn't have any impact on test/kit equipment that is not compliant with FCC regulations anyway and requires a separate license to use - this is targeting consumer equipment. So I stil…
Which, in practice, means any computer/electronic device that has a radio in it.
> this is targeting consumer equipment
Including "consumer" equipment that is being used for research, software coding, etc.