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The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

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Re: The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

#61

Post by [deleted] »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #36
paulmd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

#62

Post by dbbolton »

Apologies for the off-topic comment, but I feel compelled to say that a #6D6D6D anchor color with a #444444 body text color on a white background is a terrible UX choice. I guess they expect me to hover over the entire paragraph to see if it contains any links.

Re: The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

#63

Post by tgflynn »

ThinkingGuy wrote: post #50
tgflynn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

radios cannot be permitted to listen on frequencies reserved for cell phones Is this true ? I've never heard of the FCC restricting receivers before. You don't need a license to buy or operate a HAM receiver.

Listening to the the cell frequencies, selling a device capabable of listening to them, or modifying a device to enable listening to them, has been illegal in the US for years: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2010-title47-vol1/xml/CFR-2... The law dates back to the days when cell phone tranmissions were analog and could be picked up with a consumer-grade police scanner. As I recall, it was passed soon after an incid…

The regulation you linked to appears to date to 2010, long after analog phones had been replaced.

18 U.S.C. 2512 may be older but I wonder why such a regulation would have been issued so recently.

Also if this regulation is intended to implement 18 U.S.C. 2512 it appears to be broader in scope than that law. The law only prohibits devices that are "primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications". The regulation on the other hand restricts scanners that are capable of receiving such communications. I don't see how a broadband scanner that includes cell phone frequencies along with other bands could be considered to be "primarily useful" for intercepting cell phone communications.

Re: The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

#64

Post by paulmd »

cbhl wrote: post #44
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Here's a contrived version of this: Imagine trying to design a calculator that isn't allowed to display the digit '8' on its LCD display. In software, the implementation sees if the LCD is being set to a value that contains '8' in binary and if so, ignores the input. In hardware, you have to have a camera that is pointed at the LCD, and a hardware OCR implementation that looks for the 8, and then a circuit that when…

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 prefers you to build in a "hardware" type implementation there (a frequency analyzer that figures out what's going into it). It's just expensive to do so - like if you didn't already have a digital amp, you might easily add 1/4 or 1/2 to the cost just to get some dumb logic built in. And you can still probably get around it if you really try.

2. There is a disproportionate amount of cheap gear and old gear in circulation. We didn't get "smart" rigs until the late 90s at a minimum, and even so they are vastly outnumbered by stuff from the glory days of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. There has always been a relatively small amount of high-power stuff in circulation, and there's even less smart high-power stuff. A lot of the modern kit-built stuff like the Elecraft K2 focuses on QRP (effective operation on low power) instead of crazy high output.

3. This manifests as a CRAZY price curve. It's relatively easy to get an old radio from the 70s that'll do 50 or 100W (especially after factoring in weak, aging tubes, etc). A modern mini-rig that will do 25W or something is also relatively affordable. But if you want something new, powerful, or new AND powerful you can easily jump into the thousands of dollars. For the cost of a modern rig that'll do any given power level, you can afford an older rig and an amp that will put out an equally good signal with substantially more power. Or with a better antenna. And so on.

4. There's nothing wrong with the old gear and things like tubes can be fixed. If you trash your new wünder-rig it's garbage. So given that amateurs are crafty people (the proto-hacker, really) there's a strong incentive to make the old or lower-power stuff work, because it's repairable when it breaks.

Re: The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

#65

Post by Chlorus »

tgflynn wrote: post #55
la_fig_fontaine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need a license to buy or operate a HAM receiver. Why have you capitalised ham? What are you under the impression it stands for? Are you also one of those people that capitalises JAVA? What goes through the heads of people like you?

Honestly I don't know what was "going through my head". I think most letter case decisions are handled by my brain below the threshold of conscious awareness. I don't spend a lot of time agonizing over trivialities in my online comments that are completely irrelevant to my question or point.

Perhaps you have Amiga on the brain :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify

Re: The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

#66

Post by tbyehl »

jMyles wrote: post #25
Vexs wrote: post #15

I thought to myself: "This looks like a good time to stock up on SDR equipment, in case this ever goes through." And then I realized this is exactly the same thing gun enthusiasts thought when they though Obama would limit their guns/bullets, and stocked up on them, and I thought it was silly. I guess we're a lot more similar than I would have thought, made me think a little bit more about it. I'm reminded a bit of t…

FWIW, I don't think there's a lot of regret among gun enthusiasts who stocked up. They like guns, they like ammo, and they found a reason to buy in bulk. The people I know are happy they did. I can imagine being pretty happy in a year or two having stocked up on SDR gear. :-)

As a gun enthusiast who didn't stock up, I really hate those guys. I basically couldn't go to the range for over a year because Walmart was always out of the Winchester White Box and whatever other cheap FMJ they carried, and everyone else who could keep inventory had jacked their prices to unreasonable levels.

I finally had to start going to Walmart every morning before work to figure out which day the shelves got stocked. A couple of Tuesday morning visits later I had made my own little contribution to the problem by building my own hoard of bullets that I didn't really want just because I wanted to be able to go to the range once in a while without paying range prices for ammo...

Hoarders suck.

Re: The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

#67

Post by eponeponepon »

aianus wrote: post #56
feld wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there is a gun problem in this country and this is a terribly flawed analogy.

A random American has a 1/10,000 chance of dying to a gun this year. Half of them are suicides. Hardly a 'gun problem' worthy of banning guns. I have a higher chance of crashing my motorcycle and dying that way, do you support banning motorcycles too?

...and what're the odds globally of a random person dying from a gunshot? I could ask about specific other nations with different firearms laws, but let's start with the general case.

Re: The FCC Might Ban Specific Operating Systems

#69

Post by scrollaway »

aianus wrote: post #56
feld wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there is a gun problem in this country and this is a terribly flawed analogy.

A random American has a 1/10,000 chance of dying to a gun this year. Half of them are suicides. Hardly a 'gun problem' worthy of banning guns. I have a higher chance of crashing my motorcycle and dying that way, do you support banning motorcycles too?

If you're going to lecture someone on numbers, at least get your arguments right.

1. You should separately account for "random Americans" and americans that actually own guns. I, too, would have a higher chance of crashing my motorcycle... if only I owned a one.

2. Vehicular transportation is a worldwide leading cause of death. It is a problem that is defining the beginning of the 21st century, what with self-driving autos and all. You're setting a pattern in bad analogies.

3. Do you enjoy having that extra 1 in 10k? Do you realize it's really not that high? By your already-biased numbers, there's a 3% chance that someone in your non-gun-owning household of 5 will die with more holes in their body than they were born with.

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