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.

Funny you should mention that; apparently someone has gone and invented a book that, get this, you can use to look up the definitions of a word!

Name one spoken language, where there is an authoritative source of definitions of words. Anybody can go write such a book, and none of them will actually be authoritative.

without government regulation or fear of monopolies.

How would you avoid monopolies without government regulation?

Seriously. Write some code, publish it on Github. Spin up a single serving web page, does one interesting thing as soon as you arrive. Remember, everyone else with resumes could be pretending, you're actually doing stuff.

For work experience, sign up on freelancing sites like odesk. Take jobs just to do them. Nobody knows how old you are, there. Even if all you can do is sysadmin -- well, admin some cloud services!

it should be abundantly clear at this point, there is not and never has been such a thing as a free market

Before you even try to answer if there is a free market or not, you need to figure out what the words free market actually means. Do you have a free market if a single established player in the market or a small group of players can force newcomers off the market? I'd say no. But then you need regulations to protect the free market. There are people who say it is not a free market if there is any sort of regulations. And by their definition a market controlled by a monopoly is more free than a market with multiple competing players subject to government regulations protecting consumers from the most immoral business practices.

If your definition of a free market is one where there are no regulations and a newcomer can take a part of the market by producing a better product than the established players, then such a market cannot exist. Because without regulations established players can and will squash newcomers.

I don't really care much how people define the words free market. I care more about how the market actually works. And I consider some amount of regulations to be a good thing. At the very least consumers should be able to know what the products on the market are, such that they can make informed decisions on which products they want. Misleading information about products undermines fair competition, so regulations to prevent such misleading information is a good thing.

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.