I think this might be part of the issue though - I saw another article about this plan that said people often _don't_ try to contribute because their welfare benefits are subject to them not doing certain things.
For instance - you get $X from welfare, you could make $Y doing some work despite your disability, but $Y < $X, and if you make $Y, the government won't give you $X - therefore there is no reason to pursue $Y.
Even if you don't have money, often if you're on disability anything that might show you aren't "so disabled" can stop it. Therefore even if you want to, there is really a strong reason not to try to do things.
That is what basic income is meant to really alleviate - there becomes no reason not to do other stuff, because it's unconditional - those already on welfare no longer have all those requirements.
I'm not saying it would be perfect, but I do think it would address at least part of this problem. I wish I had an actual study on the numbers of people that don't try to get jobs/be productive while on welfare because of the risk of losing the primary income stream they get from welfare, but I can't find anything. I have known several people in this situation though, and watching the system treat them that way was kind of heartbreaking.
I find this amusing because I'm generally suspicious of sites that don't include some form of reference to wherever the information was retrieved - perhaps a habit from when I did more stuff in academia. Things don't exist in vacuum except things that are basically pure opinion articles - just about everything else is based on something and should probably be showing it.
I think that's his point - he doesn't want a license to protect this, at the end he even explicitly states in spite of this he won't change his process - he just wishes people wouldn't be jerks about this kind of thing. It felt, to me, like he doesn't think he should need a license to enforce this kind of behavior, and instead is going to just call out that the guy is being a jerk.
It's also kind of stupid to rip someone off. Assuming all the information here is accurate, this could really come back to bite the guy who ripped him off - someone is going to google what you've done and will end up with this blog post slamming you. If it was an honest mistake, the author should probably take the time to fix the posts and apologize.
I actually was thinking that the graceful degrade was how it was implemented initially and was about to write it off until I got to that part. Interesting.
At this point I still don't buy that Apple is doing this to hold things back. Do you have other examples of when they've been behind on features with no clear explanation of why? It's okay if not - you said you were only casually following - but curious.
They wouldn't have very much to gain in my mind - none of their core business relies on locking in/out web development. They have an app market, and I guess you could argue they're trying to drive that, but they have implemented a lot of other features, and early extensions in many cases, that doesn't really align with them trying to hold web back.
I've seen some of the enforcement actions - on a first offense they often just give you a stern warning unless it's clear you were doing it willfully and maliciously (interfering with a company's communications because you have a bone to pick, for instance).
Amusingly, there's been a few cases local law enforcement has asked the ham community to RDF people using their frequencies - at least here most law enforcement uses APCO-25 without encryption, so is easy to monitor and mess with by and large - because it's easier than having FCC get involved.
My favorite mistaken transmission was when a friend noted spurs coming off the strategic command in Omaha that were ending up on ham frequencies. We reported it, an hour later all their spurs were gone.
In any event - yes - monitor mode stuff they won't be able to detect unless they see your equipment, but most equipment is required to restrict the cell frequencies in such a way it's not easy to modify to detect. Most other equipment you have a jumper to enable "everything but cell" TX/RX (Looking at you Yaesu VX-9).
I've actually said a few times I think it's a bad ruling - I'm just not practically impacted by it :). That said though I think being alarmist about it does not help the cause - it makes people less likely to actually listen to you once they realize you were being an alarmist. I actually agree with the points in the article - I just disagree with how they were made.
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.
Yeah - it sucks and this FCC rules is concerning, but not as concerning as I initially thought it was.
Don't get me wrong - I think this is a stupid rule, but I just don't think it's as big a deal as the article, and title in particular, make it out to be.
I actually completely agree with you on this - what they're proposing is going to stifle a lot of wireless hacking and will be overall harmful to try to avoid what is probably already at best a marginal problem. Most people that overpower their equipment already burn it out very quickly, and I don't think I'd worry about it as much as they are.
I think the alarmist point of view on this actually hurts his points though - because it comes off as a less legitimate concern than I think it actually is. It is something we should be concerned with, because FCC rules are often hard to change once they're made.
Good call - similar to how you load firmware for Wifi using a blob a lot of the time. But for a lot of advocates of this they still might not be okay with this as they don't want any blobs. Which I can get, but even more reason it's kind of alarmist in my view.
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 still think it's kind of alarmist, but I can see your point of view as well. My goal was not to be better than their explanations, but only to summarize why I think they're being alarmist - I agree it's a topic worthy of discussion though :).
Agreed - they're more concerned about transmission, which is part of why they have more strict requirements around scanners to try a lot harder to avoid this.
Depends on the licensing/certification of the device - for consumer equipment (particularly scanners) it's required, for certain experimental and test equipment it is not.
EDIT: I think this happened in 1994 - google "cell blocked" scanner and you'll find stuff on it.
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:
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 still think it's pretty misleading.
The rest is the fact that I think the article is wrong anyway :)
This is because this is entirely intended for software defined radio and modular radio - around which the entire point is the RF component does not contain as much signal processing logic, and that is done in software. Restricting software defined radios to specific frequencies in hardware would take away the entire point of modular/software defined radio.
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 governing transmission of radio signals. You are responsible for using your HackRF One legally.
Realistically you're not going to probably get in trouble, but I _will_ caution you - if you use this kind of equipment illegally, the FCC does have radio direction finding equipment and will send someone out to find you if you piss them off - they've done this for people that were on Ham frequencies without authorization, people doing nasty things on government frequencies, and anything disturbing people who paid for a license.
Re: GNURadio The software itself has no requirement - there is no "if you run radio software, it has to do X" and there still is no requirement under proposed rules for that as far as I can tell - it's just if you build hardware, your hardware must enforce that only certain software can be installed :).
You can make it difficult and very hard in practice through antenna and component design in the case of small internal radios - in radios with external antennas it becomes a great deal harder though, and in radios that are open for modifications it becomes even more difficult.
That being said though - this is meant to apply to software defined/modular radios - that is systems wherein the entire point is that it does what the software tells it instead of having hardwired components meant only to receive certain frequencies.
This title is kind of click-bait - they aren't prohibiting operating systems, they _might_ be prohibiting installation of operating systems that are not approved on certain types of devices that allow software defined radio - that is, transceivers that can be tweaked easily by software.
That is not at all the same thing as banning an operating system.
This is already present insofar as hardware requirements in radios - radios cannot be permitted to listen on frequencies reserved for cell phones, and must not be restricted in such way as they can be easily modified to enable it (e.g., a header/jumper). This really just extends this requirement that it is non-trivial to enable illegal broadcasting or reception on software defined radios.
Now - insofar as if this should impact open source operating systems, we have a good question. I don't think it does that - my interpretation, potentially wrong of course, just as the article's could be wrong, is that you would have to restrict the actual firmware in question to a blob that communicates with the hardware in a secure way. This would prevent open/free components insofar as the actual driver, but would not permit the operating system itself from being installed. They mention this, but only at the end of the article.
I also doubt the impact of this for non software-defined/modular radio systems. I don't see a way this would really impact everyday wifi or non-modular systems in a way most people would care about. That isn't to say it isn't _bad_ but once again, it just seems super misleading and alarmist.
Whether or not the FCC should or shouldn't do this is a different question, but the link's title seems intentionally misleading.
For instance - you get $X from welfare, you could make $Y doing some work despite your disability, but $Y < $X, and if you make $Y, the government won't give you $X - therefore there is no reason to pursue $Y.
Even if you don't have money, often if you're on disability anything that might show you aren't "so disabled" can stop it. Therefore even if you want to, there is really a strong reason not to try to do things.
That is what basic income is meant to really alleviate - there becomes no reason not to do other stuff, because it's unconditional - those already on welfare no longer have all those requirements.
I'm not saying it would be perfect, but I do think it would address at least part of this problem. I wish I had an actual study on the numbers of people that don't try to get jobs/be productive while on welfare because of the risk of losing the primary income stream they get from welfare, but I can't find anything. I have known several people in this situation though, and watching the system treat them that way was kind of heartbreaking.