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ZL3AI > APRDIG 22.12.06 00:19l 278 Lines 12659 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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From: ZL3AI@ZL2BAU.#79.NZL.OC
To : APRDIG@WW
Message: 18
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:17:41 -0600
From: Lance Cotton <joe_at_lightningflash.net>
Subject: Re: [aprssig] PSKMail Live CD
Amateur Radio WB8NUT wrote:
>A Pactor II or III modem is proprietary and VERY expensive for just one
>mode. I don't think PSK is the answer because it is not fast enough,
>but I wish someone would develop something to use as a replacement for
>Pactor that is not proprietary and offered by one vendor only.
One of the benefits of PSKmail is that the "digital engine" it uses is a
multi-mode digital program called gmfsk as it's base. That means you
could use PSKmail with any of the multitude of digital modes, including
Olivia, MFSK16, MT63 and more.
PSK63 was chosen by the PSKmail creator as the desired standard because
it's a narrow mode that is able to be used at very low levels, hence it
results in a robust transmission at minimal bandwidth usage.
The truth is, you could set up PSKmail with any digital mode. Problem is
that any other PSKmail nodes who want to interoperate would also have to
have it. It is by no means restricted to PSK63, however.
The really nice thing about PSKmail is that it's built on "the UNIX way" of
stacking small utilities together with a little bit of glue to end up with
a very efficient, modular system. The one bit of real magic with PSKmail
was the creation of a protocol to turn any non-ARQ mode into an ARQ mode by
the addition of a small amount of overhead. All the other parts already
existed:
- Soundcard digital program
- Standard UNIX email program
- Other UNIX utilities for scheduling and data-passing
If only we could have MORE programs which don't come up with a new standard
of doing things that have been done for decades with a perfectly good
standard.
-Lance KJ5O
--
J. Lance Cotton, KJ5O
joe_at_lightningflash.net
http://kj5o.lightningflash.net
Three Step Plan: 1. Take over the world. 2. Get a lot of cookies. 3. Eat
the cookies.
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Message: 19
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:24:10 -0500
From: Steve Dimse <steve_at_dimse.com>
Subject: Re: [aprssig] PSKMail Live CD
On Dec 20, 2006, at 8:24 AM, Stephen Brown Jr wrote:
>I have friends who have invested money in equipment so they could
>become a PMBO and were turned down, that is a load of crap in my
>book. I think anyone who is willing to volunteer their own time,
>money and equipment in support of an emergency infrastructure
>should not be selected by one controlling entity. Sure you could
>setup a telpac bridge, but again, need to have permission from the
>winlink "gods"
I do not think it is a load of crap.
To accuse someone of playing God with their own invention is grossly
unfair. When one produces a new technology, one should have the right to
develop it any way one wishes. One very valid way as you advocate is to
allow anyone to use and modify it. An equally valid way is to maintain
control of the technology and strive for the best quality and a high level
of service and utility. WinLink's inventors chose that route, just I did
for findU. Taking away my right to make this choice has a name, communism!
In most countries, those who produce are rewarded with varying degrees of
fame, fortune, and power. An inventor can chose to give away a service,
give away the innovation, or charge for it. I wouldn't want to live under
any other system!
Steve K4HG
------------------------------
Message: 20
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:54:17 -0500
From: "Stephen Brown Jr" <stephen.brown75_at_gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [aprssig] PSKMail Live CD
>To accuse someone of playing God with their own invention is grossly unfair.
How so? I respectfully disagree. That is exactly what they are doing with
this system, playing "god" There are no other systems out there than can
accomplish what theirs can (not yet anyhow), therefore we are forced to use
their proprietary closed system and they decide who becomes a PMBO or not
and if you meet their "criteria"
To make matters worse, they told one of my friends that he could come
online as a backup PMBO and that they would need remote access to his
radio/computer equipment and can bring it up and down at will. As you can
imagine, that went over real well with him as I'm sure it would anyone.
How is that not playing god?
>When one produces a new technology, one should have the right
>to develop it any way one wishes. One very valid way as you advocate
>is to allow anyone to use and modify it. An equally valid way is to
>maintain control of the technology and strive for the best quality
>and a high level of service and utility.
I agree with you on that. However, why should we as end users and others
that want to create their own systems be at the mercy of those that simply
think their system is the best and should become the defacto standard!!??
My point is that just because someone develops a system doesn't mean that
their way is the best way, that is the beauty of open source. People fix
and patch things in the open source community all the time and are able to
do so because the source code is available to anyone who wants to see it or
modify it.
>Taking away my right to make this choice has a name, communism!
You still have a right to make that choice. No one is debating the ability
to do that, thank god we live in America were we are afforded the
oppurtunity to do that. The center of debate from my angle lies within a
free versus non-free system and I'm not talking about money. I'm talking
about freedom of choice and innovation.
I am a very big open source zealot and use FOSS daily, not because it
doesn't cost anything, but because of the ideology behind it and the people
that support it.
73's
Stephen
N1VLV
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Message: 21
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 07:42:38 -0800
From: "Scott Miller" <scott_at_opentrac.org>
Subject: RE: [aprssig] PSKMail Live CD
I've been thining about a PSK31-based system for a while now, and I think
it's perfectly adequate if it's done right. You can run multiple carriers
in a 3-kHz passband, and with proper management you could coordinate a fair
amount of traffic. Does it really matter if it takes 2 minutes for a
message to come through? If the system is properly automated you don't
have to sit there and babysit it.
Scott
N1VG
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Message: 22
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:01:46 -0500
From: Steve Dimse <steve_at_dimse.com>
Subject: Re: [aprssig] PSKMail Live CD
On Dec 20, 2006, at 9:54 AM, Stephen Brown Jr wrote:
>>To accuse someone of playing God with their own invention is grossly unfair.
>
>How so? I respectfully disagree. That is exactly what they are
>doing with this system, playing "god" There are no other systems
>out there than can accomplish what theirs can (not yet anyhow),
>therefore we are forced to use their proprietary closed system and
>they decide who becomes a PMBO or not and if you meet their "criteria"
No, you aren't forced to use their system. You can go out and develop your
own system! (This seems to be exactly what PSKMail did.) The creators of
WinLink have an absolute right to decide who can play in their sandbox.
Perhaps they turned your friend down because there were enough PMBO's in
his region, perhaps his gear wasn't good enough, perhaps they didn't like
his attitude, or his name, or anything else. Whatever the reason, they
created the technology and have a right to use it as they choose. Just
because something is useful or fun or the best doesn't mean anyone can use
it.
>To make matters worse, they told one of my friends that he could
>come online as a backup PMBO and that they would need remote access
>to his radio/computer equipment and can bring it up and down at
>will. As you can imagine, that went over real well with him as I'm
>sure it would anyone. How is that not playing god?
It sounds like they decided his area was adequately covered. In this way,
it is just like an IGate. You can have too many IGates in a region, since
each generates traffic on RF when IGating messages from the internet to RF.
If you have 20 IGates, when an internet message is sent to a local RF user,
you get 20 copies on 144.39. This is bad, and it would handled at the local
level, only because there is no way to know this is a problem from the
internet side. WinLink has a limited number of frequencies, and being HF,
propagation means the frequency cannot be reused in every city the way
144.39 is. They made a decision based on what is best for their system.
>>When one produces a new technology, one should have the right
>>to develop it any way one wishes. One very valid way as you advocate
>>is to allow anyone to use and modify it. An equally valid way is to
>>maintain control of the technology and strive for the best quality
>>and a high level of service and utility.
>
>I agree with you on that. However, why should we as end users and
>others that want to create their own systems be at the mercy of
>those that simply think their system is the best and should become
>the defacto standard!!??
Their system isn't the defacto standard because they _think_ it is the
best. If there is something better, people will use it (absent superior
marketing or some other confounding factor). There certainly is the getting
there first factor, where the first implementation makes it less likely
others will compete, but it certain stops no one from creating something
better.
>My point is that just because someone develops a system doesn't
>mean that their way is the best way, that is the beauty of open source.
That is also the Achilles Heel of open source. Unless there is a strong
manager and a shared vision, open source projects often look like a bunch
of disjointed pieces thrown together. It is the reason desktop Linux will
never compete with Windows and MacOS. Most people don't want a system with
a choice of 20 different configurable window managers, they want one that
just works.
I'm certainly not against open-source, findU relies heavily upon it. I've
never changed a line of other open source code though. findU could be built
with commercial tools just as easily, though at greater expense. That is
the way the vast majority of people act, they use the free-as-in-beer
aspect a lot more than they use the free-as-in-speech aspect of open source.
>People fix and patch things in the open source community all the
>time and are able to do so because the source code is available to
>anyone who wants to see it or modify it.
Yet even now, with xastir being out for many years, most people prefer one
of the closed source implementations. Why is that? It certainly isn't
marketing, every time someone says "how do I do this in UI View?" you can
count on one of the xastir developers saying "this is how you do it in
xastir"! If open source always resulted in superior products, you would
think the xastir market share would be bigger by now...
>>Taking away my right to make this choice has a name, communism!
>
>You still have a right to make that choice. No one is debating the
>ability to do that, thank god we live in America were we are
>afforded the oppurtunity to do that. The center of debate from my
>angle lies within a free versus non-free system and I'm not talking
>about money. I'm talking about freedom of choice and innovation.
You are saying that WinLink developers should not be allowed to make
decisions based on what the developers think is best for their system. You
seem to want to take the intellectual property they created and own, and
turn it over to the people because it is useful. How is this different from
communism???
>I am a very big open source zealot and use FOSS daily, not because
>it doesn't cost anything, but because of the ideology behind it and
>the people that support it.
And you have every right to do so. You also have the right to say almost
anything, including to accuse people of playing God, but I stand by my
statement that doing so in this case is grossly unfair.
Suppose someone spent $8000 on a server of the caliber findU uses (that is
really what they cost). Do you really think I should make them a
www.findu.com server just because they say they want to and have spent some
money? findU is a defacto standard in large part because I spend a LOT of
time making sure I provide a high level of service. If someone else were
running a server, I could not guarantee the level of service my users have
come to expect. Why should I not be free to make decisions based on what I
think it best for findU? Why should the WinLink creators not have the same
freedom?
Steve K4HG
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