[aprssig] MGATES for IS-Mobiles

[lawrence labranche]

I'm sorry but your missing the point. People are wanting to communicate to those who are on RF. I have no idea which hams are in an area to communicate with unless they beacon, or I hear them by voice. While I and my father in law have our radios, it will be a while before we can afford her a ham radio. a $25 or $50 job won't have APRS on it. If I can't see her beacon, I have no way of knowing if my message will make it to her. If I see a beacon, I know I have a good chance of making it. Cell phones and Wifi, etc all use transceivers. In this day and age, most people have cell phones, and a good deal of those have smart phones which can add to a ham's toolbox. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. Instead is a discussion of furthering the natural experimentation of our  tools and capabilities

 to achieve a better end. If we do not experiment, we will never achieve anything greater.

KI6ZQY


________________________________
 From: Pete Loveall AE5PL Lists <hamlists at ametx.com>
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List <aprssig at tapr.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 3:52 PM
Subject: Re: [aprssig] MGATES for IS-Mobiles
 
Eric,

My attitude is that amateur radio is amateur radio, not Internet networks.  Yes, amateur radio can use the Internet for transport but using the Internet by itself is, by definition, NOT amateur radio.  Amateur radio is a licensed service defined by international agreement to be the licensed use of a certain spectrum of frequencies to communicate with other amateur radio operators, only.  I work with more technology than you probably ever dreamed of but I also understand that amateur radio is a licensed service that is defined only with regards to using RF.  I am not against you using your smartphone to communicate with another licensed amateur via amateur radio frequencies.  I am against the mistaken belief that just because you decided to buy a cell phone that can send its location to the Internet instead of a dumber phone and an amateur radio transceiver that automatically makes it mandatory your packets will be sent to amateur radio RF
 frequencies by other hams' radios.  That is a very mistaken belief and has NOTHING to do with technology.  If someone is driven away from amateur radio because they find out they need a radio to communicate, so be it.  That is what amateur radio is.  If you find that attitude mean spirited, then you obviously are very misinformed on what that license you hold (I assume you are a licensed amateur) means.

Off soapbox.  You folks have fun trying to break APRS-IS.  It isn't hard and once you do, you will find that the world-wide network disappears as the amateur radio operators who run it get tired of being told by others how they must give away their bandwidth and resources to please a few folks that don't think amateur radio involves actually communicating on RF.

73,

Pete Loveall AE5PL
pete at ae5pl dot net

<snip>
_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
aprssig at tapr.org
https://www.tapr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aprssig
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.tapr.org/pipermail/aprssig_lists.tapr.org/attachments/20111227/d7cade71/attachment.html>