New Release: Ham Radio Deluxe v5.23

[AA7BQ]

First off , fred is taking all of our US callsigns from the FCC for FREE, yes FREE and selling them back to us. Havent all of us hams paid for HIS free access by our license fee's and our tax dollars? Have we done this just so Fred can make money to pay for his new tour buss , this is when this all started. Then he wants to cry when someone else takes his monopoly away. Sure seems to me that if Fred didnt start playing games then he would still have the monopoly . I sure find it a little outrageous that the call sign look up taxes his bandwidth , but yet NEVER any mention of the fourms useing bandwidth. This sure takes some big koohonas. The ball has already started rolling and it may take awhile , but the process has started for another call sign look up database that will enclude DX callsigns. Maybe it is time to start damage control and for Fred to see the light and stop playing games. The empire has started to crumble , but it is not too late to prevent the collapse, if he is not blinded by GREED.

Julie,

Your lack of understanding in this matter is nothing short of breathtaking. I will take it as a given that you've never seen the actual FCC data nor do you understand how it is so poorly delivered that no end-user software package has ever dared to make use of it. Just consider this, if the FCC data were easy to use and as useful as you think, then every piece of ham radio software on the market would have a built in FCC Data Fetcher that would keep itself updated. This hasn't happened and probably never will. The reason is simple, the FCC data is convoluted, poorly documented, fragmented, and the servers which produce it are unreliable.

There are 1,346,107 callsigns on QRZ as I write this. No more than half of these are from the USA (FCC) database. We'll probably get 50 or 60 new callsigns today from DX entities, all of which will have been submitted by the individuals. They do this because QRZ is a great place to connect with the hobby, and the FREE services that we offer are many and varied. Did you know that 98% of the members of QRZ (like yourself) are served for FREE? Furthermore, those that have paid for subscriptions have done so because we give them something of value for their money.

That value didn't come cheap. I've been working on QRZ every day for the past 18 years. I work 365 days per year, and yes, even on Christmas. I haven't taken a vacation in the past 10 years without having an internet connected laptop at my side. I've written over 100,000 lines of code that massages that "free FCC data" into something interesting and useful.

Did you ever consider that our prices are some of the lowest anywhere for the type of services rendered? Subscribing to our XML data, which is presumably what you're complaining about, costs 8.4 cents per day, $29.95 per year. You probably spend more than that on text messaging. Furthermore, what makes you think that you know anything about bandwidth, and what the impact of 1000's of freeloaders using automated robots to fetch data while discarding the advertising does to our servers? It's not all about money either. The freeloading logging programs where slowing down the entire enterprise for everybody on the site. By adding the limits and restrictions that we did, we improved service to everybody.

And what on earth makes you equate profit with greed? Do you have a job? If so then presumably you work for a profit, i.e. a paycheck. Why then would you suggest that my efforts at earning a living and being a small business entrepreneur makes me greedy?

So, what have you done for the hobby? How many new hams have graduated your FREE online test preparation course that you designed and built (twice) yourself? Does your website host the worlds largest FREE ham radio swapmeet as well as the hobby's largest FREE discussion forum? Did you abandon a successful commercial systems engineering career to take a chance on a fledgling small business whose number one concept was to provide FREE services?

Yes, QRZ makes money. You should be very happy that it does because otherwise, none of the things above would have been accomplished and the site which you apparently enjoy being a member of, would not exist. OK, someone else probably would have done it, but why on earth do you begrudge my success?

Finally, just to correct you on your observation that I'm "selling the taxpayer supported FCC data", I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm providing a service that uses advanced computer and database manipulation strategies to transform an ugly and unworkable government supplied data set into something that people find useful and easy to access. There are any number of companies out there that repackage and improve the data our government provides, mostly because our government is largely broken when it comes to disseminating information. You're not buying the data, but rather its distillation into something useful, something that takes resources and effort to accomplish.

The product of this transformation is provided 100% for free, to anyone who chooses to visit the site. We created our subscription access to the data specifically for those who wanted a high performance, stable and reliable source of data that could serve large groups of people simultaneously. Yes, it's the same data, but it's not the data that's for sale. It's a delivery service where you pay to have it brought to your virtual door. It's a marvelous service given what it does and our subscribers are extremely satisfied.

[K2NCC]

There are 1,346,107 callsigns....

Great reply Mr L. That whole post should be a sticky to refer future complaints such as W8JAA's.


For those that want the version tax dollars support, here it is. It won't take long before you come back to the free version you have here. Paid QRZ .com will get you even more. If I had a grand to spare, I'd so get a lifetime sub.



Funny how much passion a new release of HRD seems to generate in every announcement thread. Starting to feel like déjà vu all over again in here.

[W9MB]

I have noticed one thing. The OP posted the same release on Eham and has zero comments. Here, it can be a rip-a-thon. What's up with that?

[WW7F]

I am thankful we have this site,Fred and the crew do a great job on it and I think many people take it for granted. I give as just ONE example when the Amazon server went down and QRZ.com was also down how many missed its absence for 12 hours?
When you wanted to see where the station you were listening to was located andQRZ was missing did you have an alternate site to go get the info from?
I agree with NCC Fred is taken for granted by a lot of us I think sometimes we need to realize everybody has to eat,and pay the bills.
Merely by offering this stuff free to us and more if we subscribe is a good deal, I would say to those who nay say Fred as a profiteer IMHO are wrong, HRD is a great piece of software and it takes people's time and resources as well to write them.
At least this is a positive thing, a ham radio business that is NOT closing its doors but opening them wide for business I can't afford the price right now so the free one is as good as it gets and that is IMO also pretty decent.
it does the job and more which is pretty danged good for freebie wares!
This guy summed up things pretty well about free being a great price http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwZ80FEEZQo He was an icon here for decades if you don't know who Tom Peterson is,LOL73,Michelle

[N8MSA]

Julie,

REDACTED FOR THE SAKE OF BREVITY

The product of this transformation is provided 100% for free, to anyone who chooses to visit the site. We created our subscription access to the data specifically for those who wanted a high performance, stable and reliable source of data that could serve large groups of people simultaneously. Yes, it's the same data, but it's not the data that's for sale. It's a delivery service where you pay to have it brought to your virtual door. It's a marvelous service given what it does and our subscribers are extremely satisfied.

Fred -

This is perhaps the best and most definitive set of statements on this topic that I have seen to date. I think that your organization has added a great deal of value to the amateur radio community, and I certainly don't begrudge you or anyone else in your team being rewarded accordingly. Those that believe otherwise are free, and in fact encouraged, to fill whatever perceived need they think is being overlooked or not being dealt with fairly.

In other words, those of you that think everything in amateur radio should be "free" are invited to provide whatever goods or services that you can for free; otherwise please stop demanding "donations" of other people's money and time.

[K4ZOT]

And after 3 5.2x releases you still cant scan after setting the scan range. Scanning is still disabled, The Start/Stop buttons do nothing.

Ok It's official, I've lost faith in HRD.

I've Yet again uninstalled 5.2x in order to reinstall 5.0.2893

I don't plan on making it a fourth time.

Can someone explain why Scanning does not work as stated above. The start button does not function on 5.23. I have a Kenwood TS-850S.

Also, I notice that the locator field is not populated and I am not getting the full address of the Ham in the Logbook ALE. I have a subscription to QRZ and it worked before. Anyone else have these issues?

Glenn

[K2NCC]

Can someone explain...

Doesn't work for me either Glenn, but I think this isn't the thread to discuss it. Perhaps here is more the place for free support on HRD bug issues.

EDIT: QRZ XML subscription lookup works fine here.

[KC2SST]

I've written over 100,000 lines of code that massages that "free FCC data" into something interesting and useful.

Let me guess, 1k lines of PERL, 90k lines of comments so you can remember what your regexen are supposed to do ;-)

Seriously though, great job Fred and the XML subscription is certainly more than worth the price.

[W4PC]

Doesn't work for me either Glenn, but I think this isn't the thread to discuss it. Perhaps here is more the place for free support on HRD bug issues.

EDIT: QRZ XML subscription lookup works fine here.

I think this is the 3rd time I answered it, but Ive got it fixed for the next release

[KA9JLM]

Cool, do you want to do it as an open source project?

I sure could, but I am not sure why you would want open source when HRD is not.

Maybe if HRD was open source we could all help you debug it.

Hint for your developers, The way HRD and your Installer is trying to write too the Win Registry may be a lot of the problems that your new version is having.

Untrusted Software is not going to work properly if Microsoft does not like it. You may want to add Digital Signature since you are using Microsoft C++.

I guess you know that since you worked for them, but the newer Win OS is not like the old.