FCC ISSUES SIGNIFICANT RULE CHANGES

Have fun listening to hard to understand stations in the static, I'll stick to experimenting and homebrewing, in short advancing the radio art.

 

Wrong again. Several universities offer a Masters in advanced mathematics topics, and some actually call the degree "Master of Advanced Mathematics. (As in this one.)

http://www.uab.es/servlet....0149019

I did not state or imply that I had sat down with the head of state of 38 countries. I said "the head of state, the second in line, and/or the Minister of Foreign Affairs / Secretary of State, .....". I have actually sat down with 2 heads of state, 2 second in line, and 4 Ministers of Foreign Affairs (the Secretary of State equivalent). The only country where I did not meet the intelligence chief was Iraq. I worked with the top military commanders in every country.

Please do not let your lack of international experience confuse you. One does not refuse an invitation to sit down with the head of state or any other top-level person in the government of the country where one is a guest -- and where one hopes to make a sale.

A very large portion of my job was talking to the national government cipher committees to explain how our equipment defeated every known attack -- including brute force. Quite often, I was the only Datotek person in the country. Absolutely EVERY Datotek customer tested the key generator and the devices. When the security of your nation depends upon the security of your encryption, you test !

Brute force attack is assumed to find the correct key after 50% of the possible keys are tried. The time required includes key loading, KG runup, time to gather output, and time to test the output to see if it decodes the intercept. In our calculations, we assumed a very high capability of 10^9 trials per second. (This number of trails required a supercomputer.)

There are 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, and 365.25 days per year. That yields 3.16 x 10^16 trials per year. At 10^9 trails pers second, attempting ONE HALF of the keys requires 7.59 x 10^ 35 years -- or 7.59 x 10^29 MILLION years.

If I assume 10^20 trails per second, the trials per year becomes 3.16 x 10 ^27, and the time required to test ONE HALF of the keys is 7.59 x 10 ^24 years, or 7.59 x 10 ^ 18 MILLION years. At 10^30 trials per second, the trials per year becomes 3.16 x 10 ^37, and the time required to test ONE HALF of the keys is 7.59 x 10 ^14 years, or 7.59 x 10 ^ 8 MILLION years.

To achieve a high number of trials per second, one would need to model the very complex KG (a very difficult task) or have several devices so that parallel testing could be done. The latter is the more common appproach -- but it does require that one somehow gain access to the devices, AND to the "Family Key" of the customer. The "Family Key" is created and burned by each customer. If one manages to steal a device, all keys are erased when the device is either opened or drilled and probed.

The other tests that any worthwhile cryptanalyst will run on any device or system (Chi test, Kappa test, known plaintext, etc.) are defeated by the KG -- as proven by literally tens of millions of bits of test data -- and by the fact that the most capable cryptanalysts recommended our devices to their governments for their most sensitive communications.

Our gear was used on every conceivable type of radio, SATCOM, mobile telephone, and landline system. I designed the interface to each and every one of them.

One wonders why you so desperately need to knock down my qualifications -- and so equally desperately hide your own background -- especially if you have any that might give some credence to your qualification to judge mine.

 

In other words, you ignore truth in favor of your misunderstandings and biases.

What I described has been true in the DFW area for over 20 years.

If it is broken elsewhere, FIX IT. Don't say it doesn't work "anywhere" or in "90% of the US".

We don't need more CA natural fertilizer.

 

And, by the way, RACES and ARES organizations work TOGETHER here. There is a core of RACES people in each ARES group, and EVERY county net has a liason to the nets of adjacent counties.

 

Ah, Larry, googling for what you don't know again.

However, unlike you, I'm big enough to admit it: I was wrong about "Master of Advanced Mathematics."

Names, Larry, Names. Who did you sit down with? and by 'sit down', do you mean 'was at the same dinner as', or do you mean you actually negotiated directly with these people?

IOW, you rigged the cables that connected your box to the local telco.

But Larry, you still haven't answered my question. If you were such a player, how come your name is not on a single one of Dakotek's patents?

I would hardly call asking you simple questions that you refuse to answer "desperate" Larry. And you're doing a fine job on your "qualifications" without my help.

I guess maybe you haven't been around the intarweb thingie that long, though, if you don't know why I'm not getting into a credentials pissing match with you.

Anybody can claim any credentials they want to Larry. It's what they actually say that demonstrates whether they have them. And if you can make the argument and make it stick it doesn't really matter how you came by the 'credentials' that allow you to do that, because its the point that matters, not the history of the person who made it.

You say you were a player at Dakotek. But your name's not on any of the Dakotek patents. You say things about crypto that make it clear that you don't have a very deep knowledge of crypto, even if you were at a crypto company. You make up stories about events that never happened in San Francisco and call the people who wrote the official version liars when they disageee with you. You claim to have built out a big emcomm system for Texas but offer no independent evidence that such a system was installed.

But more than that, Larry, you don't answer simple direct questions. Why aren't your names on the patents Larry? Which heads of state did you "sit down" with? (State dinners that you were at but didn't sit at the head table during don't count, Larry.) Why did you claim that Dakotek did all-hardware no-software devices only when a quick google will point you to microprocessor based Dakotek devices?

 

Now which "truth" is that, Larry? The one where you call San Francisco city officials liars? Or the one where you claim that the only coms in NOLA for ten days of Katrina were hams, ignoring that the BBC was using the internet to report? Perhaps the one where you asserted that Dakotek crypto was all hardware when in fact Dakotek sold some software based systems?

Well, you've downsized from the state of Texas to DFW, so I guess we've got you going in the right direction.

I thought I'd take a look at the DFW ARES/RACES state, just out of curiousity. Turns out that the Dallas RACES web site isn't being maintained and that Fort Worth doesn't seem to have one.

So I went to Texas Emergency Management links page only to find out that that although there's a "Amateur Radio and other Service Oriented Radio" section, it doesn't have any links.

Then I found that the DARC club's 2m repeater seems to be down, according to their web site.

This certainly does not match the rosy picture you painted of how well DFW amateurs are getting along with their served agencies, Larry, so I'm gonna ask you to do me a favor: Give me the name and email address of a non-ham contact in the Texas state or DFW local emergency management that I can ask to independently verify your rosy picture.

 

I believe you have the ratios reversed (not an uncommon error).  What you describe is about 10% of the U.S., not 90%.

I'm basing that on my experience living in cities and towns from Maryland to Mississippi, travel to 43 of the 50 states, and listening to activity in 100% of the 50 states.

Although my own estimate would be that about 20% would fit your description.  And, yes, that is entirely too many.

 

By "sat down with 2 heads of state, 2 second in line, and 4 Ministers of Foreign Affairs (the Secretary of State equivalent)", I mean sat down in their office and/or in their residence with them and 2 to 4 of their advisors. Normally, two other people were in our delegation.

More childish nonsense. By "designed the interface", I very clearly mean that I was solely responsible for fully characterising all of the different types of devices and systems to which we would connect, designing the internal interface circuitry of our products, designing external circuitry when required, developing the required input and output levels for optimum interface, and making everything work several thousand miles from home.

Examples:
1. An E&M interface to our Strategic-level digital voice device for a plug-board exchange -- designed and constructed in-country

2. Serial TTL to/from RS232 dual port encrtption interface for commercial fax machines. This required separate "terminal" and "modem" connectors for use with our serial encryptor. The "modem" was the built-in fax modem. Speed sensing was required to bypass the 300 bps "handshake" data. (Development time to working prototypes and final schematic = 2 weeks of 1/2 days of work = 40 man-hours of my time).

3. Parallel TTL to/from RS232 dual port encrtption interface for commercial fax machines. This required separate "terminal" and "modem" connectors for use with our serial encryptor, parallel to serial conversion, and serial to parallel conversion within the bounds of acceptable delay. The "modem" was the built-in fax modem. Speed sensing was required to bypass the 300 bps "handshake" data and . (Development time to working prototypes and final schematic = 3 weeks of 1/2 days of work = 60 man-hours of my time).

4. Fatigue pocket HF modem. 50 bps to 300 bps HF modem with in-band diversity and separate mark and space filters. Tone set optimized for 200 and 300 Baud operation. In exhaustive tests on the Collins HF simulator (at Cedar Rapids, Iowa), its WORST CASE performance was within 1% of that of a $3,000.00+ Frederick Electronics USG standard HF modem in IDENTICAL conditions, running an IDENTICAL data stream. (Quite a bunch of these were deployed by US and foreign forces.)

Each of those was my concept and my design -- and mine alone. These go along with quite a few other products and product enhancements.

Quite frankly, it is obvious that you lack credentials and/or achievement that would permit any meaningful discussion of these topics. When you dismiss the most important concepts in cryptography, it is quite clear that you lack expertise in that area.

Those who turn to personal attacks when faced with the plain unvarnished facts that prove that their "image of reality" is incorrect are unworthy of continued response. I have responded to this point only to permit others to see how facts are twisted to create pointless personal attacks.

It was widely reported that the SFO telephone system and PS radio system went down. If the media were incorrect, blame them. Everything we have seen to date suggests that they were at least partially correct. Everything those of us with considerable years of experience have seen suggests that is the NORM in a wide-area disaster.

BTW, the Dallas police and fire systems radio have not had an outage in at least 30 years -- but no wide-area disaster has hit. They are survivable conventional repeaters with multi-site capability and voting receivers. Telephones ? That's another story -- a few years back, a fire in a major TELCO switching center wiped out much service.

 

wa5ben:

What fire was that, Larry? Year and location, please!

tim ab0wr

 

ONE percent is too many

I have found the same, though the organization in the DFW area is consistently the model for others. A demand for professionalism plus a requirement for background checks plus required training for maintaining certification plus under promising plus over delivery has led to hard-won trust. Trust is the basis for this highly successful partnership.

It is sad how those who choose not to be a part of the solution love to howl about how things don't work -- especially those things about which they have no clue -- and try to put down those who spend a lot of training time and personal resources to make it work better.

K5JD is the guy who deserves most of the credit. There is a dedicated group who have long served along side, but Johnny is the "lead dog".

 

Nope, I've got the ratios just fine.

Based on similar evidence, but also on talking with ARES and RACES managers from a lot of districts, and from talking to the coms people at a bunch of served agencies.

 

So I guess we're going to never get the names of any of these people, eh Larry?

I've not dismissed anything about cryptography, Larry, other than your claims to expertise. By the way, Larry, one doesn't need to be an expert on cryptograpy to realize that you're blowing smoke on the topic. You do a good job of disproving any expertise on your own.

Um, Larry, the media never made those reports, nor have you ever given us any citations to them, and you were calling San Francisco city management liars for their information about San Francisco, not SFO, about which you've yet to produce a shred of evidence.

Meanwhile, nothing you've posted even shows that the phone systems were down in the Palo Alto area or Oakland.

And about SFO? Here's the actual scoop from ABAG

Meanwhile, I notice you didn't comment at all on my observation that checking web sites leads one to believe that you may be overstating the case for amateur radio emcomm in the DWF area.

Larry, why do you insist on continuing to make easily checked erroneous claims interspersed with irrelevant asides that serve to do no more than demonstrate your tendency to exagerate?

San Francisco wasn't begging for hams after Loma Prieta. They never had phone problems. There was no relieve effort at SFO. They didn't need one. Oakland let its hams set up their backup systems but never utilized them. The SPECS hams in Mountain View got in the way more than they helped, as can be seen by the cancelled ambulance and the fact that they "reported" rather than helped out. We didn't use NIMS because it hadn't been invented yet. The BBC did indeed use the internet to communicate out of NOLA after Katrina. I used the wifi you claim didn't exist to IRC with co-workers stuck in NOLA.

Hacking interfaces between crypto boxes and telco systems doesn't qualify you as an expert on emcomm, nor does working as an engineer at a tv station. You don't have any background that justifies your claim that you completely understand the psychology of dispatch.

Every claim you've made that can be checked has turned out to be either false or an exageration.

Why should anyone believe the ones that can't be checked?

 

Now which part should we be using as a model, Larry? The downed repeaters, as mentioned on the club web site? The lack of web sites for the RACES groups? The complete lack of links from the state's emcomm people to any amateur radio group?

 

I propose a new organization...the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of AMATEUR CODE PRACTITIONERS (NAACP).. Members of this organization would have the following advantages:                                              1.  Their own frequencies on the bands, shared with Extra class licensees and no-code Democrats.            2.   A 90% discount from the IRS at tax time.               3.   Free postage from the US Postal  Service for letters   to the FCC, ARRL and QSL cards...                            4.   Immunity from prosecution for  deliberate interference.                                                            5.    Free legal representation for rule infractions ..                                                          6.    Free pass to get out of jail and collect $200 dollar
7.    A no code, no written test license...
8.    Free QSL cards from Office Depot, Staples or Kinkos...
9.    Anything I missed
Joe   W4CBJ

 

You forgot free legal representation to fend off HOA's and city codes department's lawsuits over antenna support structures.