At 08:25 AM 6/13/2008, Hal Kennedy wrote:
>Taking an audio feed from the N4GG receiver is against the rules
>- the receiver is outside the 500 meter circle of PJ4O. But taking a
>packet (or Skimmer) feed - one that is public - is okay by existing
>rules. With this Skimmer feed I can raise my 160 total at PJ4O from 300
>Qs to 900 Qs in a weekend - no problem.
Good catch, Hal. Two things occur:
In order for a Skimmer telnet host to be legal by this definition, its IP
address would have to be *widely* publicized - otherwise it is not public
in the same sense that the dx cluster network is. I suspect that such
publicity would lead quickly to strong criticism on ethical or other
grounds. That, of course, still leaves cheating.
Perhaps a better fix would be to suggest that Alex to limit the Telnet host
in CW Skimmer to one IP address - 127.0.0.1, which is local to a single
computer or network (multiple port numbers could still be
allowed). Originally, it was thought that an externally accessible Telnet
host would be necessary to implement the reverse beacon network, but it
turned out that a better way was to use web services, an access protocol
that does not require opening a Telnet port to the outside world (and
possible hacking). This is the approach used by skimmer.dxwatch.com. This
is a quick thought, and there may be objections to this, but maybe Alex
could include this limitation in the release of version 1.2, which already
includes dramatic improvements in callsign validation, making it a "must
have" for Skimmer users.
73, Pete N4ZR
73, Pete N4ZR
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