PowerFlarm Update?

At 18:30 12 March 2015, wrote:
On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 2:23:34 PM UTC-4, QRP Nimbus C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 11:06:55 AM UTC-7, Mike the Strike wrote:
What do the Swiss regard as "early March"?
=20
Mike
=20
To me, this is the very definition of "Having you by the short hairs!"
U=
nlike the flight navigation computer domain where there are multiple
vendor=
s competing with one another to stimulate a robust development and
support
=
environment, I'm quite surprised that there is no other entity to have
take=
n up the torch for this worthy cause (especially here stateside) to
encoura=
ge the same. For the most part, some healthy competition keeps all the
pla=
yers engaged, honest and focused. Maybe it's time for some healthy
discuss=
ion about an alternative.

With a market as small as this one, dividing it and trying to create a
comp=
etition to get to the financial bottom makes very little sense to me.=20
UH

There was a competitor once. I believe they tried to force Flarm to release
the protocols. Their web site seems to be closed.

There is no more competitor for Flarm. They have the monopoly of collision
avoidance systems.
The other company has ceased distributing products as far as I know.
They never obtained any kind of support, of course, from Flarm.

OGN (open glider network) glidernet.org is working on a OGN tracker, and
the base stations as a consequence are being obscurated by flarm through the
release of v6.0 that changes the protocol they could still read thanks to
Hiram Yaeger. Flarm is now entering the business of online tracking,
apparently, and the first thing to do is get back monopoly on the data
transmission, just to be sure.
There is no other reason to change the protocol and not keep it backward
compatible.
Beside, the new software must still run on 2004 - 2005 early units that have
a miserable cpu and ridicolous memory. This means that functionalities are
not really changing for safety.

This is an old movie for me. Already seen happening here.


"Tim Newport-Peace" wrote in message
...

At 18:30 12 March 2015, wrote:
On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 2:23:34 PM UTC-4, QRP Nimbus C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 11:06:55 AM UTC-7, Mike the Strike wrote:
What do the Swiss regard as "early March"?
=20
Mike
=20
To me, this is the very definition of "Having you by the short hairs!"
U=
nlike the flight navigation computer domain where there are multiple
vendor=
s competing with one another to stimulate a robust development and
support
=
environment, I'm quite surprised that there is no other entity to have
take=
n up the torch for this worthy cause (especially here stateside) to
encoura=
ge the same. For the most part, some healthy competition keeps all the
pla=
yers engaged, honest and focused. Maybe it's time for some healthy
discuss=
ion about an alternative.

With a market as small as this one, dividing it and trying to create a
comp=
etition to get to the financial bottom makes very little sense to me.=20
UH

There was a competitor once. I believe they tried to force Flarm to release
the protocols. Their web site seems to be closed.

Am Freitag, 13. März 2015 23:25:39 UTC+1 schrieb pcool:

release of v6.0 that changes the protocol they could still read thanks to
Hiram Yaeger. Flarm is now entering the business of online tracking,
apparently, and the first thing to do is get back monopoly on the data
transmission, just to be sure.
There is no other reason to change the protocol and not keep it backward
compatible.


There IS another reason: privacy. Those OGN-Guys could track everyone without a working opt-out. That caused a lot of furore, especially in Germany.

It seems impossible that an opt-out could not be made, it is a trivial thing
to do, a matter of a list of flarm ID opt-outs and a filter.
I cannot read german, so I cannot follow any discussion about it. Can you
please enlight us?


wrote in message
...

Am Freitag, 13. März 2015 23:25:39 UTC+1 schrieb pcool:

release of v6.0 that changes the protocol they could still read thanks to
Hiram Yaeger. Flarm is now entering the business of online tracking,
apparently, and the first thing to do is get back monopoly on the data
transmission, just to be sure.
There is no other reason to change the protocol and not keep it backward
compatible.


There IS another reason: privacy. Those OGN-Guys could track everyone
without a working opt-out. That caused a lot of furore, especially in
Germany.

You are correct - it would be easy for the OGN guys to realize such a feature. BUT: They don´t want it and are strictly against an opt in/opt out.

Flarm had to react, otherwise they would have lost a lot of customers.

There are a lot of people here in germany who don't want to be tracked or at least want the freedom to decide. This kind of stuff really hits a nerve here and there was one of the longest threads I have seen sofar in the german gliding forum. There was a big outcry for an opt out option. Unfortunatly not all OGN operators feel there should be an opt out option. The problem seemed to be that OGN is an initiative of individuals. That means there is no central entity to discuss privacy requirements with or to enforce an opt out implementation. So basically it doesn't help that the solution might be technically trivial.

Tracking of individuals without consent also might touch strict german data privavcy laws - even though it would need a court ruling to clarify whether tracking a glider is already sufficiently linked to the piloting individual.

It seems that Flarm and also Butterfly Avionic (removing FlarmNet databases) took this topic quite seriously. In the end Flarm chose to end the discussion by taking the intiative. A new encryption should disable OGN short term and long term a Flarm organised solution will probably transfer OGN operators into Flarm control enforcing opt-out.

Now I understand, thank you very much.
Well it seems OGN is going to pay back the privacy issue. Their OGN tracker
is going to expire in a few days, and they will now pass through Flarm to
get the data decrypted.
Stealth mode was easy to accomplish, very strange, and a very sad
conclusion. But I agree that the privacy goes first, it wasnt that hard to
deal with, at all.


"Alexander Swagemakers" wrote in message
...

There are a lot of people here in germany who don't want to be tracked or at
least want the freedom to decide. This kind of stuff really hits a nerve
here and there was one of the longest threads I have seen sofar in the
german gliding forum. There was a big outcry for an opt out option.
Unfortunatly not all OGN operators feel there should be an opt out option.
The problem seemed to be that OGN is an initiative of individuals. That
means there is no central entity to discuss privacy requirements with or to
enforce an opt out implementation. So basically it doesn't help that the
solution might be technically trivial.

Tracking of individuals without consent also might touch strict german data
privavcy laws - even though it would need a court ruling to clarify whether
tracking a glider is already sufficiently linked to the piloting individual.

It seems that Flarm and also Butterfly Avionic (removing FlarmNet databases)
took this topic quite seriously. In the end Flarm chose to end the
discussion by taking the intiative. A new encryption should disable OGN
short term and long term a Flarm organised solution will probably transfer
OGN operators into Flarm control enforcing opt-out.

On Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 10:18:50 AM UTC-5, pcool wrote:
Now I understand, thank you very much.
Well it seems OGN is going to pay back the privacy issue. Their OGN tracker
is going to expire in a few days, and they will now pass through Flarm to
get the data decrypted.
Stealth mode was easy to accomplish, very strange, and a very sad
conclusion. But I agree that the privacy goes first, it wasnt that hard to
deal with, at all.

I really don't understand your point. Flarm develops a proprietary product that gets adopted by a large part of the gliding community, then gets hacked and used by a bunch of techno glider geeks. Flarm responds by protecting their (as in, THEY DEVELOPED AND OWN IT) technology and responds to a market demand (tracking) by enhancing their system to provide features such as privacy for those who were previously affected by the (possibly illegal) hacked OGN network.

And you think Flarm acted incorrectly? Really?

Interesting perspective.

Kirk
66

On Friday, March 13, 2015 at 6:25:39 PM UTC-4, pcool wrote:

There is no other reason to change the protocol and not keep it backward
compatible.


There's at least one good reason to change and that's the update to stealth mode. New mode makes much more sense than old. No silly position/climb "degradation" of tactical info, simply eliminate tactical stuff symmetrically unless the gliders are "read each other's tail numbers" close.

Evan Ludeman / T8