[Ham-Mac] Re: FCC Discrimination Against Mac Users

[Jan Tarsala]

Rich,

Fascinating detective work!

Perhaps a petition for rulemaking proposing directives to be codified into
Part 0 or Part 1 of the FCC rules would get their attention.  If the FCC can
specify in excruciating detail how documents are to be typewritten for
submittal, they can surely dictate CORES/ULS standards for our paperless,
online age.

73,

Jan
WB6VRN

>At 7:41 PM -0500 5/20/03, you wrote:
>
>>John, K8AJS
>>
>>I was sorry to hear that you confirmed the same problem I had doing an
>>ONLINE FILING of a modification.  I was hopeful you found a solution.  I
>>tried and had the same failure with Safari, Explorer and Mozilla.  Yes, I
>>did report the bug to the Safari development team and even tried in OS9.
>>
>>I called the FCC and the web page guru said parts of the web page
>>[http://wireless.fcc.gov/uls/index.html] is not compatible with the Apple
>>Macintosh operating systems (OS9 and OSX) and they have no plan to change.
>>His suggestion to do ONLINE FILING was to use someone's PC.  I did and it
>>worked. I posted the Mac OS issue to the Apple discussion group and did not
>>receive one comment.  I don't think Apple cares and neither does the FCC.
>>
>>The bottom line is if you need to process an ONLINE modification to your ham
>>license, use a PC and you will not have problems.  If you try to use your
>>Mac,  you will just get frustrated and it will be a big time waster.
>
>John et al,
>
>       I did some review of the HTML code written for the FCC web pages
>that are giving Mac users problems, and here's what I think:
>
>       The problem is NOT with the MacOS in any way, shape or form.  The
>problem is that the FCC has CHOSEN to write a Java applet that works
>only in browsers running on Windows systems.  The HTML code checks
>the OS type and browser version in deciding some details of how to use
>the applet, and the HTML coder apparently wasn't even courteous enough
>to provide an error message if the OS/browser information was incompatible
>with the applet.  You just get a blank screen, and are left to figure
>out what happened on your own.
>
>       Why would they choose to write an applet that works only on the
>Windows platform?
>
>       The answer is anybody's guess, but you pick from the following list:
>
>	o The coder who wrote this page wanted to use a feature
>	  that was only available in Microsoft's Java implementation--
>	  i.e., they fell into Microsoft's trap of using Windows-
>	  specific Java extensions that are incompatible with other
>	  platforms (this is what the ongoing Microsoft/Sun lawsuit
>	  is about),
>
>	o The coder who wrote this page didn't know about the
>	  incompatibilities between Microsoft's Java implementation
>	  and the industry-standard Java implementation and, when
>	  problems cropped up, simply put checks in the code to
>	  avoid the problem rather than fixing it,
>
>	o The coder who wrote this page (or his/her boss) couldn't
>	  care less about making the web pages fully cross-platform
>	  compatible--i.e., they believe that only Windows machines
>	  exist and other platforms are not worth worrying about
>	  (they bought into Microsoft's big lie).
>
>SOAPBOX MODE ON
>---------------
>
>       This sort of problem really burns my *ss.  I was the VP of Engineering
>of a large Internet company in 2000 - 2001, and we took great care to
>make everything about our site as platform and browser-independent as
>possible.  Usually, this wasn't a lot of work, it just meant that we stayed
>away from using platform-specific features such as incompatible Java 
>extensions,
>or at least wrote two versions of each web page with similar features, and
>used browser and OS detection code to deliver the proper one.  Anything
>else is just pure laziness.
>
>       Further, as a taxpayer, and a Mac user, I am incensed that they
>would use my dollars in a way that disenfranchises me from the process.
>
>SOAPBOX MODE OFF
>---------------
>
>       Bottom line, there is no technical reason why the FCC ULS site
>should not work with all OS's and most browsers (except for the oldest,
>most broken ones).  And, as a government agency that should not be playing
>favorites when it comes to OS's, they should be brought to task for their
>short-sighted approach.
>
>       Unfortunately, talking with the technical people at the FCC will
>get nowhere fast--most IT or software people are simply going to say
>"that's the way it is" and move on with their other work.  It seems to
>me that the most useful approach would be to go to the top, where they
>are most likely to understand the argument that they should not be
>discriminating against a significant segment of their customer base.
>
>       I'm sufficiently cynical about the possibility of changing the
>FCC's mind about this that I probably won't try to start the complaining
>process, but if someone else wants to give it a try, I'll join in....
>
>- Rich
>   WA6FXP