User Panel
The long outage would suggest that they don't have anyone with skills.
Might not have much in the way of communication skills either. It badly erodes consumer confidence when you stand mute for so long. Timely "sit reps" can go a long way to make people believe that progress is being made. If they think progress is being made, most people will stay with you until a result is obtained. Standing mute just makes everyone throw up their hands and give up on you. It sucks to be them right now. |
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What's next ?
just like the demise of MFJ, . . . . who's gonna pick up the slack ? |
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Originally Posted By Colt653: What's next ? just like the demise of MFJ, . . . . who's gonna pick up the slack ? View Quote DXCC isn't dead quite yet, but the League isn't doing itself any favors by not stepping out in front of the issue with more frequent updates. Silence leads me to believe that their IT isn't making much headway and my guess is their data recovery plan was poorly executed and didn't work. |
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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan
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Originally Posted By RED_5: ... it's becoming (more) apparent, at least to me, that developers are not interested in long term results. Push the code and take the money. View Quote |
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View Quote They are very NRAish. I never renewed after my first year of membership. |
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Originally Posted By K0UA: The long outage would suggest that they don't have anyone with skills. Might not have much in the way of communication skills either. It badly erodes consumer confidence when you stand mute for so long. Timely "sit reps" can go a long way to make people believe that progress is being made. If they think progress is being made, most people will stay with you until a result is obtained. Standing mute just makes everyone throw up their hands and give up on you. It sucks to be them right now. View Quote You are so right. It costs them NOTHING to post a little more detail (obviously without giving away secrets) and apprize us of the progress or lack thereof on a daily basis. Here is the communications person, so they've got DEI covered: https://www.arrl.org/news/view/arrl-welcomes-sierra-harrop-w5dx-as-public-relations-and-outreach-manager |
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Don't confuse where I live with where I'm from.
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The ARRL also manages the awards for the CQ Magazine to include CQ WW DX CW Contest, CQ WW DX SSB Contest, CQ WW VHF Contest, CQ WW WPX CW Contest, CQ WW WPX SSB Contest, and more.
The CQ Magazine World Wide CW contest is this on this weekend and I'm sure many hams from around the world will be gathering their pitchforks and torches if LoTW stays down they can't get credit for this contest. |
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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan
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Originally Posted By Emoto: You are so right. It costs them NOTHING to post a little more detail (obviously without giving away secrets) and apprize us of the progress or lack thereof on a daily basis. Here is the communications person, so they've got DEI covered: https://www.arrl.org/news/view/arrl-welcomes-sierra-harrop-w5dx-as-public-relations-and-outreach-manager View Quote Paul (Sierra) Harrop |
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We used to have Reagan, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope. Now we have Biden, no cash, and no hope.
To anger a conservative, tell him a lie; to anger a liberal, tell him the truth. |
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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan
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Originally Posted By DarkLordVader: You need security from the top. Any CEO or Leader who doesn't ask his org after all the hacks we've seen, "Can this happen to us?", is at fault. There are a million consultants an org can hire to audit and assess the security fitness of the org. Developers have a long list of todo's and security rarely bubbles up unless there is an embarrassing finding by a customer, or a hack. The only way that changes is if the money and resources come from the top leadership to say: "Find out if we have problems, and fix them." This why the role CSO exists, to be responsible for security and not a long list of other concerns. View Quote Whats bad is they had a cyber security expert that has been telling them for years they need to fix it. She was on the board. She was run off by the new CEO is my understanding. And as you can imagine she has been very vocal as of late. K9bob can probably fill in some details. |
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Originally Posted By stanprophet09: Just reinforces why I decided to not give them any money this year. View Quote I just checked on my membership status. Unfortunately, I'm current until next January, but I shut off automatic renewal. I'm done with them. The LoTW thing is like the straw that broke the camel's back, and the "Sierra" thing is like a turd in the punch bowl. |
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We used to have Reagan, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope. Now we have Biden, no cash, and no hope.
To anger a conservative, tell him a lie; to anger a liberal, tell him the truth. |
Are there any non-arrl outgoing qsl bureaus? asking for a friend
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MIA: M/SGT James W. Holt USSF 2-7-68 SVN
"Your freedom to be you includes my freedom to be free from you." -A. Wilkow |
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Originally Posted By RED_5: Are there any non-arrl outgoing qsl bureaus? asking for a friend View Quote The bureau was one of the very few reasons I was a ARRL member. My plan is to just send cards direct to each countries bureau from now on. https://www.iaru.org/reference/qsl-bureau-2/ Without a major shift in how the ARRL conducts itself, I have let my membership lapse and have no plans to renew. |
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Don't confuse where I live with where I'm from.
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Originally Posted By Emoto: Are we thinking that the bureaus actually check to see if you are an ARRL member? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Emoto: Originally Posted By RED_5: Are there any non-arrl outgoing qsl bureaus? asking for a friend Are we thinking that the bureaus actually check to see if you are an ARRL member? Click To View Spoiler well, proof of membership is supposed to be included with your QSL cards..... https://www.arrl.org/files/file/QSL/Outgoing_QSL_Rules_Jan_2022.pdf |
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MIA: M/SGT James W. Holt USSF 2-7-68 SVN
"Your freedom to be you includes my freedom to be free from you." -A. Wilkow |
Originally Posted By illini52: The bureau was one of the very few reasons I was a ARRL member. My plan is to just send cards direct to each countries bureau from now on. https://www.iaru.org/reference/qsl-bureau-2/ Without a major shift in how the ARRL conducts itself, I have let my membership lapse and have no plans to renew. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By illini52: Originally Posted By RED_5: Are there any non-arrl outgoing qsl bureaus? asking for a friend The bureau was one of the very few reasons I was a ARRL member. My plan is to just send cards direct to each countries bureau from now on. https://www.iaru.org/reference/qsl-bureau-2/ Without a major shift in how the ARRL conducts itself, I have let my membership lapse and have no plans to renew. interesting take on what to do....could be costly.. but it IS an option |
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MIA: M/SGT James W. Holt USSF 2-7-68 SVN
"Your freedom to be you includes my freedom to be free from you." -A. Wilkow |
Originally Posted By RED_5: interesting take on what to do....could be costly.. but it IS an option View Quote I thought so too, but send once a year, get some of the local guys in on it and probably not too bad. Sending envelopes is not expensive. Plus I'm not sending stuff to 100 different countries. Always seems to be a core of 20 or so that my cards are going to. Or we just start an ARFCOM QSL bureau. |
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Originally Posted By RED_5: Click To View Spoiler well, proof of membership is supposed to be included with your QSL cards..... https://www.arrl.org/files/file/QSL/Outgoing_QSL_Rules_Jan_2022.pdf View Quote That covers outgoing, but what about incoming? I keep around $5 with my region's incoming bureau so they can forward cards to me, and it seems to work fine. When I send, I send direct. |
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Don't confuse where I live with where I'm from.
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Originally Posted By Emoto: That covers outgoing, but what about incoming? I keep around $5 with my region's incoming bureau so they can forward cards to me, and it seems to work fine. When I send, I send direct. View Quote ARRL membership not required for incoming QSLs, if that's what you're asking. |
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Originally Posted By K9-Bob: The ARRL pays $350,000 annually to the general manager (aka CEO) but the IT staff salaries are nowhere near as competitive. You get what you pay for I suppose. View Quote $350,000 to the general manager for a donation based member funded organization? Wow, I have never given them any money but I sure as shit am not going to give them money after learning this. |
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Originally Posted By Emoto: That covers outgoing, but what about incoming? I keep around $5 with my region's incoming bureau so they can forward cards to me, and it seems to work fine. When I send, I send direct. View Quote I wrote a check to them for envelopes and postage a while back, I get quarterly envelopes probably? It always has a countdown of what I have left. I guess I should send these that I have sitting waiting to go out... |
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Day 14
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NRA Life - Patron Member and former contributor to Wayne LaPierre’s Wardrobe
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We used to have Reagan, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope. Now we have Biden, no cash, and no hope.
To anger a conservative, tell him a lie; to anger a liberal, tell him the truth. |
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I tried to sign up with them several times but could never get it to work. Received their postcard, tried, gave up.
I guess I’m not missing anything now? |
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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan
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Originally Posted By Colt653: How I imagine LOTW’s well oiled machine….. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/2275/IMG_1383_jpeg-3226362.JPG View Quote I think Jed and Granny had more on the ball. But Jethro....? Yeah, that's about right |
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Originally Posted By K0UA: I think Jed and Granny had more on the ball. But Jethro....? Yeah, that's about right View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By K0UA: Originally Posted By Colt653: How I imagine LOTW’s well oiled machine….. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/2275/IMG_1383_jpeg-3226362.JPG I think Jed and Granny had more on the ball. But Jethro....? Yeah, that's about right Hillbillies would figure out how to cobble something together that would work. |
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Don't confuse where I live with where I'm from.
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I'm sure glad.they are keeping everyone informed about the status of the hack.... The poor communication about LOTW will likely be the end of my ARRL membership.
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Middleofnowhere, Nebraska
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Originally Posted By stanprophet09: This was posted on Ping Jockey this morning https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/199367/ARRL_Update__NOT__png-3227032.JPG View Quote Here is yesterday's actual update (and I use the term loosely): Updated 5/29/2024 This update includes information about the status of several services as we continue to respond to a serious incident involving access to our network and systems. The ARRL Volunteer Examiner Coordinator (ARRL VEC) has resumed the processing of Amateur Radio License applications with the FCC. A more comprehensive update on the status of ARRL VEC services is available here. There has been no interruption to visitor operating at W1AW, the Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Station. The station resumed voice bulletins on Thursday, May 23. All other scheduled transmissions, including Morse code practice, and code and digital bulletins, will resume on Thursday, May 30. Please refer to the regular operating schedule at www.arrl.org/w1aw-operating-schedule. After last week's distribution of the ARRL Letter, our e-newsletter service has resumed. Current editions of ARRL Club News and The ARES® Letter have also been distributed. ARRL Store orders have resumed shipping. Orders are being fulfilled from earliest order dates to the latest. Please allow additional time for our processing. There has been no disruption to the @arrl.net email forwarding service, though forwarding email addresses and aliases cannot be modified at this time. Our telephone system is unavailable at this time. We appreciate your patience as we continue working on restoring access to affected systems and services. |
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Don't confuse where I live with where I'm from.
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Interesting. So this problem goes well beyond just LoTW and affected all their systems. Perhaps some were just shut down out of an abundance of caution, but with the phone and other systems slow to come back online that suggests they had to be rebuilt from scratch and they are doing the easier to rebuild systems first.
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Snipped from another forum:
The update: Mike Ritz, W7VO, ARRL 2nd Vice President, was at the WVDXC club meeting last night, having just attended an ARRL board meeting to discuss the outage. Mike reported those meetings are a weekly event until the matter is resolved. Everything that was running on INTERNAL servers is down until further notice. That includes their VoIP phone system, their .org email addresses, and front ends for things like LOTW. Everything running on external servers - cloud servers etc. - including LOTW data, is believed unaffected. But, such data will not be available until the internal matters are resolved. Thus, "[email protected]" doesn't work - because that was on their internal mail server. But "[email protected]" does - because the relays didn't run internally. I checked, and [email protected] works. Efforts to restore the internal systems is proceeding full-time. No time-line can be given. The nature of the problem cannot be discussed. I believe Mike said - with air asterisks around his words - "We have been advised to say nothing." He responded similarly when asked if "the Feds" were investigating this. |
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Hmm...
Sounds like two possibilities: -External bad actor(s), likely a ransomware attack -Internal bad actor(s), maybe a disgruntled employee |
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We used to have Reagan, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope. Now we have Biden, no cash, and no hope.
To anger a conservative, tell him a lie; to anger a liberal, tell him the truth. |
Originally Posted By K0UA: Snipped from another forum: The update: Mike Ritz, W7VO, ARRL 2nd Vice President, was at the WVDXC club meeting last night, having just attended an ARRL board meeting to discuss the outage. Mike reported those meetings are a weekly event until the matter is resolved. Everything that was running on INTERNAL servers is down until further notice. That includes their VoIP phone system, their .org email addresses, and front ends for things like LOTW. Everything running on external servers - cloud servers etc. - including LOTW data, is believed unaffected. But, such data will not be available until the internal matters are resolved. Thus, "[email protected]" doesn't work - because that was on their internal mail server. But "[email protected]" does - because the relays didn't run internally. I checked, and [email protected] works. Efforts to restore the internal systems is proceeding full-time. No time-line can be given. The nature of the problem cannot be discussed. I believe Mike said - with air asterisks around his words - "We have been advised to say nothing." He responded similarly when asked if "the Feds" were investigating this. View Quote Interesting. Did he say who advised them to say nothing? |
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Don't confuse where I live with where I'm from.
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Originally Posted By Emoto: Interesting. Did he say who advised them to say nothing? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By Emoto: Originally Posted By K0UA: Snipped from another forum: The update: Mike Ritz, W7VO, ARRL 2nd Vice President, was at the WVDXC club meeting last night, having just attended an ARRL board meeting to discuss the outage. Mike reported those meetings are a weekly event until the matter is resolved. Everything that was running on INTERNAL servers is down until further notice. That includes their VoIP phone system, their .org email addresses, and front ends for things like LOTW. Everything running on external servers - cloud servers etc. - including LOTW data, is believed unaffected. But, such data will not be available until the internal matters are resolved. Thus, "[email protected]" doesn't work - because that was on their internal mail server. But "[email protected]" does - because the relays didn't run internally. I checked, and [email protected] works. Efforts to restore the internal systems is proceeding full-time. No time-line can be given. The nature of the problem cannot be discussed. I believe Mike said - with air asterisks around his words - "We have been advised to say nothing." He responded similarly when asked if "the Feds" were investigating this. Interesting. Did he say who advised them to say nothing? I don't know anything, I just pulled this off of another forum. But it does seem to answer some question. Especially how our data could be safe, but the front end of LOTW is in the dirt. |
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At this point they should just move all their systems and servers and services to the cloud and be done with it.
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Originally Posted By K0UA: That sounds like a really good idea. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Originally Posted By K0UA: Originally Posted By aa777888-2: At this point they should just move all their systems and servers and services to the cloud and be done with it. That sounds like a really good idea. I am a big fan of local machines and local control, in other words not a huge cloud fan. Of course, I assume proper IT management and security, which is evidently lacking at ARRL. The thing that pisses me off is that this stuff is NOT rocket science that mere mortals cannot hope to manage. |
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Don't confuse where I live with where I'm from.
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Originally Posted By Emoto: I am a big fan of local machines and local control, in other words not a huge cloud fan. Of course, I assume proper IT management and security, which is evidently lacking at ARRL. The thing that pisses me off is that this stuff is NOT rocket science that mere mortals cannot hope to manage. View Quote |
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Originally Posted By aa777888-2: I agree, sort of. It sticks in my craw that with cloud services it's a never ending financial drain and that one does not have total control. Indeed, at the last company I worked for prior to retirement, I started as employee #11. And, as luck would have it, de facto CIO. I was able to take the IT plant from hobby-time to full-on professional with a disaster plan and off-site backup (at a remote office, so we owned that, too) in less than a year. But, ten years later, with the company not wanting to invest in continuous improvement of the IT plant, we were saddled with ten year old hardware running ten year old software, most of which was going unsupported. Our contract IT services company was balking at continuing to support it, too. The company did not want to invest $100K in new hardware and all new software. Ultimately it was easier and more financially palatable to the C-suite to roll-over and go to cloud services. So we bought the government version of Microsoft 365 etc., etc. (we had the then new DoD cybersecurity requirements to meet). As you know, it works really well, you are always on the latest version of hardware and software, costs are easily forecast, and other than the internet connection going down extremely reliable. But the company will pay and pay and pay, and there is that ever present specter of the data being not fully in your control. YMMV. View Quote Ugh. Want to bet that that the ARRL didn't invest in continuous improvement either? |
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Don't confuse where I live with where I'm from.
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So they still aren't fessing up to what even happened?
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I guess never figuring out how to ever get LOTW to work in the first place wasn’t a bad thing after all?
I’m not a paper chaser though. |
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