In 1912 there were no laws regulating ham radio in the United States, On the tragic night of the sinking of the Titanic, there was confusion. Some radio operators reported the vessel was in trouble. Others reported that the vessel was fine. Rescue operations were hampered by the abundance of chatter on the public airwaves. The next night, ham operators voluntarily maintained radio silence to leave the airways available for sharing information, such as the list of survivors, with the press. Many operators helped in this process.
Today ham radio operators are licensed and are responsible for what they broadcast. I wonder if the day will ever come where websites will be licensed making them responsible for their content. I know my children cite websites as sources when writing term papers. Imagine if my son found a site that stated "The world is flat." and used that as fact in his paper. There would be no consequence to the site author for the misinformation.
Senior Advisor in the Office of the CTO, Jonathan Knowles, is a licensed ham radio operator. His call sign is K1DOD. When Jonathan jumped on the radio the other night, he happened to find a chat about AutoCAD Electrical. The conversation eventually shifted to this thing called Inventor LT.
“So if you install it, it’s just free and it just works?”
“Yep,” confirmed Jonathan.
He went on to introduce folks to Labs, and soon there was a lively discussion about all things Labs -- what Labs is and what it does.
Not only is Jonathan a licensed ham radio operator, he is a licensed Autodesk Labs advocate. What he says about Autodesk Labs is true. Technologies like Autodesk Inventor LT and others are indeed free. The world is not flat.
Riding the airwaves is alive in the Lab.