Part of President Obama’s directive to remake government is to have agencies open up their databases to the public. The FCC about two weeks ago brought out a totally new FCC.gov – at least the facade is new.<\/p>\n
Behind the scenes, the FCC is burdened with a “legacy”. They have made a large number of their databases available for download *** Geek alert ***\u00a0 [run away if you aren’t a geek]<\/p>\n Some interesting details are being mentioned.\u00a0\u00a0 They are also making source code available for how to manipulate the CPDS (CDBS?)\u00a0 – the FCC’s database of licensing and other engineering information.<\/p>\n The FCC’s computerized data only goes back to 1979 – that’s about the time I was working on my second job after college.\u00a0\u00a0 From their description, the FCC databases were maintained using FORTRAN – which just so happened to be the first computer language I learned – and used at a bank about the same time (never to be used again).<\/p>\n At some point they bought an automated code conversion tool that converted the FORTRAN code into C –\u00a0 whee!\u00a0\u00a0 Automated conversion tools can work and save programming costs in the beginning, but tend to create completely unmaintainable coding on the output side.<\/p>\n This fits more into the “Because I can” than “Because someone wants it” – but I’ve now added the\u00a0 FCC application history to the Station pages along with links to access the other information at the FCC.gov web site. – for example for KDKA:<\/p>\n http:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/streaming-schedule.php?stationid=343<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Part of President Obama’s directive to remake government is to have agencies open up their databases to the public. The FCC about two weeks ago brought out a totally new FCC.gov – at least the facade is new. Behind the … Continue reading
\n\u00a0http:\/\/www.fcc.gov\/data\/download-fcc-datasets<\/a><\/p>\n