Email Over High-Frequency Radio in West Africa

Guillaume Filion writes "LinuxJournal has a fascinating article about Radio Email in West Africa over HF links. 'Deep inside the warm green interior of Guinea, centered in the frontal lobe of West Africa, field personnel in the widely scattered village-towns of Dabola, Kissidougou and Nzerekore now enjoy access to regular internet e-mail, directly from their desktops. Here we have bridged the digital divide, and there isn't a telephone line or satellite dish in sight.' Talk about Wireless Fidelity!"

Comments

mod me down, fast!

[mekkab]

It's like that time I kept bitching at the moderators... basically creating a one-sided dialog where the only thing I got in response was (-1 troll) , etc. Neat, in a sort of meta-fictional way.

Infact I got ALMOST every negative moderation, except for redundant...

This was a discussion where I also got a 5 and a 4, so it balanced out my one-man tirade.

Re:mod me down, fast!

[dubiousmike]

Yeah - within 10 minutes, I have gotten the following score:

Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Funny=2, Overrated=3, Total=7.

just my luck, a bunch of moderators with no sense of (my) humor.

I Question The Durability

[PhysicsScholar]

The whole reason that the Internet was created stemmed from the need for a communications system that's global in scale and dependable and durable enought to withstand any natural or not-so-natural (read: nuclear) disaster that takes place.

In the case of sending and receiving email via radio waves, one must be aware that the electric fields from the equipment can be so high that spontaneous glow discharges can be produced by any metal object within six inches of the routers, and fluorescent tubes can be lit up anywhere in the surrounding room without being contacted.

The RF energy being generated is probably so immense and so poorly defined in frequency that probably all air-traffic communications must be jammed for a few miles around when this news system is operating.