Slashdot Mirror
Shortwave Radio and The PC
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica has an indepth guide on the Ten Tec RX-320, a shortwave radio receiver that connects to the PC and is controlled by software (both Linux and Windows). The article goes into depth on different high frequency modes, broadcast shortwave, and even a bit on ham radio and new digital modes."
But internet radio is taking over shortwave, this is a pointless product! And besides, won't the pc cause interference with the radio?
1. Weather alerts - Global reach, software controllable as well. Should be ideal to get local alerts. Specially suited for /ers who spend hours in front of their PCs blissfully unaware of the weather!
2. Terror alerts - need we say more?
3. Service Pack alerts! the best of the lot. We could have daily bulletins, sponsored programs by virus writers, chat shows with hackers etc.
Good stuff.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Primarily because its inexpensive and effective.
The BBC World Service, Deutsche Welles and a host of other national services give a good world opinion on the state of affairs, which seems to contrast with local news during periods of heightened global tension.
Its also fun to listen to the angry broadcasts of small angry countries like Cuba and NK, although the hey-dey for this kind of rhetoric was the cold war.
Now whether or not a PC is the most effective way to listen to shortwave is debatable, but the value of shortwave is not. For $250-300 you can get an excellent portable shortwave radio that will entertain you far longer than the latest hot video card.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Sure, you can even have Internet over Carrier Pigeon, just don't expect it to perform very well! Much more interesting is Shortwave Radio over the Internet.
When I played around w/ Packet Radio there were a lot of problems, collisions, weak transmitters come and go, the retries and lag time is tremendous - the buzz at the time was: don't expect to be able to d/l PacMan video games using Packet! Whats the max packet baud rate these days? 9600? On HF it's even lower.
At work I can ping a remote site and get a response in about 70 milliseconds, going thru about 20 routers. Packet radio can't touch that.
Look into PSK31, it's an interesting active mode these days for point-to-point qso's, an HF chat room if you will.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }