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Morse Code Migrating To The Net
Rosco P. Coltrane writes "With Morse code slowly disappearing off the air, there seems to be a growing number of people who carry out conversations in Morse over the internet. Several Windows and Linux clients using VoIP or special protocols, such as EchoLink, EchoLinux, MorseMail, CW Communicator or CWirc exist for Morse lovers worldwide to pound brass and make contact with one another. Could the next must-have computer input device be a morse key ?"
Morseall is a morse code input server for Linux using the mouse buttons. Morse is being used to help the disabled use computers . A great way to learn morse code is to work on the computer using morse code instead of the keyboard for a few hours.
I like to build things and wire stuff together.
crypto! now that will throw them for a loop!
Dear Mr Morse
Unfortunately your patent application for a serial binary code device (RFC 1) has not been accepted, as a company called SCO claim prior art.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Well... I can see it's uses for shortening messeges *sort of*, but what else? It's not any use as encryption obviously, I guess just nostalgia?
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
So computer geeks have finally found a way to make the internet appeal to the older generations!
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
I am at a loss for words. Why? Sure, I can see the "fun" in it. But, its like towing your car with a horse.
Just f'n IM the dude man.
As a diehard fan, it's always made a lot more sense to just plug in the radio if I'm going to do comms in morse. It's a lot more gratifying, and believe it or not, a lot more entertaining than over the net. With a radio, you don't have to pay for air time, nor do you have to set up complicated clients.
Many a night has been spent in front of a glowing dim console, applying a feather touch to an old worn dial to a hear a faint signal, a single voice coming from a hemisphere away. Sure, the internet is a guaranteed easy, clean connection. That's a given.... but it's just not the same.
*sigh*
73, VA3CSG
Urban Detail
The next big thing: horse hitch accessories on the front of cars!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
.. MoIP?
Has a ring to it.
Could the next must-have computer input device be a morse key?
Something wrong with any randomly selected key on the keyboard?
Of course, the real danger is that net.poseurs will use ASCII-to-Morse translators with programmable semi-random delays to simulate mad Morse skillz.
Hey, I hear cuneiform is dying out. Will the next must-have computer input device be a slab of wet mud?
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Wouldn't a morse key describe the Apple's mouse?
I can't really see this as the next wave in computer usage. Being a HAM (unskilled at morse as it be), I like to see people still using Morse code to communicate, however, I really don't see this as being a huge wave. Although, who knows? Maybe it will teach more and more people (hopefully the younger generation) an appreciation for morse, and might get more people as licensed HAMs.
---
Mike
I'm going to kick the next person that I see with their karma rating in their sig.
So SCO walked into a bar, and ...
:)
Nah, I think it still works.
Entering morse code sounds like it would be worse than trying to type on my cellphone.
I guess that's why it's not my hobby.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
I happen to know morse code but I rarely find a use for it anymore.
... -- ... (SMS in morse). My feature is just one step beyond what the Nokia handset already provides! ;-) )
What I would really like to have is an option to my mobile phone that converts incoming SMS messages to morse code, beeping them out! With that feature I would not have to actually pick up the phone to read my SMS messages. Maybe this would be possible to program on the newer Java-enabled phones?
(The standard "ring tone" on my Nokia for a SMS message is
)9TSS
VRML smoke signals
Now somebody just has to implement IP over Morse, and we come full circle. I expect the RFC to come out sometime in April.
Did anyone know that slashdot has a filter to prevent me from posting in morse code??!?! The irony is striking.
Praise be to our "step backwards" regime, for today, in 2008, a brand new technology has been revealed to us, the people of the world.
It has been discovered that by using a sheet, or other covering, disruptions can be made in the smoke that comes from burning uncured/wet materials. These distruptions, when agreed upon in a certain format, can be used to communicate messages great distances.
The Berkely campus was set ablaze today by techno geeks attempting to create the first "smokey net". MIT students held a joyful party claiming "It's the first method created that you HAVE to let the smoke out to use!"
Of course, being an emerging retro technologie, it is not without it's limitations. Currently there is no capability for P2P or Secure networks, shy of committing genocide on a grand scale.
SCO International Dominion Corporation, in response to this announcement, stated "That's actually OUR wireless communications system, and we want royalties. As our evidence will certainly show, we introduced the genetic make up of trees, and it was US, not prometheus, who gave fire to the masses. Of course, we will not disclose this evidence at the time. But it's mine... gimme!
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Quite so. As an old guy, I learned Morse long ago, and use it to this day, but only on the radio. It is fun to be able to send and receive it (in my head - I do not bother writing it down) as fast as I can type, or even faster. I can listen in and follow along with the conversation, without having to take my eyes off of my work.
On the other hand, the most efficient communication I have ever been involved in involved using a sound board on my PC, hooking it up to the audio in/out of the radio transceiver, and using the computer to generate PSK31 encoded signals.
Hansi Reiser has written linux software for doing this: http://www.qsl.net/dl9rdz/#psk
73,
W4TI
Soli Deo Gloria
Yeah Randy had his compute blink his NUMLOCK light in morse code to defeat van eck phreaking. He would have fake shit on the screen and the real info coming out of the blinking light. Cool scene in the book, and a nice look at how to deal with known active attempts at getting at your data, and defeating it right under someones nose. Neat!
OK, I think speak for a lot of us when I say... what the fsck are you talking abt?
Dotdadotdotdot...etcetc
E-N-L-A-R-G-E
Y-O-U-R
P-E-hey!!!
You know somebody's gonna try it...
java morse code translator
;-)
... --- ...
;-(
follow the link if you are java-in-your-browser-hater anyways, because there is a cgi morse code translator there too (includes audio!
soon to be slashdotted into oblivion
wait...
slashdot you suck!
i tried to post some cryptic output for the uber-morse geeks to read and i got this:
"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters."
oh well, i'm stuck with this titanic message then:
poo
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was going to reply to this in Morse code. Unfortunately Taco's lameness filter vetoed it. Not to troll or anything, but it seems that filter causes more problems than it solves. The trolls just work around it, while real posts get punished. Sigh....
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
I would have written a big long reply in morse code, but slashdot's lameness filter prevents morse code replies. So it should be obvious that morse code on the web will never take off.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I was suprised at all the negative comments this story has received. I guess it's easy for most people to forget where they come from.
Morse code, in my opinion, is an invaluable tool in opening the doors to the young in such fileds as electrical engineering, physics, computers and radio communications.
There is no way most parents could/would shell out 500 dollars and upwards for even a used HF rig for their kid to get started in their "hobby".
But I bet you that same kid would never foget his first QSO with his home built, 200mw, 9 volt battery operated rig and a wire antenna. Especially if he's chatting it up with another ham 2 states away. These kist are available for as little as 20 bucks online, minus the cost of the soldering iron.
As for the art of morse code "dying", the poster has no idea that there are hundreds of contests that take place yearly on a international level.
I guess it's easier for parents to sit their kids in front of a tv/interet enabled computer than to sit with them and help them learn their first morse charachters.
A high-speed key, with weights on the back to allow the thing to send a string of dots or dashes just by holding the paddle one way or the other. Once you could send code using a key, using a bug was easily learned, and was necessary for speeds approaching 20 words per minute. The advantage of using code over voice was simplicity, no modulator needed, just break entire carrier on and off to send your message over short wave to the receiver, who then hetrodyned your signal locally in the receiver circuitry using an adjustable knob to produce an audible note. I was K5HLW in the 1950's, and used this form of communication in the 40, 20, 15 and 10 meter bands for a few years.
At the time, we had no idea that PC's such as we use today would be invented, even though we were the techies of the day. Could this happen again? Sure. Give it a few years, and everyone will be using something now unimagined.
... is the Morse-Code column (after the oct, dec and hex columns) in the UniCode docs. We need Morse encodings for at least utf-16.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
In an era of ADSL, I have just one question about Morse on PCs:
.-- .... -.-- ..--..
One other use, which I have been investigating as a personal project, is using the vibrating phone feature so you can get message without anyone else knowing. I did not look at morse code initially as a solution as it too slow, but if you can get phone to vibrate in way in which you can work out the message, you could receive message in secret..
-- Dr. Fu Ling-Yu, Internal Technology Consult; Tongji University, People Republic of China.
dash dot
dash dash dash.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
I've been working on an app for my Danger hiptop to play incoming SMS and email subjects/senders in code...
A friend of mine had an idea to write a program that beeps in morse code while you type in Windows applications. I was so intrigued with the idea that I had to try it, and wound up finishing it :)
Morse Code Beeper
Both the source code and compiled binaries can be downloaded from the above site. Enjoy.
Harold
Now we just need to string a tin can to the neighbor's house and use it for a data connection.
Pratical value -> Near Zero
Sentimental value -> high.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Personally, I prefer to send my SOS to the World in a hundred billion bottles.
Of course the coast guard is mad at me 'cause my hundred billion bottles tend to wash up on the shore.
Every idea has its Sting.
The apprentice types morse, referring to a guide for each letter.
The journeyman types morse fluently from memory.
The master codes perl in morse.
True, the teachers may not appreciate the kids who secretly send messages back and forth during lectures, but it's not that much different from passing notes. If it really got to be annoying, the radio signals are probably easier to intercept and monitor than sheets of paper anyway.
The walkie-talkies I've seen tend to be 14 channels, but since Morse takes so much less bandwith it seems like a waste to use 1/14th of the available spectrum just for one QSO. Even worse, the only ones I've found are very poor at Morse communication. The buttons don't seem suitable at all for keying, and I'd like to be able to recieve the messages silently somehow instead of that annoying beep.
I tried a few Google searches for some sort of walkie-talkie type of system that was good at sending Morse silently, but to no avail. It seems like it would be a good market -- sort of like sending secret messages, but not really all that secret, since you're broadcasting. Does anyone know of something suitable for sending silent "instant messaging" in QW, over very short distances (walkie-talkie range or lower)?
William L. Dye ("willdye") ...at... willdye ...dot... com
zCW
Just turn the slash (in the slashdot name) about 70 degrees clockwise and you get dashdot. Or then again , you can turn the dash about 70 degrees counter-clockwise an the morse is turned slash. The for wxample S.O.S would look like ...///...
And slashdot woud be dashdot (i.e -. instead of /. )
Who will register dashdot.org (for Morse code enabled site)?
While the Morse code requirement for getting a ham license is going to be going away, I'm not so sure that the code will be 'disappearing off the air', at least as far as the ham bands are concerned. I'm certainly not stopping using Morse just because it's no longer a license requirement, and the same is true for a lot of other hams. The use of Morse isn't being banned, it's just no longer a license requirement. And in some segments of the hobby, morse is still a preferred mode (it's not unusual to see comments from contesters about having to hunt up the microphone when they occasionally operate a phone contest, simply because they primarily operate CW contests).
I kid you not. Consider this. The only reasons PDAs/cellphones/portables stopped getting smaller is that they still need to accommodate some sort of a display and input device(s). But, it will soon be perfectly feasible to have a very high-res display integrated into some sort of eyewear like regular looking sunglasses (actually, the only way to make a very small yet high-res screen readable is to put it right in front of your eye) and the rest of the device could be just a single button dangling off your keychain. Morse input is a natural for that. Palm graphitti (sp?) clearly demonstrated that a large number people can be moved to learn a new input mechanism if there is a clear benefit to it. In this case the benefit is being able to input without looking, eq while driving. You'd be surpised how much else you could do with a single button. (see www.xenote.com, now defunct :( , for an example)
Guess I'll have to dust off my dad's old 1947 Vibroplex bug Or go buy a new one.
http://www.vibroplex.com/origstd.htm
Aside from the cord and plug there haven't really been any design changes that I can see over some five and a half decades.