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The Journey of Radios From Hardware to Software
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times is carrying a story all about the process of replacing radios with software. The article tells the tale of Vanu Bose, son of the man who started the Bose company, and his quest to bring software to what was previously a hardware-only enterprise. He met a lot of resistance in the 90s to his ideas, because processor technology was not up to the task. Now that technology has caught up with Vanu, his software (and other products like it) are increasingly replacing now-outdated hardware components. 'Well-established companies like Motorola and Ericsson now use elements of software-defined radio for their base stations. But Mr. Bose was the first to come to market with software that could handle multiple networks with the same equipment. Software radio appears to offer an elegant solution to what has been a vexing problem: how to have a single handset, like a cellphone, communicate across multiple networks. For instance, the G.S.M. standard, for global system for mobile communications, is used broadly in Europe, and most notably in the United States by AT&T.'"
As long as they're not restricted to Windows (see: Winmodems) :D
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Companies seem to forget that there is still a market for the simple. It took me two weeks of looking to find a piece of stand alone desktop equipment that satisfactorily met the following requirements:
1) AM/FM radio
2) AC plug
3) Headphone jack
4) Let's try keeping it under $30
5) Doesn't look like crap.
Sometimes, all you want is to listen to the baseball game on the radio. I didn't want to stream online (especially paying the usurious fees charged by MLB). I didn't want to change batteries. I didn't want to bother the folks in the rest of the office. Is that too much to ask, or is it simply not sexy enough for the modern consumer electronics market?