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March 26, 2005
Pulver, The Grateful Dead, the EFF and the Spirit of Ham Radio
The International Herald Tribune re-ran the recent Skype story from the New York Times.
In the story, John Perry Barlow refers to a random Skype call he took from a person in Vietnam and the Pulver Order receives an honorable mention. :-)
While it might not sound natural for someone to place or take a random call on purpose to a total stranger over the internet, one of the things which I've enjoyed being a ham radio operator during the past thirty years are the random conversations that I get into when I turn on my ham radio, tune to a clear frequency and say the words "CQ CQ."
Ten years ago when VocalTec launched Internet Phone, I remember spending quite a few hours at night during March, 1995 searching from a list of total strangers from various places around the world looking for someone to talk to every time I had a chance to turn on my home computer. During the course of 1995, I remember speaking with people who I got to know, and whose company I learned to enjoy. Instead of worrying about my antenna, radio or HF propagation and sunspots, all I had to deal with what computer I was using, my available bandwidth and my overall connectivity to the internet. While times were different then, the cool experience described by Ethan Todraw-Whitehall is one which anyone who has ever used a CB radio has experienced and something that ham radio operators just take for granted.
The advent of Skype seems to be finally making being a Geek a cool thing. :-)
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Posted by jeff on March 26, 2005 06:55 AM | Permalink
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