Well, not to toot my own horn too loudly, but in the mid 1980s I wrote a TCP/IP implementation. I intended it for ham radio use on low end PCs, as the only existing general purpose implementations were on commercial minicomputers far beyond a ham budget. (I actually began it on a dare by Terry Fox, WB4JFI, who insisted it was too complex to implement on anything a ham could afford.)

Before I knew it, my software was being widely used outside ham radio for dialup access to the Internet. Universities and companies set up banks of modems and PCs to give their students and employees access to their existing connections. Pretty soon commercial companies sprang up to do the same for the public, again using my software; I think we now call them "Internet Service Providers".

Meanwhile, the OSI world was continuing to produce large piles of paper, but no inexpensive (or free), usable software.

In the early 1990s, I went to Qualcomm where I ported my code onto their phones so it could be used to provide wireless Internet services.

Sure, my software is long obsolete now. When people still ask about it, I tell them to go look at Linux. But it once played a role that went well beyond ham radio, even though that's all I had originally meant it for. Perhaps this was an example of a butterfly flapping its wings; I don't know.

Thanks. It was actually TCP/IP (the Internet protocols) over packet radio.

I was just trying to say exactly that, but Slashdot lost my edited comment when I changed an option. Argh.

I never said all hams should build their own radios. But all hams should be able to learn how their radios work, if they are so inclined, and to modify and experiment with them. That's what the hobby is supposed to be about. It's exactly the same philosophy behind the open source software movement, only we hams had it first.

Most ham manufacturers still make hardware schematics available for their equipment, but microcontroller firmware has always been a sore point, especially with more and more functionality moving into DSP (as it should).

Yes, I am working on open source DSP software for the Raspberry Pi (or any other Linux platform) and inexpensive software-defined radio (SDR) front ends like the Funcube Dongle and the SDRPlay. (All three products come from the UK. Not sure what that means, but I'm glad they're making them.)

But my biggest beef is with ham digital voice. There are not one, not two but THREE mutually incompatible digital voice "standards" in common use on the VHF/UHF bands here in soCal: Fusion (Yaesu), D-Star (Icom) and DMR (Motorola). All three modulation and coding designs are dated and inefficient, with disappointing performance. Worse, they all use the same proprietary digital voice codec (AMBE) that's patented out the wazoo. It must be purchased on a custom DSP when it could easily be implemented in software on the same DSPs that do everything else in the radio. This is despite the ready availability of a superior, un-encumbered ham-developed algorithm called CODEC2 (by Dave Rowe, VK5DGR). The manufacturers simply ignore it, and few of us hams are in the position to mass-market small hand-held radios.

Yes, ham radio is still very much a "thing". But to me, the one "thing" it never has been is the purchasing of closed, proprietary software that can be turned off at whim by the developer. To me, ham radio has always been a unique hands-on opportunity to learn what's "behind the knobs" of a piece of communications hardware (or now, software). Even if you don't build (or write) your own stuff, even if you're primarily interested in using it to talk to others, it still gives you (or should give you) the opportunity to learn how it all works, to make technology just a little less mysterious and intimidating. Ham radio still provides a creative outlet for hundreds of thousands of people. It helps STEM students learn about electronics, math, physics, or just about any other field of science and engineering even remotely associated with radio communications, such as computers and networking, satellites and remote sensing. When I got into it in high school nearly 50 years ago, it confirmed for me that I wanted to become an electrical engineer, a decision I have never regretted. Even many who decide that a STEM career isn't for them are hams simply because it's an enjoyable hobby.

I had not heard this story, but that might be because I don't personally use Ham Radio Deluxe or any other proprietary ham software, certainly nothing that can be controlled in this way. Other hams are free to use whatever they want, but I personally consider proprietary software to be fundamentally incompatible with the nature and purpose of ham radio.

I don't like locked-down computers any more than you do. I hate ransomware even more; it's the single most despicable use of public key cryptography there is. But consider that without public key cryptography Apple wouldn't even be in a position to stop the FBI from hacking the iPhone. Individuals wouldn't even have the option to secure their personal communications, at least not in practice. (Yes, I know all about one-time pads. That's why I said "in practice"). Nor would we have the Internet, or at least anything like the one we have now. And without the Internet, computers of all kinds (secure or non-secure boot) wouldn't be nearly as capable and available as they are now because the volume and demand would be vastly less.

Where you see eccentricity, I see genius, insight and long hair. And I couldn't care less about the long hair.

I really can't think of more deserving recipients. I've never met Hellman, but I've met Diffie a few times, including when we testified to the Senate Commerce Committee during the 1990s Crypto Wars. He's a national asset whenever the NSA and FBI get a little too far out of line. Which is most of the time.

Well, I've recently developed a machine to convert atmospheric CO2 into various simple organic molecules known as "sugars", which have the significant advantage over methanol of being relatively nontoxic. My design has been successfully tested for some time and it only requires sunlight, water and a few miscellaneous other inexpensive materials. And best of all, my machine is self-replicating!

Telephone companies used to have this exact problem. (Maybe they still do). Central offices contain a "mainframe", essentially a huge patch panel that connects cable pairs coming in the building to the switches. Technicians activated a given local loop by running a cross-connect pair. When service was discontinued, they'd often just disconnect the pair but leave it in the mainframe to clog things up for the future. I suspect this problem is decreasing with the growth of remote switching. E.g., AT&T U-verse terminates the customer loop in a VRAD cabinet in the local neighborhood instead of carrying it all the way to the central office.

I don't mean to denigrate her contribution in any way, but Lamarr's frequency-hopping spread spectrum is not the one used in CDMA mobile phones. It is used in Bluetooth.

Lamarr invented "frequency hopping" while CDMA cellular and GPS use "direct sequence". Frequency hopping is just what it sounds like: a narrowband transmitter is continually retuned to a different radio channel. Unless the receiver tuning follows the same sequence at the proper times it cannot receive the transmission.

Direct sequence XORs a narrowband signal with a high speed pseudorandom "chip" sequence, and the receiver undoes this operation by XORing it again by the same sequence properly synchronized in time. It closely resembles a keystream-type encryption system, though the "keystream" is not necessarily secret. The main difference is that direct sequence is a wideband signal while, at any instant, a frequency hopped signal is still narrowband.

Each method has advantages. Frequency hopping can be especially resistant to strong narrowband jamming, so it's a favorite of military systems (Lamarr's intended use). Direct sequence is easier to use with coherent modulation so it tends to use transmitter power more efficiently, and it can often provide precise timing and positioning as a side benefit. Or, in the case of GPS, as its primary purpose.

While CDMA mobile phones were very important in the 1990s and 2000s, it is now being replaced with LTE (Long Term Evolution), which uses OFDM - Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing. So do many other modern terrestrial digital communication systems including DSL, HD Radio, DVB-T (but not ATSC), WiFi and DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale).

My guess is that the Metropolitan Police is far from gone from the area; they simply got tired of being an overt tourist attraction. The Ecuadorian Embassy is right around the corner from Harrod's and also the hotel where we stayed as tourists last summer. I got the definite impression that the police on duty were photographed a lot...

Yes. I think cooler heads will eventually prevail, and they'll reverse their knee-jerk decision to phase out nuclear. One only has to look at German CO2 emissions over the past few years to see why. Of course, until they do I'm sure the French and Czechs will be happy to sell Germany their surplus nuclear power.

Speaking of the horrific consequences of nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, a big one that's still with us today is the knee-jerk phobia of nuclear power, often by people who can't distinguish between the two. Along with wind and solar, nuclear power is one of our chief tools to mitigate global warming, which will in the long term prove to be far worse than weapons testing. It sure doesn't help that the US government lied through its teeth about atmospheric testing. I've been trying to find a copy of Joseph Rotblat's paper deducing that most of the yield of the Ivy Mike and Castle Bravo tests came from the fast fission of the U-238 tamper, revealing as a lie the government's claim that fusion bombs were inherently clean. Anybody know where I can find a copy?