Just attended the national HamFest in Newark, UK. A great big bunch of geeky, technically minded, logic based people who love experimenting with electronics and who make it their life quest to push the boundaries of what's possible... YET.. all software and computer stuff was all windows based (and some cracking signal decoding stuff there was too - stuff the CIA wouldn't even have.) It's such a shame with such a mindset, hardly anybody even knows of the existence of Linux.. where you can see the workings of your own computer, keep old hardware alive for years and have much more control over your hardware down to the binary level. I'm dumbstruck that the Linux community and the Amateur Radio communities aren't talking to each other. I can only imagine what would be possible with such a partnership. Most radio amateurs my age (I'm not one myself) used to use sinclair spectrums and the like to analyse signals and track satellites and were able to write programs out of magazines and this was when things were at their most interesting. Nowadays, you only see program listings (well shell scripts and python) in linux magazines.
What I've found though is that recently, the Ham Radio scene has noticed a huge decrease in interest over the last few years and the hardware manufacturers responded to this by producing more 'plug and play' software that just works and my father (my ham radio connection) commented on the fact that you hardly ever see a soldering iron in a radio shack any more (and I'm not talking about the shop). This is a sad state of affairs. It looks like Amateur radio has gone the same way as Linux in trying to appease the masses.. selling it's soul and making everything shiny. There is also a lot more computer control of hardware than there was in the olden days, but windows seems to be taking the lead.
Just wondering what your views on this were because each community (with such like minds) could learn so much from each other in not only producing a better range of software, but also bringing the experimental aspect back to the forefront and avoiding going down the sealed magical box path.
Steve (Spalding)
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