It's been a while since I posted anything to the HAM section of this site, so I'm happy to pass on this story from Make:Blog about a contest held on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno putting CW (Morse code) against SMS (cell-phone short-message service). Not surprising to people who've seen good CWers, they beat the SMSers.

According to an article from eHam.net (and other sources) the N2XE beacon (CW at 80m with a whopping 40.6uW) was received by W4ZV at a distance of 546.8 miles, making the distance per watt a full 13,467,980 miles per watt.

A press release from Boeing announces that the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) has extended acceptable use of existing spectrum so that the company may use it for their Connexion high-speed internet services for aircraft.

In what may be a first, the Orlando Sentinel reports that a Sacramento, CA man has been found guilty of attempting to defraud DirecTV and Dish through scheming to sell satellite decoding equipment.

The amazing thing is that he will be paying back a $180M settlement at $500/month for the rest of his life all based on what damage he could have caused the two companies had the technology gotten out.

An article in CNET reports that the lawsuit by rival search advertising seller SearchKing has been thrown out of court. The suit contended that Google had intentionally removed links from the sites that SearchKing is trying to draw traffic to and that this was somehow illegal.

The court, however, found that the algorithm used by Google to compute search rankings is an opinion, not fact, and is therefore protected under the first amendment as free speech.

Love him or hate him, Donald Rumsfeld is one of the best known figures in the Bush administration. This article in Wired takes a look at "Rummy's Rules" and makes some interesting observations.

Warning: potentially inflamatory political content. If you are easily offended by opposing views, don't read this link.

I've always liked my name. First, lots of people compliment it. Second, everybody remembers it (although this is a distinct disadvantage when I can't remember their names). But, now I can add a new reason: it's such an uncommon name, there are no terrorists with it and I am therefore able to fly with impugnity. Not so for anyone named David Nelson.

A letter on the FTC website, which is also being sent to a number of operators of open relays, details the dangers of open relays as a mechanism for propogating spam and the potential results to an organization.

For Ameteur Radio enthusiasts who are interested in communicating using voice over the internet, check out EchoMac from Dog Park Software.

It integrates with the EchoLink service (available for PCs originally) and seems to work pretty well.

Particularly nice for those of us wimps who only have our technician's license so far.

FCC issues HA license to me. Callsign is KG4WTM