In article ,
Klystron wrote:

Ultimately, we need to treat these various modes as methods of
sending text - no more and no less. Two methods that send the same text
are competing modes, regardless of whether keyboards, a telephone keypad
or a telegraph key is used to send it. A method that sends those blocks
of text faster and with fewer errors is better. A slower, more error
prone method is inferior. Not all encoding schemes are equal. Some, like
ASCII, encode the entire alphabet, including upper and lower case.
Others, like ISO-Latin-1, can encode even more characters. In general,
the more inclusive encoding method is better. An encoding scheme that is
easily adapted to error correction (parity, automatic re-send, etc.) is
also considered better.

I hope you'll pardon me when I ask "Which deity spoke to you and laid
down those particular points of Absolute Truth?". What's all this "We
need to" and "no more and no less" and "xxx is better" and "yyy is
inferior" and "... is also considered better"?

If you're willing to state those as _your_ personal opinions of the
basis on which two partially-competing methods of encoding and
communicating _should_ be compared (and that no other criteria need
apply), I have no objection at all.

I do, however, object in principle to the idea that these are the
highest (or only) criteria, or that they're somehow sacred.

And, I also object to the idea (which I think is implied by the tone
of your other messages - please correct me if I'm wrong) that the
choice of communication methods is somehow exclusive... that the fact
that a method which is superior (by your criteria, perhaps) means that
other methods that you find inferior should be wiped out or
abandoned... or that people who prefer to use the other methods are
somehow responsible for Holding Back The True Progress.

My own perspective is that people may have *many* criteria for chosing
a means of communication (by radio or otherwise). Bandwidth, or
bandwidth*reliability is not the sole criterion that people use, in
practice, nor do I think there's any reason that it should be. Life
is full of tradeoffs between different criteria - information
bandwidth per Hz of spectrum, robustness of encoding, suitability for
multi-point communication, resistance to different sorts of
interference, cost of equipment, availability of equipment, and so
forth. I communicate with my wife by voice, by email, by telephone,
by scribbling half-illegible notes on scraps of paper, and by bringing
home flowers... different methods, for different types of information-
passing under varying conditions.

In commercial communications and public-safety, bandwidth (or payload)
and reliability and cost all play a big factor. In military
communications, reliability and security seem big, bandwidth is
important, and cost (of equipment at least) tends to take a back seat.

Ham radio is a much more diverse motivation-space. Some people
optimize their operations as for public safety and commercial (the
EMCOM folks), others for "most distance per watt" or "per dollar spent
on the radio" (QRP folks, homebrewers, and other experimenters),
others for portability, others for plain ordinary fun (according to
their own definition of fun... for some folks, using single-frequency
crystal-oscillator transmitters is just what gets their rocks off :-)

There's plenty of room in ham radio for different modes of operation.
Saying that we all *have* to abandon Morse (or SSB, or voice, or AM,
or...) and strap computers to all of our rigs, in order to encourage
experimentation and use with newer modes, is really missing the
point... it's implicitly denying a large percentage of hams the right
to explore those aspects of ham radio that *they* find interesting and
worthwhile.

If we were all being paid to do all of this stuff, then the people
paying us would perhaps have the right to set our agendas. We aren't
(and by the rules of the game, cannot be... at least, not here in the
US) and so we get to set our own priorities, operating-mode and
otherwise.

[And, for the record - I operate CW only rarely, and have enjoyed
experimenting with packet and the newer digital modes quite a bit.]

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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