On Nov 1, 1:42*pm, RHF wrote:

Hard to "Track" you with an old AM/FM/SW Radio
but they could easily 'ping' your location when
you use your Cellphone.

Quite so. It's why spy agencies still use numbers stations to
disseminate messages to their agents. It is also why this scenario:

The Shortwave Radio Broadcasters have to see some
ROI coming out of DRM; or they simply will move on
to the Internet Radio & TV and Satellite Radio & TV
as their main Technical Means to Their End of Reaching
and Communicating with People All Around the World.

.... probably won't come to pass in the immediate future (if at all).
It's too easy to track people using the Internet (or simply cut them
off). Satellites aren't there yet (who wants to pack a 60cm dish in
their luggage). When there is a good choice** of free to air* direct
broadcast satellites that are as easy and simple to receive as Sirius
currently is, then MAYBE shortwave will truly be obsolete. (Maybe. It
is technologically feasible to shoot missiles at satellites, after
all.)

Until then, a message that can be received on shortwave with poor
audio quality beats a message that cannot be received at all via
Internet or a satellite. Anyone who has bought into the DRM hype and
is ready to leave shortwave in a huff will eventually and to their
regret end up realizing this.

* Pay to view won't work; the same governments that don't want "their"
citizens listening to certain messages will threaten to cut off
payments from within their borders to foreign pay DBS satellite
services that fail to muzzle the messages they (such governments) find
offensive. The only way you can broadcast messages to areas where
governments don't want them heard is to give them away.

** Several dozen providers, both publicly and privately owned, with
ownership based in a wide range of nations, not all of who
ideologically see eye to eye. If the USA wants to cut off a certain
message, that message has to be able to go to a Venezuelan (or
Russian, or Chinese, or wherever) DBS satellite serving the same
target area. (Swap nation names as you see fit here; all examples are
equally valid.) Anything less than that standard means shortwave still
has a role to play.

--
David Barts
Portland, OR