Radio modem???

[LoLo]

Saw someone driving REALLY slow through the neighborhood today -- up and down the streets -- with a strange antenna on the top of the car. When I passed them the second time, I pulled over (saw a lot of techno gadgets in their car) and I asked them "what is that?" to which I got "what is what...?". They looked surprised and said it was a "radio modem".

OK, I know there are a lot of people here that have MUCH more technical knowledge than I do... so what does a radio modem do, and WHY were they driving the streets???

[DRTYFN]

Probably stealing the signals from people's wireless modems.

[GLBLWARMR]

Mommy and daddy do not let them search porn at their house so they have to go around and search porn by using other peoples bandwidth.

http://www.maxstream.net/products/xb...ule-zigbee.php

[Wisha Haddan H3]

Did his license plate say HMRSTR?

Yeah the guy was looking for hotspots in the neighborhood. Probably a hacker looking for some free servers to host his kiddie porn site or building a network of zombies for his spam business.

[Boar-Ral]

It is possible that he was an amateur radio operator using packet radio. It is a long shot, but you never know. A friend of mine built a PC into his car an it uses packet radio for (slow) internet access. It is too slow to do anything other than transmit his vehicle's coordinates to a web site so that he can track it from the internet. (Other vehicles using the same software can also view his location, if he allows it. Obviously, you do not see many other vehicles on the map, as this software is not used much.) It is still neat, though, and it might have been what the person in question was using.