"Can happen" is not "does happen".

If humans and chickens didn't share the biological basis for virus and antibody action, then testing vaccines on chickens would be a waste of time. As animals that evolved on planet Earth, we both have the same mechanisms for mutations, virus replication, and antibody systems, even if the biology isn't identical and not every virus that will infect a chicken will have the same effect on a human. If humans and chickens do NOT share enough commonality, then why do they call it "chicken pox"?

It's ridiculous to claim that an issue observed in testing a virus on chickens cannot apply to human viruses and their immune systems because one is a chicken and one is not.

You then proceed to describe exactly the process through which the antibiotic sensitive bacteria die so the mutations that have resistance become dominant. Where do you think those antibiotic resistant bacteria got their immunity to that specific antibiotic? They didn't order it from Amazon Prime, just sayin.

And those "fittest" become so because ...?

At work I use, let's see, ... three different clients depending on where I am. Or is it four? Should I count different versions of Evolution as one or two? Or three?

The fact is, such a system will not work if only "most people" do it.

oooh, cool. A new DDOS attack vector -- send a flood of emails pretending to be from someone with a "known key" but unsigned, to a group of people who have known keys. If the "return" function doesn't sign the return (and if it is automatic, there is probably a security issue if it does sign them) then the mail system will be brought to its knees as everyone returns every unsigned message. At a minimum, you bring down the victim's email.

They won't happen at all in any environment where there is no authority to mandate the use of PGP or anything similar. You can't order Mom to sign all her messages any more than you can order a phisher to sign his.

That's the goal. You want to know that the phishing email is invalid. Simply knowing it is neither valid nor invalid is useless, because if it is valid you should act upon it.

Imagine a work environment where you called the boss every time he sent you an email asking him if he sent it. Imagine the boss is in a meeting and told you to do something important right now.

Yes, if you work in a company where there is a mandate to sign email, and you get an email from your "boss" that isn't signed, the correct action is to ignore it, because that's the reason for the policy in the first place.

An email system where we rely on "hope" that everyone does the right thing is why we have spam and phishing problems today.

It is trivial to determine an email is "of unproven origin", and yet phishing attacks are reasonably successful. My local admin has to keep reminding people every time a stream of phishing emails comes through, and every time someone does what the phisher asks.

First, that is not true. Novice still exists. You cannot become one, but you can renew as one. Second, so what? You said that prior to 2007 the code test was required for "all but" the lowest license class. That's also not true. Novice, which still exists and is still the lowest license class, required a code test.

So you're acting as if the code speeds were going up and up and up at the request of the ARRL and you needed to stop the nonsense, when in fact it was 80 years ago that they went up and stopped. Like I said, a LONG time ago.

I say, you're using an issue from 80 years ago to complain about the ARRL getting code speeds raised, and yet you don't think one example of a government agency drooling over amateur frequencies from just 7 years ago is relevant? One example of an ongoing problem, whereas this radical idea of having people who wanted access to radio spectrum be able to use a mode that was very very very common back then is unacceptable to you.

In 1936 CW was a major mode, and it was important to know. You act as if it was a sin to be made to know something to get access to valuable radio spectrum IN 1936. That awful ARRL asked for increased code ability as part of an incentive licensing system. IN 1936, when ships at sea were required to have CW operators in case of emergency, and before SSB was in heavy use.

But much more expensive than a VHF operator. Much more expensive. You think the only spectrum that government agencies are drooling over is the HF band? You show your ignorance again.

My latest VHF handheld cost $40 and I pay nothing per month or minute.

No, Bruce, like I said, I think it will be a big deal because THAT BATTLE HAS ALREADY BEEN LOST, and it was lost a long time ago by the actions of our own ARRL.

Oh, fuck you Bruce. I run regular classes and exam sessions specifically to bring in new hams. There are about 100 people who have licenses because I took my time to teach them and then run the exam sessions for them. Some of them I've lost track of, but many of them are active and using ham radio to actually save lives. My youngest licensee so far was 13 or 14. So don't tell me what I don't care about, because you are once again ignorant of the truth.

More ignorance and arrogance and insult. "Real hams"? "folks like me"? You mean the ones who oppose the intrusion of outside agencies into ham bandwidth? The ones who point out that YOUR actions to make it almost trivial to get a ham license opened the door to more of this? The ones who think that it is arrogant to claim some star status because you "lobbied" to get rid of code by not using it? Well, Bruce, that same "star status" applies to a very large number of folks, and I'll point out once again that you didn't need to pass any tests to be able to use 20 wpm code, and the FCC didn't give a rat's ass that you weren't. They truly could not have cared less.

Right, "folks like us" aren't hard to fight. You don't know who "folks like us" are because you've got a persecution complex and think anyone who disagrees with you on anything you say must be arguing for those 20wpm code tests to come back. That only shows your ignorance, again. It is possible to agree with the removal of the code test and still understand that it wasn't a pure victory for ham radio. But you want to fight "people like us" because you don't care that there might have been a negative impact.

Wow. That's nice. And you chose not to use 20 wpm code after you passed a test that gave you the privilege of using it on the amateur bands. Oh, wait, you didn't need to pass a test for that.

Read what I write, Bruce, and stop leaping to ignorant and arrogant conclusions about what you think I said.

There are too many broken email clients that send HTML documents without the correct headers saying it is HTML, so too many broken email clients automatically render messages that LOOK like HTML because that's probably what they ought to do.

And then you get idiots who think they need to send 50k of HTML for a one-sentence email, and get pissy when you tell them that you don't read HTML and to resend whatever the hell it was in text if they want you to get the message.

I'm pretty sure that none of the clients I use can be told to completely ignore HTML, not even a text-based client like pine. I used to have procmail strip every "Mime-Version" and "Content-Type" header in incoming email just to force the client to show it as text, but I got tired of dealing with the pissy folks from above.

Many mail clients have provisions for PGP signing of messages. It is one of the options I have set up on my tablet for K9 mail.

For it to work in a corporate environment, it must be mandated by the company so that everyone does it, everyone must have a client that supports it, keys must exist and be distributed, and only then can everyone rely on an unsigned message being invalid. If your boss forgets to sign a message telling you to do something and you ignore it, you better have a company policy backing you up.

That puts it in the realm of a social problem, not a technical one. And it does not solve the problem of external sources of email that don't sign anything being the alleged source of the email asking you to "click here" because your train reservation has changed and you need to pay a bit extra.

"Path to entry" is not the same as the lowest level license class.

You're talking about the original move to incentive licensing where higher class licenses had access to a bit more spectrum and earned that through both more advanced testing and faster code requirements. That was a VERY long time ago. That was the system in place when I was first licensed more than 40 years ago. You make it sound like the speeds were going up up up until you came along to lobby for them to go away by simply not using code.

And that "20 wpm test" you passed? You didn't need to pass that test to use, or not use, CW at 20wpm. You needed to pass that test to get a more advanced class of license which had access to more spectrum. Please tell me that you never used any of the additional privileges that came with that license as your way of "lobbying" against that class of license, because "20 wpm CW" is not a privilege that came with passing that test or the license.

Yes, as I said, the dependence on CW for maritime emergency traffic went away, and thus also the requirement in the international treaty that required it for HF frequency access.

Yes, and many of them are government or NGO employees who are getting licenses because they are being paid to do so. Congratulations on winning.

Now you're just showing your ignorance. Do you realize how much it costs to keep a satphone account active? Do you not realize how many ham radios you can buy for that money? And do you not realize the hassle and expense involved in coordinating and building out another land mobile frequency when the ones you already have are getting close to capacity? That's if you can get another frequency at all.

Perhaps you just aren't paying attention to the FCC enforcement bureau actions regarding intruding users, such as the Indianapolis city police. They aren't the only ones who were and are picking up cheap ham radios and using them without bothering with licenses.

And perhaps you just don't realize how much money governments and NGOs can save by underbuilding their communications systems and relying on amateur radio to save them when the ice storm hits the fan.

No, they SHOULD have no reason to use amateur radio, but that's not reality. "Save money" is. "Easy to access" is. "Use free existing infrastructure" is. "Lots of open spectrum" is. All are reasons for governments and NGO to use amateur radio, so your claim that they have no reason is patent nonsense.

Because that battle has been lost, and it was lost when our own ARRL got their employees a special exemption. 47CFR97.113(iv) is written to such an extent that nobody but ARRL/W1AW could meet the requirements. That section is there only so ARRL can have paid employees running the W1AW code practice transmissions.

Today any attempt to get the governmental/NGO exemption removed would be met with a hailstorm of opposing comments from all those governmental and NGO that you say have no need for amateur radio, but who were very effective in presenting the case that "amateur radio saves lives" and "when all else fails ...". In case you weren't aware, both of those slogans come from our dear ARRL who used them as spectrum defense bullet points, but they've now boomeranged into justification for GO/NGO access.

Yeah, go ahead and lobby against saving lives, sir, and see just how far you get. You'd run into ham radio's version of "think of the children" and get nowhere fast. I'll just ask you this: did YOU bother to file comments against either of the rule changes that opened the door to paid government employees using amateur radio? I did.

1. The novice class license had a Morse code requirement. That was the lowest grade of amateur radio license. Five WPM.

2. The Morse code requirement was mandated by the ITU treaty (International Telecommunications Union) that required anyone who had access to HF bands (that included Novice class amateur radio licensees) to know Morse code. That requirement was based on maritime safety, as an ability to read CW could help during emergencies. Satellite and other systems have replaced the old radio op sending the weak SOS signal from a sinking vessel, so that requirement went away.

As if the FCC cared that you passed the test and then never used code on the air. I dare say, there were many many people who lobbied the same way -- without any effect, and without even knowing it. Does it count that I passed the test and used CW exactly once, forty years ago?

There are a lot of people who lost, or at least have a good argument that they did. If nothing else, CW was a good way of holding back the push for government agencies and NGO to get access to amateur frequencies.

With the loss of CW and the changes to the rules, all it takes for a government agency to get essentially free access to the ham bands is having their employees pass a 34 question test. At that point, paid employees can use the ham bands for exercises and drills:

(i) A station licensee or station control operator may participate on behalf of an employer in an emergency preparedness or disaster readiness test or drill, limited to the duration and scope of such test or drill, and operational testing immediately prior to such test or drill. Tests or drills that are not government-sponsored are limited to a total time of one hour per week; except that no more than twice in any calendar year, they may be conducted for a period not to exceed 72 hours.

NGO are limited to one hour per week but for two weeks they can be 3 days long. There is no time limit on government-sponsored "drills".

I know that government agencies are doing exactly this, because I've VEd exam sessions where they had employees getting their licenses.

I think the point is not that you need to have v2v/autonomous stuff, but that the problem becomes much more serious when you do. When there's a driver behind the wheel you have some backup; when the passenger is asleep and/or the car has no controls you don't.

Why would they point it towards the ground? You want to point it towards the distance radio. In the hackaday picture, it was pointed slightly above the horizon, which will put a lot more the radiation towards the distant station than pointing it at the ground would.

The antenna was attached to something that would normally be mounted somewhere, but while it was sitting on the table it was pointed a few degrees up. The radiation pattern of a yagi isn't narrow enough that you'd need to worry about being off by a few degrees, either left/right or up/down. It's not a dish.

People sometimes say that debit and credit cards are protected the same way because the limits are the same, but that's not true.

If someone scams your debit card your money is gone until the bank decides you were scammed and puts it back, if they do. If someone scams your credit card your bank account still has money in it and the card issuer sends you a bill that you don't have to pay while the debt is being contested.

I.e., under one system the money you need to feed your family is gone gone gone; in the other you may eventually have to pay it off over time or not. Think of the children, man!

No, they can't. The government can't just say "Joe Smith's dollar bills aren't worth a dollar" as a way of taxing or confiscating his hard money, but they can have the bank hand over the electronic money it is holding on his behalf, or tax him on the balance.

The only thing that a "fiat" can do is devalue everyone's money, which isn't what the OP was talking about.

ProxyHam didn't have an encryption restriction, either, because it wasn't operating under amateur radio service rules. ISM 900MHz.