Governments don't always suck at providing services, you know. The BBC is one of the only major news outlets that does actually try to be unbiased, even if they aren't always perfect at it.

So a chicken also has four legs. Got it.

Are you one of those frugality nutjobs who reuses aluminum foil and wipes himself with old socks?

Oh, wait, you didn't need to pass a test for that.

I'm just trying to think how that would have been possible. I think back then there was a medical exception you could plead for. I didn't. I passed the 20 WPM test fair and square and got K6BP as a vanity call, long before there was any way to get that call without passing a 20 WPM test.

Unfortunately, ARRL did fight to keep those code speeds in place, and to keep code requirements, for the last several decades that I know of and probably continuously since 1936. Of course there was all of the regulation around incentive licensing, where code speeds were given a primary role. Just a few years ago, they sent Rod Stafford to the final IARU meeting on the code issue with one mission: preventing an international vote for removal of S25.5 . They lost.

I am not blaming this on ARRL staff and officers. Many of them have privately told me of their support, including some directors and their First VP, now SK. It's the membership that has been the problem.

I am having a lot of trouble believing the government agency and NGO thing, as well. I talked with some corporate emergency managers as part of my opposition to the encryption proceeding (we won that too, by the way, and I dragged an unwilling ARRL, who had said they would not comment, into the fight). Big hospitals, etc.

What I got from the corporate folks was that their management was resistant to using Radio Amateurs regardless of what the law was. Not that they were chomping at the bit waiting to be able to carry HIPAA-protected emergency information via encrypted Amateur radio. Indeed, if you read the encryption proceeding, public agencies and corporations hardly commented at all. That point was made very clearly in FCC's statement - the agencies that were theorized by Amateurs to want encryption didn't show any interest in the proceeding.

So, I am having trouble believing that the federal agency and NGO thing is real because of that.

OK, now I read your followup. You really are a knucklehead. Not only have we had setback thermostats for ages, the Nest can adjust heating and cooling based on occupancy. It will learn when you are in the house, and in specific rooms. A simple Google search would tell you this. But apparently, you've only lived in old houses with radiators and single zones, and think nothing has changed because obviously, the HVAC fairy would have come along to rip out all that crap and upgrade it for free.

Why would so many people mod up this misinformation? The honeybee is not extinct in the wild.

Central heating is a f*cking retarded idea - heating the whole house when the simple fact is an individual can only use one room at a time.

Some people ACTUALLY LIVE WITH OTHER PEOPLE. Also, you really don't know what central heating is or how it works. I have zones. Valves only allow the hot water to enter the zones where the thermostat is calling for heat.

Radiators in the halls - WTF is that for?

That's for not having it 59 degrees in the halls while it is 69 in the rooms, resulting in possible frozen pipes (in older buildings that can't be as well insulated) or condensation on the walls. Only old buildings have radiators. Newer ones with hydronic heating use baseboards (or underfloor radiators), and you usually only see them in hallways if there's an outside wall or it's a very, very long hall with a high ceiling.

You probably should realize there are a few things like HVAC which you think are simple, but perfectly intelligent people had to study in great detail to master.

I don't see any recovery after the ban. You'd think four years would be enough to show recovery.

Honeybees aren't native to the USA. Should we expect to see them isolated in the wild? That they may have been in the past was remarkable.

They have to be within 8 meters of the key and 30 cm of the car. So that means either standing in someone's garage or the driveway, or if they're parked on the street having an accomplice stand inside the apartment building/house or at least very near it.

Too easy for my comfort, but not trivial.

Because they put a FRICKIN COMPUTER in the car, and then they go on the internet or watch TV and hear that HEY, SOME PEOPLE OUT THERE ARE BREAKING INTO COMPUTERS yet they are "ignorant" of the possibility.

You act as if the USA is the only place where drivers care about the sound of their engine.

Try watching an episode of Top Gear (the real one) sometime.

Trump has four legs?

They have an interesting take on it.
The Globe and Mail's angle is quite a bit different: How Uber is ending the dirty dealings behind Toronto's cab business

The Technican Element 3 test wasn't more difficult than the Novice Element 1 and 2 together, so Technican became the lowest license class when they stopped having to take Element 1.

The change to 13 WPM was in 1936, and was specifically to reduce the number of Amateur applicants. It was 10 WPM before that. ARRL asked for 12.5 WPM in their filing, FCC rounded the number because they felt it would be difficult to set 12.5 on the Instructograph and other equipment available for code practice at the time.

It was meant to keep otherwise-worthy hams out of the hobby. And then we let that requirement keep going for 60 years.

The Indianapolis cop episode was back in 2009. It wasn't the first time we've had intruders, and won't be the last, and if you have to reach back that long for an example, the situation can't be that bad. It had nothing to do with code rules or NGOs getting their operators licenses.

A satphone is less expensive than a trained HF operator. Iridium costs $30 per month and $0.89 per minute to call another Iridium phone. That's the over-the-counter rate. Government agencies get a better rate than that. And the phone costs $1100, again that's retail not the government rate, less than an HF rig with antenna and tower will cost any public agency to install.

You think it's a big deal to lobby against paid operators because there will be objections? How difficult do you think it was to reform the code regulations? Don't you think there were lots of opposing comments?

And you don't care about young people getting into Amateur Radio. That's non-survival thinking.

Fortunately, when the real hams go to get something done, folks like you aren't hard to fight, because you don't really do much other than whine and send in the occassional FCC comment. Do you know I even spoke in Iceland when I was lobbying against the code rules? Their IARU vote had the same power as that of the U.S., and half of the hams in the country came to see me. That's how you make real change.