Decius wrote:

In an historic move, the FCC has acted to drop the Morse code requirement for all Amateur Radio license classes.

Good riddance! When I was a kid I considered getting a HAM licence, but I had absolutely no interest in becoming proficient in an alternate alphabet. This seemed an arbitrary requirement upholding an obsolete technology and a warning post that other stupid rules would probably be encountered down the road in this overregulated hobby. There were other, ultimately more important technical subjects that I could explore without having to bother with that nonsense. In fact, they killed the code requirement for the lowest class license the same year I started my Bulletin Board System. I did reconsider it at that time, but the interesting stuff still required morse code, so in my mind it was a dead end.

Given that I have a degree in computer engineering I figure I can cut through the technical knowledge required by the exams fairly quickly and I might learn a thing or two about radio. QSLing the space shuttle would be fun!

I knew a guy who was tone def, and was unable to use HAM for many years because regardless of how much he tried, he could NOT pass the code test. He was able to get a license after many years when they introduced the no-code license. This is a smart move.