[CQ-Contest] Dead horse

[steve.root at culligan4water.com]

Skimmer is just part of a decades long trend in contesting: the replacement of human skills with hardware. There used to be 
a necessarty set of skills that all serious big time contesters had to master. Those skills are basically
obsolete and have been replaced by hardware and software:
Remembering who you've already worked? Ask your computer.
Send flawless CW every time? Computer does that.
Remember Suffixes, locations, zones, checks? That's all stored in a file on the computer.
Remember beam headings, SS/SR times? Ask the software.
Send CW with a pencil in your hand? Pencil???
Tune up your rig and amp? They do that for you automatically.
Hear weak signals in the crud? Turn on the roofing filters, DSP, Shift, notch, width etc.
Old skills have been replaced by new ones,like typing and PC/Networking Knowledge. The only thing constant 
about this hobby is that it's always changing, and now it looks like it's going to change again. We're about to 
witness the emergence of a new creature, what WB0HCH has coined the "Software Defined Operator"
The idea of a machine copying code for me is an affront to everthing I've tried to achieve as a CW operator.
But now that Skimmer is loose on the World it's time to evolve, adapt, or perish.
73 Steve K0SR