I'm colour blind. Not completely colour blind, but bad enough. For me, Google maps was bad before, and it's bad now.
What is that old saying - jumping out of the frying pan and landing in the fire. Yeah, that is kinda like that for me. No real change.

Regulations Amending the Canadian Aviation Regulations (Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems)
901.19 (2) No person shall act as a crew member of a remotely piloted aircraft system
        (a) within 12 hours after consuming an alcoholic beverage;
        (b) while under the influence of alcohol; or
        (c) while using any drug that impairs the person’s faculties to the extent that aviation safety or the safety of any person is endangered or likely to be endangered.

    In plain language, NO alcohol at all within 12 hours of any alcoholic drink. Nada, zilch, zero. That is even more stringent than driving a car.

One other thing to consider.
I am a funeral director. I see deaths first hand from medical mistakes and malpractice. In fact, I only see that "2%".
You know that old joke "an undertaker is somebody who cleans up the doctor's mistakes"? Well, more truth to it than you might want to know.

  So, for all you people who say "it's only 2%", you come, sit with me when I deal with a family who has had a death because they were part of that "2%". You look them in the eyes, and say" hey, science is still good, it is less than 2%".

Or better yet - when one you who thinks 2% is nothing, when one of your family members has a serious issue or dies, you look yourself in the mirror and say "hey, it's okay, it was still below 2%."

Maybe OT, but it's like my uncle the aircraft mechanic used to say "5% or 2% doesn't sound like much, until you are 10,000 in the air and you suddenly find out your service tech on the engine of the airplane only got 90% of the rebuild done correctly."

Here's the problem. A very quick google search will turn up research papers on on the Wilkes Land Anomaly, but they are mostly behind paywalls or "free registration", etc, etc.

A person can play video games, read tabloids, browse conspiracy websites, watch porn or gamble for "free" online all day long, but the minute you want serious information on any topic nowadays, the serious research is almost always behind "paywalls". For the average person who is not involved in some form of academia, how many east to find alternatives (other than wikipedia) are there out there? More importantly, hwo easy are they to find and access as compared o the others? As long as we as a society continue to operate this way, then society as a whole will continue to "dumb down" in general. "idiocracy" here we come. :(

Here in Canada, we have one law, coast to coast. No aircraft, I repeat, NO AIRCRAFT of any type shall fly withing 5 nautical miles of any forest fire. The only exception are those aircraft that are directly involved with the fire control / fire fighting. In that category, yes, drones here in Canada have been involved in the use of fighting fires. Mostly mapping and monitoring the spread of the fire, away from the water bombers.

However, back to the original point, near a forest fire - NOTHING flies. No drones, no CF-18 fighter aircraft, no passenger jets, not even Air Fore One. Nada. Zilcho. It is very, very clear. However, in the USA, your laws and regulations are clear as mud. :(

I was talking last year to some USDA officials at the UAV show in Las Vegas, and they lamented the fact that there is no equivalent law in the USA. It is often decided state by state, and this leads to much confusion. If you Americans had the same law we had here in Canada, then the moment any drone took off, any of your officials - could be local police, park rangers, FBI - anyone could step in and say "stop now."

One more thing, in case you don't know, you really do not want to be withing 5 nm of any forest fire to begin with. Flying or on the ground. Ever hear the old phrase "moves like wildfire?" Well, it's true, and people die. Smoke inhalation, getting lost, somebody has a propane tank in thier back yard that explodes and takes you out - the list of things that can and do go wrong is miles long. Just don't do it unless you have a really good reason to be there.

I posted a video last year, and when I first made the video, I used an old blue song that was recorded 90 years ago and is long out of copyright. You can easily find it on the internet archive. Well of course I get the dreaded "copyright violation", etc, etc. I challenged it, even provided YT with the link to the internet archive and links to information about the song, why it is in public domain, etc. Still lost the challenge.

So okay, next video I use one on youtube itself. They provide songs you can supposedly use hassle free when you edit your video online. The first couple go fine, but about my 4vth or 5th video i upload, I get a copyright violation notice again. So I challenge it and point out that I used the music as provided by youtube itself in it's own video editing menu. Still lost the challenge. I don't think they even read or pay attention to these challenges at all.

At this point I seldom use YT for anything now. I totally agree people are abusing YT for many things, but punishing the honest user is not helping the situation at all either. Youtube needs to pull their head out of their arse, but hell will likely freeze over first.

Here in Canada, under Transport Canada rules, mounting any weapon on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), aka "drone", or "weaponizing" a UAC (aka" drone) is against the law, unless you have a special permit/permission to do so. As far as I know, here in Canada, the only people who have that "permission" are the military. I do not even think the police have that right here in Canada.

I know the laws differ from the USA to Canada on several issues (for example, the handgun alone would be illegal in Canada in most circumstances), but what really amazes me is the attitude that this could be legal in the USA.

Overall, I find flight restrictions on UAVs (aka drones) are more strict in the USA than Canada. So to see something that in Canada would be totally 100% against the law and yet in the USA is something that may not have broken any laws is a bit mind boggling.

Go figure?

The rules are the same here in Canada.

    Check out M.A.A.C - The Model Aeronautics Association of Canada, full rules and safety data can be found here:

    http://www.maac.ca/en/document...

  MAAC has been around since shortly after the end of World War II. They work hand in hand with Transport Canada.

    Articles like the one quoted seem to completely ignore these facts. Either that , or they have no similar rules in the UK to begin with, with I find hard to swallow.

One thing almost always missing whenever the Passenger Pidgeon is talked about is how our pioneer ancestors considered them a major pest and threat.

    Old wood cuts and descriptions from a couple of centuries ago describe how a large flock of these birds would decend on a farm and inside a few hours completely eat all the food (grain), leaving a family to face certian starvation. Remember , back then, there are no food stamps, no food banks, no state welfare, etc. Starvation was very real and people did die of it.

    I am NOT excusing or apologizing or in any way, shape or form trying to justify what happened, but I am trying to point out that events in history, both good and bad, usually happens for a reason. Rightly or wrongly, our pioneer ancestors often looked upon the passenger pidgeon in almost the same way we look at the cockroach today. That is the major reason they were wiped out. The problem, as I see it, is history today portrays the extinction of the passenger pidgeon as the result of a bunch of people just killing for fun or no reason at all. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

    Along the same lines, wolves were wiped out because they were seen as a threat to livestock in many areas. Groundhogs and gophers killed because thier holes were dangerous for horses who stepped into them and broke legs. Buffalo where killed because they were a major food source for native americans during the Indian Wars. The list goes on and on. Again, not saying it was a good or just reason, it might of been a terrrible reason, a horrible reason, but there was still a reason these things happened.

The collusion & co-operation between Canadian and American intelligence agencies can be traced back to "Camp X" during World War II. Google it yourself to see, but Sir William Stephenson, who was I think head of British intelligence at the time, was a Canadian who was friends of both Churchill and Roosevelt, and head of Camp X.

  Just go get yourself a copy of the book A Man Called Intrepid, which was publish 4 or 5 years ago, and if you read it, none of this should come as any surprise to anyone at all. Canada does "fly under the radar" as far as world view is concerned, which sometimes makes us a perfect place or partner for intelligence for the big guys, but I can tell you, this country has very sharp teeth of it's own. You just never hear about it, which is exactly the way they want it.

A cure for aids will not matter in the near or far future if Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea continues to spread. The attitude in the public still seems to be that gonorrhea was something easily cured, but not always, not anymore.

      If there was one "silver lining" about the whole HIV-AIDS issue was it forced people to take all STDs seriously. I think even the public attention on the the HPV vaccine has been helped directly or indirectly by attention to HIV. My personal fear is the day we "cure AIDS" we will all be set back to square one in the fight to stop any and all STDs. I hope I am wrong.

When the RIM Blackberry tablet first came out up here in Canada, I distinctly remember the first reviews on the news and in print. One of the big "complaints" about the RIM tablet was that it was smaller - only 7.6 inches wide. Strangely enough, the article here states the new mini iPad is 7.85 inches wide.

      I remember too it wasn't so much what the reviewers on TV said, it was how they said it, their "tone of voice", the inflection in the words, not the words themselves. Now that Apple is doing a small tablet, it's the next "exciting product". *sigh*

      Anyhow, the basic 8 gig RIM tablet occasionally goes on sale here in Canada for around the $100 mark and they are usually sold out instantly long before you can drive to the store or even think of ordering one online. Leads me to think the number one use of tablets is e-mail, surf the web, read books and/or business documents. I don't use my iPad for music or movies or TV shows, etc, just business. Over the past year I've taken most the apps off that I had on my "old" original iPad one, because I simply don't use it for very much more than those items above.

    True you can do a million and one things with an iPad - or most tablets nowadays, but in real world use I find I still need a full featured laptop. I love my iPad for what it is, I make great use of it, but I see zero need for me to upgrade to an iPad 3 or a mini-iPad or any other new tablet. Somedays i think the real reason for the latest and greatest iPad is so you can look cool at Starbucks. for me, I will wait until my current iPad dies out or becomes hopelessly obsolete, and then, with all the choices out there, my next tablet will be whatever gets the job done.

We have five different genetic conditions in our family, some are considered diseases, others are considered disabilities. I am quite sure under these new "ethics", myself and my whole family would be on the top of the list for instant abortion. Yet despite all medical conditions, many of my family have lived very long and productive lives. In same cases, I consider my relatives and ancestors choice and will to fight and overcome the odds stacked against them something to inspire me to never feel sorry for myself. Would we ever see such a thing in a future where all babies were born "perfect"? I think the sense of entitlement we see in our society is already overwhelming as it is, and i find it's people who overcome their disabilites that throw cold water, figuratively speaking, in the fact of self indulgence and entitlement. Would we see that this 'ethical" future?

      My other point, this whole issue reminds of of that famous line from near the end of the movie "The Third Man", where the character Harry Lime says:

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

    In a world full of "perfect babies", well, just saying.

A few years ago a man I was talking to a man who's house along with the rest of his town was flooded. He said in his case he thought got off lucky because the water only came 2 to 2.5 feet above floor level

  But it turned out to be a huge issue because while the water wasn't high enough to destroy his small TV, his router, his printer, etc, etc, the water did destroy all the small adapters, transformers, etc, etc, he had plugged in. He told me it was a nightmare to try and replace individual transformer, usb connectors, etc, etc, because everybody was not only a bit different, but because inside the same company if your device was over 2 years old, standards had change or maybe they didn't even make or have for sale an older transformer with the old voltage & amperage specs.

      Or sometimes he would run into the "problem" of where "sure we can get it, but it will take two months, and you can just buy a whole new thing-ama-jig for just $10 more." This in turn led to arguements with the insurance company, and so forth. He told me a new charger for his cell phone was the worst "offender" He just ended up with a new cell phone.

      I remember him very clearing saying "why not just a universal standard for everything? One cable from your computer for everything and one transformer for everything?" He figured if there was ever a floor like that again, "everything is going to fall into the water by accident".

      This whole idea of so many different proprietary connectors strikes me as nothing more than a fancy, expanded take on those old Depression era make work projects where men would dig ditches one day and then fill them in the next day. In the short term it makes some people money, but in a long term, on a planet with limited resources, overall a terrible waste.

I found out some time ago that all conversations at my local bank (and therefore all banks, eh?) are recorded when you are banking at/with a human teller. The public is not made aware of this, but I can confirm it. My understanding is due to bank robberies, this system along with video recording was put into place, but how much more can it be used or is it used for?

        This makes me wonder then if the same thing is not happening at all other "public" spot where you interact with a human being behind a desk. For example, we know that all 911 calls are recorded, and all calls to "customer service" of large corporations are recorded "to ensure quality" (yeah, right). So why not every information desk in a mall or a hotel, every cash register at every major department store, and more?

        Another thing I noticed is if you look real close at video cameras in some retail stores, gas stations and restaurants you will see that the camera is not always pointed at the customer, but at the cash register. I first noticed this after a story about "inside" or employee theft at a local fast food restaurant made the newspaper, and the new cameras at the time were pointed at the cash station. I imagine in all these cases, there must be audio in addition to video recording.

          I think the only reasonable assumption, if there is such a thing, is to treat every public encounter you have - be it ordering coffee, paying a utility bill or paying for gas, to be recorded when you are dealing with a human face to face. Don't worry if you pay all your bills online, I am sure your IP address is locked and loaded into some database somewhere too every time you pay a bill too. I guess 1984 really did come and go quite some time ago. :(