I don't think the UAS community is complaining about the existence of regulations, or even the need for regulations, per se. The main complaint to the FAA is that they are ready for regulations, ANY regulations, just get on with promulgating them. I'm not a drone guy, but even I recognize that the potential of UAVs is huge for fundamental changes in many fields, but the FAA has been (intentionally?) dragging its feet for _so long_ that the technical initiative is bleeding out of the US into other countries that haven't been moving slower than molasses in winter.

Eminent != Imminent

It needs to be paid for one way or the other ... it's irreducible overhead to move the data you are asking them to move. You either pay for it with a lower effective cap or you pay a higher price per overhead-free byte. Six of one, half dozen o' the other. ...

Of course brain surgeons don't "just do" brain surgery .... in any surgery, there's a ton of pre-operative work, investigation, preparation, paperwork, practice, etc. No one just dives in and cuts open your head.... and just as no one administrator hovers over the scalpel's every move, no manager hovers over every keystroke, either.

Endowments return significant operating funds in up years, and sales from the endowment assets smooth out what would otherwise be significant operating losses in the down years; they decouple university operating finances from the business cycle and local politics. They _stabilize_ finances. They can also used as collateral allow for much larger debt funded initiatives to be floated. I dearly wish my university employer had a large endowment....

Put another way: you don't eat your seed corn. The endowment is the seed corn. Selling off an endowment for short term, short sighted "it seems wrong to have so much money!" would be criminal

Which is more officially the Doctrine of Constitutional Avoidance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

The station and shuttle were in incompatible orbits for docking: it would have been physically impossible to get the Columbia to the station.

Arresting an occupant for refusing a search would violate the fourth amendment, and poison the search. That's well settled case law, and not even remotely what this case was about.

Warrants aren't required when consent exists. Warrants exist for those cases where no one gives consent. That's kind of the point.

"Occupant" has a long standing, well understood legal definition. It isn't "random schmoe who happens to be near the house"....

Utility workers don't have the right to consent, because they are not legal occupants. They can, however, report anything they suspect is illegal to the police, who then need to obtain consent or a warrant. I'm not sure why you would think otherwise.

Minors generally can't legally consent to anything ... that's why they need parent/guardian signatures on permission slips to do even the most trivial things at school. They certainly can't consent to a warrantless search.

The legal definition of "occupant" is well settled law. This case makes not changes to that definition. If you think this case is going to cause you problems, you probably already have them ....

A four year old can't legally consent to anything.

There has been no extradition request from Italy.