Most of the aircraft used in California are fixed-wing aircraft (apparently, 14 spotter planes, 11 helicopters, and 23 tanker planes). Some quadcopters apparently have no trouble flying over wildfires.

I'm not going to actually disagree with that, but I don't think that's a sufficient explanation for why they'd want to curtail flights in places with an unknown pilot flying through the same airspace that the larger aircraft would also like to occupy.

Bird strikes frequently cause various levels of damage, sometimes resulting in fatalities. Quadcopters are made of considerably harder materials than birds generally, and something like a DJI Phantom 3 has a comparable mass to a Western Gull, which is a fairly good-sized bird.

It's probably true, most of the time....until it hits a prop blade just right and causes a few thousand dollars of damage to the firefighting aircraft. You'll forgive me if I don't take your word for it that they could never damage the larger craft, though.

If someone's flying there, they deserve to have their equipment confiscated by the police and to be charged with a crime with "endangerment" or "negligence" in its name. I agree that it makes sense to restrict allowed flight areas to places that don't have heavy pedestrian or vehicular traffic, the same way that I think it makes sense to have posted "no parking" signs. "No hobby aircraft here" makes more sense to me than "No hobby aircraft, period".

We're talking about restricting a small group (RC aircraft pilots) for the bad behavior of a much, much smaller group (negligent/irresponsible/criminal RC aircraft pilots). The behavior is what I'm opposed to, not the technology...so why would I want a blanket ban on the technology, rather than the behavior?

In a perfect world, all crimes would be both simple and easy to prove, and criminals would get what they deserve. I don't believe in outright banning something because a small fraction of its users abuse it. I feel that on the balance, the loss due to the reduced freedom of action of the responsible users is greater than the gain of preventing an already rare occurrence.

"Windows 10 allows you to easily rollback to your previous version of Windows, if you do so within one month" is a very different proposition than saying "Windows 10 allows you to easily rollback to your previous version of Windows.".

Sure; ISO downloads are useful for developers supporting software on older versions of their OS, and some of them are available with an appropriate level of MSDN subscription. That doesn't mean that MS would have a reason to let Joe Blow User roll back 2 months after installing Win10. Reducing use of legacy software means less back-version stuff for them to support, fewer users crapping things up for everyone else by using unsupported software with unpatched vulnerabilities, a less fragmented userbase, and so on.

Android K uses a different runtime (Dalvik) than L does (Android RunTime, ART). I updated my phone, and some applications stopped working. Apparently, the same thing is the case with these games. So, Nvidia could have always left the games on, in a broken and non-functional state, but what would the point of that be? Nvidia should've found a way to explain the situation and give their customers an informed choice. It sucks that they didn't.

I updated my phone from K to L. Some of my games stopped working with the switch to the new runtime, and they didn't start working again until the developers issued updates to their games.

That's odd. In the U.S., I can buy isopropyl alcohol by the liter at a 70% concentration for a couple dollars, and the cashier won't blink. Out of curiosity, what is the justification for making it difficult to obtain?

Don't most places already have laws against those things? Do we really need to pass new laws that include the text of the old ones with the phrase "using a drone" tacked on the end?

Because the abuses of the few shouldn't cause a restriction on the freedoms of the many.

...Of course, that's the privacy side of things. The idiots that compromise other people's safety (like the ones flying above fires) deserve to have their devices confiscated and possibly to see some fines or jail time.

I live in southern California. I know a few fields where people fly all sorts of RC aircraft. My neighbor flies a couple of small ones around my condo complex. A coworker uses one to film events at work. I've seen them at the beach, and I've seen a couple at a comic convention. They're out there. I'd be upset if someone was looking in my windows with one, but I can't see the point of getting worked up over them in a less-invasive situation than that.

I'd be interested in seeing some evidence of that. Microsoft has no business reason to allow people to roll back, and all the reasons in the world to force their users forward. It makes sense to support that during the "technical previews" (since users will have to go back and forth for testing purposes), but not when the final version of the OS is released.

Ditto. Most people don't care about controlling their system, and 99% of the time, updates will fix some security flaw. The other 1%, I'll get a call from my parents saying that something changed that they don't like, and they'll accept the answer that Microsoft pushed the change to their machine, and there's nothing I can do. Maybe they'll grouse a bit, but they'll shrug and adapt.

For my own part, I install the 99% that address security issues and put the 1% of crap I don't want into the "ignored updates" list. I like having the option of making a choice like that. I don't really want to see Windows going down the road of the Xbox 360 (which has mandatory updates). Mandatory UI updates turned the system into a product that I never would have bought by choice.

It's a 1-way street; you're basically trading your Windows 7 license for a Windows 10 one, so after you've installed 10, you're no longer licensed for 7.

Windows 8 changed more than the UI; there are some under the hood improvements that don't have anything to do with the tiles crap. Personally, I'm not sure if it's worth it to switch because I imagine it'll kill my dual-boot and I'll have to spend a few hours wrestling with OSes (not to mention reconfiguring 10 into a UI mode that I like). You may be of a similar opinion, for that reason or a different one. What I've seen seems like an improvement over Windows 8, at least.

10ft UI works differently from mobile UI works differently from desktop/laptop UI. Microsoft making a mistake in their desktop/laptop UI doesn't mean that the same thing wasn't a mistake in their 10ft UI, as well. It's my opinion that the current look of the dashboard is vastly inferior to the blade UI that the system had when I bought it, and the functionality went down the crapper with it. It was easier to find things that I wanted before, and there weren't multiple ads on every single screen of the damned thing. Then again, the blade UI would've been terrible for the desktop as well, but it was perfect for a game console with a known set of easily-categorizable features.

Searchable tiles work fine on a phone OS. Tab-like pages ("blades") work well on a system with known functions, like a game console. Tree-structure menus, possibly complemented by a feature to perform a search work, and with a screen that commonly-used programs or files can be placed on work nicely on a desktop system, which may have many diverse functions. Switch those around, and you start getting sub-optimal UIs (in my opinion).