These days - I could see someone mounting a smartphone on their craft and viewing the video that way. And your range with that would be ... unlimited assuming you also put the control signals through it as well ... although your call gets dropped you'll probably loose your bird.

I'm not certain this would work, I'm not sure what types of latency there are in a phone to phone network connection, nor how seamless the handoff is between towers.

But I'm certain lots of people would be willing to try this. And certainly if they did this, they might be dumb enough to fly near an airport, or worse put software on the bird that attempts to fly itself autonomously should the signal be lost.

> There is a difference between viewing the license plate of the vechicle in front of you and recording all license plates everywhere, building vast databases of the movement patterns of all vechicles.

But they're doing exactly that right now! It's just not as visible as a plane in the sky -- so no one cares.

LITERALLY, LAPD currently has this system and this database in place. It was in the papers *once*, 6 months ago.

NOBODY has said a WORD about it.

But airplanes in the sky? Freakout city.

> of my poorly educated gun nut friends

Heck - I have WELL educated friends who think this way.

Oddly enough these same people can't possibly put themselves in the shoes of the accidental victims, they're so paranoid about their personal right to use lethal force to defend themselves -- and of course they NEVER consider their own beliefs and demands as contributing to all the people who are shot accidentally or unjustifiably. THEY haven't personally done that (yet), so obviously it's not their damn problem. etc.

Ah, I should not have starting talking about "homes" as most American's begin imagining boogeymen with guns inside their houses.

I was mostly thinking of the concept as everyone seems to extends to their yards.

Because we're talking about drones. Obviously drones aren't inside your house. We're talking about your yards.

IE: it's not the people who have kicked in doors whom I'm concerned about, it's the innocent people walking up to the door to knock or the lost person passing through a backyard - way too many people who consider shooting them as "justified" just because they were scared or didn't recognize them.

Ah, good point. I do not support the idea of drones being allowed to fly through our houses. :)

When I referred to the "my home is my castle" phrase - I was particularly thinking of the entirety of one's property, as most people seem to include their yard in their definition of "home".

I was not trying to imply that people should be allowed to look inside your house or bedroom.

I really don't get why so many American's are up in arms about un-manned aircraft - there have been aircraft "looking down into" their backyards for 100 years now, who cares if it has a pilot IN IT or not. Tons and tons of police driving by your house LOOKING INTO your yard.

But almost no-one has raised near one third the stink about almost all their personal private conversations being intercepted and sifted through.

I've distinctly gotten the impression that American's have a heck of a lot stronger (almost zealous) "my home is my castle, my own little personal country where no one is allowed, if they're a tresspassn' I'm allowed to shoot em" fantasy.

> This whole purchase is what we need now

When is slashdot going to get an "edit post" feature like Reddit?

I meant to say "is for what we need now", not "is what we need now". I do not intend to imply that I approve of the F-35, it's a bit too expensive. Personally I'd rather go for the Superhornet. ( If anyone is listening, make sure you put "brimstone integration" on the list. )

For everyone who has "drone" and "unmanned" in their minds ... great idea for the future. I'm sure Boeing and LM and others will be on it as quick as possible.

But right now -- drones are slow dumb craft with EASILY subvertible suppressable communication channels, and this is how well they do in air combat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BypnhFI7HGY&t=33s

Drones as they exist right now are for monitoring and strikes in an area whose airspace you already completely control.

This whole purchase is what we need now (now in military terms meaning within the next 5-7 years), and there's no choosing planes that don't exist** at all.

(**) Yes yes, the F-35 just barely exists -- wait, no, that's not true, currently there are 63 of them in active use, although acceptance testing and staged development are still ongoing, and costs are still a little in dispute and could change... but the American's are committed to buying near 2000 of them. Whether or not some other country or three buys 50 or 100 of them isn't going to affect the final cost all that much...

> Want to make fighter jet more effective and orders of magnitude less expensive? Remove the pilot!

Great idea.

WHICH SPECIFIC MODEL are you recommending that can replace our existing F-18's within 5-7 years when our existing jets get too many hours on their frame's and wear out like a 30 year old truck?

What's that? You want to develop "something new"? What an original idea. I'm sure no-one else has thought of that. Get back to me in 10 years once YOU have developed it, right around the time that Boeing and LM and the europeans have their similar models ready for purchase.

In the meantime....

What's a "rape trigger"? ( Remember, sfw link or explanation. That's why I'm asking, I can't go read the one MAIN link that the entire story is about. )

Without a definition of this word, the entire article/post is ... hard to follow and not worth my time pondering over. Heck, most people won't even be able to guess at what "harm reduction" is, nor have any idea what the Ada Initiative is.

If you're going to use "technical terms", you need to define them. This being the internet, maybe, oh, I don't know, some kind of hyper text system?

It sounds like end users simply "trust google", and thus ANYTHING on google docs is "trustworthy", because hey, "it's google".

I know, it's stupid as baloney. It's like trusting a billboard down the street that says "City Billboard" just because you trust your City government, totally being ignorant that any nutjob can post something to the billboard.

Some. People. Don't. Understand. Technology. AT ALL.

> my

Bah, slashdot needs an edit button. I wrote it in one tense and perspective, then changed both -- and missed that word.

Qualifications matter. If someone dig ditches for a living and barely got 60% on my Grade 9 science, perhaps their opinion on technical matters is worth less than certain other people.

But reading my post a week latter ... yeah I could have phrased it differently. It sounds so ... what's the term ... not arrogant ... but yeah, your reaction is relevant :)

Part of the problem with my sentence is that with online postings, I'm trying really hard these days to not post too much personally identifying material. It's ... scary to see the combination of dispersed facts used to personally identify people who otherwise are posting using pseudonyms.

> it's technically possible

If steam found out about the actual change in "ownership" of the account, I bet you their license agreement gives them the right to suspend the account entirely, and I bet you it would be enforceable in North America. (iirc, EULA's are a lot more enforcable in North America than some of the example European jurisdictions..)

I'm kind of on the fence about this issue.

a) I hate EULA's that I have no option to decline other than to not use the product, and that have bullshit terms that are ... eggregious and that would force me to spend thousands on lawyers if I wanted to .. "dispute them".

b) I *really* like Valve (well, except for their twitchy client that is lacking a lot of simple things like "do not automatically start updates" and forcing you to go through hoops to enable "offline mode".)

c) I do like the idea of resale rights. If I sell my Dell PC, that bloody Windows license should go with it. If my Dell PC dies, I should still be left with a license for the software that came with it!

d) Software and all non-physical things, all information, books, videos, programs are ... different. With modern technology it really does cost nothing to "replicate" them and give everyone in the world a copy. It creates conditions where on the one hand you can spend 50 million making something and go broke but everyone in the world enjoys it, and on the other someone can spend $1000 and end up making 10 billion dollars (in theory).

e) I dislike the idea of not being able to pass on the "right to use" that I've purchased to my heirs. That's .. bullshit. I've already paid for it once. (Oddly I'm not naturally inclined to think that it's my right to purchase 50 copies of some game on 80% discount during the steam xmas sale, and latter resell them during the year...)

f) I strongly believe that copyrights should not last longer than 50 years. Current terms are way longer than they need to be to reward the creator.

Yes, I am aware that e and f sort of conflict. :) I'm still mulling things over. I probably just need to get used to the idea of time or ability limited right to use licenses for consumers.

In my place of work I have **no problem** buying or selling licenses that are "subscription" based and/or tiered based on usage. It seems natural. Probably simply because I feel like companies can afford such things, and because it seems fair.

I already kind of don't care about Valve's ... terms ... just because they deliver such value and/or I **like** them. It's wierd how that last bit grants them such enormous leeway. I'd never ever trust EA with such baloney.

If Germany/others push Valve and other companies too much .. they might make ALL GAMES go straight to a "per hour" direct pay use model. Or maybe even a "per month" thing.

We've all got no problem with "per month" subscription licenses to MMO games (of course then we think about the online infrastructure and constant new content generation).

If I was Valve, I'd immediately stop all new sales in Germany, and/or switch straight to a "pay per hour" model. They could even ramp the "per hour" costs so that the first few hours of trying a game costs more than the next N hours (where N is the average amount of time it takes a player to "complete" the game) and make any hours beyond N cheaper and cheaper.

I do have to say I am annoyed that when I buy some games for my 3 nephews and neices, the games have to be separated into 3 different accounts, this creates all sorts of trouble when 2 kids want to play games that happen to be in the same account. I do not think that they should be able to both play the same game at once without me buying them 2 copies ... and I am also aware that this is kind of convoluted by the same principles of "game resale" ... in that maybe a developer feels it's unfair that I purchase 1 copy of a game and 3 kids get to play it (even if at different times/ages).

Any battery system that is so ... intolerant of it's environment that any small falt in inputs can cause it to kill 400 people ... not worth it.

Fires on aircraft are immediate life or death. A burning half ton Lithium battery is more like thermite. Doesn't need oxygen.

I'm dead serious when I say this, I have an advanced hard core science degree and a I think I have damn good jugement. I know there's not much information ... but ... pardon my euphamism ... my jimmies are rustling and if they leave Li batteries in the dreamliner, I will refuse to fly a given flight if it's using a dreamliner. Not until 5 years have passed with zero battery fires.