We are building new coal plants to replace old ones. And bottom line we phase coal power out. 2013 was an all time low for brown coal btw.
Wow! Is attending brainwashing sessions a required activity in Germany? The reality is opposite: coal power in Germany is rising and 2013 was the highest coal year since 1990 ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/w... ). Meanwhile, more coal power plants are being built. Goals to reduce CO2 emissions by 2020 won't be met.
Over here in the US, the fascist conservatives equate anything not as fascist as them to be socialists.
Actually, here in the US not one person in a million can tell you anything at all about what fascism stood for. The term is now just one of a growing list of political insult terms with no actual content.
Of course, the fraction of Americans who can actually define socialism or liberalism or any other -ism isn't much larger than one in a million. Such terms are really just the modern equivalent of tribal names. You're expected to hate anyone with a label different from yours, but you're not expected to actually know the meaning of any of the labels. Once you understand this situation, American political rhetoric becomes much more comprehensible.
He also seems to spend most of his time enriching himself with bad pop science books and TV appearances. Maybe he did some useful science early in life but at this point he is NOT a scientist to admire or aspire to be.
Flight controller may get confused and attempt to fly the thing
The flight controller is ALWAYS flying the thing. And if you were paying attention (which you weren't), you'd note that I was talking about how the flight controller might handle the presence of debris gumming up a motor and overheating an ESC. It happens all the time - insects, dust, leaves, etc. As I also pointed out, this stuff will seem mysterious to smug people who obviously have no experience with this stuff in the real world.
The Phantom 2 is 1kg
About half again that much by the time you install gimbal, camera, and VTX for downlink. Regardless, shall we do a test where 1300g hits you in the head at 30+mph? No? Huh.
The Phantom 2 does not have carbon fibre blades. This is quite significant because plastic doesn't hurt when you get hit by it (spoken from experience).
Many people retrofit with CF props. Regardless, the stock props are plenty capable of taking out an eye, or laying open the meat on your face.
LiPos aren't bombs
Though you can use the same Google you're talking about to see lovely video of hot, instant fires caused by multirotors hitting the pavement from a long fall/dive and having their onboard LiPo rupture internally. They are very energetic. Just what we need - video of Lithium-fueled fire on someone's July 4 picnic blanket, right where their kid had been sitting in a crowd.
The public couldn't give a shit. They don't care about you, the drone...
Which explains why the FAA gets a steady stream of phoned-in tips from the public, which they use to issue subpoenas and cease & desist letters threatening fines. Or you could read up on the case of the 17 year old out having a nice time flying FPV in a wide-open public area, up until some lady started to quite literally beat him up for doing so. She gave a shit, enough to commit assault over it. Tip of the iceberg.
Nobody was in danger except the drone owner's bank account
Spoken like someone who has never actually built and or operated one.
More likely than a direct hit on the drone by a shell (likely to make the drone drop straight out of the sky, probably in multiple pieces) is the prospect of some debris getting into one or more of the brushless motors. This could cause the motor to overheat, or cause the ESC talking to it to get things wrong. The flight controller can get confused by this, and you could end up with a high battery drain, and the machine doing a nice tilt to one side, with the remaining props spinning way up to try to maintain lift
Beyond all of that, this is about public perception. The complete tool who did this is practically begging to have members of the public pile onto the FAA's existing effort to, in practice, shut down this entire hobby and almost every attempt to put these tools to work in research and business. Gee, thanks.
Ridiculous? As a pilot I don't want people's toys flying around in my airspace. Hit a plane and there's a real chance you'll kill someone.
If you're a pilot who's "airspace" includes a volume in which a fireworks display is scheduled, please informs us of that fact, because I don't think I'd ever want to be a passenger in a plane controlled by a pilot like you. The possibility that your plane might hit a drone would be the least of my worries.
Read about the new ridiculous rules the FAA imposed about drones...
Until some moron flys one into the path of a commercial airliner, small plane, or helicopter, and people die - than it's "why isn't the FAA doing something about this?"
Rules won't stop someone from doing that because it's obviously intended to try to hurt someone. I say try because in a battle between a jet engine with the power to push 400 tons of steel into the sky VS a drone I'm going to put my money on the jet engine lasting long enough for them to turn around and land again.
Wait; there were jet aircraft flying through the fireworks display's volume? How did the drone miss getting a picture of that? That'd have been really fun to watch, especially when the fireworks started hitting the airplane.
(Given that there was a fireworks display going on in that airspace at the time, I'm kinda doubtful that there were any pilots in the area who weren't well aware of them. And I also sorta doubt that there were any children running around under the fireworks. That's usually strongly discouraged at fireworks displays, and this one was over water.
At OSCON 2006 I was sitting in one of the green rooms (the spaces set aside for speakers before presentations). My laptop was open and I was happily hacking away on a project. As I killed a bug and checked the code back in, I muttered under my breath, "Python, I love you. You make the hard stuff so easy."
I noticed a few seconds later the room had gone utterly silent. I looked up, and sitting at the table across from me was Damian Conway, tapping away on his own laptop doing his own thing. I blinked a couple of times and suddenly noticed the entire room was expecting a Perl-vs-Python argument to erupt.
Damian looked up from his work, noticed everyone was looking nervous. He looked over at me, I gave a "I don't know what's up with them, uh, help?" look and a shrug.
Damian then looked back at the crowd and grinned. "Listen, the only thing I love more than Perl is well-written software, even if it's written in Python." He looked back over to me. "Kill a bug, didja?" I nodded. He gave me a smile and a thumbs-up, then returned to his code. I returned to mine, and after a few seconds the room let out his breath.
I love Python. But the only thing I love more than Python is well-written software, even if it's written in Perl.
And why are you singling out a faction of the ruling institutional party?
Because that's the faction that runs the man who runs the US senate and who runs the man who runs the executive branch of the government.
Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult. -- R.S. Barton
