I hope that Amazon idea takes off. Its green, economically sound idea. I think we need to get over the idea that drones are bad. They can be used in bad ways, and we should create a framework that defines good uses for drones. For lack of better words, a bill of rights about drone uses.
Experience doesn't count for much in this industry. To the bean counters (aka the types that fund and managing projects), you will get more done with 2 programmers paid $25/hr than with 1 programmer paid $50/hr. It's the proverbial problem: you can't make a baby in 1 month with 9 women. But the bean counters don't see it that way. Their spreadsheets equates man hours to productivity and nothing else factors in.
Part of the problem is its practically impossible to adequately measure cause and effect: aka "this decision lead to +/- quality, +/- hours to implement the next feature."
Its ok for the police to monitor (and I don't just mean warranted use of gps tracking) the every day activities of normal citizens but its not ok for the police to monitor themselves. mmmmm.
Let's not forget that other parts of this same legal system (specifically our court system) has said it is ok for private employers to violate the rights of their employees by doing all kinds of monitoring.
Sorry, I can't help but to be cynical.
I think that this could be good for energy industry because it could open the door to other means for producing energy. Nuclear reactor operators have opposed technologies that improve our energy grid because of the costs associated with running nuclear reactors. But they may have lost the battle anyways.
I think our energy policy that demands big massive producers are they only source of energy is wrong. And its strategically dangerous as well.
For the record, I'm not opposed to nuclear energy. I just don't believe an energy policy solely relying on big business is in the consumers nor countries best interest.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.