Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:A! SS! HO! LE! (Score 1) 236

I've heard those things and they often sound like a pissed off weedeater.

You have no idea what you're talking about. A passing car is louder than a small, well-tuned quad with quality balanced rotors at ground level. 30' in the air? Barely audible. There are noisier ones. I work with a 25-pound octo that sounds completely horrifying, and I know when and where to operate it. But thanks for speaking out of ignorance - it helps to put all of this stuff in perspective.

Comment Re:Accidental bugs? (Score 2) 211

There must be agencies seeding these projects, commercial and open source, with toxic contributors injected there to deliberately contaminate the code with such bugs. The further fact that one never sees responsible persons identified, removed and blacklisted suggests that contamination is top down.

Or, you are yourself a toxic seed planted by The Man in order to foment FUD and make good people not want to be part of these projects. Or something like that. Give it a rest with the absurd conspiracy crap.

Comment Re:Why fly at 3AM? (Score 1) 236

I've flown that exact same piece of equipment at 3:00 AM, just for fun. Not on Pennsylvania Ave in downtown DC, of course. But if the guy's a hobby flier up late on a weekend night playing with this quad copter, maybe trying to get a couple of cool scenic night time shots, is that so hard to believe? Or is your tinfoil hat so tight that you're also going to assume I can't possibly have been up late updating firmware, swapping some motors around, and then stepped outside in the low-traffic, peaceful night time hours to test my handiwork? Can't be! I must be an FBI stooge! Please.

Comment Re:Frickin' Lasers! (Score 1) 236

the Navy *does* have some recently-deployed point defense laser technology designed to shoot down incoming cruise missiles

The problem is that the incoming drone could easily be flying below tree-top height. Like, 20 feet off the ground. Laser counter measures would be shooting at a target that would have large office buildings and other structures directly behind it.

Comment Re:Where Does He Stand On the Issues? (Score 1) 120

Either way - in the absence of authority, there is no reason to fear the abuse of authority.

That's not really a system of thought, though, because it doesn't define a system. It describes the way that some people may, out of pure irrationality, imagine the world to work in their childish fantasies. When you get a bunch of people together and decide (look, a group decision!) that there will be no group decisions (?) forming any sort of authority or formal structure governing how they all interact, you're basically walking away from civilization. At best, you're setting up for medieval feudalism. True, you don't have to fear abuse from an authority you establish ... instead, you have to fear abuse from anyone who feels like using force to abuse you, and you've got no recourse because you've already decided that recourse beyond your own ability to withstand the use of force against by one or a thousand or a million other people is too organized and authoritative for your taste. By not establishing authority, one cedes authority to anyone else who feels like claiming it. So, people espousing that point of view are basically twits.

Comment Re:Where Does He Stand On the Issues? (Score 1) 120

So even if you get 90% of the people to vote that all gays should be put to death on a funeral pyre the law STILL wouldn't pass because the 10% voting against it would include the gay people and because they are only ones affected, and the way they are affected is so extreme

Really? So, you'd be in favor of the government making sure they know who is and who isn't gay in order properly run skewed elections and referenda? How about simply having a clause in your constitution that says (as ours does) that everyone is treated equally under the law? Isn't that simpler than getting the government involved in keeping lists of who is on which part of a given spectrum of sexual orientation or skin color, etc?

Comment Re:Translation ... (Score 3, Informative) 392

No-knock warrants are an anti-liberty product of the Drug War. Police know how to secure a building so the only way out is through them, but the suspects can easily dispose of "evidence" (illicit drugs) in the toilet. Since it was impractical to ban toilets, the courts decided to let them barge in and assault everyone they saw.

Comment Re:Where Does He Stand On the Issues? (Score 1) 120

You want to know who also agrees with you, terrorists agree with you, which is why they use terror to force people to do things that the terrorists want them to do.

Really? You equate our constitutional system of checks and balances to terrorism? Terrorism is the simple majority deciding that they can tell you what to do. Are you OK with 51% of the population deciding that you no longer get to speak freely, because they don't like what you have to say? That's democracy. A constitutional republic (which we are, that's not really open for debate, even when you confuse it with something else, like a monarchy - and you're very confused, here) has tools in place to prevent people like you from rallying 51% of the people who vote to do things like have the other 49% enslaved, or killed, or whatever you'd like to see done in the name of your having the majority of simple votes on the matter.

Democracy ie representing the majority

The majority is not always right, and the people who wrote our constitution knew that. It's why the country isn't run like one bit PTA meeting or a dog club. We have three branches of government, and the legislative branch is broken up in to two houses specifically to blunt the tyranny of the majority. You either haven't ever studied the basics of how the constitution is structured, or you have, and your pretending you haven't so that you can make your really bad analogies. Please try to get it straight.

Slashdot Top Deals

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!

Working...