So you're basically saying but someone could change the drone in the summary to something bigger and OMG DANGEROUS! Yeah good argument.
The other half of your argument is self defeating. Fires? Yeah because something that may catch fire is really going to kill you. Let me say that again, LiPo batteries do not spontaneously explode. Go get one and throw it really hard into the ground. Yes it may heat up, yes it may eventually catch fire, but if you get burnt as a result it will be because you got some really recessive genes which Darwin postulates may sort themselves out anyway.

In other news someone in my city stabbed someone else because they wanted a cab ride and they felt the cab stopped for the wrong person. Your little old lady has nothing on that, other than a case of the bat-shit insane. So let me commit the True Irish fallacy and say "No true sane person gives a shit". And that can be found by a quick Google search that shows the FAA hasn't done anything about individuals flying yet, only *attempted* to do something about a few commercial cases. So please, share with me your source on the steady stream of phoned-in tips, and the subpoenas and the cease & desist letters. No, Amazon and the guy who filmed the Tornado don't count.

By the way I like how you just pointed to the danger of drones, did you address the rest of what I was talking about? Think about it. With all those damn terrorists about we should ban fireworks and public gatherings. They are far more dangerous than drones.

Actually the reason for that is not as nefarious as you think, and its the same reason for outsourcing construction, operation, commissioning, maintenance and many of the other activities various companies outsource.

The idea is simple. The companies make their money by getting shit out of the ground and selling it. Their value lies in the exploration rights and their proven reserves. Everything else is technical details. Most upstream oil companies are staffed with geophysicists, geologists, and anyone capable of holding a divining rod, as well as a few project managers to hold the whole thing together. They then borrow shitloads from the bank and sink even more shitloads into 3rd parties who will build, maintain and run the equipment. Then they can reap massive profits without having to actually have the expertise to do anything. Ever wonder why BP's oil spill involved a platform owned by someone other than BP, run by someone other than BP, drilling a hole which was cemented by someone other than BP, yet the profits of the operation (were it to have been successful) would have gone to none other than BP?

The entire industry is like that. Wastewater isn't complicated but there are plenty of specialist contractors who are willing to do it for you, so why waste the time and resources to doing it yourself, when you can focus on other things while also partially shifting liability.

Where can I find such a democracy?

Ahhh you must be one of those, "He mentioned guns so he must thing it should all be illegal, I better rebuff" types.

No, couldn't be further from the truth, you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was saying that compared to getting killed by falling drones the above list is far more dangerous to the general health of people, and THEY ARE ALL LEGAL.

So everyone needs to take a deep breath, get some perspective and realise that getting killed by a flying drone is about likely as a terrorist attack. You should worry more about driving to a ski slope than dying on it.

I do. It's the I don't fly planes because they may crash, and there are possibly terrorists in my basement right now crowd are afraid they may end up on a TV show called "Truly bizarre ways unlucky people die".

They are probably posting the negative comments from their phones while driving down the highway, speeding of course because the government sets those speed limits to collect fines and safety has nothing to do with it.

More importantly we could all get killed by terrorists! Won't someone think of the children!!!!!

You have one of the most extreme cases of alarmism I've seen. I think we need to address your points individually in turn:

1. Flight controller may get confused and attempt to fly the thing. Or more realistically what happens when you lose a prop is the thing flips and splats straight down. Try it one day, or just jump on youtube and watch what happens when a quad suffers complete motor failure. They definitely don't come down at a nice angle, but simply fall out of the sky tumbling as they go.

2. The Phantom 2 is 1kg, this doesn't change anything but I thought I'd point it out since it'll significantly reduce the damage.

3. 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).

4. It's night time, I think we'll be able to see the bright thing with 6 red and 6 green bright LEDs tumbling towards us, especially since we'll be looking right in its general direction.

5. LiPos aren't bombs. They burn well but they won't kill you, even if they catch fire while they are in your pocket, or on your lap (Google this if you want examples).

6. The public couldn't give a shit. They don't care about you, the drone or the FAA. What they will say is "awesome video" and hit share on Facebook. You know, kind of like everyone doing it right now. (Seriously like 6 people posted this on their wall in the past few days).

Now I wonder how many people die on the way to fireworks in car accidents, or die looking at fireworks while driving, or die getting hit by fireworks (this actually happened at one show I was at, my friend got a lovely payout and a great scar to tell war stories about). But more importantly shouldn't we be focusing on the terrorists? I mean all those people just standing there, in the dark, very little security, lots of people with backpacks. Think about it.

hmmm Twice the size and twice the price. Ever consider that not every problem needs $135 thrown at it? That's what made the RPi so popular to begin with.

It's very good to options, even if they may not impress you specifically.

Funny I think the same thing about people with cars and guns. Yet somehow as a species we're content with the massive injury and death rate from those activities but a petrified from the highly remote chance that we may get killed by a terrorist, attacked by a shark, or hit by a falling drone.

Really? I have yet to see a faster last mile that hasn't resulted in a faster overall experience. The sites I want to visit? Most of them host content on the likes of Akamiai.
But don't feel bad people have been saying this for years. They said it about the 56k modems, they said it about the first ADSL modems, they said it about cable, and they are saying it now.

I guess you don't realise that in the last 15 years the service providers pipe's have grown just as fast as the last mile.

Why not? Considering the ensuring emotional shitstorm that comes from simply changing the homepage layout this experiment is actually quite tame in comparison.

You're solution to other people exercising their right to simply speak is to restrict their right to speak?
And you're comparing talking on a mobile phone during the day in a public area to blasting music at 3AM?

I'm not sure if I should call you a Nazi or a deranged old timer who really needs to be put on meds. Maybe try tapping those damn bastards who dare to speak with a broom that will sort them out.

Yeah well why not? The USA passed the DMCA, why should they have a monopoly on stupid laws with serious flaws and a high cost of implementation?

Yep and that's exactly what they did. They had to at a very minimum remove the link, or investigate if it was infact bad and then make a decision. The cheap method is to remove a link. I fully expect this to be automated soon so it's even cheaper.

But that's beside the point. I actually have a more interesting question for you: When did providing a link to a news article become "handling personal data"?
If I copy http://search.slashdot.org/com... and post it to my blog am I also handling personal data? Do you have the right to request me to remove that link?

You would only see this as pointless if you considered a light to be a light. In many cases, especially commercial installations they are so much more. Intelligent office lighting that is activated by a central authority, PE cell, or motion detection all the same time like in many commercial buildings are a real outright pain in the arse to configure. If there were some simple way to communicate with and configure one single light it would be a godsend.

One of the industrial control system vendors we deal with solved the same problem (clusterfuck of control units being outright impossible to manage centrally) using a similar method, IR communication. Each controller has an IR port. Now if one is dead or needs a firmware update you don't need to scroll through a massive hierarchy and pray that you actually connect to the right controller first go, you just go up and hold your device up to the IR port and it gives you all of it's details so you can be 100% sure you're talking to the right one.

In the computer world I don't think this is very different from the little blinking light on the front of rack mounted servers that helps locate the one you're logged into.

You don't need to convict. You just need to ban. Thinking that because Microsoft is a US based company makes them somehow immune is a ignoring the fact that they have been taken to task by foreign governments before, and have lost. Or have we forgotten why there was an "N" version of Windows XP?