The whole deal with CAA restricting your work is BS. You are free to fly what you like just by flying out of a farmers field more than 4km from a airfield. Does your system even compare to ADS-B? Small Linux computers can easily be used to receive ADS-B, and I expect they will be built into Quads and other hooby size aircraft soon. This way they will be able to avoid traffic long before it gets within 1.5km.
I am confident that CAA understand the issues. They have just released draft legislation which you obviously have not read yet, because if you had you would know that they are introducing a way of applying for permission to operate UAVs outside the hobby provisions. They are also going to remove the hobby references. I suggest you look it up and have a read.
What this new legislation will not do is integrate UAVs into normal airspace, and frankly until there is a reliable sense and avoid this is a position I support. Too many idiots out there who have little or no training flying Quads into controlled airspace. There needs to be real, reliable solutions for sense and avoid and technical enforcement of airspace before we open the integration door.
Frankly your hostile morally superior approach is not helping. The CAA has been very interested in an open conversation, and has listened to the community to come up with some regulations which are moving in the right direction. They have not addressed how to integrate airspace at this point, but they are not at all unreasonable. They are tasked with keeping the flying public safe, that must be the first priority.
I will be working on a proof of concept system which uses passive ADS-B for sense and avoid. This can detect aircraft potentially hundreds of kilometers away with precision. I also plan to extend the geo-fence system to ensure UAVs stays outside of controlled airspace and clear of terrain.

There is a strange middle ground of a sort. I am not invested too much in the outcome. Some people shrink from the fight because victory is impossible. This is the 'pragmitist' who evaluates the probability of success and decides the low chance of success means the goal itself isn't worth the effort. Then there are the optimists who fool themselves that the goal is easier than it is, or who believe that the good guy always wins. This is delusional.

Then there are people who accept the reality: they know the road will be hard, and long, involve personal sacrifice and perhaps suffering. They will not fool themselves about the ease of the goal or the probability of success. In fact in many ways the success or failure is deeply irrelevant because as I said above all we have is our intentions and actions. Do or do not, that is our choice. The outcome is up to fate and should not concern us.

This is what Stockdale meant; that we should not fool ourselves about the ease of the goal; that we should face up to grim reality and conduct ourselves in a way that best reflects on us. Because nothing else matters.

It is this attitude that drove my involvement in the campaign against Software Patents in New Zealand. A campaign that was always one breath away from failure. A campaign that many concluded was doomed to fail. A campaign that despite being passed into law may be swept away by the TPP. But these threats do not worry me because so long as I am prepared to stand up and work for the common good I honour myself regardless of the outcome.

I think you have discovered for yourself the way to being content then is not to judge. The control I am talking about is the ability to do as you suggest; to not hold expectations or judgements. The externals are indifferent to you because you have no control over them. The only thing you have control over is your intentions and actions. Therefore the only thing you should be concerned about is how you honour yourself through your actions.

I did not mean control over your physical body; health or the lack of it, while somewhat able to be influenced, is also largely outside you control and ultimately futile. The only thing that can truely be said as your own is your thoughts and actions.

'Positive thinking' is essentially the vein hope that the current situation you judge as undesirable will change to something desirable just because you desire it. It fails to recognise that being happy and content can be achieved simply by changing your judgement. You can decide to be content with your life. The truth is that those external things; wealth, health, power and fame, are all fleeting. The only thing you really have control over is you. The solution isn't hoping that things will get better, it is accepting that they won't and pleasantly surprised if they do.

There is at root no rational reason to do anything. The 'decision' to live is either no decision at all, simply the default for someone already alive with a brain hard wired to survive, or a active decision to live knowing that doing so is fundamentally irrational, but that's okay. Exploration to satiate our desire to know more about the universe, and perhaps more importantly experience more, is perfectly acceptable. Every day we do things that are irrational in that they have no meaning beyond our subjective experience of them. Perhaps only once we have left Earth will we really begin to appreciate how special it is. I believe we have an opportunity to be more; to become citizens of the galaxy. To explore the multitude of worlds our galaxy has to offer.

Nice way of trying to turn this around. What this has done is expose how these National politicians have gone beyond the normal politics in New Zealand to actually support muck raking and character assasination. It is the kind of politics New Zealanders hate. You see while it isn't perfect we still have a functional democracy, unlike the United States. This 'attack' would have had no impact if the Government had not done anything wrong, but clearly they have. There is now clear evidence of a corporation buying off favour to slander a senior investigator with the cooperation of a senior Minister. The senior Minister appears to have oiled the wheels to get previously restricted information released under the Official Information Act in order to harm a political opponent. Reminds me of the saying - live by the sword, die by the sword.

The article talks about this being a small local area network. No discussion about it being connected to the Internet. This is the best firewall of all - a physical air gap between you and the rest of the universe. In many respects this is the best security. So what do local firewalls on each box achieve? In this context virtually nothing except CPU overhead. The database server shouldn't be exposing anything but the database port anyway. The client need not expose any endpoint at all. Configure it this way and there is little opportunity for compromise.

Now as a way to protect your internal lan from the evils of the Internet a firewall is a great idea on the edge, but again they provide very little protection running on the internal servers. You can't just sprinkle firewalls over your network and assume security. They are a tool to limit a specific kinds of attack; to insulate your internal network from external bad actors. If you have a office and servers put the servers behind their own firewall.

I'm just waiting for someone to get hold of one of those lethal lead projectile machines and use it to kill someone. Oh wait - that happens tens of thousands of times every year in the US. Guns are designed only to kill things, yet are given away when you open a new bank account*, no problem there. But if there is even a potential for the possibility of harm - in complete absence of any real actual harm - and we are outright banning it?

Oh - I'm a big fan of responsible use and using technology to ensure that these things don't enter restricted airspace. Most Quads have GPS these days, and it would be mind blowingly easy to program them with TMA airspace so that they simply cannot be flown into controlled airspace.

Isn't this kinda like....um.... perjury? I'm pretty sure that kind of thing isn't taken lightly by the judiciary. Furthermore, isn't it law enforcement meant to be role models for following the law?

He could have simply shut up and lived the good life while being complicit in the spying machine that has rendered the freedoms of the US a joke. The real criminals have got away without a scratch and the spying continues without restriction or modification. Obama has betrayed the spirit and law of the Constitution, as did Bush. Unlimited power corrupts.

This is perhaps a great time to address the charitable status of religion. A new Kickstarter project has just begun to produce a full length documentary on the tax benefits that religions receive. It is called 'Pennies from Heaven'. This is a professional production that we hope will receive airtime on public television as well as on the net. A trailer for the documentary can be found below:

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

News flash; we are coming to the end of the petrochemical age. We are very much at peak oil, and the way down will only see rising fuel costs. Buying a Hybrid may be more economic and efficient, but ultimately our whole way of life will be challenged. Get used to the idea that soon we will not have the pervasive availability of cheap fuel. Get on your bike.

getting close.... ahh, isn't it cute how the Americans think they still have rights.

Perhaps the biggest reasons quadcopters will not be used by terrorists relates to the fact they are TERRIBLE weapon delivery systems. They have virtually no payload capability, meaning you would be lucky to get a hand grenade on them. A person with a backpack can carry far more and gain entry to places where attacks could occur. A mid range car could carry a far larger device, and is faster,
No doubt Quadcopters will be employed for evil at some point, just like cars are, but we should not allow irrational fear to override the larger good they could do. What we do need is sensible regulation and new technology to ensure separation between air traffic.

Building something to a existing design is a reasonably mechanical process. There is the issue of workmanship, but assuming it is a quality builder the building will be completed and stand correctly. If however a building was not designed correctly and collapsed due to a design failure you would not blame the builder. Designers make their 'mistakes' while designing. It is a process of exploration.

Software development is not at all like the mechanical construction according to an existing design. It IS design. You are bound to go down false paths and blind allys. The design process is one that involved exploration through the space I call 'AppLand' - the state space that is represented by all possible computer programs. Computer programming is about navigating through this space. Sometimes you make a wrong turn and end up on the bank of a river. You need to build a bridge or walk downstream a little to find one.

However, there is a matter of quality; that you should implement quality assurance based on unit tests, code review, functional testing and stringent disciplines to ensure that released software is fit for purpose. You can't avoid making mistakes and rework in the development process, you are exploring the state space; but you can make sure you don't end up in the brambles and thorns; that is finding yourself somewhere where the program just doesn't work.

I've been writing my book "Exploring Appland" for about ten year now...