Glenn Beck called. He said you're getting a little over the top.

Um, sure. Most of us drone users stay well away from houses. The whole "drone spying on your teenage daughter as she lovingly caresses her nubile body in the shower", and on and on and on, is something straight out of Law and Order, or porn movies. Or that packs of parrot users are going to break into your wifi network, or sit in smoke filled rooms, coming up with new ways to violate your civil rights.

Everyone I know just enjoys the little bit of flight time, for the few minutes the batteries allow, and making videos to share on youtube. They are toys.

Probably the most subversive thing we do is put leds on them and play "pretend UFO".

But as I said, I gave you the info to down one over your property. Use that info as you will.

Just wait until it comes into the airspace above your roof, then blast it with a wideband signal around 2.4 GHz. It will screw the wifi connection to the phone or tablet controlling it, and the drone, now goes into landing mode, looking for a safe place to land. It will slowly descend onto your roof.

The owner will see all this, and might take umbrage at your stealing their drone. Which almost certainly wouldn't be flying over your roof anyhow.

Wouldn't this mean that the person controlling the drone would have to be on the wifi system already?

It isn't just going to stay there without any control. On my parrot, the drone will ease on down if it loses contact with the controller. Kind of keeps it from flying on til hte batteries drop if you lose contact. So it would need multiple wifi's. Oh, and then it wouldn't be recognizable as a parrot drone. And....

Even if you could rig it to attack another wifi, it would have to have that second wireless adapter, and you'd need a second computer to do the hacking, and you'd need to get all this done in the precious few minutes of flight time. And the flight time would be even less because of the second wifi weight and battery drain. And....

Oh, and you'd need to be standing right outside the place you were hacking into. The wireless range of these things is really short. And...

This is FUD, plain and simple. Tring to break into a wireless system with a parrot would be like driving from Philadelphia to New Jersey by way of Australia, with stops in Anarctica, and the moon beforehand.

Every single Government since the dawn of time has failed. Probably not a good argument for Anarchy.

And gold based systems have likewise failed. Senescence is hardly a good reason to abandon something.

But those several failures while we were on the Gold standard - no explanation?

We've heard all the arguments for the gold standard, and the proponents will simply have to accept that there just isn't enough Gold in the world to run the world any more. I did the math a year or so ago. It won't work. There is a reason that no country uses the gold standard any more, and it's not subjugation of the masses or whatever odd reason the gold standarders give, it's just that the world's economies have so far outpaced the amount of gold that we can put our hands on. This has been known for a long time, which was why we and some other nations tried a bimetallic standard for a while. Which didn't work because the two metals always fluctuated value when compared with each other. Maybe even that should be a clue.

Pretty bad business model. If you have to rely on illegal labor, then you not only have a bad business model, but you are a criminal to boot.

Of course, because I was being terribly facetious. But the argument that higher minimum wage causes unemployment is based on ideology, not math.

The exact same concept would be true if average wages went up. Not completely linearly, of course. because the poorest workers tend to spend more of their income on necessities, while the wealthiest tend to save or invest more.

But the argument, when reduced to it's basics, is that the higher the average wage, the higher the unemployment rate. Utter bullshit. At least in my case, the more I made, the more I spent, and the more I saved. I'll bet it's the same for other people.

Which argument, oddly enough, completely ignores that the consumer is the largest driver of the economy. How can the largest driver of the economy dive the economy when they don't have the money to do it. The early 2000's credit fest probably won't be repeated, as people tried desperately to hold on to their standard of living by going further into debt.

This is not complicated math. If on average, people buy new cars every 5 years, there will be more cars bought than if they bought on average every 10 years.

Another very simple example - My sister has bought exactly 1 computer since 2001. I've bought 10. Who has pumped more money into the economy? Even if the fact that a lot of that goes to China, it still helps with the employment of the sales people at the store. I used that example for that reason.

Call it the trickle up theory if you like. People making money buy stuff. The more stuff bought, the more people work.

Even more, with Government inefficiencies, does it make any sense to allow businesses to pay a wage that requires it's workers to be on the government dole?

I might have much better things to do with my decreased taxes.

This is what I've been preaching for years. What is pushed as "modern capitalism", is pretty much slash and burn. Make no mistake, the real beneficiaries of the working poor are their employers. Via a socialistic program that takes money from you and me, and redistributes it to the employers profit.

Amazingly enough people put up with it.

I am against wage restrictions in general. If you look at Europe, the countries with stronger economies tend to have the fewest working restrictions,

I am against them in principle. Problem is, the minimum wage has been kept artificially low for a long time now. That has created a completely skewed economy, and when a company is allowed to direct it's employees to the welfare system, that just isn't right. The existence of that is a serious symptom of an underlying problem. SO they might be a necessary evil.

You think that Germany's economic system isn't very restricted? The only country among the top ten with a triple-A rating (they are number 4) utilizes a "social Market economy, which is very interesting, but completely impossible in the USAat present. Parts of it are in line with what I preach as the best way to run an economy. It's Capitalism with a moral underpinning.

It's a great read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

Rhine Capitalism. is pretty active in regulatory measures, considered the direct highway to hell in our system. And no one plans and implements with greater precision and effect than the Germans. It also takes the people in it's country into account. Yet another great read here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Basically, it doesn't require it's citizens to be the main enemy of the economy. And damned if it isn't working well. In a system like that you don't need to force employers to pay their employees. They are all pretty much pointed all in the same direction. I think it is a good model. Any "ism" - socialism, capitalism, communism, fascism, will fail and fail big when people try to make it pure. It's because no 'ism is perfect.

But capitalism tempered with moral underpinnings? Pretty much the best thing going in my book.

Because cheap. Becausd they value the cheap more than their fellow citizens. Frankly, I think that any employer that knowingly employes an illegal alien should be stripped of their citizenship, then put on the plane with all the drugged deportees. Land them in in whatever country we're shipping them to at the moment .

Then they can come back into America as an illegal alien. If they get shot by border patrol trying to cross into the US Fucking excellent!! Rough justice, most fitting.

You did answer your own question. The subsidies allow WalMart ot pay lower rates than tehy would otherwise have to. If no one could survive on WalMart pay, they wouldn't work there, and th reates would automatically go up.

Once again, you answerd the question. They don't have to pay enough to live on, and part time jobs will allow the employer to not pay any benefits

Lest ye put the part time situation at the feet of the current administration, it has been going on for years. I remember when Sears turned most of their employees into part timers in the early 1980's.

The part time/no benefits model is something that companies use that can really give the shareholders big boners. But it does tend to come at a cost - it burns a big bridge, and is therfore used as a last resort, because it you use part time employees, you get part time employees.

So in this recession, people are desperate to work at whatever they can get. So they take those 32 hour a week, no benefit, not full time jobs.

Frankly, I think that puts the lie to the "lazy American won't work" meme.

So anyhow, waddya want? The companies won't stop until you tell them you won't accept any less pay and benefits, and we have a surprising number of people that think they need to get poorer in order to get the money they deserve. If they could get you to work for the wages they pay the illegals, they would. Or less.

It's a sad day when so many people buy lottery tickets as their retirement plan.

Umm, entertainment? Like going to a party and chatting with friends, I learn something everywhere, but mostly here, I just discuss, sometimes argue. But seriously, most of it is just entertainment.

There is a whole world out there of people playing with obsolete technology. It's not always nostalgia either.

How about hit and miss engines? Now there's some obsolete tech. But people are still messing with them

Home made engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And since hoomins always take things to the semi - insane level, a Fairbanks Morse monster that someone is restoring for viewing pleasure and/or horror.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

There is more to life than Windows 8 and smartphones. All we wanna do, is have some fun, I got the feeling, I'm not the only one.

Well, there is the matter of today's internet. Anything that is posted pisses someone off. Mention Global warming, or gay marriage, or gun control, or Guvmint intrusion, or Tesla's and those folks will descend on you like carrion flies.

That being said, I used W8 for a year, and it elevates Suck to a new level. The Start menu? Meh, that's just one itty bitty step into that cesspool of suck.

W8 Works. It really does. But as a UI, and for system maintenance the verdict is in - Do Not Want. And the fanbois can call the rest of us stupid assholes all they want.

After all, we all do put Slashdot use on our resume don't we?

After all, we could be checking out our Facebook pages, or maybe playing Angry Birds.

You know - important stuff that shows our amazing productivity, focus on what counts in life, and wise use of our time instead of screwing around with an old Amiga.

Rush Limbaugh called. He wanted us to tell you that you're a little over the top.

Well okay, but then I'm going to claim that lowering the minimum wage raises employment linearly the whole way down to 0, when everyone is employed, and all social problems are cured.

Prove me wrong?

You can get B-yatches at Amazon? I better scoot on over there.