Regardless of the rights and wrongs of KD's actions, one thing has been very strongly lighlighted by his arrival in NZ and the actions that have followed from that.

When he first arrived, he was welcomed with open arms by the government, despite his shady past.

Why?

Well he had *lots* of money and was prepared to give some to the government and spend the rest locally.

Yes, you *can* buy your way into New Zealand -- despite claims to the contrary.

Then many people of power and influence hob-nobbed with KD, hoping perhaps that they'd get favours from him -- as indeed one politician did, to the tune of thousands of dollars contributed to his funds but not declared (later resulting in a conviction for that MP for filing false returns).

Once KD had given huge sums of his money to the NZ government he was then of little further use to them so they were more than happy to help out their US overlords (the FBI and MPAA) by engaging in *unlawful* surveillance and an unlawful raid and asset seizure. Despite the illegality of these government-organised activities, nobody involved or responsible has been censured for breaking the law. How convenient, and another sign of deep-rooted corruption.

Once KD dared to meddle in local politics by funding a party which stood at the last election, this was the final straw. The Prime Minister (whose office has been engaged in some *very* shady dealing with our Security Intelligence Service recently, prompting that agency to apologize to another opposition MP) has now obviously decided that it's time to kick KD to the curb.

In any *real* democracy where people's rights are respected and the government and its agencies are required to obey the laws that they pass, there would be little problem. However, as has been seen by the massive trail of graft and corruption, plus the ongoing lack of accountability for wrong-doing on the part of the PM, his office and its agencies, it's unlikely that KD will get a fair deal at all.

As I said... I don't give a damn whether KD is an angel or the devil incarnate -- his mere presence in this country has exposed the lie which is a claim that we are the least corrupt country on Earth. No... the truth is that, until now, we've been the best at covering up huge levels of corruption that are now exposed for all to see.

How clever is Google... being paid to display ads and also being paid not to display ads.

It's a win-win.

Do no eViL -- yeah, right! ;-)

Given the huge hurdles that airspace administrators are presently placing in the way of *any* non-recreational use of drones (witness the way the FAA has repeatedly tried to shut down those being used for search-and-rescue activities), can you possibly imagine the red-tape involved in getting clearance to launch one of these life-saving drones?

By the time the paperwork was done, the corpse would have already rotted away to just bones and parchment-like skin.

Governments talk about the "huge potential" of drones -- but the regulators say "no, no... you can't do that".

Crazy, crazy, crazy!

Can someone remind me why it is that we, the people who elect and pay the wages of the politicians and public servants who seek to destroy our right to privacy in this way, continue to allow such outrageous behavior to continue?

Has the concept of a democracy been replaced by one of serial fascism where voters are lulled into a false sense of empowerment by governments which collude with the *real* power-brokers to simply look after their own best interests and for who "voters" are synonymous with taxpayers -- a necessary evil required to keep the oily wheels of government turning?

They say we get the governments we deserve -- if that's true, we must be truly evil bastards!

I thought they already offered this?

A YouTube paid channel is a channel for which users pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee to watch its videos

Well if you'd been holed-up in a small room for years under the threat of extradition (ulitmately) to some US holiday camp where waterboarding is considered a social activity, wouldn't your outlooks and perceptions have been somewhat altered by the experience?

Let's not forget that Assange, through his Wikileaks disclosures, has done a hell of a lot to wake the people of the world up to the nastiness of those who forget they are in the public service and instead believe they are rulers and demigods by right.

While Assange is open to criticism on many fronts, never forget that he *has* done a lot to help preserve what few freedoms we still have.

I more strongly criticise those who see the wrongs that have been done and do nothing to right them. That's the *vast* majority of the great unwashed out there.

Actually, I think a surprisingly large number of them are running XBMC and working as media servers and (via services such as 1Channel) giving free access to a whole bunch of movies and TV content (albeit without the copyright-owners permission) :-)

What a load of BS. Moller's "flying car" is a joke -- a bit like Stan Meyer's water-powered car was. It's always easy to create a conspiracy to cover up a complete lack of substance when you're busy trying to milk gullible investors!

As for the flying car referenced in this article/video -- it's just like all the others and will never "fly" from a commercial perspective because:

  - it's a crappy car (too many compromises in order to make it fly)
  - it's a crappy plane (too many compromises in order to make it drive)
  - it's a death-trap (because of the two points listed above)
  - it's probably going to be *way* overpriced -- such that you could buy both a *good* car and a *good* plane for less money and without the compromises.

The problem with the 6502 was that if you were writing code for someone else's environment then your use of Page 0 (which many of the index-based instructions used intensively) was restricted because the OS often took up most of that space.

If you were writing code that was totally stand-alone (ie: no bios or OS to worry about) then the 6502 environment was *very* nice and could perform incredibly well. However, if you were writing code that sat atop a BIOS/OS layer then the Z80 was just so much simpler and less frustrating to code for.

Speed-wise, the Ohio Superboard (6502) would roundly trounce a TRS80 Model 1 in single-precision floating point math run through the relevant BASIC interpeters and ultimately and tightly coded 6502 code would also trounce the same written for the Z80 -- unless Page0 was already used up on the 6502 system.

In the old days, before computers went solid state, smoking on startup was often put down to worn valve-guides.

Damn... I think Americans call them "tubes" -- in which case the joke doesn't work :-(

Who the hell is going to sit down and scan a few million lines of source code with Microsoft looking over your shoulder and hope to spot a backdoor or two in the process?

Even then, how can you be sure that the source code they show you is the stuff you're actually running?

What a PR stunt this is!

Please cite the FAA regulations that state this.

I think you'll only find an *advisory* which has no legal standing.

Forget about aerial video and photography with these "drones" -- the most fun you can have with one of these multi-rotor craft is this:

FPV racing

These are tiny multirotor craft fitted with FPV (first person view) video gear and flown around a course (which can be as simple as a few trees in a field).

Stunningly good fun and a real adrenaline buzz -- without all the privacy and safety issues that "droners" create with their DJI Phantoms and other consumer-grade multirotors.

Just Google/Youtube for "mini H quad" and you'll find much more

Actually, they are *not* regulated -- and that's the big problem right now.

From the FAA's perspective, there are no regulations pertaining to RC model aircraft -- only guidlines.

This is why the courts overturned a $10,000 fine levied against Raphael Pirker by the FAA -- because there are no regulations to back up that penalty.

The FAA are scrambling to come up with some regulations but, until then, they are hoist by their own petard (or lack of work in this area).

How dare they include the Me163 Komet in a list of "worst planes" -- it was a groundbreaking craft (in more ways than one -- get the pun?) which highlighted the innovation (and desperation) of the Germans near the end of WW2.

Yes, the choice of fuel components made it horrendously dangerous and the limited flight-times did reduce its utility but it was undoubtedly *the* fasted aircraft of WW2.