Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Wah, wah (Score 1) 723

"The numbers turned out *much* higher than Fox News predicted

No, the numbers have turned out AT ALL. Because we haven't been given actual numbers. The numbers we got don't tell us who's paid (thus making time spent filling in an online form into an actual money-changes-hands transaction that actually insures somebody), and don't tell us how many people in that mix were the ones who had their insurance cancelled on them (roughly 6-million, so far).

So, actually, the numbers turned out pretty much right where critics said they would: abysmally low.

Comment Re:Plan not grandfathered and minimum standard. (Score 1) 723

The US will catch up to the idea that every human has the right to health without concern for cost or it will fail.

I think you don't understand what the word "right" means.

Should people also have a right to housing, clothing, food, climate control, utilities, and the rest, without concern for cost? Does everyone have that right? Because if you don't have those things, you could die. Just like you could by not having a "right" to the services of a podiatrist when you have achy feet.

If everyone has a right to the labor of professional medical people, and everyone has a right to the medicines, supplies, facilities, and multi-million dollar test equipment ... how does that work? We all have the right to assemble, the right to free speech, etc. The constitution protects us from government interference in such things. If we have a right to a little bit of the waking hours of a nutritionist, or the right to something that a bunch of people working in the pharma industry spent their week making, does that mean that everyone should get those things for free? Who pays? How can it be a "right" if you have to force your neighbor, on penalty of losing their wages or their home, to provide it to you? That's your idea of a right? Get a grip.

Comment Re:just stop it.. (Score 1) 178

This only shows that UAV's should only be used by licensed people with certified/licenced UAV's ... they fall under the same law's as RC planes/helicopters

Maybe we can apply the same thing to language, including - especially - the dangerous mis-use of apostrophes near crowds of people. Punctuation should only be used by licensed people certified in the language being used. We could avoid so many horrible, fatal collisions between plural and possessive traffic. Think of the children.

Comment Re:The Pilot Was Far Out Of His Depth (Score 1) 178

Those "flyaways" are grossly over-reported. Every noob who does something stupid with a machine that happens to have the very widely used Naza on board immediately throws their crash into that same causative bucket. It's ridiculous. Can't tell you how many "DJI Flyaway" videos I've watched that clearly show gross operator error, sloppy builds, GoPros with the WiFi turned on, uncalibrated compass modules, take-offs before the GPS head count is high enough, no home point set, landing gear caught in the grass, flight controller on a hexa set up for a quad ("OMG, it's the Naza flip of death!") and so on. To say nothing of smoked ESCs, never-maintained bearings, and flying right in front of the radome on a utility tower ... if it weren't all so bad for the hobby and the industry in general, it would be funny. But it's not. Because of clowns like the guy in question here.

My personal bet: he outflew his probably badly maintained LiPo until it went over the volate cliff, and the rig dropped like a rock.

Comment Re:Pilot Made Multiple Errors, "Hacking" Claim Is (Score 1) 178

It's all wi-fi. Fancy wi-fi may more reliable than crap wi-fi, but it's still all wi-fi, and it all has a range which when you go past, you still lose control.

This is factually incorrect. If you're out of range, the bird falls back on another kind of control that you exerted before you even took off (a GPS-based return-to-home waypoint and associated climb/travel/descend procedures - all things the operator controls). Never mind that the pro-level RF gear one would use with a "real" bird for RCAP isn't WiFi at all, and doesn't resemble WiFi in any way that matters.

Comment Re:Sounds like a RC plane not a drone (Score 5, Interesting) 178

In the US the FAA would also probably be fining him.

Well, that's not entirely clear just this moment. In the now-headed-into-appeals area of Huerta v Pirker, it kinda looks like the FAA doesn't actually have any formal, properly constructed rules in place. Guidance only. Their distinction between recreational and commercial use of the very same RC machines used by the same people in the same place at the very same time is pretty ridiculous - and the administrative law judge handling round one of that case agreed. But the case is still baking.

So, if you dropped your camera drone on someone's head in the US right now, and weren't flying next to an airport or beyond line of site or over 400' ... then the trouble you're in is roughly the same as if you'd hit the same person in the head with a lawn dart or a football. Good ol' fashioned reckless endangerment, having nothing to do with the FAA pe se.

Comment Laughable CYA Maneuver (Score 1) 178

I don't buy that excuse for a second. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that he's right. That means he was using cheeseball home entertainment mall kiosk grade equipment. Nobody doing for-real media coverage of a sporting event and intending to fly over people's heads is going to be using anything that could possibly be so easily "taken over." If nothing else, the drone should have a good enough flight controller to allow it to realize that something is swamping the RF control side, and have it climb to a previously identified altitude, and maneuver back over the spot from which it took off, then to make a nice gentle decent and landing. This is vanilla COTS stuff, now, with even inexpensive FCs. The good ones - which any pro should be using, and which cost more like $1k - are really good at high speed frequency hopping and only paying attention to the controller to which they're bound.

Basically, this clown sounds completely negligent.

Comment It's worth it. (Score 4, Insightful) 233

Understanding what happened could be worth a lot more than $50m, or twice that.

Major issue with the airframe, or propulsion? Very important to understand that. There are a lot more of them flying around.

A third party's influence and/or an attempt to steal the plane? Whether that ended in a crash or a successful theft, we need to know everything we can about who, what, why, to what end. If it was stolen and landed (extremely, very unlikely), gotta know where and why. If it went in the drink during an attempt, still have to understand what the game plan was.

Suicide? Hiding in regular traffic, then flying low and into the most remote, deepest water possible in the interests of never finding the plane - the better to make sure family collects on insurance money? Would be good to know, and will remind airlines to get harder about knowing their pilots and the pilots' current circumstances.

Regardless, the navy assets out looking are using the whole thing as an excellent training exercise. Lots of smart people have had to whip up new ways to think about what happened, using only traces of satellite/comms data.

Comment Re:Yea Right... (Score 2) 137

... Look at the overweight+ people in Hawaii. And we live in the sun virtually year round!

If we can take their small sample and methodology as meaningful, and presume that you mean that Hawaiians all get up early and go right into the sun... then the point is that whatever lifestyle things make a lot of Hawaiians fat would be even worse if they all rolled out of the cot in their mom's basement and stayed there until lunchtime.

Comment Re:THIS is what will destroy the human race (Score 0) 517

.. these are not what will destroy the human race. Willful ignorance is what will, along with it's partners, superstition and religion.

No. It's mis-use of the apostrophe that will be our undoing.

If, that is, people who say "I could care less" don't cause the world to explode, first.

Comment Re:It's not arrogant, it's correct. (Score 1) 466

Because internet traffic is internet traffic is internet traffic. It doesn't matter if that traffic is Netflix, Bittorrent, email, youtube, World of Warcraft, etc.

But this particular kind of use of it absolutely dwarfs everything else. Streaming media is a huge payload.

And, come on now, tell the whole story. For AT&T to be able to deliver Netflix's data all the way to the home routers of their customers, they also have to maintain arrangements with other carriers to handle that data as it comes in from Netflix. Those peering arrangements are not free, just like maintaining that last mile to their end user customers isn't free.

Meanwhile, the guy who buys bandwidth and uses it for a less Netflix/YouTube-centric array of connections absolutely is going to be asked to contribute to his neighbor's entertainment costs if the GP has his way and AT&T raises their rates across the board to deal with the behavior of a subset of users and remote content sources.

Slashdot Top Deals

"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight

Working...