Indeed. It's like a sheep and wolf discussing what's for dinner. The sheep might _think_ it has a say, but when it comes right down to it...

His proposed fix is a little too wordy. We should use more brevity and make the meaning the forefathers intended more direct and precise. Instead of his proposed change being:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed."

Should simply be:

"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Why make it so complex and leave it open for conjecture?

See, that's the thing. I have a friend that does exactly that - but he went one step further and just parked a small no-frills car at the airport and leaves it there. I'm always surprised at how easy it is to get in and out of small GA airports. But again - it ain't cheap by any stretch. "Save Money" and "Own a Plane" are never two things that live together well - but I will say it's damned convenient with the scenario you describe. In the Terrafugia I would just be too damn worried of getting my wings pranged by some idiot driver while trying to get to the runway. One small accident will erase every gain you might have had by not having to tie down your plane at the airport. And forget the accident - a small piece of debris or pothole will incur some substantial A&P time...

The flying cars try to do both things well (fly and drive) and are good at neither. Of course the definition of "well" is subjective. I live in Albuquerque - and to me the test would be what are the performance numbers of something that can take off at a runway that's about 7K ASL already and 100 degrees in the summer. Those pie-in-the-sky numbers manufacturers try to play to don't exist in real life.

And if I want to go sub-100MPH in a plane that drives I'd just get the PAL-V here http://pal-v.com/the-pal-v-one... Reminds me of a "canyon carver" and gyro rolled into one. Again even this is WAY too expensive and has similar suck-numbers for useful load after gas in the tank - but does look like a lot of fun - but it too suffers from the "Oh dear god don't let the idiot without insurance hit my plane!"

Even then he's not worried that the faux-pilot would dial the wrong number...

"WTH? I thought I was going to Alberta. Who the Hell are you people? I don't understand anything you're saying. Why is it so hot? And quit waving that damn AK-47 in my face!"

This right here - truer words have never been spoken :-)

I recall an outfit I think in Germany that came up with a giant multi-bladed beast to carry a single pilot (looked like a quad-copter but with something like 19 or 20 blades) but the issue is still batteries. Awesome concept - but until something with a battery can handle sustained 1+ hour flights with a 250-300 pound payload, it'll never see the light of day :-(

Perhaps we should get Elon Musk on it? I'd trust him to do it before Moller and Terrafugia :-)

Knowing the glacial rate at which government approvals work I would have to agree with this scenario :-)

True however I would posit that the technology would be there sooner to retro-fit a piston-powered Robinson R-44 with autonomous technology than creating the magic battery hybrid for clearance through the FAA.

There definitely are people that have that kind of expendable income, but I am looking at it from the feasibility aspect as well. The technology for near-pilotless hybrid Osprey-like personal aircraft is probably further away than Moller and his imaginary Skycar.

Okay seriously... I've yet to see a few dozen of the _current_ Terrafugia flying cars roll off a production assembly line (or is it fly?) and here we go chatting about a four-seat plug-in hybrid that doesn't require the pilot to be a be a "full-fledged pilot"? Really? How about actually building and selling something more than a prototype before leaping on the "next-generation" bandwagon already?

Mr. Deitrich - we're not even close to having something with a power-to-weight ratio in battery storage to get anything but a giant carbon-fiber glider out of ground-effect for any length of time and you have a spokesperson saying something about being only two years away from production?

Okay, where is he? No really. Is Moller and his Skycar hiding in the weeds someplace behind this company?

Also, I would think that someone with the money to pull off buying even a low-rider existing Terrafugia prototype - won't have issues learning how to be a "full-fledged pilot". I say this only because I am considering what the monstrous price-tag would be for a semi-autonomous electric-hybrid aircraft capable of carrying four people and having a range of anything beyond running a touch-and-go pattern even once at the airport. That being on top of how long it would take the FAA to approve that kind of vehicle.

Tilt rotor hybrid for the public? LOL! Yep. I hear we've got a huge shipment of unobtainium coming from Pandora to help in its construction. And as soon as I finish my distillation of my current batch of impossibilium for powering its Infinite Improbability Drive - we're set! Only two years away!

What amazing times we live in!

(tongue planted firmly in my cheek while Terrafugia's head is planted firmly in their ass. Hopefully they have a clear acrylic stomach lining so they can see where they're going)

Apologies in advance for my dour attitude. I put Terrafugia, Moller and any production "flying car" right up there with next generation solar cells cheap enough for everyone and super carbon-nanotube batteries with enormous energy densities being available.

Oh wait! No... False alarm... No monkeys flying out of my ass yet... I guess I'll have breakfast and carry on with my day... :(

At least they're up-front about it. I refuse to EVER buy another Sony product since they decided to ship rootkits to their customers years ago. If I was King of the Universe I'd make every person who even REMOTELY knew what the Hell was going on at Sony commit seppuku in public, then give away all of proprietary Sony technology immediately into the public domain.

If Nissan is so interested in the vehicle and what it is that attracts owners, perhaps they should do like Consumer Reports and just buy one. Get a team of their engineers together and do a non-destructive "consumer level review" of the car. Emails from owners to a company fishing for information is one thing - but to have an actual car to analyze and see where the "bar has been set" is best.

If they want to beat the competition, they have to actually acquire the information the old fashioned way. Then just as importantly - make a conscious decision to NOT make something that falls short.

In other words - make a system that is naturally easier to use and user-centric - don't go all "Cadillac" and come up with some un-holy interface that just pisses off your customer base. Every time you see a device that hits the market that totally misses the mark of your customer, maybe you should fire the idiots designing your product and get people that f**king listen to the customers.

Even if I was getting free charging, the business is most likely not going to cover the reduced life the batteries - which is probably more in the long run than the benefit of free charging.

I probably wouldn't get an electric-only car anyway if the round-trip range of home to/from work wasn't within one nightly charge cycle...

Spies don't have to crack them if they're financial based businesses like banks. Every time the IRS expresses an "interest" in the account information, they roll over on their backs. I would expect no less from them if any other three letter agency wanted more information, especially if any of those "interests" involved doing business with the US.

To each his own. I understand the AC's sentiment, but as a contractor/consultant writing EDI applications and interfaces for healthcare entities? Well I understand it. It also depends on the customer you work with/for. If they are easy to work with, give clear specifications and don't treat every checkpoint meeting as a hostile engagement, I'll bend over backwards and cut them slack - especially if what they want is in my "bag of tricks" that I already wrote 90% of before.

If however they are a complete ass-hat, and spend more time dealing with the "adminsitrivia" of lines-of-code to payment-time ratio, then I will bleed them. Usually though it never gets that far - because I find out soon after the Proof of Concept they're ass-hats, charge my time for that and politely decline the offer to work for them. Or as was the case with a specific high-end university hospital in Sacramento, they transferred me out of a really good group that I worked well with, to another mid-level micro-manager who had a project manager that couldn't find his butt cheeks if he sat on his hands and groped really hard. Within two weeks I was like, "Thanks for the opportunity - but I'm choosing other directions" and bade them adieu in the form of a 30-day contract cancellation notice. She was such a caustic manager, that when I went to close out certain complex tasks to hand over to her people - she immediately severed my logins and said "stay away", causing her own team to suffer for it - badly. I still helped them the best I could remotely over email - but she also was one of those idiots that didn't appreciate the complexity of some of what I did and learned the hard way.

I digress, sorry.... :-)

And yes - I totally get people who minimize the complexities of designing a website. I deal with 99% of the backend data conversion, writing the communication channels to trade data (HL7, X12, XML) on the back side, data-conversions, filtering, scrubbing, etc. I leave other people to make it all look pretty. My hat is off to you - I couldn't build a decent SITE to save my life. A super-simple data entry PAGE that serves as part of a workflow? Sure - but even that makes my head hurt sometimes depending on what I am supposed to code it in... :-)

Ryan

I would agree with this. I am a consultant/programmer in the medical technical field that works with all manner of EDI tools and the like, making sure that patient data for various hospitals is communicated correctly and accurately between various healthcare systems. I have had to wear the varied hats of programmer, analyst, manager, documentation specialist, trainer, mentor, troubleshooter, network specialist, and a whole slew of "titles" - all of which simply mean that If I don't know how to do something - I can figure it out.

I however do not have a degree. I didn't particularly care for school growing up for various reasons, but what I did have was a knack for figuring stuff out and truly enjoying making things work. Personally with all of the online learning opportunities available I think I would enjoy going back - so getting a degree (or multiple degrees) is certainly a future possibility.

But that aside - it also means with no degree I am pretty much blocked by any/all opportunities from a cold-call perspective; as my resume, regardless of having a myriad of demonstrable skills and domain knowledge, wouldn't even pass the first educational filter to get to a human being. If I were to stay in the same niche field? That would be far easier than were I to try something completely different.

I at least make up for not having a degree by having built a network of contacts in my industry, having many positive client references - and the fact that EDI in healthcare is such a niche market, that consultants pretty much know each other in many respects. I was in the right place at the right time and ran with it with everything I had.

I do wonder sometimes if the ability still exists for younger people who starting out like I did with no degree - can make it as far or farther than I have as a general rule. I'd like to think so. I think it's still as much "who you know" as it is "what you know" that gets your foot in the door... But note that I said "gets your foot in the door". You might be a great people person but know absolutely diddly about actually doing the job...

Doing a total armchair quarterback thing, I would think an EMP would be pretty heavy itself? Then again, my vision of an EMP is hollywood-esque drama with an EMP as some giant magnet fitting in a bread truck surrounded by glowing blue neon... or something...

That and I can't help but think that even though the drones are built by the lowest bidder, that there isn't some sort of faraday cage around the most critical control parts - but again, I am clueless on how tightly you'd have to wrap something like that and still allow it to be remote piloted...

Neat idea though, nonetheless. If an EMP payload could be small and cheap enough - cool. Or maybe something like a compressed air shank with a REALLY long streamer tied to it causing serious drag as it unfolds; or a really long nylon drogue parachute? Might not take it down, but its mission will be cut short trying to make it home with all that extra drag.

For DIY I would be more inclined to go low-tech and get some ball-bearings in the turbine intake first :-) Or be like Hawk in the old Buck Rogers show and make a drone with claws that just clamps on it making its glide ratio be more closely aligned with a pig, or a really large turkey :-)

Admittedly though - EMP has that whole "Hey KITT - hit it with your microwave pulse" feel to it :-)

I still think the disablement part is easy once the interceptor gets to it - it's GETTING TO IT I think is the more difficult issue...