These aren't android devices that are required to be tethered to Google every waking instant to be useful.

iBooks alone with textbooks instead of physical text books, so the students aren't carrying 20 pounds of dead trees everywhere, is alone enough of a reason to do this.

Clearly they underestimated the bandwidth usage, thats kind of the point of the story, but go ahead and not read the story and tell us how they fucked it up without you actually having any clue at all.

I'm not sure you're aware of it, but not everything actually requires a constant Internet connection to function. Working offline is pretty common in the normal world, again, if you aren't on Android which does everything it can to keep you tethered to Google.

Considering the whole iBooks is designed to allow for text book replacement thing, this is also good for the backs of students that can potentially not have to carry 20 pounds of text books with them every day.

Just because you've not bothered to understand all the ways having a tablet is a great advance doesn't mean its a 'probably'.

Schools run their own internal phone systems already? Mission creep? Just like businesses who run their own phone systems? At a certain scale its cheaper to pay a guy to do the work internally and do it in a way thats for YOUR best interest, not the guy selling it too you.

And by 'becoming their own ISP' what that probably translates too is upgrades to the existing private data lines between he schools and a bigger pipe into the district main data center to carry student bandwidth instead of buying WiFi access from AT&T/Verizon at a ridiculous rate. They'll buy bulk bandwidth instead of consumer and save a fortune.

Everytime you see someone talk about parents doing something like this being 'wrong' you can rest assured that they've never had any children or taken care of them for any length of time.

Then post your bullshit on your own websites. No one wants to listen to you ramble on about crap that you utterly fail to understand and whine like a little girl.

Go back to your hole and whine about what network providers blacklist your retarded lists of open proxies.

Bennett HAselton is an ignorant douche who complains when he gets blacklisted by various email lists because he distributes lists of OPEN PROXIES and he's too stupid to know WHY he gets blacklisted ... and then calls that censorship.

He's an ignorant fucking douche, nothing more.

Any tangental work he does is irrelevant and generally most of the crap he spews is wrong. You get more accurate information from Fox news.

There is something utterly fucked up with that statement. Don't confuse me, its nothing you did.

The fucked up part is that 'news sites' are so fracking biased!

What I wonder is why the wikipedia article isn't locked already.

What 'America' are you talking about? The USA has never really been any different than it is now. You certainly don't mean when the 'owning classes' actually owned the people that worked for them, do you? Or any time in the last century?

Contrary to what your closed eyes might believe, the working class in America is better off than its ever been. That doesn't preclude the ability for it to be better, but if you think the working class in America have it harder now than any other point in the countries history, you're just ignorant.

So how much did the cost of living raise in those areas?

How much did it suck for every person above the new minimum wage that suddenly got an effective state mandated pay cut?

Raising the minimum wage is worthless if you don't control pricing of products as well, the price of bread, milk and everything else just goes up to compensate for the new higher minimum wage.

It goes up not only because it must to balance out the increased cost, but it also goes up because it CAN, those minimum wage workers can afford to pay more so they will be charged more.

The standard of living remains the same for minimum wage workers, and goes down for everyone else who got off their asses and put effort into being more than a burger flipper.

Because they don't actually know how to do what they are claiming the requirements are and they refuse to turn it over to someone who does.

I'd have thought that was pretty clear. Trying to do real time work in python made it clear to me.

R/C aircraft also have rules related to these things, the current generation of quad just fulls well below the weight limit. Method of control is one of the points of contention, specifically the requirement for line of sight. Altitude is already limited to 400 feet AGL.

Let me drop a 2 pound UAV on your head from even 10 feet above you, then will talk about how those rules need revising now that any idiot and his 8 year old son can control one. My lightest UAV weighs about 4, the largest about 12. The weight rules were made back in the 60s when it took real skill to fly, months of meticulous building and thousands of dollars. The people who had those aircraft were careful and thoughtful or they wouldn't even get anywhere near the flying field. Now days anyone can buy a fully ready to control one from walmart. The rules have to be revised.

It amazes me how often people completely ignorant of the issue talk about how the FAA isn't being logical.

The commercial bit limits the number of people who will try it because it makes the only incentive to do so one of pleasure and interest in the process and skill, not money.

Ah yes, you're one of those people. The government doesn't want to create jobs! It just wants to tax us more while we're unemployed! The gubment is evil, Bush is ebil, Barak Osama is ebil.

You're an idiot.

Random anti-poaching people are examples of doing it wrong, just like the jackasses on Whale Wars. Every example of anti-poaching with UAVs 'I've SEEN' has been an example of breaking the law because its okay for you but not them.

You're utterly wrong on your interpretation of this. It reiterates that FPV is banned. This isn't new. Doesn't stipulate that RC aircraft are required to follow the same rules as full sized aircraft at all, unless they want to operate for commercial purposes, but again, this isn't new.

The FAA makes the law in this area. They are correct in principal. From a technical perspective however, they are suing based on policies not actual regulations.

No, the point of these lawsuits is the FAA is attempting to enforce based on policy they haven't made into official regulation yet. They are attempting to stop people who refuse to wait until proper regulation can be ironed out. This is not a good thing. Its a horrible thing.

Its horrible because these people are essentially going to force the FAA to rush the process of coming up with actual regulations.

The easiest thing for the FAA to do is to open the regulation for public comments, ignore them all, and just turn their policy as it stands into actual regulation. Then these court cases are over and the FAA wins, period. NO ONE WANTS THAT.

They don't have to get any bills to congress. The FAA makes the regulations governing the skys. Congress delegated that authority to them the 50s or so. The FAA has to follow certain rules about how it makes regulations, including open public comment periods, but they are in no way required to listen to the public comments and congress doesn't get to tell them what to do, only appoint people to lead the organization.

The FAA is one of the few government organizations that actually does its job reasonably well. I have no idea how this manages to be the case, but so far it is.

... I'm stating that they are NOT INCOMPETENT. They are taking the time to properly evaluate the situation and come up with a workable plan, as they always have. One that allows hobbyists to keep doing our thing and allows for safe commercial use without killing or maiming people.

Well of course you do ... Its possible to disagree with anecdotes, though doing so by offering your own response without providing any facts or anecdotes at all just makes you look silly. Disagreeing with fact just makes you look stupid however.

If you look at the postings related to UAVs on slashdot its fairly easy to see my point, but that would require you educating yourself rather than just disagreeing, wouldn't it?

Because he's an ignorant douche who thinks the FAA is wrong and is talking about getting 'bitchslapped'.

He's the kind of person who causes the rest of us problems and that sort of ignorance pisses me off.

At no point did I say I was for making the hobby illegal. His sort of ignorant response and the public behaving like that is what will result in the hobby being regulated to all hell and back.

The reason the hobby has been so loosely regulated to date is because we've been self policing and proactive about it. It used to require experience to get into the hobby, so if you were some arrogant dangerous prick trying to learn, you'd have to spend a lot of money replacing equipment because no one who flew would help you learn so you'd have to do it by brute force.

ArduPilot and Multi Wii changed that. ArduPilot and MultiWii showed that you could, fairly easily, control an aircraft with cheap MEMS sensors for a couple hundred bucks at most. I can get a full autopilot from hong kong (a cheap ArduPilot clone) for under $100 that will fly pretty much ANY RC airplane, helicopter, or quad as well as control an RC car. Completely autonomously.

Now anyone can control an aircraft. Note: I said control, not fly. ArduPilot flies the aircraft, you just tell it where to go more or less. ArduPilot is more or less what all these knockoffs are based on. Well, not ArduPilot alone, there are a handful of OSS implementations that are all somewhat related to each other even if they aren't sharing code. Parrot and Phantom quads? Those are straight up are almost certainly direct rip-offs of ardupilot or the other MAVLink software who's name escapes me and I'm too lazy to look up.

No, I want to be able to fly my aircraft, but dumb ass statements like 'the FAA needs to be bitchslapped' are the exact people who will fuck it up for me.

So do I, hence why I'm talking about it. I also have sold photos to real estate agents with it, yes, I acknowledge I'm doing exactly what I shouldn't.

No, if you bothered to read and understand the policy, none of those are legal. The photos taken can not be USED for commercial purposes. The VERY FIRST post to this article has a link to make it clear for those of you who fail at reading comprehension. Long story short, just because you don't get a check or a $20 bill doesn't mean its legal, but I suspect you knew that well before making the bunk argument.

I have a $30 toy heli with a built in camera as well. But just like a $500 phantom, its no where near the quality required to do actual commercial work.

$500 will barely buy you a camera of high enough quality to do any commercial work, it certainly won't buy you the UAV of sufficient size, gimble AND the camera. I have gimbals that cost more than a phantom. Putting a $10k USD UAV into the air for quality photos is pretty normal, but it can be done 'good enough' for $1500 as well. $500 ... no, that shows me you don't actually know what you're talking about. Theres a whole lot more to aerial photography than strapping a $40 digital camera on to your toy.

Just because you have a phantom with a go pro attached doesn't mean you know what you're talking about.

Again, if you had any idea what you're talking about, you'd know that realtors are the ones that are eating this stuff up. Beautiful shots of homes on demand without paying for a full sized heli to do it. MUCH cheaper. Thats where 95-99% of the photo work for UAVs is done right now. Theres also construction work where someone wants to see some progress of construction as its going along without being on site or get an overview to see what the contractor is doing. Surveying for farming is probably third on the list. Then the lowest I've dealt with is things like events, which is good because those are the most dangerous as they almost universally involve flying around crowds of people.

So again, like I stated originally, just because you can buy something capable of doing the deed doesn't make you qualified to do so. You can buy a hammer and some wire cutters from the hardware store, do you think that makes you qualified to build a safe house for people as well? Hint: It doesn't.

How many pictures of your house are you going to take? 1? 2 flights? Are you even going to bother spending the money to get a rig to do it with? Is it going to last more than the weekend you bought it simply because it isn't all that interesting too you by itself?

Now if you're doing it 5 days a week, for income? How about just weekends, for income?

The difference is frequency and motivation. You're unlikely to spend the money required on the camera alone if its just for your house and there is no profit. You certainly aren't going to take too many risks with a $500+ (minimum) camera and $500 UAV if theres no financial gain.

Now if you can pay for the UAV and make a profit? You'll be doing it FAR more often and you'll be FAR more likely to do stupid shit that could hurt people or property.

Yes, I've read their chart. I've commented on their website. Its the same logic as to why you can give your friend a ride to the airport in your personal car with a normal drivers license but you aren't allowed to charge a fee, carry random passengers and run a business without special permits and a CDL.

There are reasons we regulate businesses.

Then you're an idiot.

For $20/month you'd more than pay for all the bandwidth you and everyone you know spends on YouTube at the rates YouTube pays for it. Do you have any idea how ridiculously little ads pay the ones who show them?

The Internet 'RUNS on advertising' because they can make more money that way, not because it has to.

You may be too young to remember it, but it wasn't always that way. There was a time before Google turned it into an ad platform. There was content then as well.

Netflix doesn't run on ads. AppleTV doesn't run on ads. My Internet doesn't involve ads, and not because I use adblock, because I pay up front for the services that are worth paying for and ONLY if they allow me to avoid ads by paying for service.

Ignorant people like you are the ones who think its Okay that you get ads on cable TV and Hulu Plus.