I recommend a project that auto-edits slashdot headlines to avoid trailing prepositions.

Poor headline grammar is something up with which we should not put.

Seriously, I RTFA, AND the link on TFA to the original source. The guy just says he wants to open up a debate about how much policing of the Internet there should be. Where the FUCK did "get a license for a website" come from??? This isn't even a biased summary, it's flat-out misrepresentation. Get this shit off Slashdot.

As an EU citizen, I was delighted when the "right to be forgotten" ruling began a debate that's long overdue about online privacy. And I have no problem with the company at the absolute forefront of gathering information about individuals being told "Tell people what you're gathering, yes it's your problem to make it accessible."

The Internet we HAVE, where all information that can be gained about a person is considered fair game, is not necessarily the one anyone actually WANTS. The EU should be applauded for insisting that actual thought be applied to what's going on instead of just allowing the endless procession of "Hey, we can do this! So we'll do it from now!"

You can call them "tech-incompetent", but I label people with your attitude "social-phobic". The only limit on what's happened on the internet since its inception is "What's technically possible?", it's about time the people who asked "What do we want to permit?" got some room at the table.

As soon as Tesla set up shop in Iowa (the site they're doing the test drives from), it ceased to be interstate commerce.

People have been playing with long-range RC for many years.

And there have been various autopilots, orientation tools, and FPV-style links for a long time. Greatly predating the kids-with-multirotors era.

Which is also true of traditional RC aircraft, which have been flown for decades - with plenty of opportunities to get up into the path of full-scale aircraft. The carnage has been incredible, one plane after the next falling out of the sky.

The problem isn't going to be people shooting crop health, checking their gutters, doing an aerial during a TV shoot, or getting real estate photos. The problem is going to be malicious users. Just like wrong-headed people who choose to be malicious with lead pipes, shotguns, or kitchen knives.

A bunch of laws telling law abiding people not to fly their camera robot over 400' will mean exactly nothing to someone who doesn't care about laws.

The question was why this is interesting to the slashdot audience. The answer is that this demographic is interested in how the government looks into and acts upon things that most people think of as not-really-public-stuff.

Regardless of your take on how the editor wrote the headline, the concept here (the government empowering trash collectors to police your behavior after looking through what you throw out) is right there in keeping with the government doing all sorts of other things that involve prying into your behavior with an eye towards controlling it. Technology is the most common or at least a highly visible venue for that sort of intrusion these days, so other blatant examples of government micromanagement (like looking through your trash) serve nicely to remind technologists of the larger underlying issues, and that there ARE such issues.

OK, you got me. For a moment there I thought you were taking yourself seriously, and having a rant, however misguided. It's a shame there's no satire/sarcasm tag to reward you for your sense of humor. That was a good one!

Or generating them ;)

Maryland's rain tax is a fine monument to, and classic symptom of its lefty/progressive entrenched government monoculture.

Which state are you talking about? If a state doesn't have a coherent, functional military with the resolve to fight against these guys, then there's nothing else up their sleeves to use. Iraq wasn't ready for this. ISIS just kidnapped another 68 Iraqi soldiers to use as extortion leverage, and has killed a bunch more using suicide bombers. Recent recruits there have no stomach for fighting people like that with only what Iraq has that passes as its own air power for support. Their "little finger" isn't nearly enough to protect and hold the dam in Mosul, for example, let alone stamp this group out of existence.

Because "warmist religion" is indeed a convenient shorthand way to refer to the thought process of legions of people who opine on this topic.

Well here in our state, we've now got a rain tax. So all they have to do is tweak the law that makes guesses about how much grass you have (and this how much you should be charged each year when it rains X amount), and instead make guesses about how much wind-interfering surface area your house has, and how that might be disturbing, through turbulence, the mating habits of a special sub-species of gnats.

Not that you'd like to make a useful point by actually speaking of substance or anything. No, it's just "you're wrong, and I know secret things that you don't." Which is always a sure sign that you don't, actually. My perspective is shaped by daily reality: higher premiums, wildly higher deductibles, millions of people still not covered, millions of people now covered by charging other people for their consumption, more national debt, and a coming tsunami of yet more rate increases for millions of people. Yay, it's "Affordable!"