So, let's see ... the administration publishes a written interpretation of a law they don't like, and you think it's crazy to report that fact?

Obviously it's nothing new for the Obama administration to simply ignore statutory requirements (see his unilateral re-writing of features of the ACA entirely for political expediency), and this is simply another case of it. But what's interesting is that you are obviously either ignorant of their specific language in the new "interpretation" of the law in question, or you're well aware of the implications and are just doing your best to wish it away through childish ad hominem. Classic lefty sycophantism. Or, I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt, and tell you to go read their published intention to twist the law into an implementation that is 180 degrees opposite to its plain, so you can come back here and argue the details instead of stamping your feet like an eight year old girl.

Out of hundreds of such discussions that pop up on easy Google searches ...

http://www.modelaircraft.org/a...

It's not a conspiracy, coward. It's published policy. Your decision to trot out ad hominem in place of addressing the basic facts of the matter shows you know I'm right. That you're posting as a coward makes it even more clear. But keep propping up your pet administration, man. The documents they publish - you know, the ones that have been amply covered in both aviation news and general media of all sorts - make this all very clear. The agency has just been sued by multiple parties over the 'interpretation' document and policy position in question. But please, don't trouble yourself to keep up with the news - that would take the fun out of your shrill, drooling Obama fanboyism.

You actually need a citation to believe that the director of the FAA is a political appointee? You are that unaware of how federal agencies are run by the executive branch of the government? You don't need a citation, you need a remedial course in basic civics. Please return to the conversation when you understand the basic structure of the government.

I thought the aliens already got Elvis.....

We're trying to catch the terrorists, not dress like them.

Yes, and congress passed a law requiring the FAA to produce such regulations in a timely fashion due in this coming year. The administration has said they will not obey that law, and will not have such a framework in anything like the timely fashion required.

In the meantime, the administration has published an "interpretation" of the 2012 law that says they take it to mean more or less the exact opposite of its plain intent, and they are busy getting ready to fine people for doing things like participating in RC competitions (you know, like we've been having for decades) that happen to involve things like $20 cash prizes ... because that's commercial drone use! The employees of US-based companies that have for years stepped out back of their shops to test-fly a new RC airplane or multirotor will, according to the Obama administration's new interpretation, be breaking the law and subject to substantial fines for being paid to fly unmanned aerial systems. We can't have that! Quick! Shut down all of those businesses and jobs! Chase those retailers out of the country!

It's preposterous. We're not just dragging behind the rest of the world, we're actively taking steps backwards. The administration is deliberately, purposefully, putting the brakes on what would otherwise be a multi-billion dollar industry full of innovation and attractive to STEM-types in this country. The left's instinct to Nanny State their way down into every last aspect of what someone might do to conduct some business (hey, kid, quit flying your $250, 2-pound plastic quad-copter with a cheap camera over your neighbor's roof because he asked you to, and said he'd give you $25 to get pictures of his roof gutters for him - if you don't cease and desist such commercial UAV operations, that's going to be a $10,000 fine!) means they can't simply clone the sort of framework that the UK or Canada have long had in place ... no, there's got to be a way to make it all MORE miserable, MORE expensive, MORE punitive, and nearly impossible for small entrepreneurs to get into - because otherwise we might miss out on some more federal fees, and intrusive paperwork.

And as usual, the very idiots that we'd most worry about anyway, who will be getting a drone from Amazon tomorrow and flying it over a park full of kids an hour later without any understanding of safe operations or good manners, will completely ignore the FAA's rules/guidance/regs anyway. The government, which is here to help you, will only be placing the painful burden and expense on the very people who are the most responsible anyway: those with a lot to lose because they're in business to use the technology.

More Hope and Change, hard at work for our economy. Yes, Obama's man Huerta at the FAA is a political appointee and that aspect of the food chain lays the FAA's entire posture on this squarely at the door of the White House.

No. The same collectivist and PC-style urges that currently act to prevent free expression will continue to further intercede when you seek to trade with someone. Why? Because there will always be people who think it's unfair that you and someone else have found a mutually beneficial reason to interact, and they will use the force of government to take a piece of that benefit, pay career middlemen in the government to handle it, and hand some of that benefit over to other people who didn't manage to make that transaction happen for themselves. That trend has been increasing, not decreasing. Places like academia and mass media are now LESS free places, for expression, and the market is an increasingly less free place in which to transact business between any two given parties. The "in the future" you envision is a fantasy. That horse has left the barn, and the nanny staters have won.

So your constitution doesn't exactly spell out what dignity exactly is, or what "quality" actually means in constitutionally mandated "quality housing for all citizens" - but it's not an entitlement, it's actually a "right" defined in the constitution, right? You said it's a clause there. Which is it? Does the constitution get dirty in describing specific wealth transfer entitlement program details, or not?

OK, so indeed, if you pass a certain test, you have the power to make the government take something from other people, and give it to you. And your constitution guarantees that only can that happen, but it has to happen with a certain amount of style. Not enough style, and it's undignified, right? So: who decides how many square feet of entitlement home is constitutionally dignified? How does the constitution lay out the definition of dignified where the rubber meets the road and you have to decide how much of someone else's work day should be spent building a kitchen for somebody else? Specifically.

So just to be clear, you're saying that some people in your country have the right to force other people in your country give them stuff.

You're making the assumption that any situation the car cannot handle is both an immediate danger, and a situation that can be handled perfectly by a human.

When I try to think of situations where an automated car would fail, most tend to be ones where a response of "come to a full stop, don't do anything until the human orients himself and takes charge" is a perfectly valid one. Traffic lights not working? Let the human figure it out. Bridge out ahead? Let the human figure it out. Conditions so bad you can't see the road markings? Let the human try to do better, and if he wants to sit on his ass until it clears, that's probably a good idea anyways.

Sure, there are situations where an AI might not be able to avoid an accident an alert human would. Let's say a trailer detaches from a truck in front of you, but not in your lane. As it skids, it suddenly tumbles into your lane. An automated car might have ignored it until it was too late, while an alert human would have slammed on the brakes as soon as they saw it.

But how many humans would have been that alert? Even if they weren't on a phone, or sipping their coffee, or fiddling with the radio, most drivers end up in a sort of trance, doing things automatically. I've seen people crash just because they weren't paying attention - not distracted by anything, just driving without conscious thought. Automated cars won't have that problem - they don't *get* bored. Even if they can't dodge a freak accident, they'll be avoiding plenty of routine accidents. Net gain for people who don't like car wrecks.

Or let's see if it could handle the commute I had this morning: There was a power outage. Seems to have affected at least two blocks, including the traffic lights. I was trying to make a left turn, onto Main Street. For those whose traffic laws may be different, in this jurisdiction, a downed traffic signal is treated as an all-way stop sign. Or at least, it's supposed to be. Traffic coming from the left refused to stop. They just blew right through it, most didn't even slow down. Traffic from the right stopped occasionally (they had passed through other downed lights to get there, so I guess they had a few seconds to think), but that didn't help me. I eventually had to turn around and find a different route, specifically one that would not hit any traffic lights. I wonder if automated cars would have done better. Would they have stopped, as they were supposed to? Would they recognize it as a dangerous situation, stop and hand control back to the driver? Would they just plow right through it like all the dumb humans? The first is obviously correct behavior, the second would be tolerable, and the third would be merely no better than humans were doing. What if my car was automated? Would it have stopped? I sure hope so. Would it have realized that humans are morons and that it would never be able to make that turn? Would it plan a backup route that avoided all traffic lights, or would it continue to be surprised every time humans failed to remember an obscure driving law? What if a policeman had been directing traffic? Do Google's cars know how to obey hand signals? People can usually figure them out even if they don't remember them, since they're fairly intuitive to us, but that has no bearing on whether it makes sense to a machine.

Not really true. There are two things you can do to remain anonymous:

1. You can buy coins for cash from random people meeting up in coffee shops.

2. You can put the coins through a laundry; they get merged with coins from everyone else using the service, and spit out in a random number of accounts with random quantities all adding up to what you put in (minus fees).

Either one of those options provides a fair degree of anonymity. The two together make you untraceable, unless you've done something else to link those coins to yourself. Either way, there are definitely ways to remain anonymous while using bitcoins, even though they're inherently an open-book system.