Bingo.

As a researcher, we've found DoD made hardware is highly optimized for the task at hand. Most military equipment I've used in the public sector is very good at the task it's made for, some of it is very robust too.

That is a good thing and justifies their expensive price tag, BUT nearly all high tech military equipment forget to fulfill one requirement:

minimal collateral damage

Missile shrapnel hits surrounding homes? Drone loses RF, crash lands? Humvee leaking leaded fuel? F22 runs at 200dB noise cruising low attitude? High tech rifles discharges uranium-laced shells randomly on the ground? "Who cares, it's not apart of the mission".

In the public sector, especially what I see in entertainment: collateral damage is pretty much the #1 or #2 safety requirement.

our hexacopters can carry upto 1.5kg and about 650mm boom to boom and still get 15min flight times.

Drone delivery will be good for [highly] customized, small articles. Drug perscriptions would be a potential. And thus will justify a preimum in delivery costs. Commodity items--just ship it through ground, it scales better since there's already an infrastructure (i.e. roads). Eventually once "roads", "driveways", and "mailboxes" are established for drones, you'll likely see a shift.

Naysayers of delivery drones are just being ignorant to the fact there's a huge infrastructure to support ground delivery, dating way back to the pony express let's say, and missing the fact that your house design is apart of that infrastructure (e.g. mailbox "slot"). Drone mass-delivery just became an idea what? 2 yrs ago? Sounds like naysayers are mre like fanboys and the media more like a hype machine, but the tech will become reality once a infrastructure is developed/deployed.

That's a deep answer. This is the funniest article of the day for me as a flying robot/drone developer.

While the germans are flying drones all over the place, selling them and have a regulatory framework, they are complaining they cannot build/sell autonomous cars... and calling out other countries, mainly the US as beating them in that game.

But in the US, it's the completely reverse... or bizarro situation. While Google and Uber are building autonomous cars, and getting them approved for use, drones on the other hand are DOA with no framework insight... and drone companies are complaining countries like Germany and France (and Australia) are beating them in that game.

Oh, "the irony of the rant".

How cares about skynet when it comes to heat and computers... I worry more about the Matrix instead.

Someone needs to realize that computers will like fall out to the next big thing in about 15-25 yrs or so from now.

Computers were developed from the evolution of science, which continues and will likely evolve into some "new tool and approach". With the tools from Quantum Physics, that will likely fall in the field/aspect of memory. For instance, that step-wise calculations and numerical methods to do integrals make just go away....

As I always said, information doesn't want to be free....

  but wants to be exploited.

Also having Xerox doing real $$$ R&D on UIs/HMI/GUIs on physical objects... makes sense that the current mouse, keyboard, screen are pretty much 98% efficient for 98% of the population. Considering that R&D was done nearly 40yrs ago.

All this VR stuff is maybe 5% efficient for 5% of the population. It's a start, but guys, don't sell it now as the solution to everything.

Topic based will sure solve short term interests. But topics basically push a system into being trend based.

Last big industry I know that is trend based is Hollywood. There [in general,] are pop-actors (forumlated), discovered actors (savants), technical (by the book), and method actors (experience). That's not including the wannbes (your nightschool students?) and "wealthies" (buy their way into Hollywood, aka buy your degree).

Next thing you know, Finland's system will become similar to the above scenario, common in the Hollywood community of actors. Those would learn the old ABC's (method and technical) and those by topics (formualted and savants).

And we'll all be called talent instead of students by then... and need agents.

"That market isn't about telling time but making a statement."

Sound like Apple products, with the exception that some Apple products also increase productivity. Hence Apple will impact the market, but with the GDP of the Swiss, their services and banks--I doubt it will make an impact.

Basically 5.1 is a "steal some PR from Apple iOS Spring Event" release vs a feature update release.

I'm tried on all Android and iOS updates. They fail on 6mos old phones making them slow, battery hogs and buggy (remember the iOS simcard issue? or the Android battery hog issue?). It's not right for those who don't want to buy the latest phone every 3 mos.

Actually CEOs were somewhat different 15yrs ago. Remember the $1/day salary? There's very few CEOs nowadays that follow that paradigm... Today, there's so much VC and Wall Street influnence, and the social network, aka "club" mentality from the kiddies coming out of the universities--it's much a unfair racket as any other Wall Street business.

"Invented here" is somewhat a illusion.

Working with frameworks and other people's code is a engineering problem (design, integration, etc..)

Developing code is a computer programming problem.

Two different problems, and why Software Engineerings are [desired] unicorns in very large software projects.

You're missing the point.

Automation precedes scale. Once Google automates the vehicles, the cost of the vehicle should go down technically. Then we're looking at disposable cars or reusable car parts. The capital costs should go down a lot.

Of course, that's all theory in the non-Internet, physical world (i.e. it worked for the Internet, but there's not much physical in the internet world...)

Obviously Ubuntu devs thought the biggest selling point for this phone was that it was running Ubuntu/linux.

We've been here before, it was called OpenMoko. Though that project blazed the trails for ARM-based Linux, it never got off the ground due to the lack of driver support (the chipset guys knew it) and underwhelming h/w. Once an openmoko developer, and seeing how ARM linux has evolved, we really haven't progress much aside from getting driver support and Android (though the biggest mobile player, has an OS that runs less efficient than iOS, BB, WP7).

I'm starting to believe that Linux has finally hit a limit--it excels in the business (server, routers, robots). Forget the direct-to-consumer space--it's not gonna happen, and Ubuntu phone sort of solidifies it w/all the hype that came with it. Hi, FreeRunner 2....

They should look at the drone vendors--same problem, with even worst failure (it falls from the sky).