Sure gives a new meaning to BSOD.

Detection of a drone is much like viewing the sky. It's nearly impossible to spot something.

Unless there's a RF tag, standard audio config (common prop pitch), visual tag, or something that the vendors add to their drones and is a well known... i.e. a standard, the only way to detect drones are by intelligent multisensor systems. Humans are a great example... and that means time consuming, very expensive and very complex. And they'll (like humans) still have false positives on order of 20% or more. Currently anyone can change the above parameters, there is no standard. It's no different from an off-road car--you can basically go anywhere. Where as a typical car, you can't (must use highway system) and it's illegal to modify w/parts deemed off-road. A standard and framework is in place and the traffic cops focus on the 2% of folks that put illegal parts on their cars to go off-road...

As a drone researcher and now looking into this detection problem, now [illegally] popular over some of the most visited entertainment spots around the world, there's 2 aspects to consider: detection and countermeasures. Detection is somewhat well known, there's active research in the military field. But again false positives are a huge problem and why manned flight uses deterrents instead (i.e. instead of detecting birds, use audio deterrents & scare them away). Countermeasures is a whole other problem: so far all solutions either remove power (falling drone--not good), take over control--aka YOU assume legal responsibility (not good), or trap it with a net which again you are responsible to getting it to the ground safely (not good). The vendors can add some deterrent mechanism, much like the mobile phone industry can locate you via police warrant, but that means we need to ensure the firm/software does what it says--a certification or standard is needed. Likely another reason they haven't--they would too assume legal responsibility if the failsafe... failed. Vendors are currently all about fun features and applications. Safety/security has taken a back seat unless you're homeland security. And a lot of these solutions are not well tested, and really addressing edge cases or closed environments. The military solutions don't work well--they typically don't consider collateral damage.

The drone industry is pretty much in the early Internet days, pre-netscape, more like usenet. Standards need to be created and that will block out 98% of the current drone violators. Then you can let the security guys focus on the 2% "professionals" and everyone will be happy vs paranoid.

It's really no different from manned flight issues (someone taking over a plane)... except it much harder as the UAVs are smaller, more agile, and in my cases-- fully autonomous. Considering we can do two-button-touch "launch, run, land"... on multiple UAVs at the same time--yes, we are entering a brave new world folks.

If emacs is an IDE, then Linux is a robot.

I choose the tools that are great at one thing and not at all things. I want tools that are not jack of all trades, master of none... as the saying goes. That because nowadays standard communication interfaces and formats are everywhere (we've reached parity).

My drone can carry a zoom-capable point-n-shoot and at 3 meters is on average 65dB hovering at 2m. That's Toyota corolla territory... not that loud.

I would not be surprise that entertainment systems retrofitted onto older aircraft share subnets. Likely for battery BMS, fire safety, electrical shorts, etc.... Funny--it's actually the safety stuff!

Sure the designers would never (even a practical person wouldn't do it) tie avionics to entertainment networks, that's logical and likely easier to do to keep them separate when designing an aircraft.

But when you retro fit a 25-30yr old plane, it's possible nets cross lines due to time (i.e. competition w/newer aircraft), short cuts (accounting) and cost constraints (CEOs). We all want our movies & music nowadays. So the airlines are going to add it ASAP w/some subcontractor (not the aircraft manufacturers). It's a cheap retrofit in the end. That's one problem.

The 2nd problem is Chris Roberts and the media sensationalizing these cheap retrofits. No different from one putting a kids seat over a regular car seat (which had it's share of problems for years up until 2006). Heck anything that flies is sensationalized nowadays--it's sells eyeballs and ad money..

This is a funny article.

The Auto industry has been through many, and I mean many ebbs and flows in tech. The PC industry? just one. (1980's).

The big 3 auto markers are not one IBM. It was more the other way around (IBM went through what the auto industry has gone through.

Now if there's anything like the 1980's.... It's the consumer drone market.

So instead of The Internet of Things , it'll be The Internet of Apple Things.

Seems logical.
(e.g. moving from platforms to ecosystems).

I just watched some PBS show that led to some conclusion that they did identify what was causing the populations to die.

TFA says otherwise.

And I just lost a colony two months ago--it was weird and I sent some in for analysis. Just a pile of bees at the base of my fruit tree...just looked sad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Well, let's look at today's alternatives:

Hotmail/Live/Outlook: sucks, too slow, html errors
Gmail: sucks, I want a plain list w/o spam and google+
iCloud/.me: Sucks, need an iphone to do anything productive. And productive is a challenge still...
Rackspace: Sucks, no UI, I got pay for it too!
Yahoo!: Sucks, where is my email (layout)?
Facebook: Sucks, just read the life streams, ugh.
Twitter: really?
ISP based email: sucks, but at least I can use thunderbird w/o any issues.
Your own email server: so far the most flexible, but I have to do more work now.

Conclusion: they all suck. Having this discussion is worthless aside from social stereotyping.

I still have 3 AOL email addresses. Mainly for spam magnets and to throw off business purchases so I'm not in their tracking DB. I use my other email accounts on other services for personal stuff.

And I don't pay for them. Never have since 1998 (sometime then ?). AOL again is another Internet company, they offer paid ISP services (i.e. dial up) and [free] services like any other agg, aka google, yahoo, facebook, microsoft, etc... Never had a problem and the email always worked and only recently changed UI since the time warner split (and the new layout is not that bad). FYI, "conversations" are continuous in time, not discontinuous as most competitor UIs are now laying out their emails as conversations....

Also, you need a stable email system for your adult things, like 401K, some banks, some loans, so gov't contacts. Gmail has changed 3 times already and the google latitude, google buzz, google+ integration stunts really screwed up gmail for some time. Same thing happen with Yahoo, MS (now w/the wacko outlook365, inject characters, cursor jumps, etc...), and Facebook (spam!)... over the last 5 yrs. That's 5 yrs when AOL, Compuserv (back then) were... stable. I guess folks like going to etrade, their 401k, banks, gov't prop tax, car loan acct, and etc... to change their contact email-- from jumping onto the latest email app? At this point gmail looks like it will be around for another 10yrs... but would you count on it 100%? AOL has been around for more than 10yrs (like 25?)... that does say something aside from being a dinosaur... and it still works (only had a security issue back in 2003)...

As for dial up: give some of those guys some slack--they just don't know and deserve to pay, or just have real ISP restrictions--heck why would facebook and google spend billions for dark fiber or drone based wifi service?

And the cool thing about high speed rail or auto transport as we move into this world of IoT:

You can carry loose lithium [spare] batteries, and likely fuel cells when they're out. Good luck with airplanes at this point as they'll likely ban any high energy density power source.

Issue a mandatory NOTAM. And [already they did] shutdown the local airports.

They do it all the time at Edwards AFB here on the west coast. No one flies into the space and guess what... your tech challenges become zero. None of these aircraft are going to go flying off...like a drone for instance. Only today, the big challenges are RF issues, but luckily these aircraft have no tech that deends on digital RF connections.

I'd still take a B52 and a couple of F22s and JSFs buzzing around with some afterburners running. You see that here. Impressive.

The 25% of old cars don't use catalytic converters. That's common in most 3rd world and EU countries....

Retrofit and call it a day.

Poorly designed or obsolete languages:
"do not reinvent the wheel because thou are not as wise as the wheel builder"

Rightfully designed, efficient languages:
"do not reinvent the wheel because you can be more efficient, and focus on behavior/app logic"

The perfect case of C following the latter is the Linux Kernel--they do not reinvent a lot of things.