society functions on trust. you can't have civil society with people who are anonymous. you need to see their emotions and their intent. even wearing sunglasses is evasive and makes you seem untrustworthy

Probably not. I mean, it'd be a bit weird, but I'd set the boundary, explain that it made me uncomfortable, and expect it to not happen again. If it continued it would be something other than offense.

Honestly, I don't get offended very much because I consider "offense" to be intricately tied with intent. If someone spat at me or flipped me off or something, I'd take it as it was intended. There's lots of explicit ways various cultures have to indicate "I intend to offend you", and in my culture, those are two pretty good ones. But other cultures have different ones, and they generally don't apply to outsiders. A Frenchman wouldn't be offended if you shied away from a "faire la bise", unless it was your cultural norm as well. The Japanese have a very complex business card etiquette. Someone doing business in Japan regularly should make a point of getting to know this, but a one-off instance of a Japanese person interacting with someone from a different culture shouldn't be offended if somebody doesn't realize that just taking the card and pocketing it after a glance is considered offensive. Indian culture has a thing about shaking with the left hand since that's the ... "wiping hand" (gotta do something if you have no toilet paper). These are generally amusing tidbits shared later (by either party), not tense moments.

It's hard enough to get offense straight when it's entire cultures - when it's random individual's sensitivities it becomes impossible. I will behave in a way I believe to be appropriate - if it offends you, the onus is on you to realize that I didn't mean to offend, because that's how interpersonal relationships work. I will make a good faith effort to avoid doing that in the future - if it's reasonably accommodable - to avoid repeating it with you, but I expect you to forgive my lapses since this stuff is hard (especially for me).

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there's a lot of people who can't tolerate other people behaving in ways contrary to their exact wishes. We generally call them "two year olds".

I can't imagine being offended more than a few times a year. It sounds exhausting - that is, with my definition of offense. But since you're explicitly saying that intent doesn't count, clearly we disagree. I'd call your definition more like "mild irritation". And I don't think I can (and have so far failed to) really interact with you, or people like you - I mean that 100% seriously. I don't mean to presume to tell you when you or anybody else should be offended, but I think you, bible-thumpers w.r.t evolution, and the anti-gays have a lot in common when it comes to offense thresholds...

we already have it in the form of everyone with a cell phone camera. if anything remotely interesting in public happens, 5 or 6 people are filming it and its uploaded within the hour and mirrored forever beyond any possible take back within a few hours

if loss of privacy bothers you, the concept of little brother should bother you more than the concept of big brother. you can hold government accountable and force it to abide by rules and sue it. you can't do that with every random anonymous yahoo around you

1. the footage shouldn't be public. there's a lot of interaction that cops deal with which is embarrassing and private for individuals. your underage arrest has to live with you forever? your suicide attempt or domestic issues should be open to prying eyes? no, no, no

2. the footage shouldn't be under the control of local police departments. "oops, sorry, i 'bumped the server' and we lost the footage of that controversial shooting by my buddy nate. oh well"

state level? federal level?

and then really solid rules about who gets to access what footage must be enacted. something similar to HIPAA rules and fines

Bull shit. Sorry, but as a pasty-white American I commonly get asked this - and in this exact form:

Someone: Where are you from?
Me: New Jersey, northern part
Someone: No, I mean your parents/ancestors/family/etc
Me: Oh, a bit Irish, a bit German, [family history]

You know why? It's because we're a nation of immigrants. Almost everybody here including me and her "comes from" somewhere else. The only reason I don't often get asked specifically about my parents is because I look further down the generations. I'm sure my great-great-grandmother (a German 'Weber' in Ohio) was asked about her parents' origin since she looked rather more German than I do.

If someone is interpreting this as a "microaggression" in the absence of any... you know, aggression - then they can not be interacted with because they have a worldview that everybody is out to get them. And that's really sad. It's a victimhood that's enforced - if you don't feel like a victim, it's just because you've internalized the attitudes or it's a "microaggression" you're missing or something. It's like no-true-Scotsman applied to feeling like crap. I mean, you're a woman/Asian/black/etc - you must be a victim somehow, right?

I'm not kidding. It's becoming increasingly dangerous to have conversations with people lest you slip off the cliff. It's a shame because frank conversations in good faith is the best way we know of to dispel prejudice... you know, friendships with people unlike yourself and so on.

The point is that the page rank algorithm just reflects the consensus of other sites on the web. If you don't like that consensus, you should take it up with all of those sources.

Sorry, that should have been "a very small fraction, like the amount you could stick a pole into" followed by the quote:

--

Anyways, I just thought I'd add that I really don't have anything against drones or RC planes or anything as such, just their reckless operation. Just as the big jumboes tolerate me, I figure I should tolerate them. But my life is on the line, so I expect them to know the rules that keep us safe. I trained for 70 hours of flying time, and took a written, oral, and practical test to get my flying privileges. I know the FARs and so does everybody else in the sky, and we all follow them or people die. I'm not being melodramatic, people die all the time. Here's one from a few weeks ago where the guy likely (the report's not done) broke the rules and paid the price. The regulations are absolutely written in blood.

RC folks practice pretty hard as well, and they have a very good community that's interested in interoperating with "the system" and keeping everyone safe. The drone guys - as has been demonstrated - do not. The growing list of encounters that this article is about shows that self-policing isn't working. All I want is for people to know the rules and be held accountable to them - which is pretty much why the FAA is working their way up to requiring some sort of certification.

I cannot emphasize this enough - I consider the drone fliers to be the equivalent of a drunk driver, except worse since at least a drunk is also risking his own neck. They're going to kill someone, and it's only a matter of time.

Did you read what I wrote? The vast majority of the airspace of this country - including lots of airspace that drones have been using - is regulated by the FAA. Inasmuch as "a fraction" is "a very small fraction, like If you're a pilot, but not a crop duster, what are you doing flying at low altitudes when not around an airport?

What? That's the regulation and I'm allowed to be there whether I'm a crop duster or not. What is the drone doing there, is the question. In any case, the vast majority of this country has no altitude restriction since it counts as "sparsely populated areas". Otherwise it's 500 feet - hence the RC limit of 400 feet (since they generally fly in "other than congested" but not "sparsely populated" areas).

Exactly. Like I said, the FAA came up with rules in 1981 to have planes and RCers get along. The AMA is pretty careful about this, actually, and it works well. But these drones don't require any skill or investment (and hence limited likelihood of interacting with the community), and the self-regulation isn't working any more. Do you expect the guy buying a Phantom on Amazon to be able to read a sectional and figure out where planes are likely to be? If they all did, we wouldn't be having this problem! So we need tighter regulation to make sure the drone guys follow the rules... unfortunately for everybody who was getting along just fine.

Jet engines are designed to "ingest" a certain number of birds of a certain size. Not drones, which have pesky metal bits. And even then, it turns out that hitting birds can still ruin your day.

Not to mention that small GA planes aren't even rated for bird strikes. If I'm flying my Cessna 172 and I hit your drone and survive (which is pretty doubtful), I will be coming for you. Every pilot and person who "does" aviation feels the same way - and guess what/who the FAA is made of/for?

"A few feet" is probably "less than 50". But when even a boring plane like a Cessna 172 is going twice the speed of your car on the highway, and normally has nothing around it for miles, 50 feet is more than enough to make you change your pants. Hell, even 500 feet gets a pretty good pucker going.

And yes, generally pilots do report to the FAA (control towers) when they're near birds. It's a safety issue, and the tower will relay it to other pilots. You may recall a small issue with bird strikes a few years ago - it turned an Airbus with 150 people on it into a pretty lousy glider, so it's not something to mess with. The ATIS at my airport frequently says "birds on and in vicinity of the airport" as a warning, and it's also in the published airport information. Airports spend tremendous amounts of money on things like "population control" and more exotic measures like propane cannons to keep birds away.

Pilots report all kinds of things to the control tower, from birds to wind shear to problems with the runway lights. I definitely told tower when a drunk idiot on July 4th shot a bottle rocket into my wing on final approach...

"Navigable airspace" actually has a definition, you know.

The referenced 14 CFR 91.119 defines minimum altitudes as altitudes allowing a safe emergency landing, and various other restrictions depending on whether you're over a "congested area", "other than congested area", or a "sparsely populated area".

So if you're over cornfields, the plains, a beach, or a lake (with no boats within 500 feet) it's perfectly legal to fly at 20 feet, and that counts as "navigable airspace". Hence the FAA purview. It's well established that the FAA has authority over all airspace in the country. The only rebuke the FAA has gotten in court has been "you have to go through rulemaking for this, you know" - which is precisely what they're doing.

Frankly, these drone idiots are ruining things for everybody. Model aircraft folks came to an understanding with the FAA something like 30 years ago, and the rules were quite sensible, and kept everybody safe and out of each other's way. But in comes Mr. Drone flying his just-bought Phantom out of sight at 1500 feet in an approach path, and now they have to regulate it.

I'm a pilot, and getting too close to birds gives me the willies. But birds don't have metal. If your toy puts a hole in my windshield with a closing speed of 230 MPH, it will probably kill me - what skin do you have in the game?

Boy? LOL.

Yes, the lack of detailed status information about init-managed process is something that is broken in traditional init systems, so it's fine to get excited by the fact that systemd fixes this brokenness.

Heh. Well, if your goal is to spread fact-less hype, you should be careful not to include blindingly obvious errors in your summary. As soon as I hit "Utah" in the summary, I stopped reading.

FTFY. I've been quite impressed with it.