Comment A good thing. (Score 5, Insightful) 280
Waiting for your carrier for an upgrade? One that might never come? Competition is a good thing in this case.
The stupid GPS restriction would prevent me from doing that despite the fact that indoor flights pose no hazard to the White House or anyone else except me. There are indoor uses for these copters. I'll bet you can think of some.
GPS doesn't work worth a shit indoors.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I was in some way arguing for putting GPS on these drones? I don't care about that at all. I'm merely responding to the fellow who seems uncomfortable with the notion of making a product intentionally unflyable in restricted airspace. And the simple fact is that there is a public interest to be considered here which likely outweighs your desire to fly a drone near the white house.
Are you an American? I ask because I cringe when I see this type of comment from a people who should understand what freedom and limited government is supposed to mean.
Yes I am and I'm also bright enough to realize that freedom does not mean you get to do whatever the hell you want any time you want regardless of the consequences. Freedom does not mean no laws. Limited government does not mean no government. It means we keep government out of things that it has no reason to be involved in. Safety of the public airspace is something the government very much has a reason to be involved because there is a compelling public interest at stake.
We don't use a metric of what I 'need' to do to determine what freedoms I should have.
We do that all the time. We do not permit you to legally drive to work at 120mph because you do not need to do so and it would endanger others. There are all kinds of legal limits on your behavior which balance the needs of society against your desires. Your freedom ends when it impinges on my safety and my ability to enjoy the same freedom and vice-versa. That is the metric.
I don't need to purchase a 64 ounce mountain dew. That hardly means that I should be protected from doing so if I choose to.
If you can explain to me how your purchase of a mountain dew will result in it crashing on the white house lawn or bringing down an airliner then we can pretend that your analogy has any bearing on reality.
I could continue, but frankly if you don't understand or agree with the argument it's pointless to go on. You comment regarding the United States being 'not so different' that China is fairly telling. It's not based in any semblence of reality. Censorship? Political arrests?
You mean like the folks who were arrested and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay often wrongfully and all of them without charges? Like the people we've tortured and innocent people we've killed in the last ten years over two pointless wars? Like the FBI censoring US citizens with National Security Letters? Like the NSA spying on innocent people including those with unusual political leanings? Let's not pretend the US is some paragon of virtue.
I've actually been to China. Spent a fair bit of time there within the last decade. I'm probably far more aware than you are of how restrictive their government is and yes it can be quite oppressive in some ways. Thing is that you can say pretty much anything you want about China and the opposite is often almost equally true at the same time. China is a mass of contradictions, not all of which are obvious or make sense.
The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.
