Or, you are yourself a toxic seed planted by The Man in order to foment FUD and make good people not want to be part of these projects. Or something like that. Give it a rest with the absurd conspiracy crap.

Well that's the whole problem: democracy is subject to the voters, so if the voters are blithering idiots, well you're not going to get a very good government.

This is why democracy simply doesn't work in countries with moronic, uneducated populaces such as Zimbabwe, Egypt, or the United States.

I've flown that exact same piece of equipment at 3:00 AM, just for fun. Not on Pennsylvania Ave in downtown DC, of course. But if the guy's a hobby flier up late on a weekend night playing with this quad copter, maybe trying to get a couple of cool scenic night time shots, is that so hard to believe? Or is your tinfoil hat so tight that you're also going to assume I can't possibly have been up late updating firmware, swapping some motors around, and then stepped outside in the low-traffic, peaceful night time hours to test my handiwork? Can't be! I must be an FBI stooge! Please.

The problem is that the incoming drone could easily be flying below tree-top height. Like, 20 feet off the ground. Laser counter measures would be shooting at a target that would have large office buildings and other structures directly behind it.

Just look up the "DC FRZ" - it's illegal to fly any sort of RC device in a 30-mile circle around DCA. That absolutely includes the White House grounds, and large swaths of the surrounding suburbs.

It's hotter than Florida.

What snow? We have maybe half the snowpack we usually get, which means California won't be getting any power this year they don't create themselves with solar or wind.

Yeah, I checked out the site, and sure enough most of the comments are this exact sentiment. It's amazing how many people are fucking stupid.

Funny how quickly people have forgotten the Atlanta "blizzard." That was less than a year ago! The mayor ignored warnings by NOAA and insisted on keeping the city running until it was far too late. That was only 3" of snow, but in a part of the country not accustomed to ever seeing any.

It was my understanding that the Arago spot worked best with light of a single wavelength. Also, rather than the alignment of the surface area, it's the circularity that matters. And it's not the deviation from a circle WRT the wavelength, it's the deviation WRT to the circle itself. A larger circle can have a larger absolute roughness and still produce the Arago spot. I haven't studied optics in about 15 years, though, so maybe I'm wrong.

WTF? GP didn't say that was a good thing. In fact, I'm pretty sure GP said "this is a bad thing." Literally. Right there. Next time try reading the entire comment before freaking out.

At those bargain basement prices, maybe we can do a kickstarter to buy our own politician!!

Pretty trivial workaround: TWC and Comcast would just take the money that they save by not lobbying and pay it to their CxOs. Of course there won't be any express expectation that they use the money for political speech.

There'd be precedent for that in the European Union. England had a law in effect from 1571 through 1597 to make failure to wear a British-made wool cap in public a crime.

Thanks for that. I didn't know it was illegal in CA. I'll have to check with our branch out there, because I'm pretty sure they still random test.

Back to the Disney thing, I would think that the character actors would fall under a "think of the children" sort of thing. Can you imagine, "Mommy, why does Mickey smell funny like Uncle Jack?" The funny thing is, I'm actually in favor of companies (or governments, for that matter) requiring immunizations, allowing for medical exemptions.

Here's the thing: although you're entitled to your opinion, that doesn't change the fact that it's both wrong and un-American. In fact, the United States wouldn't exist without anonymous public comment!

So, if you hate freedom that much -- and make no mistake, freedom requires anonymity, so if you hate anonymity then you hate freedom -- then by all means continue to think that way. But please do the rest of us a favor and GTFO of the USA!