Um, no.

First, UAV is a mighty broad brush. An inexpensive electric glider with a motor on it and big battery can fly for literally hours -- without even using thermals or other lift, and they can increase it further -- and the battery will be just fine when you land, just recharge it.

Now, this is a multicopter -- far less efficient. Still, with good batteries, keeping the weight down as much as possible, and just sitting there (using as little power as possible) -- 50 minutes doesn't surprise me at all. And the battery will be ready to fly again after recharging it. (Though it's possible that they used non-rechargable batteries to last even longer for that specific test.)

Most of the hobbyist multicopter models have flight times like that, yes -- we want something that's lively and fun to fly, and don't just want to hover there. But we could make something that lasts 50 minutes if we wanted to and didn't mind spending some money.

If the pilotless plane/multicopter cannot go faster than the sustained wind, it cannot tolerate it, as the plane won't be able to come back to its starting point -- it'll drift downwind no matter what it does, and you'll never see it again (unless you go looking for it.)

Still ... while 40 mph isn't much for a R/C plane, it sounds fast for a multicopter. But after looking it up, I guess it's not that exceptional after all. Still, if you're going full throttle just to hover in the wind, you're probably going to greatly reduce your loiter time -- I wouldn't expect 50 minutes of flight time in that situation.

Well, that's one problem.

Another is that they aren't recording all the time -- and if you try, their batteries die quickly. Many things happen fast and are over before you even have time to pull out a camera and start recording. If you really want to protect yourself, you need something recording all the time.

The EFF and ACLU are only going to take cases that they think are going to have large impacts -- set precedent, get widely publicized, etc. They just don't have the resources.

You are correct, of course. Of course, by responding to the DMCA and getting your stuff put back up, you're telling them exactly who they should hassle legally. And even without a case, they can cause a lot of grief. Which is part of why I wish there was a penalty for bogus claims.

Perhaps, but in practice it doesn't matter what it was *intended* to do, only what the wording allows it to be *used* to do. And in this case, it's being used in an attempt to block unfavorable discussions.

That said, the original discussion's use would almost certainly fall within fair use, so they could just respond to the DMCA request and get their stuff put back up, putting the ball back into the court the company sending the request. And having no case, they should drop it. Still abusive, but at least the damage is minimized.

I do wish the DMCA had provisions to punish for obviously invalid invocations of it, however.

Does this argument also apply to meatspace?

If you're living in a place that is owned by somebody else, but you're paying rent on it, do you have any guarantee of privacy there?

If you're storing your stuff in a storage locker that you're renting, do you have any guarantee of/right to privacy there?

They're rhetorical questions, I do in general know the answers already, but really ... the answers regarding your e-mail, even if it's on a server somewhere, *ought* to be the same.

"Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?"

So ... many ... great ... quotes!.

Shodan was one of the best computer game villains ever!

But if they do, I would not expect any current PC OSes to be able to boot. And you probably won't be able to run DOS apps without some sort of emulator (which might be just fine.) And I imagine a lot of hardware (PCI, PCI-E, for example) will require new firmware at the very least, if not a complete replacement.

It could be done, but it would not be a trivial change.

Well, they had OS/2. Which was quite superior to what else was out at the time (Windows, MacOS) but something went wrong and it didn't sell well.

Just for the record, I don't normally get BSODs under Linux, FreeBSD or MacOS, all of which run on Intel x86 chips.

Now, being a little less specific, I don't usually get other sorts of kernel panics or oops from those OSs as well, though MacOS does seem to give more than I'd prefer. But Linux and FreeBSD? They generally just work, in spite of that "flawed" Intel x86 memory management and protection.

Based on the (very limited) evidence we've got here, I'd say the problem with BSODs seems to be more about Microsoft Windows and less about Intel x86. Though there was a version of WIndows that ran on Alpha chips -- NT 4.0 ran on DEC Alpha chips too -- and while I don't have any experience with it, it giving plenty of BSODs under it (or the equivalent) would not surprise me at all.

What if it's content that actually benefits from javascript?

http://maps.google.com/ (I guess they *could* make a version that doesn't use javascript to stitch the tiles together and does it all server-side. It would have greatly reduced functionality, but it could be done.)
http://www.scullinsteel.com/apple2/ (an Apple ][ emulator in javascript)

?

I wasn't talking about about reality, I was talking about perception.

The general public isn't going to be concerned about "drone rights" or all the good things drones can do because when they think about drones, they think about people being blown up with Predator drones or being spied upon with drones.

They *don't* think about a drone being used to take a picture of their house to help sell it, maps being made, science being done, search and rescue operations, taco delivery, or even a guy building model planes as a hobby. They only think of the bad, and mostly only of people being *killed* by drones. They don't want any of that here, and are perfectly willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater because they don't even realize there's a baby in there.

When they say "minimal laws", what they *really* mean are "minimal laws that prohibit what we want to do, but plenty of laws that prohibit what we don't want others to do".

For example, the GOP's general platform talks about generally unrestricted gun ownership and prayer in the classroom but wants carefully restricted rights to abortion and pornography (or to have them banned completely if they could pull that off.) Guns, abortions and pornography are all related to businesses, so there's a business interest here, but it's minor. But I could probably find some Democrat examples of this too if I thought about it -- it's not just the GOP that thinks this way.

And the Texas bill mentioned does explicitly limit the police in quite a few ways -- but gives them a few exceptions too, especially if they have a search warrant. It explicitly requires a search warrant for things that wouldn't require one if a manned aircraft weren't used.

As for the federal government, it's generally not subject to state laws anyways, so the state can pass all the laws the want there, though at least the writers of the Texas bill seems to think it applies to the federal government too somehow.

OK, then, what is it about?

It could be the commercial pilots (especially the photographers) ensuring that their business model stay relevant, though the New Hampshire bill shoots them down too.

As I see it, it's a knee jerk reaction motivated by a perceived lack of privacy. But there's also a fear element involved, as when they think "drone" they think an armed predator drone, which I'm pretty sure many believe are flying over US airspace as we speak in great numbers.

I do agree that the Texas bill doesn't really help privacy that much, as people can still be spied upon from manned aircraft. And yes, there's already laws against many sorts of spying.

But if you don't think it's about privacy, I'd love to hear what you really think it's about. Especially in New Hampshire.

Ahh yes, the feared "crash thirty feet from you and catch fire, maybe burning a square foot or so" drone weapon.

By this reasoning, cars are some of the most feared weapons ever, killing over 33,000 people each year in this country alone. Bonus points if the gas tank is wired to explode, so Pintos are especially deadly? Predators can't come close to this record!

We should have taken Bin Laden out with a Pinto!