Why blame Obama? This is the FAA, an independent authority. He pushed them as far as I thing a President should go in interfering with what should not be part of his personal fief. Then Congress ordered them to pass regulations, which they have grumpily done.

Is there a working large scale CCS project to demonstrate the truth of those facts? The only working project I know of are demonstration scale.

Yesterday I got a call with number withheld which turned out to be the hospital making an appointment for me to attend for a scan. I would not have wanted to miss that call, but they withhold their number for reasons I can understand.

The telescope body, free flying tens to hundreds of miles away, can adjust ti stay in the focus.

So you think neurologists should be spending a lot of time keeping up to the State of the Art in all new technologies? I would rather they were good neurologists, and waited for people with advanced new technology to offer it to them - as happened in this case. The only difference from what I would expect to be the normal process is that an end user rather than a manufacturer looking for a market came up with the idea. But I do not think skilled medial staff should spend their time surfing the technology scene for possibly good ideas.

I am afraid that, as I use the language, deniers are skeptics. Illogical or irrational skeptics, maybe, compared to the rational skeptics that the complainants would like to reserve the word for. Denying the evidence of your eyes is both skeptical and sometimes foolish.

And how do you achieve this? You need to block land borders, plus control a coast along which piracy is growing. There is no navy big enough to blockade that coast, and putting the army in to block the land exposes them to the disease.

And how will such a Roomba avoid the problem described in TFA, the grimy bits in the corner?

Which, as detailed in TFA, is exactly what has been tried. And those rotating thingies leave grimy patches in the corner. That idea doesn't work: a better one is needed - and not yet available.

I don't get overexcited by this. It is just observing stuff in a public place. We don't get upset by policemen looking at the faces of all passers by, when searching for a miscreant. If you want to use the cellphone system you are going to broadcast and anybody, good or bad, can pick up your transmissions. It is a downside of a technology we didn't have thirty years ago, and a technology with a lot of advantages.You similarly "broadcast" your car's registration number all the time.

My problem, so far as it goes, is with the various authorities secrecy about it. I think the police should be "keeping an eye" on the neighbourhood - and they should be open about it. If what they are doing it, they should be open about it. If it needs to be hidden, they shouldn't be doing it - in broad principle, if not the details. The police should not have dirty secrets (applies less to counter-intelligence agencies). If they are ashamed of this program, they should not be doing it. If they are not ashamed, tell us what it does.

So why are you not complaining about Google Maps, the self driving cars, attempting to digitise all books ever etc.? They do a lot of things that are about wild new ideas, or just raising the brand identity. You sound very confident of your own knowledge - if you cant thing of a good use for it, there cannot be one, Nice to be omniscient.

It may seem clear cut to you, but it does not seem so to me nor several other contributors.

A Trademark does not provide a universal protection for the word, only within a limited, named, commercial field. Sun Oil and Sun Computers co-existed using the name Sun. Gnome has trademarked the word for software and seoftware related services. Groupon's tablet is not software. No overlap.

Because the foldable tail puts into a very stable configuration, removing the need for attitudinal jets, because reasonable sized flaps would not work in the very thin atmosphere.

And are such things, with autonomous capability including docking, available now, as autonomous quadcopters are? The point is that this is not a research exercise, this is going into day by day carrying parcels people urgently need delivered safely. If the sphereboat is available off the shelf (and as well as being unsinkable can also not be wrecked on the shore or washed out to the open ocean)), it might make a good alternative.

Of course, this is also a tryout for more generalised future delivery systems which, being overland, would not be appropriate for a boat.

Certainly German police would take a much stricter view than US police, and random people are much less likely to have guns within grabbing distance.