This story is not about radio controlled (RC) toy surveillance drones that might fit in a building. Its about fixed wing Reaper/Predator/Global Hawk sized craft that fly high over cities used for spying. Good luck flying that into a burning building. Firefigters will laugh you out of the skys.

Further, if you are going to deliver medication via drone, you better be able to land the drone anywhere, and have someone there ready to receive the payload. Its a lot cheaper to to send the Paramedics on the chopper with the supplies they need, and the evac capability in one package.

Probably nothing, since none of the L.A. PD air assets proved useful in the Dorner case.

Per Wiki,

They also have one lame drone, which they didn't even employ, yet which was purchased with riot and barricade situations being publicly stated use scenarios.

No addition to police capabilities has led to better security or better privacy in well over a thousand years. Why should we expect this tool be any different?

An engine failure in an autonomous car doesn't lead to is crashing thru someone's roof. A communications failure, doesn't send them headlong into buildings .

They skies are relatively empty compared to the roads. Still there is the problem of keeping these things in the sky. Its bad enough when well trained professionals sitting in Creech can't keep the Taliban from hacking video feeds or the Iranians from capturing a drone. Imagine handing one to Barney Fife or Seattle PD (already on the DOJ watch list)

There is no reason police in America need this technology. Let alone private industry.
No matter how cool it might sound to you.

Seed stock are only sold for one purpose. To plant.
Its not logical that you can buy a seed that can't be planted.

If it were an animal, could you not breed it? Does the owner of Secretariat get to say a stud descended from Secretariat can't be bred?

Living things can not be ruled as if they were widgets.

You keep banging that drum, but your own scientists tell you its crazy talk.
To date, nobody has found a single health risk in GM food or GM Grain.
I suspect EU will hit a famine one of these days and will be eating GM food or nothing at all.

Agreed.

This is a dangerous road to go down, and there is really no need to go down it.

We need the courts or congress to just tell Monsanto that their rights to the seed extinguished upon the bag of seed leaving their factory. As far as terminator seed goes, I suspect the market will take care of that. Farmers just won't buy it.

This is exactly what will happen, and so Monsanto will put and end to many farmers' current practice of saving part of this years crop as next year's seed--since their seed yield will be reduced they negatively impact their future yield due to a percentage of the seed being sterile.

Except your crop is mostly pollinated by itself, and you can largely protect against cross pollination by simply arranging your crop planting to be earlier than the neighbor with Terminator seed, or later. Or, if you don't get along with your neighbor, threaten to sue.

Like many other hybrid seeds, the terminator seed extinguishes its line in a single season. Its likelihood of getting into the wild is vastly reduced. The risk would be to the crops along the boundaries of immediate neighboring farmer.

Remember that the terminator seed probably has to produce pollen that works enough to allow the plant to produce seed.
Its just that the seed produced won't germinate (or something). So the neighbor's crop might grow just fine even when cross fertilized, but some portion of his seed may not work the following year. The rest would grow fine.

Perhaps it could be contrived by engineering the "terminator"crop to produce seed later than normal, when the other crops would have already produced their pollen, and set seed that would be virile.

Saving the best of a crop for next year's planting is also a time honored farming method. Selecting for some quality that is already present in your crop is perfectly normal. It was how crops were improved over centuries. One could probably get by using round up every other year, then Monsanto would be going after grandchild crops.

Because Monsanto can tweak this crop annually (on once every 17 years, or never, and just pretend they did), this is a patent that will never expire. There has to be some limits, and now is a good time to set them.

Lets just imagine this same technique is applied to controlling human genetics. Imagine parents paying for a in vitro genetic treatment that prevents cancer (or something) forever. Then the company come's after the children, demanding payment before the are allowed to procreate. This is a dangerous precedent to set.

So is terminator seed. Big fire at Monsanto, and the world starves because no seed grows? Stupid.

But nothing was stolen here.

Bowman bought the seeds from a grain elevator, the natural market for seed crops. The farmers legally sold their seed into the market, and the market legally sold it to food producers and Bowman. Monsanto's claim to the seed was exhausted.

Nothing was stolen.

Further catastrophe for nuclear facilities?

Come on, playing the nuclear card when the chances of a nuclear plant being hit by a meteor is vanishingly small seems to be a bit over the top, don't you think?. Maybe throw in your local school, so we can "think of the children" while you are at it...

Also, meteors are far less likely to approach us from the poles. Like most things, their orbits tend to generally align with the plane of the major planets. Slightly tilted with regard to our orbit, but polar approach seem very unlikely.

Right off the top, you can write off 3/4 of meteors as they will statistically land in the ocean. (And no they won't cause a tsunami).
Then you can write off another large percentage that will hit farm land or forests.
Finally you get down to about 1% of the earths surface that is occupied by people.

Then lets measure the damage? 1908 = nill. 2013, several million to replace broken glass, and patch up cuts and scrapes. (Lesson: Don't watch meteors thru windows).

Seriously, this is statistically a huge waste of money.

The article he indicated said that the funding was to be 5mil beginning Jan 2013. They just got a wake up call
that January 1 was past

What percentage of this will the Russians fund do you suppose?

He had already licensed the technology. He wasn't holding out. It was a simple bill of materials problem as you surmised.

He failed to notice the electronics age obviated the need for a spring as an energy storage method.

Since all he actually held a patent on was the clockwork for releasing spring tension, when that method became un-necessary, he lost out.

I fail to see what his complaint in here. Competitors aren't using the ONLY thing his 40 year old patent covered.
He had stock in the company that was making radios with his invention, and sold it. Had he held on to that
he would still be making some money, or at least have a nest egg.

I see nothing to complain about here.

Or a shim to get from one API set to another API set.