But what kind of person is going to research all the information needed to fly and operate a drone safely. Mostly, they'll buy the cheapest unit that the retailer sells them.

The fact that he crashed it, is likely to put him into trouble, especially since he was using it for commercial purposes. In Australia, a license is required to operate a UAV commercially, with adequate certification of the pilots.

From the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

1. It's Illegal to fly Remotely Piloted Aircraft for money or economic reasons...

2. You must not fly closer than 30 meters to vehicles, boats, buildings or people

3. FPV flying is illegal without an Advanced Amateur Radio License

....

I guess he's in a lot of trouble.

wish I had mod points for "Red October" reference.

Arthur C. Clarke was actually a scientist who wrote science fiction. The actual bulk of his work was science education.

I have a $5000 rig (120mm ED refractor and EQ5-Synscan system) + another 150mm Dobsonian. The Galileo Scope is recommended by professional Astronomers and Science educators as a good quality starter telescope. Bang-for-buck it's a great buy. You get to see the same crappy optics Galileo used + some decent modern optics. You can pull it apart and put it back together. What more do you want.

You can buy a really cheap, and good quality "Galileo Scope" http://galileoscope.org/. It's a great starter / educational scope and the optics can be swapped out to see what Galileo saw and for more modern lenses.

You should prepare for a visit from Homeland Security anytime, in the not too distant future. You're obviously a terrorist, as only they want electronics and chemicals.

About 10 years ago, or it could have been longer, we had a similar case in Australia. The driver in question argued that he was just informing other drivers to drive safely. The magistrate agreed with the argument and the charges were dropped. Suffice it to say, the police were mightily annoyed, but there is nothing they can do about it now.

Good for you. However, you're not in the majority. In reality, what you have depends on your suburb. All the new developments (ie. in the last 10 years) are serviced by Satelite for Pay-TV and DSL for Internet. It's only the really new developments (last 2 years) that have fibre.

Everyone in my suburb has a DSLproblem. The DSLAMs in most areas are full and Telstra won't upgrade. Mine is about 5km away (as the crow flies), so give it about 7km of crappy copper. Every time it rains, I lose my internet and VoIP, but Telstra don't care, as my service is not through them.

Awesome is an understatement. Until we actually can be self contained on another hunk of rock. The human race is in jeopardy of extinction.

I couldn't disagree with you more. That isn't problem solving. That's management.

What you describe is a manager's view of problem solving. They basically don't want problems in the first place. It is a manger's role to ensure succession planning, training, resourcing and appropriation documentation and standards are maintained. A manager doesn't have to do them all. Just create the environment through appropriate "stick & carrot" measures.

Problem solving is a rare gift. I know many competent Design Engineers that cannot solve problems. Most good ones can follow patterns and apply them to new situations. They're the ones you want to do most day to day designs. They'll need attention to detail. But again, they'll get stuck at something that doesn't fit within the those patterns.

The true problem solver is one that can make those intuitive leaps. They can see patterns, where others don't. Or even work with a thousand disconnected clues to get to the root cause. The very best do have a formal background (and they'll draw on those bits of lectures and notes when needed, going back to 1st Principals). Unfortunately, this is difficult and mostly can't be put down in Manuals and Procedures. This doesn't necessarily make them appropriate for Design and quite often they are terrible at mundane tasks. So bad managers don't know how to value or deal with this skill.

It's interesting to watch this from the outside. I don't quite understand how you got into this situation. In Australia, if the Senate blocks supply of funding for the government to run, that triggers a double dissolution of parliament. At that point, a general election of both the Upper and Lower houses of the Government is triggered. All seats are open. The public then gets to vote on which idiots we want to run the country. Generally, the voters side against the politicians that caused the mess in the first place. So it rarely gets to this point.

Interesting you say that. The way grant funding works in Australia is different from the US. In Australia you can get grant funding becasue you've previously done good research before. Thus, the funding is along the lines of... "You've done good work, so we'll keep funding you to continue researching".