I'm having trouble believing the "16g" part of this story.
a) It doesn't seem possible - equivalent civilian 'copters with smaller batteries weigh 30-40g.
b) Even if it's possible, why bother? They claim it's "to make it easy for troops to carry" but an extra 30g isn't going to break anybody's back (plus the controller looks like it weighs a kilo...)
You can get most of that on a top-end $100 civilian model, available in most toy shops.
Add $50 for a miniature GPS receiver and a few hundred for a super high tech 30-minute battery. The rest is mostly software.
Help me out here, I'm having trouble figuring out where all the millions went.
If only there was a civilian product they could have used as a starting point for development. Oh, wait..
+1 insightful.
These toys will be worn out/broken long before they ever reach the battlefield.
The actual price of these things should fall dramatically over the next year or so as they get rolled out.
You don't know much about military contracting, do you?
That's not the point. The point is that my local toy store sells something very similar for £16.
"Chair", dammit.
(I meant to do that just to show how spelling checkers aren't magically going to make you write perfectly. No, really...)
Yep. An electric char that shocked people every time they misused a possessive would do a lot more good than this.
(It's useless anyway because it only vibrates when it's too late and there's already an indelible mark on the paper).
I am hearing about a lot of kids that are 14 year olds that had sex with OTHER 14 year olds. So legally both of them are raping children.
Yes, but they're both minors so the law can't touch them.
Thermal effects are indisputable, but do they mean anything?
Compared to going outside on a sunny day?
Or doing some exercise?
No. A cellphone pales into insignificance compared to those two.
(And there's plenty more - what about evil central heating systems??)
I work in neurology research at a university- so far, the jury (data) hasn't decided yet. Increases in cellular calcium ion channel activity result from exposure to EMF. This includes L-type calcium channels in neurons.
Does that also happen if you go outside in daylight? How much activity do you see in daylight relative to a cellphone?
Sticky back plastic is what you used at school to cover the outside of your books.
Yes, a giant ball of gas catching fire when fired upon and crashing into DC will sure help protect it.
At that altitude it will burn up long before it reaches the ground.
And there's no reason it would burst into flames anyway if it's properly grounded.
How's this for a way to fix it:
After the second (or third) year, patent damages are limited to 20 times the amount the patent holder pays as patent fees. The patent fees are voluntary, you pay as much or as little as you want and you can only increase the fee by 25% in any given year.
Under this scheme nobody can afford to sit on huge piles of junk patents and collect any real court damages from them. People will only pay large fees (and be able to collect large damages) for patents which are earning real money.
The patent system, for as much as it gets bad press, offers the little guy (independent inventor) a chance to get ahead. With no patents, anyone with money can make a clone of an existing product and do whatever they want with it, including selling their clone as the original item.
That's the theory, yes.
The practice is that the wealthy just use the patent system as a weapon against small guys to achieve the exact same thing.
NOWPRINT. NOWPRINT. Clemclone, back to the shadows again. - The Firesign Theater
