White House Threatened!

Maybe so, but you only get to do it once then your dick rips off and you die.

This morning on NPR the aircraft flying over Paris were referred to from the top as "small recreational drones" and "toy aircraft". They visited a shop in Paris that sells them, where they were called quadricopters.I don't understand why no one's getting this. If you were presented a news headline about children playing with guns, wouldn't it alarm you? And when you found out further down in the article that the children were only playing with toy guns, wouldn't you feel misled?I'm only saying I feel misled when presented a news story about drones when they're actually toys. I'm not saying these toy drones can't represent a threat (I've stated several times that they *can* represent a threat, but some seem to have missed this), but it's a threat of a much lower magnitude than a real drone, you know, the kind we use to fire missiles at terrorists. The kind that aren't flying over Paris or the White House.Radio controlled model aircraft have had the ability to fly over the White House, the Eiffel Tower and the American Embassy in Paris for a very, very long time. Yes, they're more capable today than a half century ago, and they represent a greater potential threat today than they did then, but it isn't asking too much for the news media to be up front about whether they talking about a real drone or not.--Percy

Well, there's no "down" time on the job, but there are many cigarette breaks. Just don't ask about the "layoffs." Alas, technically, it seems I am not even a worker bee. I suddenly feel like I am on the top of Mt. Everest, . . . cold, . . . isolated, . . . lonely.Who am I?Errrm, . . . ah, . . . thanks for the entomology lesson Tanypteryx. I now await a cosmologist to tell me my new alias name "dronestar" is being used incorrectly. (Thanks for the alias tip Percy)

Yeah, but if you're talking about the news media, then I've come to expect it.All it is, is clickbait.Dirty dirty clickbait.If you don't want to be mislead, then you'll have to stop using the news websites to find out what is new.

Actually I expect that news organizations will start using quad-copters with cameras for things like riots, wars and natural disasters.We've already seen examples with video footage of the climate change protest march in NY city and with winter olympic\competition sport shows.They can also be used to photo inaccessible areas - and apparently google-earth is doing that.And like cell-phone videos they can originate in the general public to document confrontations.Mix it up with virtual reality and you could get some interesting experiences that would simulate flight ...Enjoy.

I've played with one of these: 404 Error | Page Not FoundThey are incredibly easy to fly and are controlled through an app on your smartphone. You don't even have to be able to see it, you can just fly in first-person mode by see what the forward-facing camera sees on the screen of your phone. It basically flies itself and you just tell it where to go. Its really high tech and you can customize a lot of its functionality. It was a lot of fun to fly around with - it could even do flips. There's youtube videos out there. Turns out they're a little fragile though.

Indeed. We had one on the last 'bio-blitz' - but I don't know if it identified anything not found by the more pedestrian searchers (I used my kayak to some effect, until it rained).The smaller electric ones may be quiet enough to do observations up in tree canopies. You could even park them to observe a nest.but I think it would be fun with a virtual reality suit to pretend you were flying ...The useful applications are only just beginning.Enjoy