This morning I watched a DRONE over the park near us. And it watched me! But no, this was not a police drone--theyre still in the experimental stages. No this was someones hobby drone. A young Hispanic couple were playing with it in the park--he had ordered it from China, off the internet. I said, Im amazed it works, then. But it does. Its about the size of an extra-large-pizza pie plate, maybe a little bigger, with four rotors...and a camera on the bottom. As the girl controlled it with a fairly large remote control box, her friend watched its camera feed on his phone. He showed it to me--I could see myself from the sky! This model wont be very secretive--its got lights on it, reflectors and, more important, its loud: it sounds *exactly* like a very large hive of really pissed off bees. He said it technically has a fifty mile range for control--but it only has 20 minutes of charge in its battery and its top speed is ten mph. Still, theoretically, if you kept a car key, say, pasted to it, and you were a quarter mile from home and locked out of your car, and IF you had the controller, you could have it fly you the car key. Larger, more efficient models will be used by law enforcement--already have been tested in the field on a lawbreaker in Texas--and are being tried out for use in fire fighting surveillance, search and rescue, and the like. Paranoids will be shooting at the things. Even this variety--this did NOT look like a toy. It would freak some people the hell out. And as it has lights on it, fly this internet-ordered model at night and: instant UFO report! You could put a small tape recorder on it that made eerie sounds or said cryptic things. Of course you know that drones will be used by criminals--theyll be used by drug dealers to watch for cops. Theyll be used by transnational gangs to see if border patrol is coming. Amazingly, Amazon is STILL talking about using drones for package delivery. Theyre trying to get permission to try it. Now THAT is stupid. Look, how many packages would that be? How many drones? How many moving parts? How many chimneys and phone poles and power lines? How many malfunctions? How many crashes into windshields and house windows? Thats just not going to be practical, you damn fools. But drones, in more rational applications, and some shady ones, are here to stay, so get used to it.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:34:30 +0000
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