Unmanned Aircraft Pose US Airspace Problems

coondoggie writes to tell us that congressional watchdogs have called on Congress to create a body within the FAA to oversee unmanned aircraft development and integration. The group cited the rapidly growing unmanned aircraft community and is worried about the possible repercussions. "The GAO also called on the FAA to work with the Department of Defense, which has extensive unmanned aircraft experience, to issue its program plan. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assesses the security implications of routine unmanned aircraft access to commercial airspace, the GAO said. Even if all issues are addressed, and there are a number of critical problems, unmanned aircraft may not receive routine access to the national airspace system until 2020, the GAO concluded."

Comments

The major problem with unmanned aircraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that women are flying them! Ahhh duck!!!

Re:The major problem with unmanned aircraft

[Feminist-Mom]

As a 48 yo grandmother, techie and feminist I find that offensive. I've been a programmer since 1974, mostly writing C code, and I am sick of hearing this garbage. I think you'll find that you are a dinosaur, as most readers are more enlightened than you.

Re:The major problem with unmanned aircraft

[chrome]

As a 48 yo grandmother, techie and feminist I find that offensive. I've been a programmer since 1974, mostly writing C code, and I am sick of hearing this garbage. I think you'll find that you are a dinosaur, as most readers are more enlightened than you. I call shenanigans. Your /. id isn't low enough!

Re:The major problem with unmanned aircraft

[slarrg]

Look, its a joke.

The poster was making fun of the possible wordplay that "unmanned" did not necessarily mean robotic, it could have been women flying them. Now comedic timing is a difficult thing. Surely my statement above was not a funny description. The article stated that there was a serious problem with unmanned aircraft so there was already a sense that these unmanned craft were a bad thing because they were unmanned. There's an existing stereotype (certainly from a time when few women drove and rarely actually believed today) which when placed with the wordplay on "unmanned" makes a nice comedic delivery.

This is Slashdot. People make fun of things. Wordplay and poking fun at stereotypes is quite common here. If you've spent much time here, you've probably seen countless jokes made by Slashdotters about themselves: because they're all pimply faced 13-year-olds living in their mother's basement and dreadfully inept with girls. Now as a female programmer, I'll bet that you're already aware that this is a stereotype that is not necessarily true. Many programers are women. Most don't live at in their mother's basement (once they graduate college) as programming is one of the higher paid professions. Some even get married, too. They're jokes. Some of them quite funny, too.

When a joke like this is made, do you rush in to the rescue of pimply-faced nerds? Likely they've heard these stereotypes before and will hear them again. No one's going to melt away from hearing it again. If the stereotype fits the reader and it bothers them, they'll likely work hard to ensure that the stereotype is not true within themselves.

Now, as a female programmer, I would assume that you already know this. Or have you lived an extremely sheltered life and never heard the stereotype that women are not technical? Of course you've heard it before. It didn't stop you. Moreover, no one should stop doing what they love because it goes against a stereotype. I can't imagine that anyone thinks they should. But the stereotypes do exist in popular culture and they will be uttered by others.

Everyone will hear the stereotypes. It's always been a part of human nature and, trust me, it always will be. Everyone will always hear the stereotypes that they fight against whether it's because they're female, male, black, white, asian, blind, deaf, or from Texas. Everyone has heard stereotypes that includes them and are not true. Welcome to the club of everyone! The appropriate thing to do is to laugh it off and move on with your life. Especially when it's just a joke.

In the few cases where someone is so unbelievably stupid as to actually think the stereotype is a 100% true representation of reality and should be followed, then you should ignore them. Argument will not change the mind of someone that simple or they would already not believe in the truth of stereotypes. One should assume that everyone already knows you can't win that argument and people who still argue with them loom like fools.

Now, regarding your actions in the above post, you've made a serious error which I think you've may not have thought through. The stereotypes exist and will always exist, you can't put that genie back in the bottle. When you trace back some stereotypes you'll find they've existed for, quite literally, eons. Arguing about stereotypes will not make them go away it only gives them more exposure and greater traffic. Now, one of these common stereotypes is that women are weak and need to be protected. Every time you jump in and make statements like the one above you actually reinforce this very stereotype. You jump in to protect those poor, stupid, innocent women who are so weak that they'd simply crumble and stop their life's pursuit because someone uttered a simple stereotype. Thus, the great (and quite obviously rare) feminist needs to protect the other women who are naturally weak. And that's what I find truly offensive.

Talk about having to over-explain a joke. :(

Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio

[CaptDeuce]

Fibreglass amd carbon fibre reinforced plastic are ... transparent to radar... Gliders, birds, lots of things without metal in them don't show up.

Well, there's your problem right there. We gotta find a way to put metal in them pesky birds. Most people would immediately suggest putting metal in bird feed but I think we need to encourage our winged friends to adopt the fashion trend of body piercing.

Re:oh the irony...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you say you don't believe in terrorists, one drops over dead. I hope you're happy.

Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio

[Sobieski]

You are asking me if I am comfortable with having a 15 meter wide killing machine in my vicinity?

No, no I am not.

Unless it provides me with a scan of the immediate surroundings showing all enemies on my minimap.