Micro Plane That Perches On Power Lines

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us about a microplane that perches on power lines to recharge its batteries being developed as a surveillance device at MIT. As you can imagine, landing on a power line is hard to do ... and charging off transmission lines has its own problems.

Comments

Re:Perch?

[causality]

Are you off of your meds or something?

First, UAVs have got WAYYYYYYY more uses than spying on people. Unmanned utility wire monitoring, atmospheric replacements for satellites, land surveys, search and rescue, etc. etc. etc. Spying is just a little teeny tiny subset of the things you can do with a UAV (for instance, we're using predator drones over the gulf right now to monitor the oil spill...we're doing this because they drones can stay in the air for a very long time).

Second, you're advocating a device that would indiscriminately destroy electronic equipment with a range long enough that it could take out a airplane. Are you fucking insane? People with pacemakers, or artificial hearts...just kill them?

Destroy everybody within 200 yards' telephone, laptop, pager, e-reader, etc. because you're paranoid that some scary OMG GUBBMINT guy is watching you buy a donut?

Stay classy, slashdot.

You don't handle tongue-in-cheek sarcasm very well, do you?