(a) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law
relating to the incorporation of unmanned aircraft systems into
Federal Aviation Administration plans and policies, including this
subtitle, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration
may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model
aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft, if—
(1) the aircraft is flown strictly for hobby or recreational
use;
(2) the aircraft is operated in accordance with a community-
based set of safety guidelines and within the programming
of a nationwide community-based organization;
(3) the aircraft is limited to not more than 55 pounds
unless otherwise certified through a design, construction,
inspection, flight test, and operational safety program administered by a community-based organization;
(4) the aircraft is operated in a manner that does not
interfere with and gives way to any manned aircraft; and
(5) when flown within 5 miles of an airport, the operator
of the aircraft provides the airport operator and the airport
air traffic control tower (when an air traffic facility is located
at the airport) with prior notice of the operation (model aircraft
operators flying from a permanent location within 5 miles of
an airport should establish a mutually-agreed upon operating
procedure with the airport operator and the airport air traffic
control tower (when an air traffic facility is located at the
airport)).
(b) STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section shall
be construed to limit the authority of the Administrator to pursue
enforcement action against persons operating model aircraft who
endanger the safety of the national airspace system.
(c) MODEL AIRCRAFT DEFINED.—In this section, the term ‘‘model
aircraft’’ means an unmanned aircraft that is—
(1) capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere;
(2) flown within visual line of sight of the person operating
the aircraft; and
Open Pilot is pretty good, but good luck getting one. They only sell in batches, so you have to wait for months or get really lucky on your timing. Right now there's nothing in stock, and nothing expected for 8 weeks.
Yet allowing in-flight devices and seeing passenger safety threatened as a result could threaten funding, power, and end several promising bureaucratic careers.
Sure, maybe they only care about losing funding. But maybe, just maybe they care about that whole passenger safety thing.
R -- I've heard good things about R, and it's a good tool for certain fields. But if the original poster is interested in going into an Engineering field then different tools are more appropriate (It's better to use the same or similar tools that your colleagues are using).
Matlab -- one of the industry standards for number crunching and plotting.
Octave -- a Matlab clone that is frequently good enough. (My company can't quite afford a Matlab license, and I get by with Octave when I need that functionality).
Maxima -- for CAS, I haven't used it much, I've heard that it works.
Python with NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib -- Highly recommended. The combination is almost as good as Matlab for number crunching, and it is more generically useful.
It has nothing to do with privacy laws. The main uses are for aerial pictures and search and rescue. When there's an automobile crash on the interstate, a quick aerial photograph of the accident scene lets the police clear debris off the road faster and open the road sooner. Right now, they'll send out a hook-and-ladder fire truck and send a photographer to the top of the ladder to get the aerial pictures when needed.
Privacy laws remain in effect, independent of the technology used.
But for analog circuits it's not as easy. SPICE can give you a pretty good idea, but it's not perfect. Even more advanced programs like ADS won't give you the full picture. As the final step you will always need to actually make a prototype and just hope it works.
Sorry, but if your final step is to "just hope it works" then your design is incomplete. For example, I designed an optical to electrical amplifier in the late 90's as part of the fiber optic communication system on the ISS. It was a pencil and paper design, and the first prototype worked as expected. I can guarantee what the circuit will do for any input that is within spec.
With modern computer simulation tools a designer can absolutely expect an analog circuit to behave as the simulation does. If not, the model is incorrect, or the simulation tools are not being used properly.
No. GPS on civilian aircraft is a secondary system. Even with complete GPS blackout (or spoofing), the pilot in command still has all of the primary sensors available for navigation.
You are barking up the wrong tree. You are correct that Apple did not invent the term "App", but that has no bearing on the validity of the trademark.
"Open Happiness" is trademarked by Coca-Cola. Certainly no one claims that either word was invented by the company. PespiCo would be legally liable for using that phrase in an ad-campaign, however, a company in a different market (Dell for example) could probably use "Open Happiness" for computer sales without issue.
Are you familiar with "The Container Store". It's a store where you buy, wait for it, containers!! And yes, "The Container Store" is trademarked. No other company selling containers can use that name. Similarly, Apple was granted a trademark for "App Store". Just because App Stores have more competition than Container Stores at the moment does not make the trademark any less valid.
All cell-phone manufacturers are required to have GPS data for emergency 911 response. This is required by US law. It seems disingenuous that politicians are now upset that this data is being recorded.
my g/f was shopping for a new TV. She found the model she wanted, on sale, and was just about to tell the sales guy "I'll take it" when she was interrupted by her phone. She needs to pay attention to incoming messages because she delivers babies. She excused herself and consulted the latest news about one of her patients on her phone. The sales guy must have assumed she was price checking -- he quickly said, "Let me talk to my manager" disappeared and when he came back offered an additional $400 discount!! She got the unexpected benefit of price checking without actually doing anything.
Places that do what it takes to make the sale will outlast the places that cry "waaaah, that's not fair!"
Ok, that's fine and dandy, however when using the word "America" the singular refers to the USA, the pl refers to both continents.
No, the word "America" in the singular refers to the USA only in the common usage in the USA. In most of the rest of the world, this is simply not true.
So is this a pedantic semantic argument? I guess so, but I don't see how you could possibly justify that usage of America.
How many continents are there? It seems like a simple question, but it really depends on where you are from. In most English speaking countries, we are taught that there are seven continents. In most of the rest of the world, including most of Europe, S.America, and Latin America, the answer is six. What we call North and South America, most of the world refers to as simply America. How could one possibly justify that usage of America? If you grew up in Brazil you would ask the same question but with entirely different meaning.
It's technically illegal to fly UAVs without visual contact in visual flight rules air space.
Not quite.
The FAA controls the national airspace with a white-list approach. Everything is illegal unless a specific category of safe flight has been defined. AC 91-57 defines the Model Aircraft Operating Standards and creates a specific legal exemption for vehicles flown for recreational purposes. This exemption also applies to UAVs, provided they are flown for recreational purposes. However, there is no exemption for operating a UAV for commercial purposes. Even flying an R/C aircraft is illegal if the operator attaches a camera and attempts to sell the resulting aerial imagery!
The FAA recognizes that people and companies other than modelers might be flying UAS with the mistaken understanding that they are legally operating under the authority of AC 91–57. AC 91–57 only applies to modelers, and thus specifically excludes its use by persons or companies for business purposes. -- from FAA–2006–25714, Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System; Notice of Policy; Opportunity for Feedback (FAA link to pdf is down right now)
Technically, you or I could fly a 1:1 scale F-22 Raptor, but only if it were for recreational purposes.
It's not so much being afraid, as it is that we already have a National ID. It's called a passport. I see no good reason to spend time and money implementing an additional one.
Now I have an oh-so-sort dictionary (only 160 entries!) to feed to my favorite password-cracking program. The odds of my success just went from potentially being neigh-impossible to almost-certain.
Now tell me, if you happen to find a wallet with a similar password page in it, at which website will you direct your favorite password cracking program? What username will you pair with the password?
Yes, the file you linked to is indeed the policy for someone with Media Credentials. The SEC also released a policy for those with Tickets and Non-Media Credentials.
See page 4
That's the one this article is talking about.
I'm wondering why there's a need for drones to interfly commercial airspace here in the US,
My company demoed our UAS for the FAA related to this new legislation. The problem is that under current FAA regulations, it's illegal to fly UAS's in the national airspace -- I'm not referring to a UAV flying from LA to NY, I'm referring to a UAV flying over an open field on private property several miles from any human habitation. That's still national airspace and is still regulated by the FAA.
The main purpose of this new legislation is to define terms under which UAS's can legally fly in the US -- so that we can at least develop UAS technology legally. Of course, since they are crafting new regulations, they are thinking much further down the line for when the technology may be ready to safely fly with other passenger airliners and such. But the immediate concern is to allow research and development to occur. If things don't change soon, a lot of UAV/UAS research will simply leave the US for country's where it is already legal.
I remember playing Stellar 7 before Starglider (doesn't mean that's the order they were released, of course).
Marathon by Bungie Software is another one that is often forgotten -- probably because it was only available for Apple Macintosh initially (1994). Frankly, it blew Doom out of the water with better storyline, graphics, and 8 person multi-player deathmatch -- appletalk network, no tcp/ip support.
Not sure if Marathon would qualify as a 'game engine' for this list, though the game engine for Marathon 2 was open sourced eventually, now called 'Aleph One'.
so the Mayor pointing out "It would be stupid to commit a crime"
If this is true, then why are government officials so reluctant to have their own activities monitored? Why do law enforcement get so edgy about being filmed? Why are cameras not allowed in most court rooms? Why aren't public officials monitored all day long? It just stops crime, after all.
Also ridiculous is that video is worthless without follow through. My bicycle was stolen FROM THE COURTHOUSE when I had to go for jury duty. Sure enough, the whole thing was caught on video. Guy walks up, cuts the locks and wanders off with five bikes (one at a time). The cops watch the video a few times, "Yup, this guy stole your bike. Nothing we can do, really". I fill out a form, and precisely nothing else happens. Hooray for security cameras.
I just finished updating the checksum routines at my company. Amazingly, they had been using an 8-bit XOR checksum for years (!) on a mission-critical wireless data link. Since this was low-level mission-critical code with lots of proven flight-time, I had to prove conclusively that the new method would, in fact, be better.
TCP uses a 16-bit checksum, so you have 1 in 65536 chance of an error packet being incorrectly validated as being correct. To make matters worse, it uses 1's complement instead of 2's complement, so 0x00 and 0xFF are indistinguishable.
It's not as simple as saying 1 in 2^N chance of error for an N-bit checksum. It depends strongly on the specific checksum algorithm, and to a degree the number of bits, length of data packet, and expected bit error rate.
For example, 8-bit XOR lets 12% of 2-bit errors through undetected, and 16-bit XOR only brings that down to 6%. WAY different than if you expected it to change from 1:256 to 1:65536. But an 8-bit CRC checksum has 1:10^8, and the 16-bit version has 1:10^16 chance of undetected error. Again, WAY different than 1 in 2^N chance.
Surprisingly (to me at least), 1's compliment catches *more* errors than does 2's compliment. (the reason being that a pair of bit inversions involving the MSB remains undetected by 2's complement, but is caught by 1's compliment)
We decided to go with a 32-bit one's compliment Fletcher checksum -- good compromise between performance and error checking for our application.
They called my lab repeatedly while I was a grad student, after several calls I kept a log with time, date, and apparent Caller ID number (which was always bogus) and any info I could get out of the operators. But hey, I was a grad student, so I had time to kill, I just kept them on the phone for as long as possible.
scammer: Your car warranty is expired, would you like to renew your auto warranty?
me: expired?
scammer: yes, wou---
me: are you sure my warranty expired?
scammer: yes, would you like to renew your auto warranty?
me: well, which car are we talking about?
scammer: The newer one
me: the new one? i bought them at the same time..... ....
and when I got bored (rare) or sensed that they were about to hang up (usual)
me: I'd like you to know that I report every one of these calls to the FTC (and I really did: http://www.ftc.gov/phonefraud )
I think my number finally got blacklisted by their phone operators or something, after awhile they just hung up on me every time. Once the operator just tried to heckle my school's sports team. (its tough to rattle a geek by making fun of a football team) I *always* pressed '1' when I got those calls, must have logged at least 30 calls on the FTC website.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this the same guy that wants to ban drones? Egads. Perhaps he should take his own advice.
The FARs do not ever specify 400' for anything. That comes from safety guidelines published by a big model aircraft club. It has no weight of law.
I'll refer you to Public Law 112-95 - note the bold section.
SEC. 336. SPECIAL RULE FOR MODEL AIRCRAFT.
Do you know the FAA has no legal authority over what happens below 400' above private land far enough away from an airport.
You should really let the FAA know that. Four days ago they grounded an aerial photographer in Minnesota for using an r/c aircraft commercially. FAA grounds Twin Cities aerial photographer over use of drones
Open Pilot is pretty good, but good luck getting one. They only sell in batches, so you have to wait for months or get really lucky on your timing. Right now there's nothing in stock, and nothing expected for 8 weeks.
Yet allowing in-flight devices and seeing passenger safety threatened as a result could threaten funding, power, and end several promising bureaucratic careers.
Sure, maybe they only care about losing funding. But maybe, just maybe they care about that whole passenger safety thing.
R -- I've heard good things about R, and it's a good tool for certain fields. But if the original poster is interested in going into an Engineering field then different tools are more appropriate (It's better to use the same or similar tools that your colleagues are using).
Matlab -- one of the industry standards for number crunching and plotting.
Octave -- a Matlab clone that is frequently good enough. (My company can't quite afford a Matlab license, and I get by with Octave when I need that functionality).
Maxima -- for CAS, I haven't used it much, I've heard that it works.
Python with NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib -- Highly recommended. The combination is almost as good as Matlab for number crunching, and it is more generically useful.
Orpie -- great command line calculator
It has nothing to do with privacy laws. The main uses are for aerial pictures and search and rescue. When there's an automobile crash on the interstate, a quick aerial photograph of the accident scene lets the police clear debris off the road faster and open the road sooner. Right now, they'll send out a hook-and-ladder fire truck and send a photographer to the top of the ladder to get the aerial pictures when needed. Privacy laws remain in effect, independent of the technology used.
But for analog circuits it's not as easy. SPICE can give you a pretty good idea, but it's not perfect. Even more advanced programs like ADS won't give you the full picture. As the final step you will always need to actually make a prototype and just hope it works.
Sorry, but if your final step is to "just hope it works" then your design is incomplete. For example, I designed an optical to electrical amplifier in the late 90's as part of the fiber optic communication system on the ISS. It was a pencil and paper design, and the first prototype worked as expected. I can guarantee what the circuit will do for any input that is within spec.
With modern computer simulation tools a designer can absolutely expect an analog circuit to behave as the simulation does. If not, the model is incorrect, or the simulation tools are not being used properly.
No. GPS on civilian aircraft is a secondary system. Even with complete GPS blackout (or spoofing), the pilot in command still has all of the primary sensors available for navigation.
You are barking up the wrong tree. You are correct that Apple did not invent the term "App", but that has no bearing on the validity of the trademark.
"Open Happiness" is trademarked by Coca-Cola. Certainly no one claims that either word was invented by the company. PespiCo would be legally liable for using that phrase in an ad-campaign, however, a company in a different market (Dell for example) could probably use "Open Happiness" for computer sales without issue.
Are you familiar with "The Container Store". It's a store where you buy, wait for it, containers!! And yes, "The Container Store" is trademarked. No other company selling containers can use that name. Similarly, Apple was granted a trademark for "App Store". Just because App Stores have more competition than Container Stores at the moment does not make the trademark any less valid.
All cell-phone manufacturers are required to have GPS data for emergency 911 response. This is required by US law. It seems disingenuous that politicians are now upset that this data is being recorded.
my g/f was shopping for a new TV. She found the model she wanted, on sale, and was just about to tell the sales guy "I'll take it" when she was interrupted by her phone. She needs to pay attention to incoming messages because she delivers babies. She excused herself and consulted the latest news about one of her patients on her phone. The sales guy must have assumed she was price checking -- he quickly said, "Let me talk to my manager" disappeared and when he came back offered an additional $400 discount!! She got the unexpected benefit of price checking without actually doing anything.
Places that do what it takes to make the sale will outlast the places that cry "waaaah, that's not fair!"
Ok, that's fine and dandy, however when using the word "America" the singular refers to the USA, the pl refers to both continents.
No, the word "America" in the singular refers to the USA only in the common usage in the USA. In most of the rest of the world, this is simply not true.
So is this a pedantic semantic argument? I guess so, but I don't see how you could possibly justify that usage of America.
How many continents are there? It seems like a simple question, but it really depends on where you are from. In most English speaking countries, we are taught that there are seven continents. In most of the rest of the world, including most of Europe, S.America, and Latin America, the answer is six. What we call North and South America, most of the world refers to as simply America. How could one possibly justify that usage of America? If you grew up in Brazil you would ask the same question but with entirely different meaning.
It's technically illegal to fly UAVs without visual contact in visual flight rules air space.
Not quite.
The FAA controls the national airspace with a white-list approach. Everything is illegal unless a specific category of safe flight has been defined. AC 91-57 defines the Model Aircraft Operating Standards and creates a specific legal exemption for vehicles flown for recreational purposes. This exemption also applies to UAVs, provided they are flown for recreational purposes. However, there is no exemption for operating a UAV for commercial purposes. Even flying an R/C aircraft is illegal if the operator attaches a camera and attempts to sell the resulting aerial imagery!
The FAA recognizes that people and companies other than modelers might be flying UAS with the mistaken understanding that they are legally operating under the authority of AC 91–57. AC 91–57 only applies to modelers, and thus specifically excludes its use by persons or companies for business purposes.
-- from FAA–2006–25714, Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System; Notice of Policy; Opportunity for Feedback (FAA link to pdf is down right now)
Technically, you or I could fly a 1:1 scale F-22 Raptor, but only if it were for recreational purposes.
It's not so much being afraid, as it is that we already have a National ID. It's called a passport. I see no good reason to spend time and money implementing an additional one.
Now I have an oh-so-sort dictionary (only 160 entries!) to feed to my favorite password-cracking program. The odds of my success just went from potentially being neigh-impossible to almost-certain.
Now tell me, if you happen to find a wallet with a similar password page in it, at which website will you direct your favorite password cracking program? What username will you pair with the password?
From the fine print in Sprint's Simply Everything Plan: "Services are not available for use as a modem"
Yes, the file you linked to is indeed the policy for someone with Media Credentials. The SEC also released a policy for those with Tickets and Non-Media Credentials. See page 4 That's the one this article is talking about.
I'm wondering why there's a need for drones to interfly commercial airspace here in the US,
My company demoed our UAS for the FAA related to this new legislation. The problem is that under current FAA regulations, it's illegal to fly UAS's in the national airspace -- I'm not referring to a UAV flying from LA to NY, I'm referring to a UAV flying over an open field on private property several miles from any human habitation. That's still national airspace and is still regulated by the FAA.
The main purpose of this new legislation is to define terms under which UAS's can legally fly in the US -- so that we can at least develop UAS technology legally. Of course, since they are crafting new regulations, they are thinking much further down the line for when the technology may be ready to safely fly with other passenger airliners and such. But the immediate concern is to allow research and development to occur. If things don't change soon, a lot of UAV/UAS research will simply leave the US for country's where it is already legal.
I remember playing Stellar 7 before Starglider (doesn't mean that's the order they were released, of course).
Marathon by Bungie Software is another one that is often forgotten -- probably because it was only available for Apple Macintosh initially (1994). Frankly, it blew Doom out of the water with better storyline, graphics, and 8 person multi-player deathmatch -- appletalk network, no tcp/ip support.
Not sure if Marathon would qualify as a 'game engine' for this list, though the game engine for Marathon 2 was open sourced eventually, now called 'Aleph One'.
so the Mayor pointing out "It would be stupid to commit a crime"
If this is true, then why are government officials so reluctant to have their own activities monitored? Why do law enforcement get so edgy about being filmed? Why are cameras not allowed in most court rooms? Why aren't public officials monitored all day long? It just stops crime, after all.
Also ridiculous is that video is worthless without follow through. My bicycle was stolen FROM THE COURTHOUSE when I had to go for jury duty. Sure enough, the whole thing was caught on video. Guy walks up, cuts the locks and wanders off with five bikes (one at a time). The cops watch the video a few times, "Yup, this guy stole your bike. Nothing we can do, really". I fill out a form, and precisely nothing else happens. Hooray for security cameras.
I just finished updating the checksum routines at my company. Amazingly, they had been using an 8-bit XOR checksum for years (!) on a mission-critical wireless data link. Since this was low-level mission-critical code with lots of proven flight-time, I had to prove conclusively that the new method would, in fact, be better.
TCP uses a 16-bit checksum, so you have 1 in 65536 chance of an error packet being incorrectly validated as being correct. To make matters worse, it uses 1's complement instead of 2's complement, so 0x00 and 0xFF are indistinguishable.
It's not as simple as saying 1 in 2^N chance of error for an N-bit checksum. It depends strongly on the specific checksum algorithm, and to a degree the number of bits, length of data packet, and expected bit error rate.
For example, 8-bit XOR lets 12% of 2-bit errors through undetected, and 16-bit XOR only brings that down to 6%. WAY different than if you expected it to change from 1:256 to 1:65536. But an 8-bit CRC checksum has 1:10^8, and the 16-bit version has 1:10^16 chance of undetected error. Again, WAY different than 1 in 2^N chance.
Surprisingly (to me at least), 1's compliment catches *more* errors than does 2's compliment. (the reason being that a pair of bit inversions involving the MSB remains undetected by 2's complement, but is caught by 1's compliment)
We decided to go with a 32-bit one's compliment Fletcher checksum -- good compromise between performance and error checking for our application.
They called my lab repeatedly while I was a grad student, after several calls I kept a log with time, date, and apparent Caller ID number (which was always bogus) and any info I could get out of the operators. But hey, I was a grad student, so I had time to kill, I just kept them on the phone for as long as possible.
scammer: Your car warranty is expired, would you like to renew your auto warranty?
....
me: expired?
scammer: yes, wou---
me: are you sure my warranty expired?
scammer: yes, would you like to renew your auto warranty?
me: well, which car are we talking about?
scammer: The newer one
me: the new one? i bought them at the same time.....
and when I got bored (rare) or sensed that they were about to hang up (usual)
me: I'd like you to know that I report every one of these calls to the FTC (and I really did: http://www.ftc.gov/phonefraud )
I think my number finally got blacklisted by their phone operators or something, after awhile they just hung up on me every time. Once the operator just tried to heckle my school's sports team. (its tough to rattle a geek by making fun of a football team) I *always* pressed '1' when I got those calls, must have logged at least 30 calls on the FTC website.