There was a new agreement reached today between the UK and France to jointly develop Drone Technology, one aim being to replace Fighter Aircraft with Drones. See here - Cameron and Hollande finalise plans for Anglo-French drone

As an anything-that-flies enthusiast from way back I'm technically interested in the drones and in seeing how they develop and what technology they use. So it will be fascinating to see how that pans out. Fat chance that the discussion will stick to that, but I've put it in the title, so there.

The article, however, is thought-provoking at different levels, the political, the moral as well as the technological.

There is an interesting turn of phrase at the bottom of that article, namely,
A recent report by the Ministry of Defence said multiculturalism was a significant factor in the public opposition to conflict, as a war-weary public becomes increasingly uncomfortable with seeing British troops deployed to countries from which they once came. --- Lots of issues there.

It's worse than you think Asylum Seeker...Tracking a cellphone is easy, especially for the National Security Agency. But can you track a cellphone that's been turned off?

It sounds impossible, but the NSA apparently has been able to track powered-down mobile phones since 2004, as reported by The Washington Post in July 2013.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story_2.html

It sounds impossible, but the NSA apparently has been able to track powered-down mobile phones since 2004, as reported by The Washington Post in July 2013.

I became aware of this technology at a security seminar I attended in California about 2-3 years ago. This is nothing new.

It's worse than you think Asylum Seeker...Tracking a cellphone is easy, especially for the National Security Agency. But can you track a cellphone that's been turned off?

It sounds impossible, but the NSA apparently has been able to track powered-down mobile phones since 2004, as reported by The Washington Post in July 2013.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story_2.html

There goes your blow bidness. 

There goes your blow bidness. 

There's no bidness like blow bidness! Like no bidness I know... 

Drones not legal for hunting any more

Hunting big game in Alaska with the help of remote-controlled, camera-equipped aircraft will be illegal later this year when new regulations take effect.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2014/03/23/3389846/drone-assisted-hunting-to-be-illegal.html?sp=/99/188/#storylink=cpy

That's right!

An extra-terrestrial Drone - Dropship offers safe landings for Mars rovers.

Mind you - how we get the operator on site first is more of a problem.  

An extra-terrestrial Drone - Dropship offers safe landings for Mars rovers.

Mind you - how we get the operator on site first is more of a problem.  

That might not be that much of a problem. The rovers are, technically anyway, robot drones to begin with. So now you have a drone making sure a drone is safely delivered--.

And there is another total waste of money wanting to go to Mars for goodness sake. We have been conditioned into thinking this is a great step forward - yeah, right.  Hardly the most hospitable place to say, boring and in the main meaning of the word, lifeless unlike Earth. When you also consider the tens of millions of the poor in the corner that wants to desperately get there it makes you wonder about how brains are used.

Drones of course can have a useful purpose apart from police spying on your privacy and illegally bombing countries and ignoring their complaints. Some are even  talking about using them for delivering goods to homes, etc. Just a pity the idea is being misused on a great scale.

The operator for the Martian drones may already be on site. Further, in an apparent attempt to appease RJH, the operator appears to be Scottish. Well, sort of, anyway.

You really are a miserable o*d f**t sometimes rjh  Try to imagine someone building a steam locomotive on Mars - that should get you dribbling! (never mind the science on that one!).

Let your mind stray beyond weapons. Take in the drone possibilities for crop spraying, search and rescue, cattle husbandry, forest fire monitoring, police track and trace, and rounding up hordes of Scottish rioting model railway fans.

A Mars mission is not my favourite mission either but this example of Drone technology is interesting for its own sake at a number of levels, not only the context of it. For example as mjm points out we see there a symbiotic relationship between two drones, a feature we will see more of in the future.

Mybe in your great hurry to waffle nicknames at me string you might READ the whole entry i gave dopey man. Didn't i say there were peaceful purposes in your tut, tut, emotion rave?! Mars is a dash waste of time and money and no doubt all the sci-fi dreamboats think it is wonderful. Pointless exercise that will have little or no use. Far better spending the money on the home poor or helpt the debt trillions. Mrs will not put clothes on the back, ;provide meals, jobs and is such a nonsense. Meantime instead of calling me what you did take yor time, read and then nod.

Mybe in your great hurry to waffle nicknames at me string you might READ the whole entry i gave dopey man. Didn't i say there were peaceful purposes in your tut, tut, emotion rave?! Mars is a dash waste of time and money and no doubt all the sci-fi dreamboats think it is wonderful. Pointless exercise that will have little or no use. Far better spending the money on the home poor or helpt the debt trillions. Mrs will not put clothes on the back, ;provide meals, jobs and is such a nonsense. Meantime instead of calling me what you did take yor time, read and then nod.

So-- where were all these wonderful social programs that fed and housed everybody BEFORE the space programs? How come I never read about these programs in any history book? Why were so many homeless hungry and enslaved before the first rocket was ever invented? With all that money before the space programs, there shouldn't have been a single hungry or homeless person anywhere. So-- what happened?

Well the ignoring of the lesser people even though in their vast numbers is typical of the corporate mindset who don't actually give a damn. That so much is pent on pointless Mars and such only draws more attention to the lack of humanity for all the guff the real rich controllers exercise.

You haven't answered my question. Why did we have so many hungry, homeless, and so on before the first rocket? With so much money that wasn't being sent into space, why all the suffering? Could it be that the various space programs aren't at fault for this, and if we didn't have them we might still have an abundance of hungry, homeless, jobless and so on?

Sometimes exploration has results that no one can know for generations-- maybe centuries. I live on this continent-- maybe I live at all-- because some guy got the idea that by sailing West, he would eventually reach India and all the riches of the Orient. Who could have known that he would bump into this place, or that the natives he came across would be sitting on wealth that he couldn't imagine? He spent a bunch of Ferdinand and Isabella's money on a questionable venture when there were certainly thousands starving in Spain, eh?

Right now, Mars is a barren rockpile, nobody lives there or indeed can live there unless you bring substantial parts of Earth with you. Given present technology, anybody who goes there is on a one-way ride-- there's no coming back. So we send drones to investigate the place to see if there's a reason, someday, to send men to colonize the place. It may turn out to be an expensive waste of money-- or it may turn out to be the smartest thing we've ever done. Right now, you can't honestly say which it is.

The money was very obviously available before the space nonsense and doesn't take much to work that one out does ot? If it wasn't there would not be any space programme so it illustrates my point which you missed. And of course we know following the old adage that the poor are of course always with us but instead of dishing out money on would-be Star Trekker stuff it could have been put to better use espeically in your country which has no Welfare state as we have. Tut, tut.

I didn't miss your point-- assuming you made one to miss-- but you sure missed any point I made.

Before the space programs, the money wasn't being spent the way you'd like it to be spent. I think I could guarantee that if there had never been a space program, the money still wouldn't be spent the way you'd like the money to be spent. The space program isn't the problem.

In any case-- back to the thread-- drones here on Earth can be a problem. Military drones, and police drones, and your nosy neighbor sending his camera-equipped Octocopter over to your place to see what you're doing when you think no one is looking--- that could be a problem. I imagine that last one might even make you, RJ, ask Smiley if you can borrow one of his guns so you can shoot the pesky thing down.

Oh, man, this I'd have to see: RJHowie using one of Smileyfaze's guns to shoot down a drone 'copter.

Regarding your last line. That wouldn't occur as I wasn't born with an American brain (thank Heaven's) You lot keep gunning thousands of each other to death as you are least keeping one business in top shape - undertakers.

So--- you don't mind if your nosy neighbor flies his camera-equipped Octocopter outside your bedroom window? You really wouldn't want to shoot the thing down if you had the opportunity? I guess living in one of the heaviest surveillance states, where cameras seem to be mounted everywhere, makes you so "used to it" that you don't notice when it's really out of control.

We're catching up with the surveillance though. The Rahmfather can hardly wait to put more speed cameras up, along with the stop-light cameras that were already in place. I don't go to the Rahmulan Empire unless I absolutely have to for that reason, amongst others.

Traffic enforcement cameras had a short life here. Too many judges ruled against them as evidence, to the point they've been removed. So far rulings have went in favor of drones tho. Shooting one down would prolly land you in a heap of trouble... Assuming it was only doing its job.

it seems like  , when  insanity surpass the science .

everything is in chaos 

I heard something on the radio yesterday that farmers are using drones.

Farmers are discovering that drones can help them, giving them the ability to view their acreage much faster than they can by walking through the fields, and they can spot-- and prevent-- potential problems in the crops much faster with the drones. I think-- am not sure-- that limited crop dusting by drone may be possible too, saving the farmer the problems of having to wait for the professional crop duster and having the dust sprayed over the entire field when he just needs to hit a trouble-spot before the problems spread.

See link below:

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526491/agricultural-drones/

Yeah, I've heard about farmers using them to patrol. I haven't heard the crop dusting part yet.

The main one to get headlines here are contractors for roofing companies using them to assess potential customers. Because they are flying over private property, looking to pitch a sale to people, some have complained. I imagine they will have to become more common in that capacity before anything is done to regulate the activity. I expect drones are gonna be used by municipalities before too long as well. Anymore all they have to do is drive by your house to read your meters, so before long the logic that one truck can cover more ground by dispatching a couple drones on predetermined flight paths to do a flyby will take hold. Other uses could be tax assessment and patrolling public parks. The logic in using them both in public and private situations for surveying and surveillance is only gonna grow. I do feel it's important that regulations grow along with them. People do have a right to privacy, but when you live in a subdivision or apartment complex you've already accepted less privacy than rural homes have. So getting bent outta shape over a flyby is extreme.

Saying that drones can be of utility to people it's the first step to use drones against people.
Open your eyes people.

What more will be needed until people understand that they are the enemy for drone's owners. Drones will be used to do tele vigilance over us, in the first place, then to shoot us like animals.
Forget the "civilian" usage of drones, that's for camouflaging the objective.

Vigilance it's done over the enemy, it's that so hard to understand???
We are the enemy to them. Why is that so and who are them, that's what we should be discussing.
As well as how to defend ourselves and fight back.

Saying that drones can be of utility to people it's the first step to use drones against people.
Open your eyes people.

What more will be needed until people understand that they are the enemy for drone's owners. Drones will be used to do tele vigilance over us, in the first place, then to shoot us like animals.
Forget the "civilian" usage of drones, that's for camouflaging the objective.

Vigilance it's done over the enemy, it's that so hard to understand???
We are the enemy to them. Why is that so and who are them, that's what we should be discussing.
As well as how to defend ourselves and fight back.

Step over to that table and pick up your "Katsung47" medal. Not all drone use is for bad purposes, the story about the farmers is in fact a GOOD use of drones-- by the farmers themselves. It's a poor person indeed who doesn't take advantage of technology to make his life better and his business more profitable.

I have a GPS unit sitting on my van's dashboard. I use it to find places I haven't been to, and to give me an estimate of how long it's going to take to get to the place I'm going to. GPS was originally-- and still is-- military hardware, the military uses it to guide missiles and aircraft to targets.

Here in the American Midwest, a fair amount of our electrical power comes from nuclear-powered generating stations. I needn't tell you how nuclear power was first used-- you've undoubtedly seen the history of that for yourself.

Drones are much the same type of thing. Governments use them for surveillance and weapons delivery, civilians use them commercially and for entertainment. It's not all a trick to rape your cattle and rustle your women, regardless of what the breathless conspiracy-mongers tell you.