Mom! The drone is here!

[Foxer55]

Now, in your wildest dreams did you ever expect drones to be delivering your spiffy, newly bought AJ spectator shoes or that gift you bought online for someone? Even when you were a kid did you imagine such things? When you were a kid you were probably waiting for the mailman (what's a mailman...?) to deliver your Sky King secret decoder ring.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2013/12/04/challenges-await-amazons-drone-deliveries/

I'm sure you've all seen that Amazon, FedEx, and Google are lining up to make home deliveries by drone. Despite some naysayers to the matter, I think it will eventually become a reality - even in my lifetime which may not be too many more years. Just think, your kids or grandkids will come running to you shouting "Its here dad, its here, the drone is in the driveway with my Zipwad raygun!

Ah, the things I've seen in my lifetime. Get ready folks, its going to be a wild ride. Singularity, that point at which computers hold the total intellect of man in their sway, is just a decade or two away.

 

[vitanola]

Great. Now we can look forward to finding these little annoyances stuck to our roof-poles:

 

[Feraud]

This will never fly (bad pun!) in cities..
Homeowners aren't going to trek to their rooftops to retrieve a package and I doubt owners of multi-family rentals are going to modify their rooftops to allow access for package retrieval. I can imagine the shenanigans you'd have going on up there..

 

[LizzieMaine]

I thought Fed Ex was already staffed entirely by drones. At least my dealings with them over the years have led me to believe so.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And it'd never work here anyway -- we don't have any grassy fields in my neighborhood, the houses are less than twenty feet apart, and the street is full of potholes. And dropping something on a roof would cause it to slide straight into the gutter.

 

[Feraud]

I'd give the program two days before a drone loses communication and kills someone.

 

[Fastuni]

Consider... millions of orders daily.
The skies would be quite crowded and "losses" inevitable... and soon enough someone gets hurt or property damaged by a malfunctioning drone.
Infeasible.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Gonna be hard to clean those guts off a windshield...

 

[ButteMT61]

I'm pulling out a bunch of buck shot for this. When one comes over my house, it's going down :rofl:
I'm serious!

On another note, being the foil-hat wearer that I am, I think this is a sneaky way to get people to be "comfortable" with drones in the skies. I don't like it.

 

[Feraud]

I imagine there will be a lot of YouTube videos titled "drone shooting"!

Consider the loss of property as drones are knocked out the sky and robbed of their cargo.

There is nothing crazy about the social change of getting people used to seeing drones in our skies. First comes Amazon's delivery drones. Next it's local law enforcement and who can complain about a better way to "protect the children"..
After that it will be impossible to distinguish who is hovering over an area. It is a legitimate concern.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There is nothing crazy about the social change of getting people used to seeing drones in our skies. First comes Amazon's delivery drones. Next it's local law enforcement and who can complain about a better way to "protect the children"..
After that it will be impossible to distinguish who is hovering over an area. It is a legitimate concern.

One more reason to support your local independent bookstore and tell Jeff Bezos to go to hell.

 

[ButteMT61]

I imagine there will be a lot of YouTube videos titled "drone shooting"!

Consider the loss of property as drones are knocked out the sky and robbed of their cargo.

There is nothing crazy about the social change of getting people used to seeing drones in our skies. First comes Amazon's delivery drones. Next it's local law enforcement and who can complain about a better way to "protect the children"..
After that it will be impossible to distinguish who is hovering over an area. It is a legitimate concern.

Sure there will be - I shoot down an NSA drone and I get the Men in Black at my door

I can't imagine anything worse than skies filled with drones of any sort would be a good thing...

 

[ButteMT61]

One more reason to support your local independent bookstore and tell Jeff Bezos to go to hell.

We support them but I won't give up having essentially unlimited books on my iPad either. I can travel with a device that allows me to do many things, and carrying a bunch of books in a bag or suitcase isn't in my future.
We have and still buy real books, but I'm not about to argue against the value of the electronic versions either.

 

[Foxer55]

Its a brave new world we face and, as much as nobody likes the idea too much, this drone thing will eventually happen. Many more ideas like this are going to take root because of two reasons: (1) technology and (2) the money that exploitation of these new technologies brings. There will be schemes everywhere to take advantage of these technologies. Consider yourselves lucky because most of you will be gone by the time singularity arrives. There's no telling what will happen then, could be good or not so good. I can see myself either as a frontiersman or someone living in the '30s, '40s, or '50s because I'm not so sure I fit in so much anymore.

 

[ButteMT61]

...I can see myself either as a frontiersman or someone living in the '30s, '40s, or '50s because I'm not so sure I fit in so much anymore.

That's why we're designed to not last very long. I'm 100% convinced of that.

 

[Talbot]

I'm still waiting on the Postman with a rocket back pack.

I read about it in a 1952 edition of Mechanix Illustrated - they've had plenty of time to get it right, geeez.

Or it could just be the Silly Season is here!

 

[Hemingway Jones]

This was brilliant marketing by the folks at Amazon. They even convinced 60 minutes to cover it and now the entire country, including we FLers, are speaking about it, and them, and at Christmastime!

I don't think that they have any intention of trying to make this thing a reality; at least not across the board.

 

[sheeplady]

It's funny. Maybe this is just the type of people I have for friends but everybody I've spoken to this about either says:
A) Great, some target practice!
OR
B) Gosh, I gotta get a gun! For target practice!

So I don't think the program will be successful.

One more reason to support your local independent bookstore and tell Jeff Bezos to go to hell.

Agreed!

 

[Foxer55]

sheeplady,

It's funny. Maybe this is just the type of people I have for friends but everybody I've spoken to this about either says:
A) Great, some target practice!
OR
B) Gosh, I gotta get a gun! For target practice!

So I don't think the program will be successful.

I just get a kick out of this picture in my mind of a wild eyed little kid running through the house screaming, "Mom, mom, the drone's here, the drone's here!"

 

[sheeplady]

sheeplady,



I just get a kick out of this picture in my mind of a wild eyed little kid running through the house screaming, "Mom, mom, the drone's here, the drone's here!"

"Go get your BB gun! We didn't buy that for you last Christmas for nothing!"