"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
-- Proverbs 29:18, King James Bible (KJV)

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Quadcopters and More: Where Can You Fly Your Drone? The Legal Answers are Not Clear

Santa, Santa, what hast thou wrought!? The problems that are coming with the proliferation of cheap and ubiquitous recreational and other drones such as quadcopters are immense while the legal answers for privacy rights are unclear. Annie Sneed discusses the issues at Scientific American So Your Neighbor Got a Drone for Christmas.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

FAA Drone Registration Website Now Operational

TechCrunch reports that The FAA’s Drone Registration Site Is Now Up And Running. Lots of info there, take a look.

Monday, December 21, 2015

Quadcopter How-To Postings at Gizmag in the Loz Blain Drone School Series

Quadcopters and similar drones have not only legal aspects such as the requirement of FAA registration in the United States, but also require enhanced tech savvy on the part of the user, especially for safety reasons.

Gizmag has a series of "how to" postings on drones by Loz Blain:
We do not know how many "how to" "schools" there will ultimately be.

See also for general information on mandatory registration in the USA:

Friday, December 18, 2015

FAA Requires Modelers and Hobbyists to Make Drone Registration as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Starting December 21, 2015 Also for Drones Already in Possession

As regards our previous posting on drone registration, please now read the official FAA announcement concerning the drone registration requirement, starting December 21, that drones (also those used by modelers and hobbyists) must be registered with the FAA as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). See their FAQ for the definition of UAS.

Anyone who has made, purchased or otherwise obtained a drone prior to that date has 60 days to register. Yes, Christmas gifts and homemade drones also fall under the registration requirement.

When operating a drone, the operator must have his or her drone registration certificate in their possession.

Civil fines for non-registration can reach $27500 and "criminal penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment for up to three years".

As one sees, the registration requirement must be taken seriously by all.

No drone registration is required for drones below a certain weight (250 gm viz. 0.55 lb. or less) which are regarded to be unmanned aircraft systems viewed in the category of "toys".

Also excluded from the drone registration requirement are "paper airplanes, toy balloons, Frisbees, and similar items" which are not connected to control systems for the unmanned aircraft.

Make sure to check out the FAA Drone Registration FAQ for all the details.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

FAA Announces Mandatory Drone Registration Effective Virtually Immediately ! Get it Done !

We refer here to a very important article by Nick Lavars at Gizmag in

US government announces mandatory drone registration.

This is an urgent posting relating to mandatory drone registration, so that if you get one of these unmanned small flying "aircraft" called DRONES for Christmas, for example, then you are required to register the drone with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before flying it and also to stick a unique identification number on the aircraft. Failure to do so can result in immense fines or even prison sentences, so this is no small potatoes.  If you register the drone prior to January 20, 2016, the FAA waives the registration fee. Get it done!
If you have anything to do with drones, make sure you read that article at Gizmag:

US government announces mandatory drone registration.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

The Chump Factor at Krugman and the Presidential Candidates: The Inability of People to Admit Their Wrongs and Change Their Minds Accordingly

Once people take a stance on a given issue, they are unlikely to change their minds and admit that they were in the wrong, even if it becomes clear later that they in fact had erred. Wishful thinking and saving face rather than facing reality guides their actions.

We see this particularly in the paradigms of mainstream science and in political, economic, social and religious views and affiliations. People will cling to their previously made allegiances regardless of the actual facts.

Although a certain amount of "loyalty" is surely laudable, blind allegiance is not, although the "Chump Factor" is a widespread human characteristic. Economist Paul Krugman has it right in principle in discussing the U.S. Presidential candidates at http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/the-donald-and-the-chump-factor/?emc=edit_ty_20151215&nl=opinion&nlid=14116646.

As Krugman writes:

"Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren't."

Krugman, however, wrongly points to Donald Trump and his supporters as an example. Regardless of one's political leanings, Trump's supporters have thus far not been proven to be "in the wrong" at all. Trump leads, and he could win.

We say that as a political centrist.

What about all those who support and sponsor a broad field of Republican Party candidates who have no chance of winning? What about all those GOP candidates who lack the common sense to drop out of the race even though they are clearly out of the running? What does it say about a political party when "everyone" out there wants to be President? We call that wishful thinking.

The Democratic Party candidates fare no better under the "Chump Factor" test.

Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State of the USA in the Obama administration from January 2009 to February 2013. That is FOUR years. Wikipedia: "She viewed "smart power" as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values, by combining military power with diplomacy and American capabilities in economics, technology, and other areas." What was the result? The result is a world in chaos. Unchanged thereafter, she has committed herself to an errant foreign policy philosophy based on wishful thinking which has proven wrong.

The Democratic Party has another puzzling candidate in 74-year old Bernie Sanders looking longingly for an American version of Scandinavia in the States.  A socialist-type system that is effective primarily in the more-or-less homogeneous (uniform, unvarying) countries of northern Europe has no chance of succeeding in the heterogeneous (diverse, non-uniform) USA. It is just is not going to happen. A President can not run a nation based on wishful thinking.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

China Business Investment: Chinese Investors Buying Up the Market in Short Dotcom Domain Names


Some years ago in Domain Names as Collateral, Warren E. Agin in Business Law Today at the ABA Business Law Section wrote that:

"No doubt about it, domain names are big business."

Today that statement is truer than ever, as short dotcom domain names are proving to be a valuable "commodity" viz. "property" viz. "contract right", that can be bought and sold, indeed, in part for enormous sums.

In any case, the shorter the name, the more difficult it is to find a dotcom name that has not already been registered.

Indeed, persons or institutions looking for a short dotcom domain name for their web presence may be out of luck, unless they are willing to invest big bucks to buy such a domain name in a dotcom name market being bought up in China.

Alan Dunn at TechCrunch.com has the story in
China Is Making Domain Name History.

Friday, December 04, 2015

Samsung Struggling in Smartphone Markets in Part Due to a Patent Law System that Promotes Monopolies and Destroys Competition

Samsung Replaces Head of Struggling Smartphone Division is the title of an article at EWeek by Todd R. Weiss.

The magazine CHIP in Germany has a similar piece online at Samsung-Krise: Dieser Mann soll die Galaxys retten.

In its newest 01/2016 print issue, CHIP at p. 17 runs the headline "Wir stecken in der Krise", i.e. "we have a crisis", quoting Samsung's Vice Chairman Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon that an "extraordinary transformation" (außergewöhnliche Transformation) was required in the company to avert the worst, including rumors of plans in the works to release masses of employees and executives if the financial situation of the company does not improve.

Samsung is faced e.g. with monopolistic Apple -- on the one hand -- trying to corner the smartphone high-end high-price market for itself by destroying competition with the aid of an outdated patent law system, while, on the other hand, the lower-price segments of the smartphone market are being increasingly dominated by Chinese companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi.

Patent cases such as the one we refer to in our previous posting have played a decisive role in promoting such monopolies by skewing markets and destroying legitimate competition in various technological market segments.

Samsung May Appeal Patent Infringement Case to the U.S. Supreme Court

Will Samsung appeal the big patent infringement case involving Apple to the U.S. Supreme Court?

Don Reisinger has the story for Fortune at Samsung Will Pay $548M to Apple for Alleged Patent Infringement writing:
"The $548 million in damages was finally decided by the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year. In August, Samsung’s petition to the court for a new trial was struck down. The decision left Samsung with two options: pay up and move on or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court."
Take a look at Reisinger's article for more details.

We hope the case is appealed.

Anything that the Federal Circuit has decided has a great likelihood of being flawed to the core, especially in the area of the validity of tech patents.

Moreover, the standards applied for the granting of damages in these kinds of patent-trolling cases are ridiculous.

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