Jeff Bezos and the drone delivery thing -- he needs to thank the Chinese for the idea

Plot Device

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Yeah, Jeff. The Chinese. (Video included in link from the South China Morning Post.)

http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insi...ompany-develops-drones-which-can-fly-packages

Chinese delivery company develops drones which can fly packages to your doorstep

by Jerry Blum -- Tuesday, 03 September, 2013

A Chinese delivery company is experimenting with a new style of service, and has begun developing air drones that may one day be able to bring packages across long distances and reach remote areas.

... Each drone is outfitted with eight propellers, comes complete with a space where packages can be inserted and can reach a flight altitude of about 100 metres.

... the drones were developed as a potential solution for delivery to remote areas .... all come with built-in navigation systems that only require input of address and flight path. Staff controlling the drones will be able to monitor the drone’s movements and correct each machine’s position within two metres....
 

cornflake

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Plot Device

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Are you suggesting he got the idea from a random article in September and has the video and stuff up now? That seems unlikely. It's hardly a completely bizarre idea that no one would have - he's in the business of delivering crap as fast as possible.


No! :)

Just that it wasn't his solo idea. Not his Eureka! thing. It's being done elsewhere. I'll bet not just by the Chinese either. But the current prevailing assumption around the whole buzz of these past 3 or 4 days is that he's the brainchild.
 

Don

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Yeah, but the Chinese got the idea from us. But instead of delivering bombs, they had the clever idea to actually deliver something of benefit to the recipient.

People who decry the loss of "American Exceptionalism" need to take a look at what America has been excelling at since 2001. Death and destruction are not the best way to deliver innovation, IMO.
 

regdog

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Just what I don't want, 25,000 drones flying around. What could possibly go wrong with something like that :rolleyes:
 

Don

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Just what I don't want, 25,000 drones flying around. What could possibly go wrong with something like that :rolleyes:
I wouldn't worry about it too much. By the time the regulators get done, their use will be restricted to governmental agencies, so you'll only have to worry about the 20,000 drones used for noble purposes like catching fugitive criminals, detecting and fighting fires, finding dumb people who get lost in the wilderness, sniffing out meth labs, detecting marijuana patches from the air, catching poachers, creating aerial speed traps, and amusing the operators by spying on scantily-clad women in their own back yards. And they may be expensive as hell, but well, that's what tax dollars are for, right?

And think how handy these devices will be in the case of another Ruby Ridge or Waco.

Finally, of course, we know that as long as they're operated by our public servants, they will never fail, bringing death and destruction from the air.

Accidentally at least.
 

Kaiser-Kun

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This might be the future. Maybe in a hundred years every city will have one of these wacky gizmos.
 

robjvargas

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Man! If this came to fruition and I was a kids with a BB gun... Oh, what fun could be had blasting those things out if the air!

BB Gun?

There's cities in Colorado pondering bounties for shooting down drones.

'Course, they're thinking about FedGov drones. But who's counting?
 

Kaiser-Kun

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Only one??

Well yeah. We've got plenty of delivery boys and I think the operator got some new pneumatic tubes.

A new form of theft: shooting down drones and stealing their cargo.

Drone piracy! :roll:

Pfft, I'm gonna buy my own drones, paint jolly rogers and equip tiny potato peel cannons on them, and shoot down enemy drones to loot them.
 

Plot Device

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Pfft, I'm gonna buy my own drones, paint jolly rogers and equip tiny potato peel cannons on them, and shoot down enemy drones to loot them.


Pfft. Potato EYES work much better than PEELS.

(The peels are merely long strings of laser beams while the eyes are photon torpedoes.)
 

Roxxsmom

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I'm thinking this was more a publicity stunt than anything else. I can think of a million reason that autopiloted whirling blades o' death aren't going to be really practical in most suburban areas for quite some time.

I can see the customer service calls now--Your octocopter took out my phone lines and decapitated my dog!

Though the notion of dogfights between competing delivery drones is amusing, it seems like putting stuff in a large truck and driving along routes is still a more efficient use of fuel than delivering one book or small item at a time.
 
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Kaiser-Kun

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Though the notion of dogfights between competing delivery drones is amusing, it seems like putting stuff in a large truck and driving along routes is still a more efficient use of fuel than delivering one book or small item at a time.

Maybe they just send a huge ass drone and drop the packages along the route in adorable little parachutes.
 

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No! :)

Just that it wasn't his solo idea. Not his Eureka! thing. It's being done elsewhere. I'll bet not just by the Chinese either. But the current prevailing assumption around the whole buzz of these past 3 or 4 days is that he's the brainchild.

Shocking! And I suppose next you're gonna tell me that Edison wasn't the only guy inventing light bulbs and Bell wasn't the only guy inventing the telephone.

;)
 

William Haskins

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instead of thanking them, bezos should just invest tens, or hundreds, of millions of dollars in a hollywood blockbuster about his drone delivery program.

then china could bootleg it and, ultimately knock it off, and rake in the yuan.
 

Torgo

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I'm thinking this was more a publicity stunt than anything else. I can think of a million reason that autopiloted whirling blades o' death aren't going to be really practical in most suburban areas for quite some time.

Yeah, it's nonsense. But they did get us all joking about Amazon on Cyber Monday, so hats off to their marketing team.

I think my favourite joke was Seanbaby on Twitter: "I think a lot of 10-year-olds will realize grabbing hold of an Amazon delivery drone will fly them away to a warehouse filled with toys." To which the reply: "that’s how amazon restocks on workers".

Waterstones also had an amusing response.