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One respondent, who is part of a huge US-based industry, has identified an application for this technology that has the potential to save that industry an astonishing sum of money each year.

In fact, it appears that there are a raft of industries out there who are just crying out for a reasonably priced autonomous aerial vehicle that can be set up and used with a minimum of fuss and bother. One great example of how low-cost UAV technology can be put to good use is something as simple as forestry fire-patrol.

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Instead of using fixed lookouts to survey vast areas of plantation forestry, a UAV (or UAVs) can be programmed to fly a pattern over a forest area using infra-red cameras to detect "hot-spots". The craft can operate for many hours at a time, day or night, without the need for constant attention from human operators.

If/when a fire is detected however, the precise location, and pictures of the area can immediately be sent back to a base station and an alarm raised.

Given the size and value of NZ's plantation forestry and the increasing scale/frequency of drought, this may even have local application.

The bottom line is that there are plenty of people out there with immediate applications for this technology and there are also a goodly number of people with the money needed to fund such a venture.

I've given up banging my head against the government's wall of ignorance (or whatever it is) and will most certainly be departing for greener pastures as soon as I'm legally entitled to.

However, if some of the posters to Slashdot are to be believed, I may not live that long. These folk believe that I'll either be assassinated by the Mossad or kidnapped by terrorists and forced to work for them at the point of a gun.

Well I'm sorry to disappoint but I really doubt that my skills or experience would warrant such attention -- but it'd sure make a good extra chapter or two for the book.

And, just for the record, it seems that the webservers I use stood up well to the "onslaught" of traffic that was generated by the links from Slashdot.

In a 48-hour period my interestingprojects.com website experienced around 20,000 visitors (200,000 hits) and served up around 10GB of data.

It is easy to see why sites without sufficient bandwidth or server capacity collapse under the effects of a good Slashdotting!

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

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