We all know war is hell. We know using weapons to attack people creates horrific, real human harm. So starting off listing the effects of weaponry on humans tells us nothing about drones. It just tells us about the horrors of war. Given this is an article about drones it should be very drone specific. Do drones increase or decrease the inevitable horrors of war? I suspect they decrease it with smaller more targeted bombs vs prior more traditional larger bombs. Today if we make a mistake we bomb the wrong home and kill everyone. 25 years ago we bombed the entire village. Maybe they increase it because we're carrying out a lot more sorties than we did prior when a jet and a pilot were needed/at risk. However, I'm not sure and this article goes nowhere close to helping with the discussion.

"The view is so pixelated it makes decisions tough" Can you imagine military people who fight/fought on the ground in real combat and order in strikes reading that? Surrounded by smoke and fire and deafening noise and hoping (or maybe not caring) that the strike they call in hits the right target/s vs all the nearby civilians also hiding and cowering in a village?

The military is aware of the impact on these operators. From a February 20013 article sighting a Defense Department study: “Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.”

Lastly, imagine how you'd feel reading a similar opinion piece on Fox News from a gun ho former operator talking about all the American lives he saved by observing and taking out "the bad guys". What's even better with drones we're not losing American solider lives and dramatically reducing the number of innocent civilians killed vs how we would have approached the same problem just 25 years ago.

War is hell. The issues are complex. Trusted new sources add to the debate. Biased ones feed their viewership what they know they'll eat up and do little, maybe even damage, the search for truth.

In situations like this, one role of government is to regulate these natural monopolies to protect citizens.

One such regulation, for instance, is that the power company cannot shut off your power in the middle of winter in Minnesota without fulfilling some pretty stringent criteria.

1) This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGg1567fzTY (almost posted anonymously). Deal with it :)

2) If you have a family or a partner. Just because you are at home does not mean "can you just put on a wash". Build rules into engaging with the family. You are working. You are not to be disturbed. If you choose to 'come out' of your office and engage with the family then that is your choice. Emergencies are acceptable interruptions ;)

3) Make an office. The kitchen table is not a great space. A spare room, an office in the garden. Some place where you can just be professional. Avoid having the office in your bedroom. You need a room you can lock.

4) Exercise. Seriously this is huge. Too easy to slob out. If you get up and work at 6am, then go to the gym at 9. Do something. Make sure people you work with KNOW this is your routine. Make it a routine. Get out of the house and do something. Do not buy an exercise machine and stay locked in the house. Clear your mind, stay fit, and go out and see the world around you. Don't like Gyms? Go running, swimming or, my favourite, cycling (it clears the mind and you can easily cover 10 miles while solving a difficult problem).

5) Get a dog :) Best decision I ever made. Get's you out and walking. You meet other people and mine keeps my feet warm. Oh and she's very good at solving technical issues. Sounds mad, but sometimes just talking about a problem to her makes it work for me (and makes me look less stupid when I have to discuss the problem with work colleagues).

6) Eat well. You have the time to make great food. Use it. Learn to cook great food.

7) Pomodoro method. Some like it some don't. (I'm not a fan.) I prefer things like coffitivity. If things start going south, try it. It's a decent rule system.

8) Skype. If there is a group of you working together, just skype each other and carry on working.

9) Socialise. Suddenly this is huge. Find local interest groups. Go to meetups. Get involved. You won't realise it, but you can get your head down and 3 months later you haven't seen anyone recently, cos y'know, work. Join clubs. Do stuff. Give yourself a reason to not be working in the evenings.

10) Monthly team days. Once a month get together and have a hackathon. Go get drunk. Be a team.

11) Use trello. I mean REALLY use it. A complicated example here http://community.uservoice.com/blog/trello-google-docs-produ... but build your own work flows that work with your team. Don't be afraid to tear down your process and start again AND most importantly, EVERYBODY buys in. Don't be the only person using a project tool. You will fail.

12) If you end up doing a 16 hour day, recognise you've done two days work. Have a reward. Go see a museum. Have a long lie in. Finish early and go for a ride. See (1) ;).

13) Have fun. Be comfortable in working on your own. Give it 6 months. See how it feels. Don't like it, then move on.

14) I may have mentioned this...exercise. Get out and do some every day. No excuse.

15) Requirements management. It's a pain to do, but clients try and be sneaky. Avoid fixed price unless you KNOW exactly what it is they want. Most don't and even those that do, change their minds. Your fixed price contract MUST include a change in requirements clause and what happens when they do. You will invoke it.

16) If your client is haggling over local sales tax....walk away. Imagine the pain you will go through haggling over signing each feature off.

17) Have payment milestones.

Right must go walk the dog :)

The idea that those police helicopters, which already make me feel like a mouse stuck in an open field surrounded by owls, could be replaced by unmanned drones armed with missiles fills me with abject terror. Not only would I have to worry about myself getting falsely targeted, I'd have to worry about the next door neighbor being falsely targeted.

Now, if the police helicopters were replaced by drones, that would be scary. Imagine if they were replaced by drones operated by another country. Scary times ten. Now it isn't a question of if I'm a criminal, or if I look like a criminal, it's a question of whether or not I'm near enough to someone acting against the national interests of that country.

The abject helplessness of being in the eye of an unmanned drone, the complete and utter impotence of being unable to strike back at it... that is a special kind of terror that the drones bring. We talk about 'terrorism' a lot. Obviously all warefare inspires terror--but what makes an attack a terrorist attack? From the American perspective, 9-11 was a terrorist attack and Pearl Harbor wasn't, even though they both inspired terror. 9-11 inspired terror because there was nothing to fight back against--it was people who were quite demonstrably willing to get killed in order to achieve their objective. In fact their objective was to be killed. Once they died, there was nothing tangible to fight back against. The inexorable nature of that kind of attack inspires a particular fear, and attacks specifically designed to inspire that fear are considered terrorist attacks. Drones are similar--there is literally nothing to fight back against, and their distant, silent nature means the possibility of death is ever-present.

That said, yes. If a platoon of Marines were to attack my house, my death would be as inevitable as my death would be if a drone strike hit my house. And as an American I do live with a particular type of fear, which is that of the DEA and SWAT team escalations. At any point, a no-knock warrant could be incorrectly issued for my house and I could have paramilitary troops attack. And I could get killed because the wrong SWAT officer got startled by the wrong thing (As a follower of statistics I fully understand I'm more likely to die of a heart attack, but we're talking about semi-rational fear--if everyone were a truly rational operator we wouldn't nearly the issues we have now). And that happens frequently in the US and is the sad product of an erosion of due process brought about by a mixture of racial fear and the Drug War (well, the two are often the same thing).

But there's two ways of interpreting the escalation of SWAT raids and the concurrent escalation of incorrect shootings. One is that it's a problem of due process, and needs to be rolled back in frequency. Two is that it's a problem of precision. The second argument is where people start talking about the supposed benefits drones, because they're in theory more precise. There are certainly people trying to argue to the public that a drone strike is highly precise, clinically correct, and technologically accurate. The article is arguing against that. And I would add to the article's argument that the amount of general fear (and therefore hatred of government, and therefore terrorism) inspired by escalation will be increased by drones.

To me, the relative precision of drones vs SWAT or ground troops is beside the point and obfuscates the real reason why populations get radicalized against US policy. Simply put, there is no precision until there has been a trial by jury. Even then precision is in question, which is why there's such an argument about the death penalty. When due process is undermined, the population becomes more alienated from the government, and more individuals become radicalized, and more terrorism happens.

If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed.

Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA?

We need an international ban on armed drones before it is too late.