AMAZON UNVEILS DRONE DELIVERY SYSTEM ON 60 MINUTES

One month after its quickly discredited report on the Benghazi attack made it the most-talked-about show on TV for all the wrong reasons, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired a report on Amazon’s plans to launch a “drone” delivery system that made it the most-talked-about show for all the right ones. In an interview, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos described how the company intends to assemble a fleet of tiny helicopters that can pluck packages of up to five pounds off a conveyor belt at Amazon’s distribution centers and then follow GPS signals to their delivery destinations. Bezos said he expects the drones to be able to drop off items ordered via Amazon Prime Air within a half-hour after they are ordered. “I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not,” he said. While Bezos estimated that the delivery service would be up and running within four to five years, a video posted on the Amazon website on Sunday said that it’s expected to become a reality in 2015. “The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood,” Bezos said in the 60 Minutes interview.