I suggested the funnel landing previously. You really wouldn't want to spin it.

I'm pretty sure the problem at that point would be thermal damage to the vehicle. You could perhaps do this on land, and of course you'd probably want fresh water as a coolant and noise suppression, same as the shuttle used to suppress acoustic energy reflected from the pad to prevent it damaging the shuttle. The shuttle usually went through about 1/3 million gallons of water per launch. Of course with the rocket exhause itself, that produced a lot of HCl, and you probably wouldn't want to sit your engines in that, any more than in the ocean.

It's probably be better if they just had flip-down feet to widen the base of the cone ( the falling over was always a result of the center of mass being outside the interior circle of the cone, as described by the landing base -- or it wouldn't have fallen.

The other suggestion would be a big-ass electromagnet to lock the base components into place as it currently exists, but getting power out to the platform for that might be problematic. Maybe they could use a bunch of Tesla batteries, since it's only have to hold until you could mechanically latch the landing legs down.

If we actually had a competitive ISP market, where I could choose between, say, a hundred different providers at my residential address, then perhaps allowing the ISPs to compete in such a manner as you describe would make sense. As it is, we have 1-2 ISPs, and generally poor competition. Once one of the ISPs decides to pull prioritization shenanigans, then we the consumer is powerless to do anything about it. The only vote we have with our wallet is to forego an internet connection completely.

Split seam the fuel tank, then swing out and rotate the elements and create a massive autogyro

Why am I not convinced your way sounds like the "easy way"?

I can't event think of the mechanical stresses involved in opening this thing up to spin it around.

In fact, it sounds outright crazy.

And that's before we start considering a fuel tank designed to open up. Because, what could possibly go wrong there?

Moreover, "designed for security" is just a meaningless marketing term. It's a catch phrase, but it doesn't actually mean much, apparently.

You can't just say "I'm making the most secure thing evar" and have that mean anything unless you've spent a LOT of time and effort making it so. You can't just throw something together and think you've made something secure.

And if you make this big bold claim, and then trip on your own dicks, you look like idiots.

My general rule would be to treat a claim like "designed for security" as at best puffery, and at worst a dangerous lie designed to make your product look good. But I sure as heck would't treat it as an indication of actual security.

It was supposed to change the world, but it didn't.

But, I was in a busy downtown once and saw an older gentleman with only one leg riding on a Segway ... I bet for him, the Segway was no joke.

Well, that's why we have Poe's Law.

Weeding out the funny-stupid from the actual-stupid can be a full time job, so people don't bother. ;-)

I agree you should have the right to believe any bat-shit crazy thing you choose. That is your right.

I disagree that simply proclaiming this should entitle you to a tax-free status.

Unless, of course, we're all free to say we believe in any random thing as our religion and are therefore entitled to tax-free status.

We at the Church of the Big Titties are an inclusive group, and do not discriminate on the basis of actually possessing any.

We are a community founded on the appreciation of breasts of all shape and size (despite our name) ... we have but three commandments, "thou shalt not touch the titties of anyone without their consent", and except during the "Sacraments of the Holy Wet T-Shirt" or other appropriate contexts "thou shall endeavor to maintain normal eye contact with the owner of the boobies", and finally "thou shalt not discriminate on the basis of someone having (or not having) titties".

We ask only a small donation to assist in our administrative overhead (purchasing of the Blessed Beer).

If you wish information about establishing a local parish or ordination we offer very reasonable rates. Although, we would in no means infringe on someone else's right to participate in their own form of the Admiring of the Boobies, as we feel that would be contrary to our message.

Well, given that one of the linked articles on NVidia's firmware signing is now 7 months old (September 2014), it's not getting worse all that quickly, it's just that the people who were complaining about it before are complaining about it again. And as they point out, there's a perfectly fine proprietary driver; they just don't like those drivers. The problem, of course, being that the Open Source driver can't legally use the Sorenson CODECs, or the MPEG-LA patent pool without violating the law in many countries.

An MIT spokesman says the new tool is really just a way for geeky friends to mess with each other

Honestly, if there's a better reason to write a piece of software, I can't think of it. :-P

Well, today you can also learn that Bill Paxton is not credited with being in Independence Day, because he was not in it.

So, it is a completely true statement to say "Will Smith was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton..."

Well, if we have an article about how a company went under because IT failed to deliver, you can trot this out again.

But, in the context of a company which failed because of ever-changing customer requirements which apparently do not allow for demanding more money ... I'm going to stick with assuming the people who signed the contract were idiots who sold the farm and signed a one-sided contract which sank the company.

So, yes, bad thing happen all the time. But they're not all relevant to this particular scenario.

Natural disasters also exist. They, too, have nothing to do with this.

This sounds like an exceedingly shaky definition.

Charitable work makes you a religion? Is that codified somewhere? Is charitable work sufficient to make you a religion? Or just a subset of things which in some squishy way will?

If I have a foodbank am I a religion? Are the Shriners a religion because they make hospitals? Is McDonald's a religion because it has those Ronald McDonald houses?

I'm not sure I'd want you anywhere near a legislative job if you think charitable work automatically makes you a religion.

Honestly, I think "lack of charity" is the least of their problems:

On the subject of Scientology's status as a religion, the German government has pointed to a 1995 decision by the Federal Labor Court of Germany.[13] That court, noting Hubbard's instruction that Scientologists should "make money, make more money -- make other people produce so as to make more money", came to the conclusion that "Scientology purports to be a 'church' merely as a cover to pursue its economic interests".[13] In the same decision, the court also found that Scientology uses "inhuman and totalitarian practices".[13] Given the lessons of Germany's 20th-century history, in which the country came to be dominated by a fascist movement that started from similarly small beginnings, Germany is very wary of any ideological movement that might appear to be seeking a position of absolute power.[13][14][15] References in Scientology writings to the elimination of "parasites" and "antisocial" people who stand in the way of progress towards Scientology's utopian world "without insanity, without criminals and without war" evoke uncomfortable parallels with Nazism, and have led to Scientology being classified as an "extremist political movement".[17]

So, they operate as a business, and want to eliminate people who disagree with them.

Sorry, but no. It's way more than simply not giving back to the community.

Why oh why would you put the parsing of HTTP at the kernel level?

Why does Microsoft consistently fail to understand that if you make something inherent to the OS it becomes a bigger security risk?

This just makes no sense to me, no more than embedding IE so deeply into the OS they said they couldn't remove it.

This is the kind of stuff which needs to be in userspace, not the friggin OS.