I watched their promo video and it shows the airframe structure performing two tasks that seem to be mutually exclusive.

The airframe is a lifting body with a large flat undercarriage. This is the side that absorbs microwave energy, which is somehow transferred to the hydrogen fuel to provides thrust. After achieving orbit and delivering it's payload, the spacecraft deorbits and then the same lifting body surface that absorbed microwave radiation becomes the heat shield for reentry.

So how do you combine the ability to receive a large amount of microwave energy and then turn around and protect the airframe from reentry heat in the same structure? And in addition has the structural integrity to withstand launch and reentry stresses.

Microwaves are not invisible magic. They interact with the matter they encounter. Whatever heat shield material they use, it is going to absorb some of the microwaves that hit the vehicle. Can they keep this amount low enough and also fulfill the other requirements?

At this point there is so little technical detail, and so much marketing hype, that this has to go under the heading of geek fantasy daydreaming. I'm going to ignore this one until they show some real results or publish specific enough information that someone not on their payroll can say that it's feasible.

Drawing a distinction between cybersecurity in the Federal government and cybersecurity in other large organizations is meaningless. The only thing that does is make it easier for any large organization to avoid accountability for their failures.

The US business community has been completely successful in avoiding any regulations on cybersecurity. The US Chamber of Commerce has defeated all attempts to define laws or national standards for computer business security. Instead we have some Presidential decrees that have minimal real world impact.

Since there are no standards, it is impossible to assign any responsibility when data breaches occur. The response consists of cover ups, minimizing the impact of the event, denial of responsibility (the word "unprecedented" is common), rhetoric on helping the victims and not letting it happen in the future. After the public outcry dies down nothing is ever heard about it again. It might as well not have happened. No one is ever fired. No follow ups are made available to anyone outside the organization.

Additionally, those effected by the data leaks are given no support and have no recourse. Being offered free credit monitoring for a year, or even two, is like offering someone with potential HIV exposure a band-aid. The level off effort involved is grossly inadequate. The potential repercussions can happen years later. If the corporation responsible doesn't know how much effect the breach had, how can they decide to come up policies that balance cost and benefits? The reason they do no follow up is because it provides them with iron clad cover from having to pick up the real cost of their failure. It also makes it a certainty it will happen again.

What I just described is exactly happened with the Sony leak. But it could just as easily be the leak that occurred at UCLA in the last couple of weeks, or any leak that made the national headlines in the last 20 years. In fact UCLA was hacked in 2012, so nothing has really changed.

The non-government situation is identical to government cases. The failure modes and responses are identical. This is unsurprising because the organizational issues, technical requirements and talent involved are the same. It is nonsensical to expect that one side of an arbitrary line will have one kind of behavior and the other side will be different. It's just not going to happen.

The other elephant is the room is that a huge percent of the work is not done by the government, but is done by private contractors. That is what happened with the OPM breach. This was reported when the story first came to light, but is now erased from the narrative. That is a part of the cover up. In fact there were two contractor breaches, one at KeyPoint Government Solutions and the other at USIS.

So what is necessary to address the problem? Legislation and regulation that specifically defines standards for data security for both the government and private sector. This has to include severe criminal and financial penalties if data breaches occur. Individuals should be held personally accountable, specifically those at the highest level of the organization. The penalties for failure affecting national security should at the level of treason; life sentences and even the death penalty.

What will actually happen?Nothing. All you need to do is look at Wall Street to see what will happen. The same companies, and even the same people (Jamie Dimon) who were personally responsible for the 2008 crash are doing better then ever, and continue with out and out criminal behavior. So far no one has been charged, much less put on trial. If you assume that your will not be allowed to withhold your personal information from the "business-government complex", it will be leaked, and you will be left completely vulnerable then you understand what is going on.

Well little buddy, the reason that we need an anti-neutrino detector is because Iran is full of bad guys, and like the bad guys in the old westerns they wear bad guy colors, like wearing a black hat. If they were good guys like us they would be wearing a good guy color, like a white hat.

But neutrinos don't have colors since they are leptons. Colors are photonic, and photons are bosons and have different statistics then leptons. Since neutrinos can't have color, the equivalent for bad guy leptons is that they are anti-neutrinos. Good guys have neutrinos, and bad guys have anti-neutrinos. It makes perfect sense once you understand the quantum mechanics involved.

People on Slashdot are always nice and are happy to answer any question you ask. Any time you are confused just ask and people here will be glad to help out. Now fuck off.

You are factually incorrect. Some GMO crops use genetic material from Bacillus thuringiensis which as it's name implies is a bacteria, not a vascular plant.

Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt) is a Gram-positive, soil-dwelling bacterium, commonly used as a biological pesticide. B. thuringiensis also occurs naturally in the gut of caterpillars of various types of moths and butterflies, as well on leaf surfaces, aquatic environments, animal feces, insect-rich environments, and flour mills and grain-storage facilities.

During sporulation, many Bt strains produce crystal proteins (proteinaceous inclusions), called delta-endotoxins, that have insecticidal action. This has led to their use as insecticides, and more recently to genetically modified crops using Bt genes.

It doesn't make any difference how many right wing propaganda sources you quote since they are all incorrect. When you (or they) state flatly "no GMO food that ever makes it to your plate ever has genes from one organism transplanted to another" it not even close to the truth. A simple Wikipedia search is all that it takes to get the facts.

All the cursing and name calling in you rant makes you appear unhinged and delusional. Given that you are spouting lies as well it's obvious that a rational reader would ignore everything you say.

This makes me wonder. Perhaps your family history is unique, but as far as the rest of humanity is concerned Bacillus thuringiensis is not an organism found normally living with other bacteria in our gut. If your assertion is true then maybe you do have Bt genes or are a host to that organism. If so, when did you find out about the moth/butterfly lineage in your family tree. Please share with us the story about how you ancestors interbreed with insects.

Note: In case my response was too well written for you to understand, I will restate it in terms more suited to your limited capabilities: I called you a damn liar, said that anyone with sense should ignore you, and someone in your family tree was a bug fucker. Is that simple enough for you?

You are a good well trained peasant. When the King posts that you are forbidden to tread on his land, you will not trespass even if you are starving. If someone takes your property or you life in the name of the King, you will submit without complaint.

You gave up viewing yourself as a citizen in a democracy a long time ago, and you don't even miss it.

He mistake was assuming that he did not live in a totalitarian society.

In a totalitarian system the common person is always subject to the whims of those in a position of power, no matter how lowly. The individual is supposed to submit to any authority at any time no matter what the circumstance and what the demand. The full power of the state is imposed no matter how minimal the infraction. The only acceptable attitude is abject fear and paranoia. Anything else, like talking back, is immediate grounds for arrest or worse.

This case is only a matter of degree, not a matter of kind. The "community police officer" is in the same business as the religious police in Saudi Arabia or Iran, or authorities in North Korea or Putin's Russia.

The fact that is was done under the guise of a private company shows that this is a fascist regime. If it was done directly because he was "abstracting electricity" from the people then it would be a left wing totalitarian regime. That is the only difference.

What wrong assumption are you making about your society?

I assume you have never been outside the US. We are the exception, not the rule. Generally everyone else in the entire world takes public transportation and lives in multi-unit dwellings.

And guess what: they are not all living miserable live because of that. At least in Europe, their day to day lives are nicer then they are in the US. Not having to get in a car and get stuck in traffic is a GOOD THING. If you don't feel that way, I suggest that you move to LA and get a job that is a three hour commute one way. On a good day.

I'm sure that Siemens/AirBus can drive Pipistrel out of business. I doubt that Pipistrel has deep enough pockets to survive the kind of legal mugging that the big boys could dish out. Plus, Siemens could just refuse to sell them any more motors and that would set them a long ways back.

Welcome to our post capitalistic society. The law and the courts exist primarily to enforce the continued dominance of the entrenched players. Innovation and actual risk/reward capitalism are de facto prohibited activities, and engaging in this behavior is punishable by economic destruction, and possible criminal prosecution.

This seemed amusing, so I thought I would go over and check out the hardware and see what it could do. I wondered if it had any sensors.

Turns out that any technical information is completely buried. They have a whole bunch of cool pix, and lots of stuff they want to sell you, but if you want to find out what it can do then they are silent.

This leads me to the conclusion that it is more likely then not hype and marketing. Anyone who is proud of what they build will make it easy to get the specs and API info. They must figure that they can move a lot of merchandize because ROBOTS!!!

1 Sell it to the parents.

2 Let it sit on the shelf.

3 Profit!

Don't waste you time of this.

Why are you posting on Slashdot when you clearly should be living off the grid in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere. Even better, if you were in a mud hut off the grid we wouldn't have to put up with your drivel.

So if you're such a genius, what have you done recently that's as creative as this? (Sound of crickets...)

Did you bother to look at the video and see how he worked out the gear ratios? With a relatively small number of gears he managed to have a one in the denominator of the ratio equation and at the same time he made the numerator be 11,373,076. A design with those properties doesn't leap off the page the first time you try it. It's really hard.

He said it was compact for the extreme ratio. I'll bet if you tried to do something similar it would be a lot bigger, need a lot more gears, and might not even work. Care to prove me wrong? (Hint: no combination of worm gears comes even close.)

You're just another Slashdot Pundit, living in your parents basement and sneering at people who get stuff done in order to make up for the fact that you're utterly useless. Anyone with a life would never make such a stupid comment.

IBM 7302 Core Memory Unit circa 1957-1958 for the IBM 7030 (Stretch) computer.

The core memory in the IBM 7302 was heated/cooled to stabilize its operating characteristics. Early units immersed the core stack in heated/cooled oil, later units called the IBM 7302A, blew heated/cooled air through the core stack.

I once herd a story from a real old timer about fixing these memories. When they were new there was a problem with small metal particles left over from manufacturing floating around and shorting out the core stacks. In those days IBM field engineers always wore white shirts and a tie. When they had to fix these things, they would take off their tie, but just leave their shirts on and pull the core out with their hands, because they knew that they would get covered in oil no matter what they did.

Don't underestimate the institutional and personal corruption factor. When the government outsources to contractors, there is an automatic revolving door between the government insiders and the contracting firms. The government workers put in their time at the relatively lower pay scale, and when they get out they just end up sitting on the other side of the same table at a much higher salary. Everybody knows how it works, and as long as nobody rocks the boat they get to retire with both a government pension and a second income and retirement plan.

In some areas it moves even faster and nobody waits for retirement. If you want to work on Wall Street with an MBA/law degree and you can't get in, just go work for a government regulator. Four of five years of that under your belt and you end up being hired by the same firms you used to regulate. It's possible that this route will pay as well as going directly to the private sector.

It's not as obvious as working with on project Z in government and then directly going to a contractor who works on Z, although that often happens. It's more that the contractors know they need to hire a certain number of people who have previous government managerial experience if they are going to make a credible bid for the job.

I've seen this in person working for military contractors. To even get considered you need to have retired officers of a certain rank. When it comes to the corporate level, the requirement is having generals on you board of directors, or in management. In one case I saw a general who had a big part in the Iraq war get on the board of directors because the company wanted to go over the billion dollar mark in sales. They were starting to compete with the big boys, and without "contacts" they knew they would never get their. As far as I know it worked.

Remember that during the Iran/Iraq war Saddam Husein's regime used poison gas against Iranian troops and civilian populations.

After Iran sent chemical casualties to several Western nations for treatment, the UN dispatched a team of specialists to the area in 1984, and again in 1986 and 1987, to verify the claims. The conclusion from all three trips was the same: Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. In addition, the second mission stressed that Iraq’s use of chemical weapons appeared to be increasing. The reports indicated that mustard and tabun were the primary agents used, and that they were generally delivered in bombs dropped by airplane. The third mission (the only one allowed to enter Iraq) also reported the use of artillery shells and chemical rockets and the use of chemical weapons against civilian personnel.

How did they get this capability? Countries from all over the world helped them, including the US, France, England, Germany and China.

As part of Project 922, German firms such as Karl Kolb helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. One of the contributions was a £14m chlorine plant known as "Falluja 2", built by Uhde Ltd, a UK subsidiary of a German company; the plant was given financial guarantees by the UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department despite official UK recognition of a "strong possibility" the plant would be used to make mustard gas. The guarantees led to UK government payment of £300,000 to Uhde in 1990 after completion of the plant was interrupted by the first Gulf War. In 1994 and 1996 three people were convicted in Germany of export offenses.

France also provided glass-lined reactors, tanks, vessels, and columns used for the production of chemical weapons. Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon equipment was French. 75,000 shells and rockets designed for chemical weapon use also came from Italy. About 100 tons of mustard gas also came from Brazil. The United States exported $500 million of dual use exports to Iraq that were approved by the Commerce Department. Among them were advanced computers, some of which were used in Iraq’s nuclear program. Austria also provided heat exchangers, tanks, condensers, and columns for the Iraqi chemical weapons infrastructure, 16% of the international sales. Singapore gave 4,515 tons of precursors for VX, sarin, tabun, and mustard gasses to Iraq. The Dutch gave 4,261 tons of precursors for sarin, tabun, mustard, and tear gasses to Iraq. Egypt gave 2,400 tons of tabun and sarin precursors to Iraq and 28,500 tons of weapons designed for carrying chemical munitions. India gave 2,343 tons of precursors to VX, tabun, Sarin, and mustard gasses. Luxembourg gave Iraq 650 tons of mustard gas precursors. Spain gave Iraq 57,500 munitions designed for carrying chemical weapons. In addition, they provided reactors, condensers, columns and tanks for Iraq’s chemical warfare program, 4.4% of the international sales. China provided 45,000 munitions designed for chemical warfare.

So given this history, is it irrational for Iran to want to get the biggest baddest weapon of mass destruction they can, no matter what the cost? A rational cost analysis is irrelevant under these circumstances.

A significant number of the world's major powers actively supported an attempt to turn their country over to an actual Mad Dictator. Why should they trust anybody? With a nuclear capability they would have a big stick, and to them it is obvious this is desirable. "Axis of evil" is a great propaganda slogan, but even though it gets the votes out in middle America and is great for funding the military/industrial complex, it must sound incredibly hypocritical in a country where "roughly 5% of the Iranian casualties were caused by chemical weapons".