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.

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.

That's vastly different than giving the state the authority to destroy religions it disagrees with.

Honestly, Scientology is a religion founded by a science fiction writer who famously said "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."

They use some unscientific piece of equipment to measure people and tell them about the concentration of aliens or somesuch, and then charge them to fix the issue -- and apparently keep charging them. I'm also fairly certain the medical community doesn't recognize Dianetics as being anything other than gibberish.

Sorry, but it's awfully hard to take it seriously as a religion ... it has about as much credibility as being a Jedi or a Pastafarian.

So, what exactly is our threshold for saying "sure, your wacky religion can have tax exempt status"? Because my "Church of the Big Titties" could definitely use some tax free status if we're just handing it out like that, that way we can have more "Sacraments of the Holy Wet T-Shirt" while imbibing "The Blessed Beer".

You're kvetching about giving the state the authority to destroy religions it disagrees with, I have yet to see why we should acknowledge it as actually being a religion.

Can I just make up any old crap and call it a religion? Or are there rules about it? Clearly logical consistency or proof aren't required.

And it's also a situation in which you can get completely and utterly fucked by the people in suits who work in sales.

Many of us have seen what happens when that oily salesguy you'd like to to kick sells something which is complete fiction, and that it is now someone else's problem. His check clears, he gets a new car and a vacation, and everyone else is stuck building a fucking unicorn.

Sometimes, in small companies or with overly greedy salespeople they can sell the farm for a couple of magic beans.

And then no amount of effort is going to make it possible to keep up with an unrealistic client with a gold-plated sales contract which doesn't impose penalties for them failing to stick with a coherent design.

Sometimes, it is the suits who get you into this kind of trouble, and then they double down until there's nothing left.

when building physical products we can't always afford to build and test new physical hardware for it to then crash and burn, so how can we have unit tests for hardware or test in a virtual setting?

Isn't there software which allows you to simulate real machines in software? Adobe Inventor or something?

Has anybody made an open source version of something like this?

If you could just continuously integrate this kind of stuff with your designs to simulate the actual mechanics, you could "build" it without making the physical device each time.

I honestly know little about this space, but I'm sure I've seen some demos of software which lets people build the device virtually and make sure there's no issues.

It is when I play it. ;-)