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Comment Re:Stronger regs ? Try a better radar (Score 1) 236

Simple. A radio controlled quad copter would have about the same RCS as a bird and fly at about the same speed. To burn out the electronics you would put just about everyone around the Whitehouse in danger of being hurt. If it was a weaponized rc quadcopter you could blow it up over innocent people if it had not crossed the fence.
In other words too many false positives as far as the frying the electronics too much risk of collateral damage. The amount of power to fry a quadcopter would be high enough to do some real harm to people.

Comment Re:The solution is obvious (Score 1) 579

XP was still for sale 24 months ago. People should not count support from launch but from end of sales IMHO.
It is the phone vendors and carriers that are not updating devices. It like blaming Linux for not updating a router that you rent from a cable company.
Google can not update those devices

Comment Re:Urban legend? (Score 1) 313

Actually in 1957 an all out nuclear war with the USSR would not have a Doomsday for the US.
The USSR had no effective way to deliver nuclear weapons to most of the US. The SS-6 rocket took days to launch and they only had like 6 of them. Their bombers lacked the range to hit many US targets in the South and the US actually had SAMs and fighters that defended major US cities.
Add that they would have had to fly over Canada as well to hit US targets and most would not make it. Did I mention that a lot of US interceptors carried nuclear armed air to air missiles?
So New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and maybe Washington DC might have been hit but Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Jacksonville, Atlanta, and many others would have been fine.
Today things are very different but at that time number of targets that USSR could hit in the US was very limited and we would have hours of warning.
Europe, Japan, and Korea would have been a much different story.

Comment Re:Quadcopter (Score 2) 146

Ahhh... No
From the Wikipedia
"In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on several lines of the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people, severely injuring 50 and causing temporary vision problems for nearly 1,000 others."
And yes that was without an effective dispersal system.
Yes sparky, terrorists have created chemical weapons and used them to kill and injure a lot of people.

Comment Re:Is someone looking for a job? (Score 1) 80

Boeing and Lockheed have been in the launch business for decades and have a proven track record.
SpaceX does not have a heavy launch system yet and a very short track record.
The Military wanted one supplier for all launches to get bulk pricing and SpaceX can not offer that yet.
As to the support they get... Yep if you have jobs in the district your Congress people will fight for you because it means votes party does not really matter.
Frankly that is their job. To help the people that voted for them.

Comment Re:What's the problem? (Score 1) 146

Actually a plane like the Telemaster would be better than a jet. Paint it grey so it blends in and if possible use an electric motor.
It would fly too low and too slow to be shot down. I do not think that they would use SAMs to attack a model aircraft at 100ft over a city since you would probably kill more people from the sam blast than the plane.
At this point I will stop since I do not want to give anyone ideas but I would not use such an aircraft to attack the WH.

Comment Re:Quadcopter (Score 1) 146

I am not afraid of it. Mustard gas was developed during WWI. Nerve gas during WWII.
Sarin has been made by terrorists and used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

I am not afraid of a chemical weapon drone attack because the payload is so low. But why say something that has happened can never happen? Frankly I wonder just how long it will be before some other wack job pulls of a chemical weapons attack. I doubt that it will be any worse than some of the regular bombs in death toll and again I am not going to live in terror waiting for it but to say it is too hard to happen is just wrong.

Comment Re:What's the problem? (Score 1) 146

http://www.hobbyexpress.com/12...

Can carry several pounds of payload. Of course it would probably be pretty noticeable
As too shooting it down? That may cause more damage than the plane would.

I really wish people would stop using drones for most of these. They are simply RC Aircraft that have been around since the 1940s. Nothing really new or scary.

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