They don't have nearly as much to offer if they can't do launches quickly. I'm sure they would make that a feature of their offering.

They can carry about 110kg to LEO, compared to the Falcon 9's 13150kg. That's 0.84% of the payload capacity. A launch is estimated to cost $4 900 000, compared to the Falcon 9's $61 200 000. That's 8.01%. That means cost per mass to orbit is nearly an order of magnitude worse.

Yes, this is a really small rocket. If you are a government or some other entity that needs to put something small in orbit right away, the USD$5 Million price might not deter you, even though you could potentially launch a lot of small satellites on a Falcon 9 for less.

And it's a missile affordable by most small countries, if your payload can handle the re-entry on its own. Uh-oh. :-)

Maybe this will change your mind...

http://gyroaccidents.blogspot....

Sure, but that doesn't mean that he's free to use those tools in an operational aircraft.

He can of course mess with an aircraft with the permission of the owner on the ground. Legally he probably can't mess with any aircraft in the air, since that would be a violation of its type certificate (it was certified with one set of software, and he introducing another).

Every other instance before or after 9/11? A lot of attitudes changed after 9/11.

However, this wasn't a commercial flight. In general small aircraft can go from anywhere to anywhere and nobody takes notice. The exception is controlled interface and ADIZs, and the SFRA around DC is even more of an exception. Any aircraft that enters that airspace is subject to interception, or possibly even being shot down.

Google really needs to split Play Services.

I get that they want to make the framework updateable without a full OS update. I think that is a great idea. They should make an "Android Frameworks" app and release it as open source. Mandate that it be pre-installed on any device that passes their QA, and recommend that everybody else use it as well. Why wouldn't they - it is FOSS and just makes the device better.

Then limit Play Services to, well, Play Services. It might handle authentication to your Google Account, verify that paid apps are legit, and so on. If you remove it then you might not be able to use your Google account with the device, or use the Play Store, but otherwise Android works just fine. This can be proprietary.

Honestly, though, I'd actually like the Google Account stuff to be FOSS. I should be able to sign into my own server and have contacts/etc sync and backups and all that. It is great that you don't HAVE to use Google's services, but it would be better if you also had the option of rolling your own.

From my experience with regulators from several countries, they tend to not sweat the small stuff until it is obvious that you aren't paying attention to the big stuff. Then they go through everything with a fine-toothed comb and throw the book at you.

The guy flew into the DC SFRA. If the FAA doesn't ruin his life, then everybody and their uncle will be doing it, and then they don't really have a buffer zone in which to shoot down aircraft that are potentially threatening.

The fuel tank issue is a bit like citing somebody for worn wipers in a vehicular homicide investigation. They're just padding the charges.

Agree. Can you imagine how much noise those addresses get?

This is a bit like explaining to the IRS that it shouldn't have been a problem that you filed your taxes late, because you told the postal delivery agent that you were running a few days behind when he was dropping off a package.

You can't legally fly within 60nm of the center of DC without taking an online training course. If you want to fly to an airport right on the edge of the restricted area it is probably complicated, but for the most part you just need to stay outside of a certain distance and you're fine. If I were operating anywhere near that area i'd probably request flight following as well - then you're broadcasting a transponder code and talking to somebody who can tell you you're wandering towards trouble before they are scrambling jets.

Obviously flying IFR is the simplest solution. ATC tells you where to go and you follow the route and you're fine.

But, if you're just buzzing around sightseeing over the white house, then sure, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. They actually have lasers to illuminate aircraft to try to warn them off, so that shooting them down isn't their only recourse.

Yeah, badly. I mean, they only presold 1,000,000 of them with an average price of around $400. That's $400,000,000 in one single day.

This is version 1.0, which in the open source world would really be version 0.8 or so. It's a beta. Totally new product for Apple, and the people who are lining up to buy them know this.

Give it a few versions and it'll likely be faster and have longer battery life, as well as some very reasonable native apps.

Currently the application are hosted remotely on the I-Phone. Apple has promised that the will release a native api in the near future. What they are seeing right now are NOT native apps.

Fwiw I love the new maps. The new map updates itself as you search and lot more of the screen is used by the map. Plus it's got a version of Google earth that loads instantly which is pretty nice. But people who like the new thing rarely yell about it.

Microminiature accelerometers are really cheap and very very light, and you don't have to wait for them to spin up or deal with their mechanical issues. I doubt you will see a gyro used as a sensor any longer.

Similarly, computers make good active stabilization possible and steering your engine to stabilize is a lot lighter than having to add a big rotating mass.

When you last flew a jet somewhere, why wasn't it a seaplane? Surely such things would be an easier problem to solve than building airports.

Short of giving you the starter course in rocket engineering, I can only say no, it's not easier.

Aah, I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's everyone had a boner for microkernels. IBM even gave it a try, attempting to port OS/2 over to a microkernel so they could run it on Intel and PowerPC platforms. At one point, IBM's strategy was that they were going to build OS/2 around a microkernal and then just run THAT on all their hardware, with multi-user and security features added or removed as needed. Well, very long story, very long, they never could get it to work.

These days you don't see the same hype around microkernals that you did back then. So we should probably warn the HURD team: If your boner for microkernals lasts more than 25 years, you should probably consult a physician.