Sorry. Misread something somewhere along the line.

Yes, even if it is in a geostationary orbit. Spacecraft orientation is independent of orbital position. If you point the thing at Vega, it will remain pointed at Vega throughout its orbit unless acted upon by some force. That's the law of conservation of angular momentum.

Stick the sensor on a boom, like the picture shows. Problem solved.

The detector is not going to be on Earth. The detector is going to be "tens to hundreds of miles" from the disk.

Why does it need to be geostationary? Hubble certainly isn't.

It's a space-based telescope. They're not aiming it at the Earth, so it doesn't need to be geostationary. In fact, it doesn't even need to be in Earth orbit.

Why not? It's in space, not on Earth. It can be oriented in any direction and remain stationary for observations. The big issue with a disk that large is going to be solar wind.

I see your M-1 Tank and raise you asymmetrical warfare.

The out-gunned side takes more casualties but always wins in the end...

No joke, the US Army has plans for "if we have to invade Canada."

I'm eagerly awaiting the inclusion of WebKit in systemd.

Which is why I use a Nexus phone. It's the reference hardware. Even if you have the AT&T branded Nexus 6, it's unlockable and rootable, while on contract. I don't understand the point of buying a non-Google Android device.

I've looked at them, and I just never saw anything that made me think "that's clearly so much better and cheaper than the Google device that I should be reliant on the manufacturer and carrier to support it."

And testing for Android app development is a nightmare. "My new app works great in the emulator built into Android Studio! So I'm sure that means it'll work perfectly on 200 different devices all running different versions of customized OSes!"

So you're saying that The Man got wise to the tinfoil loophole, had it pulled from shelves, and replaced it with aluminum foil, and for those who didn't notice the difference their source of protection now makes them more susceptible to attack! The Man is truly diabolical.

And there's no "grown-up" alternative. Back in the day you didn't run Windows 95 - ME at the office. You used NT.

If they'd made a vanilla, office-friendly version of Windows 8 called "Windows 8 NT" or whatever else, that kept the same interface as 7, they might convince some corporate IT departments to upgrade. But when you've got a staff of 10,000 plus, and you're looking at rolling out a new OS with a completely different interface, at the minimum you're taking a huge productivity hit while people figure this new thing out, and at worst you're springing for new training.

I can only imagine how many billions of dollars in productivity were lost when they switched to the Ribbon in Office. It's as if millions of voices suddenly cried out "where's the edit menu?" and were suddenly confused...

Particularly when they're all the same thing, with no sense of order. At least Android goes up a letter each time, so you know "KitKat" comes before "Lollipop."

But OS X and the cats? Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, fucking Ocelot whatever. All that shit means is I have to go lookup the fucking 10.x number so I know if it'll run on my wife's computer.