Re: High-speed, point-end-down rocket landing has been a thing since the V2.
The Chinese perfected that centuries before the Germans.
Posts by Chemical Bob
613 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Mar 2016
Jeff Bezos' thrusting cylinder makes Elon Musk's look minuscule
Microsoft leads group pelting 'heavy duty' robot maker with $10.5m
Gun-jumping French pols demand rapid end to English in EU
Lexus cars suffer Purple Screen of Death – code bug turns the air blue
McDonald's says bigger fonts cooked up improved profits
Tinder bans under-18s: Moral panic averted
Thursday 9th June 2016 21:13 GMT
Re: Why is 18 improbably old?
" I would rather limit sexual relations and mariages for everyone to age +/- 10 %."
Wow. Just wow. You make the tight-assed Puritans look loose. My first marriage was to a woman only 70% of my age, my second to a woman only 76% my age. Neither of them would hit the -10% threshold until I am about 90 years old, at that age I'll be lucky to poop.
Oooooklahoma! Where the cops can stop and empty your bank cards – on just a hunch
Not-so Secret Rulers of the World gather to talk cybersecurity, AI and, er, TalkTalk?
Bill Gates cooks up poultry recipe for Africans' paltry existence
Pepper robot acts like real teenager, gets job at Pizza Hut
Former Sun CEO Scott McNealy has data on 1/14th of humanity
Next-gen Tor to use distributed RNG, 55-character addresses
Safety, pah! Digital Dukes of Hazzard have robot cars powersliding
Guccifer fesses up to Clinton hacks
Hate Windows 10? Microsoft's given you 'Insider' powers anyway
Blighty's Virgin Queen threatened with foreign abduction
Being an IT trainer is like performing the bullet-catching trick
Airbus to build plane that's even uglier than the A380
GM crops are good for you and the planet, reckon boffins
Thursday 19th May 2016 08:33 GMT
Re: Gene escape
"What is the difference between "releasing" artificially modified genes into the environment, and releasing what you presumably would call "naturally" modified genes as has been done for thousands of years by selective breeding?"
Because when you selectively breed dogs, for example, you only end up with dogs that have dog genes. GM crops can contain genetic material from anything. Most of the GM crops available today have had genetic material from various strains of bacteria spliced into them and there is a real possibility of unintended side effects. The most common GM foods are the Roundup Ready ones from Monsanto, Roundup Ready weeds showed up within 6 years of introducing Roundup Ready crops. Monsanto's response was to tell farmers to use *more* Roundup, raising Monsanto's profits and reducing farmer's profits and putting more glyphosate in the human diet. While the human digestive organs do not process glyphosate, our gut flora do and early indications are that our gut flora is damaged by glyphosate. Medical science is only beginning to understand the link between gut flora health and human health (looks like healthy gut flora = healthy human). Also, in spite of the claims of increased yields, farmers are actually reporting lower yields than conventional crops.
In other words, we have weird science making unnatural changes to our food supply that maximizes BigChem's profits, harms farmer's profits and harms our health.
Wednesday 18th May 2016 20:36 GMT
Re: When electricity was first introduced....
"The whole problem could be solved completely fairly by the Americans simply not objecting to GM foods being labelled as such."
Actually, we Americans do not object to labeling GM foods (at least 90% of us want to know what is in our food). What we object to is the unholy alliance of business interests making it illegal (through their bought and paid for congresscritters) to require GM foods to be labeled.
CONFIRMED: Google bakes custom data centre chips
You wanted innovation? We gave you Clippy the Paperclip in your IM client
Vostochny cosmodrome caught on Soyuz rocketcam
Catz: Google's Android hurt Oracle's Java business
Smartmobes in spaaace: NASA deploys Android nanosats
Dark net LinkedIn sale looks like the real deal
Adpocalypse 'will wipe out display ad growth' by 2020
Art heist 'pranksters' sent down for six months
ZFS comes to Debian, thanks to licensing workaround
Linus Torvalds releases Linux 4.6
Microsoft boots fake fix-it search ads
Ooh missus, get a grip on my notifications
Friday 13th May 2016 20:11 GMT
I have fun with texts sent to the wrong number
Where I live we have four area codes for seven counties, people are always sending texts to the right-number-but-wrong-area-code. Couple of weeks ago got one that said:
"Drove by your cottage yesterday. Lookin great!"
To which I replied:
"Not anymore. Sold it to an Indian named Timmy."
Once had a woman convinced that I stole her friends phone when I told her I wasn't who she thought I was. She called me all sorts of horrible things, assured me of the legal hell I was in for and asked if I stole the phone myself or bought it from the person who did. I told her the phone was provided by my employer and that Verizon assigned the number so she'd have to take it up with them. She then called me an asshole and never spoke to me again. Sort of like most of my relationships with women, really.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
