Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Airport

Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by smoyer on Sunday April 17, 2016 @03:23PM (#11515858)

It used to be that incidents like these would be reported as UFOs. I wonder if someone had advanced drone technology 50 (ish) years ago? Or are some of the current "sightings" UFOs but there's now a plausible explanation (drones). The most curious report is the drone with the "balloon-like center" - might this have been reported as a weather balloon in the past?

Note: I'm using the term UFO as it's original acronym and don't mean to imply they're flown by the proverbial little green men.

EDIT: I'm using the term "little green men" in the gender neutral form and am not intentionally impuning the flying capabilities of little green women.

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by VLM on Sunday April 17, 2016 @05:53PM (#11516500)

I think its more interesting that UFO reports from 50 yrs ago never included drone size deployments, therefore the reports from 50 yrs ago are quite likely inaccurate, unless the visitors to Earth were somehow limited to pre-2010-ish era technology.

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by 13of40 on Sunday April 17, 2016 @08:28PM (#11517016)

Kind of like the mystery airships that were plaguing us at the end of the 19th century? But I think the OP was talking more about normal, mortal, earthbound humans having some garage-built technology that got classified as UFOs. Those would necessarily have to be made with the technology of the day.

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by ubernostrum on Sunday April 17, 2016 @08:23PM (#11517002)

It's also interesting how many of them reported exactly the same "saucer" as the original publicized sighting, despite that sighting not necessarily involving a saucer shape!

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[dead]

Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by smoyer on Sunday April 17, 2016 @04:54PM (#11516264)

I'm glad you read the EDIT with the humor that was intended ... and in regards to speciesism, I wonder how the dolphins would feel [1].

I'm from the US where we've used the male pronouns as gender neutral for a long time but I'm really getting tired of arguments over gender, arguments over race, arguments over class. I've been thinking that it would be wonderful if we could ignore our differences, accept each other and simply refer to ourselves and our species as "us". (I know we're a long way from that now, but it's Sunday so I can do some dreaming).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by transman on Sunday April 17, 2016 @07:07PM (#11516768)

>I know we're a long way from that now, but it's Sunday so I can do some dreaming.

I have that same dream regularly! I'm old enough to have seen some progress, and I look forward to seeing even more before I'm done. To that end, I think it's vital to be able to have respectful dialogue and a little humor from time to time.

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by MichaelGG on Sunday April 17, 2016 @06:10PM (#11516575)

Isn't "whore" gender neutral?

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by threeseed on Sunday April 17, 2016 @07:30PM (#11516858)

No. Hence the term "man whore" was invented as the male equivalent. Plus you can always get a good idea of how regular young people define a term:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whore

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by transman on Sunday April 17, 2016 @07:00PM (#11516750)

I'm old enough that when I learned what "whore" meant it was only in reference to a female prostitute. "Gigolo" was the term for a male who had sex for money, but it's never had the same negative connotation as whore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by PhasmaFelis on Sunday April 17, 2016 @06:53PM (#11516720)

Sort of. You might see a headline that says "CONGRESSMAN CAUGHT WITH MALE PROSTITUTE", but never "CONGRESSMAN CAUGHT WITH FEMALE PROSTITUTE"--it's one of those concepts that is understood to be female by default.

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by jspiral on Sunday April 17, 2016 @11:07PM (#11517492)

I'm trying to think which gender i'd guess if I read: CONGRESSWOMAN CAUGHT WITH PROSTITUTE.

I honestly think i'd guess male prostitute.

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by DiabloD3 on Sunday April 17, 2016 @06:23PM (#11516628)

Yes, but it is insulting to the non-whores. Its also insulting to non-people. We need a gender neutral, species neutral, personhood neutral word to describe "corporate whores".

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Re:Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Air... by MikeNomad on Monday April 18, 2016 @12:49AM (#11517784)

Corpratists.

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