Each titanium wall measures nearly a square meter (nearly 9 square feet) in area, about 1 centimeter (a third of an inch) in thickness, and 18 kilograms (40 pounds) in mass.
Not exactly good maths there, so probably a PR piece from a 'journalist'. 9 foot^2 = 0.84 m^2. Could be correct, though I wouldn't use "nearly" for something that far off. And it's impossible to tell if the walls are really 9 foot^2 and they just made a very rough guestimate of the metric equivalent.
1/3 inch = 0.85 cm Again, that could be right. It might be exactly 1/3rd inch and they guestimated that to about 1 cm. But it's still 15% off.
40 lbs = 18.14 kg And then you hit something where the weight is actually correct. But since they've messed up that much on the other two, we now don't know if it's exactly 40 lbs or exactly 18 kg.
Hell, we don't even know if the NASA guys who wrote this are incompetent or not. Well, we know they're incompetent, we even know how much (about 15%).
However, the NASA page seemingly being written by an 8-year-old with a bad understanding of units, doesn't really justify linking to an article that is essentially a copy of NASA's page, and especially not when there is no attribution or links to the original article.
Okay, here's my "benchmark" for a Skype replacement: Must be easy to use: My parents both managed to download, install and create new users in the first attempt - without having to read anything other than the on screen instructions. Must be translated properly: My parents don't speak nor read English at all. They're Danish, and in case you're wondering, that's a language spoken by fewer people than live in New York City. Must work without fail: Again, should be something mom and dad can get up and running, without having to configure anything other than a username and password. Must work on other platforms: Shouldn't matter if you're on Windows, OS X or if your kids set up a Linux machine for you. It should still just work. Must support text, file transfers, audio and video: Just like Skype.
So - your claim was that there were plenty of these. Let's see them.
Is it really any worse than AA essentially saying "Ask God For Help"?
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Seven out of 12 steps speak of God. How is that not "recruiting for religion"? Or more to the point - why isn't this as bad as the Scientology thing you just talked about?
Why click a toolbar button when you can just use your thumb?
Button? Thumb? Back is done with the Z-key on my keyboard, and that's activated with my pinky. Since my left hand is always on the keyboard, and my right hand spends most of it's time on the keyboard, why would I want to go hunting for my mouse?
Did he mean "in such a way, that they could then go on a work in the field" or "in such a way, that the metaphor chosen makes sense to the six-year-old"?
The first one would... well, I can't really explain what they do with the LHC, but I heard someone describe the concept like this:
Suppose you took two oranges and put lots of dried cloves into them. We know that they are oranges, but we don't know what these dark things are. And we can't just pull them out to look at them. To get them separated from the oranges, we need to do something drastic, so we hurl them towards each-other. When they hit, some of the cloves will be shaken lose from the oranges, and we try to catch them, before they land on the floor and disappear. That way we can get a closer look at them.
True, it's a flawed analogy. That's definately not how it work, but on the other hand, what kind of six-year-old is EVER going to understand how the LHC works? Maybe the analogy is "close enough"?
Religion isn't like robbery or assault, it doesn't affect anyone except for those that participate in it.
It affects the people who are offended by it. They are offended--outraged even. And in a democratic society, these outraged people have a voice, and these voices in total are loud enough to force governments to punish the people who's behavior caused the offended people to become offended.
I've really only thought of one thing that I'd want to have tattooed onto my body:
DONOR just below the collar bone. BLOODTYPE (whatever)
And then a line around the organs on my donor list (heart, lungs, kidneys and liver). My eyes are also on the list, but I really don't want to have a tattoo on my face.
Alternatively they could just use a type of banking, that doesn't rely on any kind of software on the user's system. My Swedish bank uses a smart-card-reader and the chip on my card for challenge response.
While I haven't tested it, I wouldn't be surprised if the website and all transactions would work in Lynx - only iffy thing there is the CSS used, but even then. Hell, it should work on any kind of web-enabled device, from Windows to OS X to obscure OSes, to phones, to toasters to Bluray players.
Then you're essentially only looking at MitM-attacks, as even key-loggers on the user's terminal is only going to net you the user ID and challenge and response codes, and if the system is well made (which I believe it is), then that's not going to help you one bit.
Bringing religion with the sword has been wildly successful.
Very true. It worked wonders for the Europeans when they conquered South America.
Islam, for example, is the largest religion in the world today precisely because of its military efforts in the first few centuries of its existence.
While a lot of military expansion certainly did happen under Islamic leadership, it really isn't the largest religion in the world. Not even close.
Islam has somewhere between 1.1 and 1.3 billion followers. Christianity somewhere between 2.1 and 2.3 billion. But nice try though. North and South America is close to exclusively Christian. Most of sub-Saharan African is as well.
India is 80% Hindu and a "paltry" 140 million Muslims. China has somewhere between 20 and 100 million. Even the "massive population" in the middle east only amounts to about 346 million people, and not all of them are Muslim. Hell, the largest population of Muslims in any one country is in Indonesia, where some 88% of its 230 million inhabitants are Muslim (202 million).
By comparison the US of A counts between 58 and 82% Christians (179 to 253 million). In the EU it's about 75% (some 375 million).
So yeah... we, the people in the West, are certainly under siege by a religious army that far outnumbers our own numbers. I mean - we barely have a two to one advantage. That's so unfair.
Islam may get a lot of airtime in our media, but then again - so did (not really in a)-balloon-boy, Michael Jacksons death, Janet Jackson's nipple and Miss (OMG, same-sex marriage is like so gay, ya-know) America. And while quite a lot of that attention is negative, because some idiots are blowing themselves up, stoning women and otherwise behaving like idiots, why should we judge all of them by the behaviour of a few loud idiots?
How would people in the US feel, if the rest of the world judged them, by the behaviour of a small minority of their idiots? Wait... you already know what that's like, and they keep telling us that it's unfair to judge them in that way.
Anything specific for three days is torture. Bad test.
Really? So you'd be unwilling to suffer through "The Comfy Chair" for three days? I sincerely doubt that'd qualify as torture by any stretch of the imagination.
It appears to specifically cover only charging for computer time/resources in a dynamic way based on a prediction of their utilization.
How is that any different than say... hotels charging more for a room during times they predict will have lots of visitors? Or what airlines do to sell tickets - noone flying a particular day, they'll lower the price through the floor; everybody trying to get on a flight, and they'll charge you half your liver and a kidney just to use the in-flight bathroom.
Using copyleft could become a competitive advantage
I very much doubt that.
Music doesn't become popular because it's free to use or anything like that. It becomes popular because it's "catchy", and catchy has nothing to do with cost.
Six months is a very long time if you are the owner of one of the drilling rigs.
And if you're the only manufacturer of asbestos face masks, asbestos diapers, asbestos underwear and asbestos towels, then yeah, six months might be a very long time to wait, while an investigation into why 99% of all of your customers have developed cancers, while the rate in all other demographics is only around 13%.
But hey - if you make products that turn out to be harmful to the users, then tough shit.
Tell that to the shareholders who lost $89 Billion.Well, here's the thing about stocks: They aren't money, and they aren't guaranteed to maintain or even increase in value.
These shareholders obviously chose to invest in BP (directly or indirectly through 401k etc.). By having shares, they had a say in how operations were run, but obviously there was a bigger interest in making money quickly, than making money safely.
This turned out to be a bad idea, and now they are paying the consequences. Granted, I wouldn't be surprised if some people lose everything because of this entire situation, but who is really to blame? The government saying "you break it, you buy it", or the company (including shareholders) who said "fuck it, it's cheaper to ignore the problems". Keep in mind that BP managed to have almost 100 times as many egregious safety violations as number two on that list.
Should the people who invested money in asbestos companies really blame the government for putting health before money? How about the ban on Radium-enriched products? I'm sure a lot of people lost money in the market, when those things turned out to be hazardous and even lethal.
Your car is poorly maintained and unroadworthy, and your brakes fail, causing you to crash into someone. The government says no one can drive any cars, no matter how well maintained, until the government changes its mind.
No, not like that. They weren't trying to block oil wells on land for instance.
It's more like this: Car A in seemingly perfect condition is parked in the background of a Presidential speech at Car A's production plant, with a family of four sitting inside it, watching. Car B looses control and rear ends Car A. Unfortunately, due to a design fault, the fuel tank is thrust forward and into the differential, where a number of bolts puncture the fuel tank, causing it to leak gasoline, that is then ignited by sparks from the impact. Now the ground is on fire, and all cameras turn to Car A. Car A also has another design flaw, in that low speed accidents from behind often results in the doors jamming, making it impossible to open them. After a minute or so of panicked pushing and shoving against the doors, the entire car is now engulfed in flames, and the cameras keep rolling as the family is slowly being burned alive.
While the fire keeps on going, the press now hounds the President and government for not being able to stop the fire (with their minds or something). They whip up a killing mood in the public sitting at home, and they demand the president do something. One of the workers at the production plant points out, that the people in charge knew that this could happen. A quick tally by the press then shows that Car A's manufacturer has had almost 100 times as many egregious safety violations (work conditions and designs) as the second worst performing domestic producer.
Now for some strange reason the President and government want to stop the sale and production of cars like Car A - not the use, production and sale of all cars.
Granted, this analogy doesn't fit neatly into a single sentence, but that's because analogies are usually piss poor comparisons that leave out a lot of things.
Essentially it's like saying that Jesus was like Adam Savage, because they could both walk on liquids.
The comparison to a gas tank is somewhat inadequate as these batteries are far heavier than gasoline; if you have a serious accident that compromises the frame of the car you really can't guarantee that the battery container is going to be unperturbed.
Here's a thought experiment for you: You want to make an electric skate board. You want to run it using 50 D-cell batteries. How will you arrange them? a) Stack them on top of each other at the back? b) Stack them on top of each other at the front? c) Like a, but in sets of 2x2? d) Like b, but in sets of 2x2? e) Distribute them evenly across the entire surface/bottom of the board
For a regular internal combustion engine car it makes plenty of sense to have just one fuel tank, because all the space at the bottom of the vehicle is taken up by engine, gearbox, crank shaft etc., but for an electric car, you don't need a drive train. You can just distribute the cells evenly.
And just like regular D-cell batteries, there's no need to make everything one big battery. You can divide them up. You could essentially contain the entire battery structure in a crumple zone, making sure that in case of really bad accidents, as few cells as possible are destroyed.
The doctor(s) with no financial stake in the call.
For instance: My sister died in late October 2009 while in an induced coma. Technically they could have kept her alive for a lot longer. She was on a heart/lung machine and no brain damage - close to perfect conditions for keeping people alive.
But recovery? To recuperate she would have needed new lungs and a new heart. Probably a new liver and a kidney transplant as well. And that'd just stave off death for a while longer, as the underlying cause has no known cure, and it's quite tricky to give a realistic estimate on survival time. A few months before she died, her doctor guessed at maybe five years.
Sure - if this was a money issue, I'm sure this could have been arranged with enough money, but really? Even though it's my sister, I'm not sure I could justify taking four different organs and stuffing them into a body that was slowly killing itself due to a genetic disorder.
The doctors tried pretty much everything, almost desperately, for a bit over a week before calling off the game. They saw no outs apart from transplants, and that simply wasn't an option for someone who needs two to four new organs at once and have no long term prospects. Better to turn off the machines and let her die in peace.
Now - these doctors aren't paid by the patient. They don't get more money just because they run more tests, operations, clear out beds, whether or not their patients survive the trip to the hospital (as long as there is no neglect). They ARE the ones I'd trust to make that call.
But if they were paid a massive bonus for a heart transplant, another one for lung transplants, bonuses for keeping essentially dead patients alive to milk their insurance etc - I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with just "we tried what we could".
If you set up a Man in the Middle type of operation. Customer doesn't buy from EU store, they buy from the MitM-store. It will cost slightly more (MitM needs to make money plus shipping).
But since MitM doesn't need to care who is cheapest, they can help customers and merchants alike. The customers gets more options, and the merchants gets a company to fork over money and handle foreign shipping.
Biggest issue, from my perspective, is how the law handles warranty claims etc. - those are either with the seller (MitM) or the manufacturer.
No, unfortunately not. I only noticed it, because PixMania (photo seller) had different prices.
And I mixed up something. Belgium has 21%. Luxumburg has 15%. Check the list here.
What we really need is not just a PriceComparison.eu site, but one that helps you do purchases across the borders but still inside the EU, including shipping.
For one thing, I suspect that companies in Greece would welcome more customers, even if they had to pay a small fee per sale - especially if they didn't have to work on translations. And I know that I, as a consumer, would like a better way to buy things outside my own country.
Slashdot Mirror
The article links to some kind of 'ooh, look at me' article instead of NASA's own page on Juno.
Juno Armored Up to Go to Jupiter
Not exactly good maths there, so probably a PR piece from a 'journalist'.
9 foot^2 = 0.84 m^2. Could be correct, though I wouldn't use "nearly" for something that far off. And it's impossible to tell if the walls are really 9 foot^2 and they just made a very rough guestimate of the metric equivalent.
1/3 inch = 0.85 cm
Again, that could be right. It might be exactly 1/3rd inch and they guestimated that to about 1 cm. But it's still 15% off.
40 lbs = 18.14 kg
And then you hit something where the weight is actually correct. But since they've messed up that much on the other two, we now don't know if it's exactly 40 lbs or exactly 18 kg.
Hell, we don't even know if the NASA guys who wrote this are incompetent or not. Well, we know they're incompetent, we even know how much (about 15%).
However, the NASA page seemingly being written by an 8-year-old with a bad understanding of units, doesn't really justify linking to an article that is essentially a copy of NASA's page, and especially not when there is no attribution or links to the original article.
How about 'herd effect' or 'group think'?
I hate to tell you this, mate, but a phone that can't make phone calls is, by definition, not a phone.
Yes ... because when the choice is between "starving and losing your home", and "working in telemarketing" that is definitely a real choice.
One example? I'll take your word on whether or not it's a proper replacement, but one does not a plenty make.
One only barely covers "some".
Plenty?
Okay, here's my "benchmark" for a Skype replacement:
Must be easy to use: My parents both managed to download, install and create new users in the first attempt - without having to read anything other than the on screen instructions.
Must be translated properly: My parents don't speak nor read English at all. They're Danish, and in case you're wondering, that's a language spoken by fewer people than live in New York City.
Must work without fail: Again, should be something mom and dad can get up and running, without having to configure anything other than a username and password.
Must work on other platforms: Shouldn't matter if you're on Windows, OS X or if your kids set up a Linux machine for you. It should still just work.
Must support text, file transfers, audio and video: Just like Skype.
So - your claim was that there were plenty of these. Let's see them.
Is it really any worse than AA essentially saying "Ask God For Help"?
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Seven out of 12 steps speak of God. How is that not "recruiting for religion"? Or more to the point - why isn't this as bad as the Scientology thing you just talked about?
Sincerely,
An Atheist
Button? Thumb? Back is done with the Z-key on my keyboard, and that's activated with my pinky. Since my left hand is always on the keyboard, and my right hand spends most of it's time on the keyboard, why would I want to go hunting for my mouse?
Did he mean "in such a way, that they could then go on a work in the field" or "in such a way, that the metaphor chosen makes sense to the six-year-old"?
The first one would ... well, I can't really explain what they do with the LHC, but I heard someone describe the concept like this:
True, it's a flawed analogy. That's definately not how it work, but on the other hand, what kind of six-year-old is EVER going to understand how the LHC works? Maybe the analogy is "close enough"?
Well ... one can wish, right?
I've really only thought of one thing that I'd want to have tattooed onto my body:
DONOR just below the collar bone.
BLOODTYPE (whatever)
And then a line around the organs on my donor list (heart, lungs, kidneys and liver). My eyes are also on the list, but I really don't want to have a tattoo on my face.
Alternatively they could just use a type of banking, that doesn't rely on any kind of software on the user's system. My Swedish bank uses a smart-card-reader and the chip on my card for challenge response.
While I haven't tested it, I wouldn't be surprised if the website and all transactions would work in Lynx - only iffy thing there is the CSS used, but even then. Hell, it should work on any kind of web-enabled device, from Windows to OS X to obscure OSes, to phones, to toasters to Bluray players.
Then you're essentially only looking at MitM-attacks, as even key-loggers on the user's terminal is only going to net you the user ID and challenge and response codes, and if the system is well made (which I believe it is), then that's not going to help you one bit.
Very true. It worked wonders for the Europeans when they conquered South America.
While a lot of military expansion certainly did happen under Islamic leadership, it really isn't the largest religion in the world. Not even close.
Islam has somewhere between 1.1 and 1.3 billion followers. Christianity somewhere between 2.1 and 2.3 billion. But nice try though.
North and South America is close to exclusively Christian. Most of sub-Saharan African is as well.
India is 80% Hindu and a "paltry" 140 million Muslims. China has somewhere between 20 and 100 million. Even the "massive population" in the middle east only amounts to about 346 million people, and not all of them are Muslim. Hell, the largest population of Muslims in any one country is in Indonesia, where some 88% of its 230 million inhabitants are Muslim (202 million).
By comparison the US of A counts between 58 and 82% Christians (179 to 253 million). In the EU it's about 75% (some 375 million).
So yeah ... we, the people in the West, are certainly under siege by a religious army that far outnumbers our own numbers. I mean - we barely have a two to one advantage. That's so unfair.
Islam may get a lot of airtime in our media, but then again - so did (not really in a)-balloon-boy, Michael Jacksons death, Janet Jackson's nipple and Miss (OMG, same-sex marriage is like so gay, ya-know) America. And while quite a lot of that attention is negative, because some idiots are blowing themselves up, stoning women and otherwise behaving like idiots, why should we judge all of them by the behaviour of a few loud idiots?
How would people in the US feel, if the rest of the world judged them, by the behaviour of a small minority of their idiots? Wait ... you already know what that's like, and they keep telling us that it's unfair to judge them in that way.
Really? So you'd be unwilling to suffer through "The Comfy Chair" for three days? I sincerely doubt that'd qualify as torture by any stretch of the imagination.
How is that any different than say ... hotels charging more for a room during times they predict will have lots of visitors? Or what airlines do to sell tickets - noone flying a particular day, they'll lower the price through the floor; everybody trying to get on a flight, and they'll charge you half your liver and a kidney just to use the in-flight bathroom.
Music is sort of built in. If we like it, it will spread. Even if we hate a piece of music, it will hang on forever if it's catchy.
See "Around the World" by Daft Punk and "Macarena" by Los del Río as examples.
I very much doubt that.
Music doesn't become popular because it's free to use or anything like that. It becomes popular because it's "catchy", and catchy has nothing to do with cost.
And if you're the only manufacturer of asbestos face masks, asbestos diapers, asbestos underwear and asbestos towels, then yeah, six months might be a very long time to wait, while an investigation into why 99% of all of your customers have developed cancers, while the rate in all other demographics is only around 13%.
But hey - if you make products that turn out to be harmful to the users, then tough shit.
No, not like that. They weren't trying to block oil wells on land for instance.
It's more like this:
Car A in seemingly perfect condition is parked in the background of a Presidential speech at Car A's production plant, with a family of four sitting inside it, watching.
Car B looses control and rear ends Car A.
Unfortunately, due to a design fault, the fuel tank is thrust forward and into the differential, where a number of bolts puncture the fuel tank, causing it to leak gasoline, that is then ignited by sparks from the impact.
Now the ground is on fire, and all cameras turn to Car A.
Car A also has another design flaw, in that low speed accidents from behind often results in the doors jamming, making it impossible to open them. After a minute or so of panicked pushing and shoving against the doors, the entire car is now engulfed in flames, and the cameras keep rolling as the family is slowly being burned alive.
While the fire keeps on going, the press now hounds the President and government for not being able to stop the fire (with their minds or something). They whip up a killing mood in the public sitting at home, and they demand the president do something.
One of the workers at the production plant points out, that the people in charge knew that this could happen.
A quick tally by the press then shows that Car A's manufacturer has had almost 100 times as many egregious safety violations (work conditions and designs) as the second worst performing domestic producer.
Now for some strange reason the President and government want to stop the sale and production of cars like Car A - not the use, production and sale of all cars.
Granted, this analogy doesn't fit neatly into a single sentence, but that's because analogies are usually piss poor comparisons that leave out a lot of things.
Essentially it's like saying that Jesus was like Adam Savage, because they could both walk on liquids.
Here's a thought experiment for you:
You want to make an electric skate board. You want to run it using 50 D-cell batteries. How will you arrange them?
a) Stack them on top of each other at the back?
b) Stack them on top of each other at the front?
c) Like a, but in sets of 2x2?
d) Like b, but in sets of 2x2?
e) Distribute them evenly across the entire surface/bottom of the board
For a regular internal combustion engine car it makes plenty of sense to have just one fuel tank, because all the space at the bottom of the vehicle is taken up by engine, gearbox, crank shaft etc., but for an electric car, you don't need a drive train. You can just distribute the cells evenly.
And just like regular D-cell batteries, there's no need to make everything one big battery. You can divide them up. You could essentially contain the entire battery structure in a crumple zone, making sure that in case of really bad accidents, as few cells as possible are destroyed.
It won't work for all crashes. I.e. anything resulting in people dying from the impact would probably kill the cells in the impact area, but it doesn't have to mean "OMG I was just in a crash with my Tesla Roadster, and all 6,831 cells just failed catastrophically". As it happens, the Tesla Roadster has 6,831 lithium ion cells arranged into 11 "sheets" connected in series; each sheet contains 9 "bricks" connected in series; each "brick" contains 69 cells connected in parallel (11S 9S 69P).
The doctor(s) with no financial stake in the call.
For instance:
My sister died in late October 2009 while in an induced coma. Technically they could have kept her alive for a lot longer. She was on a heart/lung machine and no brain damage - close to perfect conditions for keeping people alive.
But recovery? To recuperate she would have needed new lungs and a new heart. Probably a new liver and a kidney transplant as well. And that'd just stave off death for a while longer, as the underlying cause has no known cure, and it's quite tricky to give a realistic estimate on survival time. A few months before she died, her doctor guessed at maybe five years.
Sure - if this was a money issue, I'm sure this could have been arranged with enough money, but really? Even though it's my sister, I'm not sure I could justify taking four different organs and stuffing them into a body that was slowly killing itself due to a genetic disorder.
The doctors tried pretty much everything, almost desperately, for a bit over a week before calling off the game. They saw no outs apart from transplants, and that simply wasn't an option for someone who needs two to four new organs at once and have no long term prospects. Better to turn off the machines and let her die in peace.
Now - these doctors aren't paid by the patient. They don't get more money just because they run more tests, operations, clear out beds, whether or not their patients survive the trip to the hospital (as long as there is no neglect). They ARE the ones I'd trust to make that call.
But if they were paid a massive bonus for a heart transplant, another one for lung transplants, bonuses for keeping essentially dead patients alive to milk their insurance etc - I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with just "we tried what we could".
Still ...
If you set up a Man in the Middle type of operation. Customer doesn't buy from EU store, they buy from the MitM-store. It will cost slightly more (MitM needs to make money plus shipping).
But since MitM doesn't need to care who is cheapest, they can help customers and merchants alike. The customers gets more options, and the merchants gets a company to fork over money and handle foreign shipping.
Biggest issue, from my perspective, is how the law handles warranty claims etc. - those are either with the seller (MitM) or the manufacturer.
No, unfortunately not. I only noticed it, because PixMania (photo seller) had different prices.
And I mixed up something. Belgium has 21%. Luxumburg has 15%. Check the list here.
What we really need is not just a PriceComparison.eu site, but one that helps you do purchases across the borders but still inside the EU, including shipping.
For one thing, I suspect that companies in Greece would welcome more customers, even if they had to pay a small fee per sale - especially if they didn't have to work on translations. And I know that I, as a consumer, would like a better way to buy things outside my own country.
You should go with Belgium instead. With 15% VAT, they have the lowest one in the EU.