On earth, gravity striates your stomach contents so the heavier stuff is on the bottom and the gas is on the top. So when you burp it's mostly gas which comes up. In space, this doesn't happen, and burping is a lot like throwing up. So foods that make you burp, like carbonated beverages, are a no-no.
Your comparison of gun and cars is a bit flawed, IMO. Guns were invented to take lives; that is their purpose in the universe.
I'm assuming you're talking about guns designed for shooting at people, not hunting rifles or competition shooting. The purpose of such guns is not to take lives. Their purpose is to degrade an opposing force's fighting capability. Often the best way to do that is not to kill, but to wound. If you kill someone, the opposing army just leaves his corpse and carries on. If you wound somebody, he's on the ground screaming and demoralizing his peers. They have to devote resources to carrying him back from the front lines. Once he's back, they have to devote medical resources to treat him. Afterwards they have to devote even more economic resources to assist him through his recovery (which may last a lifetime).
From a strictly military standpoint, wounding an enemy is much, much more advantageous than killing him. It's one of the reasons NATO dropped from 7.62mm rounds to 5.56mm rounds - the smaller bullets tended to enter the target and tumble, causing more wounding. The 7.62mm rounds tended to pass straight through, meaning the most effective way to use it was to kill. Guns aren't designed to kill, they're designed to intimidate, often working even when no shots are fired or (if shots are fired) nobody is even hit. The decision to use the weapon to instead kill lies with the shooter.
I think it's a sign that capitalism is deeply and critically flawed that things are turning out the way they are. It's not a good sign for the free market that we have to resort to socialism in order to restore basic economic and consumer freedoms.
No, it's not a sign that capitalism is "deeply and critically flawed." Capitalism works most of the time. There are certain localized areas of the solution space where capitalism doesn't work. This includes the Prisoner's Dilemma (where individuals acting in their own best interests arrive at the worst possible outcome for all), the Tragedy of the Commons (where individuals acting in their own best interests arrive at the worst possible outcome for everyone else), and a monopoly (where an individual, company, or cartel controls enough of the market to thwart free market economics). Phone carrier lock-in is just a localized monopoly.
It's highly unusual for any solution to be effective 100% of the time in all possible cases. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that capitalism doesn't work in certain cases. The key is to recognize those cases, and enact legislation which makes up for those shortcomings (e.g. environmental protection laws, fisheries management, anti-trust laws). Damning capitalism entirely because it fails in certain limited cases is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and about as ideologically boneheaded as believing capitalism is always the best solution. What's needed are laws assuring the phone carrier market operates efficiently - allow people to port their phone numbers, allow non-vendor hardware to operate over the networks, and a cell-phone version of network neutrality where any non-vendor apps can run over the network.
I haven't quite decided yet about multi-year contracts since they are a legitimately chosen by customers - the problem being that apparently 99% of US customers would rather amortize their purchase and pay more, rather than pay the phone costs lump sum up front for less. At this point the only contract legislation I would support is forcing the telecos to give me a discount once I am out of contract or if I bring my own phone, since then they are no longer subsidizing the phone cost with my monthly fee. As it is right now, I pay the same monthly fee as someone whose monthly fee is subsidizing a $500 phone, even though I bought and paid for my phone myself.
I'm no fan of RIAA, but the RIAA lawsuits aren't about recouping money for the artists. That would be a ludicrous business model (one where you let people steal your product and then sue them to recover you loses on a routine basis). The RIAA lawsuits are about raising the risk/reward ratio to make people decide not to steal music.
If you're correct and the copyright infringement penalties are meant to be punitive instead of compensatory, then they are enormously disproportionate. Punitive damages are meant to simply discourage the defendant (and others) from engaging in that behavior, not consign them to a bankruptcy. Being able to file a lawsuit for several dozen times a person's net worth isn't punitive, it's overkill. Would our legal system be considered sane if the potential punitive damages for Microsoft's monopoly case had been $2 trillion?
The problem is the RIAA wants and is getting their cake and eating it too. They want your music purchase to be treated as a product with no liabilities of a license (like discounted upgrades), but they want to restrict what you do with your purchase like a license. They want copyright infringement and its punishments to be considered a crime, but they want the standard of guilt used in civil cases. They want fines and settlements to be thought of as compensatory ("$billions in lost sales justify what we do"), but bring up the idea of sharing those compensatory awards with artists and suddenly it's punitive. Pick one, or the other. Don't flip flop whenever it's convenient to do so.
The Euro is a relatively new currency so record highs and lows are naturally going to be more frequent. I commented on this back when the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar has not set new lows against any of the other established currencies, meaning things have been worse for the dollar in the past than they are now.
Given the current U.S. debt situation, the dollar's drop in value is actually a good thing for the U.S. Now all that debt that's owed to foreigners is worth less. In fact, after you account for inflation, interest, and the exchange rates, Europe may very well have paid the U.S. for the privilege of having lent it money.
The mentality I speak of is "The entire world around me should be adjusted to fit my way of thinking or doing things."
If you happen to live in an area where "blue laws" exist, you'll know what I'm talking about. In my area, you cannot buy beer on Sunday before 12:00 noon, so if you forgot to buy beer before the game starts the previous day, you're SOL thanks to these religiously sponsored legislative actions. Such laws do not serve the community -- they serve to create a society that better aligns itself with religious interests.
In this case, it would make more sense that Taliban people should have to turn their phones off to avoid being tracked... but it's too inconvenient for them to change the way they do things. So instead, they want to make things inconvenient for EVERYONE to better suit their individual needs.
This just goes to show what is truly broken about their minds. They are far too self-interested to really be concerned about anything resembling "greater good." And I'll say it once again -- this is not the exclusive territory of muslim extremists. It's not even the exclusive territory of religious extremists though it does seem to be something of a hallmark of them. It's a problem of the self-interested mind.
I'm gonna burn some karma. I don't see anything wrong with that attitude. In fact, I'd argue that that attitude is what drives us to come up with new and better laws. "Hey, did you hear people are snapping up domain names without paying for them (i.e. "tasting them")? That's just wrong." "Yeah, ICANN should change its policies to prohibit it..."
The problem isn't that people want to change the world in a way which they believe will make it better. The problem is when they fail to convince the masses or lose the vote, some people feel strongly enough about it to resort to violence or brute force to impose their changes on an unwilling population.
You feel the Taliban thinks everyone else should follow their way of thinking or acting. You claim their rules aren't for the greater good. Yet from their point of view, you think everyone should follow your way of thinking and acting, and they would claim your rules aren't for the greater good. You're making the mistake of categorizing right and wrong based on a subjective measure ("greater good").
The idea behind democracy is to side-step this subjective measure entirely by letting the affected population decide for themselves what is the "greater good". Democracy just presents a framework for making decisions which will affect the entire population; the population itself makes the subjective judgments of right, wrong, and "greater good". If the majority decides they want the blue laws, then they (and you) get blue laws. If you're on the losing side of that vote, respect the democracy and abide by the laws decided upon by the majority. Ignoring those laws because you don't feel they're right destroys your credibility when asking others to abide by laws you feel are right. Resorting to ad hominem attacks (criticizing their mentality) as justifications for why they're wrong makes you no different from the people you're criticizing. If you don't like blue laws, start up a state-wide petition to get them repealed within the democratic process.
Maybe the open source guys can register the name as a trademark and go after them that way.
Yeah, TFA didn't have much detail about how this all happened, but if it's accurate and another organization has essentially taken over Shareaza's name, then it sounds like they have a pretty solid cyber-squatting case. ICANN's domain name dispute policy is primarily based on bad-faith use of a domain name, and commercial gain using the original domain name holder's reputation is pretty much a slam dunk for evidence of bad faith.
The solution of course isn't congress passing a bill that makes such discrimination illegal, but rather to pass a bill that establishes universal health insurance (preferably single payer, but lets be honest, the US is far too much a classist society to adopt that... sigh.)
You're missing the bigger picture.
Ask people if auto insurers should be able to raise rates for people who cause an accident, most will say yes. Ask people if auto insurers should be able to raise rates for people whose cars are hit while they're parked, most will say no. Ask people if health insurers should be able to raise rates on smokers, most will say yes. Ask people if health insurers should be able to raise rates for someone genetically predisposed for a disease, most will say no.
What people want isn't economic-driven health insurance, nor is it universal health insurance. What people want is a system where you have to pay more for negative influences under your control, but not pay more for negative influences outside of your control. This is why universal health insurance is a no-go in the US - people get hung up on the idea that folks who take unnecessary risks or don't take care of their bodies will be getting a "free ride". They don't care that someone who develops Alzheimers will be covered and raise their insurance rates; in fact they're altruistic enough that they'll gladly donate to charities to help people who develop diseases outside of their control. But they find repugnant the idea of them being forced to (via universal health care) help someone who won't even try to help himself.
That's the obstacle universal health care has to overcome to be accepted in the US. That's why people don't like the idea of genetic testing to determine health insurance rates, even though on an economic level it makes perfect sense. Figure out a way to incorporate this concept into universal health care and Americans will probably be all for it. If you can't find a way to do this, then you'll have to resort to statistical models of overall benefit (the no-fault vs. at-fault auto insurance debate - where determining liability costs more than the benefit of assigned risk), which is a much harder sell.
Is this something they teach in schools in the US? I find it bewildering that so many people from that country have this extraordinarily unbalanced view of WWII.
Had the UK gone turtle we'd have survived fine without the US. Had the USSR not had US materials/equipment they'd maybe have lost 25m men not just the 20m they did lose.
If it weren't for the US, the Germans would still have lost the war. Had America joined the war sooner, it may have been over quicker. Instead the UK had to bankrupt the world's largest ever empire to win that war, and did so on a point of principle. Don't fucking tell me the US saved Europe.
Incidentally, half of Europe did live under communist dictatorship for fifty years post-WWII. Ironically without US global interference and posturing the communist states may have collapsed more swiftly than they did.
WWII ended the way it did because of the joint effort of all countries involved (US, UK, Russia, China, Canada, Australia, etc). Like a see-saw, the combined mass of all the nations tipped the balance. Recognizing one nation for being the one to push them over the top is giving them undue credit. But likewise, to dismiss any of their contributions, especially one of the "big three," strikes of revisionist history and a seriously unbalanced worldview. Could the Allies have won WWII without the US? Possibly, but the UK's industrial base was being bombed daily (Hitler did not have to conquer the UK, just beat it into submission). The primary contribution of the US was an untouchable industrial base. So it stands to reason that if the Allies had won without US contribution, all of Europe would've become part of the Soviet Union.
The US was key to victory in the Pacific theatre (Europeans tend to forget that half of the war). Without the US entering the war, likely large portions of China, Indochina (including large chunks of the British Empire), the Pacific islands, and possibly even Australia would've become part of the Empire of Japan. The Russians didn't want to get involved in that side of the war, even signing a non-aggression pact with the Japanese. The US had to beg and plead with them to get them to even declare war on Japan following the atomic bombings (giving up portions of Korea and Indochina to Soviet influence as a result).
Back on topic, I'm delighted that there are ways to detect and defeat B2 bombers. US military dominance is not a good thing for the world at large. Healthy tension encourages equilibrium, which I'd greatly prefer to US imperialistic pressures.
You're barking up the wrong tree. The US doesn't use its military to apply imperialistic pressure. The military is used sparingly (Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Iraq - hardly an empire). The vast majority of any US imperialistic influence comes from using its economic might. The sooner you recognized this, the sooner you'd become more effective at combating US influence. Instead you're wasting your time complaining about and belittling US military power (probably because it better fits the Evil stereotype you wish to believe), while the its true power and influence remains uncontested. China has realized this and is acting accordingly (some would say brilliantly); many who pushed for a unified EU economy understood this. The Soviets did not fully grasp this, tried to counter the US militarily, and lost the Cold War as a result; you appear to be following in their footsteps.
B. Move a lot of perpetrator's money to lawyers and a little bit to consumers. (class-action)
Tier the rate lawyers get paid. For awards up to, say, $1 million, they get 33%. For the fraction of awards between $1-$10 million, they get 10%. Between $10-$100 million they get 3%. Over $100 million, they get 1%. Over $1 billion they get 0.1% ($1 million per $1 billion awarded). Right now they get 33% of everything, which is flat out ridiculous. A class action reduces the lawyers' workload by taking advantage of efficiencies of scale, their compensation should be reduced to reflect that.
Also, punitive awards should go to the government - either regulatory agencies or law enforcement, not the victims. The victims already get compensatory damages to compensate them for their suffering. The punitive damages are designed to punish the guilty, and should go to society as recompense for violating the public trust. The U.S. court system is currently biased against punitive damages because often even when the defendant deserves to have to pay, the victim doesn't deserve the money so the court system errs on the side of the defendant. This change would help fix that.
4000 psi net = 27.58 mega-pascal (newtons / m^2)
Pressure = volumetric energy density (joules / m^3 or newton-meters / m^3)
Energy density = 27.58 mega-joules / m^3
1 m^3 = 1000 liters Energy density of 4000 psi = 27.58 kilo-joules / liter
Also, any orbits resulting from this impact will at best case (or worst case depending on how you view it) still have a perigee of 200 km. That is, the collision might kick it into a more eccentric orbit which reaches a higher altitude at its apogee, but it's perigee (low point in the orbit) will still be 200 km or lower, where there's enough atmospheric drag to bring it down within a few months or worst case years. To move something to a higher orbit, you need one engine burn (or collision) to move your apogee to a higher altitude, then once you reach apogee a second engine burn to move up the perigee of your orbit. That's not going to happen with unpowered debris. That was why they waited until the last minute to blow it up, instead of doing it last month when the re-entry was first predicted, or back in 2006 when the satellite first failed.
Re:If you want to see the real Cuba, go now...
on
Fidel Castro Resigns
·
· Score: 1
Freeing the country will do wonders to bring the truth to light, especially with the renewed faith in this system amongst the poor of Latin America.
Yes, they can look up to Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvidor, Honduras, Guatemala, etc as a testament to the triumph and prosperity of capitalism and democracy.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the per capita GDP of all the independent nations I could find surrounding Cuba. Most seemed to be some form of democracy, although I'll leave it up to the reader to determine exactly which ones (just scroll up to the government section of the linked pages). Also, not all economic data is from the same year, but this should at least give you a ballpark estimate of where the countries stand. All figures from the CIA World Factbook, which despite the source seems to be generally regarded as a high quality compilation of facts. Here they are:
So compared to all its neighbors, not just a handpicked list, Cuba seems to be doing rather poorly.
Re:If you want to see the real Cuba, go now...
on
Fidel Castro Resigns
·
· Score: 1
In my opinion, the focus on the welfare of the people is a red herring. People are provided for. They have food, shelter, health care, and education. No one is desperate. Resources are scarce, no thanks to the embargo, but people make do. Nobody prostitutes themselves because they have to.
While I agree with the rest of your post, why blame the embargo for lack of resources? Most resources like food, clothing, oil, and raw materials are commodity items. If someone won't sell them to you, you can just buy them from someone else. Heck, aside from food (whose cost is subsidized by the U.S.), you're probably better off buying them from someone else instead of the expensive U.S. I can see blaming the embargo for the lack of manufactured goods like American cars, but blaming it for lack of resources is silly. If lack of resources are a problem, the most likely culprit is Cuba's economic policies leading to a non-functional economy, not the embargo.
No, I don't think the left argues that Cuba is some kind of paragon of liberty. They argue that the policy towards Cuba should be something like that towards China, one of engagement that will encourage them to move towards free market reforms, which will lead to individual freedoms.
Prior to the 1970s, U.S. policy to fight Communism was one of isolationism. After Nixon more or less normalized relations with China, the policy has been to encourage free market reforms within them.
Cuba missed the boat because there's a politically active ex-Cuban population in Florida which mostly opposes rescinding the embargo. Florida is the 4th most populous state, which due to the Electoral College system has about 10% of the winner-takes-all votes needed to win the Presidency. The ex-Cuban population is influential enough over that vote that neither political party wants to cross them. And so the embargo stays. If the Cuban exiles had settled in, say, Louisiana instead of Florida, the embargo probably would've been dropped in the '70s or '80s
One of their sticking points has been no normalization of relations with Cuba while Castro is in power. So it'll be interesting to see how his resignation plays out with the politics there. Regardless, most of the hardcore anti-Communist faction (those involved with the Bay of Pigs and directly fighting Castro) is in or approaching their 70s now, and will start dying of old age soon. So I would expect a major shift in policy towards Cuba within the next 10-20 years regardless of what happens in Cuba. Changing a person's attitude about something is a lot easier if they were only taught it by their parents, as opposed to having friends and brothers killed in the line of battle over it.
You had me until there... you realize we, no joke, have more nukes in a single submarine than they do in their entire military.
1. It'd take about a half to a dozen submarines to match China's arsenal.
I'm not saying they'll never be at that point, hell that point might even be soon... but in an all out war no one can come close to the US.
2. Russia is still ahead of the U.S. in warhead count, although one could argue that the U.S. arsenal is much better maintained and has more capability.
Interesting side note: Total number of warheads are now back to pre-1960s levels (though admittedly those that remain are much more powerful).
None of the three are great options, #1 hurts everybody, not just the heavy users. #2 keeps the prices low for most, at the expense of the heavy users, and #3 hurts everybody in general.
Upgrading their network isn't an option?
Upgrading their network is option #1. They buy extra food (to compensate for the appetite of the football team) and raise prices for everyone.
Spoofing the user agent is no solution, even if it does work. That's what Micro$oft wants you to do so that it appears that more people are using IE than actually are. The numbers game is far more important than the number of users who actually use Firefox.
Is there an extension which will let Firefox report itself as IE (or whatever) only to the sites you select? All the user agent extensions I've found just let you change it manually for the browser as a whole.
You'd really only get scorch marks on your car. Since the fuel is only flammable in vapor-form with oxygen, you'd just get a car-sized kerosene lamp (with the burning rag acting as a wick).
i have to wonder about figures like that. 500 million users might be every account ever created, i bet there's 1/50 of those that are active.
i have a sneaking suspicion there is another smaller.com bubble forming. especially when yahoo start talking about being under valued at 44 billion.
Internet use in Western nations centers on search. Internet use in Asia centers on portals, and Yahoo has a pretty strong presence there. So one has to be careful not to generalize one's Western (search-centric) impression of Yahoo's standing and assume it applies to the world overall. Arguably, the biggest area of near-future Internet growth is going to be in Asia.
The valuation of Internet companies is mostly speculation. If you look at Price/Earnings ratios, most brick and mortar firms like GE and IBM (and Microsoft) are around 15-18. The P/E of Internet companies hovers around 40-100 (Yahoo and Amazon are ~60, Google is ~40, eBay is ~110). My interpretation of this is that everyone is looking for the next Microsoft among Internet companies and wants to get in on it early. That is, the valuations of GE and IBM are based on how much those companies are worth. The valuations of Yahoo and Google are based on how much those companies could be worth.
So Yahoo's valuation is going to swing wildly depending on how much potential for growth the company has in the future. In contrast, the valuation of GE would mostly be based on assets and recent performance, not so much on how you expect them to grow in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
On earth, gravity striates your stomach contents so the heavier stuff is on the bottom and the gas is on the top. So when you burp it's mostly gas which comes up. In space, this doesn't happen, and burping is a lot like throwing up. So foods that make you burp, like carbonated beverages, are a no-no.
Distributing media files over the Internet to devices in your home. Wow, I never would've thought of it!
From a strictly military standpoint, wounding an enemy is much, much more advantageous than killing him. It's one of the reasons NATO dropped from 7.62mm rounds to 5.56mm rounds - the smaller bullets tended to enter the target and tumble, causing more wounding. The 7.62mm rounds tended to pass straight through, meaning the most effective way to use it was to kill. Guns aren't designed to kill, they're designed to intimidate, often working even when no shots are fired or (if shots are fired) nobody is even hit. The decision to use the weapon to instead kill lies with the shooter.
Wikipedia entry on disparities between way infant mortality is measured.
US News & World Report article on same (doesn't cite sources, though news magazines almost never do).
Slate article on impact of premature births on infant mortality rate.
Boston Globe article on rate of premature births in U.S.
It would appear there is something to the claim that better medical care can skew infant mortality rate upwards.
It's highly unusual for any solution to be effective 100% of the time in all possible cases. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that capitalism doesn't work in certain cases. The key is to recognize those cases, and enact legislation which makes up for those shortcomings (e.g. environmental protection laws, fisheries management, anti-trust laws). Damning capitalism entirely because it fails in certain limited cases is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and about as ideologically boneheaded as believing capitalism is always the best solution. What's needed are laws assuring the phone carrier market operates efficiently - allow people to port their phone numbers, allow non-vendor hardware to operate over the networks, and a cell-phone version of network neutrality where any non-vendor apps can run over the network.
I haven't quite decided yet about multi-year contracts since they are a legitimately chosen by customers - the problem being that apparently 99% of US customers would rather amortize their purchase and pay more, rather than pay the phone costs lump sum up front for less. At this point the only contract legislation I would support is forcing the telecos to give me a discount once I am out of contract or if I bring my own phone, since then they are no longer subsidizing the phone cost with my monthly fee. As it is right now, I pay the same monthly fee as someone whose monthly fee is subsidizing a $500 phone, even though I bought and paid for my phone myself.
The problem is the RIAA wants and is getting their cake and eating it too. They want your music purchase to be treated as a product with no liabilities of a license (like discounted upgrades), but they want to restrict what you do with your purchase like a license. They want copyright infringement and its punishments to be considered a crime, but they want the standard of guilt used in civil cases. They want fines and settlements to be thought of as compensatory ("$billions in lost sales justify what we do"), but bring up the idea of sharing those compensatory awards with artists and suddenly it's punitive. Pick one, or the other. Don't flip flop whenever it's convenient to do so.
Given the current U.S. debt situation, the dollar's drop in value is actually a good thing for the U.S. Now all that debt that's owed to foreigners is worth less. In fact, after you account for inflation, interest, and the exchange rates, Europe may very well have paid the U.S. for the privilege of having lent it money.
The problem isn't that people want to change the world in a way which they believe will make it better. The problem is when they fail to convince the masses or lose the vote, some people feel strongly enough about it to resort to violence or brute force to impose their changes on an unwilling population.
You feel the Taliban thinks everyone else should follow their way of thinking or acting. You claim their rules aren't for the greater good. Yet from their point of view, you think everyone should follow your way of thinking and acting, and they would claim your rules aren't for the greater good. You're making the mistake of categorizing right and wrong based on a subjective measure ("greater good").
The idea behind democracy is to side-step this subjective measure entirely by letting the affected population decide for themselves what is the "greater good". Democracy just presents a framework for making decisions which will affect the entire population; the population itself makes the subjective judgments of right, wrong, and "greater good". If the majority decides they want the blue laws, then they (and you) get blue laws. If you're on the losing side of that vote, respect the democracy and abide by the laws decided upon by the majority. Ignoring those laws because you don't feel they're right destroys your credibility when asking others to abide by laws you feel are right. Resorting to ad hominem attacks (criticizing their mentality) as justifications for why they're wrong makes you no different from the people you're criticizing. If you don't like blue laws, start up a state-wide petition to get them repealed within the democratic process.
Ask people if auto insurers should be able to raise rates for people who cause an accident, most will say yes. Ask people if auto insurers should be able to raise rates for people whose cars are hit while they're parked, most will say no. Ask people if health insurers should be able to raise rates on smokers, most will say yes. Ask people if health insurers should be able to raise rates for someone genetically predisposed for a disease, most will say no.
What people want isn't economic-driven health insurance, nor is it universal health insurance. What people want is a system where you have to pay more for negative influences under your control, but not pay more for negative influences outside of your control. This is why universal health insurance is a no-go in the US - people get hung up on the idea that folks who take unnecessary risks or don't take care of their bodies will be getting a "free ride". They don't care that someone who develops Alzheimers will be covered and raise their insurance rates; in fact they're altruistic enough that they'll gladly donate to charities to help people who develop diseases outside of their control. But they find repugnant the idea of them being forced to (via universal health care) help someone who won't even try to help himself.
That's the obstacle universal health care has to overcome to be accepted in the US. That's why people don't like the idea of genetic testing to determine health insurance rates, even though on an economic level it makes perfect sense. Figure out a way to incorporate this concept into universal health care and Americans will probably be all for it. If you can't find a way to do this, then you'll have to resort to statistical models of overall benefit (the no-fault vs. at-fault auto insurance debate - where determining liability costs more than the benefit of assigned risk), which is a much harder sell.
The US was key to victory in the Pacific theatre (Europeans tend to forget that half of the war). Without the US entering the war, likely large portions of China, Indochina (including large chunks of the British Empire), the Pacific islands, and possibly even Australia would've become part of the Empire of Japan. The Russians didn't want to get involved in that side of the war, even signing a non-aggression pact with the Japanese. The US had to beg and plead with them to get them to even declare war on Japan following the atomic bombings (giving up portions of Korea and Indochina to Soviet influence as a result).
You're barking up the wrong tree. The US doesn't use its military to apply imperialistic pressure. The military is used sparingly (Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Iraq - hardly an empire). The vast majority of any US imperialistic influence comes from using its economic might. The sooner you recognized this, the sooner you'd become more effective at combating US influence. Instead you're wasting your time complaining about and belittling US military power (probably because it better fits the Evil stereotype you wish to believe), while the its true power and influence remains uncontested. China has realized this and is acting accordingly (some would say brilliantly); many who pushed for a unified EU economy understood this. The Soviets did not fully grasp this, tried to counter the US militarily, and lost the Cold War as a result; you appear to be following in their footsteps.- 33% of the first $1 million
- 10% of $9 million (the $1-$10 million portion)
- 3% of $90 million (the $10-$100 million portion)
- 1% of $100 million (the $100-$200 million portion)
And this was an example so the numbers could be sliced any other way. I'm a big fan of continuous functions but it seems the law is not.Also, punitive awards should go to the government - either regulatory agencies or law enforcement, not the victims. The victims already get compensatory damages to compensate them for their suffering. The punitive damages are designed to punish the guilty, and should go to society as recompense for violating the public trust. The U.S. court system is currently biased against punitive damages because often even when the defendant deserves to have to pay, the victim doesn't deserve the money so the court system errs on the side of the defendant. This change would help fix that.
Pressure = volumetric energy density (joules / m^3 or newton-meters / m^3)
Energy density = 27.58 mega-joules / m^3
1 m^3 = 1000 liters
Energy density of 4000 psi = 27.58 kilo-joules / liter
Energy density of gasoline = 34.8 mega-joules / liter
34.8 mega-joules / liter = 34.8 giga-joules / m^3 = 34.8 giga-pascal
34.8 giga-pascal = 5.05 million psi
In other words, for compressed air to match the volumetric energy density of gasoline, it needs to be pressurized to 5 million psi. I smell BS.
Also, any orbits resulting from this impact will at best case (or worst case depending on how you view it) still have a perigee of 200 km. That is, the collision might kick it into a more eccentric orbit which reaches a higher altitude at its apogee, but it's perigee (low point in the orbit) will still be 200 km or lower, where there's enough atmospheric drag to bring it down within a few months or worst case years. To move something to a higher orbit, you need one engine burn (or collision) to move your apogee to a higher altitude, then once you reach apogee a second engine burn to move up the perigee of your orbit. That's not going to happen with unpowered debris. That was why they waited until the last minute to blow it up, instead of doing it last month when the re-entry was first predicted, or back in 2006 when the satellite first failed.
United States - $46,000
The Bahamas - $22,700
Aruba - $21,800
Trinidad and Tobango- $21,700
Barbados - $19,700
Netherlands Antilles - $16,000
Costa Rica - $13,500
Venezuela - $12,800
Mexico - $12,500
Antigua and Barbuda - $10,900
Dominican Republic - $9200
Panama - $9000
Belize - $7800
Colombia - $7200
Guatemala - $5400
El Salvador - $5200
Jamaica - $4800
Cuba - $4500
Grenada - $3900
Honduras - $3300
Nicaragua - $3200
Haiti - $1900
So compared to all its neighbors, not just a handpicked list, Cuba seems to be doing rather poorly.
Cuba missed the boat because there's a politically active ex-Cuban population in Florida which mostly opposes rescinding the embargo. Florida is the 4th most populous state, which due to the Electoral College system has about 10% of the winner-takes-all votes needed to win the Presidency. The ex-Cuban population is influential enough over that vote that neither political party wants to cross them. And so the embargo stays. If the Cuban exiles had settled in, say, Louisiana instead of Florida, the embargo probably would've been dropped in the '70s or '80s
One of their sticking points has been no normalization of relations with Cuba while Castro is in power. So it'll be interesting to see how his resignation plays out with the politics there. Regardless, most of the hardcore anti-Communist faction (those involved with the Bay of Pigs and directly fighting Castro) is in or approaching their 70s now, and will start dying of old age soon. So I would expect a major shift in policy towards Cuba within the next 10-20 years regardless of what happens in Cuba. Changing a person's attitude about something is a lot easier if they were only taught it by their parents, as opposed to having friends and brothers killed in the line of battle over it.
Interesting side note: Total number of warheads are now back to pre-1960s levels (though admittedly those that remain are much more powerful).
Reading some of your links, it sounds like J2 has already been challenged and defeated in court.
The valuation of Internet companies is mostly speculation. If you look at Price/Earnings ratios, most brick and mortar firms like GE and IBM (and Microsoft) are around 15-18. The P/E of Internet companies hovers around 40-100 (Yahoo and Amazon are ~60, Google is ~40, eBay is ~110). My interpretation of this is that everyone is looking for the next Microsoft among Internet companies and wants to get in on it early. That is, the valuations of GE and IBM are based on how much those companies are worth. The valuations of Yahoo and Google are based on how much those companies could be worth.
So Yahoo's valuation is going to swing wildly depending on how much potential for growth the company has in the future. In contrast, the valuation of GE would mostly be based on assets and recent performance, not so much on how you expect them to grow in the future.