I have always thought that if Venus had formed in Mars orbit, we would likely have a true second Earth in our solar system. It would have been able to retain surface water. It would have a significant atmosphere. What its atmosphere would be like, I don't have the expertise to hypothesize, but it would have evolved far differently than the current Venusian atmosphere.
The highest temperature ever recorded on Mars is 70F / 21C. With an atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, a Venus in Mars orbit would be significantly warmer with less fluctuation and more stability.
It would truly have been a planet worth sending a manned mission to.
One point about the price difference is in the U.S. Microsoft offers both the upgrade version, which is cheaper, and the more expensive retail version. Europe is just getting the retail version, due to the removing of IE 8 because of the European lawsuit. But Microsoft is having a half price preorder sale, which is 49 pounds for the full retail version of Home Premium in Britain. I just preordered for $49 for the upgrade version in the U.S. I'd rather have the full version for $75, but the offer in the U.S. is only good for the upgrade version.
But anyway, if you want Windows 7, preorder while you can. Sale is only for a couple of weeks, with limited supplies. Check Microsoft website for when your local sale is, and what vendors are offering it.
My problem with the metric system is for real world short distances an inch seems like a more reasonable unit of measure than a centimeter, which seems too short. And a foot is also a useful measure, of which there is no corresponding metric unit. The metric measure jumps from a centimeter to a meter. Not a very intuitive collection for short distances compared to the inch/foot/yard set, which seems to more naturally correspond to how I grasp distances in the world. A centimeter is just to short to be the basic unit for distances, and is an artificially contrived distance, not based on how people really grasp the world.
But for very short distances, the millimeter wins hands down.
In a NYT article in the Sunday Magazine, Buzz Aldin thinks the Russians have a better idea in going to Phobos as a stepping stone to Mars. The moon..."is not promising for commercial activities."
Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Ha ha ha. Got you there. Homer Simpson operates a nuclear power plant, and he doesn't seem like he got past the 8th grade. You need to watch more TV, you might learn something, and not be quite so ignorant of how nuclear power plants are really run.
Yeah, HD DVD was actually better implemented then Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray had more storage capacity, but the HD DVD menus and interface were better designed and had more features, at least up until last year at the point in time when HD DVD expired. But Blu-Ray will keep on improving as time goes on.
The government has been giving out coupons for $40 or $50 (forget the exact amount) towards the cost of a converter box so you can pick up HD TV signals and watch them on an analog set. I was at my brother's house last weekend, and he had one hooked up to his old analog set, which he had stuck in his kitchen, since he had a HDTV set in his living room. It was pulling in HD channels fine. His girlfriend said with the coupon, the box cost them $10.
I've seen triangular keys on a touchpad before. I think may in turn have been enclosed in a circle. Can't remember where I saw this, but the image is fairly clear in my mind.
Yes and no. Yes, they worked for a pittance, because the only way an artist could survive then was to use his craft for the benefit or enjoyment of his patron. But the majority of artists in our age (unless they manage to hit an uncommon seam of luck) have to find other means to feed themselves and their families.
I'm not talking about the third and fourth tier artists. I'm talking about the greatest and most successful artists
of their era. The minor artists couldn't support themselves solely with their art, then or now.
Don't compare Bach and Shakespeare to Joe Blow playing at the local pub or reading at the local poetry night. Compare them to the Beatles and Stephen King.
Great works of art, literature, music etc are far more often created by the impecunious than the wealthy.
How true this is. The greatest artists of the past, Mozart, Bach, Shakespeare, worked for a pittance comapred to what artists make nowadays. And contrary to the argument made that we have to feed the rich more vast sums of money so they keep on producing; the volume of output of am impoverished Mozart or Bach was enormous compared to the output of the pampered rich artists of today. And with a higher quality level.
It's funny, because when it comes to wars, the US hasn't really actually won that many in the last century. About all it's won was the Pacific campaign of World War II but even that was only because the Russians covered it's arse in defeating Germany and because it had vast amounts of allied support to the West of Japan in China and from the South from Australia etc.
In fact, what wars has the US won by itself in the last century? I'm not sure it's actually won any, even in the first Iraq war it needed massive amounts of allied support. That's a stark contrast to European nations like say, Britain that unilaterally sent the Argentinians running back home in the Falklands for example.
In the history vein I'd like to add Herodotus, the Greek historian from the 5th centrury BC, considered in western culture the father of history. I read one translation of some of his work, the Histories some years ago. Very readable.
Riiight. That's why students are constantly feed bullshit about the U.S. government's thousands of crimes in the world and millions of innocent people killed. Genocide of the native Americans, for example. That's been almost whitewashed from history by the public school system. Right wingers scream bloody murder if 1/1000 of the truth of American crimes is talked about in public schools and claim a liberal bias. The teaching of American History is just as tainted as the Japanese claiming they were the innocent victims in WW II.
Fox is NOT the only one takings sides. At least with Fox, if a politician is caught in a bathroom with someone, the word "Democrat" or "Republican" is used in the first sentence.
All the other major TV and Newspaper outlets will feature the word "Republican" in the first paragraph but will not use the word "Democrat" till the 4th or 5th paragraph
God, so many right wingers have a delusional persecution complex, making up these false generalizations which are just BS you pulled out of your ass. Care to back up this claim with facts?
- that would be a mistake, I live in Canada, it's no joke. Our cancer patients have to wait for over 70 days now to start getting critical treatment, our emergency rooms are filled with people who are waiting for 8-16 hours to get service and half of our people do not have a physician, forget about getting an appointment with a specialist in less than 3-4 months (sometimes 6-9 months).
I think your cherry picking a few worse cases. Do you have evidence that's the average? You could cherry pick a million horror stories about the U.S. private insurance system - cancer patients denied treatment or being dropped by their insurance companies, etc.
I any case, I don't mean to advocate getting rid of private insurance. I just want a government supervised insurance plan to be available.
But if you don't like Canada's health care system, by all means, emigrate to the U.S. I just hope you don't lose your job or are self employed.
You know, socialism isn't outlawed by the U.S. Constitution. I'm in favor of the government doing whatever it can do better then big business, e.g. replace the joke of a medical insurance system with a single payer government run system.
Admittedly socialism doesn't work well in many cases because the process is corrupted by the rich and powerful and special interests. But on the local level, a socialized industry might work better then on the national level, because the people will have more influence to avoid corruption then they do on the national level.
If cities can provide broadband service cheaper then private companies, I want them to. As long as its self supporting and not subsidized.
I'm tired of CEOs making millions of dollars for doing nothing unique or that a lot of other people making far less couldn't do.
And the telecoms are among the worst of the bunch in undeserved profits.
Usually the PC version of Resident Evils games comes out later, like about 6 months to a year. I would guess this is partially to allocate coding time to different platforms, and partially to give the consoles an exclusive over the PC market for a while.
But I had a great time playing RE 3 and RE 4, and hope RE 5 will be as good.
US real total compensation per hour [blogspot.com] has doubled since 1970. Real hourly earnings [econbrowser.com] aren't up much over that time, but that is because our additional compensation is going into 401k plans, health insurance, and more paid sick time. It is going there because tax policy makes it preferable for your employer to pay that compensation rather than paying you wages, having your wages taxed, and then you pay for them.
Sure, that's why it takes two people working instead of one, like it did in 1970, to keep an average household above water.
The Heritage foundation site makes claims about their calculations, but provides no links to show in any detail in the least what those calculations are. All references reference the opposing claim, except for one, and that one doesn't really explain anything.
The Heritage Foundation statements reminds me of the Republicans who say on the Sunday talk shows that the amount the rich are paying in taxes has actually gone up, ignoring that their cut of the national income has doubled.
Basically what makes the Heritage Foundation claim invalid is that, according to the notes on one of the charts, it includes everyone but the proprietors. Well, everyone but the proprietors would usually include the CEO, since he's an employee, and all of the Wall Street traders who make multi-million dollar bonuses every year.
Needless to say, such statistics which include the wealthy tell you nothing how people that make under $100,000 a year are doing. This is just more right wing disinformation.
The other proposal came from McCain, who wanted to eliminate the employer's tax-credit (the part Obama emphasized during debates) in favor of giving each individual a tax-credit (the part Obama never acknowledged) to be spent on their own health care. This would've created the same kind of market for health insurance as exists for, say, auto, term-life, house, and other insurances. The decoupling of health care from employment would've been much more fare, and the prices would've come down because of genuine competition.
There already is a lot of competition driving health care costs down. The tens of thousands of companies who have to buy it for their employees. And they are bigger and have a lot more power and leverage to drive down prices then any individual does. Your argument is false
The benefit would've been enormous, because the exelsior ("ever upwards" lat.) health care costs (and the associated evilness of health-insurers) are primarily explained by the fact, that consumers of care aren't the ones paying neither for the care itself, nor even for the insurance. This creates a lot of waste, and leads to -- inefficient, but alienating -- attempts to control it.
The problem isn't the patients, its the doctors and hospitals, which make more money the more tests they do, and the more time they waste with ineffective treatments, forcing patients to return repeatedly. Generally, the patients don't decide the treatment they get, the doctors do. Your mythical strawman arguments are typical of the right wing.
A single payer plan regulated by the government is the only way to go. The multitude of insurance companies and executives with their multimillion dollar paychecks are a drain on the system. Every country with national health care has far lower costs then the United States, and overall greater satisfaction from the citizens. Sure, you can find valid complaints by citizens of all these countries about their health care services, but you can find a multitude of complaints from U.S. citizens about our health care. Not in one country with national health care would the citizens want to go to a U.S. style system. They'd be crazy to. 'the free market is God' B.S. doesn't work, as shown with the current economic crisis.
Slashdot Mirror
I have always thought that if Venus had formed in Mars orbit, we would likely have a true second Earth in our solar system. It would have been able to retain surface water. It would have a significant atmosphere. What its atmosphere would be like, I don't have the expertise to hypothesize, but it would have evolved far differently than the current Venusian atmosphere.
The highest temperature ever recorded on Mars is 70F / 21C. With an atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, a Venus in Mars orbit would be significantly warmer with less fluctuation and more stability.
It would truly have been a planet worth sending a manned mission to.
But why lament something that never existed?
One point about the price difference is in the U.S. Microsoft offers both the upgrade version, which is cheaper, and the more expensive retail version. Europe is just getting the retail version, due to the removing of IE 8 because of the European lawsuit. But Microsoft is having a half price preorder sale, which is 49 pounds for the full retail version of Home Premium in Britain. I just preordered for $49 for the upgrade version in the U.S. I'd rather have the full version for $75, but the offer in the U.S. is only good for the upgrade version.
But anyway, if you want Windows 7, preorder while you can. Sale is only for a couple of weeks, with limited supplies. Check Microsoft website for when your local sale is, and what vendors are offering it.
My problem with the metric system is for real world short distances an inch seems like a more reasonable unit of measure than a centimeter, which seems too short. And a foot is also a useful measure, of which there is no corresponding metric unit. The metric measure jumps from a centimeter to a meter. Not a very intuitive collection for short distances compared to the inch/foot/yard set, which seems to more naturally correspond to how I grasp distances in the world. A centimeter is just to short to be the basic unit for distances, and is an artificially contrived distance, not based on how people really grasp the world.
But for very short distances, the millimeter wins hands down.
In a NYT article in the Sunday Magazine, Buzz Aldin thinks the Russians have a better idea in going to Phobos as a stepping stone to Mars. The moon..."is not promising for commercial activities."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/magazine/21fob-q4-t.html?ref=magazine
Nuclear power is complex. Maintaining a reaction takes experts with decades of education and years of training. Calculate the cost of education into the cost of nuclear power? You should.
Ha ha ha. Got you there. Homer Simpson operates a nuclear power plant, and he doesn't seem like he got past the 8th grade. You need to watch more TV, you might learn something, and not be quite so ignorant of how nuclear power plants are really run.
Yeah, HD DVD was actually better implemented then Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray had more storage capacity, but the HD DVD menus and interface were better designed and had more features, at least up until last year at the point in time when HD DVD expired. But Blu-Ray will keep on improving as time goes on.
Our government is only "out of control" because we have demanded that it fill every whim and desire we have.
No, our government is "out of control" because it is controlled by the rich and the corporations.
The government has been giving out coupons for $40 or $50 (forget the exact amount) towards the cost of a converter box so you can pick up HD TV signals and watch them on an analog set. I was at my brother's house last weekend, and he had one hooked up to his old analog set, which he had stuck in his kitchen, since he had a HDTV set in his living room. It was pulling in HD channels fine. His girlfriend said with the coupon, the box cost them $10.
I've seen triangular keys on a touchpad before. I think may in turn have been enclosed in a circle. Can't remember where I saw this, but the image is fairly clear in my mind.
Does anyone else think Bing is a stupid sounding name?
I have a better one.
Bling!
Use Microsoft's new search and get all the Bling! you've been missing with other search engines.
That says it all.
Yes and no. Yes, they worked for a pittance, because the only way an artist could survive then was to use his craft for the benefit or enjoyment of his patron. But the majority of artists in our age (unless they manage to hit an uncommon seam of luck) have to find other means to feed themselves and their families.
I'm not talking about the third and fourth tier artists. I'm talking about the greatest and most successful artists of their era. The minor artists couldn't support themselves solely with their art, then or now.
Don't compare Bach and Shakespeare to Joe Blow playing at the local pub or reading at the local poetry night. Compare them to the Beatles and Stephen King.
Great works of art, literature, music etc are far more often created by the impecunious than the wealthy.
How true this is. The greatest artists of the past, Mozart, Bach, Shakespeare, worked for a pittance comapred to what artists make nowadays. And contrary to the argument made that we have to feed the rich more vast sums of money so they keep on producing; the volume of output of am impoverished Mozart or Bach was enormous compared to the output of the pampered rich artists of today. And with a higher quality level.
This is why we have the Bill of Rights. Because governments will trample on personal freedom at their whim unless controlled by the law or the people.
The atomic weapons used on Japan saved millions and millions of lives, and prevented even greater Japanese atrocities.
Bullshit. The Japanese were already beaten by the time the U.S. dropped the atomic bombs.
It's funny, because when it comes to wars, the US hasn't really actually won that many in the last century. About all it's won was the Pacific campaign of World War II but even that was only because the Russians covered it's arse in defeating Germany and because it had vast amounts of allied support to the West of Japan in China and from the South from Australia etc.
In fact, what wars has the US won by itself in the last century? I'm not sure it's actually won any, even in the first Iraq war it needed massive amounts of allied support. That's a stark contrast to European nations like say, Britain that unilaterally sent the Argentinians running back home in the Falklands for example.
Grenada, you fool! Reagan kicked Grenada's ass!
I and all Americans await your apology.
In the history vein I'd like to add Herodotus, the Greek historian from the 5th centrury BC, considered in western culture the father of history. I read one translation of some of his work, the Histories some years ago. Very readable.
touche!
Riiight. That's why students are constantly feed bullshit about the U.S. government's thousands of crimes in the world and millions of innocent people killed. Genocide of the native Americans, for example. That's been almost whitewashed from history by the public school system. Right wingers scream bloody murder if 1/1000 of the truth of American crimes is talked about in public schools and claim a liberal bias. The teaching of American History is just as tainted as the Japanese claiming they were the innocent victims in WW II.
Fox is NOT the only one takings sides. At least with Fox, if a politician is caught in a bathroom with someone, the word "Democrat" or "Republican" is used in the first sentence. All the other major TV and Newspaper outlets will feature the word "Republican" in the first paragraph but will not use the word "Democrat" till the 4th or 5th paragraph
God, so many right wingers have a delusional persecution complex, making up these false generalizations which are just BS you pulled out of your ass. Care to back up this claim with facts?
- that would be a mistake, I live in Canada, it's no joke. Our cancer patients have to wait for over 70 days now to start getting critical treatment, our emergency rooms are filled with people who are waiting for 8-16 hours to get service and half of our people do not have a physician, forget about getting an appointment with a specialist in less than 3-4 months (sometimes 6-9 months).
I think your cherry picking a few worse cases. Do you have evidence that's the average? You could cherry pick a million horror stories about the U.S. private insurance system - cancer patients denied treatment or being dropped by their insurance companies, etc.
I any case, I don't mean to advocate getting rid of private insurance. I just want a government supervised insurance plan to be available.
But if you don't like Canada's health care system, by all means, emigrate to the U.S. I just hope you don't lose your job or are self employed.
You know, socialism isn't outlawed by the U.S. Constitution. I'm in favor of the government doing whatever it can do better then big business, e.g. replace the joke of a medical insurance system with a single payer government run system.
Admittedly socialism doesn't work well in many cases because the process is corrupted by the rich and powerful and special interests. But on the local level, a socialized industry might work better then on the national level, because the people will have more influence to avoid corruption then they do on the national level.
If cities can provide broadband service cheaper then private companies, I want them to. As long as its self supporting and not subsidized.
I'm tired of CEOs making millions of dollars for doing nothing unique or that a lot of other people making far less couldn't do.
And the telecoms are among the worst of the bunch in undeserved profits.
Usually the PC version of Resident Evils games comes out later, like about 6 months to a year. I would guess this is partially to allocate coding time to different platforms, and partially to give the consoles an exclusive over the PC market for a while.
But I had a great time playing RE 3 and RE 4, and hope RE 5 will be as good.
Your English is really fractured for supposedly being an American
US real total compensation per hour [blogspot.com] has doubled since 1970. Real hourly earnings [econbrowser.com] aren't up much over that time, but that is because our additional compensation is going into 401k plans, health insurance, and more paid sick time. It is going there because tax policy makes it preferable for your employer to pay that compensation rather than paying you wages, having your wages taxed, and then you pay for them.
Sure, that's why it takes two people working instead of one, like it did in 1970, to keep an average household above water.
The Heritage foundation site makes claims about their calculations, but provides no links to show in any detail in the least what those calculations are. All references reference the opposing claim, except for one, and that one doesn't really explain anything.
The Heritage Foundation statements reminds me of the Republicans who say on the Sunday talk shows that the amount the rich are paying in taxes has actually gone up, ignoring that their cut of the national income has doubled.
Basically what makes the Heritage Foundation claim invalid is that, according to the notes on one of the charts, it includes everyone but the proprietors. Well, everyone but the proprietors would usually include the CEO, since he's an employee, and all of the Wall Street traders who make multi-million dollar bonuses every year.
Needless to say, such statistics which include the wealthy tell you nothing how people that make under $100,000 a year are doing. This is just more right wing disinformation.
The other proposal came from McCain, who wanted to eliminate the employer's tax-credit (the part Obama emphasized during debates) in favor of giving each individual a tax-credit (the part Obama never acknowledged) to be spent on their own health care. This would've created the same kind of market for health insurance as exists for, say, auto, term-life, house, and other insurances. The decoupling of health care from employment would've been much more fare, and the prices would've come down because of genuine competition.
There already is a lot of competition driving health care costs down. The tens of thousands of companies who have to buy it for their employees. And they are bigger and have a lot more power and leverage to drive down prices then any individual does. Your argument is false
The benefit would've been enormous, because the exelsior ("ever upwards" lat.) health care costs (and the associated evilness of health-insurers) are primarily explained by the fact, that consumers of care aren't the ones paying neither for the care itself, nor even for the insurance. This creates a lot of waste, and leads to -- inefficient, but alienating -- attempts to control it.
The problem isn't the patients, its the doctors and hospitals, which make more money the more tests they do, and the more time they waste with ineffective treatments, forcing patients to return repeatedly. Generally, the patients don't decide the treatment they get, the doctors do. Your mythical strawman arguments are typical of the right wing.
A single payer plan regulated by the government is the only way to go. The multitude of insurance companies and executives with their multimillion dollar paychecks are a drain on the system. Every country with national health care has far lower costs then the United States, and overall greater satisfaction from the citizens. Sure, you can find valid complaints by citizens of all these countries about their health care services, but you can find a multitude of complaints from U.S. citizens about our health care. Not in one country with national health care would the citizens want to go to a U.S. style system. They'd be crazy to. 'the free market is God' B.S. doesn't work, as shown with the current economic crisis.