Forget about the friends example. Just try to understand the difference between ~1:50 (DR), ~1:200(US), ~1:500(Netherlands) chance of dying in a traffic accident over the period of 50 years or 1:1.175x10e8 chance of winning the Powerball.
Might be some truth to what you are saying, but driver discipline is probably more important.
This based on my experience driving across Europe a couple times - driving in Germany is a pleasure, people respect the law. Compared to that, driving in the Washington DC region is a nightmare and I can fully understand why the death rate is 2.5x higher even though speed limits are ridiculously low here...
First, your math: 10 in 100 000 is 0.01%, not 0.1%.
You might say this just further supports your "x times nothing" argument but let's present this as follows:
If the number of fatalities are 0.01% per year, over a period of 50 years this means 0.5% chance of being killed in a traffic accident - that's 1:200. Or almost 1:1 chance of loosing someone whom you have known relatively closely (classmate, family member, co-worker, friend) in a traffic accident. A rate of 40 per 100000 means 1:50 chance.
Definitely more chance than winning the lottery, what I prefer considering practically nothing.
Better US roads? You must be kidding... I have been living in Montgomery county, Maryland, for the last 4 years and I have regularly seen potholes deep enough to drown in after a thunderstorm...
First, a 10-fold difference is quite important. Second, I would like to see the average speed of motorized traffic in these countries.
Fatality rate is 41.7 per 100000 in DR and ~4 in Germany. Now my guess is that should people try to drive in the DR as fast as it is customary in Germany, that 41.7 rate would go much higher...
And make the fuel grade ethanol / whatever using GM algae. That would just as "green" and "renewable" without sacrificing land where one could produce vegetables and fruits already so bloody expensive.
Conservation : I'm not speaking about conservation, I speak about not being wasteful - I agree that not living in the city, driving oversize cars, buying 2000+ sqft single family homes is the American way but hey, maybe it's time for a change?
Government subsidized : and so what? Germany is still doing fine and you should factor in the humungous amount of money they pour into the Eurozone. It is their choice. Just as the average american house is oversized, poorly isolated, costs too much to cool/heat and far from civilization. Now step up and pay the bills.
1) Preserving domestic energy supplies could be a huge future asset when the rest of the world has none.
2) You could make a drastic reduction in the dependence on foreign petrol/energy by making Better use of it. Let's just mention vehicle fuel efficiency, average one-way commute of 16 miles and setting AC at 70F during summer.
Nothing made its way up in a year, hardly surprising.
I'm sure people will be happy when they see these chemical showing up in the water a couple hundred years from now, then discovering records about fracking in archives. They will probably say things like : they could not have been this stupid?!
Again, the problem here is timescale. One should not think in decades but in centuries.
Bundling the OS to the PC what gave a lot of mass appeal. See first sentence at 1990:Breakup.
The cost of Windows is still hidden on pre-installed machines. I doubt you pay the >$100 like for an OEM version when building our PC yourself. This was even better in the early days - when a PC was sold for thousands of dollars, a couple hundred bucks for the OS were not a big deal.
As for changing platforms : most people would not notice that they are using a popular Linux distro if they have a start menu with programs. Compatibility is an issue : I can't watch Netflix on Linux ( but can buy a set-top box for $100, running linux?!), I can't submit a CV (in most cases) in.pdf or.odf because recruiters want.docx, tc, etc. My wife was using windows, she had no trouble switching to Linux as a regular user. But she cannot vote for the french legislative elections from a Linux machine. Could continue...
So Windows became widespread because they had a very good business plan, and a functioning product "good enough" to establish a monopoly. But you cannot claim, in retrospective, that nothing better would have come up within a reasonable timeframe (5 years?), and neither will we know what personal computing could have been during the 1990s and 2000s had MS not succeeded securing their 90%+ market share with PCs early on.
Of course, without Microsoft, the rise and commoditization of x86 would have never happened
Lets not make such strong statements in retrospective. The succession of events leading to the widespread use of PCs might seem logical an inevitable when looking back a couple decades, but it might have happened in a completely different way. We will certainly never know.
What we know is that Bill Gates amassed this fortune by making pushing an inferior product on masses that defines the user experience of most PC users.
Cumulative effect over 20 years : You can be in H1-B status for 6 + 3 years. The 700K visa holders show this well, being close to 85K * 9 years.
And of course you have not seen the visa holders return home, most of these people get a green card and stay in the US, eventually becoming US citizens.
As AC pointed out above : US gets the best minds from abroad, without paying for their education. If this is not good for the US then I don't see what is...
And why would you refuse to see something based on that reason? Jealousy? Envy?
None of the above - because the details above indicates that the movie is in fact a family enterprise and their foremost goal is not to entertain me but promote their careers.
I will, on the other hand, buy Iron Sky. I loved G.O.R.A. They were both ridiculously low-budget compared to the what After Earth will cost but very entertaining movies, but they could not even get proper distribution in the US. I prefer giving my money to these guys, that's all.
After checking around on Wikipedia and IMDB: Michael Douglas started acting after the age of twenty and started in "also run" titles. Will Smith Jr has co-starred in two big movies with "stars" by the age of 12 : his father and Jackie Chan. Not to mention that the "Karate Kid (2010)" was just a typical Holywood-type rip-off of a movie to make big money.
A head is not independent of the rest of the body, center of gravity is rather at ~4 feet max than 6.
Also, if you want to get "technical", falling plays an important role in children learning balance...
and I guess also learning what is painful and to avoid, and what's not.
My main problem with proponents of helmet - not you - is that they basically say, "if you bike, you'll fall from time to time". This is simply not true : you take it easy, pay attention and you won't fall, that is not normal. If you fall on a regular basis while riding your bicycle you are doing something wrong. "you" : in a general sense;)
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Tenfold is between the Netherlands and DR.
Forget about the friends example. Just try to understand the difference between ~1:50 (DR), ~1:200(US), ~1:500(Netherlands) chance of dying in a traffic accident over the period of 50 years or 1:1.175x10e8 chance of winning the Powerball.
Might be some truth to what you are saying, but driver discipline is probably more important.
This based on my experience driving across Europe a couple times - driving in Germany is a pleasure, people respect the law. Compared to that, driving in the Washington DC region is a nightmare and I can fully understand why the death rate is 2.5x higher even though speed limits are ridiculously low here...
First, your math: 10 in 100 000 is 0.01%, not 0.1%.
You might say this just further supports your "x times nothing" argument but let's present this as follows:
If the number of fatalities are 0.01% per year, over a period of 50 years this means 0.5% chance of being killed in a traffic accident - that's 1:200. Or almost 1:1 chance of loosing someone whom you have known relatively closely (classmate, family member, co-worker, friend) in a traffic accident. A rate of 40 per 100000 means 1:50 chance.
Definitely more chance than winning the lottery, what I prefer considering practically nothing.
Better US roads? You must be kidding... I have been living in Montgomery county, Maryland, for the last 4 years and I have regularly seen potholes deep enough to drown in after a thunderstorm...
Really?
First, a 10-fold difference is quite important. Second, I would like to see the average speed of motorized traffic in these countries.
Fatality rate is 41.7 per 100000 in DR and ~4 in Germany. Now my guess is that should people try to drive in the DR as fast as it is customary in Germany, that 41.7 rate would go much higher...
And make the fuel grade ethanol / whatever using GM algae. That would just as "green" and "renewable" without sacrificing land where one could produce vegetables and fruits already so bloody expensive.
Conservation : I'm not speaking about conservation, I speak about not being wasteful - I agree that not living in the city, driving oversize cars, buying 2000+ sqft single family homes is the American way but hey, maybe it's time for a change?
Government subsidized : and so what? Germany is still doing fine and you should factor in the humungous amount of money they pour into the Eurozone. It is their choice. Just as the average american house is oversized, poorly isolated, costs too much to cool/heat and far from civilization. Now step up and pay the bills.
1) Preserving domestic energy supplies could be a huge future asset when the rest of the world has none.
2) You could make a drastic reduction in the dependence on foreign petrol/energy by making Better use of it. Let's just mention vehicle fuel efficiency, average one-way commute of 16 miles and setting AC at 70F during summer.
3) Renewable as expensive boondoggles? Germany can make it work, how come it is not possible here in the US?
Nothing made its way up in a year, hardly surprising.
I'm sure people will be happy when they see these chemical showing up in the water a couple hundred years from now, then discovering records about fracking in archives. They will probably say things like : they could not have been this stupid?!
Again, the problem here is timescale. One should not think in decades but in centuries.
At least the NSA says it doesn’t read the contents of your email. Google does, and it admits that it does.
Like I believe NSA does not look at the contents... If it weren't for Snowden, we would still not know about PRISM.
Bundling the OS to the PC what gave a lot of mass appeal. See first sentence at 1990:Breakup.
The cost of Windows is still hidden on pre-installed machines. I doubt you pay the >$100 like for an OEM version when building our PC yourself. This was even better in the early days - when a PC was sold for thousands of dollars, a couple hundred bucks for the OS were not a big deal.
As for changing platforms : most people would not notice that they are using a popular Linux distro if they have a start menu with programs. Compatibility is an issue : I can't watch Netflix on Linux ( but can buy a set-top box for $100, running linux?!), I can't submit a CV (in most cases) in .pdf or .odf because recruiters want .docx, tc, etc. My wife was using windows, she had no trouble switching to Linux as a regular user. But she cannot vote for the french legislative elections from a Linux machine. Could continue...
So Windows became widespread because they had a very good business plan, and a functioning product "good enough" to establish a monopoly. But you cannot claim, in retrospective, that nothing better would have come up within a reasonable timeframe (5 years?), and neither will we know what personal computing could have been during the 1990s and 2000s had MS not succeeded securing their 90%+ market share with PCs early on.
This good enough for you?
Of course, without Microsoft, the rise and commoditization of x86 would have never happened
Lets not make such strong statements in retrospective. The succession of events leading to the widespread use of PCs might seem logical an inevitable when looking back a couple decades, but it might have happened in a completely different way. We will certainly never know.
What we know is that Bill Gates amassed this fortune by making pushing an inferior product on masses that defines the user experience of most PC users.
Fully agree - sad how hydrocarbon became associated in my mind with zombies sitting in endless traffic jams in the WashDC area...
reinvested to build a supercomputer placing 9th...
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/frances-total-gets-oil-price-profit-boost
Very smart way to spend that money even though I'm not a big fan of hydrocarbons. I'm really curious how hard was it to justify for Board Members?
If you live too close : make a detour.
If you live too far : do only part of it on the bike.
You might not develop a gorgeous torso but your cardio health will be top-notch.
Just because you use it doesn't mean it isn't a niche feature.
Or it might be just the other way around :
"Just because you don't use it, it doesn't mean it is a niche feature."
You dropped $2200*-$4200** on CPUs, but only put 64G ($500) of RAM in the machine? Cheapskate.
Or $600 : cheapest Opteron 8 core..
I doubt that desktop PCs are the biggest market for 3.5" HDDs, just as I don't believe data centers are filled up with 2.5"/SSD drives...
Cumulative effect over 20 years : You can be in H1-B status for 6 + 3 years. The 700K visa holders show this well, being close to 85K * 9 years.
And of course you have not seen the visa holders return home, most of these people get a green card and stay in the US, eventually becoming US citizens.
As AC pointed out above : US gets the best minds from abroad, without paying for their education. If this is not good for the US then I don't see what is...
No hard feelings :)
And why would you refuse to see something based on that reason? Jealousy? Envy?
None of the above - because the details above indicates that the movie is in fact a family enterprise and their foremost goal is not to entertain me but promote their careers.
I will, on the other hand, buy Iron Sky. I loved G.O.R.A. They were both ridiculously low-budget compared to the what After Earth will cost but very entertaining movies, but they could not even get proper distribution in the US. I prefer giving my money to these guys, that's all.
Son promoting worked well for Kirk Douglas . . .
After checking around on Wikipedia and IMDB: Michael Douglas started acting after the age of twenty and started in "also run" titles. Will Smith Jr has co-starred in two big movies with "stars" by the age of 12 : his father and Jackie Chan. Not to mention that the "Karate Kid (2010)" was just a typical Holywood-type rip-off of a movie to make big money.
I don't intend to contribute to a Movie Star promoting his son into Movie Star II, I'll rather go and see Elysium or Ender's Game.
A head is not independent of the rest of the body, center of gravity is rather at ~4 feet max than 6.
Also, if you want to get "technical", falling plays an important role in children learning balance...
and I guess also learning what is painful and to avoid, and what's not.
My main problem with proponents of helmet - not you - is that they basically say, "if you bike, you'll fall from time to time". This is simply not true : you take it easy, pay attention and you won't fall, that is not normal. If you fall on a regular basis while riding your bicycle you are doing something wrong. "you" : in a general sense ;)