sneakeypete

Any idea on motive yet?

Holy heck, I must say that the Australian banks are rather different to your american ones. For example, right now i've got some money sitting in a 6 month term deposit at 4.5% that i put in only a month ago. Before the whole downturn (right before actually, got in at a good time), i had it in at 8.8% PA. Banks here still do charge a lot in fees, (don't try and use an atm that doesn't belong to your bank, could cost you up to $4 IIRC), however they're starting to drop some fees, one of my banks finally dropped its overdraw fee for sums of less than $50

Isn't all that good though, as governments might be tempted to call an early election if they know something bad is coming. State government here in QLD did that. Got back in too, but a month later they announced that they were going to privatise (sell off) the railnetwork, the ports, and a few other things, which made people rather unhappy. (if everyone knew that it was going to happen, i doubt that the government would have got back in with as many seats as it has now, if at all)

Credit cards are just fine if you use them responsibly (know how much money you have and can spend), and if your really careful you can actually use them to make a little extra money: One way to do that is to put all your pay into a short term money making account, buy on credit and then use the money to pay it off just on time before interest is paid. Then you get, what, 5 dollars of extra interest.\ Its a bit hard to get around in life thesedays without a credit or debit card. Cash is too hard to carry around for large purchases, and bank transfers can take too long. Its worth pointing out that i only use mine (which is connected to parents account, since when i got it 2 years ago i was only 17 and a bit) for large irregular purchases (eg, computer parts), for day to day stuff like food, paying bus cards, fuel i usually use cash, which is a bit more use of cash than a lot of people, i think.

I don't like what it makes your country out to be...

Originally posted by: Duke87 As for science, you really can't do chemistry properly in high school anymore because OSHA regulations forbid them from letting the kids use bunsen burners, or doing anything in "the hood", so you can't really do any actual experiments. Indeed, a lot of the kids in a high school chemistry class aren't mature/responsible enough to handle such things. In college chem lab, it's a different story. Physics labs don't involve things so "dangerous" but many of the ones dealing with electromagnetism or optics involve fancy expensive equipment no public high school is going to be affording. quote> We managed to have quite good chemisty and physics in high school thank you very much. The uni corse i do spends about 90% of the time, i think, doing stuff directly related to the course i'm doing, and even then the electives you take can be related to the course.

Originally posted by: hymI know that it is said that the science fiction of today is the science fact of tomorrow, but to be perfectly frank, it is a gross mistake to take what is written in science fiction and assume it to be possible in the real world (much less a wise idea to pursue). The science fiction writers wrote of amazing technological advances and they were able to do this because they didn't have to actually work out the science behind the idea. All they had to do was come up with a cool idea and write it down. To me, it seems absurd to look at the "technology" of a science fiction story and assume that it can be implemented in the real world. There is a massive disconnect between imagination and reality; just because it can be imagined does not mean it can be done in the world we live in. quote> And even then, very few, if any, science fiction writers from the 19th century picked computers (in their modern 20th century form "everyone can use them", that is), or the internet, before they happened.

Ion engines (or whatever their proper name is) have been used for about the last decade. Currently, there's a probe orbiting the moon that used ion engines to get there, and another heading off to do some asteroid flyby's that's powed by one.

I have to agree: duke, you sound like your just going "eww, he's gay!"

The problem with magnetic launchers, or any other ground based acelleration (gas guns etc.) is not that we can't build a big enough machine to do it, the problem is that when you launch your payload off its going to be going in the excess of 10km/s at sea level (If i remember correctly. either way, its very fast). These speeds are extreme, and we have no way of building something that would be able to withstand the forces and temperatures involved. The beauty of rocket engines is that they only get fast when they get high, where the atmosphere is less dense and these sort of speeds are more easily atainable.

300000 is an outlandish time even with current technology. Well, at least, with current technology employed in ways we've not done before (i mean, very large boosters once we get into space itself). Right now, all probes we've sent off have only just been going fast enough to escape the solar system, there's a lot more room in there for chemical boosters to make stuff go further faster.

Personally, i belive in a goverment that is a shade of grey: it can actually be able to cope with different situations in different ways instead of applying some stupid one size fits all rule to everything. What he is doing is a nusicace to the community, it needs to be stopped.

I doubt that the cement would get to that kind of concentration. It might just make sticky cement droplets, not a entire layer. (both are bad of course).

But this is happening in the 2010's! I think the whole "needing a phobia" thing is a lot less defined these days due to the net. People can go read about all sorts of things and get scared about them. (earthquakes, storms, you name it its there).

It is a big city. Yeah, i'm not sure if this'll be a good idea or not. Depends where exactly the snow is dumped. Suburbs, just shifts the problem. out on fields etc., might help.

Heh, you'd just love the thing that our telco has going on. voice recgonition phone support system. it can be rather annoying, but its not as bad as some make it out. The problem is the fact that you can't skip it. those of us who know that there's a more serious problem then unplugging router and restarting the PC will fix have to go through the entire bloody procedure before you get to speak to a person.

I'm pretty sure anyone in eastern Europe would be extremely offended by this article.

I might have said this before in this thread, but i really do hate the fact that the whole "global warming" fear is distracting us from the more important stuff like deforistation, plastics, salinity etc.

I could imagine in, say, 1000 0'syears time, someone coming across a archive of wikipedia that only has the future dates up to a certain point listed... and this happening all again.

Originally posted by: Facco from what ive heard, the three membembers of the peace prize commity were all socalists (gasp!) Not trying to say anything bout obama or the rest of the world, but from what ive learned, most of the world hates america and would like nothing more then to see it fall. Thus, they like obamaquote> Honestly, i hate to derail a thread like this, however. Most of the world does not "hate american and like to see it fail". Most of the world dislikes they way that the US has acted, and is acting. but to go from that to wanting to see it fail is a rather big jump. Its comments like yours, however, generalizing the entire world, that make this negative view of the US happen.

Hahaha, Iran and NK are certainly trying to assert dominance, but hardly trying to become "the big boy on the block". they're simply not big enough in the first place.

Someone put the probes effect on the moon similar to the effect of an eyelash dropping onto the floor of a Jet airliner. Looking at it from a simplistic physics standpoint, MmVm+MpVp=McVc (where m is moon, p is probe, c is combined and M is mass, V velocity. Lets look at it from the reference frame of the moon (eg, so velocity of the moon is zero). The mass of the moon is 7.36 × 10^22 kgs. The velocty of the probe is about 2680m/s, and its mass should be something like 2300kg (19 orders of magnitude lower than the mass of the moon). Doing the maths gets a change in velocty of the final combined mass of about 8.37 x 10^-17 m/s. This speed is tiny. It would take 378million years for the moon to move 1 meter out of its orbit at this velocity. Also consider that the moon itself is more than 360000km away from the earth already. As for the cost, take note that this mission was launched with another one at the same time. I am not sure that the 37million was just for this mission, or was combined between them, but its something ot keep an open mind about.

Originally posted by: N_O_Body Foo. To climb out of the current mess, we need to Cut down fossil fuel use. One of the best ways is to go to electrified rail using renewable power (nuclear power may be used in the interim). Stop building roads. Scale-down interstate/inter-province trucking in favor of rail. Build more public (rail) transit in highly populated areas (e.g. L.A.), and Tax the daylights out of private automobiles unless they are electric or Hydrogen powered. Start workiing on the necessary infrastructure to support Hydrogen fuels. All of the above should create jobs in all sectors from pure research to general construction. Let's get (back) to work. If we don't have the skills, grants to education, apprenticeship programs and on-the-job training are a better way to spend public money than rescuing obsolete, stagnant autobile companies and dead financial outfits. quote> 0. Stop growing the population.

It was either spend or have a significant proportion of the country completely unemployed... i imagine. However, we raised our interest rate by a quarter yesterday. We're doing bloody well.

Originally posted by: Merlin of Flyote If you're British why would you want to drive on the right hand side if the left is the correct side? Incidently right-handed people live on average 10 years longer than left-handed people as well. quote> Because i honestly don't give two hoots about which side of the road that i drive on, Neither is more correct than the other. But as someone who works with numbers and measurements all the time i know how bloody annoying it can be working with imperial units that don't easily go together.