sneakeypete

I agree exactly with that sentiment, and i think almost everyone does. Its just that people think that the object you get out of it at the end just isn't going to be as useful as they are saying. It exists, but, like with the passenger side of things, it ain't what it used to be. A lot of former lines have been abandoned and even ripped up. And where it used to be commonplace to have spurs directly off the line to factories along it, that's no longer a typical practice. A large portion of long distance freight in America is taken by truck. And the truckers are organized, so any attempt to make a political move to change that will meet some rough opposition. The existing freight rail sytem is pretty much tretched to capacity, so it could stand to benefit from expansion... but again, the truckers. It ain't happening on their watch. In much of the country we are still continuing to build highways, though.quote> Dam unions. Gotta love them, gotta hate them. Still, rail freight is a much more ideal way to transfer things. You can (depending on where you travel. over the nullabore they have trains that are 100's of cars long, and double stacked with containers (no hight restrictions because there's nothing they go under), but it only takes 2-3 people to drive them. But it'd take about 50 truck drivers to pull that many containers, it adds up to a fair bit of money. I think what turns some people off the idea of rail transport is the loading/unloading times though. Perhaps if the government spent money on building more common and more effecient loading docks, if possible, or extending your lines, or something, you'd end up with something to be proud of out of this investment. As it stands however, i have to agree that anything more than a highspeed rail connection up your eastern coast is probably not going to be very useful Sure, in europe there is the eruostar in UK/belgium, TVG france and the... err, the german one. However, take into account that the average population density over there is 181 people/square kilometer, while in the US its only 31, and the fact that its about half the distance across those four countries (meaning its quicker to take the train rather than fly when you account for customs etc.), you begin to see why people think that anything other than localised High speed rail mightn't be such a good addition right now. Of course, there are states in the US that have very few people in them, and places with a lot, but not so much in europe.

It'd be better off to focus on a good rail freight service, Its where the real benefits could be made. Or does that already exist? (i'm not american...)

I don't understand how the server got into the museum.... I mean, i understand that the police can confiscate it, but don't they have to give it back? why can they just hand it over to a museum?

If you upload good enough video's and enough people watch them, you can get a contract kind of thing with youtube, or so i heard.

That's what i like about our British derived system here in Aus. Each seat in federal parliament is based on an area that isn't bordered by state boundaries, The only requirement is that each area is roughly the same size. This way, there's seats of federal parliament that only take up a small portion of state capital cities, and other seats that take up a large portion of some states (eg, where there's low population).

The beautiful thing about steam is that you can buy it anywhere. Saves on publishing in smaller out of the way countries.

Originally posted by: Jezus53 You've got nothing to ***** about. quote> I've got nothing to what about? quote> Heh, didn't realise that was filtered. Nothing to compain about. I think that the US probably has an easier job of guarding its coastlines. Although getting stuff into it might be more popular.

Originally posted by: Jezus53 Plus, we have Mexico right next to us and a lot of coast line to cover. As much as we try, we can't track every single item that comes near our soil. And I'm sure if you knew who to ask, you could get an AK in Britain. quote> Australia has twice the coastline, no friendly canadians for a quater of the border and a 10th of the population. And mexico? last i heard guns are going in, not coming out. You've got nothing to ***** about. Of course, i think its the culture that you have over there that really messus you up with respect to firearms. There's AK's in australia, they've been used occasionally (mostly in gangland stuff), they've been siezed occasionally. However, Legal ownership of them is almost nil. Of course, that doesn't matter. No need to bring weapons across the border anyway, our army 'lost' 7 anti tank rockets from its armory a few years back. Word has it that a gang has them for 'insurance' purposes.

Hmm, i do see what your saying, and i admit that i wouldn't be suprised if the designers of the tu-144 did get a look at Concorde blueprints, and vice versa. However, i disagree with the notion that the tu-144 is a copy, for the reasons i've mentioned above. Still, you'd be surprised at how similar two things with the same goals, designed by people in similar situations can be. Look at the Datsun Fairlady and MGB sportscars of the mid 60's for example.

Couple of 3 level diamond interchanges i was making. Can't make them really compact until we get double elevated RHW-4, elevated Mis under double elevated RHW-4 and elevated mis intersections. But still, they do save space i think. Also, i didn't have a slope mod installed at the time, so i used the elevated to non elevated transfer peices. with a slopemod you should be able to make it more compact. Edit: gah, i just realised how horrible the picture is.

Gee, whats with all this tu-144 hate? yes, it was a crappily designed plane. Yes, the Concorde was better. But no, it wasn't directly copied. At that point in history, supersonic airliners were the next big thing, everyone wanted one. This lead to the fact that most of the designs looked alike. For example Boeing designed a supersonic aircraft that looked just like the Concorde too! (Boeing 2707). To put it simply, there simply wasn't time for the Russians to steal the Concorde's design, Look at it, redo the design in a way so that they could manufacture it, then build the thing and somehow have it ready before the Concorde. just wasn't going to happen. Sure, they got some ideas from the Concorde (bending nose for example), but the concorde got some ideas from the tu-144 (canards). And the American design probably copied a lot from both as well.This kind of thing isn't industrial espionage though, its just analyzing the competition. Most companies do this (eg, GM would be buying all the different cars for sale in the work and pulling them apart to see how they work). To put it simply: it was a case of similar goals and similar constraints with similar technology that caused aircraft that looked the same, not stealing plans.

There's a roundabout under highway intersection here, with another road going off each way (one to the city, one to the airport). They've put traffic lights on it. doesn't work, at least not with high capacity. Interestingly enough though, on the newest highway around here, a smallish rounderbout each side of a bridge over/under the highway itself seems to be popular, but only for low capacity roads. Have to admit, i think it works good as well.

How was the Russian one made? the same way as the european one. Hard work, designing and testing. Unless they had a time machine. There's no way that they could have used purely stolen plans to develop an aircraft and have it completely and running (well almost...) at the same time as the Concorde. If they did, it would have lagged a fair few years behind, which it didn't.

Its all about economics really. you the slower you go, the more efficient you are. It seems like cruising at about .9 times the speed of sound is the optimum currently, doubt that this is going to change for a long time. people simply aren't impatient enough yet!

No, your twisting my words. I'm not saying that anyone should share technology, but I'm saying that countries that already have it should get off their effing high horse and stop policing the world and telling people what they can and cant research. Besides, i never mentioned nukes in the first place, i merely mentioned space programs. Which, by the way, a large amount of nations, and private entaprises, are currently developing. I mean, seriously, if building a rocket that can get a payload into low earth orbit provides oh so much information that could be used to create an ICBM, why didn't the US get up in arms about the recent private launch? surely this information in the hands of a corporation is much more dangerous than it being in the hands of a Dictator of a poor third world country with some of the largest armies on the planet surrounding it on both sides.

What exactly gives everyone here the right to have their own space program, but not NK? I mean, morally its wrong in that they should try feeding their people better... but that still doesn't mean that they don't have the right to build a rocket, nor does it mean that you should invade them to try and stop it or something stupid like that. As for expense... Well, launching a more conventionall rocket is nowhere near the half billion cost of the space shuttle. But then again, even NASA admits that the shuttle was a mistake (its so cheap to build a new rocket that reusing it really isn't worth the extra expense). Want proof ? A private company launched their own rocket in september of last year. Oh no, guess we should raid their company, they must be upto something sinister! according to hym, the info they got from that launch could help them with a missile program!

It's amazing how far stem cell's have come in just the last 10 years that people have been experimenting with them. Shame they could do this with some other kind of cells to get rid of all the negativity though.

What can i say? if TV over there is anything like the TV in Aus, don't bother with it full stop.

Whats so bad if they pull out anyway. Oh, wait, foreign cars. We got that here too back in 1992. Then again, at least Japan can claim that they killed off an entire Australian racing division.

Funny how everyone chooses different places for different and sometimes even contradicting reasons (although biased towards cities due to being a city building game site i think) For example, we moved from the country to the city (in Australia) when i was 16. There are also people who move to the city. The reasons? well, we moved from the country so that we could live somewhere where everything is close. People move to the country so that they have space. We moved so that i'd get a better senior high school education and would be close to a university. People move to the country so that their kids don't have to go to bigger schools. People move to the country so that they can pursue different hobbies (can't run a hobby farm on a quarter acre block). People move to the city because of the closeness of things like entertainment centers as well as internet availability. In each case, there's a lot of negatives that people don't think about. Sure, it might be nice to have space in the country, but you better make sure you get everything on your single shopping trip, because you don't want to make that half hour journey just to get the milk. And god forbid you have a medical emergency... Then again, in the city, your neighbors are quite close, you can't make too much noise, etc. Not really enough space to have a game of backyard cricket/footy. If you live in the country, odds are the schools are going to be smaller, but also have less facilities and offer a smaller range of subjects. Don't forget that you might have to drive your kids half an hour into school and back every day too. In the city there's 1000's of people in a single school: you never get to know anyone. Of course, my examples are a little biased since i prefer living in the city to living in the country. As well as that, the 'country' in Australia might be a whole lot different to the 'country' in the US or Europe. Overall though, moving to the city has benified me (yay for having an performence car scene greater than a couple of riced up civics and a bunch of Falcon/holdens. yay for good internet access. Yay for a close by uni)

Originally posted by: elemented9 I heard about this today by looking it up on Wikipedia. I'm thinking the Chinese government runs the operation, after all they have the technology to do this. If they block websites and other information, why not this?quote> I'm thinking the USA's government runs the operation, after all they have the technology to do this. If they monitor calls and other information, why not this?

A offensive war would be devastating for any side waging it. While SK would probably be able to hold off a Invasion from the north, i really doubt their will to commit to a full invasion of it. A 50 year old gun kills just as well, if you don't know that its about to be shot at you.

Considering i live in a commonwealth country, and we have nothing of this sort here, i have a question to all you Americans: do you think the constitution is still relevant? Heck, it was made by a bunch of guys, what, 300 years ago. As well as that, from the little i've seen from the outside of your country, it seems like there's a lot of pointless bickering that goes on about "rights" granted under it. (eg "oh, you can't take my gun, its my right!", when, for example, tougher laws really should be imposed). So, is it?

I'd like for someone to point out to me how a 6 degree rise in average planet temperature would wipe out all life on the planet, let alone even cause major change to life as we know it on earth.

The benefit of coal is, because it is so cheap and plentiful, outfitting all of the new (and possibly retrofitting old plants) with technology to capture all of the carbon, (when the tech matures a bit more) is probably going to be economically viable.