Why?

The Internet is for Porn!

(Thank you, Avenue Q)

Also tape is not really stable - the magnetic oxide flakes-off over time.

I'd say the most stable technology we have for storage is Flash RAM since it has no moving parts, and if you're willing to expend the money, then a ROM is the absolute best. Even after we're all dust, the ROMs inside Atari, Sega, and Nintendo cartridges will still be readable.

Actually that would be 96F. It was, conveniently, twice as far above freezing as freezing was above the brine, and splitting them into ranges of 32 and 64 degrees added up to 96 degrees Fahrenheit for the human body temperature.

32 and 64 were both powers of 2, so the thermometers were easy to label: just mark the three calibration points and bisect the distance between them repeatedly.

The boiling point wasn't exactly 212F on that scale, but scientists decided it made more sense to have the scale calibrated on the freezing and boiling points of water, and they decided to adjust the scale so they were exactly 180 degrees apart (heh). This also resulted in the human body temperature moving slightly on the re-calibrated scale.

Their motives for wanting nukes, or at least the ability to produce nukes, if they really really had to, are pretty straightforward:

1) Prestige, and "my stuff is better than yours", the equivalent of "keeping up with the jones" only between nations;
2) To make sure nobody else will nuke them, AKA "credible deterrence";
3) To make sure they won't be invaded by a bigger power (USA, we're looking in _your_ direction).

Look, countries like Iran (and eventually Syria, and Venezuela, and Brazil, and a few others) no longer count on the attempts at international law of the past 60 years to guarantee their territorial sovereignty, so they're looking at the example of North Korea vs Iraq, and figuring out very quickly that the only way to be invasion-proof is to get nukes.

Never mind that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is starting to look, from the point of view of non-nuclear countries, like a system where there's one set of rules for the big guys and another set of rules for everybody else.

You can hardly expect countries like Iran to enthusiastically support that, eh?

Hot
Hot
Hot
Rainy (Although sometimes the rainy season takes a powder)

Correct, but if the cancer isn't recognized by the NK cells as foreign, then they won't be effective.

More like a strong 6.

I wanted to like the game, I really enjoy the Champions role playing game.

While there is some nive costume making, and some of the visually effects of the powers are extremely cool.
The game becomes boring pretty fast, and the 'comic book' effect on the art is just plain irritating.

I could play it for longer then two weeks. I was just bored.

Much of what killed people in 1918 was not the flu itself, but opportunistic bacterial infections. And we have good medicines for those, or at least we did until they were passed out as placebos to calm worried parents demanding their doctors "do SOMETHING" for Junior and/or Missy and their viral ear infections. :P

"Why, of course you can see the source code. But no, you can't view it out of this courthouse room. And yes, it's all printed out for you in three ring binders. No, no real organization -- we pretty much just dumped the precompile code and libraries at random into the printer and broke it into 250 page binders. I realize there's no room for a desk with all these boxes of binders, but there's plenty of space for your reviewer to step into the room and close the door. He can make annotations on a clipboard."

give Google their own private version of copyright law.

Have you even read the settlement? There is nothing in it that is even close to what you are talking about. The agreement is a completely non-exclusive. Microsoft is free to strike the same deal with the book publishers if they CHOSE to. What it boils down to is Microsoft doesn't want to spend the money and do the work to redigitize the world's book (yes I know about their half assed effort). So instead of being a competitor they are trying to either 1) shut down the Google effort using politics or 2) make Google share the fruits of their labor with everyone.

There is nothing that stops any other company from doing the same thing.

No idea why people are so keen on protecting Google

  Why are you so keen on protecting Microsoft? Unlike Microsoft, Google's software makes most of our lives much better every single day.

In America, it's generally the same. Here's how you handle it:

"Hello, boss? This is houghi. I'm sick in bed and I think I have the swine flu. I'm too sick to drive myself to the doctor. Could you please come and take me? What? Sure, Monday sounds good. Thanks."