As far as I know that is the general rule in the US, not sure about 401k... I'm under the impression that 'our dear mayor' Bloomburg had to sell his stake in Bloomburg TV upon taking the thron^h^h^h mayorship.
I have the t-mobile version (vibrant) and haven't had an issue with it other than when I'm in midtown Manhattan, and then the wifi/celltower feature pegs me with in half a block.
The difference is that when an automatic does go, the parts are more expensive and the job is more complex because there is no convenient place to put a point of failure. In a manual, the designed point of failure is the clutch pads. it is relatively simple to pull it apart and replace the pads. At most, in a well designed car like a Subaru, it is a 2 or 3 hour job. I've seen automatics take 2 days. At $90/hour for shop time the repair of an automatic means you eat ramen for a month, while the servicing of a clutch means you can have some steak.
Four years out of a 1k gaming rig? I'm a cheap bastard, and I still spend $400 a year to keep just above minimum specs for the new engines.
When I worked in the ship yards as a welder, I would find a job to do that involved using a cutting torch when I was hung over. For the first few hours of the day I would take regular "hits" of pure O2 from the tank, worked like a charm.
Earth may have resources that are "useful," however all the stuff we have on earth is found further out of the Sun's gravity well. Main belt asteroids have more heavy metals than earth, and you don't need to crawl out of a deep well to remove them from the solar system. And if you are only after water and gases, the oort cloud has more than enough that the cost to weight of getting the minuscule amount we have here on earth just isn't worth the energy. The ONLY reasons I can see for a hostile race to worry about humans is our technology (not likely if they are interstellar race), genetic mapping for bio war, to remove a possible future threat (the most probable reason I can think of) or, finally to colonize a planet in the "Goldie Locks zone." That last one has a lot of issues that may make it more beneficial to sterilize the planet due to biological contamination, and in that case mars would seem to be the better planet to transform IMHO.
In any other case I can think of, they would contact us and see what they could learn or teach us, or place a probe in the outer solar system to watch us. Not a lot of reason to worry about it all.
We get observed, first contact or death and there is nothing we can do to change it.
I second this
Well It is a good thing that planet hunters are better at finding things than you, seeing as they have found 358 extrasolar planets. From what I hear, it is much harder to observe the wobble of a star's red shift or see the wink of a star as a planet travels between us and it, than it is to break open a rock in a known trilobite bed.
I've been prepping my sons (3.5 years and 7 months) for their first viewing of Alien/Aliens since birth by grabbing their entire face with my hand. They think its funny... at least for now.
This reminds me of when my parents took me to see Alien when I was 5. Good time had by all due to a weeks worth of sleep deprivation.
The point is that the very large and active Mt. St Helens could be just a small vent for a much larger volcano. One who's crater / caldera is close to 2000 square miles. If true, something like this going off would make Krakatoa look like firecracker. As in, all of the US and a good chuck of Canada and Mexico covered with ash.
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.
