> > Russia won the space race.
> Only if you count either going into space first, or sending a man into space first as
> winning the space first. America got to the moon first, so it could be said America beat
> Russia in the space race.
Russia's victories:
- First object in space
- First living animal in space
- First person in space
- First person in orbit
(Incidentally: Gagarin's first flight into space was also his first orbital flight; America's first person in space, John Glenn, didn't get near an actual orbit on his first flight, landing a couple hundred kilometres away.)
- First space station
America's victories:
Yeah, I'm kinda partial to the whole "Russia won" point of view...
> 1kb is always 1024 bytes.
No, if only it were that easy (and consistent). Essentially, it depends on what you're doing; whether the "carrier" technology is based on "successive doubling".
For instance, when you look at how much RAM there is in your computer, those chips have storage capacities in powers of two, so 4 GB of RAM is 4 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes.
But when you push them through a wire one at a time, your Gb/s is 1000 * 1000 * 1000 bits per second.
On hard disks (those round disks have no real reason to work in powers of two), powers of two and powers of ten are used depending on whether you're an operating system (allocating space goes in powers of two; might as well report total capacity that way too) or a manufacturer (1000 < 1024, so if you use powers of ten, you can claim a larger capacity).
It's a terrible mess... but a mess which has absolutely nothing to do with "metric vs. imperial".
> when we are talking of scales of bits we type kbits not kb. kb is for kilobytes.
Technically, it goes like this:
kb = kilobit
kB = kilobyte
Kb = nonsense
KB = nonsense
mb = millibit (= nonsense; a bit can't be subdivided)
Mb = megabit
MB = megabyte
Of course a case could be made to always write either "kB" or "kbit" (read: never write "kb"). After all, it is more important to make sure to be understood than it is to be technically correct... but cause confusion (or even misunderstanding) in the process.
> Oldest still inhabited city in North America. (St. Augustine i think).
That's a pretty lame "accomplishment", since virtually all other countries in the world (you know,
all of them, except for Mexico and Canada) have no way of building a city in North America. What's next, "first to invent the US dollar"...!?
> First country to enforce prison reform
What on Earth are you talking about? I'm sure there must've been "prison reforms" in other countries around the world before America was even discovered.
Even though I'm not particularly sure what you're talking about exactly, the US prison system is an outright disgrace. Most people come out far more violent and criminal than they were when they entered. The percentage of released prisoners which come back for another sentence is incredibly high. And that's not even talking about the question
if they get out again; murder rates are frightening and (as one of very few "civilised" countries) the US still has the death penalty.
Go watch
http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice and then tell me again what's so great about US prisons...
> The largest railroad and road system of any country
If your (rail)roads are so great, why is air travel so insanely popular?
Besides, it's not too impressive if you stop and think about how simply being among the biggest countries gets you this almost automatically (if it's even true, both Russia and China would seem to be credible competitors). I'm curious what would happen if we'd compare the US rail system with the EU rail system (very roughly speaking, that'd be comparing a similarly-ish area with a similarly-ish population; much more fair than looking "per country").
> Transcontinental railroad
ROTFL, have you ever heard of the Orient Express (London - Istanbul)? Or even better, the Trans-Siberia Express (Moscow - Vladivostok), which covers 10.000 km (and half a dozen time zones :p ). For comparison, New York to Los Angeles is a measly 4000 km.
TL;DR:The thing the US really excels at is teaching their own population how awesome it is. While many people are proud of their country, few feel so strongly about it as Americans seem to do. I for one think it's a good thing to realise your country is not perfect; how are you going to make improvements if you are blind to shortcomings...!?
