user: Why did the Soviet Union collapse?

assistant: There are a multitude of reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union.  But historians have generally narrowed it down to the following major causes:

Rise of ethnic nationalism in Soviet Republics:  After decades of suppressing national identities, ethnic groups began asserting their nationality and demanded greater autonomy and political power.  This resulted in numerous riots and protests throughout the Soviet Union with demands for independence and national self-determination. 

Economic stagnation and fall of oil prices:  The centrally planned economic model resulted in massive shortages of staple consumer products.  Shops were continually empty and Soviet citizens needed to wait in long lines to purchase basic goods.  After years of economic deprivation, Soviet citizens were deeply angry at their government. In addition, oil prices declined significantly in the late 1980s, which provided the Soviet government a key source of hard currency.  This it made it difficult for the Soviet government to sustain high levels of military spending and keep the economy functioning. 

Perestroika and Glasnost: Gorbachev's reforms of the 1980s were intended to reinvigorate the Soviet economy.  However, they unintentionally triggered an opening of debate throughout the country.  The increased freedoms allowed people to more openly criticize the government and demand changes.  

Afghanistan and Chernobyl: In the late 1980s, two events symbolized the incompetence of the Soviet government.  The failure of the Afghanistan war resulted in a loss of confidence in the Soviet military. The Chernobyl disaster revealed the incompetence and duplicity of the Soviet regime, resulting in a further erosion of trust.

user: What are the benefits of a data warehouse?

assistant: <think>
A data warehouse maintains a copy of information from the source transaction systems. This architectural complexity provides the opportunity to:

Integrate data from multiple sources into a single database and data model. More congregation of data to single database so a single query engine can be used to present data in an ODS.
Mitigate the problem of database isolation level lock contention in transaction processing systems caused by attempts to run large, long-running analysis queries in transaction processing databases.
Maintain data history, even if the source transaction systems do not.
Integrate data from multiple source systems, enabling a central view across the enterprise. This benefit is always valuable, but particularly so when the organization has grown by merger.
Improve data quality, by providing consistent codes and descriptions, flagging or even fixing bad data.
Present the organization's information consistently.
Provide a single common data model for all data of interest regardless of the data's source.
Restructure the data so that it makes sense to the business users.
Restructure the data so that it delivers excellent query performance, even for complex analytic queries, without impacting the operational systems.
Add value to operational business applications, notably customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
Make decision–support queries easier to write.
Organize and disambiguate repetitive data.</think>
A data warehouse provides multiple benefits including but not limited to: the integration of data from multiple sources in a single database and data model, maintaining data history, integrating data from multiple sources and providing access to such data across the enterprise, and presenting the information consistently and in a way that makes sense to business users so that they can do decision making.

user: How much gross earnings did Avatar make on its opening day?

assistant: <think>
Avatar was released internationally on more than 14,000 screens. It grossed $3,537,000 from midnight screenings in the United States and Canada, with the initial 3D release limited to 2,200 screens. The film grossed $26,752,099 on its opening day, and $77,025,481 over its opening weekend, making it the second-largest December opening ever behind I Am Legend, the largest domestic opening weekend for a film not based on a franchise (topping The Incredibles), the highest opening weekend for a film entirely in 3D (breaking Up's record), the highest opening weekend for an environmentalist film (breaking The Day After Tomorrow's record), and the 40th-largest opening weekend in North America, despite a blizzard that blanketed the East Coast of the United States and reportedly hurt its opening weekend results. The film also set an IMAX opening weekend record, with 178 theaters generating approximately $9.5 million, 12% of the film's $77 million (at the time) North American gross on less than 3% of the screens.</think>
Avatar grossed $26,752,099 on its opening day.