And they've been going backwards ever since.

You cant rest on your laurels and talk about what happened 150 years ago (my descendants started freeing slaves in the 11th century, when the US was having it's civil war, they had the largest single fleet in the world dedicated to stopping the slave trade out of Africa, just for a bit of context). Its like Berlusconi claiming he is Caesar because Julius Caesar was Roman or Putin calling himself Peter the Great because he was also a Russian leader.

A lot of B777's have the same configuration. The alternative used by a few airlines are 3-3-3. This is one of the reasons I prefer A330's over the B777, the A330 is usually in a 2-4-2 configuration unless you're flying a budget (or crappy) airline where they'll have 3-3-3.

Budget airlines are pushing for 10 on B787 and 11 abreast on the A380 lower deck.

Thats kind of like saying it's a shame the DeHavilland Comet is not still flying. All things have their time.

However the DC10 is still in service with cargo carriers (notably fed-ex). Trijets are from a time where we didn't trust twinjets to make long flights. Since the A330 and B777 (two of the safest airliners in existence) and ETOPS 180 they've been completely redundant.

Actually there are a few tiny natural islands in the region where the shoreline is buried under a couple of meters of junk, mostly driftwood and large bits of plastic.

To be honest, would you pay tax that you didn't have to.

Don't get me wrong, I dont at all advocate tax evasion but you've got to be mad not to be trying to minimise your tax.

The big difference between Uber and AirBNB is that AirBNB tried to fight, yeah it was a forgone conclusion (I fought the tax dept and the tax dept won) but Uber is not even trying to fight the system at all, they're trying to ignore the system. This never works as the system won't ignore you. Its a toss up over whether Uber will go down for something like tax evasion or get sued into oblivion by insurance companies.

Water. AKA - "The universal solvent". I personally think wind farms are economically viable in many places, but not so much offshore for precisely the reasons you mention.

South Australia is 30% renewable despite a current federal government that is openly hostile to clean energy. The reasoning behind that ideological hostility is not difficult to spot - coal is our #1 export. India has recently declared that large scale PV solar is cheaper than Australian imported brown coal and is switching 400M people to solar over the next decade or so. Prices for coal are way down and mines are currently being mothballed, even those mining the high quality coking coal used to make chinese steel have seen recent mine closures.

The anti-science luddites in charge of this country can see the writing on the wall for the global coal industry, the words "stranded assets" are scaring them shitless. They lack the wisdom and intellectual independence required to plan a smooth transition so they do what politicians do best, fight it tooth an nail with tabloid propaganda and rigged domestic markets.

they just lost. That's all. I'm sure they fought mightily to avoid paying.

Motorola built a factory in the states and did just fine. They only moved it over seas because slave labor is still cheaper, but they were plenty profitable and selling the phones for competitive prices.

I've been filling the head of a good friend of mine with liberalism and it prompted his Dad to ask "What do you have against Profit". This. This is what I have against profit. It's _never_ enough.

The slave trade would not have existed without property law. A market that is free of regulation is an oxymoron, what the "free" in free market actually means is that anybody can participate in the market, nothing to do with the type or number of rules that make the market possible.

Thanks for clarifying. I was under the impression that you couldn't use the windows store at all without an account.

It does look like that's the direction they are heading though, but if as you say you can perform some downloads without an MS account it's ok then.

Because ISIS doesn't give half a shit more about the Koran than the average politician over here does about the Bible. It's a tool to keep them in power and keep the sheep following them.

Why do you think people in the Middle East would be different from people in other parts of the world?

Isis is violating a fair lot of Islam rules. Not just now.

Just like so many radical groups they use religion as a tool to justify their actions. It's hardly a new idea.

Because when people learn critical thinking skills, they automatically dismiss ignorant hate-centered dogmas.

Any religion is afraid of science.

Religion is about faith.
Science is about doubt.

It's fairly easy to see why one is anathema of the other.