Also, there are 39 countries with a higher net migration rate than the US.

I'm guessing that due to economies of scale, the more popular and longer routes are run more, so since there's more of them and more competition, they drive the prices down on them. The shorter in-between flights aren't as popular so they are more "Specialized" and cost more?

From the article, it seems to be the opposite. A trunk route has high demand, so prices are set high. For a shorter flight on a less popular route, the airline might be having trouble filling the plane, so gives big discounts to attract more customers, including on multi-leg journeys that include that popular trunk route. It can also happen where an airline without a direct route between two points offers a better price on a two-leg flight to try to pull customers away from other airlines. I remember a few years ago reading an article about this happening in Europe, where the cheapest flights between London and Frankfurt were on Air France (via Paris) and KLM (via Amsterdam), and the price was cheaper than either leg of the flight if purchased alone.

So had sycodon been pilot, we would have been picking up the remains of two plane loads of passengers right now, due to a mid-air collision between his plane and the one that was flying an intersecting course at 34000 feet at the time air traffic control denied permission to climb from 32000 to 38000 feet.

Dunno, but it seems that more automation leads to more problems.

Statistically, 2014 is the year with fewest plane crashes since the era of mass aviation began. Two of those were (Boeing, not Airbus) 777s loaded with passengers, which skewed the passenger death statistics to a level that has not been seen for 10 years or so, but as more automation comes into aviation, the trend is definitely leading to fewer problems, not more, more so if you account for the fact that the number of flights and passengers is continuing to grow, especially in areas like South East Asia.

If I have the time to spare I sometimes enjoy taking the train, fx from Amsterdam to Brussels.... But on time plane wins almost always.

Could you have picked a worse example? That train ride is less than the 2 hours that you are recommended to be at checkin before an international flight from a busy airport like Schiphol. Just getting from downtown Amsterdam to the airport has already lost you 30 minutes.

Why is this on Slashdot?

Ever considered the possibility of a software bug that strikes under certain input conditions at the very moment a plane crosses the equator? I know there was a similar issue caught early in the development of the F16 (under simulation), but is there a possibility of such a bug making it into production if the input conditions were rare enough?

I'm not sure which Singapore Airlines A380 you flew on, but the ones I've flown on have subjectively more legroom than any 747, 777 or A330 I've flown, mostly because the gap under the seats is slightly higher than older designs and free of added metal boxes for the retro-fitted entertainment systems, while keeping the same seat pitch.

According to Wikipedia...

Never rely on Wikipedia as a primary source. In Singapore and Malaysia, where English is widely spoken as a first or second language, and the latin alphabet official for government forms etc, it is common for Chinese to write their personal name separately (one word per Chinese character), after their surname, just as it is written in Chinese. If they are Christian, they will often have a Christian name in addition to their Chinese personal name, which they write before their surname. In most everyday cases they will use either their Christian name or their Chinese personal name, but when they have to write their full name for official documents, their surname ends up in the middle.

I wonder how viable it would be to just quietly escort flights in that region with stealth aircraft for a while to determine what's actually happening.

It doesn't take much wondering to figure out how viable that idea is.

great for the Atom Intel is using as a transitional product.

Thanks for the explanation. The purpose of the aluminium body is now fully understood.

In order to say CIA hacked Sony, you would have to invent all sorts of motives and cover-up to explain it. The simpler explanation is that N. Korea did it, because the circumstances and evidence so far all point to it.

You mean the motives and cover-up the media has so far invented all point to it. An even simpler explanation is that disgruntled hacker groups reused some attack code, perhaps from an attack on South Korean companies a few weeks back which maybe North Korea paid them to deploy. The narrative about The Interview being motivation for the attack didn't come out until long after the attacks, and was initially denied by the contacts the media had made, and only a few days later that statements from the supposed hackers started mentioning it. This was likely after disgruntled hackers realized that it made a better back story than the fact that they were just being assholes, and would likely deflect law enforcement attention away from them if it became widely believed

Given what the D stands for, you are correct to change it to something else at random. N for Nazi seems a fitting alternative for the FPRK.

Did you count the jobs that only listed C# or VB.NET in the .NET category?

Last time I tried doing this I found that C# pulled in a lot of C jobs. And if you're going down that path to be fair to .NET, you'd better also be fair to Java by including jobs that only list J2EE or Android.

No, this is wrong. No permit is required.

Since 2003, you no longer get beaten to death in a jail cell for failing to show one on demand, and obtaining one is easier and less expensive, but the temporary urban residence permit still exists. It seems I was wrong about them being tied to employment though.

In a labor camp, you can't say "I quit" and walk out.

If I understand the situation correctly, workers from other provinces require a permit to live in a different part of China. And that permit is most likely tied to their employment. So it isn't the same as you or I walking out on our employer - the choice is made a lot more difficult for them.