I thought that Andriod (in the form of AOSP) was open source and free for anyone. I thought that AOSP was the basis for kindle e-book readers, and kindle fire tablets. I thought that the requirement was that to pre-install the Google Play Store a manufacturer had to bundle Google Search, Maps, and what not. Why do so many news head lines (and comments here) keep saying that Andriod isn't free?
I haven't read the EU court ruling (maybe they make the distinction). I am also not saying that there isn't room for a discussion about whether the forced bundling of Search/Maps and what not to get the Play Store is anti-competitive.

So only countries who have signed up for the Paris Climate accord are allowed to give money to other countries with strings attached? Not that this administration would do it but I'm pretty sure that we are just as capable of giving clean energy money to other countries with strings attached today as we were before the announcement.

Yes I can T R O L L. And you shouldn't be feeding them...

The poster could be stupid or they could be trolling...

I've got a Lenovo W510 running Kubuntu 16.06 that works better today then when I got it in 2010 or 2011. I doubled the RAM (up to 8BG) and added a 512GB SSD. Without those updates it would work as well today as the day I bought it.

The secrete to longevity isn't Apple its buying something high quality.

To be fair that is kind of the opposite of uncertainty. The old situation was that it was unclear whether wayland support would be added or how long X11 would continue to be supported on Ubuntu. With Cinnamon unlikely to support Mir this left an open question about whether the Mint team would be able to package Cinnamon on top of the Ubuntu base. The new situation is that Ubuntu will go the Wayland route like most other distros. Cinnamon will likely gain Wayland support somtime after the Gnome Devs complete their support. Personally I run Kubuntu or KDE neon. The KDE devs have said that they had no intention of supporting Mir so the future of those releases was very uncertain. Now that Mir is out and Wayland is in I think that there is far more certainty.

It sounds like that passenger was down-graded to an economy seat not bumped off the flight all together.

It sucks but in the situations you describe maybe the person shouldn't be flying. Its easy to get mad at the airline when someone is involuntarily bumped but it could have been a storm, or an accident at the airport, or one of many other unlikely but possible issues. If the cost of a delayed flight will cause you to risk loosing your job, or miss a wedding, funeral, or some other event maybe you should plan a day of contingency into your travel plans.

What other option would you like? If you want a cheap ticket be aware of the fact you might get bumped. If getting bumped isn't OK then buy a more expensive ticket. Ya a first class ticket costs a lot more but in addition to complimentary alcohol you are less likely to get bumped. If getting bumped is a big deal then the cost of the ticket probably isn't.

The other really important thing to remember is that as good as the industry generally is at getting people to their destination at about the time they say they will there is always the possibility that there will be some issue that prevents you from getting where you want to be when you want to be there. It could be weather, or mechanical, or airport shooting or... If you absolutely have to be somewhere on Monday morning you shouldn't be flying on the last flight out Sunday...

Sorry Richard...

I wouldn't say that its not as secure. Its just as secure, its just less safe because the exploits are known.

Many companies offer cash bounties in exchange for security bugs. This means hackers can 'sell' their bugs to the manufacture who can then pass it. The hacker gets cash and they get to feel good about what they did; but mostly they get cash. I don't believe apple pays for bugs. If they did this the company might have 'sold' their bug to apple instead of the FBI and any agency/country wanting to access an IPhone.

It doesn't help that the TSA check points aren't always sufficiently staffed to run the Precheck lane(s). My home town airport often has the precheck lane closed. As a booby prize I get a car which lets me keep my shoes on, but I still have to take out my laptop and liquids. If they are serious about getting people to enroll in the program (which I did) than they damn well need to make sure that we can make use of it. How can they hope to convince people to pay the fees to enroll in precheck if they might not even get to make use of the program.

I'm not sure how it'd work but that could be way better as a Chuck Norris joke:

While overall this seems reasonable there is still the question of how the government proportions the money that it gives back? Does everyone get x/population dollars back? Is it based on how much people paid in taxes for dirty energy (which I think negates all benefits)? Does it get redistributed proportionate to income? Or inversely proportionate to income? In all cases you are going to have people complaining about it being unfair (for some definition of unfair).

The other issue is that unless all countries do the same it will just drive energy consumption from places which charge these tax-like-things to places that don't charge these tax like things. From a global CO2 level perspective it doesn't matter where it comes from, its all equally bad. (Generic pollution isn't as global, but it does have a non-trivial global component.)

Taxes should be about raising revenue. They should NOT be a mechanism for societal engineering because the people writing tax laws are simply not smart enough.

The only solution that I see is to 1) identify the carbon/pollution cost of a product, 2) charge a tax/fee for that amount when the product is sold, 3) uses the revenue to clean up pollution or capture carbon. Were we to start small (i.e. the fee charged represented the cost to clean up a fraction of a percent of the environmental cost) and slowly ramp up from there, we might be able to slowly disincentive pollution instead of just off shoring it.