Yes, obviously the entire critique of "state A will dump toxic waste B into hole C, poisoning people in state D" is entirely and specifically limited to Wyoming and PCBs. No other state and no other chemical could possibly be of concern under the aforementioned model.

Come on. This is a basic market externality. When was the last time a US company was fined in excess of the amount of money their malfeasance made them? It basically never happens.

Without a federal agency empowered to actually DO something to protect these waters they're going to be systematically exploited and people are going to suffer and die.

A) your luggage This trick doesn't work with checked bags, since airlines tend to check bags through to the final destination. Hidden-city travel is a strictly carry-on-only tactic.

B) where did we lose this person They know where they lost you, since they scanned your boarding pass when you boarded the first flight, and they didn't scan your boarding pass at the gate for the connecting flight.

C) we now have to delay the flight to make sure our count is correct This is the only potentially obnoxious consequence--some airlines may delay a flight by a few minutes to allow a "lost" passenger to get to the gate. But if an airline has a takeoff slot they're not going to give it up to recover one wayward traveller. And they do a headcount of passengers on board before every flight anyway--if it matches the count they get from the scanned boarding passes, they're good to go.

D) is there a security risk to the plane Nope. They know that you and your carry-on were on the first plane, but that makes you no more dangerous to that aircraft than any other passenger. They know that you're not on the second plane, since you and your carry-on never boarded. They know you don't have a checked bag in the hold.

I have a credit score - a rather good one - but I've never spent more than I have. One does not have to carry debt to have a credit history.

Remember that a person is also being extended short-term credit even when they are paying off their balance in full every statement period. And that's not just the case with use of credit cards (which remain the easiest - and sometimes only - way to make purchases or payments in some situations). Thing about utilities like gas, water, electricity, cable, telephone, (non-prepaid) cell, internet...if you're billed at the end of the month after you've used the service, then you're being extended credit--and in many cases the status of those accounts will be reflected in your credit report.

I'm pretty sure I read this story in 1952: The Martian Way , by Isaac Asimov.

...Except it was Mars that needed water, not Dubai.

...And they got their icebergs from Saturn's rings, not Antarctica.

But aside from that, totally the same plan.

I assume that your belief is informed by the restrained and nuanced portrayal of the US Leftist media by US conservative outlets. Ahem. (Incidentally, the "conservative" outlets seem to spend a lot more time talking about the "liberals" than vice versa.)

The non-US world has access to Fox just as readily as to MSNBC. In assessing reliability and trustworthiness, they've adjusted their Bayesian priors based on continuously supplied evidence about which networks give the most airtime to hypocritical, self-serving, lying sacks of shit.

Seeing as 96 percent of google search results about Trump come from liberal media outlets

The figure in that article places Infowars as being just center-right, and the Koch-supported Reason straddles the left-right centerline.

If you draw your line that way, you're probably the sort of person who complains about reality's liberal bias.

On 2017 net income of $48.35 billion ($48350 million), that's a tax rate of 0.116%. Tell me again why we needed another corporate tax rate cut....

It's an interesting question--what does it really mean for NASA to "do it themselves"? NASA has a very long history of contracting out the development and construction of launch vehicles. Remember, for the Apollo program the Command and Service Module was built by North American Aviation (as was the Saturn V second stage), the Lunar Module was built by Grumman, the Saturn V first stage (S-1C) was built by Boeing, the third stage was built by Douglas, the F-1 and J-2 main engines were designed and built by Rocketdyne.... I don't think anyone would dispute that the Apollo Program was a NASA project, but a great deal of the design and construction work was still contracted out.

The difference now is that NASA gets to choose its contractors after they've demonstrated their capabilities to build and fly the hardware. The "old" way was to decide in advance who got to have the monopoly and pay them to develop the technology; this "new" way involves choosing among members of a small oligopoly who already have the capability mostly off-the-shelf. There are tradeoffs - financial and planning - to either approach.

A widescreen aspect ratio doesn't have to be dumb unless the people who design apps and interfaces refuse to make good use of the hardware.

My Windows taskbar has been vertical, running up the right side of my screen, for probably a decade.

One of several reasons that Opera was my web browser of choice for several years was its native support for a vertical tab bar. I could have dozens of tabs open, and be able to see all of them, and read their titles. It was tremendously useful, while it lasted.

PowerPoint has started putting context-sensitive tools and controls on the right side of the screen instead of just at the top, and the slide thumbnails on the left.

Chrome now makes the status bar at the bottom of the window invisible - freeing up an extra line of space in the window - unless it has something important to display (e.g. when you're hovering over a link and want to see the URL).

Reading/comparing/referring to two documents side-by-side is pretty darned useful in a number of different contexts. (Of course then each application window has to have a sensible layout for portrait-oriented display, as well....)

Yes, it's an added burden for developers to have to consider how their application might be used on displays with different aspect ratios. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't do so, and especially not that they should fail to consider how to present their product on the most common format today.

Actually...the article points out that a major source of avoidable expense and delays is collisions that take place in narrow and congested waterways--and often with inanimate, stationary objects. Inadvertent groundings, collisions with moored vessels, difficulties in constricted canals and locks. Insurance is a big cost.

...ultra-attractive sinecures...

That word...I do not think it means what you think it means.

Providing stable, long-term funding so that established, high-profile researchers can bring their projects and research programs to Canada doesn't really look like a sinecure; they're not getting paid to do nothing. The $350,000 or $1 million per year funding for these positions isn't handed over as a lavish salary; it's support to allow researchers to hire staff, buy equipment, and maintain their labs. It's a fairly long-term arrangement as these things go - the NIH's R01 grants contemplate up to 5 years, and many sources of money are 3 or fewer years, or one-offs - but it's not ludicrous.

The Vancouver SkyTrain system isn't a monorail, though; it's a fully grade-separated light-rail rapid transit system.

All three lines run on two rails, with an adjacent electrified third rail for power. Two of the lines use a linear induction motor drive, which requires an additional row of aluminum plates running between the two primary tracks. The third, newest line uses conventional electric motor propulsion.

...I just log in and book with my account and it's automatically associated) because you always get a better deal if you're a member. I don't really understand why...

If one books through a third-party/reseller/OTA, the hotel pays a hefty commission - typically on the order of 20% - to the OTA. If I pay $100 through Expedia or Booking.com, the hotel only gets $80. If I book direct with the hotel for the Special Members-Only Price of $90, the hotel gets to keep all $90. In addition, they get my contact info and track my spending habits for marketing purposes, and they encourage me to check their website first in the future. Between those factors, then, they want customers to sign up and book directly, and they really want it to become an ingrained habit.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the special member pricing, though, is that many agreements between hotels and OTAs contain "rate parity" clauses that prevent hotels from offering rates lower than the OTA's price to the general public. Creating a members-only rate lets hotels circumvent these sorts of restrictions, as OTA contracts generally allow rate-parity exceptions for offers to members of "closed groups".

It's hard to say what his out-of-pocket costs might be. One of his business ventures is a consultancy called Legal Engineering; Perens is the CEO. From his website:

...Bruce Perens is the bridge between lawyers and engineers, helping one to understand the other. He instructs engineers in how to comply with legal requirements and how to deal with intellectual property issues in their own work, and produces clarity for attorneys who are working on issues of computer software.

He may well have had attorneys with suitable expertise already on retainer. Even if not, the marketing value of being on the "right" side of a dispute like this could have tremendous promotional value for him, his brand, and his company--the sort of advertising that no amount of money could buy.

I'm not saying that it's fair that Perens was out any time, money, or inconvenience, or that Grsecurity wasn't trying to abuse the system by filing a spurious lawsuit. But this isn't an instance of a lone blogger's David bravely duking it out against all odds against a giant corporate Goliath. Perens definitely has the knowledge, contacts, and resources to effectively respond to this sort of threat, and is almost certainly one of the dumbest possible choices Grsecurity could have made to sue. Of all possible defendants, Perens is among those with the most to gain from successfully defending against this flimsy suit.