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North Korea Missile Launch Fails
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile launch by the North Koreans last night? You know, the one that went over Japan and supposedly put a 'communications satellite' into orbit. Well, according to the US Northern Command and NORAD it has been a complete and utter failure, with the second stage and payload 'falling in the Pacific.'"
Fail.
This might be a great opportunity to see exactly how far advanced their missile/rocket program is, assuming we've got salvage vessels in place to pick up the pieces.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
You'd think even North Korea could get a missile launch right. I mean, it's not rocke...err, oh yeah, nevermind.
The US government and the popular media have been spouting this nonsense that it was a "failure."
BS.
I guarantee you the NK engineers learned from this "failure." Tests aren't failures as long as you learn from them. Since we don't know whether or what NK learned from this, calling the test a "failure" is pure speculation.
Wow, never expected that! If only there was a use for a launch vehicle that doesn't make it to orbit..
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Not to be confused with ICBM's. :-)
Let me guess, they couldn't figure out how to get the Photoshop crack to work.
You have to overwrite the .dll file!
Just wondering what exactly they payload was.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
How is this a failure? They launched an ICBM that cleared Japan before hitting the water, thus proving they now have the capability to deliver a nuclear strike against Japan.
If this was a test to see what the effective range was of the missile, then they absolutely determined that and there was no failure. While I dislike the way North Korea interacts with the rest of the world, I find the highly suggestive wording of the write-up to be misleading and inaccurate.
I think we all knew the 'satellite' story was BS, so we can't evaluate the launch in terms of whether they put something in orbit or not. That part is irrelevant.
Are we even sure these are actually rockets ?
Given how much Kim likes to party these could just be really big fireworks.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Two out of three ain't bad.
-Dave
First-world nations had plenty of problems with their space programs at first too. Considering that North Korea has isolated itself, it's not surprising that they're going through the pain everyone else went through 60 years ago.
GO KOLEA!
There.
and like any troll, the only way to react to it is ignore it
trolls feed on attention, any attention, psotive or negative. currently, north korea is basking in the joy of the world condemning it. just like a troll basks in the glory of watching people lose their temper over a purposely vitriolic post of theirs. just like westboro baptist church enjoys the hatred as they picket funerals
it doesn't matter that it is being condemned. what matters is that it is the focus of attention. this is the essential psychopathology of their behavior
if you ignore north korea, it will do progressively more and more dangerous things, all calculated to garner attention again. and then it will screw up, and then it can finally be taken down like the rabid dog it is
not that any of this will happen though. all that will happen is it will continue to get way more attention than the basket case human suffering machine deserves
north korea can't feed its own people. but it can launch icbms. pathetic troll of a country
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
airborne laser, the Boeing YAL-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_Laser
Not being able to see the laser beam from NK, it would appear to be just a malfunction.... an act of Nature ... the fuel tank just ruptured and exploded.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
How do you know that's true if you're not reading the official North Kolea Blog?
according to the US Northern Command and NORAD
Not to get all tinfoil-hat on everyone, but has anyone closer to a neutral third party got any information?
I don't doubt the NORAD report, but it might be nice to have a source without a vested interest make a report as well.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
They can't even keep their people fed, and yet they're trying stupid shit like missle tests. I wonder how many years this regime has left in it. I mean, it can't last forever. They're pissing away all their money on that massive army, and living on handouts from the likes of China. I really feel for the average citizen living there. They can't even fucking leave. They're practically living in the nightware world that Orwell described decades ago. I'm curious as to what this country's fate will be.
Both are correct. I prefer Inter-Continental Missiles, Ballistic. It makes document filing more practical when dealing with I-C Missiles, Vomit and I-C Missiles, +5 Arrows.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
of course getting rid of north korea does more damage than letting it stick around
that's what north korea counts on
like any kidnapper with a gun to a hostage's head
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Particularly cause they DO plan to launch a few more.
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13432014&source=features_box_main
Makes one wonder if they perchance don't have another one ready to be launched from the new launch site?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Far from a failure. North Korean Scientists put their satellite in an extremely low geosynchronous orbit!
A bit wetter than they thought it would be though.
Are designed to do one thing well, deliver a payload to a distant target within a certain CEP. That's why the 'B' in 'ICBM' stands for 'Ballistic'. Just like the NK ambassador to the UN said, "The test was a complete success." Duck and cover, children!
Sig this!
Even if we get the launch, space is not something we have a lot of first hand experience with. Getting things to work in space is hard. The world is getting more experience now that we have an international space station, and more countries are getting experience operating in space. This can only help everyone long term as innovative solutions are developed.
One may fall to jingoistic and chauvinistic temptation when it comes to this, especially since we have been trained to fear those that are different from us, but I doubt that is useful here. From what I read, the trajectory was orbital, not intercontinental. As we have seen, there are much easier ways to deliver mass destruction than these vehicles. It could be that N. Korea wants to be in the space game, and have such things as communication satellites of their own.
And it would be good that the US does not get too cocky. We are stuck in LEO. To get back to the moon is going to require a learning curve after a generation of inactivity. At this point we may not want to fund it. People think we can magically make it Mars without any baby steps. If there is anything to fear it is that N. Korea is doing science while we are arguing over evolution.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You think Koreans are Japanese?
Koreans can pronounce 'r' just fine.
North American Aerospace Defense .. always laughed at the way the military has no respect for acronym formation. They often take the letters from where-ever they can get em and sometimes they just throw in a letter from no-where. It used to be North American Air Defense.. but then they had to deal with ballistic missiles, which are clearly out of the air when you want to detect them, so they upgraded to "Aerospace". Personally, I thought they should have upgraded to "North American Orbital and Air Defence" .. of course that still leaves the R being borrowed from ORbital, but hey, it's an improvement. Having the R stand for "Realtime" would be good, if only NORAD did realtime tracking, which they don't. The oldies among us may remember when NORAD announced that civil defense training was pointless, as no-one would have time to get to a bunker.. because they just can't detect launches, and the target of launches, fast enough. This hasn't changed in 30 years. There's still an airman sitting at a terminal doing this monitoring. There's no Googlesque computer doing search for launch indicators and tracking flight trajectories. The only reason they're not still using slide rules is because pocket calculators are government subsidized.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You, sir, are completely right. Google has failed me and I didn't even notice! haha. :( You may continue your mockery of my 1336 internet ski11z.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...even by failing, they obviously learned something about the performance of that missile, and will draw conclusions that will allow them to build better missiles in the future. This reflects poorly on the United States, NATO, China, Japan, and S. Korea, since they couldn't prevent this clearly provocative activity from occuring and get N. Korea back to the table. The UN will do nothing, even with Ban as the secretary general.
i am so very tired....
Or the US anti ballistic missile system is a lot better than we were led to believe!!!
Failed? Or shot down by lasers on sharks!!!
Nope, many of you probably don't. Around the time the Russians put up Sputnik, the American space program was centered around Project Vanguard. It was going to put our first satellite into orbit. And our first satellite was going to be way better than Sputnik.
Only the rockets kept crashing. It became a source of national embarrassment and the subject of jokes.
See this image, for examp.e.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
does kim jong-il count as a godwin?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... they couldn't blow up their economy. So now they'll sink it into the Pacific.
Have gnu, will travel.
You know, with their secret arsenal of GUNDAMs.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5994905.ece
I guess the Koreans may be selling this technology to Iran.
New Economic Perspectives
i see it as a government that derives from the will of its people
i don't see the slightest interest in the people of north korea from its own government
i see a small clique interested in massive military muscle and provocative hostililty, and its people be damned, they can eat leaves if their threats don't garner enough blackmailed food and oil shipments
you tell me how i am wrong in my conception of the pacific dprk
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"The way to deal with them is to conclusively demonstrate that what they are saying is complete bunk and then refuse to argue further on the basis that they're not being rational."
nor do you have much familiarity with the long established behavior of the dprk
the dprk must keep its population and its neighbors on constant war preparations. this is the only way it can continue to exist. because if you try to judge the dprk in the usual ways you would measure governments, like, gee, an ability to feed to population, then its an instant failure
constant war preparations is all the dprk knows, and its also the only thing its capable of, and its only toehold in power. it doesn't know how to remain in power and do anything peaceful. then its entire reason for being disappears, such is its hostility so deeply ingrained in its psychology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm all ears. However there aren't so many organizations that have the capability to track this sort of thing, much less using the equipment to do so. NORAD is the primary, maybe only these days, organization with the means and interest to track this sort of thing. There aren't civilian organizations with massive radars looking for this sort of thing.
Actually contains nimble special agents with a directive of compromising the US recovery process ! This was no failure, run !
I don't think launching a missile over Japan is a failure.. It may have broken up, but don't think for a minute that it was a failure.. That's the height of stupidity to say something like that.. And don't think for a second that the U.S. doesn't know exactly where that thing came down. They know exactly where it came down within a few feet. Just think about the technology we know about.. The GPS that you have in your car can peg you within a few feet. The satellite cameras in conjunction with GPS technology has it pegged. You don't need to know any top secrets to understand that. Nukemall
What kind of Document Filling do you do if it's Ballistic?
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
So, which is more use to North Korea:
a) A nuclear launch capability they can't use, or
b) An orbital launch capability for their own satellites and maybe some foreign cash spinoffs?
Remember, the easy way to smuggle a nuke into the US is to stick it in a sack of cocaine.
Vik :v)
You think Koreans are Japanese?
Koreans can pronounce 'r' just fine.
Usually, Koreans can only pronounce an 'R' if it comes at the beginning of a syllable.
eg. they can say "rock" just fine, but 'hear' usually comes out like 'heal', so when Koreans use English words ending in an 'er' sound, it is usually replaced with an 'aw' sound. eg. 'com-pu-taw' 'key-baw-d'
Disclaimer: I lived in Korea.
-I only code in BASIC.-
What would the DPRK possibly benefit by nuking Japan, ...?
As Dostoyevsky explains and demonstrates in "Notes from Underground," human beings will act unreasonably, and often not out of ignorance but out of spite.
I can't think of something the DPRK gains by nuking Japan, but if one crazy old coot got satisfaction by pressing the big red button, the end result is still the same.
Japanese pronounce neither letter. They have some strange hybrid of L, D, and R and it depends on the Japanese person whether it sounds most like one of those three. They have a hard and obvious D, but they also have the one that straddles L and R.
(So off-topic...)
While it makes me smile every time North Korea fails, they're going to get something right sooner or later.
They launched an ICBM
According to Wikipedia: "An intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, is a long-range (greater than 5,500 km or 3,500 miles) ballistic missile" They cleared Japan, but that is what, less than 1,000 miles from NK? It takes a lot more than that to hit Australia, Africa, or the Americas. Don't add to the hysteria by calling this an ICBM.
An alternate hypothesis.
/.
First off, we know that NK does NOT have nuclear weapons. So please be quiet about them nuking everything.
Secondly, it would make no sense at all for NK to shoot anything. They are isolated, NK might make poor decisions but they won't choose to get every cubic meter of NK bombed.
We also know Kim is full of himself. If he lived 5000years ago we would have people building him giant pyramids as monuments to his greatness. At the moment, the greatest achievement a country can make is space travel. Sure the US did it first so what? Right now china, japan and india have space programs and hope to stick a man on the moon. Space Race Asian Edition. Many countries think NK is a crazy backwards land that can't do anything since they are under a horrible tyrannical rule. If anyone felt that way about you wouldn't you want to prove them wrong? Show them how awesome and advanced you are by making it into space.
NK is a bit nutty and isolated from the world. Clearly they must be assholes. But lets look at both sides. The korean war 'ended' poorly sure. Remember the end of WW1 where the global community basically fucked Germany in the ass after winning? Which lead to the bitchiness allowing/causing WW2. A mistake we did not repeat after WW2. So we decide to not trade with NK. Even put up trade barriers/embargoes internationally. Many thousands of people starve in North Korea while the world at large says, give up tyranny and we'll help you eat. (how well does that work?). North Korea is stuck on an island with enemies to the south. Enemies that are much better funded and better armed. They are also probably jealous of the fact and maybe a little pissed that their neighbors are doing so well. They need a bargaining chip. NK starts developing nuclear technology in the early 90s. Out of fear the US promises to provide electricity and normalized trade in exchange NK would disassemble their nuclear plants and join the NNPT. Korea agrees! They take apart their factories. The US changes to the republican party. They do not provide electricity, they do not normalize trade, they spit in NKs face. Bush calls NK part of the axis of evil and lists them as elligable for preemptive nuclear strikes. How the fuck the north koreans are the badguys in this one is beyond me. They were willing to normalize international relations given the chance and it was thrown in their face. So of course they will begin work on nuclear weapons again, they need a bargaining chip.
Clearly NK does not have a good human rights record. Clearly it is terrible that people are starving. But the US policy of Good vs Evil is NOT helpful. Isolating a country, not letting them trade with you, threatening them, hating them does not help. I don't understand the idea that we can fix the problem by giving them an ultimatum they cannot possibly accept then never talking. It is like the 'hard on crime' laws that never seem to help either. Maybe if we offered a hand to NK that we dont use to stab them with they'll be a bit more trusting. Maybe with more money and education, a link to the rest of the world they can join us. A country cannot be evil it isn't a demon or even a person. If we keep going as we have how can you EVER expect countries like North Korea and Cuba to rejoin the rest of us, or maybe the truth is you don't really care.
(man this went longer than I intended, sorry
Disclaimer: I lived in Korea.
So wait, are you being infolmative or was that just govelment plopaganda? :P
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
How do you guys know it was really a failure? have someone already salvaged the parts and found the main part which contains the 'program' for the missile, and its destination? i'm pretty sure they were testing range, and as they're TESTING they can't allow it to fall on land, so they could just have hit the 'drop dead' button on the command central.... isn't that a bit more logic than saying that it was a failure?
If it was a failure, what was the original destination? land? are they already calling for war? wtf.
I live in japan and these days the media has been hammering us with the fact that north korea is not happy with Japan and they're threatening to throw us a present....showing anti-missile apparel and whatnot on the tv is already saying 'we're prepared but scared' .... think again the failure already cleared Japan so they're SPOT-ON.
Perfect. From the link you provided:
Unha-2, which was launched at the Tonghae Satellite Launching Ground in Hwadae County, North Hamgyong Province at 11:20 on April 5, Juche 98 (2009), accurately put Kwangmyongsong-2 into its orbit at 11:29:02, nine minutes and two seconds after its launch.
The satellite is going round the earth along its elliptic orbit at the angle of inclination of 40.6 degrees at 490 km perigee and 1 426 km apogee. Its cycle is 104 minutes and 12 seconds.
Mounted on the satellite are necessary measuring devices and communications apparatuses.
The satellite is going round on its routine orbit.
It is sending to the earth the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans "Song of General Kim Il Sung" and "Song of General Kim Jong Il" and measured information at 470 MHz. By the use of the satellite the relay communications is now underway by UHF frequency band.
With that kind of info, there should be dozens of observatories that should be able to spot it. Or HAM radio guys to find the signal it's broadcasting.
Anyone been looking for it yet?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
/. has hit a new all time low in the quality of the news articles it posts. Any news site that has pictures with dumb ass on them and quotes such as "And that's yet another pathetic failure by the North Korean clowns, boys and girls." I tend to dismiss any information in the articles as nothing more than total BS.
/. for about 10 years. This is by far the worst article I have ever seen posted. It is even worse than the 12 year replies that I have seen of late.
At least post articles from sites that at least try to be reputable!
Yes, I have been reading
Can Kim Jong Il even wipe his ass without guidence from the Chinese government? Could it be a smokescreen attempt to trick us into believing that North Korea poses no plausable threat? I think that NK and Iran are just a few finger puppets of China's.
I'm with Nelson Muntz on this one.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Sounds to me like a nice cover story... *puts on tinfoil hat*
One man's trash is another man's propaganda.
1) bargaining chip
2) hard currency... some pragmatic nk general may actually be trying to create a way to make NK economically self-sufficient with space launches
3) political prestige inside NK
The covert operation worked. We sent in an agent under the cover of darkness to snip the fuse cord between stages. I don't know who they were fooling, no one uses solid fuel, and centuries old fuse cord in between them.
Your operation was taken down with fingernail clippers smuggled through customs! HAHAHA!
Now you know why the TSA had such a hard on for banning fingernail clippers. It was to reduce the number of clippers in circulation, for the protection of North Korea! Little did they expect that we'd hide them in a bag of Doritos! Not only great for smuggling, but they made a nice munchie snack afterwords. Did I forget to mention, these were our Dutch operatives? :)
I still feel sorry for the guy with the Bic lighter that had to light the first stage. It brings a new meaning to "light it and RUN".
BTW, this is all classified, so don't tell anyone else, ok? :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It failed, in the past, otherwise I wouldn't be reading this. It would be "Psychic says missile test will fail" or "CIA says Korea can't figure out how to build a bomb right."
I know I'll get flak from those trained to do it like this, as if being a journalist gives you the right to ignore the language your readers understand.
Missile launch failed. Don't tell me someone dies, tell me they are dead. Bulls win in overtime, Chicago wins in overtime... these tell me habitual tendencies. Normally, Chicago wins in overtime. Did they win tonight? I want to know who won, not who usually wins, you dickballs.
Jim Smith dies at age 71. People named Jim Smith? Or do you mean Jim typically dies when he's 71? Because neither one makes sense. Is someone goihng to tell me it's more respectful that way? What about "Jim Smith passed on today, to whatever it is he believes is the next stop after nearly half a century of touching the hearts of the best and the brightest, inspiring billions, yes billions of people to be more than they ever thought they could be. Here's our own Reporter McTalksalot with a look into his life."
It failed.
Actually Korean does have spaces between words. The Chinese and Japanese don't.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
A lot of native English accents (such as New Zealand) also do not pronounce the 'r' at the end of words such as "hear", which often comes out as something like /hia/. In fact most New Zealanders also do not pronounce /l/ at the end of words like "school" unless followed by a vowel at the start of the next word. Instead it is often replaced with a /w/, a /j/ (where /j/ pronounced like in a German "ja") or replaced with nothing.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
No need to apologise here. An absolutely insightful post.
If you do get modded to death by those who think pragmatism and honest assemssment of history is pinko leftist liberal crap, but whatever, you're real world karma is excellent.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Also, we'd probably be able to tell exactly what the purpose of this rocket was: ICBM or satalite. That can drastically alter the type and severity of potential US/UN retaliation.
And why would the US be interested in spending millions of dollars to retrieve and analyze the parts, only to find out that the missile was in fact for satellite purposes?
It'd be some serious egg on the face of the world if North Korea really is just trying to get a satellite into orbit. Has anyone except the US and South Korean military confirmed that the launch was a failure?
Please help metamoderate.
The tendency of many natives of the Boston, Massachusetts area to substitute "ah" for "r"s is a well known stereotype. It's often possible to fairly accurately determine someone's birthplace (North Shore, South Shore, etc) just by the particular way they mangle their "r"s. Not being much of a linguist, I've often wondered if the reason places like New Zealand have somewhat similar quirks to their speech is because the settlers of New England and New Zealand came from related parts of British society.
The ONE country most likely to get nuked right now is the one and only country which ever got nuked (twice, even) in history.
I'm usually a moral relativist when it comes to global politics, but this just seems ridiculously unfair somehow.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
I see blasted missiles?
+ 3.14 Transcendental
Mangled... That's very linguacentric of you! Anyhow, it would be hard to believe that the speech of New (England | Zealand) were related for that reason, because NZ was settled by the British in 1840, ~220 years after NE.
I don't actually know much on the subject, but the fact that New England produced so much literature and philosophy, while NZ produced meat and wool (and still does, haha) would suggest different levels of education, and therefore different parts of society for the early settlers.
Interesting point though - I might even bother to find out. One day. Maybe.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
If you are predictable people just walk all over you. See Iraq for an example. If you appear insane they keep away.
Deleted
I dont think this is what Al Gore had in mind...
Look, NK already has the capability to do massive damage to SK and drop missiles on Japan but they haven't. This missile wouldn't have changed anything.
Success or failure... it's simply not that big a deal.
It's really much more scary that they would sell one to Iran. That's the more scary scenario for international relations... but even that isn't that big a deal.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
I'm confused. I thought ICBM were trying to buy SUN?
North Korea's "president", "speaker of parliament" and "prime minister" is Kim Yong-nam, who is the "Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly" (a kind of a parliament that rarely convenes) and "Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly". A "presidium" is like a cabinet, and is formally the highest organ of the state. Kim Jong Il's title is not really "dictator" or "president", but "Chairman of the National Defence Commission". (To compare, in the U.S., the president chairs the National Security Council.) Because North Korea is a military dictatorship, the holder of this position effectively controls the entire government both in real terms and legally. Kim is also the "General Secretary of the Workers' Party", and because this party controls the political decisions of the civil government, this makes Kim the sole final decisionmaker in other matters as well. In conclusion, the amount and depth of fuckedupness in communist states is incredibly and almost mesmerizingly large.
It's not a failure, it's part of the learning curve. Every large rocket design, except maybe for the Sat 5 had multiple launch failures the first few times. The US Atlas had like FIVE blowups before a successful launch. Ditto the Redstone and Jupiter and Vanguard. The Atlas was never very reliable, blowing up a good 25% of the time.
What's mildly of concern was if the NK's had sufficient telemetry downlink to figure out what went wrong this time so they can try harder in those weak areas next time.
So we can't expect the unbiased truth from North Korea's propaganda ministry, but what the hell is this about "complete and utter failure" when the first stage apparently worked?
Was Space-X's initial failure to orbit payload portrayed here at /. as "complete and utter failure"?
Seastead this.
Oh those Koreans, still using the SI units. When will they learn the only way to get things into space is using FEET and POUNDS?
Somewhere in this country there is a scientist, or team of scientists being interrogated as to why the satellite launched failed. Someone, somewhere, is being executed for this. Gives me the willies!
My point? Bush didn't put the North Koreans up to anything, but your description is remarkably close to fitting your own country.
Is that supposed to make me feel better about North Korea being one step closer to global nuclear capability?
It was pretty routine for US surface ships in the Pacific to linger around the predicted impact area of Soviet test ICBM shots, in hopes of picking up pieces. It's not hard to track the missiles, and in fact the Russians pretty much always put out a Notice to Mariners, so it wasn't any big mystery to get at least the approximate target location.
I doubt it. That system is meant to be employed much earlier in the flight profile than this... the NK missile got all the way to stage separation, and I really doubt the 747 could get itself into position to shoot it there.
Best estimates are that NK has 6-7 nuclear devices.
I didn't bother reading the rest of your post.
They launched an ICBM and it flew. No one interfered with either the launch or flight.
They learned quite a bit of both technical and political data.
Sounds like a success to me. Sure, it could have been better, but it wasn't a failure by a long shot.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Another reason for their launch outside saber-rattling and chest-puffing is simple: cash. They have essentially launched (no pun intended) a global advertisement to potential buyers of the technology they have been touting (though it was not a successful "product demonstration".) Though theoretically propped-up by China and/or Russia, having an income source outside of state sources gives you more political flexibility; that, and the possibility that their technology could be refined/used by "rogue" states/organizations would result in further political chaos, keeping them at or near the center of attention.
I dunno what the GP was thinking... Did he miss the news coverage of the underground nuke tests that NK carried out in 2006?
How the hell does such a completely erroneous statement get a mod up anyhow?
I am about to compare the NK "space program" to the efforts of SpaceX. http://www.spacex.com/. Before I receive a terminal flaming, let me emphasize the fact that the two enterprises exist in alternate universes when it comes to scientific and technical expertise. And intent, for that matter. Having said that, it is important to consider two things they have in common: 1) Limited resources. NK is poor, isolated, etc. SpaceX is not NASA. Because it is privately funded, it does not have NASA's (comparatively) deep pockets. 2) The early efforts of both programs (and NASA's!) have been "failures". If success in actually achieving orbit is the only metric, SpaceX has a 75% failure rate. They didn't put anything into orbit until the fourth try. Elon Musk and company kept on trying. Now they are readying a fifth launch from their facility on Kwajalein Atoll, and they are preparing to launch an even larger rocket from Cape Canaveral. I have no doubt that the scientists and engineers in NK also learn from their failures. Their most recent launch may not have been a failure at all. I agree that it was most likely an ICBM test and not an attempt to orbit a satellite to give the world Kim Jong Il's version of MTV. This is why I believe it is dangerous and short sighted to dismiss the NK space program as a NASA wannabe run by incompetents for whom the wheel and fire are the latest technology.
First off, we know that NK does NOT have nuclear weapons.
It must be comforting to believe that the nuclear baby bomb they blew up a few years ago was the only one they had or produced since.
Bzzzt! Nice paragraph history, till the last sentence ... you conflate the USA and the ROK (Republic of Korea, AKA South Korea) and their roles in that fiasco. The USA brokered an agreement to provide food aid (which we did) while the ROK was to provide commercial light-water reactors for electrical power generation (which the ROK failed to do) in return for which the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, AKA North Korea) would disassemble its breeder reactor and cease all work on developing nuclear weapons (which they pretty much failed to do.)
I blame the South Koreans for failing to make any attempt to meet their obligations in this deal, and the North Koreans for closing the original plant while simultaneously opening a NEW one and for moving its program further underground (literally) rather than stopping it ... but I am proud to say the USA kept its part of the bargain and provided the food (the more fool us, but at least we tried.)
It's nice of you to claim that the DPRK government & Kim Jung Il (same thing) are just misunderstood and marginalized souls, but in fact they are far more like the Unabomber than they are like Castro. Crazed conspiracy theorists wanting to go their own way are a dime a dozen, while nutjobs who are willing to blow up their neighbors so they can be 'left alone' are a whole 'nother matter.
I strongly suggest you go read a book, a few magazines, at the very least the frak'n Wikipedia article and THEN go read the DPRK's slant on things ... I think you might change your mind about who's zoomin who here. FWIW, I speak and read Korean, I have lived in the ROK, I was in Seoul in the early 90's, and I truly believe Dear Comrade KJI is batshit crazy - but don't take my word for it, please. Go check it out for yourself.
As for your first paragraph, since in 1990 there was evidence that the DPRK already had several pounds of plutonium with which to make at the least a dirty bomb or two, you are wrong there too. They might not be able to make them with swiss-watch craftsmanship like we (used to) do, but don't think they couldn't make SOMETHING unpleasent. Now that they can demonstrably throw one as far as Japan, we might actually want to worry about it just a skosh.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Oh don't get me wrong. He is definately batshit crazy. And hes not a misunderstood saint. BUT we haven't helped. And spitting in their face doesnt help. And while the party might be batshit crazy not all of northkoreans are fans of living in poverty starving to death. I'm sure they are open to seeing alternatives.
And while nk gov is batshit crazy i dont think they are stupid enough to fire their handful of shitty dirty bombs. It serves no purpose. Thats my point, when you view a country as evil you cant think straight. They might be selfserving and all that. But their is no advantage to NK for firing their nukes at anything.
Anyways sorry about the messiness and lack of fact checking. It wasn't meant to be an essay I typed it in about 10minutes without using any references. Thanks for making it through the whole thing.
So far a perfectly typical thread of /. know-nothingism.
However, I can address one counterfactual point from way back near the beginning of the branch. It is not the "r" sound that causes trouble for the Japanese, but the "l" sound. Yes, the Japanese "r" is not exactly like the English "r" sound, but it does exist in Japanese. The "l" sound is the one that has no counterpart, so their trained-from-childhood-to-ignore-"l"-like-sound ears try to map the English "l" to the closest Japanese sound, the "r". (And of course it's very hard to learn to make a new sound that you can't distinguish from a different sound that you already know how to make.)
I could approach it in more detail from a phonological perspective, but I've already wasted more time than /. deserves these years.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Does North Korea even HAVE Amateur Radio operators?
Not according to this guy. See this page:
"North Korea has one of the most tightly controlled medias in the world. Unlike most other countries, in North Korea radios and TVs don't have tuners - they only have switches. You can choose one state-run channel, or the other state-run channel. No 'tuning in' to outside broadcasts. Of course no Internet either. On page one I showed you the kind of 'news' found in the newspaper.
A defector once told me of a visit to the hospital he had made while growing up in the North. Alone in his hospital room he was looking at the radio and noticed that a previous patient had somehow broken it open and rigged up a crude tuner. Risking imprisonment he searched for and found a South Korean station and got his first taste of the outside world. Nearly 25 years later he could still recall that first broadcast and what he had heard - a news story that, to his amazement, contained an interview with the South Korean president. An interview with a president?!?! How could such a thing happen?!?"
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
So far a perfectly typical thread of /. know-nothingism.
Yeah. Thanks for being so magnanimous to drop in on it and impart your knowledge to the unwashed masses. I don't think anyone in the thread claimed to be a linguistics expert, and throwing insults right off the bat makes people inspired to learn more I'm sure.
I could approach it in more detail from a phonological perspective, but I've already wasted more time than /. deserves these years.
Then stop typing and haul your ass out. However, I bet we'll see you again, as it probably gets lonely sitting by yourself knowing everything there is to know about everything.
I would tell you to read my sig with attention, but if your reading disability is that severe, then it isn't worth the effort. On the other hand, if you're simply blocking sigs, let me add that you're a rude moron, too.
You've already convinced me that you are a leading part of the problem, and the greatest accomplishment you could probably accomplish in your miserable life would be to designate me as your foe. I have never suffered fools gladly, but /. has sunk far below THAT level.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Nicely done, Idiomatick. As for North Koreans, their behaviour is right on schedule, no surprises. The Americans prop up these regimes by isolating them.... no thinking is going on in Washington either even though the Messiah won the election. Expect more of the same from countries that have been kept isolated, now that the US are growing weaker and collapsing internally.
US manned moon mission Apollo 13 fails.
US manned shuttle mission Challenger fails.
US manned shuttle mission Columbia fails.
etc.
Does all this mean "utter failure"?
NO, its just propaganda.
Just my 0.02.
__
L.
Which Ministry of Truth should I believe?
Ah! Typical prima donna "I know everythingism".
Talk about it from your phonological perspective all you like, but no one actually said anything within this thread that disagreed with your point. There was one statement that said
You think Koreans are Japanese?
Koreans can pronounce 'r' just fine.
Which implies Japanese have difficulties pronouncing 'r', which they do. To say that the English 'r' exists in Japanese is completely stupid, because it simply doesn't. Their 'r' is somewhere between an English 'l' and 'd' and an Italian/Spanish/(some parts of UK) 'r'. Not to mention that it varies in different parts of Japan, in some places being almost exactly like our 'l'.
Your point about sound mapping was somewhat correct, but you equated things that were not equal. Yes, of course, it is very difficult to learn new sounds that one did not grow up hearing around them - but it's not even fully for that reason that Japanese mix up 'l's and 'r's, and yes, they mix them up and swap them around (well, I know a lot of Japanese that don't but...). It is in effect, both the sound they knew, and the sound they had to learn that are the problem. Yes, they have trouble distinguishing them. Is it all 'l's fault? No.
So by all means, approach it from your "phonological perspective", but that's what we were doing anyway. We were talking about the sound were we not? Or did you mean from an academic perspective? Yes, I too can be an egocentric fool, and completely misinterpret what others are saying. Yes, I can insult people too! Man, I like myself even more now.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
Yes. And ?
Sorry, time is too valuable to waste reading your crap. Noticing the volume in passing, you must have wasted several minutes of your worthless life. From your first few words it seems you have sufficient rationale to justify designating me as your foe. Of course, if my assessment of you is correct, then your stupidity may make prevent you from figuring out how to do so. Well, actually, if my assessment of your stupidity is correct, I can't understand how you remember to continue breathing.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Shanen,
I can see that you are an intelligent person. However, may I be so rude as to tell you that your ability to communicate effectively is hindered by your quickness to anger, and dislike of being disagreed with.
I insulted you merely, because you insulted bitrex with no justification whatsoever. I was hoping that you would see the pointlessness of the insults. I am not prone to insulting others myself, and I apologise if you were insulted by what I said. However, I was saying it merely to make you think, and realise how reasonless angry vitriol can be. I failed to make that point to you.
And I would suggest you did further research into phonology before insulting people merely for disagreeing with you. And even then, an insult is wasted breath, or in this case, finger movement.
I do get a feeling that I am wasting my time writing this. But I do hope that you will at least try and understand what I am saying.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?