I'm surprised someone didn't patent it and charge the military for doing it.
Concept: Flying in an efficient formation with minimal work from the pilot and controllers, preferably interfacing with existing autopilot systems
Invention: An algorithm to compute the most efficient formation for a given time, a different algorithm for adding & removing planes at the best times to minimize total fuel consumption, and a protocol for distributing the plan and real-time adjustments as needed, all run on a computer with appropriate failover mechanisms and communication systems.
Patent title: System and method for plotting and executing an optimal fuel-efficient flight among multiple cooperating powered aircraft
Slashdot headline: Troll patents flying, doesn't even cite the Wright brothers as prior art
I'm slowly writing a scifi story where all the measurements are based on Planck units, combined in various ways with the numbers 20 or 60 to reach human-accessible sizes.
The premise is that humanity was wiped out, and the only survivors are a bunch of pedants.
Not all instability leads to crashes. If something is unstable, it means it isn't stable. "Stable" means it's not changing. A feature whose exact implementation is expected to change in the near future. This might mean that a few edge cases are known that will render funny, or maybe the code just isn't clean enough for the devs' preference (as though that would ever stop a release...).
Prefixed features are a warning to developers. They say "This is coming, but it might still be screwy". Someone using the prefixed feature shouldn't complain when their masterpiece website suddenly looks different in the next release of the browser because they were abusing a flaw in the implementation.
As a concrete (hypothetical) example, consider animating the rotation effect on a square image. If the browser is built to compute the layout before applying rotation, nothing else on the page will move. If the layout comes after the rotation, blocks could move around as the rectangular dimensions of the image's block change. Regardless of what behavior is standard, a developer could rely on the other. Having a prefix warns him that it's not quite finished.
I know, right? Sanity for alcohol laws, but not for Internet access? WTF...
More seriously, what's the harm? Just like anything else pleasurable, people can become addicted to it, and it causes severe problems when used excessively. Keeping it away from kids doesn't do anything to change those facts, but it does add a mystique of forbidden fruit.
At first, I was annoyed at the new connector (though I doubt I'll have any need to use it for a while, and when I do, I have practically no accessories to replace). It seemed to be a remarkable waste of engineering for something that could have just been standardized.
Now that I know more about the connector, I'm genuinely hoping that Apple miraculously opens up to the world and Lightning becomes the new standard. It's reversible, adaptable, sturdy (at least it appears to be), and smaller than the 30-pin connector. iFixit had an interesting perspective (that I'm too lazy to look up) that the smaller connector allowed more components to fit in the bottom of the new and slimmer iPhone.
I like the idea of adaptable connectors. Not just where you ground a certain pin to toggle the function of another pin, but where the cable and device actively communicate to negotiate what features are available on what pins.
Since my dream of Apple playing nice with others is probably impossible, are there any other well-defined connectors (preferably without patents) out there that offer the same (or even similar) amounts of adaptability?
Your single citation (which says nothing about average donation rates over time, and rather just compares geography) actually works against your overall claim:
Piff says it's not that rich people aren't generous. They're often just isolated. They don't see a lot of poor people in their daily lives.
So let's go back to my earlier suggestion: Show appreciation for the donations that are given. Don't attack the wealthy for having money, don't accuse them of greed (any more than any other human), and don't measure generosity solely by how much it hurts.
I'm told Huawei started off selling phone switches, while Cisco was working on computer networks from the start. They weren't really competitors until around 2000, as Huawei expanded into computer networks to accommodate the gradual merging of phone and computer networks.
LIfe goes on just fine after being arrested and doing prison time, you just find out who your real friends are.
I guess that means your real friends aren't your employers, future (legal) employers, landlords, bankers, friends in the military, or anyone who works with children, since they'll all see your prison time on a background check and consider you a risk. Sure, you can live just fine with that job at the local car wash, but it's a lot more comfortable to be clear enough to hold a job as a bank teller.
I was under the impression that maneuvers like this happen every few months or so, so this really isn't a big deal at all. In fact, TFA says so:
NASA and its space station partners regularly move the space station when a piece of debris is expected to pass inside a preset safety perimeter. That safety zone is shaped like a pizza box and extends out 15 miles (25 kilometers) to either side, as well as a half-mile (0.75 km) above and below the station.
He believed that he had a responsibility to give back something to a community that had given him so much. But that's a rare viewpoint amongst the "old money", that is -- people who were born into wealth.
Nope. The 10% of gifts (by number) that come from inheritance account for about 10% of gifts (by money). That means that those who donate at all are donating an equal share (I can't find any meaningful statistics on what percentage donate). I don't think giving a fair share is particularly wrong. In fact, it's actually the new-money donators (whose wealth comes from their salary) who give the least.
But once you're dead, your descendants only get a certain maximal amount - say, 10 million, even 20 million, per immediate family member, less for extended family, etc. We need to break the cycle of generational wealth, where some very small number of families accrue more and more wealth, until it becomes so concentrated that society starts to feel the effects of wealth deprivation.
I get the distinct impression that you don't really know how inheritance works. As stated earlier, I work with high-net-worth individuals. Practically none of them (that I recall offhand... I'm not ambitious enough to write and run a report, and I doubt it'd be legal to do so, anyway) are giving more than one million to their families in easily-liquid assets (public stocks, bonds, cash, etc.). Rather, the majority of their wealth is in their assets - the family company, the real estate, and other individual items that just happen to be worth a lot to other people.
I'm not against people earning whatever the market will pay them. I just don't like the idea of people who are born into wealth, who are handed power, and who don't ever do meaningful work, who never produce anything of value to society.
Fortunately, there are extremely few people like that. The few that there are, though, are lambasted by the media for their carefree lifestyle, so they're in the public eye often, and their lack of contribution is highlighted. The vast majority of heirs use the money for productive purposes, whether it be founding a company, investing in other companies, or even just giving to charities, then they get a real job and live a normal life like everyone else.
We need to reward people for their hard work, not their great-great-grandparent's hard work.
Ah, how nice it'd be to live in a world of karma. The sad reality is that hard work does not guarantee a comfortable life. Having money set aside (by anybody, of any generation) acts as a nice safety net. Those that have such a safety net and don't use it pass it on to their children. For someone whose life was well-spent, who worked to ensure that their fortune grew, what better reward than to know that their children and grandchildren will be shielded from the wrath of an uncaring world?
We've danced that tune already. It's a common staple of revolution to seize the assets of the rich and redistribute the wealth to the poor... but then what? The money itself isn't worth much and just inflates, because the people were just given handouts. The education isn't valued any more than any current government-sponsored public school. The roads might be nice for a while, but then they'll deteriorate, assuming they can even be built in time... then the money runs out. Then what?
Do we let the new distribution stand? The only ones who have been hurt then are the original multi-millionaires who lost their money, but soon the owners and investors who benefited most from the redistribution are just as wealthy, and civilization has done nothing of importance.
Do we find the next group of rich folks and seize their assets as well? That works fine for the first round or two, until people realize that as they accumulate wealth, they should immediately move out of the country to somewhere more amiable. Then you don't get their money or their taxes. Those that stay in the country must do anything they can to hide their wealth, so charity's out of the question.
Here's an alternative idea, perhaps better: Support your current millionaires. Yes, I'm serious. When a big donation is given to guarantee the local community theater's continued operation, make sure the local paper knows and runs a nice article on it. When an important bit of research is finished, make sure the funding foundations are noted in the press release. Do your best to show appreciation for charitable grants and gifts, so the wealthy are encouraged to support their communities. While there are some folks who will hold on to their money no matter what, most I've worked with are happy to give to a good cause, and fully aware of the fact that they just don't need as much money as they have.
I believe it was John D. Rockefeller who at one point quipped, while writing a large (by anyone else's standards) check, that in the time it took to actually give the money, he'd already made more. This is a common problem today for rich folks. While everyone's quick to say that the millionaire could give them the money and they'd spend it easily, it's actually very hard to find good ways to spend a lot of money. Not every school will actually use the money for improvement, not every church's message is beneficial to spread, and not every unemployed person actually wants to work. This is why so many donations come from "foundations" rather than directly from wealthy individuals. The foundation itself does the due-diligence research into whether a cause is worth supporting.
Disclaimer: I currently work for a firm catering to high-net-worth individuals. We help them find ways to manage their fortunes, leave assets for their futures and families, start their foundations, and connect those foundations with charities.
if their product depends on the on the call pressure factor in order to make a sale it's bullshit and that's what a lot of telemarketing depends on.
So how is that different from any other form of marketing? If the salesman doesn't helpfully offer a test drive, you're probably not going to buy the car. If the new meal-in-a-box doesn't have flashy packaging that looks different from every other meal-in-a-box, how will you learn the product exists?
Every form of marketing relies on the strength of its medium to make a sale.
if it's a business relationship call then it's not telemarketing, if it's soliciting you to buy some bullshit it's telemarketing, like adverts on tv are marketing. this is not redefining the word unless you use the definition that any business related call with the end aim of making more business is telemarketing, in which case ceo's are telemarketers.
I'll use the definition I linked to:
The marketing of goods or services by means of telephone calls, typically unsolicited, to potential customers.
"Marketing of goods or services by means of telephones calls" means just that, and nothing more. Not "marketing calls that relies on pressure" or "marketing that I wasn't expecting". Yes, this means CEOs will be telemarketing on occasion, if they're in a position where it'd be appropriate for them to be doing marketing at all (such as to a potential VIP customer).
"Telemarketing (sometimes known as inside sales,[1] or telesales in the UK and Ireland) is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing. Telemarketing has come under fire in recent years, being viewed as an annoyance by many."
I can't help but notice that there's no mention of telemarketing necessarily using pressure tactics, unsolicited calls, or scams in that definition. In fact it implies that the call could just set up a later meeting for other marketing strategies.
Well, since we're redefiningtelemarketing, why not cut the definition down to those who are "selling" only items that don't exist, or touting services that they know the target has no need for? While we're at it, let's restrict "developers" to be only people who write programs using C#, "gamers" to be only those who first played Pac-Man at exactly age 19, and "unemployed" to mean only those who have received no income from anywhere in the past 23 years. Suddenly all our discussions are much simpler.
That's the point of my post. Telemarketing as a field has been stereotyped until the word implies only cold-calling scammers, despite the fact that they make up only a tiny minority of the field.
Except for the ones who actually do the job right, of course (which requires managers who allow it).
Telemarketers as a group get a lot of shit for doing a pretty benign job. At my last IT admin job, I got a few telemarketing calls a month, mostly from vendors we already work with telling me about their new products. Pretty benign, and sometimes actually useful.
The bad ones are just the ones who cold-call people they have no relationship with already, press sales, and lie.
You've discovered representative traits of different societies. In many Asian societies, individual achievement is valued highly, so each individual must work the hardest to be outstanding. In many Indian societies, the collective effort is what's valued, so a team gathering bits and pieces from myriad sources and reassembling them into a new product is the respectable path to success. In many European and American societies, slacking off and blaming others for the consequences is a venerated tradition.
If a researcher follows proper procedure but ends up with an incorrect result, it's still valid science. Perhaps it's the exception to some theory that will lead to later breakthroughs in the future. Simply being incorrect is not a reason to retract. Rather, a retraction is wiping the slate clean, hoping to forget that the research was ever done. The only reason to do that is if the research itself was unethical.
No, the computer that stores the OSHA training videos and viewing records for the janitorial staff does not need to be classified, no matter what floor the janitor mops.
"Systems used by the military for nuclear commands" can have a very broad scope. Very few of them actually have classified information, or can access other classified systems.
There are supposed to be secure channels for having informal diplomatic discussions that are kept private, where a conversation like the former could take place, but I suspect that diplomats are a bit wary of making "private" comments these days. That leaves only the subtle dance of public politics, where the latter is likely.
Of course. That was a point I made in my second paragraph. Now China can step up and help, offering some token gesture of cooperation, like extracting/forging logs pointing in some other direction. This is a chance for diplomatic small-talk, where a little good-faith effort on a task that's meaningless in the long run can help hold off the prospect of an upcoming war with China.
China also has the opportunity to take this flimsy accusation as a grave insult, so they could start rattling sabers and head closer to war... but then they look like aggressors just waiting for an excuse to pick a fight.
Very few people will click links from unknown sources, even in government.
However, when the email comes through saying it's from a common company such as Intuit or Chase (both of which have been used in phishing attacks I've seen lately), and comes from an email address from that domain, and looks legitimate (pictures and all), and it tells them that they can either click the link or type in the address, and can even address the target by name, most people won't think twice about clicking that little link to save some time.
As far as they can easily see, it's an email from a company they're in contact with, offering them a convenient link to take care of some important issue.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm surprised someone didn't patent it and charge the military for doing it.
Concept: Flying in an efficient formation with minimal work from the pilot and controllers, preferably interfacing with existing autopilot systems
Invention: An algorithm to compute the most efficient formation for a given time, a different algorithm for adding & removing planes at the best times to minimize total fuel consumption, and a protocol for distributing the plan and real-time adjustments as needed, all run on a computer with appropriate failover mechanisms and communication systems.
Patent title: System and method for plotting and executing an optimal fuel-efficient flight among multiple cooperating powered aircraft
Slashdot headline: Troll patents flying, doesn't even cite the Wright brothers as prior art
Also ask whether they're aware of the risks of DHMO.
I'm slowly writing a scifi story where all the measurements are based on Planck units, combined in various ways with the numbers 20 or 60 to reach human-accessible sizes.
The premise is that humanity was wiped out, and the only survivors are a bunch of pedants.
Bad form to reply to myself, but also bad proofreading:
. A feature whose exact implementation is expected to change in the near future.
A feature whose exact implementation is expected to change in the near future should be prefixed.
FTFM
Not all instability leads to crashes. If something is unstable, it means it isn't stable. "Stable" means it's not changing. A feature whose exact implementation is expected to change in the near future. This might mean that a few edge cases are known that will render funny, or maybe the code just isn't clean enough for the devs' preference (as though that would ever stop a release...).
Prefixed features are a warning to developers. They say "This is coming, but it might still be screwy". Someone using the prefixed feature shouldn't complain when their masterpiece website suddenly looks different in the next release of the browser because they were abusing a flaw in the implementation.
As a concrete (hypothetical) example, consider animating the rotation effect on a square image. If the browser is built to compute the layout before applying rotation, nothing else on the page will move. If the layout comes after the rotation, blocks could move around as the rectangular dimensions of the image's block change. Regardless of what behavior is standard, a developer could rely on the other. Having a prefix warns him that it's not quite finished.
I know, right? Sanity for alcohol laws, but not for Internet access? WTF...
More seriously, what's the harm? Just like anything else pleasurable, people can become addicted to it, and it causes severe problems when used excessively. Keeping it away from kids doesn't do anything to change those facts, but it does add a mystique of forbidden fruit.
Sources? We don't need no steenkin' sources!
This is Slashdot, where the hivemind rules... Patents are bad! Corporations are bad! Sensationalism is good!
I know this is Slashdot, but you really should try reading TFA. The Avrocar was a separate project:
It’s worth noting that Avro Canada also worked on the VZ-9 Avrocar, though — which is basically the same as Project 1794, but a lot smaller.
It's okay... I know you had to hurry to get that ninth post...
At first, I was annoyed at the new connector (though I doubt I'll have any need to use it for a while, and when I do, I have practically no accessories to replace). It seemed to be a remarkable waste of engineering for something that could have just been standardized.
Now that I know more about the connector, I'm genuinely hoping that Apple miraculously opens up to the world and Lightning becomes the new standard. It's reversible, adaptable, sturdy (at least it appears to be), and smaller than the 30-pin connector. iFixit had an interesting perspective (that I'm too lazy to look up) that the smaller connector allowed more components to fit in the bottom of the new and slimmer iPhone.
I like the idea of adaptable connectors. Not just where you ground a certain pin to toggle the function of another pin, but where the cable and device actively communicate to negotiate what features are available on what pins.
Since my dream of Apple playing nice with others is probably impossible, are there any other well-defined connectors (preferably without patents) out there that offer the same (or even similar) amounts of adaptability?
Percentage of income: The more you earn, the less you give.
As a percentage of income, modern wealthy households give about as much as any other group. Try again.
Your single citation (which says nothing about average donation rates over time, and rather just compares geography) actually works against your overall claim:
Piff says it's not that rich people aren't generous. They're often just isolated. They don't see a lot of poor people in their daily lives.
So let's go back to my earlier suggestion: Show appreciation for the donations that are given. Don't attack the wealthy for having money, don't accuse them of greed (any more than any other human), and don't measure generosity solely by how much it hurts.
Now sit down and shut up.
My, you are a cranky one, aren't you?
I'm told Huawei started off selling phone switches, while Cisco was working on computer networks from the start. They weren't really competitors until around 2000, as Huawei expanded into computer networks to accommodate the gradual merging of phone and computer networks.
LIfe goes on just fine after being arrested and doing prison time, you just find out who your real friends are.
I guess that means your real friends aren't your employers, future (legal) employers, landlords, bankers, friends in the military, or anyone who works with children, since they'll all see your prison time on a background check and consider you a risk. Sure, you can live just fine with that job at the local car wash, but it's a lot more comfortable to be clear enough to hold a job as a bank teller.
Feeding time.
Female non-Peace Nobel laureates: 28 (with two for Marie Curie)
Men publish more hard science than women: Not any more.
Women's chance to prove themselves: They did in antiquity but have more recently had their rights curtailed and are slowly getting them back.
Nice try, though.
I was under the impression that maneuvers like this happen every few months or so, so this really isn't a big deal at all. In fact, TFA says so:
NASA and its space station partners regularly move the space station when a piece of debris is expected to pass inside a preset safety perimeter. That safety zone is shaped like a pizza box and extends out 15 miles (25 kilometers) to either side, as well as a half-mile (0.75 km) above and below the station.
Rockefeller, unlike most of our current crop of multimillionaires and billionaires, was a philanthropist.
Citation needed. Specifically with regards to the "unlike" bit. Of all charitable donations, 41% comes from the top 10% of incomes. From households (excluding foundations or nonprofit companies), 3% of households account for over two thirds of household donations.
He believed that he had a responsibility to give back something to a community that had given him so much. But that's a rare viewpoint amongst the "old money", that is -- people who were born into wealth.
Nope. The 10% of gifts (by number) that come from inheritance account for about 10% of gifts (by money). That means that those who donate at all are donating an equal share (I can't find any meaningful statistics on what percentage donate). I don't think giving a fair share is particularly wrong. In fact, it's actually the new-money donators (whose wealth comes from their salary) who give the least.
But once you're dead, your descendants only get a certain maximal amount - say, 10 million, even 20 million, per immediate family member, less for extended family, etc. We need to break the cycle of generational wealth, where some very small number of families accrue more and more wealth, until it becomes so concentrated that society starts to feel the effects of wealth deprivation.
I get the distinct impression that you don't really know how inheritance works. As stated earlier, I work with high-net-worth individuals. Practically none of them (that I recall offhand... I'm not ambitious enough to write and run a report, and I doubt it'd be legal to do so, anyway) are giving more than one million to their families in easily-liquid assets (public stocks, bonds, cash, etc.). Rather, the majority of their wealth is in their assets - the family company, the real estate, and other individual items that just happen to be worth a lot to other people.
I'm not against people earning whatever the market will pay them. I just don't like the idea of people who are born into wealth, who are handed power, and who don't ever do meaningful work, who never produce anything of value to society.
Fortunately, there are extremely few people like that. The few that there are, though, are lambasted by the media for their carefree lifestyle, so they're in the public eye often, and their lack of contribution is highlighted. The vast majority of heirs use the money for productive purposes, whether it be founding a company, investing in other companies, or even just giving to charities, then they get a real job and live a normal life like everyone else.
We need to reward people for their hard work, not their great-great-grandparent's hard work.
Ah, how nice it'd be to live in a world of karma. The sad reality is that hard work does not guarantee a comfortable life. Having money set aside (by anybody, of any generation) acts as a nice safety net. Those that have such a safety net and don't use it pass it on to their children. For someone whose life was well-spent, who worked to ensure that their fortune grew, what better reward than to know that their children and grandchildren will be shielded from the wrath of an uncaring world?
We've danced that tune already. It's a common staple of revolution to seize the assets of the rich and redistribute the wealth to the poor... but then what? The money itself isn't worth much and just inflates, because the people were just given handouts. The education isn't valued any more than any current government-sponsored public school. The roads might be nice for a while, but then they'll deteriorate, assuming they can even be built in time... then the money runs out. Then what?
Do we let the new distribution stand? The only ones who have been hurt then are the original multi-millionaires who lost their money, but soon the owners and investors who benefited most from the redistribution are just as wealthy, and civilization has done nothing of importance.
Do we find the next group of rich folks and seize their assets as well? That works fine for the first round or two, until people realize that as they accumulate wealth, they should immediately move out of the country to somewhere more amiable. Then you don't get their money or their taxes. Those that stay in the country must do anything they can to hide their wealth, so charity's out of the question.
Here's an alternative idea, perhaps better: Support your current millionaires. Yes, I'm serious. When a big donation is given to guarantee the local community theater's continued operation, make sure the local paper knows and runs a nice article on it. When an important bit of research is finished, make sure the funding foundations are noted in the press release. Do your best to show appreciation for charitable grants and gifts, so the wealthy are encouraged to support their communities. While there are some folks who will hold on to their money no matter what, most I've worked with are happy to give to a good cause, and fully aware of the fact that they just don't need as much money as they have.
I believe it was John D. Rockefeller who at one point quipped, while writing a large (by anyone else's standards) check, that in the time it took to actually give the money, he'd already made more. This is a common problem today for rich folks. While everyone's quick to say that the millionaire could give them the money and they'd spend it easily, it's actually very hard to find good ways to spend a lot of money. Not every school will actually use the money for improvement, not every church's message is beneficial to spread, and not every unemployed person actually wants to work. This is why so many donations come from "foundations" rather than directly from wealthy individuals. The foundation itself does the due-diligence research into whether a cause is worth supporting.
Disclaimer: I currently work for a firm catering to high-net-worth individuals. We help them find ways to manage their fortunes, leave assets for their futures and families, start their foundations, and connect those foundations with charities.
if their product depends on the on the call pressure factor in order to make a sale it's bullshit and that's what a lot of telemarketing depends on.
So how is that different from any other form of marketing? If the salesman doesn't helpfully offer a test drive, you're probably not going to buy the car. If the new meal-in-a-box doesn't have flashy packaging that looks different from every other meal-in-a-box, how will you learn the product exists?
Every form of marketing relies on the strength of its medium to make a sale.
if it's a business relationship call then it's not telemarketing, if it's soliciting you to buy some bullshit it's telemarketing, like adverts on tv are marketing. this is not redefining the word unless you use the definition that any business related call with the end aim of making more business is telemarketing, in which case ceo's are telemarketers.
I'll use the definition I linked to:
The marketing of goods or services by means of telephone calls, typically unsolicited, to potential customers.
"Marketing of goods or services by means of telephones calls" means just that, and nothing more. Not "marketing calls that relies on pressure" or "marketing that I wasn't expecting". Yes, this means CEOs will be telemarketing on occasion, if they're in a position where it'd be appropriate for them to be doing marketing at all (such as to a potential VIP customer).
"Telemarketing (sometimes known as inside sales,[1] or telesales in the UK and Ireland) is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing. Telemarketing has come under fire in recent years, being viewed as an annoyance by many."
I can't help but notice that there's no mention of telemarketing necessarily using pressure tactics, unsolicited calls, or scams in that definition. In fact it implies that the call could just set up a later meeting for other marketing strategies.
Well, since we're redefining telemarketing, why not cut the definition down to those who are "selling" only items that don't exist, or touting services that they know the target has no need for? While we're at it, let's restrict "developers" to be only people who write programs using C#, "gamers" to be only those who first played Pac-Man at exactly age 19, and "unemployed" to mean only those who have received no income from anywhere in the past 23 years. Suddenly all our discussions are much simpler.
That's the point of my post. Telemarketing as a field has been stereotyped until the word implies only cold-calling scammers, despite the fact that they make up only a tiny minority of the field.
Except for the ones who actually do the job right, of course (which requires managers who allow it).
Telemarketers as a group get a lot of shit for doing a pretty benign job. At my last IT admin job, I got a few telemarketing calls a month, mostly from vendors we already work with telling me about their new products. Pretty benign, and sometimes actually useful.
The bad ones are just the ones who cold-call people they have no relationship with already, press sales, and lie.
You've discovered representative traits of different societies. In many Asian societies, individual achievement is valued highly, so each individual must work the hardest to be outstanding. In many Indian societies, the collective effort is what's valued, so a team gathering bits and pieces from myriad sources and reassembling them into a new product is the respectable path to success. In many European and American societies, slacking off and blaming others for the consequences is a venerated tradition.
If a researcher follows proper procedure but ends up with an incorrect result, it's still valid science. Perhaps it's the exception to some theory that will lead to later breakthroughs in the future. Simply being incorrect is not a reason to retract. Rather, a retraction is wiping the slate clean, hoping to forget that the research was ever done. The only reason to do that is if the research itself was unethical.
No, the computer that stores the OSHA training videos and viewing records for the janitorial staff does not need to be classified, no matter what floor the janitor mops.
"Systems used by the military for nuclear commands" can have a very broad scope. Very few of them actually have classified information, or can access other classified systems.
There are supposed to be secure channels for having informal diplomatic discussions that are kept private, where a conversation like the former could take place, but I suspect that diplomats are a bit wary of making "private" comments these days. That leaves only the subtle dance of public politics, where the latter is likely.
Of course. That was a point I made in my second paragraph. Now China can step up and help, offering some token gesture of cooperation, like extracting/forging logs pointing in some other direction. This is a chance for diplomatic small-talk, where a little good-faith effort on a task that's meaningless in the long run can help hold off the prospect of an upcoming war with China.
China also has the opportunity to take this flimsy accusation as a grave insult, so they could start rattling sabers and head closer to war... but then they look like aggressors just waiting for an excuse to pick a fight.
Very few people will click links from unknown sources, even in government.
However, when the email comes through saying it's from a common company such as Intuit or Chase (both of which have been used in phishing attacks I've seen lately), and comes from an email address from that domain, and looks legitimate (pictures and all), and it tells them that they can either click the link or type in the address, and can even address the target by name, most people won't think twice about clicking that little link to save some time.
As far as they can easily see, it's an email from a company they're in contact with, offering them a convenient link to take care of some important issue.