If we were talking about any country that wasn't the DPRK, I would agree one hundred percent, because it's absurd.
That said, the normal rules don't apply to the DPRK, because by normal standards, the DPRK _is_ absurd. The entire country is built around a cult of personality centered on the Kim family, and propped up by the military elites. While it's dubious to what degree people actually buy in to it, it's very clear that they have to pretend to do so, because the alternative is pretty much risking getting sent to a prison camp for the rest of your life, along with your entire extended family.
I find it entirely plausible as a motive (nevermind Sony being a Japanese company, whom they have no particular love for). That's not to say it's proof by any means, and there are certainly other plausible explanations - but I don't think it's fair to rule out the possibility on grounds that "this isn't what normal nations do."
As for "could", they've pretty much also been accused of all sorts of hacking activity against South Korea. I guess if you don't believe they did that, then sure - but they're pretty much the number one suspect.
And lastly, the notion that Sony Pictures would go to this length to promote a movie, to the point of wrecking their operations and embarrassing the absolute crap out of their senior executives, getting lots of people fired... it's insane. They're going to spend more just fighting off the lawsuits alone, nevermind the cleanup, than they will ever make on "The Interview."
"Silencers" as they appear in movies are entirely fictional yes.
Noise suppressors on the other hand are very much real - but they don't function anywhere near like the movies portray them. You wouldn't be able to use one to silently cap someone while the guards around the corner are blissfully unaware. It's more that it becomes less damaging. You won't find one that reduces the sound below 110 decibels, and so you're probably still better off using hearing protection even when employing one.
Nevermind the fact that ad networks have been used on multiple occasions as delivery mechanisms for malware, including "drive by" attacks where you don't even need to click anything. Just visit a seemingly innocuous page, and bam, infected.
It's also not even something where it only happens to shady sites, or shady/porn/etc ad networks. Even the flagship ad services, and mainstream websites have been affected.
The only way to protect yourself is to not accept arbitrary traffic from untrusted third parties in the first place - i.e., ad blockers, noscript, etc.
They're betting on the fact that it will usually be more expensive for you to challenge the ticket than to pay it. Even if you convince the judge to throw it out, you're still out the time spent fighting it, which is the better part of a day if you're lucky (worse if not).
Furthermore, they really don't care at all about safety. Studies have shown that while this sort of thing reduces T-bone incidents (which were rare to begin with), they cause a much greater increase in rear-end accidents because people wind up slamming on the breaks to avoid the sudden red light. Studies have also shown that there's a much more effective way to increase intersection safety, such as longer yellow lights, and/or a 1 to 2 second "all red". Of course, neither of those generate tons of money for the municipal government, let alone the camera company.
We can argue endlessly over whether it's widespread or not. The simple fact is that those enslaved persons had no recourse whatsoever except to try and flee, or to engage in violent rebellion. This is a severe flaw in and of itself. It's like suggesting that massive pervasive government surveillance is okay, because they only rarely abuse it. The problem is the power imbalance itself, the abuse is just a feature of that.
"Well, what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." - Obi-wan Kenobi
They're all partly true, and partly incorrect, as each only tells part of a larger story.
-The USA cited British impressment of sailors, interference in trade, and other such provocations by Britain, as part of its declaration of war. To a degree, this is true from the American viewpoint at the time (the British didn't see it that way of course), as many Americans felt that way.
-One of the other goals stated by pro-war American politicians at the time was the annexation of Canada (they thought the Canadians would, to borrow a more recent phrase, "greet them as liberators"). During the course of the war, the USA tried to invade Canada on several occasions, only to meet with failure. Thus, it's certainly reasonable for Canadians to have seen things that way.
-The war took place during the final years of the Napoleonic Wars, in which Britain was the leader of the anti-Napoleon coalition (having been the only one to remain at war the entire time). Several of the major reasons cited for the war arose from British actions against France, such as blocking trade, impressment of sailors, and so forth, so it's certainly fair to view the war as part of the Napoleonic Wars. That said, the USA did not ally with France, nor was its conclusion tied to that of the war against Napoleon, and the USA and France did not assist or cooperate with each other in any military ventures during the conflict.
It's hard to blame SpaceX for lobbying on that, as ULA was lobbying to keep them out of the process. Unfortunately, if you want to play the game in DC, at least at any significant level, you need to be involved in lobbying, even if only to counter the people who are lobbying against you.
The current US ICBM (Minuteman III) is an entirely different model of rocket. For one, it's a solid-fuel rocket, rather than liquid, so it's an entirely different beast.
They could have, but their bid would have been in no way competitive with SpaceX since the Delta 4 is a lot more expensive, and doesn't make economic sense to use on a small launch.
Another interesting point is that ULA has the full production rights, schematics, etc for the RD-180 engine, as that was part of the original deal. However, it would cost a lot of money to set up production, and on top of that, their production costs would be more expensive than just buying the engines from the Russians. Thus, ULA doesn't want to do that if they can avoid it, and would rather try to convince Congress to let them resume buying from Russia, at least until the newer engines they've made deals with Blue Origin to build are available.
I concur, and I run adblockers primarily for this reason. At present, malicious ads/malicious content delivered through ad networks is probably the most likely thing to infect the average user, and there's no more effective defense than simply blocking the content.
Why block it? Why block random content from unknown third parties, coming across content networks that have proven, time and again, that they don't give a rat's ass about vetting the people they're selling ad space to, let alone the content that those people are sending - and we're not even getting into all the constant invasive tracking attempts that come with that.
I don't mind reasonable ads, especially native ones that belong to the page I'm actually visiting. I mind the fact that there's been no real consequences for the rampant bad or negligent behavior on the part of the ad networks - so, like all content that I view as inherently suspicious/possibly malicious, I'm going to block it by default. The fact that there's no real value to me in it just makes it easier to not worry about that.
Or one might conclude that his specificity of the Playstation 4 means that he's been paid off by whomever would benefit from a massive drop in sales/use of said PS4, or any negative publicity.
On some level, basic income is an attempt to maintain the current market driven setup of the economy beyond the point where general human labor has any appreciable value. Right now, your income (ability to consume) is dependent on the value of the work you do (or the property/etc you own, if you are so privileged). As that breaks down, so do the markets that your demand drives. Could Walmart/etc survive losing 20% of its current customers? At best, it would be a massive economic contraction, of that sort that risks feeding on itself (businesses fail/stores close due to lack of demand, meaning more people out of work, meaning less people buying, meaning more businesses fail, etc). And that's ignoring the fact that starving people don't tend to go quietly.
The question isn't what we do when we get to the Star Trek post scarcity economy. The question is more what we do in the between period, because what we're approaching now isn't post scarcity, but rather, an economy where the marginal value of low skill human labor is so low that it's practically worthless for most purposes, and certainly is far below what it would take to maintain a single person at poverty level subsistence.
What we'll need to do is move to a guaranteed basic income. If robots do most of the industrial labor, then we tax that productivity instead of human wages. Give money to people who will spend it on food/clothing/etc, thus maintaining a demand for the goods the robots make (since in a market, you need both supply and demand, otherwise things start going bad quickly on a macro level). Eliminate the minimum wage, since everyone earns enough to live on, and let market forces freely set the value of human labor. $2 an hour is pocket change, but that's really all I'd need it for at that point. You wouldn't need welfare or such, since the minimum income covers it - and it's fair, because everyone gets it. If you make more money, you just add it on top of that - so instead of making $100k, you might earn $80k salary, but get your $20k basic too.
Oh, they do care what it says - they just don't let it stop them. They don't ask "Am I allowed to do what I want to do?", they ask "How can I do what I want to do despite what this says?"
They've let the ends justify the means. They've convinced themselves that this is right, that it's justifiable, and that it's absolutely necessary, otherwise the Terrorists/Drug Kingpins/Pedophiles/etc win. It's not just about warrants and espionage either. It's about things like due process, torture, and any number of related things.
It depends where you live. 60k is great money if you're in someplace where the cost of living is low, but if you're in someplace like Silicon Valley? Yeah, good luck with that.
This. The problem isn't so much with a big company (like Google or Apple) hiring specific talent using an H-1B visa. It's with body-shop type contracting firms that employ almost 100% H-1B holders (except for maybe certain management roles), and then contract out to cover jobs/duties/tasks that otherwise would be done by U.S. workers. Get rid of those (Infosys, etc) and you'll go a long way to fixing the worst of the abuses.
Because legal ramifications stopped Edward Snowden, right?
Nevermind the fact that in today's world, everyone everywhere is constantly looking at things for bugs, vulnerabilities, exploits, and once you're discovered, the game is up. You either have to patch the backdoor, rendering it useless, or anyone will be able to use it. You can't make it "just for us 'good' guys." (And of course, that's leaving aside the fact that it's highly problematic to be granting unchecked spying powers to domestic agencies, hence the scare quotes in 'good' guys)
It may not be the same book, but the one I remember was by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn, called Fallen Angels. It was written in 1991, and envisions a world where actual science has been cast aside by the mainstream in favor of dogmatic viewpoints, leading to an oncoming ice age after environmentalist movements become all powerful after making common cause with major religious elements, rejecting technology and cutting greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of faith rather than because of scientific evidence.
It was an interesting take, to be certain, and a warning against taking something on faith, and worse, making it an essential element of faith, rather than with a scientific approach. It also very heavily mocks some of the new-age BS that can be found in fringe elements. I'd say it's still worth reading, but that you need to keep it in context of the time it was written, and compare what it speculated to the way our version of the future has been turning out. Science Fiction doesn't have to be right in order to be thought provoking. I may not agree with Niven et al's political views, but they're still thoughtful and insightful writers.
Now, to be fair there was a certain bit of fear-mongering going on, but they did have a good point, at the time the novel was written. The problem was that they failed to see which side of the debate was more prone to falling into dogmatic thinking. I'm sure there are people out there on the political left for whom it is a matter of faith, because they effectively worship the earth/nature/etc to the point of refusing to make any tradeoffs - you know, the sort that protest against wind farms because they might kill birds, or might ruin the view of the ocean, etc. The thing is, those people aren't the ones in power, aren't steering the conversation, and most of us rightly think they're idiots. Right now the problem is more with the people who've made burning noxious shit for energy into an article of faith, and the ones who are making so much money off of it that they don't care what kind of damage it might be doing, and want to shut down ANY discussion of even possibly taking timid steps, to the point that even modest proposals to maybe slow down or regulate fossil fuel consumption are equated to communist tyranny outlawing every last hydrocarbon.
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If we were talking about any country that wasn't the DPRK, I would agree one hundred percent, because it's absurd.
That said, the normal rules don't apply to the DPRK, because by normal standards, the DPRK _is_ absurd. The entire country is built around a cult of personality centered on the Kim family, and propped up by the military elites. While it's dubious to what degree people actually buy in to it, it's very clear that they have to pretend to do so, because the alternative is pretty much risking getting sent to a prison camp for the rest of your life, along with your entire extended family.
I find it entirely plausible as a motive (nevermind Sony being a Japanese company, whom they have no particular love for). That's not to say it's proof by any means, and there are certainly other plausible explanations - but I don't think it's fair to rule out the possibility on grounds that "this isn't what normal nations do."
As for "could", they've pretty much also been accused of all sorts of hacking activity against South Korea. I guess if you don't believe they did that, then sure - but they're pretty much the number one suspect.
And lastly, the notion that Sony Pictures would go to this length to promote a movie, to the point of wrecking their operations and embarrassing the absolute crap out of their senior executives, getting lots of people fired... it's insane. They're going to spend more just fighting off the lawsuits alone, nevermind the cleanup, than they will ever make on "The Interview."
Well, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Void did just come out...
"Silencers" as they appear in movies are entirely fictional yes.
Noise suppressors on the other hand are very much real - but they don't function anywhere near like the movies portray them. You wouldn't be able to use one to silently cap someone while the guards around the corner are blissfully unaware. It's more that it becomes less damaging. You won't find one that reduces the sound below 110 decibels, and so you're probably still better off using hearing protection even when employing one.
Ironically, merchandise was the one thing that Lucas told Mel Brooks was off-limits, because the toys would be too similar.
Nevermind the fact that ad networks have been used on multiple occasions as delivery mechanisms for malware, including "drive by" attacks where you don't even need to click anything. Just visit a seemingly innocuous page, and bam, infected.
It's also not even something where it only happens to shady sites, or shady/porn/etc ad networks. Even the flagship ad services, and mainstream websites have been affected.
The only way to protect yourself is to not accept arbitrary traffic from untrusted third parties in the first place - i.e., ad blockers, noscript, etc.
He sent someone back in time, who then warned his past self to wear a ballistic vest, and then went to travel to the future, and the past?
Sounds pretty cool to me.
They're betting on the fact that it will usually be more expensive for you to challenge the ticket than to pay it. Even if you convince the judge to throw it out, you're still out the time spent fighting it, which is the better part of a day if you're lucky (worse if not).
Furthermore, they really don't care at all about safety. Studies have shown that while this sort of thing reduces T-bone incidents (which were rare to begin with), they cause a much greater increase in rear-end accidents because people wind up slamming on the breaks to avoid the sudden red light. Studies have also shown that there's a much more effective way to increase intersection safety, such as longer yellow lights, and/or a 1 to 2 second "all red". Of course, neither of those generate tons of money for the municipal government, let alone the camera company.
We can argue endlessly over whether it's widespread or not. The simple fact is that those enslaved persons had no recourse whatsoever except to try and flee, or to engage in violent rebellion. This is a severe flaw in and of itself. It's like suggesting that massive pervasive government surveillance is okay, because they only rarely abuse it. The problem is the power imbalance itself, the abuse is just a feature of that.
"Well, what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." - Obi-wan Kenobi
They're all partly true, and partly incorrect, as each only tells part of a larger story.
-The USA cited British impressment of sailors, interference in trade, and other such provocations by Britain, as part of its declaration of war. To a degree, this is true from the American viewpoint at the time (the British didn't see it that way of course), as many Americans felt that way.
-One of the other goals stated by pro-war American politicians at the time was the annexation of Canada (they thought the Canadians would, to borrow a more recent phrase, "greet them as liberators"). During the course of the war, the USA tried to invade Canada on several occasions, only to meet with failure. Thus, it's certainly reasonable for Canadians to have seen things that way.
-The war took place during the final years of the Napoleonic Wars, in which Britain was the leader of the anti-Napoleon coalition (having been the only one to remain at war the entire time). Several of the major reasons cited for the war arose from British actions against France, such as blocking trade, impressment of sailors, and so forth, so it's certainly fair to view the war as part of the Napoleonic Wars. That said, the USA did not ally with France, nor was its conclusion tied to that of the war against Napoleon, and the USA and France did not assist or cooperate with each other in any military ventures during the conflict.
The fact that it's on the steaming turd that is Origin is yet another reason for me to avoid buying or playing this game.
It's hard to blame SpaceX for lobbying on that, as ULA was lobbying to keep them out of the process. Unfortunately, if you want to play the game in DC, at least at any significant level, you need to be involved in lobbying, even if only to counter the people who are lobbying against you.
The current US ICBM (Minuteman III) is an entirely different model of rocket. For one, it's a solid-fuel rocket, rather than liquid, so it's an entirely different beast.
They could have, but their bid would have been in no way competitive with SpaceX since the Delta 4 is a lot more expensive, and doesn't make economic sense to use on a small launch.
Another interesting point is that ULA has the full production rights, schematics, etc for the RD-180 engine, as that was part of the original deal. However, it would cost a lot of money to set up production, and on top of that, their production costs would be more expensive than just buying the engines from the Russians. Thus, ULA doesn't want to do that if they can avoid it, and would rather try to convince Congress to let them resume buying from Russia, at least until the newer engines they've made deals with Blue Origin to build are available.
I'm sure a lot of schoolkids would be rooting for Microsoft if that's their game plan. They could even get Alice Cooper to provide the theme music.
I concur, and I run adblockers primarily for this reason. At present, malicious ads/malicious content delivered through ad networks is probably the most likely thing to infect the average user, and there's no more effective defense than simply blocking the content.
Why block it? Why block random content from unknown third parties, coming across content networks that have proven, time and again, that they don't give a rat's ass about vetting the people they're selling ad space to, let alone the content that those people are sending - and we're not even getting into all the constant invasive tracking attempts that come with that.
I don't mind reasonable ads, especially native ones that belong to the page I'm actually visiting. I mind the fact that there's been no real consequences for the rampant bad or negligent behavior on the part of the ad networks - so, like all content that I view as inherently suspicious/possibly malicious, I'm going to block it by default. The fact that there's no real value to me in it just makes it easier to not worry about that.
Apparently the ones they named "Pinky" and "Brain" seem to be up to something at night, but the researchers can never figure out quite what....
Or one might conclude that his specificity of the Playstation 4 means that he's been paid off by whomever would benefit from a massive drop in sales/use of said PS4, or any negative publicity.
Now who might that be? I have no idea...
On some level, basic income is an attempt to maintain the current market driven setup of the economy beyond the point where general human labor has any appreciable value. Right now, your income (ability to consume) is dependent on the value of the work you do (or the property/etc you own, if you are so privileged). As that breaks down, so do the markets that your demand drives. Could Walmart/etc survive losing 20% of its current customers? At best, it would be a massive economic contraction, of that sort that risks feeding on itself (businesses fail/stores close due to lack of demand, meaning more people out of work, meaning less people buying, meaning more businesses fail, etc). And that's ignoring the fact that starving people don't tend to go quietly.
The question isn't what we do when we get to the Star Trek post scarcity economy. The question is more what we do in the between period, because what we're approaching now isn't post scarcity, but rather, an economy where the marginal value of low skill human labor is so low that it's practically worthless for most purposes, and certainly is far below what it would take to maintain a single person at poverty level subsistence.
What we'll need to do is move to a guaranteed basic income. If robots do most of the industrial labor, then we tax that productivity instead of human wages. Give money to people who will spend it on food/clothing/etc, thus maintaining a demand for the goods the robots make (since in a market, you need both supply and demand, otherwise things start going bad quickly on a macro level). Eliminate the minimum wage, since everyone earns enough to live on, and let market forces freely set the value of human labor. $2 an hour is pocket change, but that's really all I'd need it for at that point. You wouldn't need welfare or such, since the minimum income covers it - and it's fair, because everyone gets it. If you make more money, you just add it on top of that - so instead of making $100k, you might earn $80k salary, but get your $20k basic too.
I could've demonstrated that with 30 minutes on XBox Live voice chat in any FPS.
Oh, they do care what it says - they just don't let it stop them. They don't ask "Am I allowed to do what I want to do?", they ask "How can I do what I want to do despite what this says?"
They've let the ends justify the means. They've convinced themselves that this is right, that it's justifiable, and that it's absolutely necessary, otherwise the Terrorists/Drug Kingpins/Pedophiles/etc win. It's not just about warrants and espionage either. It's about things like due process, torture, and any number of related things.
It depends where you live. 60k is great money if you're in someplace where the cost of living is low, but if you're in someplace like Silicon Valley? Yeah, good luck with that.
This. The problem isn't so much with a big company (like Google or Apple) hiring specific talent using an H-1B visa. It's with body-shop type contracting firms that employ almost 100% H-1B holders (except for maybe certain management roles), and then contract out to cover jobs/duties/tasks that otherwise would be done by U.S. workers. Get rid of those (Infosys, etc) and you'll go a long way to fixing the worst of the abuses.
Because legal ramifications stopped Edward Snowden, right?
Nevermind the fact that in today's world, everyone everywhere is constantly looking at things for bugs, vulnerabilities, exploits, and once you're discovered, the game is up. You either have to patch the backdoor, rendering it useless, or anyone will be able to use it. You can't make it "just for us 'good' guys." (And of course, that's leaving aside the fact that it's highly problematic to be granting unchecked spying powers to domestic agencies, hence the scare quotes in 'good' guys)
It may not be the same book, but the one I remember was by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn, called Fallen Angels. It was written in 1991, and envisions a world where actual science has been cast aside by the mainstream in favor of dogmatic viewpoints, leading to an oncoming ice age after environmentalist movements become all powerful after making common cause with major religious elements, rejecting technology and cutting greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of faith rather than because of scientific evidence.
It was an interesting take, to be certain, and a warning against taking something on faith, and worse, making it an essential element of faith, rather than with a scientific approach. It also very heavily mocks some of the new-age BS that can be found in fringe elements. I'd say it's still worth reading, but that you need to keep it in context of the time it was written, and compare what it speculated to the way our version of the future has been turning out. Science Fiction doesn't have to be right in order to be thought provoking. I may not agree with Niven et al's political views, but they're still thoughtful and insightful writers.
Now, to be fair there was a certain bit of fear-mongering going on, but they did have a good point, at the time the novel was written. The problem was that they failed to see which side of the debate was more prone to falling into dogmatic thinking. I'm sure there are people out there on the political left for whom it is a matter of faith, because they effectively worship the earth/nature/etc to the point of refusing to make any tradeoffs - you know, the sort that protest against wind farms because they might kill birds, or might ruin the view of the ocean, etc. The thing is, those people aren't the ones in power, aren't steering the conversation, and most of us rightly think they're idiots. Right now the problem is more with the people who've made burning noxious shit for energy into an article of faith, and the ones who are making so much money off of it that they don't care what kind of damage it might be doing, and want to shut down ANY discussion of even possibly taking timid steps, to the point that even modest proposals to maybe slow down or regulate fossil fuel consumption are equated to communist tyranny outlawing every last hydrocarbon.