We didn't drill our way to lower gas prices, though.
That's because markets tend to be far more complex creatures that react to a lot of things, many of which have nothing to do with what the USA is doing. Now, I'm not a commodities analyst, but I can think of a few things that had a far bigger impact on the oil market, such as:
-Saudi Arabia jacking up production in order to hurt its rival, Iran
-Massive increases in cheap natural gas production creating competition for oil in non-gasoline areas
-Iraqi oil production recovering (it's almost doubled between 2010 and 2015)
Etc, etc...
That's not to say that the President, and the U.S. executive branch by extension, doesn't have influence on energy policy. But they can't set the price of gas, because there's a lot more that impacts it in a worldwide market.
Europe has nothing on the USA when it comes to overreaction to terrorist attacks.
I remember having planned a trip to Europe, to a city where there was an attack a few days before I went. My friends and coworkers were freaking out, said I should cancel the trip. I went anyway, and had no problems. I even went right to the very site of the attacks, and saw the flowers/etc left in memorial. That and the reporter filming a piece were about the only indication that anything was amiss. Sure, I noticed some police patrolling around, but nothing that seemed unusual to an American. Some of them were armed, which again wasn't unusual to me as an American. But none of the spaces were closed off, tourists and locals were still flocking to large public spaces, drinking and eating at streetside cafes, et cetera.
I work at a place that also has unlimited leave. I'm not sure how your manager could use it to fire you, because they're required to approve the leave. If they try to tell HR that you're taking too much leave, the response will be "then why did you approve it?" They would have to claim you're not getting work done that you otherwise said you were, but that's something they could do with or without unlimited leave.
On the whole it's been great - no feeling pressured that you HAVE to take a certain amount at a given time, nor any worry that if you take vacation you won't have time if something comes up. It covers both vacation and sick leave, as well, so people who are ill stay home and don't get everyone else sick, but there's no feeling like you have to call in or "lose" your days. And this is where it works well for the companies, because they've found that the policy actually means people take less time overall, but can take it when they need to. (Of course, it may not factor in the tendency of Americans to overwork ourselves, but that's another matter)
Paranoia over voting machines and their susceptibility to hacking long predates this most recent election (not that you'd know it from the comments). That's probably why so many people jumped to that right away, too, because we've heard that story brought up in the past, in part because of things like the Diebold CEO's comments about electing Bush. Now, I haven't seen any real proof of any voting machine hacks in the USA, whether in 2016 or before, but just because nobody has exploited a piece of vulnerable kit doesn't mean they won't someday, and we're far better off finding those vulnerabilities and fixing them before it bites us in the ass.
Incidentally, this is one of the really cool things about DEFCON, and one of the reasons why I like to go. It really is a -hacking- conference, in the original sense of the word. There's all sorts of things you can get hands-on with, take apart, scan, mess with, etc. No releases, no NDAs, no "but don't really do anything that could break it." In the last two years I saw everything from cars to home appliances to ICS/SCADA systems and more. This is exactly the kind of thing that DEFCON is known for, and I look forward to messing with them myself (as well as watching what others do and find).
What's even more interesting is that from what I've seen, it's increasingly the companies and the government themselves bringing this stuff, because they're realizing the value of unleashing the curiousity and skill of the hacker mindset on some of these things, never-mind the PR value (Two years ago Tesla brought a Model S to the main ballroom, and let people hack away at it, while advertising their bug bounty program, for instance).
I'm all for requiring ID, if you make it free and easy to get.
But that's not really what this is about, and claims to the contrary ignore both the factual evidence, as well as the long history in the U.S. of politically motivated hurdles to voting. Only in the USA do we actively make it HARDER for people to cast a ballot.
This is why, in states where they've mandated voter ID, those same legislatures have also closed down DMV offices and cut hours, making it actively harder for people to get that ID. Oh, sure, they're not stopping you from voting, they're simply putting up another hurdle, knowing that some portion of the people it's targeted against will simply decide it's too much hassle.
Empirical evidence has also shown that it's a vanishingly small problem, on the order of magnitude where misprocessed ballots are likely to have more impact on an election. Also, the size and scope of a conspiracy required to mobilize a number of people large enough to have a significant impact, at the direct risk of felony conviction for something that is easily traced to them, is the stuff of ridiculous Hollywood movie plots at best.
On the other hand, there's real reason to be concerned about closed-source systems being used to tabulate votes, especially when in some cases there is no outside paper trail to confirm what the machine is saying. Why bother bribing people to come in person, when I can just have a hacker run a program that adds or alters the counts in the machine?
I think Sony's failure to understand or anticipate the digital music market may have had a lot to do with the fact that they owned a recording company. Worse, rather than use that to leverage themselves into dominance of the market by building a digital store with their entire catalogue, and offering to let others sell there for a reasonable cut (the way Apple operates), they clung to the outdated model. Why? Because it was the Recording division calling the shots, and the electronics division was busy trying to serve the demands of that division, including protected that outdated business model.
The worst part about that list is that many of the items on it were superior in many ways to their competitor, but due to Sony's greed failed to catch on.
Sony has come up with some great products, they just need to realize that nobody wants hardware that isn't compatible with anyone else's, and none of the competitors are willing to pay the kind of royalties Sony wants, even if the end product is better.
Beyond that though, Sony did at one point in the past stand for quality. There's a reason people wanted a real Walkman and not a rip-off. The Walkman was simply a better machine. Same with many of their products. Now though the quality of Sony stuff isn't "bad", but it's also no better than any of their competitors, but they often try to charge a premium for the brand. The brand just isn't worth a premium any more.
Yes, exactly. Sony kept trying to get a locked-in market, or to charge royalties for their competitors to use their format, and it failed far more often than not. The few successful cases were less closed than others, and tended to have more partners from day 1. Trying to establish a format lock in, or a closed ecosystem, just isn't going to work (the sole exception being consoles, which are all closed by design). I'd say the only exception to that sort of rule is Apple, and there's no way Sony could do what Apple does. Heck, I'm not sure post-Jobs Apple can even do what Apple used to do as far as new product lines.
Term limits don't solve the problem though. If anything, they empower the lobbyists, because lobbyists don't get term-limited, and they wind up knowing the issues far better than your 2-3 term congresscritter. Moreover, that congresscritter is probably going to be currying favor with lobbies, if only because they know that in 4-6 years it's time to look for a new job.
What you're missing is that long term incumbency isn't the problem itself, it's WHY there's so many long term incumbents. Someone who gets reelected 10 times because they do a great job representing the wishes of their constituents, are responsive to the needs of actual citizens and not moneyed special interests? Sure, we could use more of them - a lot more of them. What we don't need are the ones that can give the average citizens the finger, because their reelection is basically guaranteed via gerrymandering and big money donations. THAT is where the problem is.
And if you just term limit them, then I have some bad news, because there's a long line of asshats waiting to take the place of the gerrymander/money protected incumbent that will vote exactly the same way that the lobbyists/moneyed interests want them to.
I suppose it wouldn't do any good to point out that I said measures, now? If the Democrats tried pulling something like this - and I mean changing the FCC rules to allow someone to pull this sort of shit - I'd be pissed off at them too.
And if a Democratic candidate did it regardless of the rules? I'd expect them to get slapped and fined for it.
But let's be brutally honest, the two parties are NOT equally bad right now. That's not to give the Dems a pass, it's just that the Republicans have gone totally unhinged. Go look at what their agenda is, and tell me that they give two sh*ts about anyone but the tiny fraction of billionaire donors. They're not even pretending anymore. Go tell me that Ajit Pai really does mean to help us all by sticking a shiv in Net Neutrality and letting Comcast/Verizon/etc free to do whatever they want. Go tell me that the GOP majority really is going to act as a check on Trump's attempt at doing a speedrun of the Nixon presidency.
And I think it sucks, because we need two sane, reasonable, yet generally opposing parties to make our current system of government work. That's not the case though, at present, and I say that as someone who was once Republican.
I have to hand it to the Republicans - I thought they couldn't come up with any measures that would be any lower or more despised than they already have. I clearly underestimated them, because who would have thought they'd side with telemarketers, of all people?
Sony (Electronics) has had a long history of being innovative. The problem often has been that they've had a long history towards pushing proprietary formats and devices. Some of those have been successful, many have failed to catch on, and some were spectacular failures (Betamax).
Somewhat ironically, their Android phones are relatively open - the failing there is likely that the devices are bland compared to an iPhone, and sit somewhere between a pure Android (a la Nexus/Fi) and a fully vendor customized setup a la Samsung. They haven't managed to establish a market niche with them, let alone dominate.
As for consoles, I'm not holding my breath on expectations that the Scorpio will be as dominant as you think. 4k gaming takes serious horsepower, and it's not cheap, even today. Past history shows that 'best hardware' doesn't always win, because there's a lot of other factors involved (price being one of them). That's not to say that the PS4 is going to 'win', though it's currently outsold the Xbox1 by about a 2:1 ratio. I find it ironic though that you slam the PS4 over something that is EXACTLY true of the Xbox1 though - they're both (an) "underpowered PC with added DRM".
Now, what would make me look at Sony products again? It doesn't have to be a world-breaking innovation, but there are definitely a few things that they could do, just off the top of my head:
1) Improve quality back to premium level. Sony products today are pretty much the same mediocre quality as everyone else's, because they're largely made in the same Chinese/etc factories, and use the same Chinese/etc parts. I'd pay slightly more for better quality, but I have to know I'm going to get it.
2) Strive for openness. Sony has a bad history, but they can do a lot to get past that. You don't need to choke the market to be a leader, and the downside of a failed proprietary format is way worse than an open one. They need to do more things the way they handled the game-sharing aspects in the runup to PS4 vs Xbox1, where Microsoft started talking about restrictions on sharing games, reselling etc, and Sony came out and mocked them for it (brilliantly), causing Microsoft to have to ditch those plans.
3) Get rid of the film division. Following in part with 2, get rid of the film division so that you're not tied into the entertainment side of things, because the studios/etc are always pushing for anti-consumer things.
There's the LibDems, too. From what I understand, Corbyn and Labour are something of a dumpster fire right now. I don't know that the LibDems are any better, but they're around. My understanding of UK politics is limited too, but I also want to say that either Labour or the LibDems have a problem in that Scotland will mostly vote SNP, meaning it's that much harder to beat the Tories to a majority.
Point I wanted to make though is that there's other choices than the Tories or Labour.
The problem, both in your response and the article itself, is that neither focus on why a job is, or could be, stressful.
For instance, constantly living in fear that management is going to ax or outsource your department/your job could be pretty stressful for most people. Having a terrible boss is stressful regardless of where you work or what you do. Having coworkers that are annoying, bad, lazy, backstabbing, etc can be pretty stressful regardless of the physical conditions.
Were pay/benefits not an issue, I'd much prefer a job that involved lots of hard physical labor but had a team with strong camaraderie, a decent boss, and a sense of accomplishment/value at what I did, to one that lacked those things but was in an air conditioned office at a desk.
And yes, I've worked at jobs like that, as well as in IT. I've even worked in jobs where I was getting shot at as a part of job (military). Certainly that was stressful too, but that's hardly the only thing worth considering, and it sure doesn't mean that there aren't other situations that are also stressful to some degree.
If it's undetectable by advanced security measures in a developed country such as in Europe, is there any reason to think it would be detectable by screening in the USA?
It's one thing to suggest that we can't trust screening measures at airports in countries with lax security measures, who may miss (or be bribed to miss) things that screening in the USA would likely catch, but it's another for them to say that European airports are inherently less safe than those in the USA.
It's entirely believable that the country is impoverished, starving, short on energy and food, and at the same time is developing nukes, icbms, and has a cyber hacking unit. This is the sort of thing that's possible when you have a totalitarian dictatorship that decides the latter things are more important than the former. What do you expect the average North Korean to do about it? Protest or complain, so they can get themselves and three generations of their family thrown into a permanent prison camp? (Citation: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/no... )
The elites live well, mostly in the capital city of Pyongyang, but the rest of the country is in terrible shape, because the resources and money that might otherwise be used to help alleviate those terrible conditions instead goes to weapons, missiles, nukes, etc. This is why the only lights in North Korea at night are pretty much the ones in Pyongyang, as seen here: http://news.nationalgeographic...
The thing about software is that it's not static assuming you have the source code. You can tinker with it, add to or change it, and make it do different things. You can add features. You can drop some ransomware code on top of the existing delivery mechanism, and tell it to phone home to Pyongyang instead of the NSA or whereever.
And you don't need to look at who committed the changes in your repository to necessarily know who did it. Programming tends to have a characteristic style, much like handwriting, and few are entirely alike. Different programmers will write the same function a different way. Some of it might just be the variable names they choose, or it might be how they lay out the code. You may also see organizational techniques, such as if certain practices are mandated. There's lots of other ways, really. Go look at any project of suitably large size with multiple disparate coders contributing, and you'll see what I mean by comparing their code.
This isn't to say that TFA's conclusions are right, as I haven't looked at any of it, but it's entirely conceivable that someone in North Korea took the leaked NSA code and wrote new parts to change and reuse it.
If it's their official channel, which it often is these days, then they're getting paid. Maybe not 'enough', but they're getting paid. The few instances where I tend to see lots of alternate versions going up usually is because it's an artist that didn't bother - and even then, Youtube will crack down on that, either transferring the ad revenue or muting the video.
More than that though, Youtube and streaming services serve the same function that radio used to, in that it exposes users to new music/artists. I know I've found news bands through Youtube specifically that I'm now a fan of, buying albums/etc, that I never would have stumbled across were it not for those services. I've also used it in place of streaming music when I was working at places that wouldn't allow pandora/spotify/etc, but had Youtube allowed, specifically to listen to music.
Did it occur to you that maybe I'm not inclined to go talking about exact clearance levels and such on the open internet where gods only know who's reading?
I'll simply say that this wasn't some low level operational crap - I was an intelligence specialist, and did intelligence work in a building that even the rest of the intelligence folks at the site weren't allowed in without special escort.
Slashdot Mirror
We didn't drill our way to lower gas prices, though.
That's because markets tend to be far more complex creatures that react to a lot of things, many of which have nothing to do with what the USA is doing. Now, I'm not a commodities analyst, but I can think of a few things that had a far bigger impact on the oil market, such as:
-Saudi Arabia jacking up production in order to hurt its rival, Iran
-Massive increases in cheap natural gas production creating competition for oil in non-gasoline areas
-Iraqi oil production recovering (it's almost doubled between 2010 and 2015)
Etc, etc...
That's not to say that the President, and the U.S. executive branch by extension, doesn't have influence on energy policy. But they can't set the price of gas, because there's a lot more that impacts it in a worldwide market.
Don't worry, Trump plans to outdo that too - his tax plan alone will add something like 5.5 trillion to the debt.
Europe has nothing on the USA when it comes to overreaction to terrorist attacks.
I remember having planned a trip to Europe, to a city where there was an attack a few days before I went. My friends and coworkers were freaking out, said I should cancel the trip. I went anyway, and had no problems. I even went right to the very site of the attacks, and saw the flowers/etc left in memorial. That and the reporter filming a piece were about the only indication that anything was amiss. Sure, I noticed some police patrolling around, but nothing that seemed unusual to an American. Some of them were armed, which again wasn't unusual to me as an American. But none of the spaces were closed off, tourists and locals were still flocking to large public spaces, drinking and eating at streetside cafes, et cetera.
I work at a place that also has unlimited leave. I'm not sure how your manager could use it to fire you, because they're required to approve the leave. If they try to tell HR that you're taking too much leave, the response will be "then why did you approve it?" They would have to claim you're not getting work done that you otherwise said you were, but that's something they could do with or without unlimited leave.
On the whole it's been great - no feeling pressured that you HAVE to take a certain amount at a given time, nor any worry that if you take vacation you won't have time if something comes up. It covers both vacation and sick leave, as well, so people who are ill stay home and don't get everyone else sick, but there's no feeling like you have to call in or "lose" your days. And this is where it works well for the companies, because they've found that the policy actually means people take less time overall, but can take it when they need to. (Of course, it may not factor in the tendency of Americans to overwork ourselves, but that's another matter)
This is separate from his convictions. He's still going to prison, he just hasn't been sentenced yet. Think of it as the icing on the cake.
What could possibly go wro-
KILL ALL HUMANS
Paranoia over voting machines and their susceptibility to hacking long predates this most recent election (not that you'd know it from the comments). That's probably why so many people jumped to that right away, too, because we've heard that story brought up in the past, in part because of things like the Diebold CEO's comments about electing Bush. Now, I haven't seen any real proof of any voting machine hacks in the USA, whether in 2016 or before, but just because nobody has exploited a piece of vulnerable kit doesn't mean they won't someday, and we're far better off finding those vulnerabilities and fixing them before it bites us in the ass.
Incidentally, this is one of the really cool things about DEFCON, and one of the reasons why I like to go. It really is a -hacking- conference, in the original sense of the word. There's all sorts of things you can get hands-on with, take apart, scan, mess with, etc. No releases, no NDAs, no "but don't really do anything that could break it." In the last two years I saw everything from cars to home appliances to ICS/SCADA systems and more. This is exactly the kind of thing that DEFCON is known for, and I look forward to messing with them myself (as well as watching what others do and find).
What's even more interesting is that from what I've seen, it's increasingly the companies and the government themselves bringing this stuff, because they're realizing the value of unleashing the curiousity and skill of the hacker mindset on some of these things, never-mind the PR value (Two years ago Tesla brought a Model S to the main ballroom, and let people hack away at it, while advertising their bug bounty program, for instance).
I'm all for requiring ID, if you make it free and easy to get.
But that's not really what this is about, and claims to the contrary ignore both the factual evidence, as well as the long history in the U.S. of politically motivated hurdles to voting. Only in the USA do we actively make it HARDER for people to cast a ballot.
This is why, in states where they've mandated voter ID, those same legislatures have also closed down DMV offices and cut hours, making it actively harder for people to get that ID. Oh, sure, they're not stopping you from voting, they're simply putting up another hurdle, knowing that some portion of the people it's targeted against will simply decide it's too much hassle.
Empirical evidence has also shown that it's a vanishingly small problem, on the order of magnitude where misprocessed ballots are likely to have more impact on an election. Also, the size and scope of a conspiracy required to mobilize a number of people large enough to have a significant impact, at the direct risk of felony conviction for something that is easily traced to them, is the stuff of ridiculous Hollywood movie plots at best.
On the other hand, there's real reason to be concerned about closed-source systems being used to tabulate votes, especially when in some cases there is no outside paper trail to confirm what the machine is saying. Why bother bribing people to come in person, when I can just have a hacker run a program that adds or alters the counts in the machine?
Agreed - and thanks for putting up the full list.
I think Sony's failure to understand or anticipate the digital music market may have had a lot to do with the fact that they owned a recording company. Worse, rather than use that to leverage themselves into dominance of the market by building a digital store with their entire catalogue, and offering to let others sell there for a reasonable cut (the way Apple operates), they clung to the outdated model. Why? Because it was the Recording division calling the shots, and the electronics division was busy trying to serve the demands of that division, including protected that outdated business model.
The worst part about that list is that many of the items on it were superior in many ways to their competitor, but due to Sony's greed failed to catch on. Sony has come up with some great products, they just need to realize that nobody wants hardware that isn't compatible with anyone else's, and none of the competitors are willing to pay the kind of royalties Sony wants, even if the end product is better.
Beyond that though, Sony did at one point in the past stand for quality. There's a reason people wanted a real Walkman and not a rip-off. The Walkman was simply a better machine. Same with many of their products. Now though the quality of Sony stuff isn't "bad", but it's also no better than any of their competitors, but they often try to charge a premium for the brand. The brand just isn't worth a premium any more.
Yes, exactly. Sony kept trying to get a locked-in market, or to charge royalties for their competitors to use their format, and it failed far more often than not. The few successful cases were less closed than others, and tended to have more partners from day 1. Trying to establish a format lock in, or a closed ecosystem, just isn't going to work (the sole exception being consoles, which are all closed by design). I'd say the only exception to that sort of rule is Apple, and there's no way Sony could do what Apple does. Heck, I'm not sure post-Jobs Apple can even do what Apple used to do as far as new product lines.
Term limits don't solve the problem though. If anything, they empower the lobbyists, because lobbyists don't get term-limited, and they wind up knowing the issues far better than your 2-3 term congresscritter. Moreover, that congresscritter is probably going to be currying favor with lobbies, if only because they know that in 4-6 years it's time to look for a new job.
What you're missing is that long term incumbency isn't the problem itself, it's WHY there's so many long term incumbents. Someone who gets reelected 10 times because they do a great job representing the wishes of their constituents, are responsive to the needs of actual citizens and not moneyed special interests? Sure, we could use more of them - a lot more of them. What we don't need are the ones that can give the average citizens the finger, because their reelection is basically guaranteed via gerrymandering and big money donations. THAT is where the problem is.
And if you just term limit them, then I have some bad news, because there's a long line of asshats waiting to take the place of the gerrymander/money protected incumbent that will vote exactly the same way that the lobbyists/moneyed interests want them to.
I suppose it wouldn't do any good to point out that I said measures, now? If the Democrats tried pulling something like this - and I mean changing the FCC rules to allow someone to pull this sort of shit - I'd be pissed off at them too.
And if a Democratic candidate did it regardless of the rules? I'd expect them to get slapped and fined for it.
But let's be brutally honest, the two parties are NOT equally bad right now. That's not to give the Dems a pass, it's just that the Republicans have gone totally unhinged. Go look at what their agenda is, and tell me that they give two sh*ts about anyone but the tiny fraction of billionaire donors. They're not even pretending anymore. Go tell me that Ajit Pai really does mean to help us all by sticking a shiv in Net Neutrality and letting Comcast/Verizon/etc free to do whatever they want. Go tell me that the GOP majority really is going to act as a check on Trump's attempt at doing a speedrun of the Nixon presidency.
And I think it sucks, because we need two sane, reasonable, yet generally opposing parties to make our current system of government work. That's not the case though, at present, and I say that as someone who was once Republican.
I have to hand it to the Republicans - I thought they couldn't come up with any measures that would be any lower or more despised than they already have. I clearly underestimated them, because who would have thought they'd side with telemarketers, of all people?
Sony (Electronics) has had a long history of being innovative. The problem often has been that they've had a long history towards pushing proprietary formats and devices. Some of those have been successful, many have failed to catch on, and some were spectacular failures (Betamax).
Somewhat ironically, their Android phones are relatively open - the failing there is likely that the devices are bland compared to an iPhone, and sit somewhere between a pure Android (a la Nexus/Fi) and a fully vendor customized setup a la Samsung. They haven't managed to establish a market niche with them, let alone dominate.
As for consoles, I'm not holding my breath on expectations that the Scorpio will be as dominant as you think. 4k gaming takes serious horsepower, and it's not cheap, even today. Past history shows that 'best hardware' doesn't always win, because there's a lot of other factors involved (price being one of them). That's not to say that the PS4 is going to 'win', though it's currently outsold the Xbox1 by about a 2:1 ratio. I find it ironic though that you slam the PS4 over something that is EXACTLY true of the Xbox1 though - they're both (an) "underpowered PC with added DRM".
Now, what would make me look at Sony products again? It doesn't have to be a world-breaking innovation, but there are definitely a few things that they could do, just off the top of my head:
1) Improve quality back to premium level. Sony products today are pretty much the same mediocre quality as everyone else's, because they're largely made in the same Chinese/etc factories, and use the same Chinese/etc parts. I'd pay slightly more for better quality, but I have to know I'm going to get it.
2) Strive for openness. Sony has a bad history, but they can do a lot to get past that. You don't need to choke the market to be a leader, and the downside of a failed proprietary format is way worse than an open one. They need to do more things the way they handled the game-sharing aspects in the runup to PS4 vs Xbox1, where Microsoft started talking about restrictions on sharing games, reselling etc, and Sony came out and mocked them for it (brilliantly), causing Microsoft to have to ditch those plans.
3) Get rid of the film division. Following in part with 2, get rid of the film division so that you're not tied into the entertainment side of things, because the studios/etc are always pushing for anti-consumer things.
There's the LibDems, too. From what I understand, Corbyn and Labour are something of a dumpster fire right now. I don't know that the LibDems are any better, but they're around. My understanding of UK politics is limited too, but I also want to say that either Labour or the LibDems have a problem in that Scotland will mostly vote SNP, meaning it's that much harder to beat the Tories to a majority.
Point I wanted to make though is that there's other choices than the Tories or Labour.
The problem, both in your response and the article itself, is that neither focus on why a job is, or could be, stressful.
For instance, constantly living in fear that management is going to ax or outsource your department/your job could be pretty stressful for most people. Having a terrible boss is stressful regardless of where you work or what you do. Having coworkers that are annoying, bad, lazy, backstabbing, etc can be pretty stressful regardless of the physical conditions.
Were pay/benefits not an issue, I'd much prefer a job that involved lots of hard physical labor but had a team with strong camaraderie, a decent boss, and a sense of accomplishment/value at what I did, to one that lacked those things but was in an air conditioned office at a desk.
And yes, I've worked at jobs like that, as well as in IT. I've even worked in jobs where I was getting shot at as a part of job (military). Certainly that was stressful too, but that's hardly the only thing worth considering, and it sure doesn't mean that there aren't other situations that are also stressful to some degree.
If it's undetectable by advanced security measures in a developed country such as in Europe, is there any reason to think it would be detectable by screening in the USA?
It's one thing to suggest that we can't trust screening measures at airports in countries with lax security measures, who may miss (or be bribed to miss) things that screening in the USA would likely catch, but it's another for them to say that European airports are inherently less safe than those in the USA.
Which Doctor though? Did they say it mattered in terms of total age, or solely the age of that particular incarnation of the Doctor?
So you're saying copyright is a joke?
It's entirely believable that the country is impoverished, starving, short on energy and food, and at the same time is developing nukes, icbms, and has a cyber hacking unit. This is the sort of thing that's possible when you have a totalitarian dictatorship that decides the latter things are more important than the former. What do you expect the average North Korean to do about it? Protest or complain, so they can get themselves and three generations of their family thrown into a permanent prison camp?
(Citation: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/no... )
The elites live well, mostly in the capital city of Pyongyang, but the rest of the country is in terrible shape, because the resources and money that might otherwise be used to help alleviate those terrible conditions instead goes to weapons, missiles, nukes, etc. This is why the only lights in North Korea at night are pretty much the ones in Pyongyang, as seen here: http://news.nationalgeographic...
The thing about software is that it's not static assuming you have the source code. You can tinker with it, add to or change it, and make it do different things. You can add features. You can drop some ransomware code on top of the existing delivery mechanism, and tell it to phone home to Pyongyang instead of the NSA or whereever.
And you don't need to look at who committed the changes in your repository to necessarily know who did it. Programming tends to have a characteristic style, much like handwriting, and few are entirely alike. Different programmers will write the same function a different way. Some of it might just be the variable names they choose, or it might be how they lay out the code. You may also see organizational techniques, such as if certain practices are mandated. There's lots of other ways, really. Go look at any project of suitably large size with multiple disparate coders contributing, and you'll see what I mean by comparing their code.
This isn't to say that TFA's conclusions are right, as I haven't looked at any of it, but it's entirely conceivable that someone in North Korea took the leaked NSA code and wrote new parts to change and reuse it.
They probably also get an insurance break due to additional protection against Alien Hive Queens.
If it's their official channel, which it often is these days, then they're getting paid. Maybe not 'enough', but they're getting paid. The few instances where I tend to see lots of alternate versions going up usually is because it's an artist that didn't bother - and even then, Youtube will crack down on that, either transferring the ad revenue or muting the video.
More than that though, Youtube and streaming services serve the same function that radio used to, in that it exposes users to new music/artists. I know I've found news bands through Youtube specifically that I'm now a fan of, buying albums/etc, that I never would have stumbled across were it not for those services. I've also used it in place of streaming music when I was working at places that wouldn't allow pandora/spotify/etc, but had Youtube allowed, specifically to listen to music.
Did it occur to you that maybe I'm not inclined to go talking about exact clearance levels and such on the open internet where gods only know who's reading?
I'll simply say that this wasn't some low level operational crap - I was an intelligence specialist, and did intelligence work in a building that even the rest of the intelligence folks at the site weren't allowed in without special escort.