We already have the Wilhelm scream that has appeared in countless movies as a kind of insider joke/cameo (including all Star Wars movies to date), so why not have the "Fyodor Code" as well?
Yes, it does, and the FBI couldn't spend a little time letting a computer index the 650k emails and any attachments first because...?
Exactly how they did it isn't the point, or precisely how long it takes for that matter. The point is that it's entirely possible to automate full text search on this scale and whittle down the numbers from 650k to something much more manageable for any human processing *within* the timescale the FBI had to do it, even if you really are just using grep and some scripts. That it apparently turned out that no human processing was necessary because all the emails had been seen before (which, as an aside, probably implies checksums and/or bulk comparison of Message-IDs was involved) is just a bonus. Which all brings us back to the same conclusion that Trump's campaign and those claiming the fix is in are either ignorant on such matters, or know that it os possible but were assuming (correctly it seems) that enough Trump voters were so clueless that they'd buy it and drown out those that didn't
Damn right. Snowden has already addressed the de-dupe question so, just for grins, I had a play with my Gmail box to look into the pattern matching. It's got over 400,000 email threads in it containing several million individual emails (I've had it since 2004 when it was still in early beta), yet Google was able to return all the emails that contained either of the search terms "Hillary" and/or "Clinton" in a couple of seconds. That included emails that contained "Hillary" or "Clinton" in the body or in the usual header fields that matter, so even allowing for the FBI trying a few more search terms, it's all entirely within the grounds of possibility that the FBI are correct in their latest assertion that there's nothing new.
What it does tell us though is a lot about the competence and IT literacy of those who are claiming it can't be done and therefore it must all be a cover-up, and given Trump's about face on the praise he was heaping on the FBI when they first broke the news of the find tells us a lot about how capricious he can be as well.
Or maybe, given that these emails belonged to a third party, they filtered out the ones sent to/from Hillary and looked at those first, and maybe even whittled it down further and restricted it to the time she was Sec State - you know, like it says in TFS: "During that process, we have reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of State". Figure a typically large circle of contacts for someone at that level, and you'd only probably need to take a look at a tiny fraction of the total number of emails, and that would still include all the mundane crap people tend to send over email to arrange meetings, exchange jokes/pleasantries, and so on.
LetEncrypt is still free, if their system will work for you, and Symantec is in the process of setting up something that seems similar over at FreeSSL. Otherwise, you can get cheap certs from Comodo and GoDaddy (yeah, their rep isn't great either, but it's just a binary file when you get right down to it) - ideally via one of their resellers who will offer lower prices, and the prices go up from there. Another approach is to shop around for a suitable VPS or other hosting bundle that includes a certificate in the price, which can often work out quite cost effective. Finally, if you fit the criteria, there are some commercial vendors that offer free certificates to non-profits - e.g. GlobalSign's offer of a free certificate for OSS projects.
Following numerous severe breaches of CA protocol by WoSign (StartCom's parent company) and by StartCom under their ownership, Mozilla, Google and Apple have all decided to revoke the trust in both the CAs - MS has yet to commit, but is very likely to follow suit. The only saving grace is that they are doing so in such a way as to not disrupt existing certificates, but if you get a new StartCom certificate now, it's not going to work in any of the major browsers in a few months time.
I agree; the "Hard" vs "Soft" exit thing is a complete sham as it's pretty clear that the choice is going to come down to "Hard" or "None", albeit by default. The EU (as a whole, apart from the UK) has made it abundantly clear that free travel is non-negotiable if the UK wants access to the EEA, and several countries within the EU - notably the V4 group - have stated they will veto any agreement that does not include this. Since all nations must agree on any deal, without exception, the only possible deal that will get that unanamous vote is not to exit - or something so soft that it's as good as - and without that agreement it's a default to a hard exit.
And therein lies the rub. 48% wanted to stay in the EU, 52% to leave, but that 52% is further divided between those that genuinely want a hard exit, and those that want some form of soft exit - whether to fix a single issue (immigration, EU regulation, EU funding, just sticking it to "elites", or whatever), or some combination of issues. Whether their understanding of the way the EU actually operates or not is correct being mostly immaterial to that, since it was pretty clear during the campaign that there were plenty of voters that were not prepared to listen to any facts that might contradict their opinion. So, once the final deal is reached, regardless of what it is, the majority of the public are almost certainly not going to be happy with the outcome; it'll either only satisfy the leave voters that still want a hard exit (non zero, but certainly much less than 52%), or it'll only satisfy those that still favour Remain - bearing in mind that the UK will have had two years of economic fallout (good and/or bad) by this point. There is one possible wildcard result though; if by some miracle the UK does get some form of Soft Exit then it'll only satisfy those that got all of their particular itch(es) scratched in the Leave camp, but will also appeal to those who are content with the trade-offs in the Remain camp, which might actually be a majority.
Assuming this doesn't get overturned on appeal (currently due next month) and it does go to a vote in parliament, then it's actually *much* more complex than that. There were clearly numerous demographics at play in the referendum which was based on a simple majority of the public vote, rather than the constituency based approach of a vote for a member of parliament, one of which was regional demographics. If this goes to a commons vote, then the regional demographics will come in to play; MPs have a legal obligation to vote in the best interests of their constituents, so that could be interpreted to mean that an MP for a constituency that voted one way or the other should vote the same way, or it could be interpreted to mean what the MP believes to be in their best interests - e.g. a position similar to that of Marge in the Simpsons episode where everyone else wanted the Monorail. (As an aside, the referendum results were not tallied by MP constituency but by a smaller number of "counting areas", but the result was 270 areas for Leave and 129 for Remain)
Equally, some MPs will likely see that reasoning as counter to the national good and/or a betrayal of the popular vote depending on their personal beliefs on the referendum choice and legal/democratic process, and may opt to vote contrary to that - in either direction. All that is also assuming that there will even be a totally free vote; it's entirely possible that some parties (the Conservatives especially) might enforce a whip to try to compel their MPs to vote in a given direction, in which case some will possibly choose to ignore it and vote as they wish, even though that may have an expectation that they then resign depending on their position in the party and number of lines on the whip.
Frankly, I'd rather bet on the US election result than on the outcome of that.
Months? Try *years*. Ignoring the frivolous crap like fridges and kettles, the IoT has basically grown out of the previous generation of SCADA and Industrial Control & Automation (ICA) hardware, plus IP enabled versions of things like access control, building management systems, CCTV and so on. In almost every single case, even where you'd assume that the vendor ought to know better, the rush to get a product to market has trumped any security considerations and quite often the design can be summed up as "take an existing analogue product, put an Ethernet enabled chip on the side of it, slap an Ethernet jack on the case, give it an SKU, and update the product brochure".
The really scary part is that that is still only scratching the surface of the problem. You also need to keep in mind that many of the original products that the IoT devices are based on are considered mature - they've been in development and on the market for well over a decade in many cases - yet researchers are still finding major security flaws in the underlying devices, e.g. the recent exploits of Siemens' SCADA systems. Factor in that in order to get the "big data" off these myriad devices and into "the cloud" to meet the necessary levels of buzzword compliance means that you are also negating any possibility of a physical air gap between the systems and the public Internet and it's been obvious for much longer than a few months that we've been heading for a major trainwreck (possibly quite literally since rail is also moving towards IoT systems).
For damages, sure, but maybe they wanted the genuine *Samsung* battery so they could burn their entire neighbourhood to the ground, but instead got a cheap knock-off and only their house got toasted and are suing for misrepresentation?
The Bergen Linux User group have actually done this for real (for all of 9 packets though), and it was also discussed here. Or course, that's now old hat as it doesn't implement QoS or IPv6oAC.
Demonstrably bullshit, and exactly the kind of falsehood that the Leave campaign was spouting during the UK's referendum - at least in the way that you are positing. Check out the latest news on the ongoing negotiations over the EU-Canada trade deal that is currently on the rocks because *three* regions of one EU member state (Belgium) are objecting to the deal. Everyone else - all the other 27 members of the EU and Canada want to go ahead, but can't because of those three provinces, and the terms of the deal (5MB PDF) are entirely public knowledge - unlike things like TPP and TTIP where the US is involved and insists on secrecy.
The real irony of the situation (and the reason for my caveat); the three regions that are blocking the deal are Wallonia, the French speaking region of Flanders... and Brussels itself (albeit as a province of Belgium rather than as the EU).
Yes, and trademarks are something else again, I understand the differences. The irony was in the abuse of the system over similar visual appearances after what Samsung claimed in court, whether it's done via patent or copyright is just a means to an end.
So, let me get this straight. When Apple sues Samsung over the "rounded corners" look and feel thing (stupid as that is/was) they were telling the courts it was all bogus; fair use, an abuse of the system, etc., etc. Now that they are abusing the system to suppress what is an obvious fair use parody - and as such should be protected anyway - of their phone's appearance, that's all fine and dandy? Maybe the Note 7 isn't the only thing at Samsung overheating at the moment...
That really depends on how he's gaining access to the Internet. It's entirely possible that he's using a different link than the one used by the embassy staff for official business - guest WiFi perhaps, or maybe even dedicated fibre, DSL or 3G/LTE - he's been there long enough to have had one installed by now. Or maybe he's just using the free WiFi of a coffee shop across the street. Chances are pretty good he'll be using a VPN and/or TOR on top of whatever he was using, so perhaps the alleged state actor in question has gone after his VPN or somehow disrupted his TOR traffic instead of cutting the underlying circuit outright.
Or maybe it's just that someone accidentally took a backhoe to a cable somewhere causing an outage and his paranoia has done the rest. Without details of what and how, it could be anything at all.
Even if that would work out, I'm pretty sure that most all of the citizens of North Korea that will have access to the web in order to register for Ashardia citizenship won't be the ones that might actually want to escape the country, what with all of them being in the ruling class and all...
True - hence the bit I put in brackets, but by initiating the recall and issuing the advice to power down Samsung mitigated much of that risk, barring a probably unlikely scenario of a faulty Note 7 catching fire when powered off, anyway.
While both vendors definitely have their fanbois, a more empirical stance would be to take a look at the level of impact vs. probability of it happening and assess accordingly. The Samsung Note 7 issue appears like it might be a major issue with a minor probability (so far, at least - based on the number of confirmed incidents vs. phones shipped), where as Apple's is a more moderate issue but with a higher probability - quite how high is hard to say as hard data is lacking, but when multiple repair shops are saying it's "quite common" it seems likely it's significant. Factor in Apple's problem covers a few year's worth of shipped products across multiple models whereas Samsung's only covers a relatively small number of pre-orders and other early adoptors for a single model, so yeah, I'd say Apple has the greater problem to solve.
You think it's bad now? Having been to Turkey in September, the situation on the ground is a definitely lot more divided than people in the West might grasp from the media reports; there's clearly a huge amount of resentment and suspicion bubbling away beneath the surface, and many Turks are clearly not happy about the supression of the media and widescale arrests if you get them to talk candidly. Likewise, the effect of every arrest, sacking or suspension ripples out across family, friends and acquaintances who have no idea why that person should have been singled out by the government (or, as is now starting to become the case, denounced). To take that analogy further there's also a huge propaganda drive in progress with Turkish flags and nationalist slogans on just about every place you could put some one - hanging from windows of home and offices, bridges, on taxis and buses... any of this starting to sound scarily familiar yet?
Meanwhile, the economy is on the verge of imploding because the big cash cow of tourism has all but collapsed. The area around the Blue Mosque and Haghia Sophia and the Topkapi in Istanbul were all but deserted in comparison with the norm and traders are getting truly desperate and are selling things at a fraction of what they normally go for just to pay the rent and put food on the table - or at least they are trying to, given that there are so few tourists to actually buy them. Wrecked lives, many social hubs like mosques, schools, media, and stores shutdown, an abundance of resentment, widespread distrust and fear, an oppresive government... Pretty much a perfect environment for any of the several militant Islamic and Kurdish groups present that might be looking to snag some new recruits. Yeah, this is going to end really well.
As for the EU though; forget it. Turkey's progress towards EU membership requirements before the coup attempt was glacial at best - plate tectonics might actually be a better analogy - and since then it's all but stopped; Ergodan is even toying with things like bringing back the death penalty which would kill and remaining chance of membership dead in its tracks. With everything else that's going on in the EU, especially the growing pushback against globalism and immigration (both internal to the EU and from outside), it would be insane for them to even consider Turkey's membership at this point, although the flipside of that course is that's more likely to result in much tighter links between Ankara and Moscow.
And... once you threaten to sue, lawyers tend to step in and insist that any and all correspondance relating to the matter be routed through them. Needless to say, this causes delays, even when it really shouldn't like in safety cases such as this. Besides, if it caught fire on Tuesday AM, Klering's priority would have been dealing with the fire then his bronchitis rather than informing Samsung, so figure late Tuesday or even Wednesday before that happened (at the earliest), then a little back and forth with front-line support before Samsung realised what they were dealing with, booted it up the ladder, and got legal involved... It's entirely reasonable that Samsung is still in the process of prepping a PR statement if they've only had a working day or two to process it, and all the while Klering is hyping it up with WKYT for his 15 minutes of fame.
That's the point though, isn't it? There *is* no clear cut "recipe" for what makes a winning book (SF or otherwise) in the eyes of the non-genre specific literary awards. The character of Miller ticks all the boxes listed by the OP (which *are* generally applicable to the winners), but the writing is definitely not up to the standard of some of those that do win the awards (and yes, I've read quite a few of them, including classics and more recent examples), on the flip side there are some winners where none of the antagonists or protagonists even come close to ticking those boxes, yet the writing and premise are definitely of an exceptional standard. When you get right down to it, what wins the awards is the aggregate personal opinions of the judges based on their moods and outlook while they were reading the particular book under review - give them the same book under different conditions and you'll likely get different winners.
Personally, I find well written Sci-Fi (or fantasy) to be just as good, if not better, than many other forms of fiction for addressing a given topic. The author has complete control over the setting and history necessary to create an ideal stage for the topic that is the real subject of the story, which is a degree of latitude that historic and contemporary fiction writers usually don't have. Case in point: look at how well many of Terry Pratchett's later works (someone else in the genre who got some serious literary nods!) subtly address and explore contemporary issues like politics, prejudice, religion, finance, terrorism, war, and so on, without any of the distractions that a more traditional setting might entail.
You're absolutely right on the ability to have and enjoy both pulp and heavier writing, and I use the same techniques myself. Sure, you can look down the awards lists and check out a few of the shortlisted titles that you think might be of interest based on the premise, and you'll likely find a few titles and authors you really like that way, but it's not really enough. The most fruitful way I've found for finding new authors (and musicians) I like is to look at the "people who bought this also bought..." recommendations for books and music I already own on places like Amazon, then reading the user reviews where those links take me.
Seriously, the big problem with SF seems to be that the protagonist isn't an alcoholic who has been suffering simultaneously from PTSD, fibromyalgia, some varied form of social / sexual or political repression and / or abuse while living in a run down apartment in a small American town.
You know, that sounds a lot like Miller from James S. A. Corey's Expanse series:
Alcoholic - check
PTSD - well, he's certainly traumatised and suffering from stress, especially in the latter books...
Fibromyalgia - check (born in low G, so can't readily visit relatively high-G worlds like Earth)
Some form of repression/abuse - check (divorced, belter, cop everyone at the precinct looks down on...)
Run down apartment - check
Small American town - well, it *is* Sci-Fi, so does a small asteroid town count?
Don't recall seeing any of the series on the Mann Booker lists though...
Yeah, I've got the obession with gold as a sound post-apocalypse move. It might do well when the financial markets are in turmoil, but that's only because investors tend to flee to the commodities market when that happens, yet the chance of an apocalypse that cripples the financial markets yet leaves the commodities intact is... well, zero. It seems far more likely that post apocalypse the things you are going to need to survive and eventually (not to mention hopefully) trade with are going to be far more fundamental; food, water, fuel, livestock, manual and basic mechanical tools (in all their forms) and other basic supplies. The slightly longer term view might be things like seed stocks, construction materials and other other things necessary for some form of civilization to try and get back on its feet, but gold... not for quite some time, I'd imagine.
Another way to look at it; when Europeans were heading west across and establishing settlements across what would later become the US and Canada, how long did it take before currency (or company scrip) really took over from bartering as the defacto means of trade? And that's in an environment where there was (mostly) a lot of co-operation going into pushing on towards the Pacific and building a viable colony in the wake of the wagon trains that would be needed to help support them once they settled. Assuming that is the kind of environment that you are going to find when you crawling out of your bunker dragging your pile of gold seems like it's ruling out a lot of more likely, more violent, and far more long-term scenarios than all the survivors giving each other a pat on the back and getting straight on with rebuilding civilization.
Yes, but that's covered by legislation and consumer rights bodies that are entirely separate from what the ASA deals with. Their remit is solely misleading and fraudulent advertising and it does not touch on the product itself; you could have a completely worthless product but provided your advert does not misrepresent it then there's not a lot that the ASA can do about the product *or* the advert.
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We already have the Wilhelm scream that has appeared in countless movies as a kind of insider joke/cameo (including all Star Wars movies to date), so why not have the "Fyodor Code" as well?
Yes, it does, and the FBI couldn't spend a little time letting a computer index the 650k emails and any attachments first because...?
Exactly how they did it isn't the point, or precisely how long it takes for that matter. The point is that it's entirely possible to automate full text search on this scale and whittle down the numbers from 650k to something much more manageable for any human processing *within* the timescale the FBI had to do it, even if you really are just using grep and some scripts. That it apparently turned out that no human processing was necessary because all the emails had been seen before (which, as an aside, probably implies checksums and/or bulk comparison of Message-IDs was involved) is just a bonus. Which all brings us back to the same conclusion that Trump's campaign and those claiming the fix is in are either ignorant on such matters, or know that it os possible but were assuming (correctly it seems) that enough Trump voters were so clueless that they'd buy it and drown out those that didn't
Damn right. Snowden has already addressed the de-dupe question so, just for grins, I had a play with my Gmail box to look into the pattern matching. It's got over 400,000 email threads in it containing several million individual emails (I've had it since 2004 when it was still in early beta), yet Google was able to return all the emails that contained either of the search terms "Hillary" and/or "Clinton" in a couple of seconds. That included emails that contained "Hillary" or "Clinton" in the body or in the usual header fields that matter, so even allowing for the FBI trying a few more search terms, it's all entirely within the grounds of possibility that the FBI are correct in their latest assertion that there's nothing new.
What it does tell us though is a lot about the competence and IT literacy of those who are claiming it can't be done and therefore it must all be a cover-up, and given Trump's about face on the praise he was heaping on the FBI when they first broke the news of the find tells us a lot about how capricious he can be as well.
Or maybe, given that these emails belonged to a third party, they filtered out the ones sent to/from Hillary and looked at those first, and maybe even whittled it down further and restricted it to the time she was Sec State - you know, like it says in TFS: "During that process, we have reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of State". Figure a typically large circle of contacts for someone at that level, and you'd only probably need to take a look at a tiny fraction of the total number of emails, and that would still include all the mundane crap people tend to send over email to arrange meetings, exchange jokes/pleasantries, and so on.
LetEncrypt is still free, if their system will work for you, and Symantec is in the process of setting up something that seems similar over at FreeSSL. Otherwise, you can get cheap certs from Comodo and GoDaddy (yeah, their rep isn't great either, but it's just a binary file when you get right down to it) - ideally via one of their resellers who will offer lower prices, and the prices go up from there. Another approach is to shop around for a suitable VPS or other hosting bundle that includes a certificate in the price, which can often work out quite cost effective. Finally, if you fit the criteria, there are some commercial vendors that offer free certificates to non-profits - e.g. GlobalSign's offer of a free certificate for OSS projects.
Following numerous severe breaches of CA protocol by WoSign (StartCom's parent company) and by StartCom under their ownership, Mozilla, Google and Apple have all decided to revoke the trust in both the CAs - MS has yet to commit, but is very likely to follow suit. The only saving grace is that they are doing so in such a way as to not disrupt existing certificates, but if you get a new StartCom certificate now, it's not going to work in any of the major browsers in a few months time.
I agree; the "Hard" vs "Soft" exit thing is a complete sham as it's pretty clear that the choice is going to come down to "Hard" or "None", albeit by default. The EU (as a whole, apart from the UK) has made it abundantly clear that free travel is non-negotiable if the UK wants access to the EEA, and several countries within the EU - notably the V4 group - have stated they will veto any agreement that does not include this. Since all nations must agree on any deal, without exception, the only possible deal that will get that unanamous vote is not to exit - or something so soft that it's as good as - and without that agreement it's a default to a hard exit.
And therein lies the rub. 48% wanted to stay in the EU, 52% to leave, but that 52% is further divided between those that genuinely want a hard exit, and those that want some form of soft exit - whether to fix a single issue (immigration, EU regulation, EU funding, just sticking it to "elites", or whatever), or some combination of issues. Whether their understanding of the way the EU actually operates or not is correct being mostly immaterial to that, since it was pretty clear during the campaign that there were plenty of voters that were not prepared to listen to any facts that might contradict their opinion. So, once the final deal is reached, regardless of what it is, the majority of the public are almost certainly not going to be happy with the outcome; it'll either only satisfy the leave voters that still want a hard exit (non zero, but certainly much less than 52%), or it'll only satisfy those that still favour Remain - bearing in mind that the UK will have had two years of economic fallout (good and/or bad) by this point. There is one possible wildcard result though; if by some miracle the UK does get some form of Soft Exit then it'll only satisfy those that got all of their particular itch(es) scratched in the Leave camp, but will also appeal to those who are content with the trade-offs in the Remain camp, which might actually be a majority.
Assuming this doesn't get overturned on appeal (currently due next month) and it does go to a vote in parliament, then it's actually *much* more complex than that. There were clearly numerous demographics at play in the referendum which was based on a simple majority of the public vote, rather than the constituency based approach of a vote for a member of parliament, one of which was regional demographics. If this goes to a commons vote, then the regional demographics will come in to play; MPs have a legal obligation to vote in the best interests of their constituents, so that could be interpreted to mean that an MP for a constituency that voted one way or the other should vote the same way, or it could be interpreted to mean what the MP believes to be in their best interests - e.g. a position similar to that of Marge in the Simpsons episode where everyone else wanted the Monorail. (As an aside, the referendum results were not tallied by MP constituency but by a smaller number of "counting areas", but the result was 270 areas for Leave and 129 for Remain)
Equally, some MPs will likely see that reasoning as counter to the national good and/or a betrayal of the popular vote depending on their personal beliefs on the referendum choice and legal/democratic process, and may opt to vote contrary to that - in either direction. All that is also assuming that there will even be a totally free vote; it's entirely possible that some parties (the Conservatives especially) might enforce a whip to try to compel their MPs to vote in a given direction, in which case some will possibly choose to ignore it and vote as they wish, even though that may have an expectation that they then resign depending on their position in the party and number of lines on the whip.
Frankly, I'd rather bet on the US election result than on the outcome of that.
Months? Try *years*. Ignoring the frivolous crap like fridges and kettles, the IoT has basically grown out of the previous generation of SCADA and Industrial Control & Automation (ICA) hardware, plus IP enabled versions of things like access control, building management systems, CCTV and so on. In almost every single case, even where you'd assume that the vendor ought to know better, the rush to get a product to market has trumped any security considerations and quite often the design can be summed up as "take an existing analogue product, put an Ethernet enabled chip on the side of it, slap an Ethernet jack on the case, give it an SKU, and update the product brochure".
The really scary part is that that is still only scratching the surface of the problem. You also need to keep in mind that many of the original products that the IoT devices are based on are considered mature - they've been in development and on the market for well over a decade in many cases - yet researchers are still finding major security flaws in the underlying devices, e.g. the recent exploits of Siemens' SCADA systems. Factor in that in order to get the "big data" off these myriad devices and into "the cloud" to meet the necessary levels of buzzword compliance means that you are also negating any possibility of a physical air gap between the systems and the public Internet and it's been obvious for much longer than a few months that we've been heading for a major trainwreck (possibly quite literally since rail is also moving towards IoT systems).
For damages, sure, but maybe they wanted the genuine *Samsung* battery so they could burn their entire neighbourhood to the ground, but instead got a cheap knock-off and only their house got toasted and are suing for misrepresentation?
Could be worse, at least they didn't get the oblig. bobcat...
The Bergen Linux User group have actually done this for real (for all of 9 packets though), and it was also discussed here. Or course, that's now old hat as it doesn't implement QoS or IPv6oAC.
Demonstrably bullshit, and exactly the kind of falsehood that the Leave campaign was spouting during the UK's referendum - at least in the way that you are positing. Check out the latest news on the ongoing negotiations over the EU-Canada trade deal that is currently on the rocks because *three* regions of one EU member state (Belgium) are objecting to the deal. Everyone else - all the other 27 members of the EU and Canada want to go ahead, but can't because of those three provinces, and the terms of the deal (5MB PDF) are entirely public knowledge - unlike things like TPP and TTIP where the US is involved and insists on secrecy.
The real irony of the situation (and the reason for my caveat); the three regions that are blocking the deal are Wallonia, the French speaking region of Flanders... and Brussels itself (albeit as a province of Belgium rather than as the EU).
Yes, and trademarks are something else again, I understand the differences. The irony was in the abuse of the system over similar visual appearances after what Samsung claimed in court, whether it's done via patent or copyright is just a means to an end.
So, let me get this straight. When Apple sues Samsung over the "rounded corners" look and feel thing (stupid as that is/was) they were telling the courts it was all bogus; fair use, an abuse of the system, etc., etc. Now that they are abusing the system to suppress what is an obvious fair use parody - and as such should be protected anyway - of their phone's appearance, that's all fine and dandy? Maybe the Note 7 isn't the only thing at Samsung overheating at the moment...
That really depends on how he's gaining access to the Internet. It's entirely possible that he's using a different link than the one used by the embassy staff for official business - guest WiFi perhaps, or maybe even dedicated fibre, DSL or 3G/LTE - he's been there long enough to have had one installed by now. Or maybe he's just using the free WiFi of a coffee shop across the street. Chances are pretty good he'll be using a VPN and/or TOR on top of whatever he was using, so perhaps the alleged state actor in question has gone after his VPN or somehow disrupted his TOR traffic instead of cutting the underlying circuit outright.
Or maybe it's just that someone accidentally took a backhoe to a cable somewhere causing an outage and his paranoia has done the rest. Without details of what and how, it could be anything at all.
Even if that would work out, I'm pretty sure that most all of the citizens of North Korea that will have access to the web in order to register for Ashardia citizenship won't be the ones that might actually want to escape the country, what with all of them being in the ruling class and all...
True - hence the bit I put in brackets, but by initiating the recall and issuing the advice to power down Samsung mitigated much of that risk, barring a probably unlikely scenario of a faulty Note 7 catching fire when powered off, anyway.
Standard disclaimer applies: The value of your collectible may go down, as well as plummet.
While both vendors definitely have their fanbois, a more empirical stance would be to take a look at the level of impact vs. probability of it happening and assess accordingly. The Samsung Note 7 issue appears like it might be a major issue with a minor probability (so far, at least - based on the number of confirmed incidents vs. phones shipped), where as Apple's is a more moderate issue but with a higher probability - quite how high is hard to say as hard data is lacking, but when multiple repair shops are saying it's "quite common" it seems likely it's significant. Factor in Apple's problem covers a few year's worth of shipped products across multiple models whereas Samsung's only covers a relatively small number of pre-orders and other early adoptors for a single model, so yeah, I'd say Apple has the greater problem to solve.
You think it's bad now? Having been to Turkey in September, the situation on the ground is a definitely lot more divided than people in the West might grasp from the media reports; there's clearly a huge amount of resentment and suspicion bubbling away beneath the surface, and many Turks are clearly not happy about the supression of the media and widescale arrests if you get them to talk candidly. Likewise, the effect of every arrest, sacking or suspension ripples out across family, friends and acquaintances who have no idea why that person should have been singled out by the government (or, as is now starting to become the case, denounced). To take that analogy further there's also a huge propaganda drive in progress with Turkish flags and nationalist slogans on just about every place you could put some one - hanging from windows of home and offices, bridges, on taxis and buses... any of this starting to sound scarily familiar yet?
Meanwhile, the economy is on the verge of imploding because the big cash cow of tourism has all but collapsed. The area around the Blue Mosque and Haghia Sophia and the Topkapi in Istanbul were all but deserted in comparison with the norm and traders are getting truly desperate and are selling things at a fraction of what they normally go for just to pay the rent and put food on the table - or at least they are trying to, given that there are so few tourists to actually buy them. Wrecked lives, many social hubs like mosques, schools, media, and stores shutdown, an abundance of resentment, widespread distrust and fear, an oppresive government... Pretty much a perfect environment for any of the several militant Islamic and Kurdish groups present that might be looking to snag some new recruits. Yeah, this is going to end really well.
As for the EU though; forget it. Turkey's progress towards EU membership requirements before the coup attempt was glacial at best - plate tectonics might actually be a better analogy - and since then it's all but stopped; Ergodan is even toying with things like bringing back the death penalty which would kill and remaining chance of membership dead in its tracks. With everything else that's going on in the EU, especially the growing pushback against globalism and immigration (both internal to the EU and from outside), it would be insane for them to even consider Turkey's membership at this point, although the flipside of that course is that's more likely to result in much tighter links between Ankara and Moscow.
And... once you threaten to sue, lawyers tend to step in and insist that any and all correspondance relating to the matter be routed through them. Needless to say, this causes delays, even when it really shouldn't like in safety cases such as this. Besides, if it caught fire on Tuesday AM, Klering's priority would have been dealing with the fire then his bronchitis rather than informing Samsung, so figure late Tuesday or even Wednesday before that happened (at the earliest), then a little back and forth with front-line support before Samsung realised what they were dealing with, booted it up the ladder, and got legal involved... It's entirely reasonable that Samsung is still in the process of prepping a PR statement if they've only had a working day or two to process it, and all the while Klering is hyping it up with WKYT for his 15 minutes of fame.
That's the point though, isn't it? There *is* no clear cut "recipe" for what makes a winning book (SF or otherwise) in the eyes of the non-genre specific literary awards. The character of Miller ticks all the boxes listed by the OP (which *are* generally applicable to the winners), but the writing is definitely not up to the standard of some of those that do win the awards (and yes, I've read quite a few of them, including classics and more recent examples), on the flip side there are some winners where none of the antagonists or protagonists even come close to ticking those boxes, yet the writing and premise are definitely of an exceptional standard. When you get right down to it, what wins the awards is the aggregate personal opinions of the judges based on their moods and outlook while they were reading the particular book under review - give them the same book under different conditions and you'll likely get different winners.
Personally, I find well written Sci-Fi (or fantasy) to be just as good, if not better, than many other forms of fiction for addressing a given topic. The author has complete control over the setting and history necessary to create an ideal stage for the topic that is the real subject of the story, which is a degree of latitude that historic and contemporary fiction writers usually don't have. Case in point: look at how well many of Terry Pratchett's later works (someone else in the genre who got some serious literary nods!) subtly address and explore contemporary issues like politics, prejudice, religion, finance, terrorism, war, and so on, without any of the distractions that a more traditional setting might entail.
You're absolutely right on the ability to have and enjoy both pulp and heavier writing, and I use the same techniques myself. Sure, you can look down the awards lists and check out a few of the shortlisted titles that you think might be of interest based on the premise, and you'll likely find a few titles and authors you really like that way, but it's not really enough. The most fruitful way I've found for finding new authors (and musicians) I like is to look at the "people who bought this also bought..." recommendations for books and music I already own on places like Amazon, then reading the user reviews where those links take me.
You know, that sounds a lot like Miller from James S. A. Corey's Expanse series:
Alcoholic - check
PTSD - well, he's certainly traumatised and suffering from stress, especially in the latter books...
Fibromyalgia - check (born in low G, so can't readily visit relatively high-G worlds like Earth)
Some form of repression/abuse - check (divorced, belter, cop everyone at the precinct looks down on...)
Run down apartment - check
Small American town - well, it *is* Sci-Fi, so does a small asteroid town count?
Don't recall seeing any of the series on the Mann Booker lists though...
Yeah, I've got the obession with gold as a sound post-apocalypse move. It might do well when the financial markets are in turmoil, but that's only because investors tend to flee to the commodities market when that happens, yet the chance of an apocalypse that cripples the financial markets yet leaves the commodities intact is... well, zero. It seems far more likely that post apocalypse the things you are going to need to survive and eventually (not to mention hopefully) trade with are going to be far more fundamental; food, water, fuel, livestock, manual and basic mechanical tools (in all their forms) and other basic supplies. The slightly longer term view might be things like seed stocks, construction materials and other other things necessary for some form of civilization to try and get back on its feet, but gold... not for quite some time, I'd imagine.
Another way to look at it; when Europeans were heading west across and establishing settlements across what would later become the US and Canada, how long did it take before currency (or company scrip) really took over from bartering as the defacto means of trade? And that's in an environment where there was (mostly) a lot of co-operation going into pushing on towards the Pacific and building a viable colony in the wake of the wagon trains that would be needed to help support them once they settled. Assuming that is the kind of environment that you are going to find when you crawling out of your bunker dragging your pile of gold seems like it's ruling out a lot of more likely, more violent, and far more long-term scenarios than all the survivors giving each other a pat on the back and getting straight on with rebuilding civilization.
Yes, but that's covered by legislation and consumer rights bodies that are entirely separate from what the ASA deals with. Their remit is solely misleading and fraudulent advertising and it does not touch on the product itself; you could have a completely worthless product but provided your advert does not misrepresent it then there's not a lot that the ASA can do about the product *or* the advert.