I want to answer you with some questions of my own.
I decide I want to be the biggest company going. Is it acceptable for me to kill the executives of the companies competing with me? Maybe a tactical nuke over their headquarters? I mean, it's just marketing outside the box. Making my product the best available by any means at my disposal. Or should I just go as far as I can while remaining legal? Moral? Ethical?
Can I cook the books? As long as I dont go Enron on it, it will make for great shareholder value.
On the transmission fluid: My opinion, depends. What benefit does this new type fluid give me? Is Honda excluding others from making aftermarket fluids? Or was it just the guy at that dealership hyperbolizing things? What about if Honda comes out with a car that has tire sizes that only Honda can provide? Motor oil? What if they make changes so that you or your local repair shop cant service your car? Does that make them evil?
What if they know about a deadly defect in the car, but decide that paying out for death benefits after lawsuits is cheaper than fixing the problem? Evil?
Tivo is in a bit of trouble. They can only record analog, and they have no "in" with the cable companies, who are moving to digital. So, you have to rent a set top box, or deal with the basic channels. Scientific Atlanta, the mfgr of set top boxes for many cable co's has 2 models of DVR ( dual tuner, replaces set top box, deals with analog and digital, some models can do HD ). As noted elsewhere, Tivo's deal with DirectTV seems likely to fade away. Microsoft has that new media center thingy they are starting to push.
They are no longer the only kid on the block, and some of the other players have some ability to lock Tivo out.
So, they can look for opportunities to stay in thier current "space" or they can look for greener pastures.
The SA box is the 8300. Apparently there are variants without the multi room feature you speak of, there are ( according to the sa8000 group on yahoo ) some out in customer hands now.
"since GM likes to make the same car under 3 different brand names, for some reason".
Cost. If they made three different cars, they would have to have three different design teams, three different tooling sets, three of many things. When they make it one car with different badging and trim, they only need one of many of these things, bringing the costs down. Why have three brands? So they can take the same basic car and market it three different ways.
RE: IBM. What actions would you have someone complain about? There is competition ( now ) in the space that IBM inhabits. There wasnt for a long time, earlier in its history, and they went thru an anti-trust suit, came out the other side, and, AFAICT, changed how they do business ( IIRC, it was a consent decree, and also IIRC, they have basically abided by it. )
RE: Microsoft. They have a defacto monopoly in desktop PC operating systems. Once you have a monopoly, the rules change. You are correct that there is no "eternal convict status" ( well, there shouldnt be, I woudl agree with you that if Microsoft changed tonight, and were the best corporate citizen ever, there would still be some who would complain... ( I would not be in that group ) ), but the monopoly hasnt gone away, so the rules they are supposed to abide by havent changed. ( Things like effectively forcing the OEMs to only sell Microsoft operating systems if they want the discount, forcing OEMs to not bundle in Netscape instead of IE. Things like pushing IE into the fundamentals of the operating system ( a security issue and a generally bad idea ) so that any attempts to unbundle IE would give them the ability to holler "we wont be able to innovate!". ). That monopoly status puts them in a different category. The things they have done *are* supposed to be forbidden to them, but it appears to be difficult to keep the legal case on course.
I dunno. I didnt start out not liking Microsoft. I started out a bit of a fan of theirs. Watching them act on the public stage for the last 14 years or so, I have changed my mind about them. When they clean up their act, I'll stop complaining about how they act.
That does not mean that Microsoft did not violate the law.
I think you know as well as I do that the fact that both parties decided to go down this route means that there is evidence that points to a violation of the law, and that proving that violation would be difficult.
If they did not violate the law, though, why is there a final judgement, and not a dismissal of the case? Why are there prohibitions on how Microsoft can act in the future?
As an aside, do you *really* believe that Microsoft has not broken any laws in it's behaviour? I'm just curious.
Further on the original topic, there was a finding of fact, IIRC, from judge Jackson, that Microsoft had a monopoly, and that indeed, they had illegally used said monopoly to reinforce that monopoly, and to gain footholds in other business areas.
He shot his mouth off in public, which made for a minor change in that another judge was appointed to review his work due to the assumption that he might have had a preexisting bias against Microsoft. Legally, I think that was prudent. The new judge did not reverse the finding, IIRC, but did not think judge Jackson's remedy was appropriate, and changed that part.
Those people's continued employement should strictly be a matter of the company producing a reasonable profit and doing well in the market. Not leverage for someone ( who already has a lot ) to get more.
No, they have no "right" to be employed. But extortion is not a right either.
And shouldnt the Danish people and goverment decide Danish policy? How is extortion to attempt to control a foreign nation's policy a good thing?
"you can do a loop with a microsleep in it to poll it if you really need that functionality"
Yup, you can. But I hate to see the CPU go to waste like that polling, when a mutex does not incur that overhead.
"If you have something that is locking a CriticalSection for long periods of time, then your problem is either doing something wierd (that long time of locking is going to be a serious bottleneck)"
Nope, not the problem. When I have my way about it, locks are lock, do the minimal needed, unlock. I had to rewrite some code once upon a time that a coworker of mine had written. Lock, wash up, drive to the 7/11, check the evening paper, paint the dog, etc, etc, then unlock. ( And I think therein lies the trouble, see, others were allowed to write MT code when were inexperienced ( why? dont ask me...:-), then I inherited their mess and had to make it right.
I have never been able to prove a problem with Critical Sections, but the code I have written with Mutexes pretty much always ( after some debugging, of course ) does what I expect. I keep inheriting Critical Section implementations, and having all the usual MT problems. Perhaps *that* is the problem.:-) But I keep on wondering if there is some edge condition that explains why Mutexes in kernel code are "more correct" ( for that edge condition ) than userland. Course, my last MT project was done with Critical Sections ( so as not to upset "those who are 'in'" ), and it seems to be working just fine, now that I think on it more. Yup, it is a bias.
Since Critial Sections are basically the same idea as mutexes, I dont seem much harm in leaving them out. Unless the reader of the article doesnt understand that they are implementing the same basic idea, in which case, should that reader be doing this work?
Oh, one other difference between Critical Sections and Mutexes ( win32, anyway... ). With a Mutex, you can specify a timeout ( wait n milliseconds for the lock, and return with an indicator "did I get the mutex or did I time out?" ). Critical Section have no such thing, you wait forever ( or you do the "try" variant, and implement your own "spin" for it ( bad idea? I think so ) ).
Anyone else out there either have a bad feeling ( or actual experience ) about Critical Sections ( vice Mutexes )? Every app I run into with Critical Sections leaves me wondering ( based on unprovable experience ) if there isnt a flaw in there somewhere. My understanding is that CS's are strict UserLand programming, no kernel code involved, so, how did they do that reliably?
The decision to be portable should be made up front, before any coding or designing is done, IMNSHO. Then you can see what things are common, at what level they are common, and design, code and purchase/license/use appropriately.
B: The Chinese are also pegging the yuan to the dollar, which is not helping the US dollar. It is keeping Chinese goods attractive to the US market. So, while they may be propping up the dollar, they are also hurting it.
*but I still think that in the case of us responding to a nuclear attack on our soil they wouldn't have much to say about it*
I believe that they would understand that we were angry/upset/in a retalitatory mood. I think that their own arsenal would give them plenty to say about it. In such a situation, I would think we would probably send in land/tactical air to inflict our revenge. With lots of reassurances to China that we would not go into their territory/airspace. ( I just reminded myself of that airspace disaster not that long ago... Where one of our recon airplanes and a Chinese interceptor had an all-to-close encounter... If they were willing to play chicken with one of our airplanes, how enthusiastic would they be about our missiles.. )
*If Mexico was taken over by an insane dictator that starved his own people and launched a pre-emptive strike against China I don't think we would stand by them when the missiles started flying*
I dont know that we would be enthused about missiles coming our direction, regardless of provocation/reason. Even if the tragectory indicated that the target was Mexico. Assuming you know the limits of your enemies equipment is a major no-no ( one example, according to the assessment pre Pearl Harbor, there was no way to make torpedoes run in such a way that they did not dive to about 75 feet below the surface. The Japanese figured out how to make it happen. Also, it was fairly well known that dive bombers could not really sink a battleship ( at the time, the main capital ship ), only rearrange the topsides. The Japanese adapted 16" battleship shells so that they could be dropped from horizontal bombers( about 10k feet up ) ( that is what sunk the Arizona, BTW ). Short story long, dont assume too much.. )
*But the one thing you can count on is the fact that he probably cares about what happens to him*
I agree, but he might well have a bunker proof against our attack. Or be in the air. Or on the way to some other place. I think there are many ways this could play out with him at least believing he was safe.
I am thinking perhaps it is time for us to agree to disagree ( that or just disagree.:-)
There was at least an order of magnitude more dollars in trade with England than with Germany. So, officially, we were neutral, but the support was not equal. Also, Germany was under a distance blockade ( illegal, by the terms of the Hague treaty of 1907 ) against Germany from the very start. That blockage effectively prevented American goods from being shipped to Germany. No outrage over this limitation was ever really heard.
As the other sibling ( at the time, anyway ) pointed out, the US cared a great deal about WWII before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. In addition to the already pointed out lend lease, we leased Britain 50 old destroyers in return for bases ( and having those bases be US meant that they could stop or reduce the garrisons thereon ). We patrolled the Atlantic out to the midpoint to aid England, and if memory serves we lost a destroyer and sunk one German submarine during that period. Technically, you are correct, we did not enter either of those wars on moral outrage. But we did involve ourselves beyond pure neutrality in both cases.
*Could people please read my entire comments before replying?*
I'll try, sorry I missed your previous, but there are limits to how far up the stack people will go.
*I was referring to the context of the United States responding to a nuclear attack against an American city. In that context (millions of Americans dead) I don't think China would have very much say in the matter at all.*
I think China would have a lot to say about it. The warheads would be coming towards them, and they would have nothing but our word ( I am assuming they will not trust that very far, as we would not from them in this circumstance ) that the warheads were aimed at them as a first strike to take them *and* North Korea out ( or, maybe not even North Korea, I would presume that they would have "shot their load" already. ) Would you trust them if the tables were turned? Apply above as needed.
*You don't know much about nuclear weapons do you? Our ICBMs/SLBMs can drop a warhead within a circle about 50 meters across at a range of 8,000 kilometers. Fallout is largely (but not completely) non-existent assuming an airburst strike*
Thanks for the disparagement. It helps me to realize you are the master.:-)
Why would you assume airburst? How much testing have we done with live ICBM launches? ( Yes, we have done live fire tests with cruise missiles. Will those be what we counter with? )
*I question if China would want to get involved in a US/NK war. This is not 1950. We are their biggest and most important trading customer...*
I dont believe that they feel such a great need to trade with us. I think the US is far more dependant on China in trade terms than the other way around. Also, would trade stop us from getting involved if one of our allies , close to our homeland ( say Canada, or Mexico ), were under threat of nuclear counterattack?
*All of this is a highly moot point because I am not advocating a war with North Korea. If you had read my previous comments you would know that I think engagement is the correct response and I consider them (in the grand scheme of things) less of a threat then other rouge states*
OK. I agree that engagement is the correct response, but I dont know that I agree that they are a lesser threat. It is my belief that the situation surrounding North Korea makes them a considerable threat.
*I was merely pointing out why I think them to be less of a threat -- mainly the fact that they are a nation-state and that deterrence and mutually assured destruction still apply*
I agree that the fact that they are a traditional nation-state removes much of the ability to disavow the actions of it's citizens in the way that Iraq, Iran, et al could claim. I believe that our ability to deter is there, but somewhat limited. They also have much much less to lose than we do, and a leader that does not seem to care what harm his actions bring to his own people.
I doubt seriously that China would stand still for the US sending even one missile toward Korea. The possiblity that it might be a first strike meant for China will be on the minds of the Chinese leadership ( and on minds of the leadership of Korea and the US ). Hundreds? No way. Not to mention that nuclear weapons are not super selective or precise ( I am thinking mostly of fallout here... ). No one in the area would stand for it.
Aint gonna happen.
It would have to be troups on the ground and tactical air power ( I.E. no flights of B-52, B1 or B2's ). And even that would have to be carefully done ( crossing ( IIRC ) 38th parallel was the reason for China coming in on the side of the North Koreans on the last go-round ). I am quite sure that China is not well pleased with North Korea just now, but just as the US would be displeased about an attack against any of the NATO countries, even those that opposed the war in Iraq, China will have a hard time sitting on the sidelines if we or South Korea sent troups in. Nor would they like troups stationed in North Korea afterwards, assuming the above could be managed in the first place.
Doubtfull.
And I believe that the leadership of all involved parties understand this well.
Slashdot Mirror
I quite agree with you on Microsoft. I was just responding strictly to the idea that marketing should know no bounds.
I want to answer you with some questions of my own.
I decide I want to be the biggest company going. Is it acceptable for me to kill the executives of the companies competing with me? Maybe a tactical nuke over their headquarters? I mean, it's just marketing outside the box. Making my product the best available by any means at my disposal. Or should I just go as far as I can while remaining legal? Moral? Ethical?
Can I cook the books? As long as I dont go Enron on it, it will make for great shareholder value.
On the transmission fluid: My opinion, depends. What benefit does this new type fluid give me? Is Honda excluding others from making aftermarket fluids? Or was it just the guy at that dealership hyperbolizing things? What about if Honda comes out with a car that has tire sizes that only Honda can provide? Motor oil? What if they make changes so that you or your local repair shop cant service your car? Does that make them evil?
What if they know about a deadly defect in the car, but decide that paying out for death benefits after lawsuits is cheaper than fixing the problem? Evil?
Half the leptons.
Same great taste!*
Light galaxies.
*The photons sorta shine out your fourth point of contact. Minimal interaction.
Set up a pristine machine*, run the test against that, see what the differences are?
Just a thought, perhaps a stupid one.
* Pristine meaning OS + your supposed patch level, assuming you can achieve that.
Obiquiet says "".
( He is living up to his name ).
( ( the above was intended as humour ) )
Another input for this might be
Used motor oil,
All the waste grease from fast food joints.
DirectTV announced that they plan on rolling their own DVR.
My uninformed opinion.
Tivo is in a bit of trouble. They can only record analog, and they have no "in" with the cable companies, who are moving to digital. So, you have to rent a set top box, or deal with the basic channels. Scientific Atlanta, the mfgr of set top boxes for many cable co's has 2 models of DVR ( dual tuner, replaces set top box, deals with analog and digital, some models can do HD ). As noted elsewhere, Tivo's deal with DirectTV seems likely to fade away. Microsoft has that new media center thingy they are starting to push.
They are no longer the only kid on the block, and some of the other players have some ability to lock Tivo out.
So, they can look for opportunities to stay in thier current "space" or they can look for greener pastures.
The SA box is the 8300. Apparently there are variants without the multi room feature you speak of, there are ( according to the sa8000 group on yahoo ) some out in customer hands now.
"since GM likes to make the same car under 3 different brand names, for some reason".
Cost. If they made three different cars, they would have to have three different design teams, three different tooling sets, three of many things. When they make it one car with different badging and trim, they only need one of many of these things, bringing the costs down. Why have three brands? So they can take the same basic car and market it three different ways.
Because they need a jumping off point for the counter-invasion.
My apologies, I thought you wer arguing something you werent.
RE: IBM. What actions would you have someone complain about? There is competition ( now ) in the space that IBM inhabits. There wasnt for a long time, earlier in its history, and they went thru an anti-trust suit, came out the other side, and, AFAICT, changed how they do business ( IIRC, it was a consent decree, and also IIRC, they have basically abided by it. )
RE: Microsoft. They have a defacto monopoly in desktop PC operating systems. Once you have a monopoly, the rules change. You are correct that there is no "eternal convict status" ( well, there shouldnt be, I woudl agree with you that if Microsoft changed tonight, and were the best corporate citizen ever, there would still be some who would complain... ( I would not be in that group ) ), but the monopoly hasnt gone away, so the rules they are supposed to abide by havent changed. ( Things like effectively forcing the OEMs to only sell Microsoft operating systems if they want the discount, forcing OEMs to not bundle in Netscape instead of IE. Things like pushing IE into the fundamentals of the operating system ( a security issue and a generally bad idea ) so that any attempts to unbundle IE would give them the ability to holler "we wont be able to innovate!". ). That monopoly status puts them in a different category. The things they have done *are* supposed to be forbidden to them, but it appears to be difficult to keep the legal case on course.
I dunno. I didnt start out not liking Microsoft. I started out a bit of a fan of theirs. Watching them act on the public stage for the last 14 years or so, I have changed my mind about them. When they clean up their act, I'll stop complaining about how they act.
The judgement is not an admission of guilt, no.
That does not mean that Microsoft did not violate the law.
I think you know as well as I do that the fact that both parties decided to go down this route means that there is evidence that points to a violation of the law, and that proving that violation would be difficult.
If they did not violate the law, though, why is there a final judgement, and not a dismissal of the case? Why are there prohibitions on how Microsoft can act in the future?
As an aside, do you *really* believe that Microsoft has not broken any laws in it's behaviour? I'm just curious.
Further on the original topic, there was a finding of fact, IIRC, from judge Jackson, that Microsoft had a monopoly, and that indeed, they had illegally used said monopoly to reinforce that monopoly, and to gain footholds in other business areas.
He shot his mouth off in public, which made for a minor change in that another judge was appointed to review his work due to the assumption that he might have had a preexisting bias against Microsoft. Legally, I think that was prudent. The new judge did not reverse the finding, IIRC, but did not think judge Jackson's remedy was appropriate, and changed that part.
Yes, they do. I call my books all the time. Gets expensive, but it lets tham know I still care, even though I have not read them in a long time.
I suspect it has something to do with the outster of those canopy group exe's. Yarro et al.
Those people's continued employement should strictly be a matter of the company producing a reasonable profit and doing well in the market. Not leverage for someone ( who already has a lot ) to get more.
No, they have no "right" to be employed. But extortion is not a right either.
And shouldnt the Danish people and goverment decide Danish policy? How is extortion to attempt to control a foreign nation's policy a good thing?
"you can do a loop with a microsleep in it to poll it if you really need that functionality"
:-), then I inherited their mess and had to make it right.
:-) But I keep on wondering if there is some edge condition that explains why Mutexes in kernel code are "more correct" ( for that edge condition ) than userland. Course, my last MT project was done with Critical Sections ( so as not to upset "those who are 'in'" ), and it seems to be working just fine, now that I think on it more. Yup, it is a bias.
Yup, you can. But I hate to see the CPU go to waste like that polling, when a mutex does not incur that overhead.
"If you have something that is locking a CriticalSection for long periods of time, then your problem is either doing something wierd (that long time of locking is going to be a serious bottleneck)"
Nope, not the problem. When I have my way about it, locks are lock, do the minimal needed, unlock. I had to rewrite some code once upon a time that a coworker of mine had written. Lock, wash up, drive to the 7/11, check the evening paper, paint the dog, etc, etc, then unlock. ( And I think therein lies the trouble, see, others were allowed to write MT code when were inexperienced ( why? dont ask me...
I have never been able to prove a problem with Critical Sections, but the code I have written with Mutexes pretty much always ( after some debugging, of course ) does what I expect. I keep inheriting Critical Section implementations, and having all the usual MT problems. Perhaps *that* is the problem.
Thanks!
Since Critial Sections are basically the same idea as mutexes, I dont seem much harm in leaving them out. Unless the reader of the article doesnt understand that they are implementing the same basic idea, in which case, should that reader be doing this work?
Oh, one other difference between Critical Sections and Mutexes ( win32, anyway... ). With a Mutex, you can specify a timeout ( wait n milliseconds for the lock, and return with an indicator "did I get the mutex or did I time out?" ). Critical Section have no such thing, you wait forever ( or you do the "try" variant, and implement your own "spin" for it ( bad idea? I think so ) ).
Anyone else out there either have a bad feeling ( or actual experience ) about Critical Sections ( vice Mutexes )? Every app I run into with Critical Sections leaves me wondering ( based on unprovable experience ) if there isnt a flaw in there somewhere. My understanding is that CS's are strict UserLand programming, no kernel code involved, so, how did they do that reliably?
The decision to be portable should be made up front, before any coding or designing is done, IMNSHO. Then you can see what things are common, at what level they are common, and design, code and purchase/license/use appropriately.
A: Love the sig.
B: The Chinese are also pegging the yuan to the dollar, which is not helping the US dollar. It is keeping Chinese goods attractive to the US market. So, while they may be propping up the dollar, they are also hurting it.
*but I still think that in the case of us responding to a nuclear attack on our soil they wouldn't have much to say about it*
:-)
I believe that they would understand that we were angry/upset/in a retalitatory mood. I think that their own arsenal would give them plenty to say about it. In such a situation, I would think we would probably send in land/tactical air to inflict our revenge. With lots of reassurances to China that we would not go into their territory/airspace. ( I just reminded myself of that airspace disaster not that long ago... Where one of our recon airplanes and a Chinese interceptor had an all-to-close encounter... If they were willing to play chicken with one of our airplanes, how enthusiastic would they be about our missiles.. )
*If Mexico was taken over by an insane dictator that starved his own people and launched a pre-emptive strike against China I don't think we would stand by them when the missiles started flying*
I dont know that we would be enthused about missiles coming our direction, regardless of provocation/reason. Even if the tragectory indicated that the target was Mexico. Assuming you know the limits of your enemies equipment is a major no-no ( one example, according to the assessment pre Pearl Harbor, there was no way to make torpedoes run in such a way that they did not dive to about 75 feet below the surface. The Japanese figured out how to make it happen. Also, it was fairly well known that dive bombers could not really sink a battleship ( at the time, the main capital ship ), only rearrange the topsides. The Japanese adapted 16" battleship shells so that they could be dropped from horizontal bombers( about 10k feet up ) ( that is what sunk the Arizona, BTW ). Short story long, dont assume too much.. )
*But the one thing you can count on is the fact that he probably cares about what happens to him*
I agree, but he might well have a bunker proof against our attack. Or be in the air. Or on the way to some other place. I think there are many ways this could play out with him at least believing he was safe.
I am thinking perhaps it is time for us to agree to disagree ( that or just disagree.
Thanks for an interesting discussion.
There was at least an order of magnitude more dollars in trade with England than with Germany. So, officially, we were neutral, but the support was not equal. Also, Germany was under a distance blockade ( illegal, by the terms of the Hague treaty of 1907 ) against Germany from the very start. That blockage effectively prevented American goods from being shipped to Germany. No outrage over this limitation was ever really heard.
As the other sibling ( at the time, anyway ) pointed out, the US cared a great deal about WWII before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. In addition to the already pointed out lend lease, we leased Britain 50 old destroyers in return for bases ( and having those bases be US meant that they could stop or reduce the garrisons thereon ). We patrolled the Atlantic out to the midpoint to aid England, and if memory serves we lost a destroyer and sunk one German submarine during that period.
Technically, you are correct, we did not enter either of those wars on moral outrage. But we did involve ourselves beyond pure neutrality in both cases.
*Could people please read my entire comments before replying?*
:-)
I'll try, sorry I missed your previous, but there are limits to how far up the stack people will go.
*I was referring to the context of the United States responding to a nuclear attack against an American city. In that context (millions of Americans dead) I don't think China would have very much say in the matter at all.*
I think China would have a lot to say about it. The warheads would be coming towards them, and they would have nothing but our word ( I am assuming they will not trust that very far, as we would not from them in this circumstance ) that the warheads were aimed at them as a first strike to take them *and* North Korea out ( or, maybe not even North Korea, I would presume that they would have "shot their load" already. ) Would you trust them if the tables were turned? Apply above as needed.
*You don't know much about nuclear weapons do you? Our ICBMs/SLBMs can drop a warhead within a circle about 50 meters across at a range of 8,000 kilometers. Fallout is largely (but not completely) non-existent assuming an airburst strike*
Thanks for the disparagement. It helps me to realize you are the master.
Why would you assume airburst?
How much testing have we done with live ICBM launches? ( Yes, we have done live fire tests with cruise missiles. Will those be what we counter with? )
*I question if China would want to get involved in a US/NK war. This is not 1950. We are their biggest and most important trading customer...*
I dont believe that they feel such a great need to trade with us. I think the US is far more dependant on China in trade terms than the other way around. Also, would trade stop us from getting involved if one of our allies , close to our homeland ( say Canada, or Mexico ), were under threat of nuclear counterattack?
*All of this is a highly moot point because I am not advocating a war with North Korea. If you had read my previous comments you would know that I think engagement is the correct response and I consider them (in the grand scheme of things) less of a threat then other rouge states*
OK. I agree that engagement is the correct response, but I dont know that I agree that they are a lesser threat. It is my belief that the situation surrounding North Korea makes them a considerable threat.
*I was merely pointing out why I think them to be less of a threat -- mainly the fact that they are a nation-state and that deterrence and mutually assured destruction still apply*
I agree that the fact that they are a traditional nation-state removes much of the ability to disavow the actions of it's citizens in the way that Iraq, Iran, et al could claim. I believe that our ability to deter is there, but somewhat limited. They also have much much less to lose than we do, and a leader that does not seem to care what harm his actions bring to his own people.
I doubt seriously that China would stand still for the US sending even one missile toward Korea. The possiblity that it might be a first strike meant for China will be on the minds of the Chinese leadership ( and on minds of the leadership of Korea and the US ). Hundreds? No way. Not to mention that nuclear weapons are not super selective or precise ( I am thinking mostly of fallout here... ). No one in the area would stand for it.
Aint gonna happen.
It would have to be troups on the ground and tactical air power ( I.E. no flights of B-52, B1 or B2's ). And even that would have to be carefully done ( crossing ( IIRC ) 38th parallel was the reason for China coming in on the side of the North Koreans on the last go-round ). I am quite sure that China is not well pleased with North Korea just now, but just as the US would be displeased about an attack against any of the NATO countries, even those that opposed the war in Iraq, China will have a hard time sitting on the sidelines if we or South Korea sent troups in. Nor would they like troups stationed in North Korea afterwards, assuming the above could be managed in the first place.
Doubtfull.
And I believe that the leadership of all involved parties understand this well.