The problem is the sheer lack of information. We can kind of see an analogue in the way that many people in western countries, despite having access to many sources of news, tend to gravitate towards the ones that reinforce their points of view. Another problem is the paranoia. An uprising would have to be a popular one, but it's difficult to organise this when there are so many who'd faithfully report subversive activities to the authorities. The GDR was an example of people living in a state where their own relatives could be informers.
I'm torn on the food aid. Yes it arguably prolongs the regime, and I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said that the food aid, when distributed to the people, is described as a foreign tribute to the greatness of Kim Jong Il. Food aid keeps people alive, but it also aids Kim Jong Il by allowing him to direct more of his resources to keeping his regime going, and it gives him a PR boost.
Withholding food aid may provide an impetus for a popular uprising, but a lot of people would be dead from starvation before the army has had a chance to shoot them. The only hope would be that those who'd reinforce the regime would balk at defending it while their friends and families die of starvation. If the state though is smart, it's doing its best to take care of the families of "good citizens". As in any regime, those in favour would be the losers if the state collapsed. Not least of all, they'd risk being held accountable for their crimes against humanity, but certainly they'd lose their relatively cushy lifestyles (cushy by North Korean standards).
Overall I'm leaning towards the withholding of food aid. North Korea's record of backing out of its promises would suggest that conditional aid is pointless. China and South Korea have legitimate concerns with regards to what would happen if the regime fell apart, but realistically playing happy families with North Korea is just postponing the inevitable - and the fall will be far worse if it happens later rather sooner. It's a problem that primarily needs to be solved by northern-Asian nations. The west should assist, and be ready to support North Korea's neighbours in dealing with the fall-out of North Korea's collapse, but it'd be very risky for the west to wander in to China's back yard and try to fix things. Same with Iran. We'd need a pretty good reason to march in there, but we could facilitate a popular uprising.
Either hell works. Better that than an eternity spent in the company of crazed virgins, all dedicated to stroking the ego of the most powerful chap in the universe.
Yeah, and try using AppleScript to do in Excel 2008 what used to be done using VBA in 2004. Trying to decipher the scripting dictionary is like parsing scripture, and then quite a few things that, according to the dictionary, should work are well and truly broken. Combine that with the legendary stability of Excel 2008, it's patchy support for Mac OS conventions (such as command+a), its modal dialogues, and you have a recipe for a pretty shitty tuesday - at least until deciding to shift the work to another application. After that things became pretty nice.
I don't want a return to VBA support in Excel, but at least that was pretty well documented and generally functional.
Silly Christian propaganda! Islam provides a far more accurate view of the heavens than any man-made space doohickey . I bet Muhammed (Geese be upon him) got a pretty good look at space while he was traveling around on his flying mutant horsie, hobnobbing with all and sundry in heaven.
Hmm, come to think of it I think there may have been some man/horse love - at least if this excerpt is anything to go by:
"Hearing this he (the mutant horsie) was so ashamed that he sweated until he became soaked, and he stood still so that the Prophet mounted him."
Stickers make computers go faster. it's like painting stripes on the sides of cars. When peeled off the computer will slow down, but the nice sticky residue left behind on the palm rest will help prevent the user from falling off while browsing the web at high speeds.
If someone had died as a result of this decision, they would still be responsible for manslaughter.
And if the firefighters had sexually assaulted the man then they'd be responsible for sexual assault, but that did not happen, and in this case there were no people trapped in a burning house.
It is a silly situation that should have never come about. Hopefully it will provoke a debate about how these services should be paid for and provided.
Given the current set-up, it's like living in a Sweden and expecting the Danes to come around and slap a tarp on the roof when a storm blows it away.
Sad situation, but maybe they're just not set-up to accept that kind of payment.
It's kind of in a different league, but when going onsite to do warranty repairs you'd get people offering to pay for things not covered by the warranty, but there was no scope for accepting those payments.
The whole situation seems mad to me. I'm used to the way things work in most European countries, in which we kind of take for granted that services of this kind are going to be provided through our taxes.
I never understood how it actually worked, except as you suggested, the script kiddy crowd are heavily in to giving money to strangers in exchange for uber zomg epic sexual prowess.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I'm kind of reluctant to whip out my credit card to buy something from a company that employs mittens-wearing illiterates to write their adverts. Sure I'll eat at a Chinese restaurant with an amusingly translated menu, but that's a little different.
It's a holodeck that provides accurate recreations of early 21st century living rooms. Marvel at the crazy things people had back then, such as non-CFL light bulbs and indoor toilets.
Yeah, same here. Until a week ago I'd have said that I didn't get a rise, and in seven months I'll be able to say the same - but for now I'm not in that camp. Twelve months is definitely a sensible measure.
It's kind of difficult to come up with a one-size fits all approach. The consulate people he spoke to could have said no, and that could have been the end of this guy's foray in to international industrial espionage. They could have informed his company, who would then have taken disciplinary action against him. I've no idea what his mental state was, but his references to his wife and son certainly seem a bit strange - and it's certainly not normal for the average office guy to make these offers to foreign governments. Had he been working for something related to national security then I'd say that the FBI would be right to see if he was serious, and then throw the book at him when he produced the goods. As it stands, I honestly don't know if the FBI did the right thing here. A simple warning early on may have been enough of a wake-up call to allow this guy to lead a semblance of a normal life (presumably beginning with looking for a new job).
There are obviously limits to "enabling" a crime. If a guy was drinking in a bar and said that he was sick of his wife and wished she was dead, it would most likely be vindictive for an undercover officer to offer to sell him a gun, and then pick him up later when he returned to his home. In most cases the drunk would be spewing hyperbole, and it's unlikely that he'd actually want to see his wife dead.
It'd be different though if the guy in question was actively seeking a gun in order to commit murder. i.e. he specifically asked the undercover officer if he had a gun for sale, or he had placed an advert in the local paper looking for a hit-man. Particularly in the latter example, I'd be happy if law enforcement answered his advert and picked him up for questioning.
Australia - Consulate Boston Austria - Consulate Boston Canada - Consulate Boston Germany - Consulate Boston Hungary - Consulate Boston Israel - Consulate Boston Mexico - Consulate Boston Norway - Consulate Boston Portugal - Consulate Boston Sweden - Consulate Boston Venezuela - Consulate Boston
Israel would seem the more likely option, and certainly a country to engender the "homeland" feeling.
By that logic then the following would also be entrapment:
I threaten to beat-up a co-worker, so I arrive at their house the next day, and on seeing them standing outside of their house, begin whacking them with a plank of wood. The actual victim though was an undercover police officer taking the place of the intended victim, so really the crime could not have been committed had they not been there, but it'd be an incredible stretch to describe that as entrapment.
It's not entrapment for law enforcement agencies to take people up on their offers to break the law.
Somebody would likely end up in jail for something that blatant. The legal protection afforded by incorporating (as an LLC or something similar) doesn't allow its officers and staff to let the company take the fall when they're caught harvesting organs from the homeless.
Yeah, security software is comparable to condoms. It's protection, but it doesn't mean that one could routinely screw third world prostitutes and still enjoy a healthy life. In-built warnings about running stuff downloaded from random websites is good, but I think that the average consumer machine needs to move more towards a secured environment (code signing and such). It'll maybe protect the kinds of people who download binaries from any site that shows them a cartoon monkey. Tthis is a marketing problem. People are going to complain when they can't run a download some amazing and free crapware they found on some banner advertised website that has existed for less than 30 days.
A series of sandbox modes could help. Start of by gently blocking certain ports and services, but ending by showing nothing but a help page hosted by the ISP. I don't buy the slippery slope thing. With fair warnings a system like this could work, no least of all by letting users know that their personal data is at risk if they don't fix their machine.
Yeah, it is pretty bad. Still, this is the Daily Mail. Expecting quality English from them is like asking a lynch mob of confused and angry Mail readers to take off their shoes before storming a hospital to bring an end to their foul plot to use the MMR vaccine to bring about an Islamic caliphate in what used to be a very nice town in which children respected elders and England won the world cup every week.
I was worried when I realised that the local bus company had posted information telling us the routes and times of the bus services in the city. If it weren't for the drivers doing their best to randomise their arrival times, terrorists would use this information for nefarious purposes!
I saw a kind of foreign looking guy the other day. Close call that.
I'm surprised they didn't mention that pointing iPhones at passing planes could cause the occupants to contract cancer, or perhaps cause alter the brainwaves of immigrants that would make them more likely to leave. If we ever see 20 middle aged and bitter people point outside Heathrow waving their phones at the sky then we'll know that the Mail nicked my idea for a scare story.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is the sheer lack of information. We can kind of see an analogue in the way that many people in western countries, despite having access to many sources of news, tend to gravitate towards the ones that reinforce their points of view. Another problem is the paranoia. An uprising would have to be a popular one, but it's difficult to organise this when there are so many who'd faithfully report subversive activities to the authorities. The GDR was an example of people living in a state where their own relatives could be informers.
I'm torn on the food aid. Yes it arguably prolongs the regime, and I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said that the food aid, when distributed to the people, is described as a foreign tribute to the greatness of Kim Jong Il. Food aid keeps people alive, but it also aids Kim Jong Il by allowing him to direct more of his resources to keeping his regime going, and it gives him a PR boost.
Withholding food aid may provide an impetus for a popular uprising, but a lot of people would be dead from starvation before the army has had a chance to shoot them. The only hope would be that those who'd reinforce the regime would balk at defending it while their friends and families die of starvation. If the state though is smart, it's doing its best to take care of the families of "good citizens". As in any regime, those in favour would be the losers if the state collapsed. Not least of all, they'd risk being held accountable for their crimes against humanity, but certainly they'd lose their relatively cushy lifestyles (cushy by North Korean standards).
Overall I'm leaning towards the withholding of food aid. North Korea's record of backing out of its promises would suggest that conditional aid is pointless. China and South Korea have legitimate concerns with regards to what would happen if the regime fell apart, but realistically playing happy families with North Korea is just postponing the inevitable - and the fall will be far worse if it happens later rather sooner. It's a problem that primarily needs to be solved by northern-Asian nations. The west should assist, and be ready to support North Korea's neighbours in dealing with the fall-out of North Korea's collapse, but it'd be very risky for the west to wander in to China's back yard and try to fix things. Same with Iran. We'd need a pretty good reason to march in there, but we could facilitate a popular uprising.
I'm sure they only do it as a homage to the TV series The Prisoner.
You sir/madam, are a genius.
Either hell works. Better that than an eternity spent in the company of crazed virgins, all dedicated to stroking the ego of the most powerful chap in the universe.
Yeah, and try using AppleScript to do in Excel 2008 what used to be done using VBA in 2004. Trying to decipher the scripting dictionary is like parsing scripture, and then quite a few things that, according to the dictionary, should work are well and truly broken. Combine that with the legendary stability of Excel 2008, it's patchy support for Mac OS conventions (such as command+a), its modal dialogues, and you have a recipe for a pretty shitty tuesday - at least until deciding to shift the work to another application. After that things became pretty nice.
I don't want a return to VBA support in Excel, but at least that was pretty well documented and generally functional.
Silly Christian propaganda! Islam provides a far more accurate view of the heavens than any man-made space doohickey . I bet Muhammed (Geese be upon him) got a pretty good look at space while he was traveling around on his flying mutant horsie, hobnobbing with all and sundry in heaven.
Hmm, come to think of it I think there may have been some man/horse love - at least if this excerpt is anything to go by:
"Hearing this he (the mutant horsie) was so ashamed that he sweated until he became soaked, and he stood still so that the Prophet mounted him."
Stickers make computers go faster. it's like painting stripes on the sides of cars. When peeled off the computer will slow down, but the nice sticky residue left behind on the palm rest will help prevent the user from falling off while browsing the web at high speeds.
If someone had died as a result of this decision, they would still be responsible for manslaughter.
And if the firefighters had sexually assaulted the man then they'd be responsible for sexual assault, but that did not happen, and in this case there were no people trapped in a burning house.
It is a silly situation that should have never come about. Hopefully it will provoke a debate about how these services should be paid for and provided.
Given the current set-up, it's like living in a Sweden and expecting the Danes to come around and slap a tarp on the roof when a storm blows it away.
Sad situation, but maybe they're just not set-up to accept that kind of payment.
It's kind of in a different league, but when going onsite to do warranty repairs you'd get people offering to pay for things not covered by the warranty, but there was no scope for accepting those payments.
The whole situation seems mad to me. I'm used to the way things work in most European countries, in which we kind of take for granted that services of this kind are going to be provided through our taxes.
I never understood how it actually worked, except as you suggested, the script kiddy crowd are heavily in to giving money to strangers in exchange for uber zomg epic sexual prowess.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I'm kind of reluctant to whip out my credit card to buy something from a company that employs mittens-wearing illiterates to write their adverts. Sure I'll eat at a Chinese restaurant with an amusingly translated menu, but that's a little different.
It's a holodeck that provides accurate recreations of early 21st century living rooms. Marvel at the crazy things people had back then, such as non-CFL light bulbs and indoor toilets.
Yeah, same here. Until a week ago I'd have said that I didn't get a rise, and in seven months I'll be able to say the same - but for now I'm not in that camp. Twelve months is definitely a sensible measure.
By the way, a very thought provoking post you have there.
It's kind of difficult to come up with a one-size fits all approach. The consulate people he spoke to could have said no, and that could have been the end of this guy's foray in to international industrial espionage. They could have informed his company, who would then have taken disciplinary action against him. I've no idea what his mental state was, but his references to his wife and son certainly seem a bit strange - and it's certainly not normal for the average office guy to make these offers to foreign governments. Had he been working for something related to national security then I'd say that the FBI would be right to see if he was serious, and then throw the book at him when he produced the goods. As it stands, I honestly don't know if the FBI did the right thing here. A simple warning early on may have been enough of a wake-up call to allow this guy to lead a semblance of a normal life (presumably beginning with looking for a new job).
There are obviously limits to "enabling" a crime. If a guy was drinking in a bar and said that he was sick of his wife and wished she was dead, it would most likely be vindictive for an undercover officer to offer to sell him a gun, and then pick him up later when he returned to his home. In most cases the drunk would be spewing hyperbole, and it's unlikely that he'd actually want to see his wife dead.
It'd be different though if the guy in question was actively seeking a gun in order to commit murder. i.e. he specifically asked the undercover officer if he had a gun for sale, or he had placed an advert in the local paper looking for a hit-man. Particularly in the latter example, I'd be happy if law enforcement answered his advert and picked him up for questioning.
I wasn't aware of the transferred intent doctrine. Thanks for the tip.
It seems plausible.
http://www.searchboston.com/boston_directory/Gov/Foreign_Consulates_in_Boston/
Australia - Consulate Boston
Austria - Consulate Boston
Canada - Consulate Boston
Germany - Consulate Boston
Hungary - Consulate Boston
Israel - Consulate Boston
Mexico - Consulate Boston
Norway - Consulate Boston
Portugal - Consulate Boston
Sweden - Consulate Boston
Venezuela - Consulate Boston
Israel would seem the more likely option, and certainly a country to engender the "homeland" feeling.
By that logic then the following would also be entrapment:
I threaten to beat-up a co-worker, so I arrive at their house the next day, and on seeing them standing outside of their house, begin whacking them with a plank of wood. The actual victim though was an undercover police officer taking the place of the intended victim, so really the crime could not have been committed had they not been there, but it'd be an incredible stretch to describe that as entrapment.
It's not entrapment for law enforcement agencies to take people up on their offers to break the law.
Somebody would likely end up in jail for something that blatant. The legal protection afforded by incorporating (as an LLC or something similar) doesn't allow its officers and staff to let the company take the fall when they're caught harvesting organs from the homeless.
In the UK we prefer to elect these people to government so we can at least keep an eye on them.
Yeah, security software is comparable to condoms. It's protection, but it doesn't mean that one could routinely screw third world prostitutes and still enjoy a healthy life. In-built warnings about running stuff downloaded from random websites is good, but I think that the average consumer machine needs to move more towards a secured environment (code signing and such). It'll maybe protect the kinds of people who download binaries from any site that shows them a cartoon monkey. Tthis is a marketing problem. People are going to complain when they can't run a download some amazing and free crapware they found on some banner advertised website that has existed for less than 30 days.
A series of sandbox modes could help. Start of by gently blocking certain ports and services, but ending by showing nothing but a help page hosted by the ISP. I don't buy the slippery slope thing. With fair warnings a system like this could work, no least of all by letting users know that their personal data is at risk if they don't fix their machine.
Heh heh, you win one of those Internet things that the kids are all talking about.
Yeah, it is pretty bad. Still, this is the Daily Mail. Expecting quality English from them is like asking a lynch mob of confused and angry Mail readers to take off their shoes before storming a hospital to bring an end to their foul plot to use the MMR vaccine to bring about an Islamic caliphate in what used to be a very nice town in which children respected elders and England won the world cup every week.
I was worried when I realised that the local bus company had posted information telling us the routes and times of the bus services in the city. If it weren't for the drivers doing their best to randomise their arrival times, terrorists would use this information for nefarious purposes!
I saw a kind of foreign looking guy the other day. Close call that.
I'm surprised they didn't mention that pointing iPhones at passing planes could cause the occupants to contract cancer, or perhaps cause alter the brainwaves of immigrants that would make them more likely to leave. If we ever see 20 middle aged and bitter people point outside Heathrow waving their phones at the sky then we'll know that the Mail nicked my idea for a scare story.
He's referring to the IT policies of his company - not the licences.