I'm kind of wondering if the Saudis are attempting themselves to hurt Russia, or if they're playing-ball with the rest of the world in attempts to isolate Russia.
My pet theory is that the US government made a deal with them- The US will deal with ISIS so the Saudi's don't have to get their hands dirty. The US will make sure that Saudi Arabia doesn't get too many refugees dumped on their border- a phenomenon which is quite concerning given that Lebanon's population is now around 20-25% refugees. In return for this help, Saudi Arabia helps put the squeeze on Russia.
I'd feel a lot better about this case if the plaintiff (Klayman) weren't proceeding pro se and actually had a lawyer who knew how to argue a case instead of using his pleadings as a political soap box.
The American justice system has been co-opted by lawyers who've constructed a labyrinthine system of rules meant to enrich themselves by wresting control from the common man and forcing the use of their services. It shouldn't be necessary to avail oneself of legal aid to pursue civil torts. His choice to do this himself is in itself a protest of the horrible state of affairs in American courtrooms.
It shouldn't be necessary to hire a plumber to hook up a dishwasher, or hire an electrician to wire an extra circuit. I am a licensed professional engineer with a strong background in piping and electrical. I can do both tasks easilly, and understand the theory of each. When the building inspector comes around though, I would be biting my nails. Only someone who does a trade or profession for a living every day has a hope of knowing all the little rules, tricks, and pitfalls.
It's fine to have a law enthusiast represent themselves when it is their own skin on the line. Not so good when they will be arguing a case that may well be the legal precedent for the next 100 years. The only saving grace is that if he does get to the Supreme Court, the justices generally do a good job of making all the arguments themselves and just use the lawyers as their pawns to advance their preconceived talking points.
Your Linux gaming machine shouldn't be doing more than 3/4 cores of CPU and handing the heavy grunt work off to the GPU anyway. No need for a 64 core CPU for that one.
I think you are being a little shortsighted here. AI for NPC's could be incredible if each NPC had its own core. Real life people analyze every action you take, no matter how small or insignificant. Real life people discard or take notice of these actions, weigh (rank) the important actions, and then combine the most important actions in consideration of what you are thinking or what you might be likely to do. Real people analyze the actions of all the people around them, and take that into consideration when dealing with a person too. In a computer, each AI thread do all these things too, but nowadays we normally use tricks and hacks since computing power is in short supply for AI.
Doing this well takes a large amount of computing power, and there is no reason it can't be paralleled- real life people act in parallel and aren't all part of the same computing "thread". Simulating that doesn't have to be in the same computing thread either, but nowadays it often is because the vast majority of computers are limited to 2 to 8 cores.
South Korea’s military said North Korean firing was first heard Friday afternoon, directed at balloons carrying anti-North Korean regime propaganda launched by South Korean activists.
Activists frequently launch helium-filled balloons carrying thousands of leaflets with pro-democracy, anti-North Korea messages, as well as DVDs and other items. Many North Korean refugees say access to outside media motivated their escape from the country, but critics say the balloons contribute to inter-Korean frictions.
North Korea has repeatedly demanded that South Korea prevent the launches and threatened to fire at the balloons, but it had never previously done so.
"The leaflet-scattering operation, part of the psychological warfare targeting [North Korea], can never be overlooked as it is a deliberate and premeditated provocation," North Korea’s state media said Thursday.
South Korea sometimes intervenes to prevent launches when there are complaints from local residents worried about the North’s retaliation.
The North’s firing appeared to be aimed at balloons launched by a group headed by North Korean defector Lee Min-bok, who said no one in the group was hurt. Late Friday, Mr. Lee said he was looking for new locations to launch more balloons.
A lot of the balloons have religious messages attached. Most people launching balloons aren't doing it just because they think the citizens of the DPRK want these things. They are doing it because they are religious evangelist fanatics and it is part of their conversion strategy.
As an agnostic, I completely understand why the DPRK hates these balloons. It is the equivalent of Mormons dumping tracts (pamphlets) in your back yard. Not once, not a handful of times, but whenever the winds are favorable.
First of all, those older jets are upgraded while the F-35 is being delivered according to a contract. That's not government incompetence. That's contract law, and no respectable contractor is going to write an agreement where the specifications can change at the last minute. In all probability, the military has already accounted for this and has planned upgrades.
I doubt it. Airframes develop very slowly but electronics is quickly obsolete. The prudent thing to do in the spec would be to say "we will have a sensor pod X by Y by Z inches with attachment points T,U,and V. The sensor pod (yet to be developed) will require # amps of power at #volts using a HIJ connector, and please run a ABC connector to that area with specification EFG connecting to the main bus." They didn't do that. They settled on the sensor knowing it would be obsolete before the aircraft flew.
Mind you, I don't think this has anything to do with manuipulating stocks. I think it is far more likely that it was some person who didn't like Sony very much and the deflection onto the DPRK was just a red herring. But if shorting stock WAS the angle, the Russians have a lot of experience doing it.
The North Korean regime's survival depends on keeping its people completely uninformed. Here's an article about how even a little bit of information about the outside world can destroy the carefully constructed myths that sustain North Korean society: http://articles.latimes.com/20...
"About two years ago, a North Korean who worked in the state fisheries division was on a boat in the Yellow Sea when his transistor radio picked up a South Korean situation comedy. The radio program featured two young women who were fighting over a parking space in their apartment complex.
A parking space? The North Korean was astonished by the idea that there was a place with so many cars that there would be a shortage of places to park them. Although he was in his late 30s and a director of his division, he had never met anyone who owned their own car.
The North Korean never forgot that radio show and ended up defecting to South Korea last year."
The article is old, but I don't think things have changed much in North Korea.
They have. When I was there earlier this year, we got stuck in legitimate traffic jams a couple of different times. There are about 10 times as many cars on the road as there were just 5 years ago, according to the (Australian) tour guide. It is the single biggest and most visible sign of change he had seen.
And the whole time we are super worried about North Korea, and Russia....
No informed person is worried about the DPRK. As for ISIS- if they want to be a state, I say let them be one. The USA is great at breaking states. Its literally the only thing we can do correctly in international diplomacy. In about 3 months we changed the tone in Russia from "lol these sanctions are a joke" to "These Rubles are worthless so we're going to price everything in Euro with an exchange rate to rubles which changes hourly"
A few things are worth noting about the original case. Marriott agreed in a plea deal to have improperly used "containment features" of FCC-licensed equipment to block Wi-Fi hotspots, and this was performed in conference facilities, not the hotel.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/m...:
"Marriott Hotel Services, Inc., will pay
$600,000 to resolve a Federal Communications Commission investigation into whether Marriott intentionally
interfered with and disabled Wi-Fi networks established by consumers in the conference facilities of the
Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, in violation of Section 333 of the
Communications Act. The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s investigation revealed that Marriott employees had
used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland to prevent individuals from
connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, while at the same time charging consumers,
small businesses, and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network."
$1000 per device? Wow. I was at a recent trade show and they wanted $80 per device per day. Needless to say, everybody had their phone in hotspot mode and therefore the 2.4GHZ spectrum was useless for everybody.
I did a week tour in April 2014. You're not special, lots of westerners have taken tours since the government decided to open up a little bit and experiment with reforms. The strongest and most universal impression I got was that every foreign visitor saw basically the same things, and yet everyone came to completely different opinions about what was going on. It was a great learning experience for me to see how given the same information, different people will see different things depending on their own experiences and predispositions.
It seems you disagree with me that these folks are basically harmless and just want to enjoy life and watch their kids grow up. That's fine. The situation there is tense, but it has been more tense in the past. If something was going to happen it would have happened already. Saber rattling never leads to peace.
I didn't catch any stories like that. Why is China mad at them this time?
You've got it backwards. China has stated that they think the US Government's claim that NK was behind the Sony hack is bogus and lacking in facts. Since NK's internet routes through China, then the implied source (the US Government, probably the NSA) is going through Chinese servers to whack NK's internet, which will piss them off. Personally I doubt it's the US, I bet it's some hacker group like an Anonymous faction, but everyone will think it's the US.
China hates North Korea as much as everyone else. They support them because they're a convenient tool for Chinese diplomacy with the US; every so often the DPRK goes nuts and threatens to blow up South Korea, and the US gets all riled up because we've never officially stopped being at war with them (just a 60 year cease fire). Then China gets to step in and provide the peaceful solution and portrays Washington as a bunch of warmongering fools bullying smaller nations. This is just another iteration of the same tired old game going on the Northeast Pacific.
It kind of begs the question about what the US is still doing in South Korea anyhow. South Korea is a rich country. They can afford their own defense, but its convenient for them for Uncle Sam to pick up the tab. I have stood on the North side of the DMZ and it is clear that the US is just a thorn in the situation making everybody tense. There is no doubt that the South Koreans can adequately defend themselves against any potential "invasion" from the North. There is no reason for the US to be there. The constant presence of US marines on the DMZ make the North Koreans nervous that the South will invade them.
The DPRK certainly does overreact to different situations, but we need to take a little responsibility for not trying to de-escalate the general tone on the border. Up in the DPRK officer's lounge on the North side, there is a smoking lounge with leather couches for the guards to chill out, possibly smoke some weed (which is legal in the DPRK countryside), and look down on the DMZ. Most of the guards on the North side looked bored and didn't care particularly what you did. In contrast, the guards on the South side look like they will kill you for looking in the wrong direction.
Um, have you ever thought that maybe the reason there wasn't any response until June 2014 was because the movie wasn't hyped until then? Do you really think there is someone deep in the bowels of Pyongyang scraping TMZ looking for any hints of a movie that may not be portraying North Korea in a glowing fashion?
That's exactly my point. Why would North Korea hack Sony 6 months before they were aware of such a movie? Sony has pissed off a huge number of people, especially technically-minded people. The DPRK is just a convenient scapegoat.
The article you linked to doesn't have any references, and sounds like it is based on an extremely poor translation. Looking at the official DPRK news agency, they don't seem to mention it: http://www.kcna.kp/kcna.user.a...
What the do say is that if they were to retaliate it wouldn't be a terrorist attack on innocent movie-goers, it would be a military strike on the leadership. That seems to match what the badly translated CNN statement says, i.e. that they wouldn't attack some random corporation or civilians, they would attack the leadership who they hold responsible.
The entire narrative of the DPRK is based on this idea that the majority of Americans are innocent, if deluded, and should be freed from the control of their masters. Without going in to how close to the mark that might actually be, it's basically a reflection of the US narrative on regime change.
We are deluded. There isnt a shred of evidence tying the DPRK to this hacking and yet they get all the blame. The movie was filmed in Fall 2013, but there were no statements from the DPRK until June 2014. They really arent the kind of people to miss out on a threatening press release if given even the slightest opportunity. Their press bureau literally salivates a this kind of thing. They also rarely lie. Huge exaggerations? Sure. But not lies. So it seems reasonable they didnt hear about the movie until June when official announcements and trailers started coming out
Meanwhile, the hackers apparently got into Sony's systems over a year ago. They first asked for money, then only later started talking about The Interview and wanting it pulled. The broken english used in their communications is not consistent with a Korean speaker. DPRK citizens speaking english is pretty obvious- they only have a small number of schools which teach it, and without many native english speakers, the teachers are very consistent.
We need to back up a little and reask the question of who did it. The answer might be even more interesting that the line we are being fed.
We also lost CNN and the Turner stations in October/November due to a renewal disagreement.
This is far from limited to just Dish customers, as each major cable provider has to renegotiate regularly.
I've noticed a common theme, though... no matter who you talk to, it's the othergreedy bastard who's being unreasonable.
That just shows how nasty the negotiations are- each company is employing their PR department to push statements and try to influence the public as part of an overall negotiation strategy. Bringing in other people, especially one of a higher authority, into a negotiation is standard practice in negotiations (car sales manager is one good example). Trying to rope your customers into influencing a negotiation, however, is unusual and generally only happens when the negotiation is so nasty that you want people to see how nasty it is.
The bottom line is that families were split apart and have remained apart for 60 years directly because of squabbling between the US and the former Soviet Union.
Directly because? Certainly the USA and the Soviet Union encouraged the hostility but the Korean people aren't robots. The reason North and South Korea are apart and have such lousy relations is because of Koreans. Non Europeans are also responsible for their actions.
Come on man. The USA and USSR literally drew the DMZ line at the end of World War II. Koreans didn't have much to do with that. Instead of reintegrating Korea into 1 republic, the two countries set up their own preferred style of government in each part of Korea. Nobody can argue that for the first few years after World War II, that the governments were anything but a puppet government. The US set up a South Korean constitution modeled after the US constitution, and the USSR set up communisim in the North with a hand-selected autocrat as the leader.
Korea and Vietnam were cold war fights by proxy. Maybe they would have had a conflict without foreign powers interfering, but the resources that the USSR and USA poured into the fight ensured that it was a far bigger, nastier, and longer war than it would have been otherwise. If either of the superpowers had stayed out of it, one or the other side would have won the war reasonably quickly. Both countries were responsible in creating the stalemate and both are responsible for the poor decisions of the past.
Its also important to keep in mind that outsiders of all types have been fiddling around in Korea since the 1600s- first the Chinese, then an incident with the American-owned ship "General Sherman", then the Japanese, then the USSR and USA. The History of Korea is not a very uplifting read. Korea has been shit upon by every country in their neighborhood and most of the superpowers as well. Given that history, it shouldn't be surprising that they turned inward and cut ties with the West and South Korea, which is strongly aligned with the USA.
I just have to wonder if it's not just a PR stunt.
These kind of threats from hackers does indeed sound unbelievable. Hacking a pc and setting up a terrorist strike are quite different skill sets.
Am i the only one wondering if this is just a hoax from Sony/the authorities to make people change their stance on the hacks? In the beginning everybody was like "serves them right". Now everybody is like "Omg, poor Sony, i would watch the movie if i could".
These threats seem like the best thing that could happen to them after the hack. I'm kind of wondering if it isn't a bit too convenient.
I'm thinking they made a financial calculation. If the value of the materials which the hackers have, but have not yet released, exceeds the expected revenue of the movie, then it makes sense to trash the movie and just move on. I can easily imagine that such materials (especially if they implicate Sony in illegal or questionable activities) having a value of millions of dollars to be kept secret.
Plus, the Korea situation isn't that funny. The bottom line is that families were split apart and have remained apart for 60 years directly because of squabbling between the US and the former Soviet Union. That's not a joke, its just sad.
Outside of those conditions, hobbyists and commercial interests would be free to fly drones."
I hope he meant "inside" or possibly "under" those conditions. I'm normally not that hung up on grammar but this is the opposite of what was probably meant.
The headline is wrong. This is not at all a cargo ship. It's more like an free-floating platform on which a gas refinery has been built. It will stay in place during its entire lifetime.
It should not even be compared to ships.
It may be freed from having to think too much about propulsion, but it still has to float, weather storms, and keep the crew alive and comfortable with water treatment, sewage treatment, laundry, cooking, etc. Not to mention providing all the functions of a refinery on an island made out of steel. It's an FPSO but for LNG. That kind of vessel is considered a ship, and not an rig, for the purposes of most class societies such as Lloyds or the American Bureau of Shipping.
My alma mater has a few simulators, but the main training tool is a 450ft ship. When studying to be a ship engineer or a bridge officer, there is no substitute for the real thing, so we had the real thing. Each of the serious maritime universities in the USA (of which there are about 7) has a ship. Usually, the ships actually are owned by the government and can be called up by the government in times of need for disaster response or other reasons.
But how do smaller countries deal with this? Are there other region-wide registrations other than EU?)
Smaller countries often take different approaches. Small countries next door to a large country may adopt the larger country's standard; especially if they get most of their imports from or through that larger country. For example, Bermuda accepts either US or Canada approval, but you still need to register with Bermuda. Enforecement is typically weak in countries like that because the equipment is probably coming through the US or Canada anyhow.
Some countries are "anything goes" because it hasn't become a problem.
I have a Surface 2 that I tried using for a bit (got it from work) and it sucks, badly. The mouse design is horrible, you can barely see it. A coworker has been testing the 3 Pro for a while as a desktop replacement with the ability to quickly take the tablet/laptop thing and go on the road. He likes it, but he's got a full set up, docking station, etc.
I've had the Dell XPS 12 for almost two years and LOVE it for taking it to meetings and customers at work. Taking notes with OneNote is so easy and the touch screen make it really nice to use. I rarely if ever use the tablet feature. A nice thing about it vs. my iPad is that I can put it on my lap while on the couch at home and browse the web with touch with ONE HAND. iPad requires a stand or two hands and it's just uncomfortable for me.
A few months ago I got just an UltraBook with a 15 inch screen so I could program and work on servers better. It's a Dell Precision M3800 meant to compete with a MacBook but it was Windows 8.1 and touch. It's the best device I've ever had, hands down. Light, beautiful in design and screen, great mouse, touch works great. It's not trying to be a tablet/hybrid thing. It's just a great UltraBook. Don't get me wrong, I love my iDevices too (we have lots of them at home), but for work UltraBooks rock.
Hold on there. The Precision M3800 is a desktop replacement. It is not an ultrabook. It's built for power, not minimum weight or thickness.
Wow that is a ridiculous argument. Ships used wind energy because that was the easiest thing to use with the technology available 3000 years ago (or whenever the first guy to hang a sheet on a boat did so). Harvesting wave energy using ancient technology would have required ridiculous clockwork mechanisms, which would have been extremely expensive for the day, difficult to repair at sea, and probably not reliable either. A piece of cloth attached to 1 or more sticks is far superior in all these practical concerns, and is far more obvious and practical.
Well, my question would be what are they doing with all the phones they get? If they are being destroyed, it's exactly like flushing money down the toilet. If they are being resold (through a 3rd party obviously) then those phones are still on the market and working against the very marketshare they are trying to buy.
No - it's not even a question. Bury the lines and you will remove a large number of causes for power outages.
Quote correct. Thing is someone has to pay for the upfront cost of burying the cables and it is much more expensive. Where I live stringing wires on poles costs in rough numbers something like $1 per linear foot. Burying the cable costs about $8 per linear foot. (this is semi-reliable info from family who worked in the business and would know) Getting the funds to do any sort of meaningful program of burying wires would likely involve a rate increase which tends to be as popular as a lead filled life preserver.
In the long run buried lines will save money - even if you are in an area where the ground is filled with rocks.
That isn't so clear in a lot of places. Repairs on above ground wires are more common but cheaper when they occur. Roll a truck, look up and get busy. Repairs on buried cable is just the opposite. Even finding the problem is harder and many repairs involve a lot of digging. There are places near where I live (semi-rural 20 miles from a major metro area) where it might make economic sense to bury the cable but also quite a few where it most likely doesn't. You can do a LOT of repairs before you even break even on the buried cable despite its general higher reliability. Plus you are replacing infrastructure that already exists and lots of it so any sort of economically rational replacement program would take decades. Every place that truly needs reliable power has a backup generator anyway so it's not like you are gaining much in practical terms by burying the cables for quite a few customers.
Don't get me wrong, I think a lot more cables should be buried than currently are but it's not as simple an equation as buried = more reliable = cheaper.
All good points, and here is another small one-
The line carrying capacity of a cable on a pole is higher than the capacity of a cable in the ground (according to the codes). So if you decide to bury a power cable, often a larger cable is needed for the same capacity.
It would be a lot easier to build, test, and debug a control system if you started with 0 wind and slowly increased to a steady wind and then later begin testing in gusts or random winds, wouldn't it? PID control fine tuning goes a lot faster when you have full control over the inputs.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm kind of wondering if the Saudis are attempting themselves to hurt Russia, or if they're playing-ball with the rest of the world in attempts to isolate Russia.
My pet theory is that the US government made a deal with them- The US will deal with ISIS so the Saudi's don't have to get their hands dirty. The US will make sure that Saudi Arabia doesn't get too many refugees dumped on their border- a phenomenon which is quite concerning given that Lebanon's population is now around 20-25% refugees. In return for this help, Saudi Arabia helps put the squeeze on Russia.
I'd feel a lot better about this case if the plaintiff (Klayman) weren't proceeding pro se and actually had a lawyer who knew how to argue a case instead of using his pleadings as a political soap box.
The American justice system has been co-opted by lawyers who've constructed a labyrinthine system of rules meant to enrich themselves by wresting control from the common man and forcing the use of their services. It shouldn't be necessary to avail oneself of legal aid to pursue civil torts. His choice to do this himself is in itself a protest of the horrible state of affairs in American courtrooms.
It shouldn't be necessary to hire a plumber to hook up a dishwasher, or hire an electrician to wire an extra circuit. I am a licensed professional engineer with a strong background in piping and electrical. I can do both tasks easilly, and understand the theory of each. When the building inspector comes around though, I would be biting my nails. Only someone who does a trade or profession for a living every day has a hope of knowing all the little rules, tricks, and pitfalls.
It's fine to have a law enthusiast represent themselves when it is their own skin on the line. Not so good when they will be arguing a case that may well be the legal precedent for the next 100 years. The only saving grace is that if he does get to the Supreme Court, the justices generally do a good job of making all the arguments themselves and just use the lawyers as their pawns to advance their preconceived talking points.
Your Linux gaming machine shouldn't be doing more than 3/4 cores of CPU and handing the heavy grunt work off to the GPU anyway. No need for a 64 core CPU for that one.
I think you are being a little shortsighted here. AI for NPC's could be incredible if each NPC had its own core. Real life people analyze every action you take, no matter how small or insignificant. Real life people discard or take notice of these actions, weigh (rank) the important actions, and then combine the most important actions in consideration of what you are thinking or what you might be likely to do. Real people analyze the actions of all the people around them, and take that into consideration when dealing with a person too. In a computer, each AI thread do all these things too, but nowadays we normally use tricks and hacks since computing power is in short supply for AI.
Doing this well takes a large amount of computing power, and there is no reason it can't be paralleled- real life people act in parallel and aren't all part of the same computing "thread". Simulating that doesn't have to be in the same computing thread either, but nowadays it often is because the vast majority of computers are limited to 2 to 8 cores.
I'm more curious about how North Korean defectors are smuggling things into the country.
The same way they got out? A little help on the inside? Helium-filled balloons are all the rage:
South Korea’s military said North Korean firing was first heard Friday afternoon, directed at balloons carrying anti-North Korean regime propaganda launched by South Korean activists.
Activists frequently launch helium-filled balloons carrying thousands of leaflets with pro-democracy, anti-North Korea messages, as well as DVDs and other items. Many North Korean refugees say access to outside media motivated their escape from the country, but critics say the balloons contribute to inter-Korean frictions.
North Korea has repeatedly demanded that South Korea prevent the launches and threatened to fire at the balloons, but it had never previously done so.
"The leaflet-scattering operation, part of the psychological warfare targeting [North Korea], can never be overlooked as it is a deliberate and premeditated provocation," North Korea’s state media said Thursday.
South Korea sometimes intervenes to prevent launches when there are complaints from local residents worried about the North’s retaliation.
The North’s firing appeared to be aimed at balloons launched by a group headed by North Korean defector Lee Min-bok, who said no one in the group was hurt. Late Friday, Mr. Lee said he was looking for new locations to launch more balloons.
A lot of the balloons have religious messages attached. Most people launching balloons aren't doing it just because they think the citizens of the DPRK want these things. They are doing it because they are religious evangelist fanatics and it is part of their conversion strategy.
As an agnostic, I completely understand why the DPRK hates these balloons. It is the equivalent of Mormons dumping tracts (pamphlets) in your back yard. Not once, not a handful of times, but whenever the winds are favorable.
First of all, those older jets are upgraded while the F-35 is being delivered according to a contract. That's not government incompetence. That's contract law, and no respectable contractor is going to write an agreement where the specifications can change at the last minute. In all probability, the military has already accounted for this and has planned upgrades.
I doubt it. Airframes develop very slowly but electronics is quickly obsolete. The prudent thing to do in the spec would be to say "we will have a sensor pod X by Y by Z inches with attachment points T,U,and V. The sensor pod (yet to be developed) will require # amps of power at #volts using a HIJ connector, and please run a ABC connector to that area with specification EFG connecting to the main bus." They didn't do that. They settled on the sensor knowing it would be obsolete before the aircraft flew.
Just because it's "strictly business" doesn't mean that North Korea wasn't involved. They probably know how to short stocks too.
The broken english used in the threats is a match to a google translation from gramatically correct Russian. That doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. Since the Russians hacked the NASDAQ as recently as July 2014, maybe they had something to do with it. And Russians are known to enjoy manipulating stocks
Mind you, I don't think this has anything to do with manuipulating stocks. I think it is far more likely that it was some person who didn't like Sony very much and the deflection onto the DPRK was just a red herring. But if shorting stock WAS the angle, the Russians have a lot of experience doing it.
The North Korean regime's survival depends on keeping its people completely uninformed. Here's an article about how even a little bit of information about the outside world can destroy the carefully constructed myths that sustain North Korean society: http://articles.latimes.com/20...
"About two years ago, a North Korean who worked in the state fisheries division was on a boat in the Yellow Sea when his transistor radio picked up a South Korean situation comedy. The radio program featured two young women who were fighting over a parking space in their apartment complex. A parking space? The North Korean was astonished by the idea that there was a place with so many cars that there would be a shortage of places to park them. Although he was in his late 30s and a director of his division, he had never met anyone who owned their own car. The North Korean never forgot that radio show and ended up defecting to South Korea last year."
The article is old, but I don't think things have changed much in North Korea.
They have. When I was there earlier this year, we got stuck in legitimate traffic jams a couple of different times. There are about 10 times as many cars on the road as there were just 5 years ago, according to the (Australian) tour guide. It is the single biggest and most visible sign of change he had seen.
And the whole time we are super worried about North Korea, and Russia....
No informed person is worried about the DPRK. As for ISIS- if they want to be a state, I say let them be one. The USA is great at breaking states. Its literally the only thing we can do correctly in international diplomacy. In about 3 months we changed the tone in Russia from "lol these sanctions are a joke" to "These Rubles are worthless so we're going to price everything in Euro with an exchange rate to rubles which changes hourly"
A few things are worth noting about the original case. Marriott agreed in a plea deal to have improperly used "containment features" of FCC-licensed equipment to block Wi-Fi hotspots, and this was performed in conference facilities, not the hotel. https://www.fcc.gov/document/m...: "Marriott Hotel Services, Inc., will pay $600,000 to resolve a Federal Communications Commission investigation into whether Marriott intentionally interfered with and disabled Wi-Fi networks established by consumers in the conference facilities of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, in violation of Section 333 of the Communications Act. The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s investigation revealed that Marriott employees had used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland to prevent individuals from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, while at the same time charging consumers, small businesses, and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network."
$1000 per device? Wow. I was at a recent trade show and they wanted $80 per device per day. Needless to say, everybody had their phone in hotspot mode and therefore the 2.4GHZ spectrum was useless for everybody.
I did a week tour in April 2014. You're not special, lots of westerners have taken tours since the government decided to open up a little bit and experiment with reforms. The strongest and most universal impression I got was that every foreign visitor saw basically the same things, and yet everyone came to completely different opinions about what was going on. It was a great learning experience for me to see how given the same information, different people will see different things depending on their own experiences and predispositions.
It seems you disagree with me that these folks are basically harmless and just want to enjoy life and watch their kids grow up. That's fine. The situation there is tense, but it has been more tense in the past. If something was going to happen it would have happened already. Saber rattling never leads to peace.
I didn't catch any stories like that. Why is China mad at them this time?
You've got it backwards. China has stated that they think the US Government's claim that NK was behind the Sony hack is bogus and lacking in facts. Since NK's internet routes through China, then the implied source (the US Government, probably the NSA) is going through Chinese servers to whack NK's internet, which will piss them off. Personally I doubt it's the US, I bet it's some hacker group like an Anonymous faction, but everyone will think it's the US.
China hates North Korea as much as everyone else. They support them because they're a convenient tool for Chinese diplomacy with the US; every so often the DPRK goes nuts and threatens to blow up South Korea, and the US gets all riled up because we've never officially stopped being at war with them (just a 60 year cease fire). Then China gets to step in and provide the peaceful solution and portrays Washington as a bunch of warmongering fools bullying smaller nations. This is just another iteration of the same tired old game going on the Northeast Pacific.
It kind of begs the question about what the US is still doing in South Korea anyhow. South Korea is a rich country. They can afford their own defense, but its convenient for them for Uncle Sam to pick up the tab. I have stood on the North side of the DMZ and it is clear that the US is just a thorn in the situation making everybody tense. There is no doubt that the South Koreans can adequately defend themselves against any potential "invasion" from the North. There is no reason for the US to be there. The constant presence of US marines on the DMZ make the North Koreans nervous that the South will invade them.
The DPRK certainly does overreact to different situations, but we need to take a little responsibility for not trying to de-escalate the general tone on the border. Up in the DPRK officer's lounge on the North side, there is a smoking lounge with leather couches for the guards to chill out, possibly smoke some weed (which is legal in the DPRK countryside), and look down on the DMZ. Most of the guards on the North side looked bored and didn't care particularly what you did. In contrast, the guards on the South side look like they will kill you for looking in the wrong direction.
Um, have you ever thought that maybe the reason there wasn't any response until June 2014 was because the movie wasn't hyped until then? Do you really think there is someone deep in the bowels of Pyongyang scraping TMZ looking for any hints of a movie that may not be portraying North Korea in a glowing fashion?
That's exactly my point. Why would North Korea hack Sony 6 months before they were aware of such a movie? Sony has pissed off a huge number of people, especially technically-minded people. The DPRK is just a convenient scapegoat.
The article you linked to doesn't have any references, and sounds like it is based on an extremely poor translation. Looking at the official DPRK news agency, they don't seem to mention it: http://www.kcna.kp/kcna.user.a...
What the do say is that if they were to retaliate it wouldn't be a terrorist attack on innocent movie-goers, it would be a military strike on the leadership. That seems to match what the badly translated CNN statement says, i.e. that they wouldn't attack some random corporation or civilians, they would attack the leadership who they hold responsible.
The entire narrative of the DPRK is based on this idea that the majority of Americans are innocent, if deluded, and should be freed from the control of their masters. Without going in to how close to the mark that might actually be, it's basically a reflection of the US narrative on regime change.
We are deluded. There isnt a shred of evidence tying the DPRK to this hacking and yet they get all the blame. The movie was filmed in Fall 2013, but there were no statements from the DPRK until June 2014. They really arent the kind of people to miss out on a threatening press release if given even the slightest opportunity. Their press bureau literally salivates a this kind of thing. They also rarely lie. Huge exaggerations? Sure. But not lies. So it seems reasonable they didnt hear about the movie until June when official announcements and trailers started coming out
Meanwhile, the hackers apparently got into Sony's systems over a year ago. They first asked for money, then only later started talking about The Interview and wanting it pulled. The broken english used in their communications is not consistent with a Korean speaker. DPRK citizens speaking english is pretty obvious- they only have a small number of schools which teach it, and without many native english speakers, the teachers are very consistent.
We need to back up a little and reask the question of who did it. The answer might be even more interesting that the line we are being fed.
We also lost CNN and the Turner stations in October/November due to a renewal disagreement.
This is far from limited to just Dish customers, as each major cable provider has to renegotiate regularly.
I've noticed a common theme, though... no matter who you talk to, it's the other greedy bastard who's being unreasonable.
That just shows how nasty the negotiations are- each company is employing their PR department to push statements and try to influence the public as part of an overall negotiation strategy. Bringing in other people, especially one of a higher authority, into a negotiation is standard practice in negotiations (car sales manager is one good example). Trying to rope your customers into influencing a negotiation, however, is unusual and generally only happens when the negotiation is so nasty that you want people to see how nasty it is.
Directly because? Certainly the USA and the Soviet Union encouraged the hostility but the Korean people aren't robots. The reason North and South Korea are apart and have such lousy relations is because of Koreans. Non Europeans are also responsible for their actions.
Come on man. The USA and USSR literally drew the DMZ line at the end of World War II. Koreans didn't have much to do with that. Instead of reintegrating Korea into 1 republic, the two countries set up their own preferred style of government in each part of Korea. Nobody can argue that for the first few years after World War II, that the governments were anything but a puppet government. The US set up a South Korean constitution modeled after the US constitution, and the USSR set up communisim in the North with a hand-selected autocrat as the leader.
Korea and Vietnam were cold war fights by proxy. Maybe they would have had a conflict without foreign powers interfering, but the resources that the USSR and USA poured into the fight ensured that it was a far bigger, nastier, and longer war than it would have been otherwise. If either of the superpowers had stayed out of it, one or the other side would have won the war reasonably quickly. Both countries were responsible in creating the stalemate and both are responsible for the poor decisions of the past.
Its also important to keep in mind that outsiders of all types have been fiddling around in Korea since the 1600s- first the Chinese, then an incident with the American-owned ship "General Sherman", then the Japanese, then the USSR and USA. The History of Korea is not a very uplifting read. Korea has been shit upon by every country in their neighborhood and most of the superpowers as well. Given that history, it shouldn't be surprising that they turned inward and cut ties with the West and South Korea, which is strongly aligned with the USA.
I just have to wonder if it's not just a PR stunt. These kind of threats from hackers does indeed sound unbelievable. Hacking a pc and setting up a terrorist strike are quite different skill sets. Am i the only one wondering if this is just a hoax from Sony/the authorities to make people change their stance on the hacks? In the beginning everybody was like "serves them right". Now everybody is like "Omg, poor Sony, i would watch the movie if i could".
These threats seem like the best thing that could happen to them after the hack. I'm kind of wondering if it isn't a bit too convenient.
I'm thinking they made a financial calculation. If the value of the materials which the hackers have, but have not yet released, exceeds the expected revenue of the movie, then it makes sense to trash the movie and just move on. I can easily imagine that such materials (especially if they implicate Sony in illegal or questionable activities) having a value of millions of dollars to be kept secret.
Plus, the Korea situation isn't that funny. The bottom line is that families were split apart and have remained apart for 60 years directly because of squabbling between the US and the former Soviet Union. That's not a joke, its just sad.
Outside of those conditions, hobbyists and commercial interests would be free to fly drones."
I hope he meant "inside" or possibly "under" those conditions. I'm normally not that hung up on grammar but this is the opposite of what was probably meant.
The headline is wrong. This is not at all a cargo ship. It's more like an free-floating platform on which a gas refinery has been built. It will stay in place during its entire lifetime.
It should not even be compared to ships.
It may be freed from having to think too much about propulsion, but it still has to float, weather storms, and keep the crew alive and comfortable with water treatment, sewage treatment, laundry, cooking, etc. Not to mention providing all the functions of a refinery on an island made out of steel. It's an FPSO but for LNG. That kind of vessel is considered a ship, and not an rig, for the purposes of most class societies such as Lloyds or the American Bureau of Shipping.
At Warsash there is a similar set of systems: http://www.warsashacademy.co.u...
The engine room simulation looks pretty nice: http://www.warsashacademy.co.u...
My alma mater has a few simulators, but the main training tool is a 450ft ship. When studying to be a ship engineer or a bridge officer, there is no substitute for the real thing, so we had the real thing. Each of the serious maritime universities in the USA (of which there are about 7) has a ship. Usually, the ships actually are owned by the government and can be called up by the government in times of need for disaster response or other reasons.
But how do smaller countries deal with this? Are there other region-wide registrations other than EU?)
Smaller countries often take different approaches. Small countries next door to a large country may adopt the larger country's standard; especially if they get most of their imports from or through that larger country. For example, Bermuda accepts either US or Canada approval, but you still need to register with Bermuda. Enforecement is typically weak in countries like that because the equipment is probably coming through the US or Canada anyhow.
Some countries are "anything goes" because it hasn't become a problem.
I have a Surface 2 that I tried using for a bit (got it from work) and it sucks, badly. The mouse design is horrible, you can barely see it. A coworker has been testing the 3 Pro for a while as a desktop replacement with the ability to quickly take the tablet/laptop thing and go on the road. He likes it, but he's got a full set up, docking station, etc. I've had the Dell XPS 12 for almost two years and LOVE it for taking it to meetings and customers at work. Taking notes with OneNote is so easy and the touch screen make it really nice to use. I rarely if ever use the tablet feature. A nice thing about it vs. my iPad is that I can put it on my lap while on the couch at home and browse the web with touch with ONE HAND. iPad requires a stand or two hands and it's just uncomfortable for me. A few months ago I got just an UltraBook with a 15 inch screen so I could program and work on servers better. It's a Dell Precision M3800 meant to compete with a MacBook but it was Windows 8.1 and touch. It's the best device I've ever had, hands down. Light, beautiful in design and screen, great mouse, touch works great. It's not trying to be a tablet/hybrid thing. It's just a great UltraBook. Don't get me wrong, I love my iDevices too (we have lots of them at home), but for work UltraBooks rock.
Hold on there. The Precision M3800 is a desktop replacement. It is not an ultrabook. It's built for power, not minimum weight or thickness.
Wow that is a ridiculous argument. Ships used wind energy because that was the easiest thing to use with the technology available 3000 years ago (or whenever the first guy to hang a sheet on a boat did so). Harvesting wave energy using ancient technology would have required ridiculous clockwork mechanisms, which would have been extremely expensive for the day, difficult to repair at sea, and probably not reliable either. A piece of cloth attached to 1 or more sticks is far superior in all these practical concerns, and is far more obvious and practical.
Well, my question would be what are they doing with all the phones they get? If they are being destroyed, it's exactly like flushing money down the toilet. If they are being resold (through a 3rd party obviously) then those phones are still on the market and working against the very marketshare they are trying to buy.
No - it's not even a question. Bury the lines and you will remove a large number of causes for power outages.
Quote correct. Thing is someone has to pay for the upfront cost of burying the cables and it is much more expensive. Where I live stringing wires on poles costs in rough numbers something like $1 per linear foot. Burying the cable costs about $8 per linear foot. (this is semi-reliable info from family who worked in the business and would know) Getting the funds to do any sort of meaningful program of burying wires would likely involve a rate increase which tends to be as popular as a lead filled life preserver.
In the long run buried lines will save money - even if you are in an area where the ground is filled with rocks.
That isn't so clear in a lot of places. Repairs on above ground wires are more common but cheaper when they occur. Roll a truck, look up and get busy. Repairs on buried cable is just the opposite. Even finding the problem is harder and many repairs involve a lot of digging. There are places near where I live (semi-rural 20 miles from a major metro area) where it might make economic sense to bury the cable but also quite a few where it most likely doesn't. You can do a LOT of repairs before you even break even on the buried cable despite its general higher reliability. Plus you are replacing infrastructure that already exists and lots of it so any sort of economically rational replacement program would take decades. Every place that truly needs reliable power has a backup generator anyway so it's not like you are gaining much in practical terms by burying the cables for quite a few customers.
Don't get me wrong, I think a lot more cables should be buried than currently are but it's not as simple an equation as buried = more reliable = cheaper.
All good points, and here is another small one-
The line carrying capacity of a cable on a pole is higher than the capacity of a cable in the ground (according to the codes). So if you decide to bury a power cable, often a larger cable is needed for the same capacity.
It would be a lot easier to build, test, and debug a control system if you started with 0 wind and slowly increased to a steady wind and then later begin testing in gusts or random winds, wouldn't it? PID control fine tuning goes a lot faster when you have full control over the inputs.