A simple guide for movie executives.
1. Release films worldwide at the same time.
2. Stop policing movie theatres with security guards and confiscating mobile phones as potential "recording equipment" and creating customer antipathy.
3. Release films to DVD within a month of their theatre release.
4. Stop putting region coding and anti-copying measures on DVDs.
And finally, the most important:
5. Stop your own employees from stealing and duplicating your films and selling them to criminal organisations for mass duplication.
1) Check, already being done
2) They are idiots to even bother trying this
3) This might kill the movie theatres, especially the low cost 3rd run ones that don't show a movie until it has been out for 3 months, as they will be showing the movie while it is already out in DVD. They are already having problems with the as low as 3 month time between movie and DVD release as is. (Remember, not all theatres are owned by the studios).
4) Would love this, especially as how some of us want movies that would never be released in other regions. Though I guess copyright law would have to change some (not that it can't use the update) so that there are no regional restrictions on sales/distribution.
5) This is their bigest problem, thought they are loathe to admit it.
The biggest threats from breaking content protection do not come from without, they come from within. Most of the high quality rips you talk about come from people who work inside the DVD production plants and save an extra copy of the files to take home with them. Or the person who works in the editing room and gives themselves a copy. Or a whole host of people involved in the chain of production who can be bribed.
Then there are some other things involved. I knew a guy who was working at a TV station when Star Wars came out in theatres, in 1977. Yes, we are talking the original one here. They called up the studio to ask for some footage of the movie so they could show some clips on the nightly news, since it was such a big hit they wanted to show people what all the fuss was about. The studio sent them the entire movie over satelite, and they recorded it to 2 inch tape. They had the entire movie, while it was still in theatres on very high quality tape.
It's not breaking the "content protection" DRM crap that is the studios problem, it is their entire assembly process that has so many holes in it.
Why don't they take that $30M and make a movie people might want to pay money to go see?
Because that would mean that they would have to admit that the main reason for the drop in movie attendance is their shitty movies instead of piracy? That they would actualy have to admit to their shareholders that they have run out of ideas and can't make a decent product (aka movie) anymore without rehashing old movies/remakes/sequels?
Other stuff in here as well, just can't phrase it properly. But maybe this will help (some). Several years ago I came up with a rule of thumb. Sequals are never as good as the original movie and are usually just rehashes of them. (LotR 2 does not quallify as a sequal, Ninja Turtles 2 does.) The only time I have come across one that breaks this was "White Fang 2".
Back when I was growing up, we had a third-run theater that continually waited until the end of the blockbuster weekends before they'd get copies of movies.
They still exist, though they may count as second run now. We have one near us called "University Mall Theatres". They are right across the street from a... university. Fairly cheep tickets and small theatres. They are currently showing, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Madagascar, War of the Worlds, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Star Wars: Episode III. If that don't count as a late runner, I don't know what does.
Try looking around the universities, that is where (I guess) they usually exist today. On the other hand, if you go and see the "Matinee" runnings, the tickets are usually a few bucks cheaper as well. Not as cheap as the 2nd/3rd runs, but still cheaper.
May be less payload, but last time I checked we weren't building Saturn 5 components.
For crew capacity, technology has changed. We can take out a lot of mass and replace it with new technology compared to the apollo era. Remember, we were still using vacum tubes then and no solar panels. Adding solar panels (which is in the plans) means fewer batteries are needed. Replacing vacume tubes with solid state decreases power and mass and space.
The good news is that NASA are finally picking up where they left off 30 years ago. The bad news is that NASA are picking up where they left off 30 years ago. . . and we have precious little to show for the decades, lives, and many billions of dollars sacrificed to the Shuttle.
We got some info out of it, just not as much as we could have since we got sidetracked with the original moon missions. I've heard that JFK set the space program back (or held it back) 50 years. However, that does not mean we haven't gotten anything out of the shuttle. Otherwise we wouldn't be using shuttle components in these new lifters.
Well, that's only like, 20 times more dangerous than a car. Pretty good considering you're basically riding a bomb to orbit.
I keep hearing joked from various places about how the way we get into space currently is by shoving a great big firecracker under a tincan (and several variation on that). It falls under the sad but true category.
How about Neuros? They have built in FM tuners and firmware (available from official site) you can play OGG. Currently looks like they are out of the 2nd gen players from their site and the third gens are coming out next year. You may be able to find a 2nd gen from one of the retailers. Cost is generally not to bad either. Most are hard drive based, as opposed to flash based. Just depends on how much storage you want I guess.
I'm more worried about the 99.5% methanol being combustable. It seems to me you are powering an mp3 player with lighter fluid. (And yes, I do realize methanol is harder to ignite)
The 3.5ml and 10ml configurations contain quite a bit of fluid.
I'm sure my university is poor. After all, my president only made $500,000,000 as an annual salery.
Oh, and they're increasing tuition as well.
You're off by a couple of zeros. His salary is $500,000. Not, $500,000,000.
As for that beeing "a lot", consider that the presidents main job is to raise money for a university. The more successful he is at it, the better off the college is. Best way I can say is to look at how well he has been doing as a fund raiser for the school. Your university still needs money from donations to help keep costs down, otherwise you'd see your tuition going up much more. (Try finding a list/total of what he's raised in the past year, your school should have one.)
That said, a %42 increase over 4 years is a lot.
As for your tuition increase? It's only 4.9%. Thats not much, most schools have a yearly increase that is higher. At 29,000 students that $500k comes out to $17.25 per student. It's not a big chunk of your tuition either.
Last year, UConn, my college, had a privacy breach where lots of SSN's were leaked. This year, they've made a committee to figure out ways in which they can remove SSN's from as many internal processes as possible.
Last year, a student's ID was their SSN. Now, it's an ID assigned by our peoplesoft system. If i forget my ID at, oh say, the campus book store *shudder*, they can't look it up w/ my social. Like I said, good things can sometimes come out of these event
At UHA (uni of hartford, right near you guys), where I went to undergrad, changed 2 years ago over to a random id. what took you guys?
Side note, housing assignment lottery numbers were posted on a wall in one large list. With it sorted by SSN# (yes, they publically showed the SSN, but no name or anything else, still stupid). Did you guys have anything like that?
om a customer standpoint, "give everyone a free year" sounds great.
But that would put almost any business OUT of business.
I have no idea what the profit margin for them is.. but even if 25% of their income is pure profit, giving out a free year means they will make zero profit for four years.
What would be more realistic is to give back everyone a years PROFIT on their tuition. That way the schools expenses are covered, teachers get paid, ect.
Most (if not all) universities and colleges take a loss every year. It is made up by donations/grants/contributions/other from Alumni, parents, businesses and rich individuals (either while alive, in their will or in memmorial of someone else).
To find out who generally has given $$$ look at the names of the schools buildings.
3) There is easily 100 times that, according to a previous Slashdot post, sitting in Colorado oil reserves.
At least 1 trillion barrels (million barrels/ mile^2, thousand miles^2) of oil sitting in Colorado shale fields (don't know if there is anything else there besides shale). At the low market value of the past few years of around $40/barrel, that's ~40 trillion worth of oil and over 100 years worth of oil for the US at current consumption levels.
Which, if we fully exploit said shale fields, we can cut off our importaion of oil (last time I checked, ~10 million barrels/day).
10 million barrels/day*30 days/month*$65/barrel=$19.5 billion we can cut out of the current trade deficit. Given that we could then export some of the oil/natural gas/other we could then lower the trade deficit even further.
All in all, the U.S. government is not about to run out on money any time soon...
Actually, it's trillions in debt, with only future taxes to pay them off.
Which, when scaled to per capita or based on % of GDP, were still better off than some EU members (among others). From the numbers I see on most countries, the larger a population the larger the national debt.
I completely agree! I used to get the "NASA Tech Briefs", so I know the technology that they produce. BUT, in our current fiscal state, I think it's completely irresponsible to be spending that kind of money right now, maybe later, but not now.:-)
Because if we do that then when the "current" problems are solved, something else will have come up and people will say the same thing. If we keep waiting until we solve all the worlds problems, we will still be stuck on earth when the sun dies out.
Yep, those would be the ones. I just find the idea that we have the technology but won't implement it due to budget issues is as short sighted and detrimental just as the Romans having had the capacity to create the steam engine (and thus start the industrial revolution long before it finally happened) but failed to do so because of cultural limitations (ie. no need for labor saving techniques due to abundant slavery).
Or for the same reason. Cultural reasons due to the number of people (idiots I call them) who think that any and all nuclear technology is bad. Personally, I'd love to see this in a working rocket. Especially if we got one of those 1,000 ton liberty ship boosters over at nuclearspace.com
They mentioned Paris Hilton. Apparently, the public images of herself (as a party girl with loose morals and limited brains) and that of her sister (quiet and reserved) are carefully crafted creations of a PR firm. Real-life Paris is supposed to be very street smart, with an ability to add up figures with the speed and accuracy of a computer.
Reminds e of what I have heard about Marilyn Monroe. She played a whole bunch of ditzy blondes in the movies, but was apparently very smart.
As for the nukes, please don't try to win some debate, just think a bit. What you are saying doesn't make sense - you are being irrational. First, you drag in West Germany, which is completely unrelated. Then you invent some unsubstantiated fantasy about nukes being pointed at the DMZ. Who told you that? Please don't make up bullshit arguments in order to score some "points". Let's respect logic.
Here's the logic behind that.
You said that it Turns out the United States has nuclear weapons (where are they aimed, what do you think?) right next to the North Korean border (in nuclear terms).
The only thing I know of near the North Korean (as you do not say they are pointed at or into NK) border is the DMZ and South Korea. So my best guess is then that the nukes are/were pointed at that area.
Second, West Germany. A Tactic that was (at one point) to be used in the event of soviet invasion of europe was to nuke west germany so soviet armys could not advance as easily. Nuking the DMZ area would be using the same tactic in the event of an NK invasion of SK.
People tend to use the same tactics. So based on what I have learned from others, that is what I would guess would be the reason for pointing nukes "near the NK border".
I am not attacking you. Nor do I see anything that I have writen that could be percieved as an attack. Only pointing out that the point has not been made.
As for the Nuclear Nightmare video, I was waiting for it to finish downloading (took 2 something hours) and I have not had a chance to watch it yet. I will the next chance I get.
Still no information on your statement of He also stopped North Korean nuclear program several times, only to resume it again, when the US didn't follow on its promises.
Turns out the United States has nuclear weapons (where are they aimed, what do you think?) right next to the North Korean border (in nuclear terms)
We also had nukes aimed at west germany during the cold war. The plan was that in the event of a soviet invasion of europe, the armies would have to try to cross through a nuclear wasteland. These nukes that are pointed near the border are probably pointed at the DMZ then and are there in the event of a an invasion by NK into SK. That said, I see nothing in that page that says nukes are pointed there.
Then the timeline details (some of) the promises, concentrating mainly on the promised nuclear reactors. An important thing to understand is that North Korea has few other energy options, it needs nuclear power to run the economy, not just to make plutonium. But these promises haven't been followed up on very well. You can also see from the timeline very clearly that North Korea has repeatedly made steps towards compromise, peace, etc.
I see nothing in there on the US breaking any promises. I see items in there on NK breaking IAEA agreements, among others.
For power, this compromise was given and agreed to 1994: U.S. and North Korea conclude an "Agreed Framework," in which President Clinton promises to help arrange, finance and construct the light-water reactors and fund interim energy supplies.
On 19 August 1997 KEDO and North Korea held a groundbreaking ceremony to begin construction of two light-water reactors.
In October 2002, North Korean officials acknowledged the existence of a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons that is in violation of the Agreed Framework and other agreements.
NK has broken IAEA agreements. NK has broken agreements that the US was keeping. I have not seen anythink that says the US has broken said agreements.
I also suggest that you watch a "Nuclear Nightmare - Understanding North Korea" documentary, it has a lot of interesting footage and, though it's also biased a bit, overall it shows a very interesting picture of where North Korea really stands.
Do we give this power to the President as an option without having to go through Congress? with NO checks and balances?
Last time I checked there was this thing called "the nuclear football". It's pretty much a suitcase that allows the president to launch nuclear weapons at will. No having to go through congress at all. Implented by JFK I believe.
Slashdot Mirror
A simple guide for movie executives.
1. Release films worldwide at the same time.
2. Stop policing movie theatres with security guards and confiscating mobile phones as potential "recording equipment" and creating customer antipathy.
3. Release films to DVD within a month of their theatre release.
4. Stop putting region coding and anti-copying measures on DVDs.
And finally, the most important:
5. Stop your own employees from stealing and duplicating your films and selling them to criminal organisations for mass duplication.
1) Check, already being done
2) They are idiots to even bother trying this
3) This might kill the movie theatres, especially the low cost 3rd run ones that don't show a movie until it has been out for 3 months, as they will be showing the movie while it is already out in DVD. They are already having problems with the as low as 3 month time between movie and DVD release as is. (Remember, not all theatres are owned by the studios).
4) Would love this, especially as how some of us want movies that would never be released in other regions. Though I guess copyright law would have to change some (not that it can't use the update) so that there are no regional restrictions on sales/distribution.
5) This is their bigest problem, thought they are loathe to admit it.
The biggest threats from breaking content protection do not come from without, they come from within. Most of the high quality rips you talk about come from people who work inside the DVD production plants and save an extra copy of the files to take home with them. Or the person who works in the editing room and gives themselves a copy. Or a whole host of people involved in the chain of production who can be bribed.
Then there are some other things involved. I knew a guy who was working at a TV station when Star Wars came out in theatres, in 1977. Yes, we are talking the original one here. They called up the studio to ask for some footage of the movie so they could show some clips on the nightly news, since it was such a big hit they wanted to show people what all the fuss was about. The studio sent them the entire movie over satelite, and they recorded it to 2 inch tape. They had the entire movie, while it was still in theatres on very high quality tape.
It's not breaking the "content protection" DRM crap that is the studios problem, it is their entire assembly process that has so many holes in it.
Why don't they take that $30M and make a movie people might want to pay money to go see?
Because that would mean that they would have to admit that the main reason for the drop in movie attendance is their shitty movies instead of piracy?
That they would actualy have to admit to their shareholders that they have run out of ideas and can't make a decent product (aka movie) anymore without rehashing old movies/remakes/sequels?
Other stuff in here as well, just can't phrase it properly. But maybe this will help (some). Several years ago I came up with a rule of thumb. Sequals are never as good as the original movie and are usually just rehashes of them. (LotR 2 does not quallify as a sequal, Ninja Turtles 2 does.) The only time I have come across one that breaks this was "White Fang 2".
Back when I was growing up, we had a third-run theater that continually waited until the end of the blockbuster weekends before they'd get copies of movies.
... university. Fairly cheep tickets and small theatres. They are currently showing, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Madagascar, War of the Worlds, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Star Wars: Episode III. If that don't count as a late runner, I don't know what does.
They still exist, though they may count as second run now. We have one near us called "University Mall Theatres". They are right across the street from a
Try looking around the universities, that is where (I guess) they usually exist today. On the other hand, if you go and see the "Matinee" runnings, the tickets are usually a few bucks cheaper as well. Not as cheap as the 2nd/3rd runs, but still cheaper.
Your Post:
How about "Hurricane Man-Are-We-Fucked-Or-What" or "Hurricane I-Hope-This-Drowns-Michael-Brown"?
Your Signature:
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There's comedy and/or irony here, and I'm not sure which.
My bad. Forgot that transistors were in use back then. Still, the same principles apply. ICs today will use less power and less mass/volume.
According to this site
Saturn C-5 max payload: 127 metric tons
New Booster may payload: 100+ metric tons
May be less payload, but last time I checked we weren't building Saturn 5 components.
For crew capacity, technology has changed. We can take out a lot of mass and replace it with new technology compared to the apollo era. Remember, we were still using vacum tubes then and no solar panels. Adding solar panels (which is in the plans) means fewer batteries are needed. Replacing vacume tubes with solid state decreases power and mass and space.
The good news is that NASA are finally picking up where they left off 30 years ago. The bad news is that NASA are picking up where they left off 30 years ago. . . and we have precious little to show for the decades, lives, and many billions of dollars sacrificed to the Shuttle.
We got some info out of it, just not as much as we could have since we got sidetracked with the original moon missions. I've heard that JFK set the space program back (or held it back) 50 years. However, that does not mean we haven't gotten anything out of the shuttle. Otherwise we wouldn't be using shuttle components in these new lifters.
Well, that's only like, 20 times more dangerous than a car. Pretty good considering you're basically riding a bomb to orbit.
I keep hearing joked from various places about how the way we get into space currently is by shoving a great big firecracker under a tincan (and several variation on that). It falls under the sad but true category.
How about Neuros? They have built in FM tuners and firmware (available from official site) you can play OGG. Currently looks like they are out of the 2nd gen players from their site and the third gens are coming out next year. You may be able to find a 2nd gen from one of the retailers. Cost is generally not to bad either. Most are hard drive based, as opposed to flash based. Just depends on how much storage you want I guess.
I'm more worried about the 99.5% methanol being combustable. It seems to me you are powering an mp3 player with lighter fluid. (And yes, I do realize methanol is harder to ignite)
The 3.5ml and 10ml configurations contain quite a bit of fluid.
Slight problem with what you say. Shell believes that they have a way to economically extract shale oil even when oil is at $30 a gallon. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columni sts/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4051709,00.html
I'm sure my university is poor. After all, my president only made $500,000,000 as an annual salery. Oh, and they're increasing tuition as well.
You're off by a couple of zeros. His salary is $500,000. Not, $500,000,000.
As for that beeing "a lot", consider that the presidents main job is to raise money for a university. The more successful he is at it, the better off the college is. Best way I can say is to look at how well he has been doing as a fund raiser for the school. Your university still needs money from donations to help keep costs down, otherwise you'd see your tuition going up much more. (Try finding a list/total of what he's raised in the past year, your school should have one.)
That said, a %42 increase over 4 years is a lot.
As for your tuition increase? It's only 4.9%. Thats not much, most schools have a yearly increase that is higher. At 29,000 students that $500k comes out to $17.25 per student. It's not a big chunk of your tuition either.
Last year, UConn, my college, had a privacy breach where lots of SSN's were leaked. This year, they've made a committee to figure out ways in which they can remove SSN's from as many internal processes as possible. Last year, a student's ID was their SSN. Now, it's an ID assigned by our peoplesoft system. If i forget my ID at, oh say, the campus book store *shudder*, they can't look it up w/ my social. Like I said, good things can sometimes come out of these event
At UHA (uni of hartford, right near you guys), where I went to undergrad, changed 2 years ago over to a random id. what took you guys?
Side note, housing assignment lottery numbers were posted on a wall in one large list. With it sorted by SSN# (yes, they publically showed the SSN, but no name or anything else, still stupid). Did you guys have anything like that?
om a customer standpoint, "give everyone a free year" sounds great. But that would put almost any business OUT of business. I have no idea what the profit margin for them is.. but even if 25% of their income is pure profit, giving out a free year means they will make zero profit for four years. What would be more realistic is to give back everyone a years PROFIT on their tuition. That way the schools expenses are covered, teachers get paid, ect.
Most (if not all) universities and colleges take a loss every year. It is made up by donations/grants/contributions/other from Alumni, parents, businesses and rich individuals (either while alive, in their will or in memmorial of someone else).
To find out who generally has given $$$ look at the names of the schools buildings.
3) There is easily 100 times that, according to a previous Slashdot post, sitting in Colorado oil reserves.
At least 1 trillion barrels (million barrels/ mile^2, thousand miles^2) of oil sitting in Colorado shale fields (don't know if there is anything else there besides shale). At the low market value of the past few years of around $40/barrel, that's ~40 trillion worth of oil and over 100 years worth of oil for the US at current consumption levels.
Which, if we fully exploit said shale fields, we can cut off our importaion of oil (last time I checked, ~10 million barrels/day).
10 million barrels/day*30 days/month*$65/barrel=$19.5 billion we can cut out of the current trade deficit. Given that we could then export some of the oil/natural gas/other we could then lower the trade deficit even further.
All in all, the U.S. government is not about to run out on money any time soon...
Actually, it's trillions in debt, with only future taxes to pay them off.
Which, when scaled to per capita or based on % of GDP, were still better off than some EU members (among others). From the numbers I see on most countries, the larger a population the larger the national debt.
I completely agree! I used to get the "NASA Tech Briefs", so I know the technology that they produce. BUT, in our current fiscal state, I think it's completely irresponsible to be spending that kind of money right now, maybe later, but not now. :-)
Because if we do that then when the "current" problems are solved, something else will have come up and people will say the same thing. If we keep waiting until we solve all the worlds problems, we will still be stuck on earth when the sun dies out.
Yep, those would be the ones. I just find the idea that we have the technology but won't implement it due to budget issues is as short sighted and detrimental just as the Romans having had the capacity to create the steam engine (and thus start the industrial revolution long before it finally happened) but failed to do so because of cultural limitations (ie. no need for labor saving techniques due to abundant slavery).
Or for the same reason. Cultural reasons due to the number of people (idiots I call them) who think that any and all nuclear technology is bad. Personally, I'd love to see this in a working rocket. Especially if we got one of those 1,000 ton liberty ship boosters over at nuclearspace.com
They mentioned Paris Hilton. Apparently, the public images of herself (as a party girl with loose morals and limited brains) and that of her sister (quiet and reserved) are carefully crafted creations of a PR firm. Real-life Paris is supposed to be very street smart, with an ability to add up figures with the speed and accuracy of a computer.
Reminds e of what I have heard about Marilyn Monroe. She played a whole bunch of ditzy blondes in the movies, but was apparently very smart.
PS Yes, in this post I state some opinions that I do not back up further, and while this generally is bad I think that they should be clear enough.
I think we have a new slashdot signature.
see this post:r eshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&pid=1355 9602#13560084
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=162229&th
As for the nukes, please don't try to win some debate, just think a bit. What you are saying doesn't make sense - you are being irrational. First, you drag in West Germany, which is completely unrelated. Then you invent some unsubstantiated fantasy about nukes being pointed at the DMZ. Who told you that? Please don't make up bullshit arguments in order to score some "points". Let's respect logic.
Here's the logic behind that. You said that it Turns out the United States has nuclear weapons (where are they aimed, what do you think?) right next to the North Korean border (in nuclear terms).
The only thing I know of near the North Korean (as you do not say they are pointed at or into NK) border is the DMZ and South Korea. So my best guess is then that the nukes are/were pointed at that area.
Second, West Germany. A Tactic that was (at one point) to be used in the event of soviet invasion of europe was to nuke west germany so soviet armys could not advance as easily. Nuking the DMZ area would be using the same tactic in the event of an NK invasion of SK.
People tend to use the same tactics. So based on what I have learned from others, that is what I would guess would be the reason for pointing nukes "near the NK border".
I am not attacking you. Nor do I see anything that I have writen that could be percieved as an attack. Only pointing out that the point has not been made.
As for the Nuclear Nightmare video, I was waiting for it to finish downloading (took 2 something hours) and I have not had a chance to watch it yet. I will the next chance I get.
Still no information on your statement of He also stopped North Korean nuclear program several times, only to resume it again, when the US didn't follow on its promises.
Turns out the United States has nuclear weapons (where are they aimed, what do you think?) right next to the North Korean border (in nuclear terms)
We also had nukes aimed at west germany during the cold war. The plan was that in the event of a soviet invasion of europe, the armies would have to try to cross through a nuclear wasteland. These nukes that are pointed near the border are probably pointed at the DMZ then and are there in the event of a an invasion by NK into SK. That said, I see nothing in that page that says nukes are pointed there.
Then the timeline details (some of) the promises, concentrating mainly on the promised nuclear reactors. An important thing to understand is that North Korea has few other energy options, it needs nuclear power to run the economy, not just to make plutonium. But these promises haven't been followed up on very well. You can also see from the timeline very clearly that North Korea has repeatedly made steps towards compromise, peace, etc.
I see nothing in there on the US breaking any promises. I see items in there on NK breaking IAEA agreements, among others.
For power, this compromise was given and agreed to 1994: U.S. and North Korea conclude an "Agreed Framework," in which President Clinton promises to help arrange, finance and construct the light-water reactors and fund interim energy supplies.
Here's two points of information from another page. http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/
On 19 August 1997 KEDO and North Korea held a groundbreaking ceremony to begin construction of two light-water reactors.
In October 2002, North Korean officials acknowledged the existence of a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons that is in violation of the Agreed Framework and other agreements.
NK has broken IAEA agreements. NK has broken agreements that the US was keeping. I have not seen anythink that says the US has broken said agreements.
I also suggest that you watch a "Nuclear Nightmare - Understanding North Korea" documentary, it has a lot of interesting footage and, though it's also biased a bit, overall it shows a very interesting picture of where North Korea really stands.
Found a place to watch it from. Will do.
He also stopped North Korean nuclear program several times, only to resume it again, when the US didn't follow on its promises.
Mind providing some links about what promises teh US didn't follow through on? Along with a timeline of his resuming the nuclear activities.
Do we give this power to the President as an option without having to go through Congress? with NO checks and balances?
Last time I checked there was this thing called "the nuclear football". It's pretty much a suitcase that allows the president to launch nuclear weapons at will. No having to go through congress at all. Implented by JFK I believe.