You never learned in school how significant digits work, did you?

True. Never could work out why giving someone two fingers was supposed to be ruder than one.



To be serious it appeared from my efforts with undergraduates that hardly anyone learned about significant digits in school.

The case I'm describing was an actress pretending to be a nurse giving a verbal account of an atrocity - so no such excuse of reality being boring for the camera, and stupidly counterproductive.
It was ineptly done, easily exposed and it made people question real events.
It's the sort of bullshit that breeds 9/11 "truethers" who have worked out that they've seen some propaganda lies and now assume real reports are lies, leading to an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality and some really weird conspiracy theories (the real conspiracy by Bin Laden etc is apparently not enough for them).

Well hindsight is always 20/20. Few people look into securing their houses what haven't been robbed or known someone who was. Nobody benefits from this sort of attack; like you say, its a motive issue. Why does the production network need so much proection? Up until now it hasn't. There was nothing of any value there for anyone....only of theoretical value.

The only people who carry out this sort of attack are the ones who work for armies because they don't have to worry about personal reprisal and they are not interested in any sort of profit. Its just a game to them; and they will work to whatever goal they are told to.

Its the rise of this "cyberwar" bs that creates the danger in the first place. The only result is going to be to hurt some insurance company that is going to pay, or the steel factory, but more will be built. However, within the context of a cyber war group this is a demonstration of effecitveness or even a win for some petty head of state.

This is one more area where I was happier with the old threat of money hungry gangs and the occasional rambunctious kid than the massive politically directed machine that is supposed to protect me from them but ends up just being bigger, badder, and more capricious versions of the same.

N.K. basically has a "business model" of holding up a sign up saying "will not nuke Seoul for food". They send a few shells over every now and again to show it's not a bluff, and that even if it is called they can threaten to trash other cities after levelling Seoul.
That's the first thing to consider before posting something simplistic like the above.
It may be an utter basket case but it's not going away if we ignore it, it will get worse.

And it even specifically says the talks were about Sony and other studios helping them with, what can only be described as, propaganda.

Most likely situation normal and ongoing instead of something new.
Remember that the WMD stuff came out of a PR company. The Kuwait hospital atrocity thing a decade earlier was a performance from an actress - very bizzare since they had real atrocities just as bad that could have been used instead of cooked up PR.

Actually it didn't. The Russians were used to real madmen.

Sort of but not.
I'd say it's civilian American criminals trying to shift the blame to N.K. instead of government employed ones.

Then there's the beatup because pretending that it's OMG! CyBeRwAr turned up to 11 means more funding and empire building for a few people in the FBI and similar who seem to be making noise without adult supervision.

So more the case of "patriotically" waving the flag falsely and rattling sabres than actual false flag.
The downside is such warmongering pricks don't seem to realise that their stupid fake war games may inspire the very thin skinned North Korea to fire shells at parts of South Korea and kill a few people. They have done that every now and again.

The Soviets knew how to screw JFK over, and did it big time with the diminishing offers over the Cuba missile brinksmanship, so would not want to kill him off and see him replaced by someone like Johnson. I'm really amazed that anyone seriously considered that conspiracy theory at all.

without a scratch, and end up three blocks away in a plastic bag)

For some macabre reason there are a lot of hiking trips to plane wrecks. From seeing a few of those it appears that something landing the distance of three blocks away is a fairly normal result for a flight into terrain. It's a very obvious outcome if you think of it.

You've ignored their history of shooting nearly anyone that looks like they may have the ability to use a screwdriver.
I've talked a few times to someone that used to run a business trading seafood from North Korea into China, but at one point she just had to get out or die and not long after that North Korea did not have the ability to feed itself let alone export food. She didn't hear from relatives over the next few decades and had no idea if they were alive or dead. Over the years refugees coming into China knew less and less about what was actually going on in N.K. - the place was/is very compartmentalised. One common theme however was that older people were arrested and disappeared if they were caught talking about recent history when N.K. could feed itself.
The place is an utter basket case. A small country like Botswana is more likely to put someone on the moon than N.K. carrying out a very patient long term hack on Sony.

encouragement of corruption

Or encourages corrupt behaviour.
People resorting to criminal acts to get around new restrictions that were probably not worth implementing in the first place.

I don't know anyone who handles explosives

I'm not in the film industry so I was mentioning a creeping corporate thing. First they tested the shot firers after a few accidents, but now it's crept to any contractor that goes out on site and in some mining companies it appears to be anyone in the city offices below a certain pay level. Given a few recent decisions in some places maybe testing for cocaine and similar should be done at the top instead, but maybe it's just trust fund baby syndrome at work and I can be thankful that I work for several clients instead of directly for them.
Anyway my point is that given the nature of society you are going to lose a few people if you take a zero tolerance attitude, and some of those people may be far more useful than the HR people that are doing the removal. It's intrusive, counterproductive, and mucking about with bodily fluids on an industrial scale while attempting to keep costs low can get very unhygenic. It's also an encouragement corruption, for instance I've got a co-worker that was offered fifty bucks for his urine by a guy that only had to lay cables out in a paddock - no driving or other activities that are illegal while inebriated.

As for (2), that's good news until the union's computers get hacked, but presumably they are both taking more care (since it's part of their "core business") and have a much smaller attack surface.

If the ticket for the last helicopter out didn't cost $1M, would there even be a last helicopter out?

Yes. The guy that takes advantage is not the same one that has the power to provide the helicopter or not.


Things are getting very grey, even almost black here and considering the content of a historically set novel I'm reading I may start mentioning the modern version of pimps hanging around bus stations to recruit likely girls as an example of where your "pure" economics gets rejected by society. Are you really comfortable with that? Have you really considered such implications before posting something like what you have written above? Do you care that I consider you dangerously naive but have been hoping for some sort of insight from you anyway?

In the long term we should WANT to eliminate jobs. If robots can do all the work then great, that frees people up to do what they want instead of what they have to do.

Capitalism is going to end when automation is producing everything. Some sort of socialism is going to be the dominant economic system - this trend can be seen in most of the 1st world already. Even in the USA where the "free market" seems to be worshiped there is a growing number of people who see that helping out people is more important than accumulating wealth.

Today's tech still requires people, but it is obvious that improvements in automation and related computer technologies are reducing the number of people required to produce the things we need. This trend will accelerate over the coming decades. The current economic system isn't going to work well when no one, or even very few people, need to work.

A good first step would be to move to a 4 day work week. The 5 day work week was only adopted nationally in the USA in 1940. The 4 day work week is something all the first world nations should do at the same time.

The next steps will involve a gradual shift to a system that most people would see as a mixed capitalist/socialist economy with socialism becoming the dominant factor over a number of years. This trend has started in many countries, with the USA being a notable exception.

If governments and the rich and powerful try to cling to what will become untenable systems then there will be revolution. If governments make changes like the 4 day work week, minimum income, etc... then the transition will be much more peaceful.

These changes can't be stopped. Society and the economy will have to change as technology improves production and eliminates jobs.

This is all a GOOD thing. People will get to do what they want. Most people, given the chance, do want to do useful constructive, or creative things. They want the respect of other people. I expect the percentage of people that sit on the couch and watch tv will be quite small. And even if it isn't it won't matter!