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Comment Re:Who will get (Score 2, Informative) 360

Maybe your clues are wrong.

North Korea faces famine: 'Tell the world we are starving'

More than a decade after North Korea was struck by a famine that killed up to a million people, the country's poorest are once again facing starvation, reports Peter Foster in Yanji

Pyongyang’s Hunger Games

... during the great famine of the 1990s, between 600,000 and 2.5 million people died of hunger. According to the commission’s report, the North Korean regime, then headed by Kim Jong-il, obstructed the delivery of aid to the hungriest regions until 1997, and punished those who tried to earn, buy, steal or smuggle in enough food to survive. The regime was “well aware of the country’s deteriorating food situation” as it stocked airfields, reactors and palaces, rather than food stores.

According to one expert witness testimonial before the commission, the North Korean regime, at the height of the famine, could have closed its food gap by importing between $100 and $200 million worth of food each year, which is just 1 to 2 percent of its national income. Yet rather than using foreign food aid to supplement its own commercial food imports, the commission found that Kim Jong-il used aid “as a substitute for” them, cutting back on commercial food imports when more aid arrived. By contrast, the State Department estimates that in 1997, at the peak of the famine, North Korea’s annual military budget was $6 billion.

Comment Re:Again... (Score 1) 212

The nation's economy collapsed because the steel factory shut down? Some equipment was damaged, maybe they should have insurance for that?
Possibly there should be a worry would be injuries or deaths, so in that context security is of an important safety concern.

It's not on the same scale as collapsing the power grid for millions of people, businesses, and hospitals. Or tying up world wide credit processing for weeks, which would have some serious economy consequences.

Comment Re:Who will get (Score 1, Insightful) 360

You act as if the common North Korean citizen has internet access.

Indeed. The typical North Korean subject likely doesn't have enough calories per day to thrive, and lets skip the question of nutrition. Even the North Korean armed forces have been on lean rations the last several years.

Comment Introducing... (Score 1) 73

Programmer's Pizza*

Eating just the right amount will allow you to reach optimum blood sugar levels for creative programming. However, be warned that eating too much will probably put you to sleep.

Please watch this space for the introduction of our follow-up product: Programmer's Spaghetti (with Object-Oriented Meatballs)*

*Garlic levels tailored for maximum personal isolation. Do not use if in a relationship or if expecting a job interview. May cause immediate termination of relations, arms-length disease, and acne. Not suitable for homeopathic dilution. May enhance programming mania. Use with caution.

Comment Re:Interesting (Score 1) 115

Fine; but Cuba is one, at least as far as I know, that doesn't have a significantly built-out Internet structure, even though the hardware to do so is pretty far down the road to commoditization. They're very late to the game, and this should (ok, could) afford them some advantages. So what I was trying to say (and apparently, saying badly) was that it will be interesting to see how they go about it.

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