I think there's a slight misscommunication here (probably on my part).

The instability in NK isn't only from a change in attitude, though that HAS been significant in recent years. The instability comes from the fact that it's getting harder and harder to ignore the *starving population* and *rapidly failing "industry"*. Even the strongest True Believer in the Kim family regime has to be doing an increasinly absurd amount of justification. The fact that some (still VERY small, but growing) portion of the population has started to look outside that carefully controlled box is a byproduct of this decay. There are many parts of NK that are really only holding together by the thinest of threads, and that imbalance is harder to support when you run out of natural resources and productiivty to pillage.

Hence the problem for China: if NK went full rebellion, tthat would sugest there's a certain critical mass of people within NK that could handle stuff like rebuilding their infrastructure, at least in principle. After the dust settles, go in with some UN people to offer a bit of financial or industrial help while they bootstarp. As bad as revolutions are, that situation at least has a "reasonable" chance at a stable, not-horribly-expensive-for-China outcome.

Unfortunately, as you note, there ISN'T enough support for a traditional rebellion. It's a big change in attitude for NK, but you can't erase that much indoctroination overnight. They likely will need a nation's worht of "deprogrammers"/exit-councelers or somesuch, which is *not* something China (or anybody) really wants to be suck providing.

So many people here obviously haven't learned anything new about the NK situation in the last 10 yeears, or even the last 5.

Basically any real "stability" in the country died with Kim Jong-il. It probably collapsed much earlier, though that gets harder to pin down the further you go back. The key point, though, is what once was a more-or-less unified group of fanatics has slowly come to realize that there's another world out there, and the reality of what their leaders are has become harder and harder to ignore.

Doubt this? Think there's still some kind of politics or ideology at work here, making NK the same "annoyance" they were 10 - or even 5 - years ago? Then watch this brave NK woman publicly confront a soldier, shame him, and chase him off .

  A handful of years ago that would have been suicidal - or worse.

Oh, and China? The politics of the past doesn't matter. What they know now is that there are a VERY large number of people - mostly decent people, most likely - that have lived their whole lives in what was, more or less, a cult. And they know that there is a very real risk that those "[sometimes former] cult members" could become "starving refugees" almost overnight.

Even if they wanted to, that's a crisis on a scale not even China can sweep under a rug. They are facing the possiblity of being neighbors to a country with a small number of fanatics/old-guard that no longer have real power (enough to be a problem, though), a MASSIVE numbre of people who really need some sort of deprogramming/cult-exit-councelor, and some unknown mix of economic assistance, knowledge assistance/guidance, etc. If they end up with an incredible amount of luck, the people of NK might just be able to so they can bootstrap their country into something aproaching sustainable.

I suspect that China, more than anything, wishes they could simply get rid of this mess.

I have read the news, and while there are quite a few spots around the world - some of them islamic. None of them are particularly threatening. We have a military that drawfs the militaries of the rest of the world combined.

Or are you saying that the fine men and women in our various armed forces are so incompetent that they couldn't defend against an attack from a far smaller, far weaker enemy? (not to mention all those impressive tool and weaponss we've invented) Such a position would be rather insulting to those serving to defend this country.

To suggest that any small terrorist group is any kind of actual threat implies that either 1) you have no idea wthat you're talking about ("the fool"), 2) you are unable to tell the difference between political rhetoric and a an actual threat of attack ("the easily frightened"), or 3) you're trying to scare other people with bogeymen in an effort to push another agenda ("the shill").

Maybe you'll find something if you look.

You know what I see in the news/etc? Certain US agencies and elected officials breaking their oaths to the constitution, spreading panic to get what they want, and generally doing their best to ruing this country's reputation.

So ou're right - we should keep up with the news and learn from the real threat: the unamerican traitors that are trying to destroy the very things this country if founded upon.

Please, go watch the talk I mentioned in some other posts.

You really, REALLY need to listen to the lessons in the talk. The the current "You'll get over it" attitude hurt fark a lot, and it will hurt you too. The talk covers the issue VERY well, though, and there is still time to reverse course by following the lesson the talk presents. They clearly show a way you CAN intoduce a new set of features like your beta in a way that doesn't scare existing users.

In all seriousness, this will be the most important hour of video you'll watch in years. Learn from those that made mistakes in the past... and were kind enough to *discuss* those mistakes in public so we can avoide repeating the failures!

As I said (late) in the previous thread, the people over at Fark gave an incredible talk on this very issue, after figuring out how to recover from their "You'll get over it" incident. It is literally the perfect discussion of the ways /. is failing hard right now.

As you say, it's about a fundamental miss-understanding of relationship, by thinking of your members as an "audience", and not peers. Even worse, they are peers that are only here because it's the current familiar ploace to "hang out" at. Piss them off - or even simply surprise them the wrong way and they will simply go hang out somewhere else.

(*sigh* - the /. staff doing the beta *REALLY* needs to watch this talk ASAP, because they are currently doing basically *every* single bad move discussed in the talk. Yes, you there, slashdot staff - drop what you're doing and watch this talk right now. There's a good chance you know the incident I'm refering to with the phrase "You'll get over it", and you need to listen to these lessons from those that walked the path your're currently on. You still have time to reverse course, if you change right now)

To the /. staff creating this new "beta" project, and anybody else concerned with the change:

You need to watch this talk from NOTACON 8 by Joe Peacock of fark.com. It is an amazing pice of introspection about how they seriously pissed off their users with a new design, - costing them most of their readership (aka "income").

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

The issue is one of "buy-in", and how it doesn't matter if a change is actually objectively "better" - the problem is that you should never surprise your users. WIth any social "hang out spot", people are going there more because they are used to it and just want to "hang out" in a familiar place.

Even if a change is a true improvement (which is rare, as most changes are subjective anyway), forcing ANY big change is disruptive.

As an example, imaging you went to your favorite resturant, expecting to get that cool sandwitch that you order every time you go there. One day, you show up, and they've changed the wallpaper, re-arranged the tables, and worst of all, the entire sandwitch section of the menu has been replaced with gourmet pasta dishes.

Maybe you like pasta. Maybe it actually would be a higher quality meal. Maybe re-arranging the tables allws them to fit more people in so you don't have to wait when there is a crowd. Unfortuately, none of that matters - at a base emotional level, you're still angry because you weren't able to get that sandwitch you were hoping for.

There are ways to introduce changes: add them picemeal, opt-in. That way, people can warm up to the new features on their own time. The talk examines these methods in more detail.

So i implore the /. staff to watch that talk and listen to its lessons - and warnings, because neither a literal nor figurative "Youll get over it" is the correct way of handling this situation.

Yah, they could use an editor. Do note, though, that many of the authors have been at this for years now; the weary may be showing a bit. I certainly noticed a bit at this VERY interesting talk by two of the authors (Drake, Binney, with Jesselyn Radack also speaking) from a year ago at 29C3 . They're certainly not practiced public speakers, either.... but hearing theory stories told first-person more than makes up for any such deficency O.O

You'll note that the only link I provided that brought up "phone metadata" disagrees with that assessment, but that's not really important. As I'm sure you noticed, I'm talking about a larger problem than any one court case, about how we seem to have a status-quo where patent 4th Amendment violations are ignored. When writs of assistance are regularly used to justify mass collection[*] without specific warants, we're obviously not using the *Constitution* any more, and the SCOTUS isn't particularly relevant.

I'm sure you have some better response for THINTHREAD-vs-TRAILBLAZER and the NSA's role in 9/11, right? Instead of just projecting more onto Snowden? Or are your too busy masturbating over your assination fantasies like so many other NSA-apologists seem to be doing recently?

[*] Note: do NOT bother replying with the usual NSA doublespeak. If they get to redefine "collecting" to to mean "only if we choose to log that we looked at it, even though it's in our database", then I get to redefine "protest" into all kinds of fun things. Words have meanings, and you know it.

As interesting as Snowden is, this is a distraction from the more important (and probably more urgent) question of... when are the criminals at the NSA going to be brought to justice?

Also, when do we fire the people that sold out our actual spy talent - with their far more targeted, far more 4th Amendment compatible tools like THINTHREAD - instead of continuing to give a paycheck to the assholes that let 9/11 happen so they could keep funneling money to their contractor friends to develop the far more expensive TRAILBLAZER? The families of the victims that died do this willful neglegence will probably want to file civil lawsuits, too.

A cornerstone of the very idea of "justice" is equal protection before the law, and these people need to get their day in court. If they do, then maybe we can start to put this feckless imbroglio behind us and move on, with only the usual political drama to worry about.

On the other hand, if we fail to accomplish this task - if we fail to obtain some basic symbol that the Constitution is still respected as the highest law of the land - then we've really given up any last pretense that this is any kind of civilized nation with a social contract.

no, what Snowden did was to make the crimes of his superiors public, aka "whistleblowing". At no point does "civil disobedience" enter into this.

The only chaning of laws that have even been mentioned by him is to respect the constitution. Do you really want to claim that respecting the constitution - the highest law of the land - is civil disobedience?

It's a good thing, then, that Snowden - nor anybody actually following this saga - is claiming that Snowden is engaging in "civil disobedience".

Snowden is a whistleblower.

Furthermore, the espionage act (which he is currently charged under) would NOT allow him to defend himself in court, so these cries that he should have stayed and faced our legal system are only asking for a show trial similar to those found in the Star Chamber.

So which are you? "badly misinformed" or "NSA shill"?

We've been slowly moving in that direction for quite some time now. Often, when some of those small, individual steps have been noticed and discussed, the discussion tends to (understandably) focus on the declne itself and the problems it brings.

Unfortunately, this almost always ignores another slowly-amplifying aspect of the problem: the gradual conditioning (Pavlov-style) of the people responsible. Each time we - The People - allow abuse of power to go unpunished or a another roadblock placed in the way of our Rights, the politician responsible is trained to do it again. We are very slowly traiing our politicians to believe that nobody will actually stop them. Even worse, we reward some of it, such as when we give paid vacations instead of years-in-prison whenever the police beat somebody up.

So now we have a problem on our hands: we've taught some people that they are above the law. We've taught that the risk of being caught is so close to zero that such concepts don't apply to them. When you have people that no longer fear reprecussions, there is no incentive for them to change. An argument could be made that it would even be a rational decision, given how reliable the historical record has been.

I strongly suspect that we won't see real change until this feedback-loop has been disrupted. Once the usual human level of fear has been re-established, we could see improvments quite quickly, but it has to be real - they have to truly fear that they could be held accountable for their own actions, in some way.

Hypothetically, there are a number of ways such a fear could be created. Traditionally, things like "being voted out of office" and "jail" have been used to decent effect. While I really wish such things were still realistic goals, I fear we have left those opportunities behind in the distant past.

Unfortunately, I fear there only one thing left that can break through the years of conditioning: the sight of one of their peers losing their head to the Guillotine[1] the angry mob constructed for the occasion. It might only take one - fear of that magnitude can shift attitudes amazinly fast. As a pacifist, though, I loath the idea[2] of such a tool could be necessary. There's still time for the players involved to choose one of the better alternatives.

As time goes on, the probability of some person(s) snapping and deciding to "fix" this mess French Revolution style is sounding far more realistic than a bunch of politicians suddenly ignoring years of conditioning and flipping sides, all on their own...

[1] : or the modern substitute
[2]: ...and really really really hope I am wrong about this

ack; in my hates, didn't notice the other author mentioned on wiki. That poem is atributed to Rudyard Kipling, not Shakespeare, though they both speak similarly on the subject.

I think you're probably strongly underestimating just how bad the *accusation* of such a charge can be,; especially with how easy it is to plant any sort of incrimnating file. Really, though, America's panic over that entire topic is a topic for another thread.

the story is now that you've payed someone to keep quiet

Of course, THAT obviously-wrong solution to being blackmailed has been know for a long time. As Shakespeare put it:

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

It may have bad consequences, and it may nto even work, but irunning fighting the blackmailer is still a much, much better option than giving in to what they want, which only invites more of the same.