Ah yes, the downtrodden shareholders. Selfless upper management live near the poverty line in order to maximize value for the shareholders.

Is your head encased in a concrete block? Have you ever looked at the winners and losers in the US economy? Upper management in the US don't give a tinker's damn about shareholders, customers, or employees. They screw everyone in their pursuit personal wealth. Large companies are run primarily for the gain of the corrupt insiders.

Look at what happened in the financial sector in the ten year run-up to the 2008 crash. The people at the top were wildly irresponsible because they were making obscene amounts of money. After the crash, none of them suffered at all.

Consider Angelo Mozilo the former CEO of Countrywide Mortgage. Conde-Nast Portfolio placed him the second on their list of the 25 worst CEOs of all time. It's hard to know the exact figures, but at one point his compensation was $470 million. Even though he had to personally pay a $46 million fine to keep from being criminally charged, he still ended up filthy rich. With the post 2008 stock market gains he may be worth more then $470 million by now.

Meanwhile, the shareholders at Bank of America, which bought Countrywide, are still paying for the bad loans that he was responsible for creating. The only reason banks are profitable right now is because the FED discount rate is between 0.0% and 0.25%, which is basically free money. A senile poodle could run a profitable business with 0% loans.

Those 0% loans from the FED are de facto backed by the people of the US. Effectively the common national debt increases. So the CEO class makes personal profit by siphoning wealth from everyone. We have an economic system that redistributes income upwards. The proof of this is the ever increasing wealth gap between the top 10% and the declining fortunes of the 90%.

So why are you making excuses for greedy incompetent psychopaths who will destroy anything as long as they are making money? What's wrong with you?

Good. I'll keep posting more of it.

The shorter version: you didn't bother to read the article.

It talks a lot about the actual decision making process, which you did not reference. It also goes into great detail on how sport fishing has been a major driving force in fishery policy since the introduction of salmon in the late 1960's. It ends with the current dilemma of balancing between the re-emergence of trout as the primary sport fish vs the salmon, which are not doing well. The irony is that a trout friendly ecosystem is much closer to the way the lakes were before the man made changes that lead to the introduction of salmon in the first place.

You'd rather just whine in complete ignorance rather then read something interesting and become more knowledgeable. Pathetic.

Sorry, I ment Kim Jong-un, not Kim Jong-il. Wrong mad generation of mad dictator.

This is the kind of retaliation that seems to fit the North Korean mold. It doesn't matter if they did it themselves or had someone else do it for them.

There seem to be two general styles of politically motivated hacking. One is the NSA/CIA style: the goal is to get as much information as quietly as possible. One of the things that the Snowden/Manning leaks revealed is how extensively the NSA was able to do this.

The other style is the highly visible attack. This is the kind of thing that the Syrian Electronic Army engages in. Much of what they do is intended to be high profile whether they claim responsibility or not.

Despotic leaders like Assad and Kim Jong-il want to see damage and humiliation inflicted on their enemies. It's fundamental to their political strategy. They do this internally to victims of their regimes and externally to their foes.

Rationally it doesn't make much sense for North Korea to waste this kind of capability on a single company. That kind of activity would be better used on a strategic target, say a western defense company or infrastructure in South Korea. (There have been attacks on South Korean banks that fit this description.) But Kim Jong-il is not a rational leader. Atacking Sony because of a perceived personal insult seem just like the kind of thing he would do.

There are plenty of examples of "bad behavior" on Slashdot. I've been accused of this myself, for not being "polite". So it seems obvious that it's only a matter of time until someone in London figures out that collectively Slashdot is a "bad influence" and it gets banned.

Which side won the Cold War again? Oh yeah, "Ignorance is Strength". That side.

Keep that KKK meme running, asshat!

The predominant native US movements using terrorist tactics are all right wing. Assassinating doctors at medical clinics providing abortion services. The truck bomb attack in Oklahoma City against a federal office building. The threats against BLM officials in Nevada and Utah. Militia movements./a> Posse Comitatus threatening violence to government officials.

Left wing violence is a thing of the past. You're flogging a dead horse. Environmental extremism is nowhere near the levels it was in the 70's through the mid 80's. When Greenpeace goes out and makes trouble it's not in the US, it's going against Japanese whaling ships. They may get funding from the US, but not doing much to get arrested here.

There are no radioactive scorpions with commie mind control venom lurking under your house. Maybe if you were taking the right meds the paranoia would abate and you would not live in such a distorted and fearful universe. It might even be simpler then taking prescription drugs. For a first step, try leaving your parents basement and watch something else besides Fox News. At least it would be a change...

People in southern California need help to stop fracking in earthquake prone areas, which is pretty much the entire southern end of the state. The oil companies have a lot of money to spend on local politicians to get fracking approved, so maybe it's time to get some help from a guy who really cares about the well-being of people around the world, Vlad (The Impaler) Putin.

Clearly oil companies don't give a rat's ass about the effects of oil extraction (can you say DeepWater Horizon?), so it just makes sense to find allies wherever you can. Given the Supreme Court ruling on non-disclosure of unlimited political contributions, it should be a snap to get Russian money into US politics. It's not like big business in the US has any national affiliation (Apple/Google paying no taxes), so why not get foreign funding? It's not that big a step from what corporations are doing already.

Cynical much?

You've got it completely backwards. Sony has lost a vast amount of credibility and trust, and it will take a long long time to get it back.

As you yourself said, "their connections, the power they have to move the industry" carry a lot of weight. A lot of people inside and outside Sony could have their reputations ruined by these leaks. The film industry is full of gossip and jealousy, and people often say things in private that can be incendiary if they get loose. If someone with big clout is offended, a lot of current and future deals could go out the window. Grudges are real, and can last a lifetime.

And even non-bigwigs can be wrecked. Suppose someone takes time off, or has other issues from stress and uses prescription medication as a result. This could easily end up in personal records. This gets out, and that person could find themselves unemployable anywhere. Not even able to get a minimum wage job in retail or fast food, much less the entertainment industry. Remember, there are a lot of show hires and workers are transient, so there are a lot of ex-employees with records at Sony.

Sony could be on the hook for a huge class actions suit, particularly if you consider ex-employees. No matter how long ago it was, if you name shows up online as a result of this breach you have a valid reason to sue.

And Sony is not a well regarded company in Hollywood. They are known for squeezing the life out of people and then giving them the boot. They routinely have layoffs while they are advertising for new hires. (Everyone in Hollywood does this, but Sony is a prime example.)

They keep a few people around but nobody lasts because it's cheaper, and transient workers are no threat to bad upper (or middle) management. Bad practice can be hidden if there is no one around to complain or remind anyone of previous mistakes. (Just ask anyone who has been cycled through Disney about this.)

Given the combination of ill will and a lot of ex-workers, don't be surprised when the civil actions start. Sony doesn't have a leg to stand on, particularly on personal records. They had no partitioned networks/systems, no encryption, and didn't detect the breach until they were screwed. It's going to be just like drug lawsuits: there will be multiple late night commercials fishing for anyone who worked at Sony to join in.

Hollywood is a schadenfreude kind of town. There will be a lot of movie industry types who will derive a lot of satisfaction from watching Sony suffer mightily because of this.

In the most recent election, there were 10 or so elected judge positions. Each had 3 or 4 candidates. Of the total candidates, over 50% listed their occupation as "Gang prosecutor", or a similar phrase. Because the only thing judges ever do is hear cases about gangs, or so one might think. No traffic court, no civil litigation, no other criminal cases. Only gangs.

Way to go 'Merica!!

It's simple: quantity over quality. And because they can. Beyond that, if they can get funding, they (NSA/BND/etc) will do it, because spying is what they do. They need no other reason.

Of course the practical result is that they spend so many resources spying on the masses that they are incapable of doing anything else well. For example, they have the meta data on a large percentage of all the phone calls in the world, but they were caught flat footed by the rise of ISIS in Syria. If they spent 1/100 of the time and money wasted on tapping everyone's phone on doing the hard human intelligence in places like Syria, the world would be a better place.

So ultimately we are all demonstrably less safe because of the huge time and attention sinkhole of mass surveillance. Not to mention the cost and threat to democracy. All you need is know the history of the FBI to realize that illegal spying on civilians will inevitability lead to abuse of that information. We'll find out about the current abuses in 20-30 years, after the bad actors have retired or died, and it's too late to do anything for the victims. For example, the full text of the letter from the FBI to MLK trying to get him to commit suicide was just released a month or so ago.

Every time I post under this title I get modded down to -1,000,000. So what? I'm right, and tearing out a book page, or voting down reality is just a form of political masturbation. I'm going to continue saying this every time I see Republicans choosing to be stupid. Not opposing vile behavior is giving up.

The shorter version: fuck Republican stupidity.

Researchers from Stanford demonstrated in 2005 how to generate an image of a scene from the point of view of the light source instead of the camera. It's called dual photography, and has some similarities to the single pixel technique.

We present a novel photographic technique called dual photography, which exploits Helmholtz reciprocity to interchange the lights and cameras in a scene. With a video projector providing structured illumination, reciprocity permits us to generate pictures from the viewpoint of the projector, even though no camera was present at that location. The technique is completely image-based, requiring no knowledge of scene geometry or surface properties, and by its nature automatically includes all transport paths, including shadows, interreflections and caustics. In its simplest form, the technique can be used to take photographs without a camera; we demonstrate this by capturing a photograph using a projector and a photo-resistor. If the photo-resistor is replaced by a camera, we can produce a 4D dataset that allows for relighting with 2D incident illumination.

It exploits Helmholtz reciprocity to swap the camera view with the light view. If light is modeled as rays/photons, the path between the light source and a camera pixel is the same going from the light to the pixel, or the pixel to the light. Hence reciprocity.

Yes, Mr. ShashDot Pundit. You're absolutely right.

You are so smart and they are so dumb. it's guaranteed that they spent no time doing any calculations about this. Every engineer they have has never even seen the ocean, only designed stuff on paper/computers in nice clean rooms. They've never run any simulations, or done any physical testing at all, because all engineers just know that complex new things always work perfectly the first time.

So just call them and talk to the receptionist, or send them an email and tell them about your brilliant insight. I'm sure that once they hear your detailed criticism it will bring their foolish scheme to a screeching halt. At the very least they will give up, or see the light and appoint you the head honcho. Only your fantastically sharp mind can save them.

Good luck with your new position.

To late. The Republican party has decided to legislate against reality already.

House Republicans pass bill forbidding scientists from advising the EPA on their own research :

H.R. 1422, which passed 229-191, would shake up the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, placing restrictions on those pesky scientists and creating room for experts with overt financial ties to the industries affected by EPA regulations.

The bill is being framed as a play for transparency: Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, argued that the board’s current structure is problematic because it “excludes industry experts, but not officials for environmental advocacy groups.” The inclusion of industry experts, he said, would right this injustice.

But the White House, which threatened to veto the bill, said it would “negatively affect the appointment of experts and would weaken the scientific independence and integrity of the SAB.”

In what might be the most ridiculous aspect of the whole thing, the bill forbids scientific experts from participating in “advisory activities” that either directly or indirectly involve their own work. In case that wasn’t clear: experts would be forbidden from sharing their expertise in their own research — the bizarre assumption, apparently, being that having conducted peer-reviewed studies on a topic would constitute a conflict of interest. “In other words,” wrote Union of Concerned Scientists director Andrew A. Rosenberg in an editorial for RollCall, “academic scientists who know the most about a subject can’t weigh in, but experts paid by corporations who want to block regulations can.”