We've long touted M.A.D. (and nuclear weapons as a result) as the invention of peace-ensuring weapons. Can't launch a nuke without being guaranteed that someone else will nuke you a few moments later, so you never launch yours.

But thirty minutes is shorter than the administrative effort for a launch-back. That's a big huge problem.

Ready the dead-man switches.

Apologies are absolutely meaningless statements, just like movie lines. And since we're dealing with a country that cares about apologies, it costs you absolutely nothing to give it -- and it savfes you a few billion dollars.

As for being responsible for private citizens, most terrorist attacks are done by private citizens. And since your laws don't count in the foreign country, I guess you should just sit back and do nothing, because the attacks came from outside of your jurisdiction, and they were just private citizens. Except you don't. You attack the entire country instead -- remember?

But there's something so much simpler going on here. Who the hell cares what's right, moral, or correct. You could kill people, you could get people killed, or you could say a few words. You're going to take the death approach because you believe that principles outweigh actual lives. Good for you. My family won't be around to bleed for your principles. I trust your family will stand with you -- or sit -- in the theatre. I can see my local headlines now: "USA gets blown up sitting down."

Let me know when your country grows up just a little bit. It's been a few hundred years, and you haven't progressed one iota.

"Comments owned by the poster." is a legal structure which requires a legal institution in order to have any interpretation whatsoever. The real issue here is that there are two legal institutions: the USA one, and the Korean one.

So which set of laws are you going to choose to enforce? Yours or theirs? You'll choose yours. They'll choose theirs. That's a pretty solid Nash equilibrium whereby lots of people die purely because lots of laws conflict.

So if you're going to prioritize life and blood, instead of freedom and liberty -- some wold argure that life and blood are the very basis for freedom and liberty, others would argure the exact opposite -- then you're going to need to do something to avoid the war. Since all it would take is a couple of words, that would seem to be the most cost effective solutions. And since the entire copyright and freedom of expression is there to protect economies and blood, it would stand to reason that the diplomatic solution would be the most rational of actions.

Now, like I said, I don't at all expect your country to take that route. It's just not in your nature, as you've so directly stated. And so, if the movies are released, I will 'conveniently' take my family and friends on a trip far far far away from your borders.

No one ever said that they could co-ordinate 18'000 attacks simultaneously. No one's worried about that.

What we are worried about is that they'll try, miss, and hit 100 random non-targets instead.

On a very different side of things, Sony's doing the right thing. As an entertainment company, indeed as any consumer/commercial company, Sony should not be creating a war -- rightfully or not. If it gets to that level, as it just did, Sony ought to back off and your government ought to step in to do something -- I know exactly what my country would do: publicly apologize for the insulting movie, as a sign of respect, and move on.

But your country doesn't like $50 solutions. Your country has always preferred $50 billion dollar solutions. So your president will likely escalate matters with a display of power. And if things do escalate, as we all know that they have in the past, you'll lose a few thousand soldiers' lives, instead of a few thousand movie-goers' lives -- as though that's somehow better, or any different at all.

Of course I'm all for freedom of expression. Of course I'm against slander too. And maybe, just maybe, it's a bad idea to insult an enemy while he's holding a few nuclear guns. Just maybe.

But hey, your country fought for its independence, with a lot of lives lost. Mine waited 100 years, and then asked politely.

HOSTS file.

HOSTS file, like I said.

So, instead of saying: "Hey Joe, check out vids.com", I'll say "Hey Joe, check out 74.238.38.132". Because that's somehow so much harder to do, especially in a link. Welcome to your HOSTS file.

direct vs indirect. opposites. so you're wrong, instead of right.

Wow, that actually went far more coherent than I was expecting.

So I'll push your very same argument one step further, which continues to align our two ever-closening (closening?) arguments:

I think we can both agree that allowing a human to pierce skin without permission is, in a lot of ways, significantly scarier than a virus doing so.

No problem. Then you won't charge me taxes to cover your school right? Your school will fall apart quite quickly. It won't be public anymore.

If you want to offer school for all, then that's what it is -- for all. You don't get to force anything more than taxes. You certainly don't get to assault and mutilate everyone as a result.

Your solution to disease is vaccination. It's mine too. It would be wonderful (for us) if it were everyone's solution. We still don't get to force them to take our less-than-perfect solution.

I am vaccinated, and believe it to be the best course of action, but that is hardly the point.

There is no way in hell that any government is going to demand that I stick anything into my body, let alone my child's body. And, if anyone were to try to pierce my skin, or the skin of my loved one, self-defense will cover my tearing them limb from limb.

Make no mistake, these people do not "endanger the lives of everyone else with their views". The virus endangers lives. These people's views merely inhibit everyone else from benefiting from currently-available medical prevention opportunities, which apparently aren't even "100 percent effective".

If you don't support someone else having control over their own blood, and the blood of their children, then you're for slavery, imprisonment, unlawful confinement, the crusade, and forced conversions of all kinds.

If you're upset with the promotion of mis-information, then stop its publication. Let me know how that goes for you.

You don't get to tell me what to put into my blood, and you don't get to tell me what I can say to my friends. Welcome to freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

You want to split public schools into two buildings, that's cool. You want to restrict some children from public school, that's no longer public.

I'm so sorry; but you don't get to solve your problems by piercing someone else's skin. It's just that simple. It doesn't matter if that's what will work. It doesn't matter if that's the only thing that will work. You just don't get to do it. It's physical assault. It's bodily mutilation. You need permission.

compared to something inside the vehicle, locked possibly twice, with no means of digital nor of remote access. oh, and breaking into a car is very illegal. stealing a car even more so.

It isn't.

This sounds like something that evolution would beat-out in two years flat. Visible light harming members of a population differently. . . how many generations do you think it would take?

You might want to go back to grade four, when they taught you (or ought to have) about root words.

You'll find that the root word of happy is shared by happen, happenstance, happening, and haptic. You'll find that to be happy is to be happy with what is happening. Being happy is being satisfied with your current happenstance. It has nothing to do with joy.

You may also want to go back to psych 101, where they taught you (or ought to have) about emotional indices. You'll find that joy is the emotion, and happiness is not.

You may also want to go back to that Latin course you took, or ought to have. You'll find that "joy, joyful" exists, but "happy, happyful" does not. When words are conjugated differently, they are almost always different parts of speech. Happy is an adjective. Joy is a noun. You experience joy. You don't experience happy. You experience happiness.

You can make up your own definitions for words, or you can use the meanings that the general public tends to use. Each is incorrect. Alternatively, you can actually use the meaning of the word, as it is almost always a simple definition from another language. If you do that, not only do things make sense, but foreigners will be capable of learning your language.

late 14c., "lucky, favored by fortune, prosperous;" of events, "turning out well," from hap (n.) "chance, fortune",
"lucky."