Holy shit. What state do you live in?

This. Bad text re-flow is simply inexcusable. The stupid subscribe ads make the site completely unusable, to boot.

Don't be naive, you know damn well that it doesn't stop at "talking to congressional representatives." The founding fathers never meant for the right to petition to translate into "The right for multibillion dollar international conglomerates to take congressmen on luxurious junkets where they can be educated on the need to propose and pass legislation that has been helpfully written by ALEC." Lobbying firms don't just petition. They bribe. They cajole. They threaten. If it was as simple as petitioning government, why would they need 8 or 9 figure annual budgets? And don't even get me started on SuperPACs.

Not true. There have been people working on this problem for over a decade; it has not been proven impossible. In fact there are several promising solutions that provide both an audit trail and secrecy. And you left off a third thing, no way to prove to a third party who you voted for.

Is that really so different from "I don't want to get get shot at or firebombed by fans of the prophet." Using violence or threats of violence to curb unwanted speech is an age-old phenomenon. I am surprised that people are just now getting rankled about it.

I'm a little befuddled by your conflation of European free speech curbing and the run-up to WWII. Keep in mind that most of the press during WWII was very right-wing and pro-fascist. And not just in Germany. There were several US and British newspapers that saw nothing wrong with Brownshirts destroying the godless communists and social democrats. In fact, it was common for the pro-fascists to hide behind free speech laws when "marching." They would claim it was just a legal protest against social democrats (and Jews). But that's a little off-topic and lot Godwin.

Funny, that's the same sentence I hear from Dice with that beta link.

If you think having a preacher scream "God Damn America" is somehow stumping for anybody in any election anywhere in the US, you are clearly an idiot.

This is not just making a copy. They used her work in a major motion picture. Big difference, jones. Maybe you're not an artist of any kind, so you wouldn't understand. But those of us who dabble in the arts can tell you it's a very personal expression. That's why copyright is important. People feel like they are entitled to control what they make. That is a very human thing to feel.

First of all, you say, "North Korea didn't hack Sony," as if it is an indisputable, known fact. It is not -- by any stretch of the imagination.

The fact is, it cannot be proven either way in a public forum, or without having independent access to evidence which proves -- from a social, not technical, standpoint -- how the attack originated. Since neither of those are possible, the MOST that can be accurate stated is that no one, in a public context, can definitively demonstrate for certain who hacked Sony.

Blameless in your scenario is the only entity actually responsible, which is that entity that attacked Sony in the first place.

Whether that is the DPRK, someone directed by the DPRK, someone else entirely, or a combination of the above, your larger point appears to be that somehow the US is to blame for a US subsidiary of a Japanese corporation getting hacked -- or perhaps simply for existing.

As a bonus, you could blame Sony for saying its security controls weren't strong enough, while still reserving enough blame for the US as the only "jackass".

Bravo.

Many of the same slashdotters who accept "experts" who claim NK didn't hack Sony will readily accept as truth that it was "obviously" the US that attacked NK, even though there is even less objective proof of that, and could just as easily be some Anonymous offshoot, or any number of other organizations, or even North Korea itself.

See the logical disconnect, here?

For those now jumping on the "North Korea didn't hack Sony" bandwagon that some security "experts" are leading for their own political or ideological reasons, including using rationales as puzzling and pedestrian as source IP addresses of the attacks being elsewhere, some comments:

Attribution in cyber is hard, and the general public is never going to know the classified intelligence that went into making an attribution determination, and experts -- actual and self-appointed -- will make claims about what they think occurred.

With cyber, you could have nation-states, terrorists organizations, or even activist hacking groups attacking other nation-states, companies, or organizations, for any number of motives, and making it appear, from a social and technical standpoint, that the attack originated from and/or was ordered by another entity entirely.

That's a HUGE problem, but there are ways to mitigate it. A Sony "insider" may indeed -- wittingly or unwittingly -- have been key in pulling off this hack. That doesn't mean that DPRK wasn't involved. I am not making a formal statement one way or the other; just saying that the public won't be privy to the specific attribution rationale.

Also, any offensive cyber action that isn't totally worthless is going to attempt to mask or completely divert attention from its true origins (unless part of the strategic intent is to make it clear who did it), or at a minimum maintain some semblance of deniability.

At some point you have to apply Occam's razor and ask who benefits.

And for those riding the kooky "This is all a big marketing scam by Sony" train:

So, you're saying that Sony leaked thousands of extremely embarrassing and in some cases damaging internal documents and emails that will probably result in the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment being ousted, including private and statutorily-protected personal health information of employees, and issued terroristic messages threatening 9/11-style attacks at US movie theaters, committing dozens to hundreds of federal felonies, while derailing any hopes for a mass release and instead having it end up on YouTube for rental, all to promote one of hundreds of second-rate movies?

Yeah...no.

Best response I've seen all day. But good luck convincing Apple that anybody but a "Genius" should be cracking open an apple device. Aren't they still using those patented fuck-you^W pentalobe screws?

Yeah either the article means BIOS or EEPROM, or Apple is clearly doing it wrong. From the article: "Malicious code installed in the MacBook boot ROM will be executed before the OS is loaded..."

Most of us hate various branches of Sony for different reasons, but remember, Sony Pictures is not the same as Sony BMG, is not the same as PlayStation. I personally don't have a beef with Sony Pictures, except that their DVDs tend to crash MTR.

We won a Fire in a raffle, so I put the next book of a series I've been reading on it. It works fine during the day and on the can, but it's awful right before bed. Even on its lowest brightness setting, it feels like staring into the sun (probably why it chews through battery so fast). Anybody know how to get Kindle books on an old Sony e-reader? Yay LCD!

Yeah, except it's not always a dictator that the US overthrows.