When retards make a comment like that on a public site, hosted in the US, viewed primarily by US citizens. You would think they could see the inherently contradictory nature of such a thing but no, they are convinced somehow that the US government clamps down on information like a repressive regime, yet somehow managed to miss this, and the millions of other, sites hosted in its borders.

I've flown first class before, but the value proposition isn't really there. Given the choice between flying first, or flying economy and keeping the price difference, I'd pick the latter (I'll happily fly first when someone else is paying and I don't have the choice of taking the money though). Economy (well, Economy Plus, but it's United, so Economy on any other airline) on the 787 was the first time I've been sufficiently comfortable in an economy seat to get productive work done - usually I just sleep or zone out and watch bad movies. The interesting thing was that the first and business sections didn't seem any different from the 777, only the cheap seats improved.

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.

Those "sensor pods" are shaped like external fuel tanks. They've got that rounded and curved shape, to make them aerodynamic. Which is horrible for stealth. The F35 has to pack all its baggage inside the fuselage, with minimal openings.

A huge part of this question then becomes a tradeoff between stealth and features. You have to gve up some stuff if you want to be stealthy. So far, on the F35, most of those drawbacks have been "bought out" by spending a crapton on working around them. Stealt VTOL for example was a major PITA.

Considering the already absurd cost of the avionics electronics developed for the F35, tacaking on a completely new ground sensor package (and finding a place to PUT it inside the airframe) would have raised the cost quite a bit. Those sensor pods have been a work in progres for the last 15 years, the R&D is already mostly done. You can't compare that to a completely new package. (and you thought the rest of the new F35 had bugs and glitches?)

But that is just an accusation without any shred of evidence. You shouldn't be able to get a search warrant just for an accusation without any shred of evidence. And you are not answering my first point: What does Korean police to do with damage that was done in Germany? Only German police should be involved with this, since the crime happened in Germany.

If this works the same way that it does in Europe, then even after you've gone through this you get a code valid for 30 days that you can give to another operator to port your number. This gives them a little window to try to change your mind and is a fairly good way to protest.

Let's look at the facts: It is alleged that LG employees destroyed Samsung property in Germany. For starters, the only place where this should possibly go to court is Germany. None of the business of the Korean police at all. The crime happened in Germany. It's like one Korean CEO punching another Korean CEO in the face _in Germany_: We all enjoy it, and the first CEO would be questioned by police and go to court and possibly to jail _in Germany_.

Second, offices of LG in Korea have been raided. What evidence did they expect to find? For a raid (which I assume is just a search with a warrant, and lots of police arriving because it is a big office), the police would have a reasonable expectation to find proof of a crime. Well, in Korea, there is of course another explanation: If Samsung calls the right minister whom they own, any search warrant will come forward immediately.

But then a raid on an LG factory? What evidence in connection with a purported case of vandalism are the police expecting to find in an LG factory? Only possible explanation, same as above.

CEO not allowed to leave the country? That's getting bizarre. Do they think he won't come back? Never heard of bail?

I think it's getting time for LG to buy some politicians themselves. Worst case if someone gets convicted, they can then expect a pardon, like Samsung's ex-CEO (convicted for tax evasion).

Apple got a lot of bad press a few years ago for massively overestimating their battery life and is now quite a bit more conservative. They've gone from claiming 6 hours to claiming 8, but at the same time they've shipped lower power CPUs and doubled the size of the battery. There was a Kickstarter for an open source compatible laptop with very similar specs to the MBP floating around last week: they were also claiming 8 hours on battery, but they were shipping a battery half the size of the MBP. I guess they think Linux users keep the screen turned off.

Adjusting the brightness has a big impact on battery life for the MBP. Cutting it to 50% can give you another hour or two. I have gfxCardStatus installed and so disable the nVidia card if I'm going to be using it on battery for a while.

A big part of the reason for short battery lives is people who don't realise that LiIon and NiCd are not the same and think that they get the best battery life by completely draining the battery then charging it. LiIon prefers partial discharge and then full recharge, although the controller typically wants a complete discharge cycle every month or so for calibration.

The 787 has more legroom than any other plane I've flown in and this is aimed as a 787 competitor. Note that it depends a lot on the airline though - they get a lot of say in the exact layout of seats, so you'll see different amounts of legroom for different carriers and the same aircraft.

The A380 is really huge. A lot of the long-haul flights that I've been on in the last couple of years haven't been full, even when they're the one flight of the day between two points and are on a plane with half of the capacity of the A380. It's a very economical plane to fly if you can fill it up, but if it's likely to be under half full then it's very expensive. The big-planes, infrequently model doesn't really work with the hub-and-spokes model popular in the USA, because it either needs more coordination with short-haul spoke routes, or layovers (and the cost of near-airport hotels means that these can often make it cheaper to book a different airline's flight).

I flew on the 787 (LHR - IAH, both directions) for the first time this year and it was such a massive improvement over earlier models that I actually enjoyed flying for the first time in ages. Even in the cheap seats, there was lots of legroom, lots of overhead space (so you didn't feel cramped), the air pressure stayed good for the entire flight, the seats reclined comfortably without invading someone else's space. I managed to get more uninterrupted work done on the outbound flight than any other time over the surrounding few months. I'm really looking forward to airlines using similar craft on all long-haul routes.

One really good developer can, by code review, good design, and mentorship, dramatically improve the productivity of half a dozen middle-of-the-pack developers. To the point where it's actually worth a company's while to hire them. So you're arguing against the availability of jobs for you, not for it.

Sure, but it only matters when the ones in the USA are competing in a global market. How many of those other industries are contributing a lot to the US GDP from exports? Put the ones that are on the list of things to care about.

Not at all. He's saying that training doesn't create great programmers if they don't already have some innate ability. You need the mixture of ability and opportunity. Now that more and more of the world is growing up with computers, a lot more of the people with the ability are going to develop it. Graham wants those people to be in the USA.