Because as everybody knows, all Apple employees are special little snowflakes whose precious little lives

They are human beings who deserve a break from a rough work schedule, and again what is even the point of serving Sony's 11th hour demands when a release next week has essentially the same effect? Are you truly so daft as to imagine the physical act of release means anything next to the symbolic act of simply saying the release will go ahead?

I somehow get the sense you are that daft, and perhaps far dafter than can be discerned at first glance... I'll let you have the last response as you are quite simply batshit insane and not worthy of further correspondence.

Yeah, what the hell is this, HackerNews? :-)

That is simply not true.

Free Speech in the states has never been interpreted as a right to libel. To shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

The roots of free speech in American law lie deep in the desire for open and civilized debate over public affairs without fear of governmental interference and reprisals. But there can be no debate if the other side is free to shout you down, take control of the mike, drive you off the stage, threaten your life, your family.

That is also true about the US too, and their adamant allegations about another country have always turned out to be true...

Yeh! Except isn't Sony a Japanese company? Who am I being patriotic for by seeing it?

No. Offense can surely be given. But trying to magically legislate it away is a horrific, cowardly, hubris-ridden mistake. Offense arises because of difference in opinion and grasp of fact, intentional or not.

Because of this, it can and will always arise, no matter how narrow you choke down the channel of discourse, unless or until all have the same opinions and grasp of facts, which, one hopes, will never, ever come about.

The most productive course is to try not to give offense, and if received, to assess it and take value (warning, insight, stance, new information) from it if possible — otherwise, let it go.

Restricting opinion by legal means is one of the worst ideas ever. Offense is not a legitimate mitigating factor for censorship and repression. When enacted into law as justification for anything, what it tells us is that we need new legislators, because the ones we have demonstrated fundamental incompetence.

There is, however, possibly the world's largest repositories of rare earth metals.

What the hell does Thailand have to do with North Korea?

Prejudiced much?

North Korea does not have any great need to repress bad publicity. The royal house of Thailand is very different, and in a very different country with a very different culture.

It is begging the question, isn't it?

I am fairly confident that there are people in the three letter agencies and the government that aren't so much interested in finding the truth as in blaming the Most Hated Enemy du jour.

Actually, that's not what it says. It says that plurality is not to be posited without necessity, i.e. don't add complexity to reach a conclusion if it can be reached without adding it.

The simplest solution here isn't that it's North Korea acting based on an unreleased movie they probably hadn't even heard of before this whole debacle, displaying hacking skills not seen before, and then denying it.

Much simpler solutions could be disgruntled former employees or someone doing it for the lulz. It's not like Sony hasn't been a magnet for the latter, with all the previous hacks.

In any case, unless the three letter agencies are withholding crucial information, there's not enough to go on here to point the fingers at Kim Jong-Un. I'm sure there are people who would blame him no matter what, because frankly he's an asshole of Goatse dimensions, but the evidence needs to be far more solid than this.

I've seen nonsense about inductance and capacitance. And then it'll be stranded. Oy.

Most people are using it to make a permanent connection in their homes with stranded wire... so endurance, fatigue, corrosion are all non-issues. I would wager a very high sum of money that double-blind testing would result in no perceptible difference.

To make a political statement? Since when was this "a political statement"? It was an attempt to stop a movie that made fun of the Great Leader. An attempt that mostly succeeded. Which was done after previously threatening Sony about the issue.

What, exactly, is to gain by admitting culpability? Is that usually what criminals do? "Why, yes, officer! I threw the brick through my ex's window to get back at her and scare her. I'm telling you now so that you can go ahead and punish me!"

Because the world is just full of people who would hack a company to blackmail them not to release a movie about Kim Jong Un. Because everyone loves the Great Leader! His family's personality cult^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HVoluntary Praise Actions only take up about 1/3rd of the North Korean budget. And I mean, they totally deserve it. I mean, did you know that his father was the world's greatest golf player who never had to defecate and whose birth was fortold by a swallow and heralded by a new star in the sky?

No, of course it wasn't North Korea. Clearly it was the work of America! Because America wants nothing more than a conflict with North Korea right now. Because clearly Russia and Syria and ISIS aren't enough, no, the US obviously has nothing better to do than to try to stir up things out of the blue with the Hollywood obsessed leader of a cult state whose family has gone so far as to kidnap filmmakers and force them to make movies for him. It all just makes so damn much sense!

Cue the conspiracy theorists in three, two, one...

They aren't scare quotes - they are there to differentiate people who think they can hear things that they really can't from people who truly chase better sound. If I hear anything about oxygen in your speaker wire, you'll get the quotes.