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An Offer to Sony from 2600

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Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#181

Post by junto »

atmosx wrote: post #118
junto wrote: post #77

I guess a movie about two brave maverick North Korean TV stars heading to Washington to assassinate Obama, the evil emperor of the United States could also be a 'funny' comedy movie to watch. Seriously though, while the plot of the film is both purile and offensive to the North Korean dictator personally, should NK be behind the attack on Sony (im still not convinced) then it is definitely an ulterly inappropriate re…

> I guess a movie about two brave maverick North Korean TV stars heading to Washington to assassinate Obama, the evil emperor of the United States could also be a 'funny' comedy movie to watch. Except from the fact that it's a boring script, I don't see nothing wrong with it and I'm pretty sure that you an do a movie like that anytime you'd like in the US. I'm pretty sure the government will not send hackers to attac…

No, that wasn't my point. My point that the film picked a target where it doesn't matter if it offends.

The film studio quite deliberately decided not to make a film about assassinating Vladamir Butin, or Angela Derkel.

I also find such a plot puerile. That was my point. Also read my original last sentence.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#182

Post by junto »

estebank wrote: post #171
junto wrote: post #77

I guess a movie about two brave maverick North Korean TV stars heading to Washington to assassinate Obama, the evil emperor of the United States could also be a 'funny' comedy movie to watch. Seriously though, while the plot of the film is both purile and offensive to the North Korean dictator personally, should NK be behind the attack on Sony (im still not convinced) then it is definitely an ulterly inappropriate re…

Death of a President and Vantage Point come to mind. There're many many films that talk about killing the president of the US of A, some using real presidents and in at least one case already mentioned, while that president was in office. You can find it tactless, and I this case painfully unfunny, but that should never stop anyone from doing anything. Specially bit a film. Otherwise there're large swaths of our publ…

Ah, yes, but who's the hero? Not the person who assassinates the president right? They are the villains.

I'm playing devil's advocate above, the last sentence was fairly clear about that, just in case you missed it.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#183

Post by junto »

raldi wrote: post #126
junto wrote: post #77

I guess a movie about two brave maverick North Korean TV stars heading to Washington to assassinate Obama, the evil emperor of the United States could also be a 'funny' comedy movie to watch. Seriously though, while the plot of the film is both purile and offensive to the North Korean dictator personally, should NK be behind the attack on Sony (im still not convinced) then it is definitely an ulterly inappropriate re…

Is your first paragraph intended to be sarcastic? If so, could you rephrase it without the sarcasm?

I'm merely making point that Sony chose NK because they don't matter. A movie about killing David Cameron might have set some red telephones ringing.

   Scene. Oval Office. Red telephone rings. Ring ring...

   Obama: Hey David, what's up dude?

   Cameron: um, you know, this new film about me being blown 
   up in my Prime Ministerial helicopter by some of your 
   special agents, because I'm an evil dictator?

   Obama: Oh, yes. Funny. Got a sneak preview of that. They 
   got you and your Eton homies down bro

   Cameron: hmm, yes. You know, could you ask them to stop 
   it? You know, or I'll let the GCHQ boys loose on the old 
   reservation if you know what I mean...
Yeah, it isn't believable, but that's the point. NK are the western's 'devil incarnate'. We can say whatever we want to about them, even make a movie just about killing their nepotistic dictatorial family, but it doesn't matter if it offends, because diplomatically NK are like a turd under the world's proverbial shoe.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why they are such a perfect scapegoat, and more importantly, that is why I find it so suspicious.

N.B. If it isn't obvious, my 'script' above is offensive. Whether or not I like or support David Cameron policies is irrelevant, but he's still my Prime Minister and he's a real person with a wife and child. Similarly Barack Obama is not some gangbanger, he's a smart man with noble beliefs (albeit a button that got pushed to make him flip flop on the NSA but who wouldn't), but still both British people and American people might find that script offensive. And just to be absolutely crystal clear, David Cameron having GCHQ hack a US film studio is of course an incredibly imbalanced response.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#184

Post by sitkack »

maroonblazer wrote: post #156
hellgas00 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the case where there is without a doubt a definitive 'ticking time bomb'. Torture is usually used to illicit confessions, and in the case of the CIA they used it as a method to garner further information without knowing if the subject had more information to give. Say the guy in the article was just a suspect and didn't actually know where the person was, is it prudent to torture him because he might know som…

Right, I wasn't arguing that torture was necessarily called for in situations where we don't know if someone has the desired information. I was more making the point that the idea that "torture never works" isn't borne out by the facts. One could imagine a situation where, like this one, we DO know the person has the information. Add to that the 'ticking time-bomb' context and it's difficult to argue against torture.…

Turn it up to 11 and see if any more "information" comes out. Sounds legit.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#185

Post by zaroth »

sokoloff wrote: post #148
zaroth wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything I think this shows how poorly the US Gov is prepared for cyber-warfare. The last decade was no cake walk, but the next decade will truly be eye opening. The FBI told Sony they didn't know if the theaters were safe. Seriously, WTF are we paying them for if they can't tell us, with absolute certainty, that our theaters are safe from terrorist attacks on Christmas. That's not very comforting... So what I'm h…

The FBI told Sony they didn't know if the theaters were safe. Seriously, WTF are we paying them for if they can't tell us, with absolute certainty, that our theaters are safe from terrorist attacks on Christmas. Are you kidding me? You expect that if the FBI can't say with absolute certainty that all 40K screens in the US are absolutely safe from terrorist attack on Christmas that they've somehow failed us? They'd ha…

You're right. The bit about 'absolute certainty' was hyperbolic on my part. How about this though;

You think it's too much to ask for the FBI to be able to stand up and say that this particular threat of violence, which feels like little more than chest-pounding script kiddies, is not credible?

My initial reaction was the physical threat was little more than a joke. The FBI and Homeland Security do need to be able to give proper guidance on credible and non-credible threats, and I think in this case in particular, it's a good example of something which I really would have hoped they could have explicitly labeled as non-credible.

Or to state it another way, if the accepted reaction is that we actually have to treat threats like this as credible, if attackers start spamming these threats are we just supposed to shut it all down?

What companies are looking for is a liability shield, and a public reassurance that they can use as a backstop for disregarding the threat. Otherwise they have no choice but to cave-in. So I think we depend on the FBI in specifically these cases to provide that level of assurance.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#186

Post by zaroth »

themartorana wrote: post #101
zaroth wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything I think this shows how poorly the US Gov is prepared for cyber-warfare. The last decade was no cake walk, but the next decade will truly be eye opening. The FBI told Sony they didn't know if the theaters were safe. Seriously, WTF are we paying them for if they can't tell us, with absolute certainty, that our theaters are safe from terrorist attacks on Christmas. That's not very comforting... So what I'm h…

"...what are we paying them for..." This is an argument that frustrates me. I don't mean to directly imply that parent feels this way, but there is this idea that our government can provide true assurances of our safety. But in a free society (or any) that's just not true. This idea isn't helped at all by the government pushing that they can, if we just hand over one more freedom, or give up one more bit of privacy.…

I agree, I went too far with 'absolute certainty'. I think a better way to reason about what are we paying them for is my response to @sokoloff above.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#187

Post by zaroth »

kiiski wrote: post #78
zaroth wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'sanctions haven't done a damned thing ever' OT, but have you read what's going on in Russian this last week? It's unbelievable how hard the sanctions have hit them, and how quickly. It's a huge story which has been drowned out in all this other noise. NK is obviously not Russia, being more insular makes it harder to sanction them. The escalation of cyber warfare, the possibility of it all being a false flag, the i…

I don't know what American news say, but from what I've gathered from Finnish news, the Russian troubles are mostly due to oil prices, and the sanctions have had very little effect.

I was reading an article on telegraph.co.uk [1] which very much pins the Russian collapse on sanctions;

  After years of bluster and suggestions by Mr Putin that the US is a paper
  tiger, the Kremlin is now coming face to face with the cataclysmic
  consequences of what it has done by invading Ukraine and changing
  Europe's borders by force. By the same token, Washington needs to move
  with care since it would be a geostrategic miscalculation of the first
  order to push a nuclear-armed Russia too far into a corner, or to
  perpetuatue a cycle of grievance.
[1] - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11297770/Russia...

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#188

Post by a3n »

encoderer wrote: post #157
downandout wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The CIA report threatens our legitimacy as a world power. The Sony hack just costs a corporation some money, maybe (free publicity FTW). Big. Deal. It is a big deal actually. Sony and these movie theaters taught the world that US businesses are so risk averse that they will give into any threat - credible or not. The crazies will now come out of the woodwork. Not every business will give in, but the volume of threat…

Sony is not a US Business...

> Sony is not a US Business...

Yep, it sure is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment

"Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (SPE) is the American entertainment subsidiary of Japanese multinational technology and media conglomerate Sony."

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#189

Post by riffraff »

q2 wrote: post #68
riffraff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a few years back we had Team America[0] in which kim jong il is painted as a crazy terrorist and in the end dies after the american world police gets to him, and is revealed to be an alien cockroach when he gets impaled on a tube. Apparently, that movie was ok, so why shouldn't this have been? There is always people whose sensitivity gets hurt by movies and books, but this should not automatically lead to stopping pu…

All things happened in the past may not be good for example financial crises, wars, tsunami's ...etc. So past is not reference to present or future. >>> There is always people whose sensitivity gets hurt by movies and books, but this should not automatically lead to stopping publishing. There are "defamation laws" in many countries. Many people/companies use them if they feel offended/hurt, even if they are not noble…

I think you misunderstood me: sony did not worry about north korea's sensibility, as you seemed to imply it should have done, because north korea has never manifested any interest in it.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#190

Post by MarkMc »

wylee wrote: post #155
MarkMc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about burning just the pages of the Koran that condone slavery. Is that still hate speech?

What about burning just those pages of the Bible that condone slavery?

I'm not sure I understand your point. I accept that both the Bible and Koran contain sections that condone slavery, but how does that affect the question of whether burning the Koran is 'hate speech'?
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