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Comment by mmaunder | Hacker News Reader

4476 words. IMO this is badly written. The article stalls at "That mix of ubiquity and interchangeability makes the shipping container one of the most radical developments in global commerce since World War II. The first dedicated container ship was built in 1956, and virtually overnight the new logistical approach transformed the cargo business..."

I'd guess an intern took over at that point, fired up wikipedia and started filling in the other 4000 words.

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I dont agree, I think that the discussion of the shipping container and the security issues it has created provided some very interesting (to me) context to the story. I particularly enjoyed the quick discussion of the round trip the DHS took on achieving 100% scanning of container ships - from there to 'oh, hey, we'll make sure they all get scanned before they leave the remote port, thats exactly the same thing right?'

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I got a similar impression - lots of words, little pay-off.

Not only that (it would be OK if it was the only problem): the article is in a form of a thriller-movie rather than a scientific (or popular science) article - too many interspersed digressions, you have to read it until the very end to get the basic facts (contrary to the "inverted pyramid" principle). I would expect such an article to be broken down, with trivia such as details about the container markings extracted to text boxes.

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