Re: Norks - Serious or not

But they don't want to be brought into the modern era. That would mean giving people some freedom, and probably revolution. The Chinese Communist Party has managed to keep in charge, despite modernising the country, but no-one else have managed it so far. And it's probably a different dynamic for North Korea, because of South Korea. They're much richer, and the more contact there is, the more attractive just re-joining the South is going to look.

Anyway, their current choice is nukes or aid. And they seem obsessed with keeping their nukes. They don't seem to have realised that having 1-10 nukes that you can't actually use doesn't make you a nuclear power, it makes you a target. Do they even have their nukes small enough for air-dropping yet? Which will depend on what planes they have available.

Re: Norks - Serious or not

Khaptain,

If anyone really knows anything, they're not saying. There have been enough defectors, and the stalemate has gone on long enough that I'd be surprised if the South don't have at least some decent intelligence sources up North by now (and by that I don't mean Barnsley...).

All the publicly available analyst types are busy writing pieces for the paper. Some of them being very definite as to what the correct policy is. But almost all of them admitting that they don't really know what the Norks' strategy is (or if they even have one). Publicly it's the usual mix of what they've done in the past, and doubts as to whether Kim Jong Un is actually in charge, just a puppet for others, or is struggling to fight off internal rivals. But then they were saying that about Kim Il Sung as late as the middle of the last decade, and now everyone seems to think he was in total charge, and his Dad had snuffed it in the early 90s - and Kim Jong Il got at least a decade of being named successor.

In the past they've made lots of threats, and done the nuclear or missile tests, then taken concessions in the talks/negotiations that followed (mostly food and fuel aid), then broken the deals but kept the goodies. Lots of the analysts seem to agree that they want direct talks with the US, and security guarantees and a treaty from them. Presumably on the grounds that they don't recognise the South as a legitimate government. But for diplomatic reasons it would be difficult for the US to do that, and upset the South. So I don't know if that's what they really want, or they're just setting a condition to get the US to humiliate the South, just so they can break the deals anyway.

They've got a huge army, but it's probably not too well trained. They spend most of their time doing manual labour. According to one defector they used to love the annual tension around the joint South-US military exercises. They went on full alert, so no digging ditches or working in the fields, and they got full rations too. So will the army be well motivated? Most of the Iraqi army didn't fight, for example. Doesn't matter how much propaganda you go in for, eventually most people are going to realise their country is horrible - and become cynical. Maybe that's already happened, in which case it might not be that awful. Or maybe the propaganda works, and most people do believe that the rest of the world is even worse than NK? Depressing thought if true. But as even their horrible standard of living has dropped since the 80s, I find that hard to believe. The South spend more on defence than the entire DPRK economy, and that's well under 3% of the South's GDP.

Re: Why Thatcher joined the Conservatives

So, there you have it. We ended up with a PM who was only interested in her ambition.

Likewise Tony Blair became an MP based upon a single vote cast at his constituency selection committee (41-40 IIRC).

Food for thought....

Hmmm... Perhaps some thought might be a good idea? Is it likely that Thatcher only joined the Conservatives because it was easier, and despite her opinions on socialism would have gone the Labour route otherwise? Or perhaps is it likely that this is an anecdote that means little?

On the Tony Blair thing, I'm no fan of his, and never voted for him. But he managed to get himself elected by his constituents to the Commons during a big Labour defeat, got re-elected in the same seat 6 times, got elected to the Shadow Cabinet, got elected as Labour leader and won 2 general elections with over 40% of the vote and big fat majorities (plus one more for luck). Given that, and that he'd been selected for a by-election before, I'm sure he would have got a seat eventually.

Re: One lasting change from Mrs T

And who the fuck do you think *legitimised* Tony and Gordon's behaviour?

I'd say that would be the voters who elected them. Funny thing this democracy lark, but people tend to get at least some of what they vote for. For example, Margaret Thatcher won 3 general elections as party leader, the final 2 larger than that which first got her in, in 79. Which suggests at least some of the voters thought she got things more right than wrong.

I find it very odd to hear and read how Mrs T created a selfish society. I suspect politicians wish they were that powerful. Politics doesn't really change society, it's the other way round. There are exceptions of course, but if society is more individualistic since the 80s that's probably because people are more individualistic. If they weren't, they'd vote consistently for more tax and more government, more would join unions etc. Which they haven't. I'd suspect a majority thought Thatcher went too far in the 80s, but I'd be amazed if there are all that many who'd like to go back to the 70s. Blair certainly didn't feel he had a mandate to rip up Thatcher's reforms, and for all his faults he was an excellent reader of the electorate for at least a decade.

Re: At least two sides to this story

Funny that. The last 2 Conservative governments have come in when the country's been right royally screwed. Both had to cut government spending and try to get the economy on an even keel. In the current case after Labour properly screwed things up. It's a bit harder to be that definitive in the case of 1979, because it's not as if the Heath government was that much better (or even hugely different) to Labour.

Anyway it's a great wheeze for the Left. We'll call the Conservatives 'The Nasty Party', leaving the implication that we're the nice one of course. Which obviously they are... Spend more money than you raise in tax, and, "hey presto!", everyone loves you. Course it's a bit different when the economy turns to shit, and the levels of debt have to be reduced. Then it's much nicer to be in opposition and admit that maybe a cut or two is necessary, but oppose every one, and claim you'd be much nicer.

Fuck that for political analysis. Could we have something a little less simplistic and a bit more adult next time please.

Not that I claim Thatcher got everything right, and we were certainly well overdue for a change by 1997. But I wasn't much impressed with what Labour had to offer. And I'm even less impressed by them now. I don't see much chance of sorting things out with Ed Balls as Chancellor, and I'm not particularly keen on Miliband either. Mid-term polls are meaningless, and Labour are averaging under 40% at the moment - which is shocking! I'd still make them favourites, due to the inbuilt bias of our current boundaries, I suspect both major parties will only poll around 36%, leaving Labour with a very slim overall majority (or possibly forced into a coalition). I think they'll make a mess, but maybe it's what the country needs. Perhaps we'll get some more realism from some sections of the voters when it's Labour that are forced to make the cuts. We currently spend £120 billion odd more than we tax. That is completely unsustainable - and although most of it will go away when the economy grows more, we probably have to make £40 billion more of cuts to government spending or tax rises to balance things up. Then there'll need to be a bit of surplus for a few years, until we can get debt below 80% of GDP.

Re: So very sad to see El reg delete comments

I'd imagine they delete them if they get complaints. Plus I bet they're heading for 1,000 comments on here, and the mods should really be subbies. The more foaming commentards they have to deal with, the more typos we'll get in articles, and the fewer bonkers headlines. So it's just a quick delete if you're not sure, rather than a 10 minute agonise about press freedom.

Anyway, surely to mention press freedom is ludicrous. It's The Register's press, so surely they have the freedom to publish what they want. And not if they don't like it. If you want total freedom of speech, publish your comments on your own website.

Re: One lasting change from Mrs T

Whatever you may think about the City being de-regulated in the 80s, Brown and Balls set up a new City Regulation scheme in 97, when they took regulation off the Bank of England and gave it to the FSA - while making the BofE responsible for interest rates. So whatever happened afterwards is definitely not her pigeon.

She didn't privatise the Post Office. She hived off the telecoms bits, and privatised them as BT. Then its monopoly was regulated.

As an example, in the early 80s a daytime national rate call was something like 40p a minute. By the 90s that was down to about 5p. Although I guess one downside of phone calls getting massively cheaper has been more sales calls - with Skype making it even worse...

Re: At least two sides to this story

That's mostly a big old pile of drivel, but I've got to single one quote out:

Thach brought about content free politics, and ever after parties can only lose.

Surely the one thing you definitely can't accuse Thatcher of is content-free politics with no convictions, or doing only what would make her popular. That's just a bonkers thing to say. Given how absolutely everybody seems to have an opinion on her, and her policies, 25 years after she left politics - 5 elections and 4 Prime Ministers later.

As for all the theories being her policies being discredited, nope again. Some have, some not so much. Extreme monetarism always looked like snake oil to me when I studied economics. But the problem of her time was high inflation, which isn't the problem in this current recession. Just like the problem of her time was over-regulation and too much trade union and state power. You probably wouldn't say that's the main problem now.

There's several arguments here. In the case of UBS they actually made such a huge loss on Facebook day 1 that it had to be placed in their annual report as material to their results. Apparently they bought 100's of millions of dollars worth of shares. The trade didn't go through, so the trader did what any non-techy would do and just pressed the button again...

Well to be fair they apparently checked the exchange records and they didn't say that they owned any FB stock. So they repeated the trade. A couple of hours later double $100m worth turned up. Oops!

The 2nd argument is that by this point the share price had tanked from nearly $40 a share to the mid-20's. So UBS can say we only bought one lot of shares, you should compensate us for the second lot you foisted on us by your incompetence. Seems a pretty fair argument to me.

The 2nd argument is a bit less clear-cut. Though I'd still be pissed off as a trader. If you had shares at the beginning, but the exchange wasn't working properly, you often weren't able to sell them for hours. Had you been able to, you might have got rid of them at say $35, rather than at $25. But then if the market had been working, who's to say anyone would have bought at that price, once the shares had already lost a load, and were heading South.

I think some people may also claim they hit sell at around $35 share, but the order wasn't processed until it hit $25 a share. It may be that had the market worked, they couldn't have sold, but then if the market had worked, at least they could have decided the shares might go back up, so rather than crystallising the losses, they might have chosen to keep them, and sell later. Shares have been as high as $30 recently, so they'd have got something, if they'd been able to wait.

Re: Maybe good for 14 year olds...

It might be aimed at teenagers, if they go for cheap handsets, maybe with subsidies. And especially if the operators can be signed up to give cheap contracts where all the Facebook messages are free, then it could take over from BBM. But I've read many suggestions that teenagers are now less Facebook obsessed.

So I'm thinking it'll be people like my sister-in-law. She's got 2 kids under 6, last time I sorted out her phone she had over 800 pictures of the kids on there (not backed up), and I'm now her hero for saving them when it died. Probably a quarter of those piccies are on FB, and she posts loads of messages to all her other mates on there, lots of them also mothers of young kids. Not being interested in tech her phone is for texting, photographs, Facebook and a phone, in about that order. She'd probably love a FaceFone - as would many of her mates.

Re: My Prediction

Are you sure about that Barry? Seems a bit too much like wishful thinking to me. There is an anti-Facebook backlash, I agree - it's become a fashionable opinion to hold. But there are a lot of very loyal users, who post loads of stuff on there, every day, and absolutely love to use it on their phones. They take loads of photos on them, and spray them all over Facebook, plus they've got lots of friends on it, and I doubt it would take much persuasion from Facebook for them to send all their messages via Facebook and WiFi, rather than the carriers.

Facebook may lose the fashion-conscious and the younger users, but they seem to have gained a stranglehold on a lot of parents and grandparents. And they're the people who've actually got the money. Advertisers seem obsessed with chasing the teen market (I guess it makes them feel young), but it's the middle aged and old who've got all the cash.

Of course, given what the other Facebook apps have been like, there's a good chance it will be a hideous, unusable piece of shit. Like the Facebook web user interface, come to think of it...

Re: The difference between Facebook and e.g. Vodafone 360

There's plenty of good stuff the operators could have done, if only they'd had half an ounce of sense. Also they needed the vision not to try to screw all the customers' money out of them on day one, you need to be cheap at first, and build up your services until they're popular. With their control of billing they had years of an open goal, which they managed to miss every time they tried. I guess their greed stopped them sprinkling some good free stuff in with the paid-for stuff. They couldn't even come up with apps to manage your bills and add-on services, let alone free storage decent email.

I think the other major problem was their total inability to cooperate. It makes sense that you worry most about your direct competitors I suppose, but despite repeated attempts they were totally unable to come up with any kind of standards they could all build on.

I suppose one big disadvantage is a customer is more likely to be loyal to Apple or Android, than they are to Vodafone or Orange. They were more concerned about creating the lock-in than they were about giving the customer the goodies that make them buy-in to the lock-in voluntarily. Some people move, but I know many happy 'Droid and Apple users, I don't know any loyalists to mobile companies. There used to be an army of Orange fanatics (I include myself), who'd been with them since the 90s and loved the customer service, but that all went when France Telecom bought them, and I've not found much difference in the operators since.

Re: Poor, poor operators

When I say puppies, I don't mean cute Retrievers or Labradors, or intelligent ones, but obviously stupid, ugly ones.

Re: 'Pay as you go' SIM fraud at Heathrow dispensing machines

Perhaps you should complain to Heathrow. As that's where the vending machine was. It would be perfectly possible for some company to buy in a shedload of Vodafone SIMs, not bother to load any credit on them, then stick up that sign. Although Vodafone might just be morally responsible, they certainly wouldn't be legally responsible for that particular breach of contract.

Anyway, Vodafone can only stop selling them SIMs if they buy direct. Heathrow can close down their vending machines.

Re: Ding! Dong! —the witch is dead!

Tasteful...

Still, I don't doubt there are plenty of people celebrating. However there are plenty of others who lived through her premiership, and the 70s before it, that think she got more right than she got wrong.

It would be a more adult reaction to consider that people can disagree with each other without either's motivation necessarily being bad. It's not as if the 1970s were a great period of social harmony and delight, suddenly destroyed by an evil, cackling Thatcher as soon as she got into power. Still, you're welcome to your opinion - and I'm sure you're not alone. So far Labour have mostly been keeping quiet, even Alex Salmond has, but Gerry Adams and Ken Livingstone agree with you.

Re: cough... Nitric Acid

Yes, but the hydrogen fluoride used as a 'stabliser' does.

Edit: Sorry Lester you beat me to it. Snap!

I suppose I should change my post to say something either witty or interesting now, and pretend that's what I meant to do all along. Oh well...

Re: It IS rocket science...

Mad Mike,

Japan didn't shoot down the last one, that went over its territory. I presume the AEGIS radar can give a quick enough solution that they'll know the vertical (as well as horizontal) trajectory quickly enough to make that decision. After all, they didn't shoot the last one down, and I'm sure they had ships in place - as it was flagged well in advance.

So unless Japan wants to increase tension further, you'd hope they'd hold back. I guess that depends on the length of time the rockets burn for, before going inertial, and the positioning of the ships.

Of course, nothing stops North Korea from claiming their failed tests were shot down. But in the past they've preferred to claim success, even when their wasn't. Anyway, if they want to be provoked into war, shelling South Korea is easy enough to arrange - or sending some commandos in by submarine (both of which they've done several times before). That comes down to what their motivation is in this. There's plenty of people happy to line up and say this is just Lil' Kim protecting his position against internal rivals - but I'm not sure we've got any proof of that. There were pundits as late as ten years ago saying how Medium Kim was only causing trouble to shore up his internal position, and try to live up to Daddy - and I'm not sure they had any more evidence for that than they do now.

Re: It IS rocket science...

Mad Mike,

I think a Nork missile test at this point is probably the least bad outcome. As the US have hinted. They've already had a round of UN sanctions for the last nuclear test - so there wouldn't likely be any more just yet. At which point everyone can step back and claim honour is satisfied.

Although should the missile go off-target, or even look like doing so (there's not much room that doesn't overfly Russia, China, Japan or South Korea, it might get shot down, and that could make things all kinds of interesting. Although although, would the Norks be able to tell? They must be used to their test rockets going bang by now, so if an AEGIS destroyer shot one down, out of their radar range, they might not even notice...

The other alternative to end this could be another shelling incident, or attack on a US, Japanese or ROK ship. While the South didn't retaliate last time, I've read several suggestions that this was a pretty serious political trauma, and so the current government has promised to retaliate forcibly. At which point we get into escalation, and you're at the mercy of the least stable government. Then we have to hope the North is run by a ruthless but sane bunch of calculating murdering bastards rather than a bunch of loony murdering bastards.

Re: Missile fuels and testing

Velv,

Although a few dead rocket scientists is no loss to the serene progress of the glorious state, you do need to be careful about how many you kill off. They're hard to train, and the ones with experience of making things work are very valuable - as they're likely to get things to work again next time.

Unfortunately along with a chronic lack of health and safety, I've also read suggestions that failed missile tests tend to get you (and your family) sent to a camp (if you're lucky). So they may have found a way of getting rid of their best people that doesn't require accidental poisoning.

Re: Topic? What's a topic?

Chairo,

No he's got his lovely bronze badge already, for posting over 100 times in a year. As you say, he's got just shy of 1,000 posts.

The 2k refers to combined upvotes. Which you can tell from looking, but only if you're sad enough to read through all 998 posts and count the upvotes... That's what gets you your silver badge. I saw a comment from someone else who should have a bronze by now but hasn't, so it looks like El Reg's badgey-script ain't up to muster.

Re: I'm pretty sure MacArthur thought this in 1950, and look at what happened

I believe the bit where MacArthur suggested nuking China at a press conference may have had something to do with him getting sacked.

Re: You'd be surprised

I'm sure that the West had plenty of first-strike plans. After all Trident has an incredibly high accuracy, and they launched a whole constellation of GPS satellites partly in order to allow submarines to launch accurate missiles at the USSR. If you just want a deterrent, 50m accuracy is not a requirement. Moscow is bigger than that.

Clearly the idea was either first-strike or damage limitation - i.e. first-strike their nukes then hope for massively reduced retaliation or peace under threat of a follow-up strike on cities.

So everyone expected those military plans to exist. The difference is that the KGB were reporting a political (not military) plan to both initiate and win a nuclear war. Which was ludicrous. As you say, it may not have been believed, but who knows? Just because the Soviet leadership knew they would lose all the Western-sourced baubles if war happened doesn't mean that they didn't also believe that the West was hoping to invade the Soviet Union.

And that's the answer we don't know about North Korea. Do they believe their own propaganda? Obviously not all of it, but do they fundamentally believe that the South, along with the US want to conquer North Korea? If so, they're going to respond differently to if they only maintain such a large military and warn of the threat as a way of maintaining control of the country.

Re: Fingers crossed...

Jabuzz,

It may be that the 20,000 number includes Katyusha rockets, possibly without reloads - in which case the numbers get far less scary. But it takes time to finish off an artillery piece, and they get to fire once every few seconds until you stop them, they move or they run out of ammo. If they can get off something like half a million shells in the first 5-10 minutes then we're talking a barrage that would make the Battle of the Somme look like a riverside picnic. And I can't see anything short of a pre-emptive strike with multiple tactical nukes doing much to dent it fast enough.

Assuming that the South Koreans had perfect intel on where all the artillery pieces were (unlikely), and that they were never moved (very unlikely), and that they weren't entrenched (amazingly unlikely) you could line up lots of missiles to take them out. But that's easier said than done. You'd probably need lots and lots and lots of MLRS, or thousands of expensive cruise missiles. I don't think short range stuff like Hellfire would do the job, as the artillery is probably too far away, and they tend to need guidance (laser or wire) which is unlikely to be possible.

Re: You'd be surprised

The KGB were apparently telling the Politburo, as late as the 1980s, that the US and UK were actively planning an unprovoked nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union. I don't know whether these reports were taken totally seriously - but given the KGB had access to the odd spy, plus all the information you can get in the press about Western governments that's still pretty surprising.

I haven't seen convincing evidence either way as to whether this was just a system going through the motions of justifying it's own existence. Or whether the propaganda of 50 years meant that it was seriously believed, and groupthink overruled all the contrary intelligence. After all Western governments are pretty transparent, you can read an awful lot in the newspapers, and get even more information just by knowing a few of the right people. Then add some spies, and the fact that the Soviet Union by that point was a far more open society than North Korea ever has been and they should have had an extremely accurate picture of high level NATO political and military thinking.

Even if North Korea has the best spies in the world, and the best intelligence analysts, the people who report to government are all party hacks. And they're more likely to report what's expected of them than not, unless they want to end up in a camp. Which might also be the fate of the general who says "I couldn't capture Seoul with double the number of troops, unless you give me some weapons younger than I am..."

That's what makes dealing with regimes like this so difficult. We've got so little political intelligence that we don't even know who the people in power actually are some of the time, let alone if they're rational or well informed. It may of course be that the South Koreans and US have better information on what's going on inside the North's government than they're letting on to the public. But even if we assume they're totally rational, unless we know what aims they're trying to achieve, that still isn't totally helpful.

Re: Fingers crossed...

North Korea has some stupidly large number like 20,000 artillery tubes pointed at Seoul. Although it would be interesting to see where that oft-quoted number came from, and how much maintenance gets done as in a normal army you'd expect to need over 100,000 troops to run 20,000 artillery pieces and that would be a tenth of their army after mobilisation, so a ridiculous chunk of the regular army. Anyway, you don't need much command and control to fire that lot, and basically wipe Seoul off the map. Even with communications buggered up, it would be very difficult to stop the junior commanders on the ground from firing that lot off, and killing a million or so people.

It's an interesting point whether the only possible defence against that is tactical nukes. You're not going to be able to do enough damage, quickly enough, with conventional weapons. Although first-use of nukes is a no-no, if it's a choice between that and massive casualties, what is the right thing to do?

It's a particularly nasty situation for the South Korean and US staffs to work on. Stopping North Korea from getting far into South Korean territory is probably easy. Weakening the North from the air, ditto. Attacking into the North on the ground, with lots of bunkers and difficult terrain would be extremely hard. Moving armoured formations and conducting mobile warfare yes, but taking and holding ground would lead to very heavy casualties.

Unless you get plenty of warning of war, you can't evacuate a place the size of Seoul in time, and even if you did, it's a shame to get your capital city blown up.

Re: well yes

I'm in the emergent alchemist class according to the BBC. But I was only 5% out on my lowbrow culture knowledge - or I could have been in the saucy slappers class. At least I can still aspire to some social mobility! Now where did I leave my copy of Heat...

Re: Bitcoin

Wasn't MtGox hacked last year though? Or was it the year before? Hopefully it's more secure now, but I doubt they've got the resources to be all that well locked down.

Re: it's simple

You're right. It does tell you all you need to know. The Swedish are unable to break their own laws and provide an illegal guarantee. The politicians aren't allowed to interfere in judicial process, and the judiciary have no law on which to base such a guarantee.

Next question...

Re: Actually, no

Mad Mike,

It's clear you have little understanding of how law works. Not that I claim to be any expert in Swedish constitutional law, but if their constitution guarantees judicial independence specifically, or the separation of powers then no such law could be made. Parliaments can pass laws, but only in accordance with the constitution.

As for your unrelated point about UK tax law, 'mens rea' is a pretty standard concept in criminal law. You have to prove that the defendant intended to commit a crime for certain offences. That's little different to the case of tax law. If you create a special purpose vehicle to do some sort of business that's fine, but if it's only to evade tax then you're committing a crime. The crime is the intention to avoid paying your taxes. I've not looked at the specifics of the law you mention, but as described it's perfectly reasonable.

No Need: The Lisbon Treaty re-established the death penalty within the EU and the European Arrest Warrant can be used get people fast-track extradited by one country to be prosecuted for alleged illegal activities, even activities that are not illegal in their own country.

The countries are "EU countries" but somehow includes places like Morocco ....

No it didn't. The EU treaties specifically ban the death penalty. Lisbon made no change to that.

And no, the EAW doesn't apply to Morocco, or any other country outside the EU. And the High Court in London ruled that all the offences on the Swedish charge sheet were all also offences in the UK.

I still think the EAW is a crap idea, and personally would like to see a bit less integration within the EU, and much fewer pretensions to statehood. But there's been no injustice here, and Assange would equally have been extradited to Sweden under the old system, as the High Court said in their judgement.

I believe he could be charged with a crime that carries the death penalty, but in order to secure extradition from an EU state the courts would have to guarantee that the death penalty can't be applied in that case.

From what I've read, the charge the US prosecutors would like to go for would be espionage. Not publishing the stuff itself, but directing Manning in getting the info off the servers it lived on. The allegation being he was giving instructions over IRC. I don't know the law, but I'd have thought that they'd have to prove he was running Manning as an agent (which seems pretty unlikely), not just helping with the hacking - otherwise they'd only be able to charge him with conspiracy as part of the hacking itself.

Given that Manning hasn't been found guilty, and even if he is it'll be a military court that does (which has already admitted he was mistreated in prison) - it's going to be a real struggle to get any charges that'll stand up out of that process. Remember this is extradition, not a European Arrest Warrant, so they'd have to produce evidence that a Swedish court will accept as admissible and then hope the US court system would agree. I can't see any prosecution even getting off the ground, and it would probably end up in the European Court before extradition had even happened. Plus on the way there it would have to go through both the Swedish and British Supreme Courts. Great for the lawyers I suppose...

Re: Nice Brand you have there, Squire...

At least the .xxx domain wasn't too bad. Sure you had to pay them cashola so as not to tarnish your brand, but they let you do a one-off payment. so that yourdomain.xxx could never again be registered. It wasn't that much more than a registration fee, and means no further work required.

At least until they change the system in 10 years time to get some more cash out of you...