Posts by I ain't Spartacus

That's the 64 thousand dollar question isn't it though. Does giving the behaviour a safe outlet satisfy the desire, or does it increase it? There was some evidence (last time I looked, I claim no expertise in the field) that the internet has increased paedophile behaviour. That many people used to be isolated from others who shared their sexual desires - and ended up doing nothing about them. But they then there was an online 'community' which they could connect with, and this then gave them an outlet for those desires as well as ways of satisfying them that used to be unavailable without serious risk and/or serious illegality. So you'd always get some people who'd take those risks, but many others wouldn't.

Whether that's held up to recent research I don't know though.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

EuKiwi,

Even two hours may not be enough in this case. Though that being an average I imagine the more modern ones store much more data.

Well the ocean is huge. The floor in many places is unmapped, so there are many places where you might not spot a crashed plane even if you search right where it is. Much easier if you have pre-existing data to compare against. Although, I think modern sonar kit is much better, making this less likely.

Obviously while the black boxes were pinging we were much less likely to miss them. Assuming the pingers weren't damaged. And of course they found the Air France plane in the South Atlantic well after the boxes were out of batteries.

hatti,

There is indeed all sorts of kit to make sure we know where stuff is. However, satellite data rates are expensive, so many airlines don't pay for it. Malaysia have been in financial difficulties for a while, so were one of those cheapskates. I imagine one of the envtual fall-outs from this crash will be over-ocean satellite positional data upload becoming compulsory.

Many large carriers have constant reporting from all their aircraft all the time, and so know their location to within a few meters. Rolls Royce for example have vast amounts of data coming in directly to their control room on some of their more modern engines, and so can tell the airlines what maintenance they may need to do before the plane has even landed.

However, when this data is not switched on, the Indian Ocean is huge. And very empty. Look at a map. There aren't many radars out there. And with the aircraft's transponder switched off, it mostly needs to be an active military radar, as modern civilian ones basically just ask the plane to please tell them where it is.

This is science. We theorise from the data we have, then we test, then we refine (or completely dump) our ideas and start all over again.

So completely different scientists in a different field did some rather innovative work with the satellite handshake data to give more information than anyone else had at the time. Then the ocean currents people got into the act, which couldn't happen earlier, as they didn't have the data. Because a lot of their data comes from the location of crash wreckage and post-crash testing of ocean currents.

Re: Oy!

What do you mean, "the other's got a bad haircut?" Which one are you claiming has a good haircut?

Re: "just gabbing on until..Norks have the ability to nuke the whole US and..free to invade SK.

Don't need to, just need to make sure the Americans don't intervene, which they won't if there's a risk of getting into a nuclear war.

This is why the US has troops stationed on the inter-Korean border. And the same reason the US had troops in Germany, even though NATO doctrine pretty much admitted the Soviets could get to the Rhine whenever they wanted. Unless NATO used tactical nukes.

The idea is that nobody would want to join in a posisble nuclear war. But once the other side has already killed 20,000 of your troops, you're already in it. Which gives the other side pause for thought, as obviously to attack Germany/Korea meant/means engaging US troops, i.e. attacking a nuclear power directly.

Also, it's not a given that the North can beat the South. Obviously their army hasn't been tested in a long time, but then neither has the North's. South Korea's defence budget is only something like 3 or 4% of their GDP, but that's equivalent to the entirety of the North's GDP, because the North is a dirt-poor shithole that's been run into the ground for the last 70 years.

On which subject, what's the morale of the DPRK troops going to be like? There's more of them than the South have, but a quick Google suggests they still use 1950s T55s in frontline units, and the best they've got are T72s. So we're talking similar capabilities to Sadam's Iraq, though they may be better led (or not). Good military leaders mean rivals for power, which Sadam didn't tolerate, and I doubt the Kims do either. They do have a ton of special forces though, which would create havoc. They've probably got much more artillery, and better defensive terrain (if they choose not to attack), but a much less modern airforce.

Re: @Triggerfish

Triggerfish,

NK makes a nice buffer.

That's harsh. I know Kim is a bit of a porker, but even he's not that fat...

I believe the Chinese stopped buying their coal a couple of months ago. Though I've not been following things closely enough to know if that was a quick slap on the wrist, or a punishment that they're still keeping up. However China are still supplying the regime with a whole load of subsidised oil. But that's the nuclear option, if you'll pardon the pun, as once the oil dries up, the army becomes a lot more a paper tiger than it probably already is. Which makes it very hard for the regime to continue the high levels of oppression needed to renew itself. I'm sure they've got reserves, but I'm sure even the Chinese don't know what happens if they do that.

However, they've got quite a lot of ecomic levers. There's a lot of Koreans working in China and sending stuff back across the border. This is possibly the only thing making life bearable for the folks at home.

Kim 3, after looking like he'd reverse Kim 2's minor reforms seems to have relented, so lots of people have small personal food plots and these actually do produce something, unlike the collective farms. People are now allowed to sell this in still illegal (but ignored) local markets. That and remittances from China mean the place is a lot less desperate than it was in the 90s famine, or even 10 years ago.

However he killed his uncle a couple of years ago. And that guy was the main regime link to China - and had been so for Kim 2. By the looks of it, Kim 3 has made no attempt to fix things up, and has even done stuff to deliberately snub the Chinese leadership. So I wonder even how much they know about what's going on inside the regime. If not much, it's no surprise if they're even more cautious than normal. Though they've taken a few public steps, like cricising and joining some UN sanctions, and especially stopping buying the coal, that are major steps compared to previous Chinese policy.

Does it now come down to if they're more worried by what Kim Jong Un or Donald Trump might do?

Re: Preemptive strike

Erm, a few problems with that.

The DPRK's biggest test so far was about 10KT - so they're a long way from 200KT. That was a land-based test, they're still a while away from miniaturising their warheads to smaller than a shipping container. They may not even have the ability to drop a warhead from an earoplane, let alone getting one onto a missile. They're also still testing fission, or just possibly boosted fission, not fusion warheads.

On which subject, their longest missile tested so far can reach maybe Alaska. Even the Western seaboard is a mite further than that, let alone the Eastern.

Next the US do have the ability to intercept Nork missiles. They have at least 3 layers of missile defence. THAAD is the final stage area defence, there's a mid-course missile to hit warheads in space and the rather better tested SM3's which they have deployed in the Sea of Japan to shoot missiles on the way up.

Obviously that doesn't help with a surprise attack which looks like a missile test. And I've no idea what the quality of intelligence sources inside the DPRK is.

If you're talking about disguising this warhead as a satellite, rather than re-entering the atmosphere, then they've launched one satellite, which they never gained control of. So they neither have the tech for control in space or for re-entry.

200km seems rather high. I'd have thought the atmosphere would still be giving quite a lot of shielding at that distance, which brings me neatly to my final point. Nobody has ever tested an EMP weapon. Nobody knows how, or even if, it would work.

So there's one hell of a lot of if here, and an awful lot of rather complicated tech that the DPRK may be quite a long way from developing - let alone mastering. If they ever can. They have very limited resources.

China is the embarrassing proof that you can have successful capitalism without democracy,

That's yet to be proved. China has a heavily investment-led economy. For the last thirty years it's been very successful at export-led growth by fixing its exchange rates at a very low level. This had the nice effects of helping them export more by keeping them cheaper, and effectively reducing the wages of the workers - as if the currency had risen naturally, they'd have got richer. They were further helped by many hundred milllions of people coming off the land and into the cities to swell the work-force.

That's all good, however it's coming to an end. That's the easy stuff that many economies have proved can be done by planning. But their working population is starting to shrink (due to the one child law), most people have now left the rural econony) and their investments are getting less and less returns. Basically because all the bank investment goes into the state controlled sector of the economy and people have mostly been forced to save into banks at crap rates (often below inflation) - but the state controlled sector is the most corrupt and least efficient. Because it's run as much to give sinecure jobs to the party elites than to make money. Corruption in China dwarfs anything that happens in the democracies.

The most efficient bits of the economy are the private bits, which are also the bits the state deliberately starves of funds. Which has forced them to borrow at higher rates from dodgier sources, hence the huge worries about the Chinese shadow banking sector - basically again because government intervention has made their banking system close to useless.

Again, planned economies have their downsides. 2 years ago China probably went into actual recession (from 7% growth the year before) purely because the government banned local government from borrowing from the banks they controlled. This being an obvious risk to those banks going bust (see German Landesbanks and Spanish Cajas for details). This was to be replaced by a new system of local debt issuance, but the ban happened on Jan 1st, and the new debt issusance didn't happen until sometime in April. Hence the economy looks to have shrunk in the first quarters, but made up lots of that growth later in the year. Again, non-democratic governments can just make up the figures.

To be honest a lack of democracy is much less of a problem, than a lack of rule of law. It's possible that democracy follows from having a genuine rule of law, it certainly makes it more likely. But it's not having your stuff nicked by random party officials that really allows you to invest.

Anyway, about now is the crunch time. Can the Party keep dancing, or will they fall over, and fuck everything up. For example, they've no longer having to maniuplate their exchange rate down. This is not so good however, as it's basically due to capital flight. Any Chinese person who can, wants to get their money out of the country, and the hands of the party. So what money for investment there is, is being wasted on the state-controlled sector (much of it loss-making and suffering from chronic over-capacity), and there's not enough money to invest in the private sector to keep the economy growing so fast.

In summary, it's complicated. And so far I've seen nothing to suggest that Churchill wasn't right. Democracy is the worst system in the world, except for all the others.

Re: Have you visited the petition?

Reminds me of Dave Gorman's 'Modern Life is Goodish'. His found poems, culled from the bottom half of the internet are very funny.

Re: The Bible

To be fair, Noah also had his 3 sons Shem, Ham and Japhet. And their wives.

And a lot of sheep. Just sayin'.

Yes I was in Noah! The Musical when I was 8. Our poor, poor parents. Except for the night when Japhet buggered up his lines, started the wrong song, and managed to miss out a third of the script. Bonus early ending.

What if my need is to have it available 24x7x365?

Erm you download the software to your computer. Then it's all available even if you are unable to log-in to MS for any reason.

I've not yet had a noticeable problem with it. In that I've never not been able to log-in when I've tried to, and had no drop outs in connectivity with the remote Exchage server that have been long enough to notice. Been on it for 3 years now.

Re: Like those Chryogenic companies

Well at least you can get your own back by defrosting all over their carpets.

Or go one better, do a Henry VIII, and explode.

Re: Don't mention the iTunes.

Sorry. Nope. I've used iTunes. It's awful. But I've also used Microsoft's Zune software that came with the Windows Phone 7. Which was both worse than iTunes and designed by a cluster of colourblind hedgehogs in a bag. On acid.

But both were brilliant pieces of software perfection compared to Sony's music management program at the time. MusicForge? It was the only way to get data onto their Walkmen (Walkpersons?) - and was rather like iTunes, only it was impossible to install, took 3 minutes to start, then crashed 50% of the time - and repeatedly failed to complete synching. It wasn't as hateful to look at as Microsoft's though.

I'm pretty sure there's a combat version of the Alphajet. Or if not yet, there's one in design. It's supposed to be a cheap close air support plane.

Re: There is a venerable tradition here

I remember seeing a guy on telly who'd bought one in the late 80s. He lived in central London. So a Scorpion (painted bright yellow naturally) was apparently the perfect vehicle. One advantage being, the new clamps didn't fit it.

Cue inevitable joke: Where did he park it? Anywhere he bloody well wanted...

The question is, what does Google do? Remember that Google provide search to us mere mortals in order to show us adverts, paid for by companies. Most of that ad spending comes from honking great international companies, who also don't like fake products.

This is an area where because there's no single government, there's unlikely to be any single law. So Goolge will do what it can to make as much money as it can, and accept as little legal oversight as it can get away with. However if it takes the piss too much out of its real customers (the global advertisers who pay it something like $100 billion a year) then it might find the bottom line suffers.

Re: The next logical step for Google

People seem to think that the internet is sort of immune to national law, because it's global. And that's basically true. Unless you can get cooperation from other nations, there's always somewhere to hide a server and operate from.

However when you're as big as Google, that can easily stop being true. Google might be doing something the courts don't like in a third country. And mostly Google will get away with saying, that has nothing to do with you. But if Google have significant assets in a country, then that country's courts can go after Google there, to force them to do stuff elsewhere.

Something that's unlikely to be an effective tactic for say Vietnam or Tuvalu, who aren't that important to Google, but the EU, US and Canada are worth enough money to the bottom line that they can exercise some power over Google outside their borders. I seem to remember from a few years ago that Google's UK turnover was about £6 billion for example, which ought to mean the UK government and courts could make them jump if they wanted to enough.

Re: Old Fashioned

Fizzle,

All military kit is old fashioned. As the chappie said, you order this stuff 10-20 years before you get it. Often from a spec that was mostly written before that. Every time you try to change that spec during the build process, the price goes up and the delivery time gets further away. So you tend to plan regular upgrades instead, and deal with the problem while the unit is in service.

So for example, Lewis Page of this parish spent many a happy article complaining about the Eurofighter Typhoon. But the design work for that started sometime in the 70s - where they were trying to guess what aircraft the Soviet Union would be operating by the 1990s, and then build something to be capable of dealing with them. The design work got serious in the 80s, and it was ordered by the mid-80s, just in time for the Cold War to be about to end. At which point who needed a pure air superiority fighter?

But cancelling it meant burning all the money already spent, and sacking all the people involved, plus possibly knackering the companies. So it was considered cheaper to keep going, then modify it to be more multi-role when they'd finished it. Also the price shot up, asl the various nations buying it chose to have fewer aircraft, thus spreading production and R&D costs over fewer units.

Was this mess anyone's fault? Well not really. They had to order way into the future when they thought the Cold War was a serious problem. The only alternative was to buy from someone else - which obviously has less risk. But that means your stuff won't be state-of-the-art by the time you get it, and that you lose the skill and ability to produce your own, should someone ever refuse to sell to you.

These carriers are such large and complex systems, that there'll probably be some bit of kit changed, updated or in testing every couple of months.