Does A Pentium 4 Need A Weapons License?

WindBourne writes "It appears to be that the U.S. house of Reps. want to classify Pentium 4 and above CPUs as weapons. This would mean that all these will require export licenses. Apparently, they have not heard about that the far east has developed large CPUs as well that are used in beowulf clusters." According to the article, this clause is unlikely to appear in the final version -- but stranger things have happened.

Donno about Pentium 4 but Athlon is a weapon

[Donny Smith]

Athlon is definitively a dangerous weapon - it can cause 3rd degree skin burns

Air travel

[eggoeater]

So can I still fly with my "weapon"?

I'm sure they have P4's in Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

..so perhaps we were justified going in there after all.

It's about time they catch up

[jokell82]

Back when the fastest x86 chip was a Pentium 2, the G3 received this same classification. Apple even ran ads that proclaimed their "weapons grade" status. Looks like Intel is finally catching up with an Apple chip that's two revisions old. :o)

new way of waging wars?

[kalpol]

So are wars gonna be decided with Unreal Tournament now?

uh oh

[ak3ldama]

being in a large room full of developers sitting unhappily at cubicles is bad enough, but no we are all armed with weapons, ahhhh!!!

Personally, I think

[GillBates0]

my keyboard, in it's current condition, should be classified as a WMD.

Re:I tought...

[Anonymous Coward]

well.. another country to be liberated soon

beowulf cluster

[stang7423]

Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of congressman...

It would be the only cluster in the world to slow down as you add nodes.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

[Anonymous Coward]

So, now we can finally identify the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!

I was beginning to get worried that my beloved president was wrong.

Thanks for the info. now go to jail.

[PsiPsiStar]

Now we're going to have to arrest you for disseminating this information.

Sincerely,

The Feds

Is a weapons license necisarry?

[theJerk242]

Does A Pentium 4 Need A Weapons License?

Sure, if you throw one hard enough.

Concealed weapon...

[k4_pacific]

Does this mean I need a CCW permit to stick a P4 in my pocket?

Is this sponsored by AMD?

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

AMD would presumably love this - their Opterons are produced in Dresden and I can't see the Germans joining in on this.

Re:I tought...

[cynic10508]

They were manufactured in Taiwan or someplace... ?!

How do you say "Beowulf" in Mandarin?

A weapon? Heh!

[Anonym1ty]

The use of a Pentium 4 or better as a weapon can easily be avoided by running any Windows variant on it.

Brilliant!

[macdaddy357]

Everybody knows that all computers, and parts thereof are made here in the good old US of A, so if we don't export them, the moozlim ayrab terrorists can't get them. Our congressmen and senators are geniuses!
/sarcasm

Re:Get it right...

[savagedome]

The amendment will never leave the House

Famous last words

finally

[scaaven]

while they're at it, they need to punish the overclockers for making their weapons run faster

Okay dude

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a stick-up. Give me all your money.

No seriously, I'm packing a P4 3,4ghz. You do NOT want to fuck with me.

Pentium 4 and above?

[56ksucks]

This means every AMD chip on earth after the K6 is a weapon.

Re:How would this help?

[ch-chuck]

Yeah, but since they can't run Windows® it would be not ready for the desktop.

If it sucks, say it sucks

I knew it!

[sirgoran]

Right before the election Dubya will announce that he's found the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction.

They're sitting in boxes at the Bagdad CompUSA store marked "Intel inside"!

Nice work!

-Goran

Good thing I've got a CCW permit.

[raider_red]

I'd hate to have to leave my laptop at home when I go to the coffee shop. Of course the part about concealing it could be difficult.

Re:Is a weapons license necisarry?

[GoRK]

I was thinking more along the lines of "Incendeary Device"...

simple solution

[at_kernel_99]

All they have to do is require that the faster chips ship with Longhorn. There won't be enough cycles left for advanced weapons design!

There's only one known OS

[the_skywise]

Proven to disable a US Destroyer.

Windows NT.

I suggest that we make it export tariff free and make sure it gets distributed far and wide.

Because that makes about as much logical sense as this legislation.

Re:Donno about Pentium 4 but Athlon is a weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

So that makes my G5 a... what? Weapon of Mass Computation?

Waiting periods, NICS, californians disarmed.

[knisa]

I feel for California. If this goes through, they'll have legislators pushing for registration, fingerprinting, five day waiting periods, closing the "computer show loophole" and the like. I recommend burying half of your high end computer hardware now so that you can have it available when the government starts confiscating.

Re:beowulf cluster

[jasno]

From here [robelle.com]:

Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in.

Re:Air travel

[Anonymous Coward]

not with the 478 sharp objects attached to it...

Re:Resist like Moses!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your fingers probably aren't cold if they're clutching an Athlon.

Congress Is In Session...

[Anonymous Coward]

Congress is in session, and across this great land of ours, many a village is missing its idiot.

I warned you about the Snark

[nyc.!fnord]

Now if I have to tell you again, I am going to send you an Pentium 4 and a Windows Box.

Now, you must ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?

Well, do you, punk?

Somewhere in Iraq

[bl8n8r]

"Colonel Look, A whole stack of Pentium 4s!"
"Good work private. We've finally found those WMDS."

Re:beowulf cluster

[4of12]

Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of congressman...

Easily - if there's a lobbyist in the middle, or perhaps Fanne Fox (for those old enough to remember [ishipress.com] Wilbur Mills...)

No

[Sloppy]

I don't think you should need a license, provided that you carry your Pentium 4 openly where everyone can see it. A society with everone walking around displaying their Pentium 4, would be a polite society, and sane people would think twice before starting any shit.

I would be more worried about people with concealed Athlons. You're minding you're own business, and then some nut with an overclocked Athlon without so much as a fan or heatsink, suddenly produces it in his asbestos mitten, brandishing it at you. You feel the heat coming off it, looking down at death itself. You think of reaching for the P4 holstered at your side, but he's got the drop on you. That would suck.

Re:When you sit down and think...

[pixelpusher220]

yeah...simpler and *MUCH* more spectacular crashes!

Re:Donno about Pentium 4 but Athlon is a weapon

[drinkypoo]

Well, the blurb DOES say Pentium 4 and above. I'd say the Athlon is well above the P4, and don't even get me started on Opteron :)

Re:SIGH! Here we go again.

[thrillseeker]

You see, it's called a joke. Perhaps you've heard of them?

Congress? But, you repeat yourself ...

Re:Air travel

[duffel]

No, because you might put the pilots to sleep by solving complex differential equations at them with your weapon.

Do not underestimate the soporific power of indiscriminate maths!

Re:I tought...

[SilentChris]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of US representatives. Never mind... that wouldn't produce much more work than one representative (0 x any number...)

Re:Is this sponsored by AMD?

[Tackhead]

> AMD would presumably love this - their Opterons are produced in Dresden and I can't see the Germans joining in on this.

There's a firebombing joke in there somewhere.

Re:I tought...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

How do you say "Beowulf" in Mandarin?

Genghis Khan?

Re:I tought...

[Bombcar]

Is "Fab 4" in England?

Re:Air travel

[shadowcabbit]

Do not underestimate the soporific power of indiscriminate maths!

I'd be more worried about the indiscriminate use of weapons of math destruction.

Re: I tought...

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Or maybe BEI4 YAO3 WU2 FU2 [4ff6 302d 4ad3 3695], which (I think) means 'completely unfathomable vast big-head'.

(however, I don't speak Mandarin, this is just from looking up syllables in the Unihan Database [unicode.org]

Wrong generation

[A nonymous Coward]

weapons of math destruction

That would be those ancient Pentiums with the FDIV bug.

Re:Tech required for building a nuke

[Jedi Alec]

Read Tom Clancy for the answers to all this...and while you're at it, marvel at his ability to predict the Bush presidency...

Re:I tought...

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Is "Fab 4" in England?

It was, but then Michael Jackson bought it and had it moved to his backyard (next to the roller-coaster).

Re:It's about time they catch up

[mikeee]

And I thought it was Itanium that was the gigaflop...

Re:beowulf cluster

[Paulrothrock]

So that's why the space shuttle [howstuffworks.com] has such slow computers!

Re:Air travel

[catch23]

Well at least you can sniff out drugs. How do you sniff out processors? Are we going to train dogs to sniff out pcb's and other electronics too? I wonder if the dog could tell the difference between a 1.7Ghz Celeron and a 3.2 P4 Extreme Edition processor? That would be way cool.... I could get the dog to find me "repackaged" celeron chips that I could overclock to 3.2Ghz....

Weapons?

[ro_coyote]

"It appears to be that the U.S. house of Reps. want to classify Pentium 4 and above CPUs as weapons."

But only if you ship them with free copies of Microsoft Windows.

Re:I tought...

[Anonymous Coward]

--Texas? I hope so, poor oppressed misguided people.. Their mullahs make them worship strange things like cows and oblong balls. They have temples with over priced knick knacks they buy and give to each other as some sort of pagan ritual. Then they erect these strange skeleton looking towers all over. On their pagan holidays they get out of their mind on this "brew" stuff they have and just...fight and swear and do a lot of animal sacrafice. They wear funny shoes and hats, too, not anything like what normal people wear. All in all, yes, they need liberating and some enlightnment to get civilised.

And now, the 11 o' clock news at 10

[Jesus_666]

At 9:13 AM two CPUs crashed into the Sears Tower, killing a dog when it tried to eat them. Terrorist organization al BM has declared that they were responsible for this horrible strike against the western world.
President William Gates III. has announced that the terrorists have been located "somewhere around Europe or something" and that two ICBMs (InterContinental Beowulf Missiles) with a payload of 32x4 GHz have been launched somewhere at Europe's general direction.

Our hearts are with the owners of Fido, who choked on the deadly weapons which crashed into the Sears Tower. Officials suspect them to be Pentium-type processors, but cannot say it before they have been retrieved from the dog's stomach.
The Sears Tower seems to be out of imminent danger of collapsing, but, as some random government suit said: "only a few hundred chips more and they might have smashed a window."

I other news, Apple Defense Systems (ADS) has just finished their new G2000 RISC (Really Incredible Stuff-based Computer) line of ultra-expensive and extremely hip weapons of mass destruction. President Gates has announced that the USA will be saving money for the next five years, hoping that this will generate enough money to actually afford an Apple-brand WMD (or iWMD, as Apple calls them).

This were the 11 o' clock news at 10, with Tejas Barton.

Re:A weapon? Heh!

[Jesus_666]

Why? I can clearly see many brains suffering damage from prolonged exposure to Windows. Machines running Windows should be classified as violations of the Geneva Protocol, fast or not.

Bought a USA made computer

[Enquest]

I bought a Dell. Dell asked me because they where an Amerikan company. Are you going to use this computer for(no joke) Nuclair weapons? Biologic weapons? Mass murder? chemical weapons? Any terrorist activities we don't now of... ... Ofcourse as a honest terrorist I answerd to them all YES!!!. Afterall I was expecting to play C&C... I don't know where Americans find there politicians. But you U.S.A. people should start looking harder!

Re:WMD Revisited

[narcc]

More like weapons of math instruction...

Ancient?

[tgd]

Now I feel old.

Re:it's a flaw in the constitution

[maximilln]

Um, by your argument we shouldn't allow anyone to be elected to any position, because they're clearly going make laws that would benefit their own positions

SHHHHH! Don't tell anyone. They might figure it out.

My other response is: NO KIDDING! BRILLIANT!

Re:How would this help?

[spamchang]

I suggest the name of the company as 'Universal Exports.'

(surely someone here gets the joke)

My Cold, Dead Hands!

[CygnusXII]

New Bumper Sticker campaign...

You can have my Laptop (PIV), when you pry it, from my cold dead, Hands.