Does A Pentium 4 Need A Weapons License? 766
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.
Typical technical ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
So we bring them here when complete and then decide they can't leave the country?? heh.
When you sit down and think... (Score:1, Insightful)
moores law and all that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When you sit down and think... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Air travel (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Typical technical ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignorance is only part of the problem. You're assuming that most of these politicians even care whether the measures they propose are practical, effective, fair, or even needed. They don't. What they do care about is getting some publicity, and being seen as strong and proactive by constituents that are even more ignorant than themselves.
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Insightful)
What about: Gaming consoles, pda, cell phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Typical technical ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fear based on ignorance.
Re:I tought... (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tech required for building a nuke (Score:5, Insightful)
A: Several brilliant people and a hell of a lot less computing power than a single P4 (you could run all the programs they ran on a palm pilot in under a day).
It would take even fewer brilliant people now, since it has been done before... Trying to keep the computing power to build a nuke out of the wrong hands is futile at best.
Re:Air travel (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime a law or rule is made, you have to think about the EXTREME application of it because the people enforcing it tend to be idiots like you.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:5, Insightful)
for number 2 they just do the test, at a target... If it fails, it is still a dirty bomb, if it suceeds, well then they blew up a city...
Knowing that it will fission it not necisarry for using the weapon. If fact, a failed nuclear detonation on US soil would inspire extraordinary amounts of fear, a long the lines of "what if it works next time...?".
For a 3rd world nation, a sucessful test is exactly what they want, a big sign that says "don't fuck with us, we got the bomb". They don't want secrecy, they want publicity.
Hacked computers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying I condone this; that it's politically or morally correct. You have to admit it's a real possibility.
Re:Ill concieved (Score:2, Insightful)
Completely untrue. For a long time, the Wassenar agreements have prohibited exports of "dual use" technology, and this includes advanced technology. Naturally, as time goes on, the state of the art changes, so what was advanced technology yesterday, is not today. Continual review is needed.
But, it is without doubt the restricting supplies of advanced technologies does make things harder. Try design and simulation of advanced materials without the use of computing tools. Sure, you can do it, but at a snails pace. I mean, the simple example is that I'll set up a research lab with pentium based computing hardware and software, and you'll set up a lab using i386 based. Tell me who is going to be more productive ?
I see no problem with restricting supplies to "rogue states", but I do see lots of problems with identifying what are the rogue states, viz. the WMD fiasco with iraq.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:5, Insightful)
HELL NO! We'd nuke their sorry asses (bomb and all) out of existence before we allowed a credible threat to US soil.
Why have we not turned North Korea into a parking lot by now if that is the case?
We know it would be a blood bath for both sides if we invaded, and a nuclear preemptive strike would be completely unacceptable (plus they might actually be able to nuke Seoul in the time between becoming aware of our attack and impact). It is easier to let them have their deturant as long as they know that using it means they get nuked. It is a mini cold war.
Geez, what do we look like over here? Children who are afraid of being spanked with a rod?
A nuclear weapon is a lot more than a rod.
Re:I tought... (Score:2, Insightful)
Its irked me for years that people making laws have no sense as to what they are "protecting". I mean, give me a break - what idiot thinks that a computer from '99 on is going to threaten the US? The most threatening thing out right now is the internet due to access to information. Any 486 can still get online with the help of Linux for god sake. A 386 can still get online if you have a hell of a lot of patience... tards
Thats politics for you (Score:3, Insightful)
On the card was a big sticker warning about export restrictions etc etc.
The chip that actually was doing the encryption that resulted in the sticker: Made in Japan.
So we are importing hardware we then can't export.
Thats politics
third world pissant who was stabilizing his countr (Score:2, Insightful)
One is that they really were building WMD, were going to attack the US with them, were linked with Al Quaeda and the 9/11 attacks, and GW Bush was completely justified in invading.
The other is "No, we went after a third world pissant who was stabilizing his country."
IMHO, the answer is between these extremes, and well away from either of them. I don't like GW Bush's policies, but my dislike of his policies in no way makes me think Saddam Hussein was a 'good man and leader.'
Occasionally life throws difficult problems at us, with no clear-cut right and wrong. This is one of them, and it happens to have (at least) two wrongs.
Re:Air travel (Score:5, Insightful)
"You cannot control anything that is made by the millions and which you can put in your pocket."
-Seymore Goodman, professor of International Affairs and Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology
It's too bad more people don't realize this, we could end this silly "war on drugs".
Re:Nuclear weopons development?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Up until late 60's or so, a lot of development work was done with live tests of nuclear devices. As test-ban treaties were made, these tests were moved to underground tests, then finally - no (sanctioned) tests at all. However, you still need to be able to "test" your devices before, during, and after you build them. So, what do you do?
You simulate them, on a computer. Actually, you simulate them on very fast parallel processing vector computers, which is *not* something we have on the desktop, nor is it something that is easily built. A beowulf (or other) cluster is *not* a vector parallel processing machine. Fast vector machines need special purpose CPUs, ultra-fast interconnects to memory, etc.
That isn't to say that some design work or simulation couldn't be done on such machines (using older or current technology). It most certainly can. Nor am I saying nothing can be done with a desktop machine - there is a lot that could be done - but large scale detonation simulation is not one of them.
I agree with your sentiments and logic, though - attempting to stop the tech won't do any good. We developed the H-Bomb using good-ole fashioned 60's tech, with plenty of above ground and other nuclear detonations. The test-ban treaties mean nothing to countries that didn't sign them - they will test whenever, whereever they want to. Plus, any legislation as shown ignores the fact that other countries are jsut as capable as us in developing the technology needed (as needed - its a big jump to just get an atomic bomb, and one would think that would be enough, but the next stage is even harder to attain).
Ultimately, our lawmakers (whatever country they reside in) need to get past this idea that countries are somehow isolated in the world based on those damn lines on a map, and come to terms with the fact that we are all on one big rock. We need to learn how to live with each other, how to accept each other, how to understand each other, and how to help each other. Somehow, we are able to (mostly) do it in each of our "petty" countries - why is it so damn difficult to do the same worldwide? If we don't learn to do this, we run the great risk of wiping ourselves off this planet...
hilarious.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unproven (Score:1, Insightful)
The idea that you have a nuke is probably almost as good as actually having a nuke.
Keep that in mind.
Also keep in mind what you read/hear in the media isn't necessarily true.
Like for instance, it turns out Iraq had no WMD's.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:3, Insightful)
Building a nuke doesn't necessarily require extraordinary financing - you don't need a huge plutonium refinement factory to produce 1 bomb, you just need a source of refined plutonium.
This gets a bit OT, though. The issue under discussion - controlling computing hardware as weapons - is obviously asinine. Any general purpose tool can be used as a weapon, or at least to produce weapons.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:3, Insightful)
A patron nation will contain innocents. Because a small group of people (and I mean small in the same way that a football stadium full of people is small compared to the population of a country) perpetrate an act that kills thousands, doesn't mean you can go and nuke thousands of innocents in a patron nation. Will it make you feel better? Maybe, yeah. Will it all end in tears? Well, probably a big firey death for all concerned but, yeah.
Sure, terrorism is wrong. I don't think anyone here would seriously dispute that. But it doesn't give us the right to commit acts of terror in retribution. We're meant to be better than that.
it's a flaw in the constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
The second one is we should have made it completely illegal for a lawyer to be elected to congress, it's a clear cut case of conflict of interest. They have *no* incentive to make government simpler, cheaper, less complex. They have *every* incentive to create as many and as convulted and complex laws as possible.
here's every campaign speech boiled down, any party addressing any demographic.
"vote for me, I will help to make government more complex and expensive, except for YOU though, because YOU are special and we need to make the other guys pay for whatever YOU want"
So that is what happens, and people keep voting for them.
Re:Donno about Pentium 4 but Athlon is a weapon (Score:4, Insightful)
Athlons are as hot as ever. It's just that, compared to the Prescott, it doesn't seem so hot after all.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:3, Insightful)
To top it off, their leaders are nuts and would probably love to go down in flames.
That is why we basically leave them alone. A war of the Korean Peninsula would be devastating in the first five minutes alone.
Re:it's a flaw in the constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Come to think of it, maybe it should be illegal for anyone to be elected to Congress.
Re:Air travel (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a few teachers who tried to write me up for huffing and puffing into my inhaler, most failed when presented with the option of having to write me passes whenever I needed to use my inhaler, or calling an ambulance to deal with the problem. PMS drugs can be harder, but a lot of doctors will sign off on a Rx for midol "as needed" for girls to be able to keep the drug at school. Your insurance might also pick up the tab on that $10 bottle of drugs, or you can likely not pay sales tax on it.
Re:China's gonna love this (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of us have far better understandings of physics and the inevitable outcomes of actions that it predicts than, say, politics, which appears mostly a marketing scheme selling "leadership skills".
As anyone whose taken a marketing class knows, the whole idea of marketing skills is "perceived value" to a human mind, not "quantitative value" as the laws of physics would account.
So, here we are, glut of laid-off high tech people right here in the United States. I have a resume that reads like an encyclopedia and *I* have trouble finding jobs!
Here's my problem: I am specialized in design for manufacture... and we don't manufacture in America much anymore. Outsourcing.
I am watching imported electronics come in to the local arcade with absolutely amazing realtime rendering engines. God only knows the effectiveness of using such advanced fast technology for nefarious purposes. Although the powers that be may think of it only as a game for children, I see very powerful CPU's driving extremely sophisticated rendering engines... and know the difference between a game and reality is only in the hardware interface.
So, we outsource our high tech and somehow Congress thinks US is gonna remain a world leader?
Foreign countries are now developing the technologies of the future while our own technical people languish in the unemployment office?
How much does a good engineer go for these days?
Is a politician more valuable?
How much value is, say, 20 years of training by actually working in the field?
I think the idea the politicians can keep the cat in the bag by simply passing laws is gone. "How to Make Fire" is now public knowledge... the entire world knows how to make matches now. We do not have a monopoly on it anymore. And it looks like we won't even have match factories anymore... and we think we are gonna remain a world power?
My feeling is we are heading straight for the poorhouse.
I see this latest collapse of interest rates as one of the dying gasps of our economy, as the last bastion of the American economy - the solidity of the dollar itself - is sacrificed by dilution of the money supply so that sufficient numbers of dollars can be generated for the balance sheets - irrespective of any "value" that the dollar is to represent. I feel soon the dollar will be just a number... meaningless as a measure of wealth. Just a number. Congress can print as many as they want to wipe out past debts. Something else has to evolve as a standard unit of wealth, as holding a dollar is like holding ice on a hot day.
Its gonna be interesting when the power of foreign game consoles exceed the power of our best military chips, driven by the economics of worldwide purchases of entertainment compared to a country whose military budget depends on collecting income taxes from its laid off citizenry.
Only a Congressman could be so smart.
Re:it's a flaw in the constitution (Score:3, Insightful)
"There's little wonder that taxes keep going up."
But they don't. They go down while our spending goes up, which is why our debt goes up ever faster.
And while your history of the national debt is informative, and your analysis somewhat interesting, you're ignoring an important fact: Of the current debt, almost all of it was incurred by just two administrations: Reagan and GW Bush.
oh well..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I could go on, but I think the point is made.
And it's still a conflict of interest. The lawyers lobby & guild LOVES laws, oodles and bunches and boatloads, as complex, wordy, involved, complex, obscure and arcane as possible, to cover every bit of human minutiae they can think of. We even have a noun for it, called "legalese" a sarcastic noun, meant to ridicule how atrociously wordy and..stupid it is. This gig of letting them create new laws by the thousands every term makes them MONEY. It makes them wealthy and powerful. It KEEPS them wealthy and powerful. It's job security, job #1, "if you are in the law business,make new laws". And government, being an accumulation of law writers, administrators and enforcers, LOVES laws, well beyond what is truly necessary, because then they get to expand and expand and expand to administer and enforce all the new laws. So then they can say "wow, look at all these laws, well, guess we need bigger government then, we toldyaso. Umm, well, it *will* cost a few more dollars, or we can always put YOU in debt for it"
This is just so obvious.
Anyway, if he was around, you could argufy with this guy,himself one of the guild, you might have heard of him, Thomas Jefferson:
"It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour. "
"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. "
"That government is best which governs least, because its people discipline themselves."
"And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."
"Whenever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force."
""Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted totheir own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust.
Whether our Constitution has hit on the exact degree of control necessary, is yet under experiment."
--I think he nailed it. It was an experiment, with a lot of good qualities to it. Some bad though. The constitution was a good attempt, but has become corrupted by weak and greedy men over the years. Now, look at the demographics of who is in congress, what is the number one profession? Look at the corrupt judges, who wouldn't know a constitution if it bit them on the ass, what were they before? How about presidents? Look at the government, is it really working? Or has it betrayed the trust, has it gotten to the point that "these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust."?
I'd say that is a "roger" on that last one.
He nailed it. It's human nature. Power corrupts. It gets out of hand. It got out of hand because of a simple conflict of interest basically. Yes we need people who can *understand* the law to write laws, but we don't need professional lawyers who *profit* from those laws to write them. Two entirely completely different things there. It started out OK, as an experiment, it has gone steadily downhill to the point we have it today, which is basically a two class technofuedalistic society, those above the law, the aristocracy, although they won't admit to it, and those who are subservient to it, and to the dictates of the aristocracy, although they won't admit to it either. Not readily anyway.
last quote for this subject
"I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses nor pursue measures by which they may profit and then profit by their measures."
Re:I tought... (Score:2, Insightful)