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.
I tought... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I tought... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I tought... (Score:3, Funny)
They were manufactured in Taiwan or someplace... ?!
How do you say "Beowulf" in Mandarin?
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Funny)
How do you say "Beowulf" in Mandarin?
Genghis Khan?
Re: I tought... (Score:5, Funny)
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]
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I tought... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I tought... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sitting in my office, and the mail guy comes around, dropping a package on my desk. It's the latest version of Checkpoint Firewall-1, which includes a VPN. It's got a big huge sticker on the outside stating that it is illegal to ship this package to an outside country without whatever the exemption is that needs to take place, yadda yadda yadda. But guess where it was shipped from? Ramat Gan, Israel, sent DHL Worldwide Express.
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: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:it's a flaw in the constitution (Score:5, Funny)
SHHHHH! Don't tell anyone. They might figure it out.
My other response is: NO KIDDING! BRILLIANT!
Re:it's a flaw in the constitution (Score:4, Interesting)
Thus, instead of electing people, they should all be apointed and forced to serve at the point of a gun.
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."
Donno about Pentium 4 but Athlon is a weapon (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Donno about Pentium 4 but Athlon is a weapon (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Air travel (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Air travel (Score:3, Insightful)
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: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:Air travel (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a link to that story [al.com] for those interested.
Re:Air travel (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Air travel (Score:5, Funny)
Do not underestimate the soporific power of indiscriminate maths!
Re:Air travel (Score:5, Funny)
I'd be more worried about the indiscriminate use of weapons of math destruction.
Wrong generation (Score:5, Funny)
That would be those ancient Pentiums with the FDIV bug.
Re:Air travel (Score:4, Informative)
Section 1404 of the appropriations bill would roll back the licensing equation to a level not seen since 1994.
"The President shall require a license...for the export of goods or technologies included on the Militarily Critical Technologies List," Section 1404 of the House bill states. That list cites a level of 1,500 MTOPS as being militarily critical.
I'm sure they have P4's in Iraq (Score:3, Funny)
How would this help? (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks for the info. now go to jail. (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
The Feds
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:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Obtaining the materials. Uranium is very difficult and expensive to refine. The US has done their best to keep their process for refining out of foreign hands, but someone with a large enough industrial infrastructure could figure it out. One reason why third world countries have to steal U235 is because they lack the necessary infrastructure.
2. The only way to know if a bomb will fission properly (i.e. it will blow up and not just very hot) is to test it. This tends to show up on lots of spy satellites, seismic detection equipment, and radiation monitors. Thus enemies are generally prevented from completing any bomb they might be developing. The only known shortcut to this procedure is to use a computer to simulate the bomb. If the simulator results look good, they know they have a good chance that their bomb would work correctly during a live conflict.
Remember, the biggest trick for third world and terrorists parties is to keep the weapon secret. It's somewhat difficult to stop after you've used it, but if people hear of it ahead of time you're program (and possibly you) is dead.
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.
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:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely nothing. Dirty bombs are primarily scare tactics. They're actual ability as a tactical weapon has been highly overrated. Here's a good write-up for you [llnl.gov].
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:4, Interesting)
Any terrorist who gets ahold of a bomb had to have help from a patron Nation. Any such patron would get glassed.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:4, Interesting)
Correction, number 1 is only a real problem for anyone who would actually USE an ABomb in today's world. Larger countries (who are capable of developing an ABomb) certainly wouldn't be looking to tangle with the US's HBomb and Neutron bomb arsenal.
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...
Believe it or not, the US is not a primary target for terrorists who get nukes. Most terrorist organizations want us out of the way because we help Israel. If they actually DID acquire a nuke, then they'd want to use it on the Israelis. The only downside is that a nuke that fizzled would only anger Israel and produce the combined force of Israel, the US, and many European powers against the perpetrator.
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".
Because they can already see that the US is going to roll over and let them keep "their bomb".
HELL NO! We'd nuke their sorry asses (bomb and all) out of existence before we allowed a credible threat to US soil. Geez, what do we look like over here? Children who are afraid of being spanked with a rod? Hell, I'd be the first in line to sign up for war if we had a real nuclear threat pointed our way!
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:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:3, Interesting)
HELL NO! We'd nuke their sorry asses (bomb and all) out of existence before we allowed a credible threat to US soil. Geez, what do we look like over here? Children who are afraid of being spanked with a rod? Hell, I'd be the first in line to sign up for war if we had a real nuclear threat pointed our way!
Pack your bags - N Korea has a nuke or three and the missiles to send them as far as Seattle. Did we invade them? No, we went after a third world pissant who was stabilizing his country.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:4, Interesting)
Obtaining the materials is easy. I for instance just drive over to Gera-Leumnitz (it's on the Autobahn between me and my parents) and dig in the hills there. If someone wants to see an Uranium mine from close, I may direct you
And the process itself is not that difficult. It's just very, very slow. Take any industry grade centrifuge (one to process dairy milk will do), coat it with something which doesn't get solved in Hydrofluorid (HF) (like porcellain, gold), solve the Uranium in HF to get UF6 (Uraniumhexafluorid) and start centrifuging. Because the weight difference between 235U and 238U is quite small (1%), it takes a very long time to enrich 238U, but it can be done. Everything else is patience.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it's the only way to know 100%, but if competent engineers build a Little Boy (Hiroshima) gun-type bomb, they can be very, very confident without bothering to test it.
The Little Boy bomb design was never tested because it was such a no-brainer that it would work. Built as a back-up to the Fat Man (Nagasaki) implosion type bomb, it was always taken for granted that it would work, while no one was that confident about Fat Man, which was why the design was tested in the Trinity test.
In a gun-type bomb, you take a slug of fissile material with a hole in it, and build a gun into the bomb to literally shoot a fissile projectile into the hole. Nothing could be simpler in principle. You need precision and competence in the design, and you need to know that projectile will assemble into the slug, but not fly right through it, and you need to tend to some details I'm not going to enumerate, but that is pretty straightforward engineering.
Little Boy was not very efficient. It had an 85 lb slug of U-235 and a 55 lb projectile of U-235, with what IIRC was a modification of a common 3" gun to shoot it. Only 1.38% of the U-235 actually fissioned, but that was enough to produce an explosion equal to 15,000 tons of TNT.
Little Boy wasn't very "little" either (10 feet long, 9700 lb). But that isn't much of a package requirement to take out a city with a very high assurance factor.
It always escaped me why the US (or someone else) didn't simply mass produce gun-type bombs, rather than apply the tremendous amount of science and engineering to perfect the implosion assembly type, of which Fat Man was the first design of many.
Re:Tech required for building a nuke (Score:5, Informative)
The gun design requires a lot of refined material, which is expensive. It also doesn't scale. You can make implosion bombs use fantastically small amounts of material, or you can scale their yield up greatly, or use them as the trigger to a fusion bomb, and they will be cheaper to produce (even if more expensive to design) than the gun design. When you're making thousands of them, using less material is a significant gain. When you're planning on using thousands of them in a full-scale war that you want some people to survive, using less material is also a significant gain. And when you want to stick them on top of missiles or inside bombers to launch them at your enemies, making them as small and as light as possible is yet another significant gain.
Re:How would this help? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. US government make silly rules.
2. I start import/export co.
3. ???
4. Profit.
Cheers.
Re:How would this help? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about time they catch up (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's about time they catch up (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's about time they catch up (Score:5, Interesting)
Typical technical ignorance (Score:5, 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:Typical technical ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fear based on ignorance.
new? (Score:4, Interesting)
new way of waging wars? (Score:4, Funny)
uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I think (Score:4, Funny)
Playstation 2 anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
beowulf cluster (Score:5, Funny)
It would be the only cluster in the world to slow down as you add nodes.
Re:beowulf cluster (Score:4, Funny)
Re:beowulf cluster (Score:3, Funny)
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...)
Get it right... (Score:5, Informative)
The amendment will never leave the House.
-h-
Re:Get it right... (Score:5, Funny)
Famous last words
Re:Get it right... (Score:5, Informative)
Emphasis mine. It's already left the house.
Is a weapons license necisarry? (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, if you throw one hard enough.
Re:Is a weapons license necisarry? (Score:4, Funny)
Concealed weapon... (Score:5, Funny)
Is this sponsored by AMD? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is this sponsored by AMD? (Score:3, Informative)
I also think that if they stoped selling in the US, they would have penatlies included to any other portion of the company that would still operate within the US. It is technicaly inclusive so a companiedoesn't just decide to operate outside the boundries o
Re:Is this sponsored by AMD? (Score:3, Funny)
There's a firebombing joke in there somewhere.
Already happened to Apple (Score:3, Informative)
More infos here [infoworld.com].
How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How? (Score:3, Informative)
This is
moores law and all that (Score:5, Insightful)
A weapon? Heh! (Score:5, Funny)
Brilliant! (Score:5, Funny)
/sarcasm
finally (Score:3, Funny)
Plant location (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Plant location (Score:4, Informative)
Okay dude (Score:3, Funny)
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.
I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)
They're sitting in boxes at the Bagdad CompUSA store marked "Intel inside"!
Nice work!
-Goran
Good thing I've got a CCW permit. (Score:3, Funny)
simple solution (Score:3, Funny)
There's only one known OS (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Waiting periods, NICS, californians disarmed. (Score:3, Funny)
What about: Gaming consoles, pda, cell phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Would have no effect anyway. (Score:3, Informative)
Kind of reminds me of the laws on bottles of inseciticide which state "It is unlawful to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labelling." or something to that effect. What does my "professional" landscaper tell me? "Oh, I mix these two together in double the concentration to really zap the weeds!" (And no, I didn't let him do that). The law is basically unenforceable. And let's not even talk about posted speed limits! (Guilty as hell on this one). Yes, much more enforceable, and still not all that effective at preventing the behavior (talking percentages here).
To think the law would do anything useful just goes to show how out of touch some of our elected officials are. Is there really nothing else they can think of doing with their time and position of authority?
Sheesh.
- Leo
Ill concieved (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone determined to launch a missile, develop a weapons program, or design a new figher jet, is going to get their hands on computing power and software very easily. All that will end up happening is exports will be stifled as Joe bloggs in RougeStateistan won't fork over cash to US companies to pay for that PC he wanted so he could send email, browse the web and type up documents. Instead he'll give it to a european or russian company.
You can see the reason for this. The Pentagon is annoyed that foreign governments are using clusters to build supercomputers. Which means that they could start snooping on Pentagon comms instead of the other way around.
Obviously someone dropped a line like, "Terrorists use Computers to build a-bombs", in the House of Representatives caffeteria. Cue the assembled polititions nodding in agreement and shuffling off to draft a law to "protect the free world".
Just before lunch was the best time to drop this as their next meal was only seconds away. They still can't think past it!
WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Somewhere in Iraq (Score:3, Funny)
"Good work private. We've finally found those WMDS."
This won't stop the dedicated (Score:3)
I'll bring up an example every slashdotter can relate to. Microsoft's activation didn't prevent piracy one bit. The corporate version or crack patches that would disable activation got around it easily. All it did was inconvienence people who went to the stores and bought the software legally and honestly.
No (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Hacked computers (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear weopons development?? (Score:3, Interesting)
The computing power available to the US when we developed the hydrogen bomb was considerably less than what was available on a desktop even twenty years ago, so to consider fast or advanced processors to be nuclear weapons development technology seems a trifle absurd.
This article [gwu.edu] may demonstrate that these congressmen's fears may be justified, but it also demonstrates just how absurd the notion of controlling proliferation through limiting technology is. There's no need for a Pentium-IV (or even a computer) to develop nuclear weapons, and attempting to control the spread of computer technology through this kind of lawmaking is misguided and likely doomed to failure.
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
So we bring them here when complete and then decide they can't leave the country?? heh.
Re:When you sit down and think... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:SIGH! Here we go again. (Score:3, Funny)
Congress? But, you repeat yourself ...