Slashdot Mirror
"H-Bomb Secret" Now Online
DrDNA writes "In 1979, the US Government sued Howard Morland, Erwin Knoll and Sam Day at The Progressive Magazine for prior restraint over the planned publication of 'The H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It--Why We're Telling It,' citing national security. Six months later, a Federal appeals court vacated the restraining order on publication, and the article was published. There's an interview about the case with George Stanford, of Argonne National Lab, Illinois, a technical adviser for the Progressive Magazine. After all this time, the Progressive article is now online (4Mb pdf)."
Someone set them up the bomb.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
For the Orange alert. Thanks for helping the terrorists!
FYI Americans, we are now at Orange Alert. There is a higher level of indication now than ever that SOMETHING is going to happen. Before, we were on Yellow Alert, so it was possible that something was going to happen, but now we are Orange, meaning that it is slightly more likely that something is going to happen. When something happens, we will go to Red Alert, indicating that something has happened, but until that time, we will remain at Orange alert.
Be Prepared Americans, Something May Happen Today!
"After all this time, the Progressive article is now online"
Not for long.
If you read only the first page of only one article posted to Slashdot this year, make it this one. I don't think I've ever seen a more eloquent, and relevant, defense of the First Amendment.
Speaking of the history of the H-Bomb, a great read on the subject is the mammoth Pulitzer Prize winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. He also wrote Deadly Feasts which I enjoyed even more.
Seemed kinda slow... So I mirrored it. Go ahead and /. it as much as you want. Fortunately, I managed to grab it before you bastards killed their server.... Now I have to RTFA.
It's certainly better than destroying freedom in the name of national security.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Of the Radioactive Boyscount who built a nuclear reactor in his shed from uranium paint you find on antiques
meridian at tha.net
In 1979, The Progressive publishes an article on how to build H-bombs, and our courts hold that our right to free speech is so strong that the government can't do anything to stop the article. Barely 20 years later, Dimitri Sklyarov is arrested for publishing a program that reads copy-protected PDF files. Clearly, copyright infringement is a greater threat to humanity--or at least to politicians' campaign contributions--than H-bombs are.
Can you really stop people thinking ??? Do you really take the rest of the world that retarded that no other physicist than the US could come up with the "recept" ? If you read the article you might see that *FOUR* nation came up *INDEPENDANTLY* onto the recept.
Frankly once you know this *IS* feasible, as a physicist then you can come up with a solution. that then the engineereer can work upon and come up with an effective device.
Secrety is worthless in nuclear weapon run. Only experience and engineering is somethign worth.
As the article author I wish US , France , Russia and China would have worked together on stoping nuclear proliferation thru treaty , because as we may now observe every country which have money to spend on engineering can get the bomb (Pakistan, India, N-K maybe and whoever else).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets
Come on, now. Anyone who has taken a college class in modern physics has most of the know-how to build a fusion bomb. Anyone with a degree in physics is more than capable of doing all the necessary calculations to design one. This article provides very little assistance really. The difficult part is not the theory -- it's fairly simple. The challenge lies in the practicalities of actually making one. Obtaining the materials is nearly impossible for most nations, never mind for an individual! This precludes just about everyone except major governments from building them, and it's hard even for them. Successfully assembling one without dying of acute radiation poisoning requires advanced manufacturing facilities and equipment beyond the reach of any but the wealthiest experimenter. It's just not a hazard. *Think* before you decide to restrict information.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
People always get that quote wrong.
Captain: What happen?
Operator: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
I know it doesn't sound right, but that's how poorly translated it was.
Thank God those days are behind us. The 21st century is a much more enlightened time.
Sadly, consolidation of the media and reduced competition will make them more likely to roll over on things like this in the future.
Nowadays we are into multi-culturalism, and besides, there are now many immigrants from India in various walks of life in American society, and then there was George Harrison and all of that, so the comfort level with Indian culture and Hindu religious icons is much better these days. But back then, Oppenheimer was already suspect for being somewhat left-of-center in his politics and for being somewhat of an egghead (to use swing-era slang), and being Jewish in America of that time already made a person suspect of not worshipping the same God, perhaps in the way being Muslim in America does today, and gosh, quoting some obscure Hindu scripture really put a person way in left field.
But the nagging, unanswered question I have is this: isn't "I am become death" ungrammatical or am I missing some fine point. I can understand "I am death" (present tense) or "I have become death" (past perfect? -- I am not up on grammer), but I always thought "I am become death" was the result of some mistranslation on the order of "all your base."
You misunderstand, badly.
I am against censorship. I am not against secrecy.
Secrecy is saying, "I do not wish to publish my personal information."
Censorship is the government telling you, "Publishing your personal information is illegal, and we will put you in jail if you do so."
Secrecy is fine. If the government wants to keep secrets, that's fine, up until the point where it uses censorship to do so. Keeping secrets with encryption, lockboxes, barbed-wire fences, and armed guards is fine. Keeping secrets by forbidding publication of material gathered from public sources is not fine.
Until and unless you understand the difference between secrecy and censorship, and how it is possible to be completely against one while accepting of the other, there is no point in responding.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The human cost of an invasion of Japan was estimated to be over a million lives. While the loss of 100,000 lives in the two bombed cities was bad, it would have been much much worse for the Japanese had the United States NOT used the bomb.
And therein lies the issue. An invasion of Japan would have cost lives on both sides, many more than were lost by using two atomic bombs. Noone in the longterm learnt from it, noone had to deal with the many dead that would have resulted from an invasion. The lessons that were presented by the 100,000 dead were easily forgotten, precisely because the deaths were all on one side, and were easily dealt. Two bombers dropping two bombs killed 100,000, and it was all too easy.
The victory over Germany was earnt, precisely because we had to fight them all the way to Hitlers doorstep. Now please do not get me wrong, I understand that a great many people died in the pacific front fighting for our freedoms, and I sincerly thank all the surviviors and the fallen, but the victory over Japan was far too easy to learn any long term lessons from. We now have the bomb, killing a large population is now easy. We tend to forget the people involved, and go after anti ballistic missile systems, so we can throw our bombs at them while they cant throw theirs at ours. We try and regain the same advantage that we had when we dropped the bombs on Japan, lack of the ability to retaliate, so there is no kick back on using these weapons.
Attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, threatening North Korea, Iran and god knows who else is easy to us western nations because there is little kickback. The US people got to know a bit about civilian casualties when the WTC was hit, and they didnt like it one bit. 3000 people died that day, and the voice of America that day was one of retaliation. And they got it.
Why do the people who back these wars think Germany, France and other nations were against hte invasion of iraq? Because they have felt the ramifications of war first hand, and fairly recently. They have knowledge that the US, the UK and others are sorely lacking, that of oppression and internal strife. They know that it is better to resolve difficulties through diplomatic channels, however long it takes, rather than in battle. Hitler would never have come about if Germany had been better treated after World War 1. World War 1 would never have taken place if the European royalty had sat down and talked about the assassination of a minor political figure, rather than square off against one another.
I applaud the current stance taken by Libya. They held secret talks with potential enemies, talks that had to be secret so there was no pressure to deliver. They discussed their problems, and settled on a solution. Some could say they did this because of Iraq, but if this was the case, then Iraq has had a net negative effect on the world. Its a case of the play ground bully making an example of one of his victims. They didnt pay up, you could be next.
Well, there was never going to be an invasion of Japan. Japan began suggesting surrender as early as Feb 1945 - the main sticking point later in the negotiations being that we wanted something unconditional whereas the Japanese were insisting that the Emperor retain a non-political title.
The bombs did force an unconditional surrender, but more importantly, it stopped Stalin dead in his tracks, who we had recognized as a grave threat who was now moving aggressively toward Japan. The worst-case scenario here was that Stalin, weakened but holding far more control of Europe and Asia than he could have hoped, could move for a year-round port city on the Pacific. He was clearly willing to commit his citizens to the last man - his ability to send hundreds of thousands of soldiers, including women to their deaths scared the hell out of the other ally leaders. Stalin could move against Japan from the north and take territory from Japan that would be extremely valuable to Russia against a US enemy (Russia entered the war against Japan on Aug 8 by easily invading Manchuria). Stalin realized that the US was the only other power to escape WWII with any resources, and that the two would be in conflict.
Stalins best scenario was to move against Japan after a successful US invasion - both US and Japanese forces would be weak and the US would not be prepared for an invasion from the north. Russia could more easily bring forces to the location than the US, and Russia could win most or all of the island. Stalin realized that the US would buckle under the scale of the Russian army, particularly since the US public would oppose defending real estate given that the real enemy (Japan) was defeated.
The US position was difficult. We couldn't afford to invade given that scenario - Japan could be lost to Russia regardless of whether we defeated Japan or not. Quite possibly the bombs were viewed as the solution to both problems - first, we could quickly end the war with Japan without giving Russia time to become entrenched, and avoiding any further invasions. Second, we send a message to Stalin that we can defeat his armies without committing US soldiers, and that we can bring resources to bear much more quickly than he can (how long does it take to hopscotch a B-29 across the Pacific vs. mobilizing hundreds of thousands of troops). Stalin knew nothing about the bombs until they were dropped but FDR certainly made it clear to him throughout the war that US resources were as limitless as the US wished them to be, so he had to assume the worst. Stalin made it clear to FDR that the number and commitment of his troops were as limitless as he wished them to be, so we had to assume the worst as well.
It's not pleasant to think that the bombs were used against the Japanese as a demonstration to the Russians, but that's quite likely to have been the case. The only possible upside to this is that Japan had a much brighter future not being an iron curtain nation.
If you read the original article and the articles published with it, you may notice something that jumped out at me. It was later made moot by the government giving up the ghost on the injunction, but before they did, they made a claim that "technical" information was different from other forms of speech and therefore not afforded First Amendment rights.
Does this sound vaguely familiar to anyone from a more recent case? Perhaps I'll jog your memory. In the DeCSS case, it was argued that Code is not protected because it has functional value. In effect it is technical rather than political or other speech. In this case, it doesn't seem to be the government making the assertion, rather an organization. But that would be misleading. The DMCA represents a restraint on speech just as broad as the Energy Act used against this article. The identity of the party pushing for the censorship is irrelevant. It's the laws with over broad, sweeping generalizations on what we can, and cannot say, as well as the idea that there is protected and unprotected speech that are truly dangerous. Surely some forms of speech are distasteful in the extreme, and prompt a gut reaction that they should not be allowed. But once you establish a form of speech that is officially "not OK", The worst of your obstructions as a censor are over.
What part of of this is confusing?
"That Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and consult for their common good, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
It's straight forward, black and white. Our nations third grade students can easily understand it. But once you add even ONE exception, however well meaning it might be, the floodgates have opened, and the end result is the muddle we have today. Sufficiently muddled, the citizenry are too afraid to use the rights they might have, for fear of a costly lawsuit, and then they basically don't have those rights. Then we require people like The Progressive, 2600, Penthouse and Lary Flint, and anyone else willing to put their livelihoods and privacy on the line for our freedom.
The base point is this. As soon as something I can personally say out loud becomes Illegal, the whole of my freedom of speech is gone. As soon as something I could sit down and write with my own pen becomes illegal, my freedom of press is gone. Be it technical specifications, computer code, poetry, a political indictment, a story about rape, or a shopping list, If one of those things is illegal, eventually fear will make them all impossible. And once our freedom of speech is gone, Our ability to claim to live in a free society will be a farce.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?