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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.
This ignorance is often displayed by many politicians, regardless of political orientation. Anything we can do to change it? I really don't think so. Politicians just want to do what they can to get (re)elected.
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I guess what I find amusing about this is that very few of the CPUs nowadays are manufactured in the USA. Taiwan, Germany, etc.
So we bring them here when complete and then decide they can't leave the country?? heh.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Computers are now powerful enough to do stuff that formerly required such computing power that only the government had access to. Never mind the fact that theoretically the chips inside of computers nowadays can be used to guide missiles, and other stuff of the like.
Even if it did make sense, what's the point?
You joke, but I can see the legislation now. The government idiots are idiot enough to make the classification and then have its agencies live and die by such a decree, now matter how stupid it is in the pragmatic world.
If the final packaging of the raw chips into usable format is done in a 3rd world country with cheap labor, then people who want to 'smuggle' them will just do it from there rather than the US. The only people who will lose from this kind of export control would be US companies that assemble computers. And that is even assuming you can enforce this sort of thing in the US, which won't work very well. The gov't can't keep billions of dollars worth of illegal products from coming into the US, how will they keep things from going out?
"That level is currently set to the equivalent of a computer using a Pentium 3 processor running at 650MHz, state of the art in 1999 but considered feeble today. " That will also mean any of the current generation of gaming devices as well wouldn't it? If I recall the xbox has 800 or 850 mHz, and the gamecube and ps2 aren't far behind. I imagine PDA's would also fall in this area, and some of the newer generation of cell phones?
Doesn't AMD have a big fab plant in Desden, Germany?
This has to be the goofiest shit I have ever heard coming out of Washington. I take it all our other problems are solved? A computer by itself is not a weapon. It could, however, be used as one, as could a pencil or a brick.
I hate sigs.
Q: What did it take for the US to build it's first nuclear weapon?
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.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Well, fellow idiot, schools instituted "no tolerance" rules to keep students from using those bad illegal drugs, and guess what?!?!? Now students are being expelled for bringing over-the-counter drugs to school. We have a case here where an honor student was seen taking a Motrin tablet for her PMS cramps and the school officials want to send her to an alternative school. They also had the option of expelling her.
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.
Great, so they can't get them locally... what'll they do, hack a ton of Windows machines that have fast processors that are almost totally unused by the thumbless muppets that own them (done) and then upload some programs to do the processing remotely? Welcome to the WWW and the Internet, senator.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"The idea of restricting CPU's, or ANY form of computer software for that matter, is completly without justification."
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.
Mk, so anyone moving out of the US or back into the US like myself due to the military needs an export and possibly import license for a computer that was considered fast in '99.
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
I saw an Intel pro 100/s network card - it has encryption on it.
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
There are two answers to Iraq, at the moment.
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.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
From the article:
"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".
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Especially considering that my last computer was built and shipped to me from one of the countries that they want to ban the export of computers to (China). Don't they realize that computers come from there and arrive here, not the other way around??
"N Korea has a nuke or three and the missiles to send them as far as Seattle"
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.
well, a few flaws, but the two main ones are, we have no top end cut off point for new laws. They are under mandate to always create new laws, that's ALL they are supposed to do, so that's what they do, year in and year out. There's no automatic provision for removing old laws, so they add up. I sincerely doubt now there is a single "legal" human inside the US, everyone is guilty of something now, and it will keep getting worse. Even little babies are born into guilt, before they have done much of anything they "owe" a buncha rich guys a lot of money. How they racked up that debt is beyond me, but it's supposedly the "law" someplace.
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.
Athlons have solved their overheating problems ages ago... Now, Prescotts, OTOH...
Athlons are as hot as ever. It's just that, compared to the Prescott, it doesn't seem so hot after all.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
You would be surprised at how no tolerance rules get thrown out the window for asthma inhalers, especially albuterol ones (fast acting). While most schools have (or had) functions in place for students to be allowed to carry their drugs with them, some do not, all pending a doctor signing the right forms.
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.
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.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
there aren't that many sunshine provisions on the really important laws. Just a few. Easy to prove. How many laws on the books in 1904, compared to now? Were we freer then, or are we freer now? Did government run with balanced books then, do we now? What was the individual income tax rate in 1904? What is it now?
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."
Beowulf was a legendary warrior and king in the old saxonic tradition, much like Gengis Khan was in for the moguls (not the chinese mandarins)
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.