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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.
They were manufactured in Taiwan or someplace... ?! can anyone clarify this to me?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Athlon is definitively a dangerous weapon - it can cause 3rd degree skin burns
So can I still fly with my "weapon"?
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
..so perhaps we were justified going in there after all.
Foreigners could simply obtain SPARC or MIPS specs and fab a multi-GHz version of those. Since these chips are better designed for multi-processing, foreign powers could scale them just as high as a PIV cluster, and run their nuclear simulations. Time to worry more about refined Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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)
I dunno who it is
but it prolly is fhqwhgads.
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.
C:\>
xboxes are already illegal to export(from the US) to certain countries, and Dell also has an export statement when you order
pictures and ramblings
So are wars gonna be decided with Unreal Tournament now?
12:50 - press return.
being in a large room full of developers sitting unhappily at cubicles is bad enough, but no we are all armed with weapons, ahhhh!!!
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
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.
my keyboard, in it's current condition, should be classified as a WMD.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I remember when the Playstation 2 was qualified as such (or so I remember) and it couldn't be exported to certain countries because it could be used in weapons or some BS like that.
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of congressman...
It would be the only cluster in the world to slow down as you add nodes.
It wasn't "the House of Representatives", it was Representative Duncan Hunter, a San Diego Republican who makes Rush Limbaugh look moderate...and that's coming from a registered Republican!
The amendment will never leave the House.
-h-
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.
Now we're going to have to arrest you for disseminating this information.
Sincerely,
The Feds
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Does A Pentium 4 Need A Weapons License?
Sure, if you throw one hard enough.
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
Does this mean I need a CCW permit to stick a P4 in my pocket?
Unknown host pong.
AMD would presumably love this - their Opterons are produced in Dresden and I can't see the Germans joining in on this.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Well, this already happened to the Powermac G4 back in 1999, since it was considered as a "super computer".
More infos here.
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
Given the fact that many P4s are made in Malaysia (among other countries), how exactly is the US going to enforce this?
Even if it did make sense, what's the point?
The use of a Pentium 4 or better as a weapon can easily be avoided by running any Windows variant on it.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
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
How ya like dat?
while they're at it, they need to punish the overclockers for making their weapons run faster
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
well, just remember that the Saturn V rocket had a guidance computer that was even simpler than my Apple ][
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
Obvious question: what fraction of Intel's chip manufactures is actually located in the USA?
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.
This means every AMD chip on earth after the K6 is a weapon.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
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
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
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.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
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!
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.
So what ? Export licensing has been, and will always be, a hell of a joke. If other nations want our tech they can either buy it through third parties, steal it outright, or buy it through the very lossy and buggy 'export license' process. When I worked in defense, it was amazing how easily people could get licenses for all kinds of stuff. Example: ICBM development technology to Pakistan and India in the 1980's. (Sure, they bought their main missle tech from China and the USSR, but they bought a lot of tech from the US of A too.) It was licensed for 'civilian space exploration' and 'satellite launch'. Yeah, right. It's just another potential trade barrier to US goods. Your Tax Dollars at Work !
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.
This space for rent.
"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?
Laws like this are silly; they don't stop other parties from getting their hands on the export-controlled product. Period.
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
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
Congress is in session, and across this great land of ours, many a village is missing its idiot.
The idea of restricting CPU's, or ANY form of computer software for that matter, is completly without justification. States do not require Pentium IVs to launch nuclear missiles or detonate nuclear bombs. These systems were deployed in the seventies with primitive CPUs and little memory or storage space.
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!
May the Maths Be with you!
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...
"Colonel Look, A whole stack of Pentium 4s!"
"Good work private. We've finally found those WMDS."
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I am assuming this is to prevent terrorists and rogue nations from developing super computers that would...do something bad? Alright, maybe some nuclear weapons simulations? Here's the problem, any country or group of people can get their hands on pentiums if they tried hard enough. I think that the past few years has shown us that a country or terrorist group can accomplish a lot of they are dedicated. This is one of those typical laws that just makes it difficult for the ligitimate people who follow the rules.
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.
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.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
yeah...simpler and *MUCH* more spectacular crashes!
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Congress? But, you repeat yourself ...
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.
It seems odd that the excuse being used is that these machines will help countries to develop nuclear weapons.
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 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.
Read, L
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.
weapons of math destruction
That would be those ancient Pentiums with the FDIV bug.
Infuriate left and right
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??
"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.
I thought the whole idea was that these cpus were smart enough to fly cruise missiles or smart bombs. .
Anyone out there want to give a terrorist more ways to kill us?
Oh, wait, the terrorist would just smuggle them out of the country, through one of those wide open borders we have to Mexico, Canada, the coastlines, etc.
And he might steal them, instead of buying them, circumventing the tracking system companies have in place for proscribed exports.
Or get a job as a clerk at Fryes, and buy bunches at an employee discount.
So all this law does is slow down the law-abiding people and businesses, adding to our paperwork load, and undoubtedly increasing our taxes to pay for policing these WMDs, and catch the dumb crooks and dumb terrorists.
Leaving the market for WMD CPUs wide open for the Mafia and smart terrorists.
Great
Give the mafia something to export and make big profits off of, that drug sniffing dogs cannot smell.
This stinks.
wake up and hold your nose
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.
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.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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!
So what are those damn US politicians going to do when one of them bothers to figure out that AMD's main CPU making plants ... FAB30 and FAB36 are in Dresden Germany? ... and that many people consider AMD processors to be as good or better than Pentium 4s?
I'm guessing the almighty demi-god Dubya will be forced to launch a pre-emptive first strike against Germany to destroy the AMD factories, and prevent the chance for the Germans to take a third stab at world domination in less than 100 years.
AMD! choice of der next Furher! zig hail!
Personally I think Dubya just wants to make some money exporting those crappy 1st generation P4's that totally sucked. By making them appear fobidden, they will be more desirable.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
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]
More like weapons of math instruction...
Required reading for internet skeptics
Now I feel old.
Most supercomputer and mainframe parts could be designated as weapons components. Systems and components made by Siemens have had this designation for a long time, since have been used in many weapons systems for years. Intel has been making a big dent in that market as well, so it's components can fall under the same designation. I've heard that Kraftwerk was using machines with Siemens components (this was a long time ago). They had trouble touring internationally because the same components they were using to make music were also components of many weapons systems. There was also concern that powerful computers could be brought into the country and used to hack the defense network (not likely, but hey, why not?).
TallGreen CMS hosting
New Bumper Sticker campaign...
You can have my Laptop (PIV), when you pry it, from my cold dead, Hands.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
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."