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UK Demands Sourcecode for Strike Fighters
An anonymous reader writes ""The UK has warned America that it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets"
Lord Drayson, minister for defense procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning."
Yes, that's right any technological advantage the US has is so good only a collaboration of more or less the entire (civilised) world could beat them.
Exactly what we have seen in the car industry too. The best (and definitely) most succesful cars in the world are designed and built in the US by US companies. Oh, wait... they're not, which means other (individual) countries can (and will if needed) out-design and outproduce the US. And don't give me that "we are the biggest economy in the world" bullshit either. If you take the EU their GDP is already larger than that of the US.
The trust the rest of the world has in the US has been constantly shrinking (thanks to George "the dicator" Bush), and hence the willingness to rely on the US for anything remotely vital is continuously decreasing. And that is a good thing.
The US is still the strongest kid on the courtyard, but they lost the trust of the other kids, which was actually their main asset (as an albeit imperfect example of a free world). Any empire is bound to fail sooner or later.
Sorry, you had something good going.
J.
Is it just me, or does it feel like the UK DoD just read yesterday's "Deploying Linux: Should You Pre-Compile Binaries or Roll Your Own?" It's nice to see that someone finally respects Gentoo enough to run it on a crucial system! -funroll-loop-the-loops all the way! Tony Blair, PM me, I have some other optimisations that will make your plane go up to 40% faster!