Think a moment about the Constitution, and then since this is/. think about computer and network security.
The Constitution was written the way it was because the Founding Fathers didn't trust Governemt, including the one they were creating. Therefore they created a Government with three independent branches, each with checks and balances on the other two branches, in an attempt to create a trustworthy system. In security-speak, they attempted to create an open, trustworthy system so that it would function correctly even if some particular untrustworty components were incorporated. (elected or appointed)
It's ALL about trust, plain and simple.
The President is head of the Executive Branch, and Commander In Chief, but only Congress can declare War. Of course, leading up to the Gulf War II, Congress gave the President a blank check to make War. The only control they appeared to put on it was 'payable to Iraq', but the amount, date, and decision whether or not to exercise were not filled in.
The Legislative Branch makes laws, and the Executive Branch enforces them, but since enforcement of the law essentially deprives the accused/convicted of Constitutional Rights, the Judicial Branch is involved in the process, both in warrants and in judging and sentencing. The Patriot Act significantly weakens the Judicial Branch's participation in the warrant process. (This sentence keeps the post on-topic)
Back to transparency, for a moment. Transparency allows us to see the checks and balances in action, so that we can see that our government is functioning as designed.
OTOH, when the Government begins to operate in an opaque fashion, it doesn't matter whether or not we trust the Man at the Top. Opacity shrouds downward from the starting point, so it requires that you trust the start point, *and everyone from there on down*. This has particular relevance with respect to Abu Graib. Even if it were just 'a few bad eggs,' the cloak of secrecy gave them the space to operate. Keep in mind that Abu Graib techniques were imported from Guantanamo, another 'cloaked' installation, and we've heard next to *nothing* from there, other than they're being kept in what sounds like dog kennels. Eventually this will come out, too.
I may be able to grudgingly agree with you. But you can prepare to blame them for the destruction of another technology, as they get peer-to-peer practically out of existence. Let's also hope they (and the other ??AA, and other business interests) don't finish gutting end-to-end on the Internet.
If only we'd thought of this paradigm before. Just add the "fetch" command, and off they'd bound, coming back in a bit with native lifeforms in their little sample bins.
My point was that had DAT become ubiquitous for audio, as a side-effect it would have become ubiquitous for computers, too. I'm making the conjecture that this side-effect would have made backup that even Joe 6Pak would have done it, especially since the Windows Backup Wizard would have taken care of the details. (We'll leave whether you could actually restore from one of those backups for another battle.)
Of course professionals would be griping about this half-wit backup device cluttering any computer you could buy.
I wonder if the Martian atmosphere is dense enough to use an ion-wind fan, and if the draft from it would be meaningful at keeping dust off. And, for that matter, how much power would it take to run?
36GB is small for data-center or professional backup, but IMHO it would do a great job for home or SOHO backup. Right now I snapshot a few critical directories and files, and don't even try to do comprehensive backups. Nor do I argue about DDS vs DLT for quality, but it's far better than my current (non-existent) comprehensive backup technique.
As to RIAA, I beg to differ. This is old, well-before-/. and even pre-web, but I remember seeing a decent amount of fuss by the recording industry about DAT. My brother-in-law is really into audio and was foaming at the mouth for a DAT, before it was declared stillborn. I know the RIAA had nothing to say about computer backup, but the reality is shared technology. Had DAT/DDS made penetration into the audio market, drives would have become cheap, and they would have found their way into computer backup, cheap.
Once again, there's a difference between 'available' and 'so cheap they put one in every box' like they do floppy drives, today. (I know, the floppy is on the verge of vanishing, but it has lasted for years past it's mission.)
36GB sounds pretty meaningful for backup. With today's hard drive sizes, even blue DVDs won't be dense enough for convenience.
Yes, DAT may be available. But the RIAA managed to hamstring the wide deployment, so it never had a chance to get cheap. IMHO the technology in one of the many (not to mention multi) flavors of writable DVDs is likely more demanding than DAT. But if you shop carefully you can now get multi-format DVD writers for down in the $100 range. You have to shop carefully to even *find* DAT. (or DDS)
My point was about wide deployment, and how RIAA interference at the strategic time prevented that on DAT. To be fair, it may not have all been about the RIAA. DAT tried to come out in the same timeframe as CDs, but recordable CDs were nowhere on the horizon, at that time.
Had DAT become widely depolyed for audio, it would have also found its way into consumer computer backup.
Someone else mentioned VHS backup, and ISTR seeing that years back. But there's one other hitch with VHS - it won't fit into a drive bay. DAT, or at least a 2nd or 3rd generation DAT drive would fit into a drive bay, and was meant to store digital data, (duh) unlike VHS. It's density wasn't the best, out the door, but one can hope for denser versions, and a 'music device' would require backward compatibility.
But horror of horrors, DAT might be used to pirate music, so therefore it's a technology that MUST be suppressed! And suppressed, it was. So the opportunity for a device that might well have had the right charactaristics to become a ubiquitous backup device, even for Joe 6Pak, is gone.
The one I was thinking of was a short story about two guys stuck in a dustbowl. The dust was deep enough to readily get kicked or electrostatically attracted to their faceplates, yet shallow enough that they could easily walk, if only they could see. Trying to rub the dust off only increased the attraction, making it worse.
****SPOILER ALERT****
They rubbed faceplates against each other, feeling embarassed at looking like they were trying to kiss in spacesuites. But presumably the charges on the faceplates would be different, and rubbing would amplify that difference. One faceplate would attract the dust from the other. The guy who got some visiblity back led the other back to the tractor.
I forget the title of the Arthur C. Clarke story, set on the moon, but it presaged another part of the problem, here.
But basically, if you whisk off the solar cell panels with a broom, you have to worry about static electricity buildup. It's just possible that by wiping the solar panel, you'll build up a static charge and attract even more dust.
Of course this possiblity suggests another possability - some sort of static device to repel the dust, so you need no moving parts, beyond deployment.
Or you just estimate the dust accumulation rate, the solar panel degradation due to that, and the design lifetime of the mission. Then make the panels sufficiently oversize to accomodate, and live with it. Don't forget that one rover already has a bum wheel, so other things are showing wear and tear besides the panels.
They certainly do have the right to blow $2e7 for a few moments in space. I'm not saying it's wrong to do that, just that it doesn't benefit society. But you do have a good point, that it does take that $2e7 and pump it back into the economy.
We all can take a wide range of actions, and on multiple scales (legal, moral, intelligent, benefit-to-society) they can be positive, neutral, or negative. There's nothing wrong with neutral actions, and IMHO, spending $2e7 for a space trip is mostly-neutral. As you say, moving that money back into the economy is a positive. Plus, from what I've heard, most people come back from space with a much better attitude toward our world, which would be a positive. I don't know if sub-orbital flight would really do the attitude adjustment as well as orbital, or if orbital is as effective as lunar (see the whole Earth, small) orbit was.
I wasn't offering private donations, merely that there are places that my involuntary donations go that I disapprove of much more than NASA.
When you discover you've got cancer, which are you going to want to buy?
>Space Tourism... benefit
Watch the word 'benefit'. Space tourism itself will have little benefit to society, other than to make a few people happy. It's merely a bigger handful than the really small handful of astronauts. The 'benefit' of space tourism to society will be in opening up economy-of-scale for space travel, so that in time we can actually DO something up there. For one, perhaps move environmentally ugly things off of Earth, like mining asteroids, solar power satellites, etc.
>pure research and weird (not wierd) artwork I'm not going to touch the weird artwork, but that pure research is only of interest to a small class of people TODAY. I'll compare pure research to venture capital. In a normal market, fund 10 companies. 7 will go bust, 2 will do so-so, and 1 will be a Winner. Maybe 70% of pure research turns out to be utter drek, maybe 20% makes some improvement, but just look at that 10%. The problem is, you can't always tell what that 10% is when you start, just like venture capital. I've read one report that part of our economic doldrums in the face of outsourcing is that venture capitalists are sitting on money until they can figure out and ONLY invest in that winning 10%. They're not doing their job, which is helping others discover what the 10% really is.
As far as "other peoples' money," some of that money is mine. There are many things the government takes MY money for, and NASA is one of the smaller ones. I'd rather see that money go to NASA than many of the things it does go to.
Think for a moment about the state of personal data backup.
It really stinks.
Now imagine a device suitable for backup of digital date, reasonably dense, read/write, and small enough to fit into a drive bay. Not only that, but it's originally introduced for consumer applications, so there's a large market base to really drive the costs down.
Finally, imagine that the first use was to record audio, and it scared the RIAA so much that they essentially drove it out of the market.
That's right, Digital Audio Tape. Right out of the chute, it was 3X the density of a CDROM, back in the 1980's, when it would have been a meaningful density for backup. Presumably density could have been improved along with other magnetic media, to keep it useful for backup.
But no, too dangerous to RIAA profits. So now practically nobody backs up disks. I know at home I just back up a few critical files - really just keep spare copies around on several computers. The drives to do real backup are too expensive.
When Windows 3.11 came out, it didn't really do very much, except break OS/2 for Windows. OS/2 for Windows used/loaded an existing copy of Windows 3.1 to run Windows programs, and did the patching on-the-fly to make it run as an OS/2 client. Windows 3.11 changed the build to mess up the offsets so OS/2 for Windows couldn't load it.
So the joke was, what's the difference between Windows 3.11 and Windows 3.1? Use the Windows calculator, and the answer was '0'. It left you with the impression that the whole release was there just to break OS/2 for Windows.
(From what I've heard, WfWG 3.11 was a 'real' release, though.)
Actually, I found The Fountainhead much more palatable than Rand Fans. I can certainly agree with you 1 and 2 points, I suspect others run with it in directions neither of us like. Though I've heard some of the titles of her other works, and still reserve the right to disagree violently. I didn't disagree with what I have actually read. (1 book)
As for the portrayal, I admitted it was based on a picture that IMHO really didn't cast her in a good light. The picture exuded silver-spoon non-worker.
Never read Atlas Shrugged, though I did read The Fountainhead. A guy down the hall Freshman year in college was a Rand fan, which got me to the point of reading one. Shortly later, I began reading Atlas Shrugged, and it seemed like same story, same characters, different setting.
Funny thing about Rand Fans, "Let's all be individualists, just like Ayn Rand." Perhaps that's unfair of me. Second thing about Ayn Rand, I once saw a picture of her, in a 'leisure setting.' Perhaps she had once suffered and worked hard, but this picture gave no hint of it. It gave me the feeling that her writings were an attempt to justify the silver spoon it appeared that she was born with, in her mouth.
As for Self Interest, I guess I subscribe to E.E. Doc Smith's version, enlightened self interest. Find your share of the pie, but recognize that you are sharing a pie, and be fair about it. Strive to make the pie larger, while you're at it, and everybody can get a larger share.
I was just at the end of second grade, and *really* into submarines. My neighbor was two years older than me, and made fun of me for getting "little kids' two-page books" when we went to the bookmobile. So early that Summer, I got another age-appropriate book about submarines, but I also got 20,000 Leagues. It took me most of the Summer and several renewals, but I was determined to read that book. To be honest, quite a bit of it zoomed over my head, too. But I read the whole thing.
A good lesson in stick-to-it-ivness, and it helped launch my life-long interest in Science Fiction, which helped launch my interest and career in technology, as an engineer.
As a bad side-effect, I never looked at any of the many 20,000 Leagues movies quite the same, after that book, since none I've seen were truly faithful. (Most tried to hint at nuclear power, instead of really good batteries, etc.)
I really ought to reread the book, some time. For all the books I've read and re-read, I've never re-read that one.
But it all would have worked better had he gone though the UN, let the weapons inspectors finish their job, etc. It might have meant invading 6-12 months later, but IMHO the results would be better.
Not so much accusing the grandparent of that as dramatizing the point. In the process of criticizing Bush, which I must do, one must also not lose sight of the fact that Saddam Hussein was a really, really bad man.
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.
Or what if Germany decides it's a trade war, and retaliates by placing similar controls on AMD CPUs, and doesn't allow them to be exported to the US without a license?
Maybe Intel's really behind it, to make a US market for IA64.
Slashdot Mirror
Think a moment about the Constitution, and then since this is /. think about computer and network security.
The Constitution was written the way it was because the Founding Fathers didn't trust Governemt, including the one they were creating. Therefore they created a Government with three independent branches, each with checks and balances on the other two branches, in an attempt to create a trustworthy system. In security-speak, they attempted to create an open, trustworthy system so that it would function correctly even if some particular untrustworty components were incorporated. (elected or appointed)
It's ALL about trust, plain and simple.
The President is head of the Executive Branch, and Commander In Chief, but only Congress can declare War. Of course, leading up to the Gulf War II, Congress gave the President a blank check to make War. The only control they appeared to put on it was 'payable to Iraq', but the amount, date, and decision whether or not to exercise were not filled in.
The Legislative Branch makes laws, and the Executive Branch enforces them, but since enforcement of the law essentially deprives the accused/convicted of Constitutional Rights, the Judicial Branch is involved in the process, both in warrants and in judging and sentencing. The Patriot Act significantly weakens the Judicial Branch's participation in the warrant process. (This sentence keeps the post on-topic)
Back to transparency, for a moment. Transparency allows us to see the checks and balances in action, so that we can see that our government is functioning as designed.
OTOH, when the Government begins to operate in an opaque fashion, it doesn't matter whether or not we trust the Man at the Top. Opacity shrouds downward from the starting point, so it requires that you trust the start point, *and everyone from there on down*. This has particular relevance with respect to Abu Graib. Even if it were just 'a few bad eggs,' the cloak of secrecy gave them the space to operate. Keep in mind that Abu Graib techniques were imported from Guantanamo, another 'cloaked' installation, and we've heard next to *nothing* from there, other than they're being kept in what sounds like dog kennels. Eventually this will come out, too.
I may be able to grudgingly agree with you. But you can prepare to blame them for the destruction of another technology, as they get peer-to-peer practically out of existence. Let's also hope they (and the other ??AA, and other business interests) don't finish gutting end-to-end on the Internet.
If only we'd thought of this paradigm before. Just add the "fetch" command, and off they'd bound, coming back in a bit with native lifeforms in their little sample bins.
My point was that had DAT become ubiquitous for audio, as a side-effect it would have become ubiquitous for computers, too. I'm making the conjecture that this side-effect would have made backup that even Joe 6Pak would have done it, especially since the Windows Backup Wizard would have taken care of the details. (We'll leave whether you could actually restore from one of those backups for another battle.)
Of course professionals would be griping about this half-wit backup device cluttering any computer you could buy.
I wonder if the Martian atmosphere is dense enough to use an ion-wind fan, and if the draft from it would be meaningful at keeping dust off. And, for that matter, how much power would it take to run?
36GB is small for data-center or professional backup, but IMHO it would do a great job for home or SOHO backup. Right now I snapshot a few critical directories and files, and don't even try to do comprehensive backups. Nor do I argue about DDS vs DLT for quality, but it's far better than my current (non-existent) comprehensive backup technique.
As to RIAA, I beg to differ. This is old, well-before-/. and even pre-web, but I remember seeing a decent amount of fuss by the recording industry about DAT. My brother-in-law is really into audio and was foaming at the mouth for a DAT, before it was declared stillborn. I know the RIAA had nothing to say about computer backup, but the reality is shared technology. Had DAT/DDS made penetration into the audio market, drives would have become cheap, and they would have found their way into computer backup, cheap.
Once again, there's a difference between 'available' and 'so cheap they put one in every box' like they do floppy drives, today. (I know, the floppy is on the verge of vanishing, but it has lasted for years past it's mission.)
Oops, I thought it was Clarke. Oh well, I like Clement, too.
Well geee, folks, we were trying to help you out. Look at all of that nookyular stuff we were sending away from the Earth, forever.
Very simple solution, probably more effective if you ionize it, too.
36GB sounds pretty meaningful for backup. With today's hard drive sizes, even blue DVDs won't be dense enough for convenience.
Yes, DAT may be available. But the RIAA managed to hamstring the wide deployment, so it never had a chance to get cheap. IMHO the technology in one of the many (not to mention multi) flavors of writable DVDs is likely more demanding than DAT. But if you shop carefully you can now get multi-format DVD writers for down in the $100 range. You have to shop carefully to even *find* DAT. (or DDS)
My point was about wide deployment, and how RIAA interference at the strategic time prevented that on DAT. To be fair, it may not have all been about the RIAA. DAT tried to come out in the same timeframe as CDs, but recordable CDs were nowhere on the horizon, at that time.
Had DAT become widely depolyed for audio, it would have also found its way into consumer computer backup.
Digital Audio Tape
Someone else mentioned VHS backup, and ISTR seeing that years back. But there's one other hitch with VHS - it won't fit into a drive bay. DAT, or at least a 2nd or 3rd generation DAT drive would fit into a drive bay, and was meant to store digital data, (duh) unlike VHS. It's density wasn't the best, out the door, but one can hope for denser versions, and a 'music device' would require backward compatibility.
But horror of horrors, DAT might be used to pirate music, so therefore it's a technology that MUST be suppressed! And suppressed, it was. So the opportunity for a device that might well have had the right charactaristics to become a ubiquitous backup device, even for Joe 6Pak, is gone.
Nope. That was a novel, also good.
The one I was thinking of was a short story about two guys stuck in a dustbowl. The dust was deep enough to readily get kicked or electrostatically attracted to their faceplates, yet shallow enough that they could easily walk, if only they could see. Trying to rub the dust off only increased the attraction, making it worse.
****SPOILER ALERT****
They rubbed faceplates against each other, feeling embarassed at looking like they were trying to kiss in spacesuites. But presumably the charges on the faceplates would be different, and rubbing would amplify that difference. One faceplate would attract the dust from the other. The guy who got some visiblity back led the other back to the tractor.
I forget the title of the Arthur C. Clarke story, set on the moon, but it presaged another part of the problem, here.
But basically, if you whisk off the solar cell panels with a broom, you have to worry about static electricity buildup. It's just possible that by wiping the solar panel, you'll build up a static charge and attract even more dust.
Of course this possiblity suggests another possability - some sort of static device to repel the dust, so you need no moving parts, beyond deployment.
Or you just estimate the dust accumulation rate, the solar panel degradation due to that, and the design lifetime of the mission. Then make the panels sufficiently oversize to accomodate, and live with it. Don't forget that one rover already has a bum wheel, so other things are showing wear and tear besides the panels.
They certainly do have the right to blow $2e7 for a few moments in space. I'm not saying it's wrong to do that, just that it doesn't benefit society. But you do have a good point, that it does take that $2e7 and pump it back into the economy.
We all can take a wide range of actions, and on multiple scales (legal, moral, intelligent, benefit-to-society) they can be positive, neutral, or negative. There's nothing wrong with neutral actions, and IMHO, spending $2e7 for a space trip is mostly-neutral. As you say, moving that money back into the economy is a positive. Plus, from what I've heard, most people come back from space with a much better attitude toward our world, which would be a positive. I don't know if sub-orbital flight would really do the attitude adjustment as well as orbital, or if orbital is as effective as lunar (see the whole Earth, small) orbit was.
I wasn't offering private donations, merely that there are places that my involuntary donations go that I disapprove of much more than NASA.
>viagra vs cancer drugs...
... benefit
When you discover you've got cancer, which are you going to want to buy?
>Space Tourism
Watch the word 'benefit'. Space tourism itself will have little benefit to society, other than to make a few people happy. It's merely a bigger handful than the really small handful of astronauts. The 'benefit' of space tourism to society will be in opening up economy-of-scale for space travel, so that in time we can actually DO something up there. For one, perhaps move environmentally ugly things off of Earth, like mining asteroids, solar power satellites, etc.
>pure research and weird (not wierd) artwork
I'm not going to touch the weird artwork, but that pure research is only of interest to a small class of people TODAY. I'll compare pure research to venture capital. In a normal market, fund 10 companies. 7 will go bust, 2 will do so-so, and 1 will be a Winner. Maybe 70% of pure research turns out to be utter drek, maybe 20% makes some improvement, but just look at that 10%. The problem is, you can't always tell what that 10% is when you start, just like venture capital. I've read one report that part of our economic doldrums in the face of outsourcing is that venture capitalists are sitting on money until they can figure out and ONLY invest in that winning 10%. They're not doing their job, which is helping others discover what the 10% really is.
As far as "other peoples' money," some of that money is mine. There are many things the government takes MY money for, and NASA is one of the smaller ones. I'd rather see that money go to NASA than many of the things it does go to.
Think for a moment about the state of personal data backup.
It really stinks.
Now imagine a device suitable for backup of digital date, reasonably dense, read/write, and small enough to fit into a drive bay. Not only that, but it's originally introduced for consumer applications, so there's a large market base to really drive the costs down.
Finally, imagine that the first use was to record audio, and it scared the RIAA so much that they essentially drove it out of the market.
That's right, Digital Audio Tape. Right out of the chute, it was 3X the density of a CDROM, back in the 1980's, when it would have been a meaningful density for backup. Presumably density could have been improved along with other magnetic media, to keep it useful for backup.
But no, too dangerous to RIAA profits. So now practically nobody backs up disks. I know at home I just back up a few critical files - really just keep spare copies around on several computers. The drives to do real backup are too expensive.
But it didn't have to be that way.
When Windows 3.11 came out, it didn't really do very much, except break OS/2 for Windows. OS/2 for Windows used/loaded an existing copy of Windows 3.1 to run Windows programs, and did the patching on-the-fly to make it run as an OS/2 client. Windows 3.11 changed the build to mess up the offsets so OS/2 for Windows couldn't load it.
So the joke was, what's the difference between Windows 3.11 and Windows 3.1? Use the Windows calculator, and the answer was '0'. It left you with the impression that the whole release was there just to break OS/2 for Windows.
(From what I've heard, WfWG 3.11 was a 'real' release, though.)
Actually, I found The Fountainhead much more palatable than Rand Fans. I can certainly agree with you 1 and 2 points, I suspect others run with it in directions neither of us like. Though I've heard some of the titles of her other works, and still reserve the right to disagree violently. I didn't disagree with what I have actually read. (1 book)
As for the portrayal, I admitted it was based on a picture that IMHO really didn't cast her in a good light. The picture exuded silver-spoon non-worker.
Never read Atlas Shrugged, though I did read The Fountainhead. A guy down the hall Freshman year in college was a Rand fan, which got me to the point of reading one. Shortly later, I began reading Atlas Shrugged, and it seemed like same story, same characters, different setting.
Funny thing about Rand Fans, "Let's all be individualists, just like Ayn Rand." Perhaps that's unfair of me. Second thing about Ayn Rand, I once saw a picture of her, in a 'leisure setting.' Perhaps she had once suffered and worked hard, but this picture gave no hint of it. It gave me the feeling that her writings were an attempt to justify the silver spoon it appeared that she was born with, in her mouth.
As for Self Interest, I guess I subscribe to E.E. Doc Smith's version, enlightened self interest. Find your share of the pie, but recognize that you are sharing a pie, and be fair about it. Strive to make the pie larger, while you're at it, and everybody can get a larger share.
I was just at the end of second grade, and *really* into submarines. My neighbor was two years older than me, and made fun of me for getting "little kids' two-page books" when we went to the bookmobile. So early that Summer, I got another age-appropriate book about submarines, but I also got 20,000 Leagues. It took me most of the Summer and several renewals, but I was determined to read that book. To be honest, quite a bit of it zoomed over my head, too. But I read the whole thing.
A good lesson in stick-to-it-ivness, and it helped launch my life-long interest in Science Fiction, which helped launch my interest and career in technology, as an engineer.
As a bad side-effect, I never looked at any of the many 20,000 Leagues movies quite the same, after that book, since none I've seen were truly faithful. (Most tried to hint at nuclear power, instead of really good batteries, etc.)
I really ought to reread the book, some time. For all the books I've read and re-read, I've never re-read that one.
But it all would have worked better had he gone though the UN, let the weapons inspectors finish their job, etc. It might have meant invading 6-12 months later, but IMHO the results would be better.
I guess I should have added a smiley to the post.
Not so much accusing the grandparent of that as dramatizing the point. In the process of criticizing Bush, which I must do, one must also not lose sight of the fact that Saddam Hussein was a really, really bad man.
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.
Or what if Germany decides it's a trade war, and retaliates by placing similar controls on AMD CPUs, and doesn't allow them to be exported to the US without a license?
Maybe Intel's really behind it, to make a US market for IA64.