Comments on: Defense bill could stifle computer trade

If section of House bill stays, any PC with a chip more powerful than a Pentium 3 would be classified as a weapon.

[Jonathan]

Idiots

n/t

thats our gov't for ya

While the gov't is busy running around trying to control exports, half of the other countries in the world will be creating their own pc's and cpu's to sell to the countries we won't sell to.

Free invitation to China

Dear China,
Please feel free to take our position as IT superpower and all our exports,
yours generously G.W.Bush and friends

[MacarioV]

read!!!

you, apparently, did not read the article. It is the congress, dems and reps, who is the idiot. The pres and the future pres, are busy, trying to refute this bill.
Don't let politics cloud your judgment.

[MacarioV]

Useless congress debate

To build a guided misile, I am told, you need no more than the power of a processor on a cheap cell phone.
Software technology is what really count. Without the right software, you might as well use the powerfull chips as rocks to kill your neighbor. A useless and non civilized activity, anyways.

Does anyone use their brain when they create these proposals?

What are they thinking about? Hmmm, sounds like a fantastic opportunity for companies to MOVE to another country where such regulations are considered communistic and take the hundreds of thousands of US jobs with them. Does anyone feel that this country is fast becoming socialist? The Rich will only get richer and forget the American Dream?

genie's out of the bottle

It's too late actually, we've outsourced the required manufacturing capabilities and there's no turning back now. Take an AMD based computer, for example. The fab is in what was East Germany. The wafers are cut up and die's mounted in Malaysia. The mainboard is manufactured in Taiwan. Most of the remaining components are made in the Pacific rim. The OS required is freely available everywhere (Linux + clustering software).

We're actually IMPORTING these computers ourselves. By adding these restrictions, all they'll do is hurt what remains of the U.S. manufacturing base.

[arnetwork]

you miss the point

You miss the point with your comment about the limited amount of computer manufacturing in the U.S.

It would be an offense to _arrange_ the export of prohibited items. If Gateway arranges the export of a pentium four computer to me in Canada it will be an offense regardless of where the item actually originated, what country it travelled through to get to me.

If arranging certain exports were not the target of such legislation only longshoremen and truckers could be charged. It is also possible that providing support for those prohibited items already sold would be legally risky.

My advice to corporate, government and other institutional purchasers of computer products is to avoid all American technology companies like the plague unless they wish to hire a large number technology lawyers to monitor purchase orders. Non American companies would be liable for damages caused by any failure to fulfill contract obligations as a result of predictable supply problems caused by using legally restricted American technology companies.

There is a lot of technology that uses chips with the processing power mentioned in the legislation. Its not just American _arranged_ desktops that would be barred but everything that uses the processor. An obvious example would be much of modern manufacturing processes, medical technology etc.

Safer, easier and requires less techno-legal types to simply not buy any American technology.

Absolutely right! We have no exclusive franchise

A major Taiwanese fab (TSMC) or Samsung in Korea or Philips in the Netherlands or ... All are capable of fabricating leading edge silicon within 30% or closer to the best U.S. fabs Intel, IBM, AMD, Motorola, LSI Logic, ... can do in terms of performance.

If you have ever worked at a semi-conductor house that designs processors, you know that the majority of the design engineers are either recent immigrants or the children of recent immigrants. As a 5th generation U.S. citizen I am a minority being a design engineer.

We are far from owning this field of human endeavor in the U.S. All that would be accomplished by restricting exports of computers would be the slow killing of our computer industry that is already facing massive competition from abroad, from embedded processors to super-computers. The bad actors who want this technology don't have to come to the U.S. to get it at all...

Yes, I'm scared by that statement, too. But by hurting our domestic computer industry, I contend our national defense would be actually harmed, because our defense agencies could be put in the position of relying on a foreign supplier for their high-end computing needs if they really want "state of the art". I don't think anybody in the U.S. wants that.

[shadowself]

Unworkable and stupid in the extreme

Two things:
I used to do simulations/analyses on effects of nuclear events on
our ICBM systems for the DoD back in the 80's and early 90's
with systems much slower than the top of the line laptops
available today. True, the simulations/analyses took several days
to run, but I did it. Thus there are laptops running around the
world that today could do these analyses while on a plane at
35,000 feet -- and do it in hours, not days. To try to limit the
export of these is stupid since there would be many
businessmen flying around the world that would be violating this
section if it is enacted into law.

Additionally think of this scenario:
An extreme game player has a top of the line machine today: A
dual 3.6 GHz Pentium or a dual 2.4 GHz Opteron or a dual 2.5
GHz PowerPC based system with a top of the line graphics card.
This game player has a friend in Europe or Asia (easy to happen
with the Massively Multi Player Online Role Playing Games out
today).
This gamer then decides to upgrade to the then state of the art
next spring.
This gamer offers to sell the used machine at a huge discount to
his friend. They complete the sale, and the gamer ships the
machine to his friend.

From the limited wording in the article if this clause is enacted
and signed into law the gamer will have just violated export
control laws. The U.S. government cannot police every private
transaction. It is just 100% unworkable.

Mass Destruction Weapons

USA will soon invade your country.
Dont **** with my computer or i'll join al-quaida..

[hadaso]

"Bad guys" actually don't need to buy this technology!

"Bad guys" actually don't need to buy this technology! Just like spammers can use viruses to plant email servers on private PCs, or crackers can use thousands of infected PCs to launch distributed denial of service attacks, so can terrorists or terroristic regimes create networks of hundreds of thousands of "zombie PCs" working for them as a giant supercomputer utilizing the power of privately owned PCs without their owners knowledge! There's no real need to buy the hardware, and certainly not to export it from the USA!

[Inetsec]

Double S, Double D

Same S***, Different day... Government paranoia has been going on since before the pyramids were built. When the very FIRST computing machine was built the "then" government looked seriously at classifying it as "TOP SECRET" (actually if I remember correctly they did).

The article talks of an arms race, nuclear threats, desktop computers that can assist the malcontents and such. BAH! The horse was let out of the barn when the first man like creature picked up a rock or a stick and beat the crap out of his opponent.

What chimes in my brain here is fear. Fear of the future based on the past. This bill is concerned with 1/2 a century old technology and the lack of some recent quantum leap that out flanks the "bad guys" and a thought that since we came up with a trump card - the atomic bomb - that someone may possibly outflank us (the US) if we allow "OUR" technology to fall into the hands of the foe. BAH! It's already there with no restrictions. Heck, half if not more of the bleeding edge tech stuff is being developed elsewhere.

Rather than establish a pseudo gag order on US technology, what the government would be smart in doing would be to take the Gates approach. "We want something and if we can't do it or it cost too much for us to do it - buy it or kill it." Better yet they could actually pump up the R&D funding for the "fringe" tech stuff. Which by the way does NOT necessarily take a hoard of high priced MBA's or PhD's to dream up the fringe ideas.

This bill is stupid and does not in any way look forward or protect anything of future value.

[unknown unknown]

God, what bunch of morons...

Congress tried this with encryption, and then they realized that other countries had developed strong encryption of their own. The only thing the export controls did do is hurt U.S companies trying to compete in other countries. I just wonder how long it will take them to realize that other countries have already developed fast processors. Motorola, for example. I seem to remember after the PS2 came out a few people were worried other countries would cluster them and make a super computer for weapons research.

We have a bunch of paranoid morons in congress. Let?s vote out the incumbents

[Inetsec]

Paranoid?

Actually one is only deemed paranoid if the fear is unsubstantiated or that no one else sees the threat. I would suggest that the "paranoia" as you point out is substantiated, but the reflex action is what misses the mark. Education of those in office could fix the problem - if they would pause to listen. I really don't think that replacing one "moron" with another will do the trick.