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Bush Lightens Supercomputer Export Restrictions 167

Posted by Hemos from the gettinghte-power-out-there dept.
MrZeebo writes "According to a story on Yahoo! News, Bush has finally decided to lift the Cold War-era restrictions on how fast an exported computer can be. Now, computers as fast as 195,000 MTOPS (up from 85,000 MTOPS) can be exported to countries such as Russia, China, and Pakistan."
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Bush Lightens Supercomputer Export Restrictions More

Bush Lightens Supercomputer Export Restrictions

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  • finally (Score:5, Funny)

    by _UnderTow_ ( 86073 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:45AM (#2778949)
    Cool, maybe now the Mac fanatics where I work will stop bragging about how THEIR computers are so powerful they can't be exported from the country.

  • neat... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:45AM (#2778951) Homepage Journal
    ...now we can re-export playstation 2's.

    eBay.ru, here I come.

    - A.P.

  • They had no choice... (Score:3, Funny)

    by PsiPsiStar ( 95676 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:46AM (#2778958)
    The tanks that were being used to guard the
    iMacs got sent over to Afghanistan.
  • Within a year or so PDA's will fall under this rule, since I remember reading somewhere the PS2 (I think it was) technically was over the allowed power.

  • What difference does it make? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rui del-Negro ( 531098 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:49AM (#2778983) Homepage
    Aren't american supercomputers made in China and programmed in Pakistan anyway?

    RMN
    ~~~
    • American supercomputers (meaning Crays) are made in the US using parts that are mostly made in the US because for certain DOD contracts this is what is required. The rest of the classic supercomputer (meaning vector machines instead of ccNUMA style machines, ie Origin3k, SP2, etc) market seems to be supplied by japanese companies (NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi being the main ones). I doubt that Japan willingly lets their supers go to china.
  • theregister [theregister.co.uk] on the same

  • Obligatory (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Karl Cocknozzle ( 514413 )
    ...Imagine if we exported a beowulf cluster of these...

  • This restriction doesn't make sense anyways. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sluggie ( 85265 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:50AM (#2778989)
    I think after a long time of several users being modded down for this comment, it still has its meaning:

    "Imagine a beowulf cluster of theese..."

    The power definetely lies in clustering, who wants to/can control which clusters are built?
    Some nice 2.2 Ghz Northwoods add up number crunching power very quickly...
    • Wouldn't clustering be a way to circumvent the law in the first place?

      The problems that the law was intended to make difficult to solve (nuclear weapons simulation, aero flow analysis, cryptography, and so on) are, as far as I can tell, problems that can can be attacked in parallel, and so are good applications for clusters to tackle.

      Well then, if the restriction prevented the export of any computer faster than x, couldn't a cluster of n export-legal computers of speed y (y x ?

      And for smaller values of y, substitute larger values of n to gain the same net power Y.

      So really, I would think that clustering technology rendered (heh) the restriction moot a long time ago.

      .
      • Let's try this again.

        Wouldn't clustering be a way to circumvent the law in the first place?

        The problems that the law was intended to make difficult to solve (nuclear weapons simulation, aero flow analysis, cryptography, and so on) are, as far as I can tell, problems that can can be attacked in parallel, and so are good applications for clusters to tackle.

        Well then, if the restriction prevented the export of any computer faster than x, couldn't a cluster of n export-legal computers of speed y (y less-than x ) produce a total throughput power Y (Y greater-than x)?

        And for smaller values of y, substitute larger values of n to gain the same net power Y.

        So really, I would think that clustering technology rendered (heh) the restriction moot a long time ago.

        .

        • Clusters are covered by this law: US companies can't sell a cluster which exceeds this limit without approval. However, the people making the law are quite aware that the end user can assemble the cluster out of parts; that's the main reason why the limit is rising.

          See the May/June 2001 issue of *Computing In Science and Engineering*, pages 24-31. I led the technical side of the team that built the large cluster illustrated in figure 3, which clocked in at 190,000 MTOPs.

  • Does it really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Raleel ( 30913 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:50AM (#2778990)
    As I read it, the scale at which this is working from is substantially over your average desktop machine. Why not just use a cluster of pc's/macs?

    Yes, I am aware that network bottlenecks can be an issue with certain varieties of calculations. I work in a national lab. I administer clusters. But I don't think there is an export restriction on myrinet, or any other high performance network. Not to mention that most of the countries that this applies to don't have a lot of money to work with anyways, so perhaps desktops with fast/gigabit ethernet is more the order of the day.

    Not only that, but there are other companies that make supercomputers. Hitachi comes to mind, and I think Fujitsu as well.

    Perhaps what they should rather do is not require DOE facilities to buy American unless it truly is the better product.
    • This is especially relevant with the whole channel-bonding thing that's been developed lately. If you use numerous 100-megabit ethernet cards and bond them logically via software into giga-bit class cards via a few switches and routers along the way, you end up with giga-bit class performance for far lower cost.
    • Well, I worked in a University in Spain setting up a cluster based on Myrinet 3 years ago, and I can say that there are some restrictions on importing Myrinet, at least. We had to certify that the equipment was going to be used for academic purposes only. The certification had to be signed by our Dean, so you can see they were pretty serious about it.

    • Re:Does it really matter? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @11:14AM (#2779122) Journal
      Why not just use a cluster of pc's/macs?

      I think a big part of the answer might lie not in hardware, but in software.

      As you know, the scientific and technical computing world still runs on Fortran. I know the SGI and Cray Fortran compilers are fantastic, especially the Cray vector-optimizing compiler; I would expect that the compilers NEC and Fujitsu use are similar. But as I understand it Absoft's Fortran compilers for Linux and Windows aren't up to those standards.

      You might be able to run benchmarks or other C or assembly code as fast on a cluster as on a commercial supercomputer, but if the compilers aren't as good, your application will suffer.

      It's important to note that this is just speculation on my part. I've only ever used SGI's and Cray's Fortran compilers, so everything I know about Absoft's comes to me second-hand. If Absoft rocks and I don't know it, it's not my fault. ;-)
  • A typical U.S. home computer now sold in retail stores is capable of roughly 2,100 MTOPS.
  • Does anyone have a list MTOP ratings for different computers? Just what computers are now exportable?
  • So... now we can export supercomputers twice as fast as cold-era ones?

    Ahem. So them, Bush's Law of Computer Export Speed states that the power of exported computers doubles every twenty years.

    Why doesn't this sound like a good thing? Or is this rating not linear?
    • If you read the article it actualy states that the limit was already extended last January, so we're talking more like 6 times as fast.

      "In recent years, the government had moved to ease export restrictions. The Clinton Administration boosted the MTOPS limit to 85,000 from 28,000 last January and the Senate passed a bill on Sept. 6 that effectively removed MTOPS limits."

  • the catch (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    all supercomputers must come with Windows pre-installed making them slightly less than super :)

  • So they haven't lifted the restrictions ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:54AM (#2779012) Homepage Journal
    ... just bought themselves another couple of years or so worth of computing progress before mainstream small-busines servers fall into the restricted category. [sigh] This is just as stupid as restrictions on encryption software. When the hell are the feds going to learn that the US isn't the world's only source for computing technology (hardware, software, and combinations thereof) and the only thing these export restrictions accomplish is to weaken US companies against foreign competition?
    • Not to mention that the export restrictions are moot anyway. Yeah, another beowulf comment; I can feel the (-1, Redundant) already...

      But the problem here is the same one as we had with the aftermath of September 11, on a much less tragic scale. Instead of admitting that there was nothing we could have reasonably done to stop it, we've taken all kinds of after-the-horse-is-out-of-the-barn measures (i.e. banning knives on airplanes?!), cracked down on basic civil liberties, and tried to point fingers to blame someone, anyone, for something that was entirely the doing of one man and his personal terror cult.

      Things like this are accountability issues. While the average man on the street may not care, there's still a lot of cold-war mentality out there (Red-baiting is still a viable attack strategy in some quarters; it's not a joke to everybody) and those people pull some pretty powerful strings. Long story short, the people who demand ineffective restrictions like this are very much the same people who want National Missile Defense (just as unworkable -- you really think you can catch sand in a sieve?) -- long on rhetoric, short on logic.

      /Brian

    • Re:So they haven't lifted the restrictions ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by deebaine ( 218719 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @11:14AM (#2779120) Journal
      I think the analysis is a bit more subtle than that. By this same argument, preventing Boeing from selling -C and -E model F-15 Eagles to Pakistan and China does nothing but weaken Boeing against foreign competitors. After all, the United States is not the world's only source for high-performance combat aircraft.

      Of course, this too is an oversimplification, as computers are not exactly analogous to fighter planes. Nevertheless, the issue at hand is to what extent raw computing power is a defense technology, and to what extent its export should therefore be restricted. The "they're going to get it anyhow, we may as well give it to them" argument is an insufficient answer.

      -db
    • If, as a previous poster mentioned, the average home computer is 2,100 MTOPS, it takes about 6.5 doublings of computer power to reach 195,000 MTOPS. If Moores law holds and we double every 1.5 years, this adds almost 10 years until the average desktop reaches this limit. That is certainly more than just a couple of years. If a mainstream small-busines server is twice the power of an average home computer, this still gives over 8 years...

      Now, even given those numbers, I still think the limitations are just plain dumb.

  • Maybe now Iraq can start its stockpile of PS2s.
    • Maybe now Iraq can start its stockpile of PS2s.

      Nah. Saddam has already gone ahead and built his killer-AI jets with Dreamcast units. It took a few more, but they were only $50 a pop! Even megalomaniacal dictators aren't crazy enough to spend $299.99 for a PS2...
  • I think the main purpose behind supercomputer restrictions in the first place was to limit the amount of nuclear research that could be done. Russia obviously already has a stockpile heavy enough to blow a good portion of the earths crust into orbit, perhaps giving the planet a nice debris-ring like saturn or jupiter, and a toasty warmth similar to venus.

    Pakistan just figured out how to split the atom for antihumanitarian purposes, and i guess Gee Dubya Srubya figures the indians are going to wipe out the pakastanis who are going to wipe out the indians anyways, so why not give them a computer powerful enough for them to calculate trejectories carefully enough to make sure thats ALL they destroy (directly)

    "...And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them. "

    -H. G. Wells, The World Set Free, 1914
    • I think the main purpose behind supercomputer restrictions in the first place was to limit the amount of nuclear research that could be done.
      [...]
      Pakistan just figured out how to split the atom for antihumanitarian purposes, and i guess Gee Dubya Srubya figures the indians are going to wipe out the pakastanis who are going to wipe out the indians anyways, so why not give them a computer powerful enough for them to calculate trejectories carefully enough to make sure thats ALL they destroy (directly)
      Of course, you're right! The only possible use for computers in in nuclear research. It's not like you need anything more than an abacus to crack powerful encryption, and I certainly don't think there's any practical use for it - it's not like it's integral to our military or financial systems, or anything.

      Oh, wait...

      --
      Stop @env.textlog! And feel ashamed if you know what it is!
    • Balistic missle trajectories are not that hard to calculate.

      Anyone whos taken an astrodynamics class has done them with a pocket calculator.
    • I read in Newsweek and on Janes a couple years ago, that when it was time to ban nuclear tests, the only way the US got the Russians and French to agree was to tell them that we would sell them the big iron that Sandia uses to simulate nuclear blasts.

      The problem with stockpiles is, that a weapon decays over time and a weapon may or may not be effective. The Russian stockpile is older than the American so thier need is greater.

      Russia's stockpile, while large, is getting old and they have a need to do tests to keep it up to snuff.
    • The main purpose of the limit was to prevent the Europeans exporting this technology, while American companies got export control waivers and stole the market. - Ie it was an illegal export promotion scheme, which didn't work very well.

      As has been pointed out, all the computers are made in China or Korea anyway, and its not like they didn't have the technology outside the good ol' US of A.

      The restrictions had to go because Sony are p*ssed because they can't sell Playstations to the Afganis (which is desirable for humanitarian reasons cos people playing "Grand Theft Auto" are too busy to indulge in crimes against humanity.)

      For those who don't know, a PS/2 is a blue IBM machine with a 386 in it, and a really good bus.

      All your MCA are belong to us.

  • Amusing to me that the chipmaker with the smallest share of the supercomputer market is the only one quoted in the article. I'd think this restriction change would be much more important for SGI, Compaq, Cray, HP, and IBM than for Intel at the moment. Admittedly, the industry shills will all say similar things, but geez. Let's try not to push the story of Intel as the only remaining chipmaker too much, huh? Especially in one of the few industries in which they don't have any sort of supremacy.
  • Seems to me that as the ceiling is only about 100 times as powerful as the average desktop (according to article - ~2100 MTOPS), beowulf or other clusters would relatively easily approximate the power of one of the top-end machines here.

    Certainly a number of above-average workstations or servers clustered together effectively would by far supercede the most powerful machine currently exportable.

    And I don't see any limit on telecommunications or gigabit/optical switches that would otherwise limit the ability of such a cluster to be effective.

    Is this finally an example of US legislation where a little ignorance actually HELPS the international tech community?

  • Interesting, considering.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by syrupMatt ( 248267 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:58AM (#2779034) Homepage Journal
    Wasn't it not all that long ago that Ashcroft (and the Bush administration) were beating their chests over the Clinton era "mistake" of lightening export restrictions on encryption software?
    Anyone know what the impetus behind this move was?

    • Re:Interesting, considering.... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      at the start of the Clinton era folks were using what, 486's ?? At that time, certainly the restriction made sense. Really, the restriction idea made sense up until clustering technology fell into the reach of the average joe. Now, though, why bother? Anybody can slap a gaggle of cheapie boxes in a rack and get massive horsepower.

      Really, I'd wonder what nation would be dumb enough to spend millions on a turnkey system when they've probably got plenty of homegrown talent that could slap up a Beowoulf system if given enuff parts and electricity.

    • Re:Interesting, considering.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jamie ( 78724 ) <jamie@slashdot.org> on Thursday January 03, 2002 @11:18AM (#2779139) Journal
      Supercomputer export control topic for American republican president candidates [hoise.com]

      "Washington 19 Oct 99 Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer called on Gov. George W. Bush to reverse his position calling for an ease on supercomputer export controls."

      Googling around, I see a lot of right-wing wackiness attacking both Bush Jr. and Clinton for proposing (and actually doing, respectively) the lifting of supercomputer restrictions. One 1999 report called "RED FLAGS OF TREASON" suggests that China is pretending to know more about supercomputers than it really does, so that the gullible Americans will let down their guard and sell them the supercomputers they can't make themselves.

      Now that Apple sells "supercomputer" laptops and Cringely is writing [slashdot.org] about building a clustered supercomputer in his garage, the restrictions of the 80s and 90s seem a little silly...

    • Anyone know what the impetus behind this move was?

      Money.
    • The impetus was that with the new secretly developed US quantum super-computers, it doesn't matter how many MTOPS the "enemy" has!

  • Old news (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by Red Eyes ( 145902 )
    This has already been posted here [slashdot.org].

  • Not "Finally", just another step (Score:4, Informative)

    by Soong ( 7225 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @10:58AM (#2779037) Homepage Journal
    There were a couple such steps during the Clinton administration, and probably this has been going on since the Cray 1 was a hot little number.

    I think I even missed a step, article says current limit is 85 GOPS, last I heard was 12.

    Don't forget too that there are different grades of countries we may or may not export "supercomputers" to.

    See Dec 11, 2001 [slashdot.org], Jan 11, 2001 [slashdot.org], Aug 3, (2000? 1999? [slashdot.org]

    Heh, pity /. doesn't seem to have years attatched to its articles.
  • I belive this is a good move by the U.S. First of all though getting supercomputers - from the U.S. - was under export restrictions building clusters wasn't because that wouldn't been possible. Another crusial point is that this may have slowed the developement of competanse on supercomputing and certain areas wich requires super computing. Applying the butter-fly-effect to this the U.S. may have been - unwillingly - slowed the economic and democratical development in the countries the restriction applied to. No doubt could such computers be used in design and simulation of nuclear weapons but that is only one branch in wich super computing is put to well - or ill regarding nukes - use.
  • Well, giving the worst nation on earth normalized trade status was just plain dumb (China), but at least W isn't dumb enough to keep trade restrictions from 20 years ago on US tech firms in place for no reason. Free trade is good and all, but we shouldn't be giving more business to our enemies in the first place. Our only consolation is that hopefully the increased overseas business for US companies will mean more envelope pushing technologies for 'us', before 'them.'
    • Our "enemies"??? Deud, get a grip. It's pretty small-minded to see the world like that. And about China's human rights record: Who do you think killed and crippled more innocent people in the last two months, the US or China? Sure, some fucked up things happen in China, but they are not our enemies. If you were to rate them, us and say the Netherlands on human rights issues, I suspect you'd find we resembled China more than we resemble a civilized European democracy. (We allow executions, indefinite imprisonment without trial--or even being charged, and just about all the other bad stuff we condemn China for. And China has no DCMA.)

  • Bush blows it again (Score:2, Troll)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First he uses an undeclared war to stomp on our civil liberties, now he's our selling high end technology so his business buddies can make some more money. I can't wait to hear what the military is going to say. They view selling our high tech as the same as selling arms to the enemy.
    • Sorry, but Bush's "business buddies" are in Texas and Wyoming. See he's an oil man. And former baseball team owner.

      Clinton and Gore have/had the friends in the high-tech areas.

      Austin went Democrat in 2000, so did California, Oregon, New York and Washington. The states with CPU and big iron production.
      • That doesn't mean that the people with the big tech money are democrats--only that they prefer to live in democratic districts (which are, let's face it, much more fun to live in). Name me the coolest city that didn't vote for Gore. Was it Houston? Ha ha!
    • Huh?
      Every war since WWII has been undeclared.
      The concept of declaring war is generally considered obsolete. The President, quite clearly, has the power as "Commander in Chief" to declare war.
      • Check your copy of the constitution again. Only Congress has the legal power to declare war.

        -Legion

        • Technically yes, but it means nothing - because if a President expresses his/her wish to declare a war, Congress is going to rubber-stamp it anyway.

          Ever since WWII, this has been the case, and no President has felt it necessary to perform the formality of asking Congress first, before declaring war.
    • You know what, I don't think that restricting supercomputer sales would have much of an affect on someone who truly wants to blow something up. The threat most people are giving is that $ROGUE_STATE is going to buy themselves one of them new-fangled supercomputer doohickies, and they're suddenly going to be a nuclear superpower. Guess what, folks? I am not a nuclear engineer, but I could probably create plans for a nuclear delivery system in a month or so, much shorter than that if you've got a few expendable bodies to control the delivery system using far less computing power than in the desktop you're using right now.

      Honestly, the hardest part of creating a viable nuclear threat is refining the fuel, and we (the US), have been doing that for decades now. Sending the payload is actually fairly simple.

  • Specially SGI, which is the biggest seller in the Defense and Federal markets. I'm sure that, despite the economic problems in Russia and China, they will save some money to buy some "big iron" from them. I don't think they will base some of their strategic systems in PC-clusters, not even if they run Linux.

  • Just fsck(1)ing great. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First Bush tightens the restrictions on crypto and puts wiretapping laws into effect to make it harder to secure data in that way, and then he makes it easier for other countries to break our weakened crypto! What the fuck is he doing?!

  • Go to the real site for the real news... (Score:3, Informative)

    by gordguide ( 307383 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @11:25AM (#2779172)
    The article was written in such a way that pretty much everything in it was misleading. Poor journalism at it's best.

    Last time I checked the "real" site (may not now be current) the big loser was Motorola and IBM for home desktops (from a chipmaker's perspective). G3's and G4's did math better than the Intel chips (using the math instruction speed criteria used) and were restricted further than P3's and P4's. Again, it may not be current now, but 800Mhz Itaniums were faster at math than Pentium family computers at 2Ghz and were similarly restricted as G4s.

    No mention of strong encryption in the article either (some SW and things like wireless cards were affected).

    There are 4 tiers, also poorly noted in the article. Go to the US Department of Commerce's site at:
    http://www.bxa.doc.gov/HPCs/Default.htm

    Note: does not seem to reflect changes mentioned in the article; nonetheless a lot of good background that will help put the new rules into perspective.

  • Benchmarks MTOPS (Score:2, Informative)

    by gordguide ( 307383 )
    Somebody already posted Intel's site, here is Apple's:
    http://www.info.apple.com/support/export.html

  • NYTimes Article (Score:3, Informative)

    by instinctdesign ( 534196 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @11:31AM (#2779205) Homepage
    The New York [nytimes.com] Times is also running the story [nytimes.com], mostly the same info but with a few interesting facts not mentioned in the Yahoo version.
  • The renewed concern about nuclear weapons in South Asia comes a little more than three years after the events of May 1998: the five nuclear tests conducted by India at Pokharan in the northwestern desert state of Rajasthan, followed three weeks later by six nuclear explosions conducted by Pakistan in its southwestern region of Chaghai. These tit-for-tat responses mirrored the nuclear buildup by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, with a crucial difference: the two cold war superpowers were separated by an ocean and never fought each other openly.

    http://www.sciam.com/2001/1201issue/1201ramana.htm l [sciam.com]

  • Basically moot... (Score:4, Informative)

    by cnelzie ( 451984 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @11:43AM (#2779288) Homepage

    With all of the stories about individual people, labs and companies building supercomputers using clustered commodity hardware with freely available tools, software and information. Why would The Bush Administration with to continue to financially hinder US-based computer manufacturers?

    It makes little sense. I mean if Cringley can run off and buy around $6000 to build a supercomputer in his garage. What is stopping someone in Russia, Pakistan or Vietnam from running out and buying tons of old Celeron 333 and slightly faster CPUs and then building a powerful Free *NIX-based supercomputer?

    The only thing that would now make those people look at the US-built supercomputers are the fact that they won't have to run out and build their own supercomputer. They can take a pre-made solution and plug it into their computer datacenter and get to work much faster, with hopefully, a lower upkeep cost.

    Ever since I first started reading about roll-your-own supercomputers, I have always wondered why the US would continue to ban the export of powerful computer systems.

    The malarky about keeping 3rd-tier nations from being able to develop nuclear weapons is rather silly as well. I mean, did the US use powerful 195,000+ MTOP supercomputers to develop Fatboy? ...um... NO. They did it with slide rules and human minds.

    Maybe they should ban the exportation of nuclear physics majors. Especially since a large number of foreign born physicists came to the US to learn how to do their thing.

    --
    .sig seperator
    --
    • The malarky about keeping 3rd-tier nations from being able to develop nuclear weapons is rather silly as well. I mean, did the US use powerful 195,000+ MTOP supercomputers to develop Fatboy? ...um... NO. They did it with slide rules and human minds.

      The difference is that the US was able to test their designs out in the desert and on atolls. With nuclear testing being rather frowned upon these days, tests have to be simulated on computer--therefore the need for supercomputers.

  • i mean.. think about it. if you're the head of some strategic research lab designated for simulating chemical or nuclear reactions for use in arms i'd think it'd be pretty easy to drum up the cash necessary to purchase/build the equipment necessary to do so.

    aside from that, what's to stop pakistan, india or anyone else from carrying out tests in any of the manners forbidden by test ban treaties? i seem to remember a story from a couple of years ago about china being lambasted for firing medium range ballistic missles over hong kong and into the ocean.. but maybe it was a dream i had.

    seems like a waste of time and effort to me. let them have their nukes if it makes them feel that important.
  • I'll never forget the top secret Xerox we sold to Iraq. For those that need a reminder: The US Gov teamed with Xerox to include a transmitter that sent a copy of everything Saddam photocopied using that machine.

    Brilliant.
  • ...how many of these countries already have supers? I remember reading somewhere a LOOONG time ago that Sun had gotten themselves into a bit of trouble by selling systems to the Chinese. Alot of people here have pointed out clustering as a way to circumvent the law. This is just a way for American companies to make a few bucks off of it.


    "Man, I don't know..." [flat1ine.org]

  • Clearly, A Big Mistake (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lethyos ( 408045 ) on Thursday January 03, 2002 @12:05PM (#2779473) Journal
    I think we all agree that beyond the shadow of a doubt this will drastically increase world terrorism. Super computers obviously play a huge role in organizations like al Qaeda. Terrorists will use them to carefully calculating the results of catastrophic activities as well as inform their operatives with strong, uncrackable crypto. (arf arf)
  • They don't have to get it from somewhere.
    e.g. India was denied permission to purchase CRAYs in the 1970s or 80s.
    We developed our own supercomputers the PARAM 1000 series which actually cost quite a bit less than similarly powered CRAYs.
    Moral of the story: The US can delay it, they can't prevent it - they do not have a monopoly on knowledge, and its application isn't that difficult a problem.
  • Hmm, do people actually think restrictions on technology exports actually prevent other countries from aquiring them? Ever stop to consider that it's just propaganda? You know, to promote a false sense of safety.

    Ever hear of the black-market?
    Sheesh!

  • That's great and all but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) <ellem52@@@gmail...com> on Thursday January 03, 2002 @12:55PM (#2779816) Homepage Journal
    Can Russia, China, and Pakistan?

    -Get DVD players in those "super computers"?
    -Create a Q3 Clan and attack us with these "super computers"?
    -Can their "super computer" do this?
    -Will the pr0n banks be depleted as those countries begin the massive dowloading of Anna Kournikova and Stevana?
    -Surf the web and see what great pricing we have on our "super camera" the X10?
    -Will they be able to run Outlook on these "super computers"?
    -Will evil frogs be _more_ evil in Daikatana?
  • why don't they just buy a lot of normal old personal computers (that we can obviously export) and built huge beowulf cluster? wouldn't that be just as fast (if not faster) than these supercomputers, providing youg et enough baby comps? and wouldn't this work a lot better for third world countries who can always split the comps up and say "see, no supercomputer here"?
    i dunno, i don't really see the need for supercomputers around at all, but that's just me :)

  • Who cares ??? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by c00ldude ( 517397 )
    US had banned export of Supercomputers/ nuclear Tech/ Space tech to India as well. Thanks to that we developed our own supercomputers/nuclear tech/ space tech and we had one major advantage of being way cheaper thus tapping markets which could not afford the US versions anyways.
  • After reading all these comments, am I the only one who recognizes the absurdity of searching for TECHNICAL meaning in a POLITICIAN's decision?

    There are arguments about how the equipment is in use in those countries anyway, how clusters of "legal" systems can outpower the "illegal" ones, how plenty of dastardly deeds can be done with my TRS-80, etc, etc.

    What we have here is a political decision, made by a politician, on the advice and recommendation of other [aspiring] politicians about a technical subject they know nothing about.

    If you're looking for deeper meaning behind this decision - you'll find none.

    If you're just looking for an excuse to bitch about politicians, doesn't that get old?

    If you're looking to impress the world at large with your technical understanding of the subject, and point out the obvious flaws in the politician's point of view... taking candy from a baby becomes the obvious parallel.

    I guess I don't see the point of the argument. We've proven over and over again that [most] politicians don't understand the technical issues they make decisions about, but bitching on /. won't change that. If you really care, write your representatives (from the state level on up) and volunteer your technical expertise. Write papers on the subjects that concern you. Publish them. Make your voice heard, instead of shouting into the abyss about the lack of technical knowledge at the higher levels of our government.

    Just my $.05 (inflation, you know.)

    - Dave

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