From: sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us (Bill Sommerfeld)
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 93 07:20:22 PDT
To: ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu
Subject: Re: State Dept. shuts down DEC machine
In-Reply-To: <9307130437.AA19964@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Message-ID: <9307131310.AA00173@orchard.medford.ma.us>
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Note that the machine wasn't (only) an FTP server; it let anyone who
wanted get at a shell with compilers, debuggers, tools, etc., so that
the alleged Bad Guys from third world countries in a country with IP
connectivity on a student visa could run their nuclear bomb
design/simulation programs there....  never mind that the simulation
for the Manhattan Project was done with a horde of clerks, decks of
punched cards, and a big bunch of IBM card tabulators (see Feinmann's
autobiographies for more details..).

This looks annoyingly like a variant of the "initiative" a few years
back where the State Dept. wanted makers of high performance
workstations to export them only in a locked-down configuration
capable of executing only the applications they were originally
purchased to run; compilers need not apply...  fortunately, that died
a quick & quiet death.

					- Bill