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Hardware

Playstation 2 Under Export Controls 269

Posted by CmdrTaco from the dangerous-munitions dept.
Henry Pang writes "The New York Times has this interesting article. It seems like people of China will not be able to buy Playstation 2 next year. " It's The Times, so you need a free account to read it, but it talks about the Playstation being a supercomputer by US standards. Also notes that within 12 months, a $1200 Merced based PC would also be illegal.
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Playstation 2 Under Export Controls

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  • Totally ridiculous laws for today (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    These machines unlike crays will be commodities. They will be available off the shelf to anyone. They are small and can be transported easily. How difficult will it be to smuggle these computers to the afore mentioned countries? The various agencies/organisations which the US government feels that they should not be having these computers will be the first to get them. Only people who will not get these computers will be the common innocent people of these countries who might want these computers for the same reason as most of us here.

    Yeah, there is a way out. Take these computers off the list of commodity items. That is, everybody who wants to buy these machines goes through a background check and give permission to the law enforcement agencies to check their workplace or home (randomly) to ensure that the machines are still with them. If you want to sell your computer, you might have to get permission. Sounds scary?

    The above was worst case scenario. It is unlikely to happen. Considering the persecution of Zimmerman, It is not impossible. I think not only should the big wigs in computer industry be worried, the common people should also pay attention to these kind of things

  • espionage is so easy (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The title _Corporate Espionage_ by Ira Winkler (primapublishing.com 1997) details how ridiculously easy it was for one man, Bill _____, to loot the secrets of both AMD and Intel and hand them over to Cuba and China. More than a billion dollars worth. Relavant chapter is _Chips and Dips_.

    The idea that the nitwits in the US gov't are going to keep anything secret is laughable. The whole premise of this embargo has me ROTFLMAO.

    May as well release Jonathon Pollard and Aldrich Ames, this stuff is beyond punishment.

  • Re:RC5 cracking or SETI on Playstation 2? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Probably because they don't exist yet, duh.. God.. some people..

    Moron..

  • Re:Just harder to get... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Extradition? Heh, I doubt a foreign country (say, Japan) would extradite its OWN nationals to the US for breaking the US's laws (but not that Japan's). Should the Taliban Afghans try to extradite American Citizens for drinking alcohol???

    If the chip is neither designed nor manufactured here, the US can't even bother trying. And even the design part is iffy; there are no export restrictions on a company's own designs; they are freely sent back and forth between one company's multinational offices.

  • Re:espionage is so easy (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    don't forget 'the year of the rat' by timperlake and triplett. high tech will be kept out of china? hahahaha

  • Re:This seems pretty warped.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This message is in direct reply to the parent and the parent's parent.

    It doesn't really matter if the Chinese obtain a "supercomputer" by networking thousands of commodity machines together that isn't really mobile. The primary technology that they are after is not individual processors, but rather large numbers of machines that can be used in parallel to solve a single problem. In this case, that single problem is the simulation of nuclear devices. Most nations in the world have signed a nuclear test ban treaty, which means that they are prohibited from exploding nuclear weapons. This was a strategic move on the part of the United States because we are one of the only superpowers with enough technological skills to simulate nuclear tests without exploding actual bombs. By getting other nations to agree to this treaty, it gives us a strategic advantage.

    And, yes, it is possible to use commodity machines and fast interconnects (check out Myrinet from www.myri.com) to do about the same thing as a supercomputer in this context. I was one of the original developers of the NT Supercluster at NCSA. In December 1998, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about how China was using our technology to try to do nuclear simulations just as I described above.

    So I guess the whole point, as several have pointed out correctly, is that it is not really possible to prevent the spread of this technology to countries such as China.

  • I'm disappointed.

    I used to think /. was an oasis of reasoned, intelligent thinking in a desert of flaming. Having read some of the (100's) of posts in this thread I am truthfully very shocked. Some of the comments on here are so biased, ignorant, racist and factually wrong it beggars belief.

    Personally the article on PS 2 is little more than a novelty, of course the restrictions will either be lifted, changed or they'll get an exemption. If not, we'll just see a lot of grey imports heading over to China from Hong Kong, Europe, and probably the US as well. However much the government might like it to, US law simply doen't apply outside the US.

    What is of interest to me here is the eagerness with which people turn a thread which highlights how hard it is to legislate in such a fast paced environment (the high tech industry as a whole) into an excuse for flag-waving and racism.

    The US government is waaaaaaaaaaay from being perfect (for starters lets see if they can get around to paying their UN subscriptions!). In a lot of ways it is way from being even acceptable. The same goes for China, and Japan, and most of the world to be honest. The fact is some people are far too ready to believe propaganda. The chinese people, while largely poor by our standards, are very highly educated, have a low crime rate, and work hard. The major cities are much safer to live in than say NY or london. Remember kids : Communism != Socalism != bad. The chinese government is certainly corrupt, and has a terrible human rights record, both at home and in neighbouring countries like Tibet. But the fact is the US govt. is scared of it, otherwise how come they don't send in the troops to liberate that country? Oh of course...it doesn't sell as much oil to the US as Kuwait.

    I don't want to carry on with the offtopic posting, so I won't even bother to correct the numerous factual inaccuracies regarding Taiwan, Vietnam, WWII, Berlin etc etc. All I can say is that the net is a wonderful learning tool - use it to educate yourself (not only in anatomy). Just because you live in the "free" west don't be fooled into thinking everything you see on tv is true...

    Yours, a proud capitalist.

  • Re:US as a threat (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Basically you can replace the word "China" with the word "USA" or any other country in your message.

    I'm sure USA has missiles pointing at several countries. Do you know for sure they're not?
    And even if they're not pointing missiles at anyone (which I doubt), how long would it take them to do so.

    The US has killed its own people as well. I won't even mention slavery or the deportation of Japanese in WWII.
    What about Kent University. What about the (white) anti-war protesters that got shot at in the 60s. I'm not American so I won't profess to know your history, but maybe an American can enlighten us on this. How are those protesters any different than the protesters at Tianamen. You call China evil for shooting at student protesters but what about when the US shoots at their students?

    China IS taking steps towards democracy. The president and the premier are pro-west and want to modernise. Yes, some people yelling for freedom are likely still jailed. However you can't democratise a country overnight. You tried this with Russia and look what happened. If you want China to democratise, you have to do it slowly. Let them take it at their own pace. It will happen.

    I'm sure the people and government of the US weren't always so enlightened and open to free speech. However, over time speech has (supposedly) become more free. Even coloured people can (supposedly) speak freely in the US now.

  • Re:China as a threat -- funny as hell (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Lets see, I'll do the math and give you a history lesson at the same time.

    1+ billion people,

    invented gunpowder 600 years before the west had any idea about it ( amoung numerous other things ) and we treat the as if they're stupid and cant figure out this stuff on their own? Thats either arrogance or stupidity.....

    Frankly its just easier to steal and guess what my friends in the US... you stole a good portion of it ( tech nology ) from the russians but hey lets not mention that.

    The chinese people are equally capable of being brilliant ( maybe even more so ) than the people at LANL or LLNL and guess what they got a work ethic like no one in the west. If they put forth the effort it could be insanely scary what they could do.... Besides they already have nukes.

    I hate this ( primarily based ) US arrogance that says that they get to regulate who can and cant play in the sandbox...who died and made you GOD... ( that goes for other countires as well but the US is the worst perpetrator of this kind of hypocrisy ).

    In no way do I wish to see any country with NUkes or advanced guidance systems for them...the US included but unfortunately they exist and will continue to until people of this planet can learn to live together and the west ( again primarily the US but this historically goes back a long ways ) can stop trying to impose there beliefs and way of life on other countires ( ie. only countires just like the US are valid and any country run under a communist or Religous government is inherently "BAD" ).

    oh well I'm done ranting for now....

    Hey if we dont sell the to the chinese eventually they'll learn how to make them better than us and then they'll just sell them to us making their economy stronger. 1+ billion people is one hell of a potential consumer market.

  • The article said that some chip ran 1600 TOPS, above the limit of 2000 TOPS. That looks like it's under...
    -----------
  • Was that _pubic_ office? Woulda been even funnier if one 'ems first name was Harry.
  • FWIW, the article mentions specifically that the 'chip' in question is built in the good ole' US of A.. Now, I don't know if the physical chip is built in the US, or if it was merely designed here.. I don't know which of these are under USA export restriction...

    -joev

  • Posted by Remarque:

    Ok...first of all, I'd like to say that I feel there is no real danger of shipping Playstations, or high level computer products to China. After all, we're still not talking about anything capable of directing ICBMs, here. We're talking about a faster engine for playing Star Wars: Racer. But...with that in mind, a few comments about your cavalier attitude toward China.

    China is a big country, with a lot of people. Granted, they have been trapped under the dual thumb of communism and low technology, but their current administration is mixing communism with capitalism, and doing everything within their power to raise the technology level. (which, we have seen, includes stealing technology from us) Economists predict that, by 2020, China's total economy will be over 50% larger than ours. (assuming similar growth to the two economies) This means, that they will soon be able to mobilize those billion people to build things faster and create a military that could walk over much of the world.

    Now, granted, the Chinese military is not much to speak of today. And their Navy is practically nonexistant. However, it must be remembered that in the Korean War, when China entered on the side of our opposition, we were forced into a stalemate we could not break. Also, it must be considered that Russia, at the height of its Cold War strength, considered a war with China to be a "meat grinder." A billion people, even armed with pick axes, could defeat a more technologically advanced power. Ask Germany. They experienced that first hand in the second World War.

    So, while the issue at hand is silly, the greater one is not. We should be doing everything in our power to keep ourselves level with China on this global playing field, and not let an industrial, hardworking people, whose only weakness is a temporary gap in technology, gain the upperhand, which could lead to our defeat.

    That attitude is the arrogance you speak of. And it is /vital/ we never forget that the United States, while able to pick on Serbia and Somalia with impunity, will not be able to do any such thing against China for many years, if ever.
  • Posted by viperx2:

    Oops! Wrong title!!! Should be America's shame.
  • Posted by packbart:

    Maybe Titanic II will be rendered on a farm of Playstations. ;)

    Anyway, technology should be free to all. Those who can use it will use and improve it. Those who want to restrict access to new technologies will only slow down the process of evolution.

    That's no good.
  • Posted by viperx2:

    I don't need a vacation for one thing.

    Second, who says that a playstation2 will be used as a "nuclear technology?"

    Other than that, I think that china can get whatever they want when it comes nuclear tecnology.
  • Posted by viperx2:

    This is absolutly rediculous. This is America wanting to hold all the cards, again. Fear of the Red Herring should be over by now, but there are many atrocities in China. Granted, we should keep our secrets to ourselves, but a PC.... A PC is never JUST a PC is it? With overclocking methods out, and faster processors comming every month, who is to say that they won't run nuclear simulations? On the other hand, we all know that the US runs nuclear simulations everyday, to combat a possable "threat" of another country that does not have the capabilities of our "super-techno-army." I am sure that countries like Russia, using what they have, run nuclear tests as well. The problem that American's have, is pointing the finger and shouting EVIL! before looking at themselves. If I was another country, I would be worried about America's aggressive media campaign that makes people in other countries think that this is the "land of oppertunity." This is the land of "War on Drugs," "No fredom of religon," and my personal favorite, "you look weird, I don't like you." The attack on other countries, such as germany, has people confused into thinking that America is better, when they should all remember the horror of the Berlin wall. America wants to be the best, and will do anything to stop anyone else from geting absolutly ANYTHING, including a simple playstation 2, that might give them the slightest hint of a minute advantage. While we pride ourselves on the Kosovo conflict (thus names so we don't think of innocent people dying) we fail to realize that we caused more problems that we hoped to fix. This will be the same situation of failed American secrecy that will eventually lead to the downfall of the biggest group of hipocrites that I have ever had the displeasure of living with.

    With that said, I would like to add that I speak on people as a whole, not individuals. As they said in MIB, one person is smart, a group is dangerous. I would also like to add that most real netcitizens are very openminded, and I don't consider them to be "real Americans." I'm sure most of them have had the same problems with American bullshit that I have had to deal with, and can understand, at least where I am comming from, if not how abrasive I am being.

    China IS A THREAT, don't get me wrong. They are just as much threat as my next door neighbor that dosen't like me comming over to kill me and take my property and use my house. Is that socity? Should I show him my big screen TV, and all my electronic equipment and tell him that he can't touch them? Should I go to the stores and pay them not to sell it to him? This is idocy. It creates tension, and hate between country lines. Masses of people in China will see something directly affecting them (eg. no playstation2) and public opinion will sway, no matter how much ProAmerican shit we are pumping into their TV, oh, and don't doubt that we are. That is America's strongpoint.


    ViperX2

    --And so the day came, when the mighty fell, and saw that all their power wasn't worth a drop in the bucket, when the people realized what horrors they lived in.--
  • Yeah my ass. Maybe Willamette. The G4 too, I bet. And I guess the K7. But Merced won't be in a machine costing $1200 any time soon. And I wonder, when were these policies introduced? Even making it 6 times what it is now will be a very temporary solution.

  • You can't go run any old OS on it can you

    Why not, Linux has been ported to nearly everything else...

    With sufficient desperation, you can cross compile your simulation, and indeed run it on a playstation.

    I don't advocate helping China use the stolen secrets either. The US will have to recognize that they can and will do exactly that, and there's nothing to be done about it. So it's either try and fail hurting US business in the process, or recognize a lost cause for what it is.

  • Also agreed. When the other side does it, it's called stealing secrets and spying, when your own side does it, it is called intelligence gathering operations. I'm sure China is just thrilled when our spysats orbit overhead.

  • Stand BACK!! I've got PVM and I'm not afraid to use it!

  • That's not the point.

    The point is that the same game console that millions of children will be vegging out in front of on Christmas morning is considered by US export law to be a risk to national security. It's hard to type that when I'm laughing so hard.

  • It will not work when using junkbuster; it keeps returning to the login page. And it's not about cookies, you can replace the cookie file with a subdirectory, disable junkbuster, and it still goes through. But you get the blinking ads. (I don't mind the ads; I mind the blinking and the use of my computer to keep track of which ones I've been blinked with).
  • odd, you're write. I must have only used one of them when I tried that in the past (probably the www). Thanks.

    btw, for FreeBSD, it's /usr/local/etc/junkbuster/cookiefile

  • Re:LOL! (Score:1)

    by jimbo ( 1370 )
    Agreed, it conains a programmable microprocessor, memory, IO circuits, etc. It is a perfectly good computer. Just like a PC, a RISC workstation or even a cable modem board.

    Anyway, China steeling secrets (business or millitary) are not exactly a good thing, but the US spys on about anything and everything they can get their hands on as well, so there are no "good guys" in these games. Just the lucky ones and the not so lucky ones.
  • You don't ever get mobile supercomputers. The computers used in space projects are old and slow simply because they've been tested to death and will never, ever (well ok, not often :)) fail. And you don't need that much CPUtime to steer a missile etc.
  • In this case, I thgink "spooks" refers to the CIA, the NSA and other such intelligence/security agencies.

    I have not heard the term used as a racial insult against blacks, but I have heard the Ku Klux Klan referred to as spooks. Probably a reference to their white robes making them look like ghosts.


  • nope, not even the K7, if the prices i've heard are right.
    hard to sell a computer for $1200 when the cpu'sgoing to be introduced around $900.

  • Exactly the oposite of what you expect from the times. I shuld check if Jamaica is on that list. I wold realy be opset if we have to bring in Playstations the way we imported 128 bit Netscape.

    I.e. A few at a time, boght retail and caried as logage on comersial airlines.
    --
    "THINK" -: former IBM motto.

  • You don't need to put a fast chip inside a bomb.

    It's pointless though since around 17 countries. ( Including china ) have the capability to wipe any single nation off the map ( including the US ).

    The only effective defense is to make sure they don't want to :)
    --
    "THINK" -: former IBM motto.

  • Read it 1st. (Score:3)

    by Forge ( 2456 ) <kevinforge@@@gmail...com> on Sunday June 13, 1999 @03:23PM (#1852459) Homepage Journal
    I counted 4 comments that amount to "The playstation is made in Japan so US law doesn't apply".

    The Actual article says that the CPU is made in the US."

    Is there a law against reading the article before posting or do we just have a lot of morons around ?
    --
    "THINK" -: former IBM motto.

  • Terrorist attack- several soldiers manage to deploy suitcase nukes at most of the major airports.

    Suitcase nukes are 1-10kt high-yeild devices that fit into a case the size of a large Zero Haliburton briefcase. These evil things, by design can slip past a LOT of the measures we currently have in place to detect bombs (they wouldn't show up on normal bomb sweeps- and nobody's looking for an atomic bomb being flown in on an airplane!).

    A 1-10kt device will make a bloody mess of most major metro areas (To put this in perspective, the two bombs dropped in WWII were only in the 50-100kt range...). To date, the Russians have made hundreds of these damned things- and some are missing.

    Sleep well after reading this... :->
  • The USA is blocking itself from the high technology market. The market may become a playground for companies that will not have to compete with the US. This means the US will lose. This happens to countries that do not play fair.

    US encryption products are a joke. Pretty soon the same could be said about US semiconductors.
  • Add a few lines to your junkbuster's cookie file:

    /etc/junkbuster/cookiefile

    nytimes.com and
    www.nytimes.com

    that should do it!
  • What many here fail to realize is that it is not specifically the chip used in the game console that is not allowed to be exported, but the hardware based encryption/encoding/decoding used for the game data that is built into the playstation 2 which is under the export control.

    This is also why certain video cards are restricted. They may contain hardware encryption/encoding/decoding routines that ths US consideres as munitions.

    https://www.mav.net/teddyr/syousif/ [mav.net]
  • As far as I know the story the law applies to exports from the US to non-secure nations.

    So why bother? Sony (a japanese company) will build its game-consoles somewhere else (singapure? china? taiwan?) and export them whereever they want (iraq? serbia?).

    Its just like crypto-laws: Germany has free crypto-laws, so many companies move to germany when they get into crypto-stuff.

    America has free weapon-laws, so many gunman move to America. Uh. Just kiddin... but the gun-industry of america seeems to be more alive than that of japan or germany :-)
    1. Sony is not a US company. It is a multi-national founded in Japan.
    2. That is not allowed. US export regulations are not quite that stupid.
  • This smells like a publicity stunt to me.
    Come on, what 14 year old gamer wouldn't want the system that is too fast to be exported? This is great free advertising.

    --T
  • Okay, number one, if say playstations were to be illegally exported it would be from a relativally small number of exporters (very few people can export something like this in quantity). Furthermore, these illegal exporters would have to be either in the US or in an allied nation that has extradition treaties with us.

    Two, if you want supercomputers from the US, just drop a couple hundred thou in the pockets in the Clinton administration. (btw, this has proven to have happened from the chinese army, and as a result, we have drastically increased the # of supercomps to China in the past two years and allowed them to get tons of missle tech.) It's scary how incredibly much the Clinton administration has just given the Chinese and what they will be able to do with it (MIRVs, etc.)

    Three, your comparison to software is completely invalid and different from playstations. Any /.er knowes that anyone can put warez on a ftp site which can be DLed from China and put on a CDR. That's a hell of a lot easier than shipping machines to another country. The difference is obvious. And, if they wanted to *steal* our tech and build it themselves, they would have a problem, we control the export of machines that can fab that kind of stuff.

    Your comment is completely unfounded and unrealistic. Granted, our export policy is a little behind the times, and beowolf computers only make it easier for *enemies* to develop nukes or biotech or whatever. But there is a lot of dangerous stuff that we have to keep our eyes on.
  • taiwan's economy is very closely linked to china's, regardless of what the economist says. if you think about it, taiwan has a lot of "manufacturing". (you know, lots of stuff is "made in taiwan"). but taiwan is a fscking tiny-ass island. where are all their factories?

    china.

    hong kong does a lot of that kind of thing too. gets around tariffs, basically.

    many taiwanese are *pissed* at the nationalists for trying to keep their market closed. the pragmatic ones know damn well that taiwan depends on china for just about everything- food, water, power, it all goes through china, just like with hong kong. how closed do you think the economy could possibly be?

    taiwan's banking system was conservative compared to the rest of asia's, but its still pretty risky by american standards. taiwan's economy is not as protected as they like to say it is. compared to thailand, yeah, i guess they did all right.

    but soros and the other speculators did rape taiwan along with thailand, south korea, philippines, malaysia, singapore, indonesia, and hong kong. (am i missing anyone?) there was more to it than just currencies- they also crucified the stock markets- but the taiwanese market was not as inflated, and hence "did better". their stocks still dropped a lot though. china's market dropped a lot too, but since they were (and are still) growing rapidly, it didnt hurt as much. china's a bit messed up right now... but i think thats more of a painful transition thing than anything else.

    as for that army thing, yeah, youre right. but its still a lot of people with guns. and unlike americans, theyre less likely to let their kids check to see if theyre loaded in the classrooms.

    unc_
  • russia is definitely screwed, and will be for a fairly long time. they are a superpower on their way down. ill agree with you on that. any way you look at it, though, they still got a lotta nukes.

    did you know that russia developed "suitcase nukes"? smaller than conventional nuclear bombs, but how big a fricking nuclear bomb do you need to take out a city anyway? (not very big) they made several hundred of them- doesnt that make you sleep better at night? (theyve also LOST some of them....) so id say russia is still pretty dangerous, even when theyre spiralling down to postcommunist hell.

    but china is very clearly on its way up.

    some things you might wanna know about china, if youre wondering why everyone thinks theyre a threat.

    china has and is still spending very very very large amounts of money to upgrade its military. their equipment sucks, and has for a while. but they have been quietly buying tech from russia and europe (and stealing from us). part of the way jiang got the military to support him was by promising to upgrade all their equipment, which he did and is still doing. china's also been building lots of factories- some of them with OUR money and expertise.

    in terms of arms expenditures, china beats everyone else in asia. in fact, china has a larger military than any other country- in the world. yup. china's standing army (thats not counting reservists) is OVER ONE MILLION SOLDIERS. what happens if china can equip all of them (or even half of them) properly?

    regarding education level, observe the current leader, jiang zemin. he likes to hide it, but in fact he speaks english fluently. his high school education was at an american missionary school and he studied engineering in china and in russia. hes an ee, but hes good at pretending to be ignorant.

    in 1989, when he visited a university some students had put up posters quoting the gettysburg address. jiang gave an impromptu speech in which he recited the entire gettysburg address (in english) and then chastised the students for mistaking lincoln's meaning- because the civil war was fought to preserve the union, and to stifle rebels against the federal government.

    the average person may not be well-educated. but anyone who can manage to stay afloat and rise to the top in a government as treacherous and corrupt as china's has to be pretty fricking smart, doncha think? and jiang's background means he has also attracted a larger number of intellectuals to china's government than ever before.

    as for brain drain, there are a lot of chinese who come to the US for education. but there are also a lot of people who go back to make sh!tloads of money. and every factory opened by an american or european entrepreneur adds to china's industrial power.

    china's economy is maybe the only one that didnt completely crash and burn in the last two years- can we say the same about south korea, singapore, taiwan, or even japan, the most advanced countries in asia?

    so yeah, this was pretty long, but maybe you should know a little more about what youre talking about before dismissing such a large part of the fscking globe next time. specifically, the two largest countries on it.

    unc_
  • I'm sure USA has missiles pointing at several countries. Do you know for sure they're not? And even if they're not pointing missiles at anyone (which I doubt), how long would it take them to do so.

    actually, i do know for a fact that the missles are aimed into the sea right now, but it also takes seconds to re-aim them.

    The US has killed its own people as well. I won't even mention slavery or the deportation of Japanese in WWII. What about Kent University. What about the (white) anti-war protesters that got shot at in the 60s. I'm not American so I won't profess to know your history, but maybe an American can enlighten us on this. How are those protesters any different than the protesters at Tianamen. You call China evil for shooting at student protesters but what about when the US shoots at their students?

    ummm... you did mention slavery, et al. slavery was a horrible practice that lasted much longer than it should have. but it was a different time, different leaders, different policies. the internment of american citizens of japanese decent during the second world war was a terrible thing for the government to do to it's own people, no excuses offered. as far as kent state is concerned, did you know that some of the students attached knives to the bottoms of their boots/shoes and kicked the national guardsmen who were there to attempt to control the situation? the difference between the tianamen(sp?) square massacre and the instance(s) you cite in the u.s., is that the students were peaceful in the china situation. in america, the students attacked the police in many instances (though many were also quite peaceful). you're comparing different situations entirely.
  • I had heard similar details about the fabrication of the EE, so I was wondering how we could impose any kind of export laws over the chip. Would it simply result in the US "not being happy" with Japan? or does the US have some kind of cooperation from Japan about that kind of thing? I don't know....
  • So what's to stop anyone from running some cluster defined as a supercomputer here in the good ol' USofA and offering up cycles the the PRC's nulcear wapons program?
  • Have you taken a look at the specs for the PSX2? If I remember correctly, it has just over three times more floating-point power than a 500MHz PIII. That's some serious computing power for a console.
  • The Beowulf mailing list had a thread for a while about clustering Playstations. All that 3D rendering does indicate a sweet chip in there.
    The only problem is Playstations are supposed to be largely black-box so as to deter piracy, so putting Linux and MPI on them would be difficult.

  • "Hello, MicroSloth support, how can I help you?"

    "Uh... Yeah. I've got a problem with my MS-Barney Sexbot? I booted DOS 5.0 for the calibration program as instructed, and it says on screen "INT 21h conflict", and then it... uhhh... locks up..."

  • Wassenaar and some random thoughts (Score:4)

    by craw ( 6958 ) on Sunday June 13, 1999 @05:51PM (#1852476) Homepage
    I do not believe that this has been previously noted, but the 2000 MTOPS export limit is not only a US restriction but is also part of the Wassenaar Arrangement. There is one caveat however. The provisions of the Wassenaar Arrangement are not binding. Each of the 30 something countries involved is free to establish their own national policy wrt to export restrictions. This point was previously discussed here at /. with regard to encryption.

    Another person mentioned that this is not an outright export ban. Once again, under the Wassenaar and US policy, exemptions to the export restrictions can be sought and approved. I think that is an important point that should be considered. OTOH, I have had the fun of dealing with export laws wrt to sending equipment overseas so that I could conduct my own research. As I don't have bags full of money to help grease the skids, my experience can be best described by the following phrase: bend over and grab your ankles.

    Finally, keep in mind that changes in US export policy changes at a glacier pace that is not commensurate with Moore's law. Changes do occur, but they are driven by the interaction of industry lobbyists and politicans. This mix is not condusive for the establishment of intelligent policy.

    As a side note, the Wassenaar Arrangement previously (1996?) had an export restriction of 700 MTOPS, IIRC.

  • HELLO! (Score:1)

    by pqbon ( 7033 )
    Hello people are you listening. Better still are you thinking. The US is not Banning the PSX 2. They have laws IN PLACE. That the PSX 2 happens to be powerfull enough to fall under. I repeat the US is not specifically targeting the PSX 2! The US has laws in place that states computers over a certain power are not allowed to be exported to certain countries!
    "There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
    "SPOOOOOOOOON!" - The Tick, The Tick
  • Most people sound like they missed that point. People who haven't great... I know the point of the whole thread is it's kinda silly to have laws like that. How ever most people forget that MOST processors used in multipurpose computers are from the US so I US can easlily control where they go. As to shipping them to anouther country then to china, indea, etc. That would cuase alot of trouble as the US would definately get WAY pissed!
    "There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
    "SPOOOOOOOOON!" - The Tick, The Tick
  • As off-topic as this is, there's a good reason why Americans don't have to learn another language: we have a big country. We don't live in Europe where there's a different language spoken every two hours you drive down a road. We spend our time learning other things... and since we're something of a world superpower, other people learn our language.
  • Things like this are *nothing* new for our goverment (the US) to do. The fact that we now notice them and can do something about it however is. The US has done some awful and stupid things throughout the years as has any other country in the world. Countries like people do make mistakes and need to learn from them... and most of you need to learn some serious history before arguing moot points again.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • >China isn't going to become a superpower like the US anytime soon.

    They COULD be, but I doubt it too - though for different reasons. The chinese leaders are walking a tightrope right now. So far they have managed to introduce limited market economy without much personal freedom, but unrest is growing in the country. China is a mindboggingly huge country that is the oldest still living civilization, consisting of hundreds of different peoples and languages. If a civil war breaks out, it would be a tradegy on a scale not seen before. Imagine Bosnia with 1.2 billion citizens.

    >Why? Because the supress freedom of press and speech there, which is not going to help people become more educated.

    Well, America has freedom of press, but it doesn't seem to do a lot of good for YOUR education. ;-)
    I mean, I bet 95% of Americans could tell you who Jerry Springer is, but according to a study "one in five could not name a single country in Europe, while one in four could not locate the Pacific Ocean on a map. Nearly half of those tested could not find New York State, and fourteen percent of them could not even correctly identify the United States on a blank map of the world's nations."

    >It'll take a long time to revamp it, and the only way they can get better stuff is to steal it from us

    That is where you are wrong. The west is currently ahead in the technological race, but the Chinese are smart and dismissing them like that would be a mistake.

    >Russia? First, how are they going to pull their country out of economic ruin? Second, the only reason anyone cares about Russia is that they usd to be a superpower and still have lots of nukes. They are really just a junky broke country with corrupt and stupid leaders.

    Russia is in deep shit for sure, but don't you understand that an unstable country is MORE DANGEROUS than a functioning one. Nukes have gone missing for crying out loud. Who has them now? Suicidal Hizbolla guerillas who want to give the US a little present? The Russian Mafia wanting to blackmail a nation?
    If you knew a little bit about history, you would know that it was the economic ruin after WWI and German resentment over their defeat that made it possible for Hitler to rise to power. And he actually managed to rebuild the country in a few years. As you said, they have lots of nukes. Would you want Zhirinovski in control of them?

    >Retaliates for what? All the aid we've sent them?

    Well, I doubt YOU sent any aid. It's funny, poorer nations that need every penny they have to build their econmy have it in their hearts to spend 1-2% of their GDP on aid to the poor. How much does the rich US spend? 0.0001? Or look at the sitiation in Kosovo. Now that the fun and exitement of dropping bombs on civilians is over, the US goes home and declares that it is the job of Europe to take care of 100 000 refugees, both Kosovars and Serbs, and rebuild a country that has been bombed back to the 19th Century.

    Personally, I would like to nuke the US for what you have done to the environment, but that is another matter... :-)

    >Any military attack from Russia would mean no more Russia.

    ...and if they used nukes, no more US, no more Europe, and nuclear winter. Wohoo.

    >"The American society is arrogant, poorly-educated, knows very litle about history, is very easly influenced, manipulated and brainwashed." And this is different from the people in other countries how?

    It is a matter of degree, and the stupidity and ignorance is spreading, but your country defenitely leads the pack. This is a quote from a forum on Salon Magazine that I think sums it up pretty good.

    Cheers,
    /Lars

    ******************
    P Glass 11:03pm Jun 9, 1999 PDT (# 98 of 106)
    WHERE IS THE PRESS?.....(It's been 'developed')
    Sounds about right, catb.
    But I'm getting dizzy. The media pack simply is getting dumber and less and less informative every month.
    In no other country has this occurred. And they all have payrolls to meet and `need audience. But somehow they manage to attract viewers and listeners and readers by the good, not poor quality of their product.

    Andrew walsh 06:29am Jun 10, 1999 PDT (# 99 of 106)
    Last time I visited Niagara Falls I watched CBC at night. I was pretty amazed at the quality of the programming. Maybe it was just a good night for CBC, but I wished I lived closer to the border. More and more the US strikes me as a strangely zombified country. Lots of money, lots of irrational anger and paranoia, lots of religious cults, but it's missing something that I can't put my finger on - something akin to emotionally cool, satisfied-with-life, integrated-with-society mental health. Ken Starr, singing hymns at night as he soaks in the dirty details of Clinton's sex life, seems the perfect embodyment of this psychic illness. But no one dares to say the emperor has no clothes.

    P Glass 08:38am Jun 10, 1999 PDT (# 101 of 106)
    WHERE IS THE PRESS?.....(It's been 'developed')
    Andrew- re CBC...
    I remember with nostalgia the time in the early eighties when NPR routinely carried CBC news productions daily as part of All Things Considered and the AM news.The ONLY unbaised, investigative journalism on the ground in Nicaraugua, for example.
    Canadian correspondents entered villages immediately following the massacre of citizens carrying a tape recorder. One I particularly remember was inside a village house where inhabitants had been caught and slaughtered while in the midst of preparing a meal. The correspondent was almost whispering into the mike as he went from room to room describing the fresh bloody scene.....
    CBC was removed from NPR after a couple years...I wrote and telephoned protest. I think it was too sophisticated for NPR to tolerate. Their correspondents in Cuba and Central America were not helping NPR in its struggle to keep Congressional funds..

  • Now think of this situation of the playstation 2, people will get it illegally, just like alot of illegal CDs coming out of China of our best software,

    Our best software isn't illegal to distribute on CD. It's also not just from US programmers. *grin*


    --
    QDMerge -- generate documents automatically.
  • see what they did to Serbia? They flattened it. It's not just America either. It's NATO. There is no world power that can withstand that kind of punishment. NATO was only using one branch of the armed forces for that too. There are at least three others. No American and other NATO forces will call the shots for at least 20 more years, like it or not. Any country that attempts to challenge that proposition will find itself leveled.

  • Hell, most of the video cards I own have "Only for sale in North America" or whatever on them. And they were all bought in Akihabara, electronics capital of Japan ;)

  • LOL! (Score:2)

    by Delphis ( 11548 )
    Heh.. just imagine if the Chinese buy up the remaining stock of nicely overclockable Celerons then and slap 'em together to make systems that are greater than the export regulations allow.

    Seriously, the PlayStation a 'supercomputer' .. come on .. I don't call a 'games console' a computer by any stretch of the word. You can't go run any old OS on it can you or can you really get a PSX title of 'Nuclear Physics Simlation' ?? .. jeez.

    One thing is of note in the article, you can't stop technology once it becomes so widely available and prolific. Processor power increases almost exponentially .. nothing you can do (or want to do IMHO) to stop it - not that I advocate helping the Chinese take advantage of stolen secrets, that's a different thing.
  • Everyone here has been misinformed. The PSX2 MAIN CPU not made in US, it is manufactured by Toshiba of Japan, and is currently in mass production stages. In fact, Sony actually funded the entire construction of Toshiba's 0.18 micron fabs just so they could make the CPU for the PSX2. (Many in the semiconductor industry felt Sony's decision to fund this a risky venture) The "US made" CPU mentioned in the NYT article was the original PSX CPU core which is embedded into the die of the bridge chip for the PSX2, designed by LSI. And as far as I was told, Sony is mearly licensing the IP core for the bridge chip so that they can manufacture it themselves. (via Toshiba agreement) Besides, the PSX2 unit will be manufactured in China so I can't see how America intends to limit its distribution.

    BTW- There sure has been alot of anti-China sediment in this topic discussion. Just remember who made the computer your surfing with right now...you would not be able to afford it if not for China and Japan. And don't get cocky with the US's supposed "technological superiority". Let me tell you, there are only two technologies the US leads in, thats weapons of mass destruction and the Internet. Japan has equally and in many cases superior electronic design technology to the US. The US PC and consumer electronic industry is curenntly hitting a wall, and they know it. Japan is poised for taking over starting this next year with China and Korea as their right hand men. Look out!

    -Huang Bao Lin (A white American currently living in the US)
  • Junkbuster makes all it's block/don't block decisions from a file containing patterns to watch for. If you click on the junkbuster logo that pops up, you can see exactly which pattern it was that got caught, and remove/modify it if you like.
  • NYTimes' login script uses the referer header. Add a line

    referer @

    to your junkbuster config file (/etc/junkbuster/config in most cases), and a a line

    nytimes.com

    to your junkbuster cookie file. Then restart junkbuster, and it should work.
    --
  • This comment contains no answers.

    Why is it that humans can not be content? I'm not sure if its intrinsic of governments or humans as a whole. The reason we form governments is to keep ourselves protected from invasions and losing what we have.

    We have to protect ourselves because we believe the other guy is plotting to invade.

    Peace agreements never work. The world can't trust itself.

    America is afraid that China is going to blow us up. China is afraid that America is going to blow them up. So we each build weapons to keep the other at bay.

    The American population just wants to live without fear of being blown up.
    The Chinese population just wants to live without fear of being blown up.

    Is it just because of governments that these conflicts occur?

    Is it possible to live without governments? I don't think so, because of criminals.

    It is so frustrating to try and find answers.
  • Yeah, yeah, the bloody British Empire...

    Gettin kinda cozy lately, isn't it? Down to Ireland (for now), England, Wales, and about 30 million crazy Scots...

  • One problem with your theory is that the U.S. is the only place China can get it's information from; and that's a very biased view. I think you are confusing the inability of the U.S. govt. to keep *it's* secrets secret, with it's refusal to allow American companies to be competitive in the global market. Yes, they should guard their secrets better; but no, they should not control what U.S. companies can produce, especially if it's already freely available outside the U.S.

  • Ha! (Score:1)

    by Gumber ( 17306 )
    Then sony has trouble selling anything in the US due to putative trade restrictions.

    I think they would rather forgo the current Chineese market than the current US market, especially given the weakness of the Japanese economy these days.
  • The US (I'm a native) is developing a most unenviable track record in the repression of technological advances by its residents.

    The notion that a supercomputer (or an encryption program) is dangerous is cold war thinking. And even during the cold war, we were trading in high tech with our "enemies" in the hope that keeping them from being too far behind might make them less disposed to bomb us.

    It's time to stop conducting such stupidly silly policies. Our elected representatives need to hear from us en masse in an expression of our dissatisfaction. It won't make them change, at least not quickly, but over time, they will listen, or risk not being re-elected.

    When technology is outlawed, only outlaws will have technology.

  • Nice (Score:1)

    by FatSean ( 18753 )
    I'm soooo sick of the knee-jerk anti-go'vt attitudes here. It's good to question authority, but a little moderation please...
  • Since the CPU in the PSX2 utilizes a MIPS-core, complete with the MIPS IV-instruction set, its actually designed and owned by a company from the USA.

    Anders W - Inquisitor CoJ, Champion of Lady weeanna "Why despair? We are all going to die anyway"
  • According to current laws, 2000 MTOPS. (Million theoretically operations).
  • And the 286 was able to address something like 1gb of memory. Not that anyone could afford a gig of memory back when the 286 ruled the roost.

  • "Ahhhhh! Oh god it locked up! The pain, the pain! It hurts! Damn you, Gates!!!"

    Don't say "locked up" in the same sentence with "Sexbot." It conjures up not-pretty images.

  • You're missing the point of the article.

    The point is that a TOY exceeds gov't limits on exporting technology. The questions now should be:
    - How to update the standards reasonably
    - Whether the US should try limiting technology xfers like this at all.

    Sorry, I don't see problems with sensible limitations - I wouldn't hand a gun to someone that I had reason to believe would want to shoot me with it. Whether I could stop him from getting a gun somewhere else is, sadly, another story.

  • A 1-10kt device will make a bloody mess of most major metro areas (To put this in perspective, the two bombs dropped in WWII were only in the 50-100kt range...).

    More like 15..22 kiloton.

  • They already are using Beowulfs fairly heavily, but they don't have to for the most part. We already gave them a huge bunch of Supercomputing power. Clinton has been so easy on China over the years that it is obvious who's pocket he is in. They are the biggest threat to this country and the world, and we are feeding thier economy and thier war machine just because we are only seeing green. Do you think a medium sized African country would have most favored nation trading status if they treated thier people like China does, or if they so blatantly were building up weapons of mass destruction? I think not. Anyway, Beowulf or T3E, they are not putting supercomputers into warheads. Anyone notice that there is a ban on nuclear testing? They need the computational might to do the same things our nuke geeks need it for: Simulation.

  • I have heard that Linux have been ported some time ago to Nintendo 64. the port haven't been made available because of pressure from Nintendo.

    Maybe this was an hoax...but maybe not. it seems to me that the N64 was using MIPS chips and Linux was working on them, so one of the harder step was already done.


  • Actualy, the 8088 supported LOTS of interrupts (I'd have to dig into my old documentation file to find out how many). It was IBM's bus and motherboard design that didn't. And its about as backwards as I care to get.

    Back to the actual topic - specific claims for yet to be released products aren't that important. If they don't meet their targets on scedule somebody else will shortly afterwards. Who knows what the K[smallest number not announced] will do? It seems that any fixed limit that excludes real super computers will be exceeded by a system afordable by mere mortals before too long.
  • I belive the x86 has 256 interupsts... as well as 256 'exseptions' but I'm not qute sure about the exseptions...

    maybe the guy was talking about registers..
    ---------------
    Chad Okere
  • you mean russia?
    you should, beacuse they have the most...
    ---------------
    Chad Okere
  • rc5 dosn't exsist?


    ---------------
    Chad Okere
  • Probably beacuse they have somthing *imporntant* to do... I doubt many people would spend hundreds of millions of dolars for somthing, and then leave it running idle...
    ---------------
    Chad Okere
  • I'm sure the people and government of the US weren't always so enlightened and open to free speech. However, over time speech has (supposedly) become more free. Even coloured people can (supposedly) speak freely in the US now Free Speach has been at the *core* of our nation since the begining (well after the bill of rights were passed, very early on). There was no censoring of Televison, or Print media in the 1960's (as there is in china today). When the US was created, it was the *only* true democracy, since the pre-cezar days of rome. America may seem to be run by dumbasses, but they could *never* pull somthing like the Chinese. The fact is, people are jailed for there mear words. that could *never* happen here
    ---------------
    Chad Okere
  • I belived they used a UNIVAC, or somthing similar, to help develop the first Nuke... they didn't do a simulation per se (obviously) But I belive they had it crunch some numbers for them (and to determine if it was even posible)
    ---------------
    Chad Okere
  • and yet its perfictly legal for women to walk around topless in NYC.... better keep a spare shirt in the car :)
    ---------------
    Chad Okere

  • Actually, i'm pretty positive Toshiba is manufacturing EE in the US. I think it's in one of my NextGen's somewhere. It sticks out because they were talking about how its gonna use the .18 micron process, and that with the new fab people were speculating they would not be able to manufacture enough for the release. But i could be wrong...
  • With WebWasher [siemens.de], a similar filtering tool (but available only for Windows), I can read the article just fine. Anyone knows what's the difference there?
  • Well, are there laws against journalists checking their facts before publishing?
    The Emotion Engine was developed jointly with Toshiba in Japan, by Japanese engineers and will be fab'd at a new plant in Japan.

    The design for some of the supporting video chipsets is done in America.

    The stupid politicians in D.C. should get their facts straight or else f**k off. They're screwing their own companies...
  • At first, it seems that the simple answer is to raise the bar so that video games and commodity PC's are no longer classified as supercomputers.

    However, if we accept that the original reason for the supercomputer export restrictions is to make it difficult for some countries to solve certain problems like simulating nuclear blasts, raising the bar defeats this purpose. These problems aren't getting any harder (and don't forget that the US managed to solve these problems in the days of pencil and paper, adding machines, and the occasional vacuum tube). If all that the regulations are doing is keeping the latest generation of hardware out of China's hands for a few months until it, too, becomes embedded in something you can buy at Toys 'R Us, is there any value remaining in the restrictions at all?

    We might as well give in and abandon the restrictions. In fact, putting millions of Internet-connected Pentiums into the hands of the Chinese population is probably the Chinese government's worst nightmare.

  • The article makes it sound like the PS2 and higher MHZ computers are outrighted banned and will never be available in China unless laws are changed. This is not true.. the author is just trying to cause a stir. Sony only has to apply for an export license, which is a very simple process. Undoubtably they will be granted export permission immediately.

  • I'm from Israel, one of the other countries effected by the export regulations. The reason Israel is effected by the export regulations is that our country refused to sign the treaty concerning nuclear weapons.

    Now, guess who was the first client that got a Cray supercomputer, with the blessing of the US government? Right, the defense ministry. And at the same time, Israeli academic institutes couldn't even dream of getting such a computer. Now, go figure the logic behind it ...

    It seems like those export regulations long lost their point. It is true that computing power is needed for simulation of nuclear weapons - while the A-bombs in WWII where made without a computer - a simulation can be used to create even deadlier weapons using radioactive isotops which are easier to produce. The biggest problem is the detonation. There is a need to calculate the exact position and activation time of the different detinators in the bomb to make an efficient and fast chain-reaction.

    Anyway, personal computer power has reached the point where it can solve those problems several years ago, so what are they trying to prevent now?

    In nuclear physics there is critical mass neaded for the chain-reaction to be possible (probable) and for the bomb to explode. Likewise, there is "critical computing power" needed to develop nuclear weapons. Once we're past that point, increase in computing power won't change anything.
  • No, it's different. US foreign policy makers take the approach that since we are a relatively appealing trade partner, and they can control, to an extent, who US industry trades with, they can leverage that. It's not "Hey Sweden, don't export to Cuba or we'll get medival on your ass," it's "Hey Sweden, you know, we're sure you'd love to export those thinga-ma-jigs to Cuba, but you have to pick - you can be our friend or their friend, but not both." Which is very different. I can't say I agree with the application of such a threat in any or all cases in which it has been used by the US govt, but it is a perfectly legitimate way of carrying out foreign policy, as opposed to simply saying "No, you can't export to them." If you disagree, I'd love to debate this via email.


    itachi
  • >if capitalism hadn't already failed then the US wouldn't still need the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
    >today. if capitalism hadn't failed then we wouldn't need labor protection laws (the workplace
    >is too often still unsafe).

    Okay, please, take a lesson from an economist. Market failure != failure of capitalism. Market failure can be brought about by all sorts of things, and, in general, the market has not failed in the US to protect labor or encourage competition. There are cases where the market has failed, ie software and the textile industry (one for competition, the other for labor). Market failure is when market forces fail to keep something balanced - a serious work shortage where wages somehow don't increase, that sort of thing. For capitalism to fail, you'd have to be talking about the economic system becoming completely and totally non-functional, with a dead halt to international trade, paper currency, everything but bartering, and a lack of set prices for goods. But look at grocery stores. Ain't no way that the market failed when my co-workers were making $14 an hour checking groceries, with double time overtime and sundays. You can thank labor market forces for that, thanks. Wages are tied to geography, unemployment, skills, etc, just like the market dictates. As for competition, how many grocery stores, or convenience stores, or shoe stores can you name off the top of your head. How about car manufacturers? And any industry with sufficiently low entry costs, such as software, or convenience stores, or beer brewing, you see a new company every week. Car companies don't spring up overnight due to the high cost of entry into the market (getting a design ready, then getting a plant online to build the design, then getting it okayed with governmental safety standards, and so forth. But they don't fold overnight, either. In fact, the auto industry is rather competetive. I can think of a dozen or so major manufacturers off the top of my head. That's no monopoly for any of them. Don't spout about the failure of capitalism, b/c it hasn't failed. I wont argue any of the other stuff with you, but I would like to point out that if you go to Vietnam, or if you go to Nigeria, or pick any of several other countries, you aren't going to find the same technology. If technology is the same everywhere, explain the African AIDS crisis.


    itachi
  • I would like to pose two scenarios and ask what would happen in each case. What if our government imposed censorship on the net, and lets say 50 people which is really an unrealistic number actually broke our law, would we actually go to their country, pull them out and bring them here to be prosecuted? Now magnify that at least 900 fold, and think of this, where is the money coming from to prosecute these people? Now think of this situation of the playstation 2, people will get it illegally, just like alot of illegal CDs coming out of China of our best software, our best games. It usually seems that it is a desire that we want our technology to not get into enemy hands, but what exactly is our government doing to check that other countries that are fortunate to be able to get our technology also has some form or checking mechanism in place and that would be used on our behalf? Just a few questions, that I wanted to have answers to the next time I get into a conversation *smirks*
  • This is getting stupid.
  • You're correct about the chinese inventing gunpowder first. They also invented clockwork, the printing press with movable type, books, paper money, and so forth. However, I believe that 100 years after they invented the mechanical clock, they forgot all about it. In fact, they were amazed when Europeans came to them and showed them _their_ clocks. From there it went downhill, with the Chinese not really inventing anything new. Europe had caught up, and China had become less innovative. Government has just gotten more and more oppressive in China, and the majority of the people couldn't think for themselves if their lives depended on it. Granted, the government gets all those who can and it uses them to their full potential. If they were so intelligent, why didn't they come up with the missle technology first, just like they did with gunpowder? The reason is this: China is not a _major_ threat because they are still extremely third-world and have not been able to develop as fast as the US and Europe. Yes, at one time they excelled, but they grew lazy and are now extremely behind. Their economy is so poor comparatively that most of that 1+ billion people you mention could never afford an inexpensive car, let alone video game consoles and computers at the level that we can.

    Has communism ever really worked? The last holdouts are China, Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. None of those countries are in proper economic shape, and the government controls everything, not the people. The people really don't have any say in what the government does, unlike we do in the US. Granted, we don't have as much as we should have, but our democratic/capitalist system seems to function much better than their communist system. We still have most of our freedom, a healthy economy, and so on. They don't have money, health, education, or anything.

    In short, next time you post, make sure you _really_ know what's going on. China is only a minor threat (even with the missles). They are poor and extremely backward. Communism will eventually fail because of the human nature to fight against oppression (Tianmen Square was such a demonstration, although a tragic one). The USSR had missles in Cuba when Kennedy was president, remember, and we were able to dissolve that problem before anything could happen.
  • chinese emperor?
  • What the hell ... you think some government is going to to Nuclear Ballastic Missiles Simulation on a PLaystation?

    China has already stollen so much data from the United States, they can make (And have already made) extremly powerfull supercomputers, nuclear reactors, missiles, aircraft, etc.

    Besides, how hard is it to find the parts for a supercomputer? Buy 64000 8-Way 500MHz Pentium III3's with a gig of RAM each and RAID, and 1Gb fiber optic networking hardware, and you can build a cluster with more computing power than the Intel Supercomputer, Red.
  • While I do think that restricting Playstations is ridiculous (a case of barn door a few years too late), the government is right to be worried about China and other countries like that gaining advanced technology. Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that when I say China, I mean the Chinese government. I have nothing against the Chinese people.

    China already has over a dozen nuclear missiles pointed at the US. The technology to allow accurate guidance of these missiles was 'accidentally' leaked by Lorel. The technology to build various advanced nuclear weapons, such as neutron bombs (which kill people and leave buildings standing) have been stolen by the Chinese. China has demonstrated its willingness to use military force against its own citizens (Tienammen Square).

    China appears to be headed down a new and dangerous path, combining communism with capitalism, in a mix with a high potential for growth and an even higher potential for instability.

    I think it's quite likely the US will see themselves in some form of conflict with China fairly soon (i.e. next decade). It may come in the form of a limited conflict over Taiwan, or another cold war, or (hopefully not) WWIII.

    Unless China's government changes to something more democratic and less oppresive, I don't see any way around it--China wants to be a superpower, and the US isn't going to just shove over and step down. There are two main ways to subvert another country's government.

    A) Force--this is bad, for many reasons.
    B) Destabilize, then cause a revolution from within. In this case, this might be achieved through trade, by making it obvious to the people how much better democracy is. Of course, if this doesn't work, you're left with A, and your enemy now has way better technology.

    Basically, the US is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It might be worthwhile for them to work on Star Wars-like anti-ICBM technology. Otherwise, China can rattle their nuclear sabre to keep the US at bay while they go pillage Taiwan or the rest of Asia.

    The only bright side I can see to all of this is that China is going to get hit especially hard by Y2K, as almost all of their government's software is pirated (making it much harder to get updates or otherwise fix). Kinda ironic...
  • I presume they're talking about the Emotion Engine [tm] and not the PSX2 graphics coprocessor. (Hey, why doesn't it get a silly/cool name too?) Anyway, the EE was designed by Ken Kutaragi at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, IIRC. And I thought I remembered reading that Sony and Toshiba were building a new fab in Japan to crank out EE chips, which would make the EE a totally Japanese-made product. So I'm not sure where the export restrictions come in, unless the manufacturing situation has changed...
    --
  • You seem to have misunderstood the idea of technological development. An AMD chip made in another country is Still an AMD chip. If, however, you went to china and bought from Wang's Computer Hardware Company, you wouldnt get an AMD chip, you would get a chinese developed chip with chinese developed architecture built using chinese processor production machinery. THAT chip would be 3 or 4 generations behind because it was developed entirely by a country that Doesnt have AMD or Intel or any other chip manufacturer from a technologically advanced country selling stuff for them to reverse engineer.

    Saying that the statement that other countries are behind is wrong because your malasian AMD chip is fast is like saying that if a programmer from california moved to japan he'd suddenly become japanese. An american product from a foreign country is STILL an american product, it's just got someone else's flag on it.


    Dreamweaver
  • Yes, it's all the fault of the evil american propaganda machine. Afterall, all communists are good and all those evil westerns ever do is try to make them look bad. Good gods man, get a clue.

    Sure communist countries dont 'spoon feed' their population popaganda.. they shove it down their throats at gunpoint. I mean come on, look at middle-eastern countries.. they arent communist (well, socialist.. since NO country is acctually communist and hasnt been since the beginning days of the concept of communism when it was discovered that giving the entirety of a country over to a few guys with no oversight was a bad idea) but thanks to the overwhelming power of government over the people they cant even watch un-edited TV or buy un-censored magazines because they might be tainted by those evil westerners.

    As to "we" and "they" being the same thing, well.. they apparently arent to you. Your whole first paragraph was bashing 'they' [westerners] for being so horrible and biased. So we're all on a little orbiting rock on the outer arm of a typical galaxy off in a lonely corner of a big uncaring universe.. So What? Is there anything anybody can do about it? Not without some serious advances in more sciences than you can shake a stick at. So until someone drops FTL into our laps, our universe remains what's on this little rock.

    US export restrictions have a great deal to do with national sercurity. Yes they're outdated, but when they were put into place computers capable of doing 2000 tops were the size of a typical office building and were pretty much cornered the market on icbm targetting calculations. Now most countries could build one just by importing smaller computers, and apparently now the playstation 2, something you could carry inside a briefcase, can do it. I agree that the US should probably give up trying to hold back the info, but not because it's pointless.
    Just imagine what would happen if tomorrow the US and all the european countries said to china "Hi, we want to be nice to you guys now, so you can come in and take any technology you want." At first it might sound like a great idea.. but think about it. Certain technologies would advance enormously while other ones that Seem less important flounder. Chinese car companies would spring into existence, but would chinese oil refiners, which would bring much less obvious and immediate change, spring into existence? Dont count on it. It's like putting a kid in a store and saying you can have what you want. They grab all the toys they've been drooling over but dont bother with the stuff they Need. Maybe every chinese home would have a computer, but they would still be impoverished and undernourished because you cant build a country-wide nutrition system overnight. Not to mention not having the knowledge to Maintain their new toys. Every time something breaks down china would have to call in someone from the US to fix it for decades until their educational system was up to par to teach their people how to do it themselves. That, on top of having to import the essentials needed to Run the new technology would drive china's economy even Futher into the ground. For decades technologically advanced countries have been trying to catch up the third world countries of the world so that they CAN share technologies. The US gives out enormous amounts of money to asian and african third-world countries every year to help them build things like sewer systems.

    As for capitalism failing.. yes, it will eventually fail. Not because it's inheritly bad, but because of technology. Things become cheaper and cheaper to produce. A few more steps down the path of technological advancement and necessities like food and clothing will be so cheap as not to matter anymore. When THAT happens, traditional capitalism will fail. What will evolve from the situation? Not communism, that's for sure. It'll probably be a quasi-barter system based around the exchange of propriety data. But all that is in the future. Capitalism hasn't failed yet like you seem to think. Most of the world works off of capitalism, even socialist countries are, as a whole, capitalistic. How so? Simple, the Country (not the people in it, the country as a whole entity) buys and sells on capitalistic principles with other countries. Why? Because capitalism works. Why do we have things like labor protection laws if it works? Because people are greedy. If someone can save a buck at the cost of somebody else, they'll go for it. Greed is what drove communism into the ground in the first place. Labor protection serves to keep greed from going too far. As for unsafe conditions, you're telling me eastern countries are better off? Pull the other one. There's a reason why american compaines try to get away with opening overseas branches.. they can hire eastern workers at 12 cents a day and have them mold plastic in unventhilated factories 100 hours a week and the resident government thanks them for providing jobs and more income for the government.

    America's not perfect. Europe's not perfect. But neither is asia.. not by a longshot. China's not a major threat now and wont be for a long time because they're too backward. Whatever the reason for it, they ARENT up to par with the rest of the world. They're the equivalent of a little kid with a gun. Dangerous to others, dangerous to themselves, but only because they have the gun. Take away china's nukes and it's back to "that place with too many people and not enough money".
    Dreamweaver

  • This seems pretty warped.. (Score:3)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Sunday June 13, 1999 @03:01PM (#1852545) Homepage
    When the most powerful computer in the world runs on commodity Pentium processors, available under no export restrictions whatsoever.

    Sure, it has over 9000 of them, but neither the chips themselves, nor the technology to make interconnects of the required speeds, nor the algorithms to make large-scale distributed applications are under any controls whatsoever.

    It makes no sense to make it illegal to buy a Cray mainframe when you can build a computer with similar power from parts that any major PC manufacturer will ship to you no questions asked.

    Sure, ASCI Red has lots of custom hardware, but i seriously doubt that the Chinese, Soviets, Indians or any other reasonably developed country in the world are incapable of building or sourcing this type of hardware.

    Sure, it's cheaper to buy a pre-built system from a US manufacturer, but if China wants to simulate nuclear explosions, then they'll do it. And theres not much the US Government can do to stop them.

    I don't see the problem, they seem to think it's alright to have nukes sitting round in their own back yard, but no-one else gets to play?

    Making the PSX-2 illegal to export is just plain ridiculous, if theres sufficient demand in the market, illegal (according to US law) clones will simply be manufactured in Taiwan or Korea for the Chinese market.

    Copyright and Patent law? Look at the situation with software in Asia.

    Why try and put export controls on technology that is inherently uncontrollable?

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