Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 18:29:47 +0200 (CEST) From: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: cjclark@alum.mit.edu, "Crist J. Clark" <cristjc@earthlink.net>, Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" <root@pukruppa.de>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <1002817787.3bc5c8fbddbfd@webmail.neomedia.it>
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> Salvo Bartolotta wrote: > > > Take one of the most interesting scientific > > > and engineering efforts of the century, the Manhattan Project. That > > > research took place amongst a _very_ small but able scientific > > > community sequestered in the desert. It was quite a while for that to > > > be shared with the world at large; we all know why. Same story for the > > > hydrogen bomb or any other technology developments placed under the > > > cover of national security. The idea that all information "needs to be > > > free" is a rather naive one. > > > > I would say yes. And no. Essentially because Science != technology. > > > > Nuclear reactions (fission & fusion) are described in many Physics books. > > _Understanding_ or _knowing_ Science does NOT necessarily imply eg having > > the > > technology to produce a fission or H bomb. > Security through obscurity never works. > It is relatively trivial to build such devices; the book: > The Curve of Binding Energy > John A. McPhee > Noonday Press > ISBN: 0374515980 > gives sufficient information to calculate the neutron numbers, > and therefore the critical mass, for any radioactive material > that is capable of fission. <snip> Science != technology. Today primary school pupils know about the equivalence of matter end energy. Secondary school pupil/student [may] know about critical masses for nuclear reactions. Better yet, some of this information is written in [more or less] scientific encyclopedias (/me having read those and other data at about 9/10). Obscurantism is NO solution. Talebans anyone? "Dangerous" technologies, that is, the precise details of how to _work_ eg plutonium to make a bomb out of it, *should* be kept secret. Alas, this is not always possible, but they should. > The way we control such things is to control the availability > of the critical raw materials very, very carefully. One of > the reasons we have been so careful to court Pakistan and > Uzbekistan must be that they are Afghanistan's neighbors, and > are both members of "the nuclear club". Yup. I had left out one of the most important details. --Salvo To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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