7 Mar
2012
7 Mar
'12
5:58 p.m.
It's quite ridiculous that something like this
would get dinged for
that reason. It's not like it could actually hurt anyone. Unless of
course it was dropped on someone's head.
Reminds me of a story I once heard about Ken Thompson. He
was once transporting Belle (the chess computer he developed)
out of the contry. Because of the belief at the time that shipping
anything with a greater computational power than a slide rule
would end western civilization as we know it, they asked him if
it could be used as a weapon. He responded, "only if you drop it
out of the plane on someone."
Disclaimer: I don't have any first-hand knowledge of whether
story is true, or if it is, whether it's related to the reported time
the State Department confiscated the machine.
BLS