From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,TO_NO_BRKTS_FROM_MSSP autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,ec3b1a84cab8fc8a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-09-06 10:31:30 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!feed.textport.net!newsranger.com!www.newsranger.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Ted Dennison References: <3B970152.4AC6C6E3@PublicPropertySoftware.com> Subject: Re: Ada and the NMD Message-ID: X-Abuse-Info: When contacting newsranger.com regarding abuse please X-Abuse-Info: forward the entire news article including headers or X-Abuse-Info: else we will not be able to process your request X-Complaints-To: abuse@newsranger.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 13:31:21 EDT Organization: http://www.newsranger.com Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 17:31:21 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:12823 Date: 2001-09-06T17:31:21+00:00 List-Id: In article , Preben Randhol says... >Yes but as I understand the argumentation it is the protection of USA >against rogue states (not Russia) that is the target. And it doesn't You are making the mistake of believing that the current arguments you hear are the *actual* reasons for making it. Things don't work that way here. We come up with a government program or weapon system, then go looking for good rationalizations for building it. This very issue was touched on in, of all places, one of Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently" books. I'd give a quote, but I don't have the book handy. Essentially, one of the main characters struck it rich by creating a sort of reverse-theorem prover that you could give a conclusion, and it would come up with a set of plausible-sounding steps to get you to that conclusion. When he got it completed, the US DoD came in and bought the whole project. He claimed that he recognised some of the argument patterns in the Congressional Star Wars arguments. :-) >have to land to be harmful. I mean just look at the extent of the >nuclear downfall from Tsjernobyl. H-bombs and shoddy Soviet nuclear fission plants are *quite* different from each other. Most folks in this country never figured that one out either, though. >> silly as the Star Wars program itself. Almost. There *are* good >> reasons for being against it, > >Such as it is easy to fool the system with flares or something like that >if I remember correctly? That's a particularly good one in my book. Why should I, as a taxpayer, spend loads of my money developing something that will probably be defeatable with some simple cheap countermeasure? Sure, we can then try to counter the counter-measure. But that just leads to a vicious cycle where the baddies will always inevitably be one step ahead. In the end I see tons of money spent for very little gain. Better to just use the dough to send the terrorists to college or something. Get them all jobs maintaining Perl code, and they'll be too busy to even think about blowing anything up. :-) --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com