From: Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>
Subject: Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 05:27:11 GMT
Date: 2003-01-11T05:27:11+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <PWNT9.23112$E83.8883@news2.central.cox.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1042177570.752923@master.nyc.kbcfp.com>
Hyman Rosen wrote:
> Back in engineering school we would occasionally joke about going
> to work making bombs after graduation. The issue never really
> arose for me since I went into programming, and I've always worked
> on stuff that had nothing to do with weapons systems. Not that I
> think it would bother me to do so (insert obligatory reference to
> Tom Lehrer's song about Werner von Braun :-)
Its arisen for me on occasion. I've spent most of my career working on
DoD projects. I find most people in DoD work are actually quite
conservative politically, which leads me to belive most of us liberals
opt out of DoD work at the get-go. I know at least one friend of mine
from college did just that. However, a suprising amount of DoD work is
more about *saving* lives than taking them. Some of it, like the NASA
stuff, is as noble a cause as you can devote your time to. *The* most
noble, IMHO, but that's another diatribe for another time.
Only twice have I ever felt I couldn't work on something for moral
reasons. One was the time I was offered a job by a smartbomb maker. In a
way, smarter bombs actually save lives too when compared to the
alternative of using larger or more dumb bombs, which is what would
happen, make no mistake. But I just didn't feel like devoting a
(possibly large) part of my life to helping make bombs.
The other actually had nothing to do with the DoD. For a while we (my
old group at Martin-Marietta) were considering making a tank simulator
for the Chineese army. This was about 2 years after Tienamen. I had a
mental image of sitting in the simulator cockpit trying to get the
"crunch" sound right when the tank rolls over the head of a protester.
No thanks.
It so happened that during the massacre I was off work for a while in
prepration for my wedding, and had nothing better to do all day than sit
and watch everything go down on CNN. With the state of mind I was in
after that, it would have been an exeedingly bad idea to put me anywhere
near a representative of the Chineese military for about 4 years
afterward...
My apologies to our Chineese readers for getting their c.l.a. access
revoked.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2003-01-11 5:27 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 70+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <Pn_TS1-GfE@vib.usr.pu.ru>
2002-12-23 1:03 ` Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET Robert C. Leif
2002-12-23 11:11 ` Ingo Marks
2002-12-23 14:18 ` Hyman Rosen
2003-01-05 16:50 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-06 9:09 ` Hyman Rosen
2003-01-06 9:17 ` I. Marks
2003-01-06 22:12 ` Ted Dennison
2003-01-07 3:23 ` Hyman Rosen
2003-01-07 13:21 ` Ted Dennison
2003-01-08 4:52 ` Hyman Rosen
2003-01-08 5:54 ` James S. Rogers
2003-01-08 13:08 ` Ted Dennison
2003-01-10 2:38 ` Richard Riehle
2003-01-10 5:02 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-10 5:23 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-11 4:47 ` Ted Dennison
2003-01-06 13:27 ` Larry Kilgallen
2003-01-07 3:30 ` Hyman Rosen
2003-01-07 13:24 ` Ted Dennison
2003-01-10 2:43 ` Richard Riehle
2003-01-10 5:13 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-10 5:17 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-10 5:11 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-10 5:46 ` Hyman Rosen
2003-01-10 15:09 ` Ranged Types (was: Hijacking a Thread) Larry Kilgallen
2003-01-10 23:17 ` Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET Georg Bauhaus
2003-01-11 5:27 ` Ted Dennison [this message]
2003-01-11 7:33 ` Making bombs after graduation ( was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET) faust
2003-01-10 13:53 ` Christopher Browne
2003-01-11 9:10 ` u.r. faust
2003-01-10 14:25 ` Fraser Wilson
2003-01-10 10:41 ` Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET Richard Riehle
2003-01-10 13:22 ` Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET) Marin David Condic
2003-01-10 22:38 ` Richard Riehle
2003-01-11 14:15 ` Marin David Condic
2003-01-14 20:02 ` Kevin Cline
2003-01-14 23:03 ` Pat Rogers
2003-01-15 2:00 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-15 4:03 ` John R. Strohm
2003-01-15 13:26 ` Marin David Condic
2003-01-15 17:43 ` Richard Riehle
2003-01-15 20:57 ` Robert C. Leif
2003-01-15 22:53 ` chris.danx
2003-01-16 12:58 ` Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: NewAda " Marin David Condic
2003-01-16 1:28 ` Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada " Jeffrey Carter
2003-01-16 3:45 ` Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: NewAda " Richard Riehle
2003-01-16 15:44 ` Jerry Petrey
2003-01-16 19:50 ` Jeffrey Carter
2003-01-15 23:18 ` Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada " John R. Strohm
2003-01-16 0:00 ` Richard Riehle
2003-01-17 17:21 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2003-01-17 19:09 ` Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: NewAda " Richard Riehle
2003-01-16 12:50 ` Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada " Marin David Condic
2003-02-03 9:33 ` Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen
2003-01-11 4:38 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-11 9:02 ` Pascal Obry
2003-01-11 14:28 ` Ada Compiler Pricing Marin David Condic
2003-01-13 12:33 ` Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET) John English
2003-01-13 16:15 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-14 12:52 ` Marin David Condic
2003-01-15 7:11 ` AG
2003-01-27 12:33 ` Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET Colin Paul Gloster
2003-01-28 13:14 ` Marin David Condic
2003-01-28 13:47 ` Pat Rogers
2003-01-28 15:31 ` Larry Kilgallen
2003-01-29 12:43 ` Marin David Condic
2003-01-11 7:21 ` faust
2003-01-10 22:38 ` P S Norby
2003-01-11 3:44 ` Adrian Hoe
2003-01-13 12:31 ` John English
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