jwgli...@gmail.com (John Gilmore) writes: > We are in a situation much like that of the atomic-energy industry > some years ago. The original Hanford, Washington, gaseous-diffusion > facility for the separation of uranium isotopes was designed by Enrico > Fermi, slide rule in hand. It then came uinder the control of AEC > civil servants; and when decades later it was shut down, after > polluting large tracts of the state of Washington all but > irretrievably, there was no professional physicist on its staff.
re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#77 IBM going ahead with more U.S. job cuts today there has been a lot written about Admiral Rickover's exacting standards for nuclear plants not only for naval vessels but also land-based commercial nuclear power plants ... and that standards became more relaxed after Rickover. one of my favorites is Col. John Boyd ... who I knew and I sponsored his briefings at IBM. He wrote jet fighter pilot training manual that came to be used by nearly country in the world. He significantly improved the design of the F15 & F18 and responsible for the design of the precursor to F16 (although lots of comments about design was significantly downgraded in becoming F16). I also credit him having big hand in F20/tigershark He is credited with the battle plan for Desert Storm in the early 90s and there have been comments that one of the problems with the conflicts the last decade was that Boyd passed in 1997. One could make a case that many of the F35/JSF could also be attributed to Boyd no longer being here. Lots of Boyd posts & references http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html for a little mainframe ... Boyd biographies mention him doing tour in command of "Spook Base" ... including reference to it being a $2.5B windfall for IBM (possibly $18+B in today's dollars) ... spook base reference ... gone 404 but lives on at wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html Hugh Laurie (actor in TV "House") even references Boyd in "Gun Seller" fiction ... quote in this recent (open linkedin "Old Geek") discussion "Is newer technology always better?" ... also archived here http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#41 as an aside, Boyd wasn't authorized to do the design for what became the F16 ... and MICC felt threaten by his activities and tried to get the Air Force to sentence him to life in Leavenworth for "stealing" millions of dollars in gov. property (i.e. the unauthorized use of supercomputer time for the F16 design) ... fortunately he had carefully covered his tracks and they couldn't find evidence of his use (somewhat analogous to part of Laurie's theme in "Gun Sellers"). The issue of IBM short-term/long-term recently came up in this (closed linkedin) IBMers discussion: "IBM going ahead with more U.S. job cuts today". part of my contribution archived here http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#77 for even more drift ... past couple months there has been lots of divers doing repair work on the seawall on the perimeter of the naval academy ... workers say that the concrete has significant erosion. Its only something like 30yrs old ... this compares to sea structures made from Roman concrete that has survived for 2000yrs "Ancient Roman Concrete Is About to Revolutionize Modern Architecture" http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-14/ancient-roman-concrete-is-about-to-revolutionize-modern-architecture -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
