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You mimic the whining socialist claims of liberal geeks who claim info wants to be free when you say that.

All that about beowolf clusters is admittedly and obviously true. But what all this is about is really whether the U.S. is to allow assembled systems perhaps fully integrated with optimized software to cross the border. Examples are usually things like SGI Origins or Crays.

A cluster does not a simulator make.

Would you say the U.S. should allow integrated systems to wander across the borders?

You mimic the whining socialist claims of liberal geeks who claim info wants to be free when you say that.

Actually the socialists agree with you. Nuclear Threat Initiative : Global Security Newswire is a $250 million dollar Ted Turner peacenik creation and they are against dropping the restrictions. Euro-trash socialists are also upset with Bush's decision. None of these people want America to be competitive. They want export restrictions exactly because they are no longer needed.

A cluster does not a simulator make. Would you say the U.S. should allow integrated systems to wander across the borders?

What do you mean by "integrated" systems? Do you mean big mainframes or "prepacked" clustered systems with an SGI/IBM brand name on them (perhaps this is an example?)? I'm sure cray can use all the customers it can get, if it's still in existence.

otoh, if the issue is whether we should be exporting "optimized" software or not, this really is a tempest in a teapot (unless you're the one who's trying to buy or sell the software). The US has enough problems with software piracy inside of our borders as well as outside. The existence of the WTO isn't going to keep China from running software that's publicly available througout the U.S, sorry. But I don't see where "optimized" software really would give a rogue state a real advantage like "optimized hardware" would in the first place. Ask any good programmer and they'll probably tell you that there's nothing really "new under the sun" as far as software goes, and that's why so many of them dislike the idea of software patents. And what if a freely distributable OS like Linux happened to be more "optimized" than Windows? The only effect of export restrictions in such a case would be to take away some of Microsoft's revenue. General export restrictions on cryptography are just as stupid, especially when you want to encourage the use of a particular "standard" for commerce purposes. If there's some software that the government wants to keep "bottled up", it ought to be kept on a few secured machines, accessible by only a few trustworthy people, and it certainly shouldn't be available "over the counter" anywhere, just like any classified information.