Missile Defense
Didn't work in the Reagan era, and its still not practical.
I went to NM Tech. Home of the US Center for Explosives Technolgy Research, the Navy's Terminal Effects Research Project, and the operations center for the VLA radio telescope. Where do you suppose most of my classmates in physics went to work? Sandia Labs, Los Alamos, various other defense contractors all working on parts of Star Wars.
The amount of fakery that went on even then is astounding (and remains unreported).
Besides which, missiles cost real money and the current crop of have-nots is a decidedly low budget crowd. They're a lot more likely to borrow a freighter and blow it up in Boston Harbor than spend money on expesive rockets. Heck, these guys took out a US Navy warship with some fertilizer and a rubber boat.
Missile defense is a waste of money.
I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customer got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.
--Alan Perlis
