Storm Watch

I found your editorial and articles on storm forecasting [“Modeling Toward Accurate Storm Forecasting,” and “It’s Hurricane Season: Do You Know Where Your Storm Is?” [August] very interesting. For a lot of weather forecasting, it’s a lack of data that limits accuracy more so than computing power. The hurricane article says, “Three things are going to foment this revolution in forecasting accuracy: supercomputers, satellites, and advances in the scientific understanding of how weather evolves.” More and improved data from aircraft sensors should also be listed here.

In the IEEE Spectrum’s June issue, [“ Troubled Weather Satellite Program,” News], I see that the estimated cost for the NPOESS satellite program has gone from $6.5 billion to more than $10 billion. Although they may be useful for hurricane forecasting, for everyday forecasting the return on investment for some of them is questionable. Sensors on aircraft, especially turboprops flying in the lower troposphere, are much cheaper to operate and give more accurate four-dimensional real-time data where it’s really needed.

Our company, AirDat, is deploying a sensor that measures winds, humidity, temperature, turbulence, and icing. Our TAMDAR sensor is currently installed and operating on the Mesaba turboprop fleet, which operates in the Great Lakes region. Its data has proven very useful to forecasters in making more accurate model predictions.

Daniel Mulally

IEEE Member

Evergreen, Colo.

The Hydrogen Economy

The item “Hydrogen on Track” [News, August] reported on some encouraging developments in mobile applications of fuel cells and wisely referred to the technology as hydrogen-fuel-cell propulsion. In the general debate on alternative fuels, one very simple and basic factor should always be borne in mind with regard to hydrogen, but it is all too frequently forgotten. Where does the hydrogen come from?

This confusion is exemplified in the article: “…railroads around the world are taking a serious look at alternatives to diesel because of skyrocketing fuel costs.” But to what extent is hydrogen, as such, an alternative? Hydrogen is highly reactive and all too anxious to oxidize. The only possible source of hydrogen as a primary fuel to replace oil and natural gas would be in the form of mineral hydrides. These are far too rare to be considered worth exploiting.

The most abundant source of hydrogen is water, hydrogen oxide. We have two ways of “de-oxidizing” the hydrogen (reducing the water), electrolysis and the most widely used method of producing hydrogen commercially, reduction with carbon. If all were perfect (which it never is), it would require exactly the same amount of energy to release a given mass of hydrogen from water as it would to oxidize that mass of hydrogen back to water in a fuel cell. The net energy produced is thus zero, and the hydrogen is simply an intermediate energy carrier for moving the point of use from one place to another—in the same way as electricity.

Reducing water to hydrogen with carbon produces carbon dioxide. Generating electricity for electrolysis usually produces carbon dioxide (from coal, oil, or gas). So the use of hydrogen fuel does not directly reduce the carbon dioxide footprint of the energy consumption in any way whatsoever, except insofar as the overall efficiency of the reduction-oxidation-consumption process is higher than that of other prime movers.

The key factor in the fuel-cell technology is the potential to reach much higher efficiencies than are possible with mobile internal combustion engines. As things stand, it appears that we can look for an efficiency savings of 2:1, halving the primary fuel consumption and the carbon dioxide footprint. Modifying internal combustion systems to approach the efficiency of fuel cells makes them unwieldy in both price and bulk, so the fuel-cell approach is clearly one that should be energetically explored.

As to alternatives to diesel, the use of the hydrogen intermediate enables us to use any primary energy source that may be available as an alternative to fossil fuel. The implication here, however, is that we need to convert our power stations to nonfossil fuel, generate more power from “renewable” sources (solar, wind, hydro, tidal, and so on) and use nonfossil carbon to produce hydrogen by thermochemical reduction. Oh, and by the way, dams are bad for the carbon cycle; they impair the deep ocean sequestration of carbon dioxide. So hydro, yes, but no more dams, please.

Peter Bissmire

Associate Member

Caerphilly, Wales

I read with interest about the new technologies in hydrogen-powered trains. As an engineer in traction power at Los Angeles Metro, I have seen many new technologies perform energy savings, and I wonder whether this new hydrogen methodology will take hold on TP substations as well.

I was talking with a manufacturer about a battery substation to collect energy from regenerative braking and prove voltage support and power support. I also discussed (with a manufacturer who already does what you say for windmill applications) an idea of using wayside fuel cells and doing what you indicate on the train by producing hydrogen by electrolysis.

Would it be better to apply this fuel-cell technology as a substation replacement system or addition, instead of using high-voltage power utilities, by providing gas to a fuel-cell substation rather than putting it on a train? Is this industry application coming soon?

Thomas Langer

IEEE Member

Burbank, Calif.

I am insulted by the news item on the “hydrogen-powered locomotive“ [August It indicated that in case of some natural disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, you could just “drive it to wherever you need it, hook it up, and provide enough power....” Hook it up to what—your friendly neighborhood hydrogen fuel station? Not in Metairie or New Orleans. Nor in my town, nor yours.

If this thing can run at 1200 kilowatts output, it will need a lot of hydrogen, not easy for your neighborhood station to provide. And that “station” would need an input of several megawatts to generate that much hydrogen. I don’t know anybody who says that generating H2 is efficient or cheap. The caption on a photo says this machine can keep the lights on at a military base or hospital. Fine concept; now show me a military base (or hospital) that has a neighborhood hydrogen station. If you can’t run a hose over to such a station, this quickly turns into “The Little Engine That Couldn’t.”

The author quotes “experts” as saying that “railroads...are taking a serious look at alternatives to diesel because of skyrocketing fuel costs.” The next time you drop by your “friendly neighborhood hydrogen station,” check out the price of hydrogen. (That is a joke, because nobody—except maybe NASA—has one of them.) If somebody is not holding his thumb on the scale, you would see that the price of hydrogen will rise and fall just like the price of any other fuel, because energy is not cheap if it has to be generated by electricity or by fuels that compete in an open market.

I am not opposed to subsidies for experimental applications of energy, but somebody has to get serious about large-scale practical considerations. Hydrogen is not cheap and will not be cheap. Anybody who implies that it is, is being fooled by the same pseudoscientists who think that “hydrogen is cheap because water is plentiful.”

And if you want to ignore the minor purchase price of a new locomotive with fuel cells, and the little cost of its fuel, check out the recurring price of replacing the fuel cells when they poop out in a few months. Finite lifetime. That alone makes this an expensive proposition that could be cost-effective only on a NASA railroad on Mars.

I am sure the “fuel-cell locomotive” is an excellent piece of engineering, allowing for the minor little problems I have pointed out. It’s just the fuel-cell cost, and the hydrogen supplies, that are minor little problems. These problems were ignored in that article.

Robert A. Pease

IEEE Member

San Francisco

The author replies: The writer makes a valid point that we should have said more about how hydrogen will be carried onboard locomotives. In the mine locomotive described, the hydrogen is stored chemically as solid metal hydrides. Other proposed trains could carry their fuel either in metal-hydride form or as compressed gas, and be refueled at stations placed where hydrogen can be piped in or manufactured on-site.

For example, the Charlotte-Mooresville line mentioned in the article runs within a few kilometers of a colocated hydroelectric generating facility and a nuclear power plant. The plant’s electricity already powers a scrap iron smelting facility located a stone’s throw from the train tracks. A refueling station there would never want for electrolysis hydrogen. In an emergency, the military yard switcher-cum-generator would not rely on a local hydrogen refueling station. Once it reaches its destination and is linked to, say, a hospital’s electrical connection, it becomes, in essence, a stationary power plant to which hydrogen can be delivered by truck in high-pressure tanks.

More on Metcalfe’s Law

I was interested in “Metcalfe’s Law Is Wrong” [July While I'm not an economist, my experience in business is that the value of something is determined by profit: what people will pay for it multiplied by the number of customers you can attract, minus the cost of business. A network can’t be worth more than the number of people who can afford to pay for it times the amount they’re willing to pay, which is linear. Once a customer can connect to most people, they start assuming they can connect to everyone, so additional connections don’t increase their perceived value.

Such a network, like other types of infrastructure can create value for someone else (that is, with no Internet, there is no Amazon), but a network owner has little or no gain from this. I would even speculate that what a company like Amazon will pay to connect to additional customers actually goes up at less than a linear rate. They want to pay only for bandwidth and they probably want it at a volume discount!

History shows that the value of things is determined more by perceived value than anything else, so no mathematical model is likely to be correct. One has only to watch prices on eBay, stock values over time, and so on, to see that value can’t be modeled. The main difference between the value of a Newsweek article online and in print is perception.

Incidentally, online stores aren’t the only place to shop if your taste is esoteric. Our company has carried 100000 or so CD titles for 20 years, in spite of Zipf’s Law (our sales do indeed have a long tail), because all those extra titles are a draw for all those people who want the experience of shopping (like getting to talk to another human). Our inventory cost is presumably the same as Amazon’s (minus deals they get), and although we store the product in less dense, presumably more expensive, retail floor space, that size is determined as much by the maximum number of customers in the store at once as it is by holding the inventory in a browsable way.

In addition, “bricks & clicks” gives us the same potential customers as Amazon has. Any lack of success on our part has more to do with such factors as our ability to market ourselves, the lack of capitalization, the erosion of customers’ perceived value of a CD, along with various other industry problems that have been discussed widely in the press, not with Zipf’s Law.

As an engineer, I would solve hard problems like a compiler’s register allocation algorithm by looking for mathematical approximations. In business, my experience is that mathematical modeling takes a back seat to intuitive decisions, whose only basis in science would be human psychology. By the way, in my view DVRs’ ability to skip commercials makes the value of broadcast TV zero, because it essentially eliminates the broadcasters’ ability to generate any revenue, no matter how many customers they connect to.

Bob Scheulen

IEEE Member

Seattle

Metcalfe or bust: Authors Briscoe, Odlyzko, and Tilly present good arguments that Metcalfe’s Law overstates the value of networks. However, their own “n log(n)” hypothesis seems equally blind to some critical factors. They admit that the n log(n) hypothesis “oversimplifies,” but they fail to expend the same effort probing its shortcomings that they put into defending it.

They present arguments against Metcalfe’s Law that amount to hand-waving. They say, in several ways, that such values of scale would overwhelm all other factors and inevitably lead to massive mergers in a short time frame. In this, they vastly overrate the rationality of human beings. Humans tend to be much more interested in protecting our space than in sharing it with others, a factor that often overwhelms all financial incentives.

The authors claim that Metcalfe's Law would “create overwhelming incentives” for mergers. But they present no evidence that mergers occur just because of incentives. They say that “surely” (a singularly dangerous word in a scientific or engineering article!) “it would require a singularly obtuse management [or] inefficient ... markets” to resist mergers. Where is the evidence that either factor is not to be found in abundance? It’s true that a school of economics exists that claims that markets are always rational and always control human action, but such thinking ignores the fact that markets work well only when carefully regulated.

The authors point out that large networks are often reluctant to merge with small networks without compensation. This can be explained by two factors, one human and one economic. The human factor is simple bullying: I’m bigger, so you pay me. The economic factor is risk and volatility: premerger, the smaller network is more at risk from volatility of economic conditions. Thus even if the “average” network value implies a proportional benefit for both the small and the large network from a merger, the smaller receives more benefit in terms of reduced risk. Even the authors’ citations of historical times-to-merge are unconvincing. Two decades to merge phone systems? Not bad technological progress for the time.

Five to eight years for e-mail interconnection of online services? Technical and costs considerations were very real at the start of that interval, and human reluctance to share space likely played a part. One very real value of increased size of networks is what I call “discovery value.” It’s not just that I can communicate with the other n people in a network. It’s also that I can discover them—in ways that were simply not possible in smaller, or separate networks. Network tools such as mailing lists, Usenet newsgroups, and Web search engines multiply value in ways that analysis of one-to-one communication does not consider.

I don’t for a minute believe Metcalfe’s Law. The Internet with a billion users is clearly not a million times more valuable than it was with a million users. That would imply that the value to each user had increased a thousandfold, and those users would have all retired by now if it had. In fact, I doubt that any simple function describes network value: surely (that word again) there are critical points (tipping points) in network size, where a particular tool or value decreases or increases below or above that point. (Discussion groups are very clearly subject to critical mass factors.) As a result, I find it difficult to see that the authors’ proposal is any more useful than Metcalfe’s Law. I would argue against simple functions more than against either n-squared or n-log(n) specifically.

Edward Reid

Associate Member

Tallahassee, Fla.

Cautious Forecast

The August issue of IEEE Spectrum was remarkably compelling; I only wish I had more time to follow up on many of the articles. Judging from their articles, some of the editors apparently also lack the time to consider the contents of the entire issue. In particular, it would seem that William Sweet and Paul McFedries might spend some time with the “It’s Hurricane Season” article by Gall and Parsons.

At the risk of exposing myself as an “exemptionalist,” it seems to me the “precautionary principle” is stretched to its limits if we are to base policy on models where a “minor alteration of initial conditions is typically magnified into an enormous change.” I am no expert on either short-term or long-term forecasting of the climate and weather, but it seems to me that for any conclusion on global warming to be “universally regarded as fact,” it will need to be accompanied by verifiable models that predict weather phenomena for more than a few days.

Stephen S. Miller

Senior Member

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Senior Editor William Sweet replies: Miller raises a valid issue about making policy under conditions of uncertainty. Predicting weather and projecting climate, however, are basically quite different problems. As the Gall and Parsons article explains, weather modelers are able to evaluate how small changes in initial conditions affect outcomes by running parallel “ensemble” computer runs, in which initial conditions are varied and the outputs averaged. Climate modelers also do ensemble runs, but mainly to evaluate uncertainties in parameters (such as the amount of carbon dioxide in the air) and alternative descriptions of physical processes (such as convection, or reflection and absorption of sunlight by clouds). Natural variations in initial conditions average out over the long run in climate models, and so in this respect, projecting climate is less difficult than predicting weather.

Fuel Economy

“Stricter U.S. Gas Standards Stalled“ [News, September], a long and somewhat baffling discussion of automobile fuel economy standards, in my opinion, dances around the real basic truths of the case, which are primarily two. First, regarding the lament over the current price of gasoline (around US $3 per gallon, but dropping), history shows that if, for example, you allow for the general inflation that has taken place since 1950, shown by statistics to be a factor of about 10, then $3 a gallon is about in line with the prevailing 1950 price of around 30 cents. (On top of that, today’s gasoline is a much more sophisticated product.)

The second basic is that the only effective brake on gas prices, as with other commodities, is the free market. Legislating fuel economy in the face of basic physical and engineering limitations does not work. Gasoline is not yet expensive enough to throttle down consumption very much, which would in turn force the price down.

Harold E. Haynes

Life Member

Cherry Hill, N.J.

Controversial Research

“Cells on Ice” by Michael Dumiak [News, September] misleads in its statements about the politics of stem cell research. The article repeatedly states that storage of stem cells at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering cannot yet proceed because stem cell research is such a “hot-button issue,” especially in the United States. However, the stem cells discussed in the article would be taken from umbilical cord blood, not human embryos.

Embryonic stem cell research is controversial because it requires that embryos be destroyed for research or potentially for future treatments. The use of stem cells from other sources, such as umbilical cord blood, is not controversial and is in fact strongly advocated by pro-life groups, such as the Family Research Council, as a viable alternative to use of embryonic stem cells. Stem cells from sources other than embryos are being successfully used for various medical treatments today.

Barry Burgess

IEEE Member

Gurley, Ala.

The author neglects to distinguish between embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. The stem cell controversy in the United States concerns the former kind—stem cells that require the destruction of human embryos. This fact is the basis of the Catholic Church's opposition to embryonic stem cell research. As such, I am not sure why Dumiak brings up the Catholic Church and its “influence in the southern and western parts of the country,” as he himself specifies that the proposed German cell farms will store stem cells from umbilical cord blood, not embryos (and hence do not require the destruction of an embryo). It is important to note that Catholics in the United States and the rest of the world do not oppose stem cell research per se, but the research on (any) cells the derivation of which results in the destruction of human embryos.

Damian Fedoryka

Laurel, Md.

The editor responds: The Fraunhofer research is aimed at creating large-scale banks of many different kinds of cell samples, and leaves the choice of what kinds of cells are stored—whether embryonic or adult stem cells, cord blood, cancer cell lines, tumors, and so on—to the industrial user. We did not intend to say or imply that storage cannot proceed until stem cell cloning is approved, but it’s assumed that industrial-scale storage will not take place until the associated politics cools down some. The institute is currently storing umbilical cells, as specified in the story, but if this is to turn into a huge industrial-scale operation, broader sensitivities would come into play—not only Catholic, but as stated in the story, concerns about data privacy.

Systematic Writing

As a retired EE turned systems engineer, I appreciated Robert W. Lucky’s September column, “Unsystematic Engineering,” bemoaning the lack of a systems emphasis in both industry and academia. I was, however, disappointed that he failed to mention the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), which, in its 16-year existence, has become the worldwide focal point for SE. It has worked with the IEEE and other professional societies on integrated standards across multiple disciplines. I believe that INCOSE is a bright light on the SE horizon.

Derek Hatley

IEEE Life Member

Middleville, Mich.

Lucky’s remarks about engineering educators in “Unsystematic Engineering” reminded me of a saying from my student days of over half a century ago. An arts student (it went) starts by knowing a little about quite a lot, learns less and less about more and more, and ends up knowing nothing about everything. An engineering student, on the other hand…

My experience as a systems engineer leads me to disagree with Lucky’s disparagement of the divide-and-conquer approach. If indeed any possibility of a holistic approach is “forgone from the very start,” then that is because management has failed to employ systems engineers from the very start. System engineering experience is needed to properly design the division even more than to manage the conquering.

Neville Holmes

IEEE Member

Dilston, Tasmania, Australia

Technology and Terrorism

I read all of the September 2006 Special Report, “Unlocking the Terrorist Mind,” with some interest. In my opinion, only the Perrow article, “Shrink the Target,” was on target, the “Terrorist Mind” being something for a shrink to examine, anyway.

Perrow’s most cutting insight was captured in the quote, “We spend billions on unproven technical remedies for imagined terrorist threats….”

A question raised in this series was, “Could the hypothetical terrorist scenarios…do harm by giving terrorists ideas?” No, not likely, at least as described in this article, because the scenarios are unimaginative and oriented toward fictitious parameterizations, not factual representations, of past events.

Why the “Nine Cautionary Tales” ? Wasn’t this wasted pages, even if nowhere near billions? Instead of fake stories about the horrors of 2007, why not some careful analysis of the facts? Why not a better insight into the attacks that actually have occurred?

For example, the “terrorist network” diagram in “Modeling Terrorists” shows two lines of followership between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Even in the mid-2003 time frame, this was widely believed not to have any basis in fact (WMDs were the focus). Worse, everyone knew after 9/11 that Osama and Omar (former Taliban leader) cooperated in the planning. Yet, Omar does not even appear on a diagram composed at least a year after the demolition of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He and Osama remain at large.

After the failed Clinton assassination attempt, the cruise missile bombings in 1998, Osama and Omar were known to have become allies—probably the most dangerous combination of terror in history! In Senate hearings late in 1998, FBI Director Freeh was quoted, “Retaliation for the U.S. cruise missile strikes...on Aug. 20 is already in the planning.... We’ve identified people in the United States or people who have transited the United States who are associated with [Bin Laden],” Freeh said, “[who] poses about as serious and imminent a threat as I can imagine.” (See http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/09/03/freeh.terrorism.ap/ and a transcript at http://radiobergen.org/terrorism/senate_terror-4.html.)

Yet, the diagram shows nothing and apparently was based on presidential (mis)statements more than on analysis. We ignore the FBI in favor of fiction writers and game programmers? People who don’t know history, can’t tell war propaganda from fact, and have no proven political experience?

Maybe we should blame our cruise missile technology, not our fiction writers, for giving the president the wrong ideas?

What can we do, as engineers? Not much, because people, even terrorists, are not technological products. My suggestion is to participate in the dwindling terrorism

battle in two ways:

1. Before taking action, consider the consequences in addition to the benefits.

2. Choose a technical action only if the expected consequences justify it.

We were shown by terrorists that they can attack unexpectedly from the air and cause massive destruction. Just as we did to them.

Are we going to go through this again and again, standing our ground like scarecrows, or are we going to learn something from it?

John Michael Williams

IEEE Member

Redwood City, Calif.

The article “Modeling Terrorists” was good, but I thought that the Carley group’s network graph of Iraq had some inexplicable features. For example, there is a direct line connecting Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden, even though the two men have never met. In fact, within the last months, both President Bush himself and the Senate Intelligence Committee report have said that there was no relation between them. The graph also shows a link between Saddam and Ahmad Chalabi (who turned out to be an Iranian spy). In early 2003, Chalabi had not set foot in Iraq for over 20 years, and there could not have been any conceivable connection between him and Saddam. Conversely, Shia cleric Ali Sistani is shown at a distance from the center, even though he had spent his whole life inside Iraq and was certainly known to Saddam.

I wonder, does this graph really represent the U.S government’s understanding of Iraqi politics at that time? That might help explain why the occupation has gone so badly wrong. Or is the graph just a pastiche of famous names, designed for public relations purposes?

Dale Shultz

IEEE Member

Iowa City, Iowa

As a Life Member and with over 50 years as a member of IEEE, I am in awe of and disgusted with the piece on “Nine Cautionary Tales.” If any of these scenarios were unknown to terrorists, they surely are being added to their playbook. Revealing weak points to an enemy is a despicable act.

You have done more to alienate me, and many others I have spoken to, while providing terrorists with some new soft targets. My loss of respect for your editorial integrity is beyond description.

Shame on you.

Irwin Goldstein

Life Member

Boca Raton, Fla.

Tale No. 2, “Electroshock,” describes a scenario wherein “boroughs are attacked by grenade- and assault-rifle-toting terrorists.” Later on in the discussion of the scenario, the author states, “Outside the United States, private ownership of weaponry is often more tightly regulated. Militias found in many U.S. states provide opportunities for weapons training.”

First, no one has a definition for “assault rifle.” This was a term manufactured by antigun groups. Because there is no definition for this term, the legislation banning assault rifles resorted to individually listing every firearm that the antigun groups thought were assault rifles. Most, if not all, of these firearms are of the fully automatic variety. So, making some assumptions on the author’s intended use of the term assault rifle, one would expect that he is referring to a “fully automatic firearm, such as a Uzi, an M-16, or an AK-47.”

Regarding the reference to the “more tightly regulated” private ownership of such fully automatic firearms outside the United States, private ownership of fully automatic firearms has been illegal in the United States since the 1930s. Some private individuals may own these weapons if they are licensed by the federal government. Such licenses are very tightly controlled.

The author’s intent with these statements quoted above (the second of which really has no bearing on the article) is to imply that Tale No. 2 is much more likely in the United States because of his perception that our gun control laws are somehow lacking. But the truth of the matter is that fully automatic firearms (assault rifles, if you will) are as tightly controlled in the United States as they are in any other country. It is against the law to own one, has been for more than 70 years, and can land you in prison if you are caught with one in your possession.

Mark Swan

IEEE Member

Colorado Springs, Colo.

Being politically correct by the omission of the words Islam and Muslim in the “Modeling Terrorists” article could prove fatal, and I mean fatal. Not all members of Islam are terrorists, but all terrorists featured and modeled are members of Islam. This writer must be hanging with Vice President Gore.

Bennie G. Williams

IEEE Member

Savannah, Ga.

The last of your tales, “Too Much—or Too Little,” presents the false dichotomy that is a favorite justification of every police state. Must we choose between freedom and security? Certainly it’s harder to have both, but it’s unfortunately very easy to have neither. Actions like massive wiretapping, exhaustive citizen databases, and intrusive searches make it look like the government is seriously pursuing security, but they certainly don’t “prove” that security is better. The breathtakingly incompetent management of the Iraq war, the Afghanistan adventure, the hunt for Bin Laden, and hurricane Katrina relief show that the results may not justify the costs and, indeed, the results may be taking us in the wrong direction.

Harvey S. Cohen

Associate Member

Middletown, N.J.

“Shrink the Targets”

Perrow (“Shrink the Targets”) is the only one on target. Civilians need to be protected not just from terror, but also from natural and industrial catastrophes. “Nine Cautionary Tales” correctly includes the impact of terror aimed at the economy but misses the most important factor: improve energy efficiency and protect yourself from oil cartels. I think the energy factor costs the United States much more even without the oil wars.

It is disappointing that IEEE Spectrum continues to take a political stand in its issues, despite words of wisdom to the contrary from IEEE President Michael Lightner, who in a recent article urges all members to put aside nationalism and xenophobia. The knowledge we use is not owned by any single nation—Newton’s Laws, Hindu-Arabic numerals—but by everyone and is a heritage that we must pass to future generations, untainted by allegiances of any kind, whether to kings, nations, or governments.

If the IEEE must take a political stand, then why not try to look for the most effective solution to terror by eliminating the cause. Surely, there is a very good reason why people in Canada and Norway have no need to fear terrorism. The price for peace is to give up imperial ambitions and learn to live in harmony and compromise with others, saving precious human lives everywhere. Violence is not the way, period.

Vivek Sharma

IEEE Member

Olten, Switzerland

Readers are invited to comment in this department on material published in IEEE Spectrum and on matters of interest to engineering and technology professionals. Short, concise letters are preferred. The Editor reserves the right to edit letters and limit debate. Contact: Forum, IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave., 17th floor, New York, NY 10016, U.S.A.; fax, +1 212 419 7570; e-mail, n.hantman@ieee.org.