Classified research

[Scott.Fahlman@SEF1.SLISP.CS.CMU.EDU]

    }Area of research is Passive Sonar Detection and Classification
    }using Neural Networks - research is propriety and classified.
    
    Perhaps you should consider unsubscribing.  This is an international
    list with no classified traffic or propietary content.

    This list was created back in 1986 with the idea of sharing ideas.  If
    you must do otherwise, this is of no interest to me as a connectionist.
    Do you do anything that is of interest?
    
    				-- Marek Lugowski

I disagree with Marek Lugowski.  Obviously, this list is not an appropriate
forum for discussing research and ideas that are classified or proprietary
-- it goes all over the world to all sorts of people.  We would prefer that
subscribers to this list share as many of their ideas as possible with the
rest of us, but I do not think that we want to say that a legitimate
researcher is unwelcome to participate in this group just because some
portion of his or her ideas are not going to be shared with the rest of us
immediately, or because he happens to work on classified problems.  If we
put in such a restriction, we would lose a large fraction of our
participants.

There are are lot of people out there who read these messages, but who have
never contributed to these discussions.  Perhaps their work is proprietary,
perhaps they want to publish their ideas initially in a journal or some
other formum for which they get "credit", or perhaps they don't yet have
anything to say.  That's OK -- in fact, the current setup would not work if
everyone felt compelled to "share" something, whether or not he had
anything to say.  When someone *does* have something he wants to say, this
forum provides a medium by which he can address a large community of
interested, legitimate researchers.

If your objection is to having any contact with military-sponsored
research, perhaps *you* had better consider unsubscribing.  The machines
and networks upon which the roots of this list reside are paid for mostly
by the U.S.  Department of Defense.  It is unfortunately the case, as of
today, that most computer science research in the U.S. -- not counting
proprietary research within companies -- is paid for through DoD in one way
or another.  Some of us hope that will change, but it won't change over
night.  In the meantime, it would be quite hypocritical for us to suggest
that people doing classified research are not welcome even to listen to
what goes on here.

-- Scott Fahlman