About those Fees

As a student from Technical University Munich, now doing research at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, I found German Universities Seek to Reclaim Lost Glory [January] quite good. Some points, however, could mislead.

Yes, German students are protesting increases in university fees. But what upsets them is that the fees will go into state and not university budgets

Also, the central agency in the article that places students in universities handles only a few areas, like psychology, law, and medicine. Any graduates of a "Gymnasium" who want to study electrical engineering can find a university on their own.

I believe the German university system is still very good and offers learning of a high quality. But students have to motivate themselves more than in the U.S. system, where "motivation" comes from a tight schedule of homework, mandatory reading, and classes.

Christoph Ullrich

Boulder, Colo.

The article concisely points out some principal shortcomings that led the once excellent German education system into decline.

Three major issues not mentioned are the grotesque federalism that makes universities a plaything in turf wars between the federal government and the states (Länder) increasing political influence on even the daily operation of universities, ironically dubbed "increasing autonomy" by the (Länder) and reforms that address nearly everything except real problems, which are uncomfortable for politicians to face.

Kai Borgeest (SM)

Aschaffenburg, Germany

Missle Defense

Despite what your news story U.S. Deploys Missile Defense System [February] describes as "...the linchpin of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program...," President Reagan's administration had no Star Wars program. It did have a missile defense program called the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI.

The term Star Wars was coined by some members of the media, presumably as a way to maintain their readers' interest in the subject or, in other cases, to hold it open to ridicule.

William K. Alverson (LS)

Nicholasville, Ky.

The article does a good job describing the Bush administration's program for an antiballistic missile (ABM) system. Since the Reagan presidency, our control system capabilities have still not increased enough to reliably "hit a bullet with a bullet"; inherent system noise precludes sufficient accuracy, and the multitude of failed Pentagon tests bears this out.

Sheldon C. Plotkin (LM)

Los Angeles

Does Age Matter?

The selection of those 10 engineers in "Dream Jobs" [February] almost implies that no one younger than 30 or older than 50 has a dream job.

I have held three dream jobs, one when I was a "kid" and another post age 65. At 20, I was a U.S. Air Force navigator, helping survey electronically, from the air, the lower part of the Atlantic Missile Range.

At age 29, I put together a million-dollar NASA contract to verify that communications components of the Apollo Unified S-Band Lunar Telecommunication and Tracking System would actually work together. And today, at 70, the same "kid" has a dream job in Homeland Security, training ordinary citizens to respond to attacks with weapons of mass destruction. I may not earn as much now, but it's a dream job nonetheless.

John Painter (LS)

College Station, Texas

What about Spain?

Here in Spain we already have a commercially available service equivalent to Swisscom's TV over Internet Protocol over digital subscriber line ["The Battle for Broadband," January]. The Imagenio service is available in three cities (although not with full coverage)—Madrid, Barcelona, and Alicante—and is long past the restricted "friendly customer" pilot service phase. It will be extended throughout Spain during 2005.

Carlos Garcia Braschi (M)

Madrid, Spain

Patently Obvious

I want to add another factor that favors the issuing of useless, but threatening patents ["Patent Prescription," December]. Since 1880, no applicant has had to have a model of the device being patented. No evidence or demonstration of a patent's feasibility, functionality, or "reduction to practice" is required. Requiring that patents be shown to be feasible could do much to stem the tide of fraud supported by the current patent system.

Gio Wiederhold (F)

Stanford, Calif.

It is unclear to me that patents of software and business methods have any justification whatsoever. Such patents foster a system of legal extortion whereby large corporations can stifle new competitors. When IBM and Microsoft add thousands of software patents every year, you know they are not for something as innovative as, say, the spreadsheet. Most are for trivial combinations of existing capabilities that no one got around to programming before.

Either eliminate such patents and revoke existing ones or, better, limit them to a life span of 2 or 3 years, rather than 20.

Mark Wallace (M)

Mission Viejo, Calif.

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