US Military Builds MMO Earth Simulator 525
transient writes "BBC reports that the US military is creating a second Earth with help from There. At the moment, only Kuwait City has been modeled, but the ultimate goal is to model the entire Earth using existing terrain data and a super-accurate physics model. While combat will be part of the game, 'the emphasis in the artificial Earth will be on human interaction rather than conflicts involving lots of military hardware.'"
Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes sense that they'd do this. After all, there have to be a few people at the Pentagon who understand that you can't make people stop hating you at gunpoint, and that they'd do well to have a simulator that allows them to get a feel for the social environments where terrorist organizations have the best luck in recruiting. The more they understand the role society plays in terrorism, the better they'll be able to counteract it.
Break recruitment, and you're dealing with a handful of international criminals rather than a terrorist network.
Psychological impact (Score:5, Insightful)
War is terrible. Games are fun. Ne'er the two should meet. IMHO.
Simon.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:-1, Insightful)
The map is the reality (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, what is that supposed to mean?
Echoes of Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote in a story about a map of the world that was as big as the world itself....
Interaction (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Virtual Wars? (Score:3, Insightful)
If both sides were trusting and trustworthy enough to follow those rules, there wouldn't be a need for war in the first place.
infinite regression (Score:2, Insightful)
Super-accurate physics for...what again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they're talking about military tactics or something when they say "human interaction," but to me it seems like they're trying to say "no, really, it's not a military-oriented project." Come on people, this is the Army. If this system is mainly for military purposes, then just come out and say it, ok? Really, we pay you guys to worry about situations that involve "lots of military hardware." There's no need to pretend that you're really trying to solve world hunger or something.
Solution... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like hell you can't - it's all too easy to make someone stop hating you at gunpoint. Just pull the trigger. It ain't pretty, it ain't nice, it's hard to do thoroughly, but it works despite protests over its obvious brutality.
And remember that Osama bin Laden comes from a family of billionaires, and Mohammed Atta's father is a millionaire.
"Violence never settles anything" is such a dumbass, incorrect cliche. Ask the ancient Carthaginians if violence ever settled anything. But only ask after the Romans are through destroying their city, salting the earth, and putting the entire population into slavery. That "violence" sure settled that the Europe and the Mediterranean basin area would evolve from Latin roots instead of Phoenician ones.
Ask the six million Jews that Hitler gassed if violence ever settled anything. They're dead. That's pretty damn settled, now isn't it?
If "violence never settled anything", people wouldn't use it!!!!. And it sure as shit get used all the damn time.
Hiding from the real world because you don't like it isn't going to make it better.
Re:Technology != success (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop saluting, put the flag down, turn off Fox and get your own brain back. The US military isn't as great as the US media and hollywood portrays it. They have no regard for human life or peace, yet America thinks they can't do a thing wrong.
Need I mention the fiasco in Iraq? US soldiers killing US/allied soldiers? Grenade attacks? Spooked troops shooting their comrades? Patriot attacks on friendly aircraft? Attack helicopters shooting blocks of appartments? US flags being waved everywhere? US soldiers killing Iraqi police? The list goes on. Wake up! Think about it for 2 seconds... if they're so good, why do they keep screwing up all the time?
Easy way to memorize maps (Score:3, Insightful)
What if the troops have no idea how to get home when their chopper is shot down or the natives put up another barricade?
A 3d environment like this is a very effective and fast way to memorize the map and layout of the city.
Also good for convoy training, preparing for ambush training, etc.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BBC huh (Score:3, Insightful)
It's on the verge of libellous to suggest that the BBC is deliberately and routinely biased against the US. I presume that you've never analysed the news coverage which is presented to you in any kind of critical way, or you'd figure out that "loving to trash the US" means something completely different to "reports both sides of a story rather than automatically following some kind of uncritical "Whoop, go US! U-S-A! We rule!" stance. The latter stance is the point of view of the Fox Newses of this world.
Bias is in the eye of the beholder. During the Iraq war the BBC was angrily accused of bias by both anti-war activists and pro-war folk like the government. If you're being accused of bias by people on both sides of an argument, you're doing pretty well.
The recent hoohah that led to the resignation of both the Chairman and Director-General of the Beeb resulted from one point in a live discussion between a presenter and a journalist that was broadcast at 0607 one morning and never repeated. That point was found to be untrue (heh, well, technically untrue) and top people in the BBC resigned. Doesn't sound like systematic bias to me.
(What moderator decided the post I'm replying to was "Insightful"? Yeesh.. if unsubstantiated regurgitated sniping counts as insight..)
Re:The Sims (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone really ought to merge The Sims with Battlefield 1942.
Meet new people! Pimp out the neighbohr's teenage daughter! Strafe your boss' car! Curse each day about not respawning next to your car and watching your son drive of with it instead! WOOT! And you gain valuable military experience as well!
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:4, Insightful)
And the brothers and sisters...
And the best man from their wedding...
And their drinking buddies...
Hold up a sec--you're gonna need another clip or two.
Re:Psychological impact (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally think that one of the best treatises on the matter is Ender's Game. In case you aren't familiar with the idea, Ender is trained in the latest military action/theory using a simulation, but what he isn't told is that the simulation is really just a control interface to give REAL soldier's orders.
The idea is that Ender would not have won the battle the way he did if he had known it wasn't a game (because there were sacrifices no one would really make that had to be made to win). Yes, I realize that it's *just* a book, sci-fi at that, but the social commentary is interesting, useful, and very important. Card did a wonderful job of making a very important concept accessible to pretty much anyone--war CAN be NECESSARY, but sometimes the sacrifices we make in war are very difficult.
I have seen some comments on this discussion that are very anti-war. I agree with the sentiment that when possible, war should be avoided. I disagree, however, with the concept that war is so evil that we should never fight one. To those who feel that war is NEVER justified, I have to say that I respect your willingness to believe such a high ideal, but I don't believe that you really accept the implications of that statement.
You see, if you state that war is never justified (because violence is wrong), what about personal defense? Are you justified in defending your own person? If you are, then what about you and say, five of your friends. If you are all attacked, should you defend yourselves? Yes? Then what is the difference between this and a battle or war? All war is, is someone attacking another person, and that person choosing to defend themselves. (Yes, I realize that it gets much more complicated than that, but I am talking about basic premises here).
Personally, I feel that you must either say that no one should defend themselves from attack (thus suffering rape, murder, theft, etc without argument) and war is never justified, OR you must accept that there are times when personal defense is justified, and therefore war (being NATIONAL DEFENSE) can be justified.
All that said, I did not serve in the military because I felt that I was not properly suited to the military mindset. (read: I don't like taking orders!)
mod me up, mod me down, I'd rather you replied intelligently.
Re:Now we know how it began... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is definately cheaper to print a book than create a virtual world to intereact with a virtual book. Especially at that time.
It might be cheaper to build a fake city and staff it with actors than to build a virtual world. But considering the state of the art right now in VR worlds, it likely won't be.
It's definately cheaper to build an artificial world to model the entire planet than it is to build a fake planet and staff it with actors. Not to mention where you're going to put it and what you're going to make it out of... (Chia-Earth, anyone?)
It's all about scope and purpose.
The biggest problem I can see is keeping the model up to date. Geography, cities and populations are always changing. If their intent is to have a virtual world that can be used to study the real world, they're going to have their work cut out for them. Frankly, I can think of better things to spend money on.
=Smidge=
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Deep Thought (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder what the stopping condition is? And I sure as heck don't want to be around when the garbage collector comes to destroy our objects because the reference broke.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the US is fighting for democracy and justice, it has to play by the rules, otherwise its demonstrating a massive love for hypocrisy. Killing people because some people were killed is only going to make things worse. By your logic, there would be peace in the middle east by now.
Just because it's easy, doesn't make it right. Your argument is very immature, and short-sighted.
This "war on terrorism" is more than people fighting people, but ideas fighting ideas. You can't shoot an idea.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Psychological impact (Score:4, Insightful)
War is terrible. Games are fun. Ne'er the two should meet.
To achieve that you're going to have to turn the clock back to pre-history and start fixing it there. Games have always been about war, whether individual or group conflict, and military training has always been done with games. The essence of any good game is conflict, and warfare is obviously conflict taken to its most extreme level. In that sense war is the best game ever invented, unlimited conflict between people who are intelligent and supremely focused.
I'm not trying to glorify war, because it truly is terrible, but there is a fundamental connection between war and games, which are really a microcosm of war.
For this reason, soldiers have always used wargames to prepare for war. Whether it's wrestling, footraces and javelin-throwing, jousting, field maneuvers against an OPFOR or computerized versions of any of the above, the only way to really prepare for war is to practice, and although individual fighting skills can be practiced to some degree without actually creating a contest, learning how to fight effectively requires the enactment of battles. Real battles are too expensive, of course, so soldiers use games which to the participants become almost as engrossing as a real war would be.
War and gaming are intimately related in another way as well. To some extent, good commanders have to be able to treat real war as though it were a game. Good commanders must really, truly care about the individual men they command, both because that caring creates loyalty that is critical to unit integrity and because commanders who don't care tend to waste their men. On the other hand, a good commander must also be able to view the conflict abstractly, like a game, so that they can expend their men's lives when necessary. Overly cautious generals kill more of their own men than overly aggressive generals. The best commanders in history are those who've been able to achieve a remarkable balance between caution and audacity while simultaneously inspiring their men to do things that no sane person should be able to do.
The subtext of your comment, though is "I don't want the soldiers and their commanders to think war is fun, because then they'll want to go to war all of the time". I understand where you're coming from, but that notion makes no sense, either.
In the first place, soldiers always understand better than anyone else exactly what the cost of war is, and the field commanders are up to their elbows in it. The rear echelon element also gets a good second-hand taste of it, plus they were all field commanders at one time and had plenty of years to think about, if not experience, the horror. All good soldiers are interested in going to war to test themselves, to find out if they're really up to the challenge, but given a choice between going to war and resolving issues peacefully, they'll choose not to fight.
But soldiers don't get that choice, at least not in any country I'd want to live in. They are asked for their professional opinions about what may or may not be achievable, but the the decision as to whether or not to go is in the hands of civilians, most of whom do *not* have the same understanding of war.
In summary: If you want to make sure that the military can achieve victory in the shortest possible time and with the least possible damage, let them play the games and get prepared. If you want to make sure that they never have to go to war, keep the *civilians* away from the wargames so that they don't get hooked on the fun of war.
See you on your own (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like hell you can't - it's all too easy to make someone stop hating you at gunpoint. Just pull the trigger. It ain't pretty, it ain't nice, it's hard to do thoroughly, but it works despite protests over its obvious brutality.
Different issue. You can stop someone hating you by killing them, but for every person you kill, more will begin to hate you. The only way to stop people, in the plural, hating you, using violence, is to kill everyone who doesn't support your policy of mass murder. That's not going to do much for the future of the human race.
That's why the "war on terror" will never be won with military power. Even the evil terrorist bastards you kill were the parents, siblings, or children of someone who will hate you for killing them. And for every evil terrorist bastard we've killed recently, they've also killed or wounded dozens of innocents: how much love do you think they're going to have for us for that?
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why yes, indeed it did settle that matter. In fact, I can't recall hearing about a single bit of pain, suffering or conflict related to Judaism since. No, I can't think of a single person, family, nation, or Holocaust survivor who feels that things weren't settled by Hitler's actions. Not one, anywhere.
Of course, had Hitler managed to completely wipe out the Jewish race and faith, then yes, there wouldn't be an Arab-Israeli conflict today. Total genocide does make for neat, tidy endings, doesn't it? Unless, of course, you have spineless sympathizers who fail to see the necessity of eradicating those who are at odds with you.
If "violence never settled anything", people wouldn't use it!!!!. And it sure as shit get used all the damn time.
If violence settles things, why the hell do we keep coming back to it? You'd think violence would have settled our differences centuries ago. What happened--was it an outbreak of accursed peace or something?
Violence only succeeds when you completely eradicate your opposition. If you don't, all it does is breed hatred amongst the survivors. Unless you track down and kill every last person who opposes your will, you're going to have to deal with those who hate you because you've destroyed their lives and families. Is this what you're advocating--the wholesale slaughter of every terrorist, their families, and all those who cared about them? Think you can keep up the pace?
I invite you to register for a free Slashdot account. Even a pseudonym lends credence to one's comments.
PSYCHOPATH (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea, and we know there's never any backlash or circular problem as a result. After all, it's not like the muslims started, no the christians started! No, you started it! Nuh uh, you started it!
Yea, of course not, this violence hasn't been going back and forth between Western and Middle Eastern cultures for the last millenium, no. Each time violence erupted, it sure settled things.
There are two reasons you're not a social scientist: 1) You have no clue how psychology, social anthropology, etc. contribute to the collective behavior of a society and 2) you're an idiot who's confusing settlement between two individuals and entire societies. Go ahead - argue that you can just nuke entire societies out of existence. I dare you.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame America is based on a unique variant of American exceptionalism: that we're uniquely evil-- that China, or the USSR, or Syria have no control over their own destinies becasue it's all Our Fault. History was pretty bleak before we came along; I like to think we've had a good impact overall, but we're not omnipotent.
The civil war in Sudan had nothing to do with us, or the violence in Rwanda, or the Kurd separatism in Turkey. Where we have been involved (Afghanistan, the Korean Penninsula, Taiwan, Eastern Europe) there is a good defense to be mounted.
Either way, the idea that the military creates global chaos so that it can justify its own funding is ill-conceived claptrap. Why not prop up the Soviet Union to keep the Cold War going?
War and chaos and death is a reality of the human condition. Even if all weapons were somehow destroyed, people would get boards with nails in them and start the whole thing over. The US military is trying to think of clever, weird ways to approach conflict to make it more decisive and with fewer dead innocents. Three cheers for that.
Best interests? (Score:5, Insightful)
J Edgar Hoover had the US best interest in mind when he framed Martin Luther King, Jr with forged audio tapes of bogus conversations.
McCarthur had the US best interests in mind when he tried to start WW III with Red China.
The generals who had plans in the early 60s to fake terrorist attacks in the US and blame it on Castro had the US best interests in mind.
Oliver North had the US best interests in mind.
Poindextor and TIA had the US best interests in mind.
I myself don't particularly appreciate other people having my best interests in mind. They don't know my best interests and they don't care.
And that includes you. To all you and your ilk who have my best interests in mind, I say FUCK YOU, I can decide my own best interests.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't matter how neatly you do it - conquest involves killing many people. There is no way that doesn't have bad aftereffects. Put yourself in their shoes - even if you didn't like your ruler, if the ruler didn't actually kill anyone you know or opress anyone you know, and in fact most of your poverty was caused by trade embargoes, and then someone comes along and blows up your family because some other country pissed them off and they had a vendetta against your ruler, what would you do? You can't deny that's how it would look to an average Iraqi right now. Whether its true or not is beside the point.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:1, Insightful)
That's an interesting statement considering the US still executes people for crimes in some states.
>This "war on terrorism" is more than people fighting people, but ideas fighting ideas. You can't shoot an idea.
Neither can you take an idea off someone. In fact doing so is usually what compels them to violence to protect that idea.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not every conflict demands a gun, but nor can every conflict be settled by a friendly conversation over tea. His argument may be immature and short-sighted, but yours is breathtakingly naive and at least as dangerous as that of the shoot-firsters.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pardon me, but that's bullshit. Blame America says we're uniquely evil simply because we're uniquely powerful. What other country has significant numbers of armed forces around the world? What other country spends anywhere NEAR as much as the US does? What other country effectively controls the worlds oil supply (either economically or militarily)? What other country has more nukes than the rest of the world combined (and then claims that other countries don't have the right to pursue nuclear technology)? The US is the ONLY remianing superpower.
And I hope you remember what they say about power and corruption [bartleby.com]...
Re:Best interests? (Score:1, Insightful)
Read this part again.
"I can decide my own best interests."
But you couldn't defend yourself against an attack by a foreign power, could you?
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the employees of weapons dealers can have the best of intentions.
I'd expect that most (or at least many) of the people who work in the pentagon have the best of intentions, but they've gown up in an environment where might makes right and they have the most might. It's not generally the best crucible for peacemakers.
To paraphrase Einstein:
The thinking it took to get us into this mess is not the same thinking that it's going to get us out of it.
The leaders paradox is that the kinds of people who are willing to fight for power tend to be precisely the kinds of people that you don't want in power.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:4, Insightful)
- The Sheep: These are those who are lead around by the noses and don't know any better. An example of this would be people that actually believe the 71 virgins crap (which was created by the man who institutionalized the concept of the Assassin) and the extremist "schools" that teach hate to children. The Sheep tend to be illiterate.
- The Desparate: These are those who have lost all, real or imagined, and have nothing to lose. They are ideal for recruitment as suicide bombers.
- The Manipulative: These are those who take #1 and #2 and manipulate them for their own power. Osama is a good example. He and his lieutenants manipulate the passages of the Koran to suit their needs and objectives, tricking the Sheep and the Desperate to carry out attacks.
Violence will only solve #3. It will not solve #1 or #2. Only education and active peace will fix that.I'll have to disagree with the premise behind this (Score:3, Insightful)
But you CAN work to establish and support governments that are NOT based upon religious teachings and that DO have rights for women. If you do that, al Queda and other organizations like them will die within a few generations because no one will WANT to be a part of them.
The problem is that it will take a few generations and none of the politicals in the US are willing to put effort into a program that will solve the problem for their grand-children. It's MUCH easier to take a "tough on xxxxxx" stand and advocate violence.
Most people don't remember enough of their history to know that even the "greatest Democracy in the world" (the US) started out without rights for women or blacks and so on. It took us many generations to get to the point we're at now. Don't expect instant solutions to complex problems.
So you're correct in "good luck talking al Qaeda over - I'm sure you'll be able to convince them, through logic and reason, that Sharia isn't really a good system of government, and that women should have full rights as citizens."
But that is just one facet of the whole problem. And it is NOT a major facet. Estimates of al Queda membership before our invasions was about 1,000 individuals. Many of you had graduating classes that were larger than that.
Re:OpenSourceTerrain modelling (Score:2, Insightful)
This news about millions of dollars going to There.com is both good, and disappointing. It's good in that any increase in the funding and attention for modelling the earth is, in general, a good thing.
It's disappointing in that There.com is a highly secretive, closed, proprietary environment, which guarantees that none of these millions of taxpayer dollars will actually bring the public closer to having a model of the earth.
-Ben Discoe, Project Manager, VTP [vterrain.org]
Re:Once again, NOT ON OUR SHORES.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of note: Germany's destruction WAS complete and utter. They had no chance to survive through the war, plus the fact that their leader died (suicide) and the dwindling resources of the Reich as a whole, both financial AND material (i.e. metal to make weapons with, gas, etc) - they couldn't wage war as they had been doing, and therefore could not fulfill their goal of world domination. As for conquest: it WAS conquered. And taken over, and regulated, for MANY years by the Allies.
Japan was forced to concede through mass destruction and fear of further retribution on the same scale. Japan was in it for the long haul - they would go down with the sinking ship and make life miserable for their enemies. However, when it became clear that they wouldn't be given a chance to (think: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2 loud messages), they gave up.
Of final note: the 2 World Wars were wars between countries. That made targeting the enemy easy: Germans/Japanese. Either you killed Nazi's/Japanese, or you conquered/contained German/Japanese civilian populations (taking a villiage, etc). Also, Germany and Japan were the aggressors in those cases. In the case of Iraq, or the War Against Terrorism, the US is viewed as the aggressors, and the distinction of "conquer a country" isn't clear - they're trying to pussyfoot around the civilians who aren't part of the conflict directly (who may later turn against US forces), and the resources in the region remain. Iraq had no goal but to be left alone, although they didn't like to get along politically. The people of Iraq aren't being conquered, and they're not being targeted as the enemy, so you're usually missing a large contingent of people that could turn on you. As for the War On Terrorism, that works in an entirely different way - the enemy isn't located in one area of the world, and they have no allegience. You have to pick them off one person at a time - a particularly daunting task, since now you don't even HAVE the option of going in and decimating a population or conquering a country. You can kill one, but the terrorist population grows like cancer in the blood.
The recent Iraq situation was handled really half-assed and badly - they should have waited for a really strong reason to go in and really conquer Iraq. Now all the US & coalition forces have done is made a mess from an already murky situation. The reasons for and methods of violence in Iraq and the "War on Terrorism" hardly run parallel those of the 2 World Wars.
Re:of course ... (Score:1, Insightful)
You fools! You've played right into his hands. He's just been waiting for this to happen :(
Re:Give war a chance (Score:3, Insightful)
The existance of the Japanese and German populations who do not subscribe to Nazism, do not hold Hitler in high regard, and do not hate us for the elimination of both, precisely support the grandparent post's argument.
What exactly were you trying to provide a counterexample to?