A Peek At South Korea's Autonomous Robot Gun Turrets 298
cylonlover writes "If there's one place you don't want to be caught wandering around right now, it's the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. Especially since South Korean military hardware manufacturer DoDAMM used the recent Korea Robot World 2010 expo to display its new Super aEgis 2, an automated gun turret that can detect and lock onto human targets from kilometers away, day or night and in any weather conditions, and deliver some heavy firepower."
Unless they can move or be moved easily ... (Score:4, Insightful)
.... they're a sitting duck for a missile or shelling to take them out.
Re:They phased them in relatively recently (Score:5, Insightful)
So they recently phased in autoturrets because of a 1976 incident ? Talk about swift action.
Re:There's a really useful aspect to these. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>I guess you're right, it's the lesser evil. Still, I find it scaring and can't understand what makes a human being work day after day to design and manufacture such an evil device. Clumsy and random, as Obi-Wan would put it.
Maybe it was designed by a bunch of guys who didn't want to see their friends killed and wives raped.
Weapons aren't evil when used to defend oneself.
Re:It does not have the Juche spirit (Score:2, Insightful)
Devices are not evil. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Weapons aren't evil when used to defend oneself.
Weapons are not evil. To be evil requires the capacity for good, Some "evil" people are not evil because they lack this trait; they are insane.
Even the ICJ has admitted that nuclear weapons might be legitimately used in some circumstances, for example.
And enough rifles will kill as many people as died at Hiroshima, or Dresden. Or under Stalin.
A weapon is a tool, to be used or abused or destroyed or thrown away. Your point--"when used to defend oneself"--shows that It is what we do with the weapon that establishes moral worth.
Re:There's a really useful aspect to these. (Score:5, Insightful)
The national passtime of South Korea is StarCraft... Siege Tank crawl... My God, it suddenly makes sense! Oh hell! WE'RE FUCKED!
North Korea has a lot of very cheap units, while the South has a lot of very powerful, but expensive units.
It's pretty much a Zerg vs Protoss battle.
All the South has to do is survive the initial rush. After that, their eventual victory is pretty much assured.
Re:There's a really useful aspect to these. (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm sure some even consider working to keep their family and friends and countrymen a little safer from being overrun and losing all their freedoms a noble and worthwhile cause.
Re:There's a really useful aspect to these. (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you're right, it's the lesser evil. Still, I find it scaring and can't understand what makes a human being work day after day to design and manufacture such an evil device.
Don't worry, when your next door neighbor wants to blow you to smithereens just for existing, you will finally understand.
The world has bad people in it. Good people need to defend themselves from bad people so civilization can continue. It's really that simple. Civilization can exist only as a small, ephemeral clearing carved out in a metaphorical forest of chaos; you live entirely within the clearing. The clearing is always under attack, but you live entirely within the clearing, so you never actually see what is happening at the fringes of that clearing in order to hold back the forces that would otherwise overwhelm the clearing.
Re:Total Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Devices are not evil. (Score:2, Insightful)
You are wrong again. Not having guns makes shootings much less common, but it does absolutely nothing to prevent stabbings, beatings, robbery, etc. And since it reduces the risks that criminals face, it may even increase crime.
What you said isn't a fact, it would be a correlation that doesn't account for the many other differences between countries. It isn't even observable because it isn't at all true. The US is right in the middle of the pack for crime among industrialized nations, England and Australia are at or near the top and they have strict gun control, Japan is near the bottom probably due to cultural reasons rather than lack of guns.
There are places in the US where gun ownership was mandated by law and crime went down. The crime rate in England is nearly twice per person for many types of crimes compared to the US. After Australia banned many guns, the rate of armed robbery increased by 45% and the gun homicide rate increased by 300% in Victoria.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=8340
http://www.allsafedefense.com/news/International/BritvsUSA.htm
And before you say that if no one made guns, then none of that violent crime could occur because even the criminals would be unarmed, I'll say this. Without weapons a normal man is hopelessly outmatched by anyone who makes a living by beating people down. You can also make a gun in an afternoon with simple tools, simple materials and simple skills. Anyone one that wants to be armed can be.