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.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:4, Interesting)
The more they understand the role society plays in terrorism, the better they'll be able to counteract it Firstly my two cents... You have Santa who controls the presents delivered around the world for millions of kids, and then
You're forgetting that it would not be in the military's best interest to live in a Utopia because the world would not need armed forces. Aside from that, when it comes to the US military, put your filtered Americanized book down and learn the truth for once. If you look at the majority of conflicts in this world, you would know the US played a major role through clandestine actions. Take the cold war for example. The United States engaged Russia to implode. Certainly their researchers had to have known about the nuclear factor that would come out of it concerning a splinter of countries with nukes. It would be moronic to think the collapse of the Soviet Union would make their arms disappear. So what do we have now, nukes on the black market. Irrelevant here, but you should know the role of the MIC (mil. ind, complex) a bit better from an outside perspective before you believe that the army is doing this in order for all of us to sing "I'd like to teach the world to sing...".
The ambitious project aims to help the US Army plan future conflicts which are unlikely to involve set-piece battles and instead be smaller in scale. Translation, lets simulate different combat scenarios here, so we'll know how to fight/kill (INSERT YOUR TERM HERE), when the time is appropriate.
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.
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: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: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: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.
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 pr
You are a God-damned motherfucking liar. (Score:3, Flamebait)
Bin Laden et al., as is well known, have made it clear that jihad will continue until the entire world lives under an Islamic Caliphate enforcing Taliban-style Sharia law. [forum18.org]
I say we take them at their word, and kill anybody who advocates Sharia, anywhere in the world. We need to treat the Wahhabbis as the Romans treated Carthage.
I want every Wahhabbi imam in the world
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3)
Al Qaeda and bin Laden, simply put, wish to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate. They want it to stretch through the entire Middle East all the way to Spain. (go here [msn.com] if you actually want to read a bit about this). They want to drive the Jews into the sea in Israel. The sort of Sharia they advocate, with Afghanistan under the Taliban being Exhibit A, is *profoundly* oppressive towards women, non-Muslims, gays, etc. etc. If you really believe these fascists are freedom
See you on your own (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Informative)
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, Informative)
The correct quote is "violence never solves anything".
Violence may wipe people off the face of the earth but it does not solve problems. Sure rome destroyed carthage but their politics never let them have
long-term peace and the cost of their military might eventually bankrupted them.
While the Republic of Venice did fight some wars their politics allowed them to find solutions that were much less costly than wars. Venice as a small state still lasted over a thousand years from the height of byzantium to the coming of Napoleon.
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.Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, duh! Of course holding someone at gunpoint doesn't stop them from hating you.
It's when you pull the trigger and splatter their brains all over the place. *That's* when they stop hating you.
Sheesh! Wadda they teachin' youse kids in skool dese days?
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:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the problem: the US & other like-minded states lack the lack of heart & conscience to do what the Romans did. They're not into genocide, they're not into complete and utter violent domination of cultures. That's what they stand for - everyone getting along, and removing those who don't want to get along.
As the parent rightly mentions, you can't just kill the one person - you have to kill them all. I'll go out on a limb here and say that we will never see the entire Middle East wiped out of existence by any military force.
The approach of working smarter and not harder fits better with the goals set out in search of a free world. Bullets work, but since we don't want to do that anymore and because we really probably CAN'T, this might be a better approach.
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Funny)
This is probably the most insightful post I've seen this week.
High praise for a Monday....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 conc
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Insightful)
Technological Inertia. (Score:3, Informative)
Just becuase we can do something, does not mean that we should. We ought to categorically oppose all technology used for the sake of automated control (red light cameras, airport profile scanning, etc). Unfortuantely, because we can do it, we do it anyway... obsessive-compusliv
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:5, Flamebait)
How dare you sit at your keyboard and accuse them of being "shadow employees of weapons dealers".
I say again, FUCK YOU
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.
Which foreign power? (Score:3, Interesting)
As for attacks by foreign powers, can you specify which ones? Is Castro bothering me? Is there some reason I don't know that Cuba has to be quarantined but not China?
How about Iran, whose current govt only came to power because they finally got fed up with the govt which had been foisted on them by the US?
How about the many central American countries who had govts controlled by US banana companies and backed up by US Marines?
I dare say 90% of the fo
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:Once again, NOT ON OUR SHORES.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Choose your weapon... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 any
Gigantic Quake server (Score:5, Funny)
Now we know how it began... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, that was an obvious observation. But they're making an online world that mirrors our own world. It reminds me some years back when I went to Siggraph in Chicago and Virtual Reality was the "next big thing". Someone showed a demo on a virtual world where you could walk in, pick up a book and flip through it. Someone remarked wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy a book...
So wouldn't it be cheaper to build a fake city with actors playing a part for the people being trained to interact in? Be employed by the US Army for acting in a simulated city so they can better understand how to weed out terrorist and help people in need, yet do so in a safe environment. Also, working with actors trained themselves in certain ways AND with the ability to actually "think" would be WAY better than AI in a game.
Just a thought, but probably a stupid thought on my part.
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:Now we know how it began... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Is brown
2) Mistakenly refers to God as Allah
3) Hates freedom
He talks about #3 all the time even though it makes no sense. When Bin Laden was working with the CIA to free Afghanistan from the Russians, he liked freedom well enough. The Army of God has killed 3 people and injured over 100 in 4 bombings (Olympic Park, 2 Women's Clinics, and a Gay Bar). They fail tests #1 and #2, so Bush never mentions them.
-B
Re:Gigantic Quake server (Score:5, Funny)
So... (Score:2, Funny)
None of this is real?
So that,s residual self image
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Deep Thought (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Deep Thought (Score:5, Funny)
(ref. vis. Dr. Dan Streetmentioner)
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.
Why do we need another Earth ? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh crap (Score:5, Funny)
i wonder the level of detail (Score:5, Funny)
Dup? (Score:2, Informative)
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0
Which talked about stuff from here
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04
The Sims (Score:5, Funny)
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:The Sims (Score:4, Funny)
Psychological impact (Score:5, Insightful)
War is terrible. Games are fun. Ne'er the two should meet. IMHO.
Simon.
Re:Psychological impact (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.battlefront.com/products/tacops4/tac
"TacOps 4 is the commercial version of "TacOpsCav 4", an officially issued standard training device of the US Army. It is a simulation of contemporary and near-future tactical, ground, combat between United States (Army and Marine), Canadian, New Zealand/Australian and German forces versus various opposing forces (OPFOR), simulating the Former Soviet Union, China, North Korea etc. Various civilian units and paramilitary forces are also included."
Gaming doesn't blur the distinction anymore than the training to take orders and it's "Us vs. Them" does for a soldier.
Since 1942 the US Army has trained at Ft. Irwin in wargames. Commanders already see the theatre of operations as a game, thats how they deal with the massive amounts of people, equipment and casualties they will deal with. At the lower level, situtations have been gamed for hundreds of years and numerical values have been established to units, ships and fortifications have been in use since at least the 1750s.
Re:Psychological impact (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree. If you join up, you know the risks involved. There are many reasons for someone to join the armed forces, but fundamentally everyone knows the deal. You do as you're told. You might get killed. You might have to kill others. That's no real problem for a human - the veneer of civilisation is a very thin one, and we can easily regress into the 'kill or be killed', 'fight or flight' primitive responses. No problems there.
If however, you start to present these lethal environments as a game, you're making a flank attack on the soldier's psyche. You're saying "this isn't real", when it patently is. You're lowering the barriers for doing things that even soldiers do not do. ("Shall we waste the villagers ?", "Sure why not, let's see what happens"). People do things in games that they would never countenance in real life, even in real-life battle, even if it's simply to see what the programmers have in store for you if you do...
Your last paragraph is talking about game-theory. I have no problem with viewing a conflict using game-theory - this is a mathematical model to count losses and victories, a way to count the cost; I'm all-for ways to count the cost.
Using game-theory is very different from treating war as a game, one is a deplorable attitude, the other is responsible accounting. Troops die in war, and you may sacrifice company A so that B,C,D all get through. Fine, this is war. Sorry they died, but it was necessary. Unless you have a cost model, you can't even say it was necessary...
Simon.
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:Psychological impact (Score:2, Flamebait)
I'm sure that's deliberate.
It's much easier to get your troops to take part in the nastiness of war if they are trained to think it's all a game...
/greger>
Re:Psychological impact (Score:2)
The easier way to get soldiers to think it's a game is not to train them ahead of time, but to build a shell around them that distances them from the real sensory input. Power armor, heavily enhanced vision, etc. You put a barrier between t
Too late (Score:2)
Sure looked like a video game to me. Point, click, and BOOM.
Office buildings? Homes? Hospitals? No, those are merely designated targets, blips on a map.
Ender Wiggin could not be reached for comment. (Score:5, Interesting)
You thought you were running through the sim... you had no idea you just took a UAV on a live mission and actually killed 2 dozen people. Missions take place, with perfect human guidance - and not even the soldiers involved knew it actually happened.
Worse yet - consider the game world altering the appearance of targets. Your strike deep in the Tora Bora mountains may have been a cover for an FBI raid on a militant compound in Colorado. The four phillipino terrorists you just greased with an armed unmanned terrestrial rover... well who in the hell were they?
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.
Re:Psychological impact (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know if it's clear or not, but I wasn't arguing against wargames. I'm all for them: the military have to practice, in order to successfu
Ender's Game (Score:3)
I'm sure someone else will point it out but this wonderful book by Orson Scott Card really comes down to this.
It make so much sense though doesn't it? Currently UAV's are remotely flown why not place the pilots in an immersive 3d environment giving them access to all kinds of terrain data from various perspectives they otherwise wouldn't have access to?
The further step, and the step Ender's Game takes, is that as weapons become increasingl
First of a kind? (Score:5, Funny)
peeved (Score:5, Funny)
I'm so glad to be living in the US, just to know that my tax dollars go towards making a version of The Sims on crack.
But the part that pisses me off is that they won't let me pl
Huh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't understand another culture, talk to people who do. The gov't ignores those people, and just decides that it will decide things with an imaginary, "faith-based" approach. It doesn't work, guys!
Virtual Wars? (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously, we'd need to make sure the Americans aren't using cheats. Just imagine the standard procedure before entering combat. Press tilde, type 'AmericaRulesOK 1' followed by '/god', '/allweapons' and '/allammo'
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.
Re:Virtual Wars? (Score:2, Interesting)
Pretty much useless, if you ask me.
What are the UN for? Isn't it supposed to serve the purpose of finding peaceful solutions for conflicts? At least in theory...
It boils down to the point of pure animal instinct: until you realise that your instistence in trying to win is going to inflict some serious phisical harm on you, there is no way in the world you, as a human, will stop fighting to get to the top of the food chain.
You could say "OK, and we just accept it as final", but if you lost, I bet you'
Watch out for Kirk Logic(tm) (Score:3, Funny)
- Dave
BBC huh (Score:5, Interesting)
Not first. (Score:3, Informative)
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 ru
The question is.... (Score:5, Funny)
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....
Re:The map is the reality (Score:3, Informative)
I discussed this with folk a little while ago, here [slashdot.org]
Why bother. (Score:3, Funny)
We already know the answer is 42.
So when... (Score:2, Funny)
...can I sign up for beta?
Interaction (Score:2, Insightful)
The Point? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Maybe it's just me but everyday I open up the door I enter a "lush 3D environment".
human interaction (Score:2, Interesting)
Riiiiiight. Why would the military whant to model the earth for combat training? It's clearly for human interaction. Or did they mean squad-level interactions?
Neal Stephenson connection... (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this bring to mind, for anyone else, that nifty piece of software Hiro had in Snow Crash [amazon.com]? I mean, of course, the model of Earth updated in real-time with satellite imaging data, etc...
Eerie.
OK,
- B
Re:Neal Stephenson connection... (Score:5, Interesting)
Grand Theft auto... (Score:5, Funny)
infinite regression (Score:2, Insightful)
Peace sells.. but who's buying? (Score:2, Interesting)
This could be funny... (Score:2)
A sample of life in There's game world
The emphasis in the artificial Earth will be on human interaction rather than conflicts involving lots of military hardware."
So we're basing 'human interaction' on an MMO game? How exactly does someone model "h4h4h4h4h4!! r0x00r3D ur @$$!!!" into -human- behaviour?
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.
Hitchhiker's Guide (Score:3, Funny)
There = Evil (Score:4, Funny)
Evil. Evil, I say!
This claimer: Having MSIE bundled with Windows poses no problem for me, I see it as they include Notepad instead of Word and Calculator instead of Excel. So why not let them include Internet Explorer instead of a [browser.org] real [opera.com] browser [mozilla.org]? However, I dislike sites that require it. It's like mailing around text files that need Notepad to read... Rude.
Re:There = Evil (Score:3, Informative)
It's like McAfee doesn't want to do business with you if you aren't running a well-tested virus vector.
A new earth? (Score:5, Funny)
Sims (Score:3, Funny)
Hrm (Score:5, Funny)
But I keep hearing the voice... (Score:5, Funny)
of course ... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Combat is human interaction (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps this will all turn into a real-life version of the episode of Star Trek (original series) that had a centuries old war all played out on computer...and the citizens in the killed areas would disintigrate themselves as it was more clean (and real bombs have the habit of destroying the structures--which is never fun.)
OpenSourceTerrain modelling (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like a typical PHB decision (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd rather see my tax money invested into helicopters that don't crash into each other and cannons that can't do "friendly fire".
Re:Kuwait City (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Using the RFID chips implanted ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Using the RFID chips implanted ... (Score:3, Funny)
If they are tracking my private moments they will get a lot of lying on the couch after dinner with the top button of my jeans undone, watching television.
I am basically jamming the signals with massive waves of mediocrity.