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PS2 a Weapons Development Platform?
Moleman was one of the number of people who wrote in about the apparent move by the Japanese Government to restrict export of the Playstation 2. The reason? It has been apparently deemed to be a potential weapons development platform, in particular for missle guidance systems. Geez, get a couple and I can form my own rogue nation. The UK Telegraph has a more complete story - it's apparently only if you want to take two or more out of the country that they require permission - so you could fly and take one if you wanted without a problem.
As someone said twentysomething years ago about video games, the soldiers of the future ae training themselves, one quarter at a time.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
So after a little show 'wrangling,' the politicians who sponsored the objection back down, and the export of PS2 goes forward to everyone's excitement - the orders fly in, and everyone's happy.
Just a little healthy paranoia.
The PlayStation 2 is considered a weapons development platform by the Japanese government.
The Sega Dreamcast and the Nintendo 64 aren't.
Which would you rather have, kids?
-jon
Seriously, I am trying to figure out the possibility of turning these (or the chips in them) into some other purpose. My particular case would be for sceintific computing. Would it be "practical"? I have not heard much on them, other than they have insane performance, and I heard once they have a very small instruction set (a RRISC?), but I have not seen anything else. Anyone have some good info?
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Reuters Tokyo -- In a surprise move today Iraq citizens are flying to Japan in droves, each one buying one Sony Playstation 2, game consoles recently classified by the Japanse government as potential weapons development platforms, and returning immediately home to Iraq.
One Iraqi citizen, when asked why this was happening, told this reporter about how Saddam Hussien is paying for each round trip ticket and each game console. He also spoke of rumors about a massive underground bunker where these consoles were being collected and tied together in a "Baywolf Cloister".
Saddam Hussein is apparently taking this designation seriously. High level Japanese politicians claimed the designation was just made to help Sony raise the price of the units in foriegn markets: if it was harder to export then the massive electronics corporation could justify the extra cost to consumers.
A Sony spokesman remarked, "While the computing power of our Playstation 2 console is impressive, a normal desktop personal computer would aid better in weapons development unless you want to play Crash Bandicoot on your Tomahawk missile."
Former US General Schwartzkoph said, "That's something we need to be looking into. Our men and women get really bored out there on those ships, maybe if we had more entertainment it would raise morale. That's why we couldn't kill Saddam, he plays more games then us."
-- iCEBaLM
Maybe one day lawmakers will put a Moore's law trailer on their 'supercomputer' bills so we won't see crap like this anymore, though I'm sure the people at Sega are getting more than a chuckle out of this. I hate to defend megaconglomerates like Sony, but this could hurt their chances with the American market and in the end consumers have the most to lose.
Well, we now have Apple G4's considered weapons (I don't know how, but oh well) and a gaming station from Sony not allowed to be exported because it could act as a weapons system...
So now both a desktop computer for graphic junkies (mac people are fanatics) and a gaming station for quake junkies (equally fanatical plus they have weapons training and bloodlust) are both able to purchase machines that are considered weapons.
<sarcasm>What the hell is this world coming to? Screw gun control, we're now putting dangerous hardware in the hands of crazy radicals!!!</sarcasm>
Because, you know, if you're going to wipe out humanity with a massive nuclear strike, you're going to want to be able to get in a few rounds of the next Tekken while you do so!
-Denor
Most of the time, countries support exports, and often like to put restrictions on imports to protect the stuff they have at home.
In this case, Japan is being rather oppressive and is restricting exports, hurting a company within their domain! There is no justification for this at an economic level. Whenever foreign money wants to buy your stuff, it's favorable to your country and corporations.
I believe you've all dissected the "weapons" BS as well. Truly pathetic from Japan on all levels. A country that actively and purposely hurts its citizens. I normally don't see that.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Japanese gov't and business are tied together much more closely than in the US. This looks to me like a play by Sony to try and make sure not too many of the consoles make it out of Japan before the real release.
right.. so what this does is effectivly stop grey importing of units en masse, personal exporting is still possible. as soon as they are ready to do a us/world release.. the japanese government will sign the piece of paper which allows sony to export them at will, until then sony wish to stifle the grey import market in order to get more money from shipping the 'real' console, rather than the importers (ie they can sell more of the console at a greater cost on release).
who controls who? the government or the multinational?
its not about munitions.. its about blocking grey imports.. expect the dolphin from nintendo to fall under exactly the same controls when it comes out in 18mths or so...
You should feel guilty if your just watching - ATR
While I'm not inclined to overestimate the intelligence of the Japaneese Gov't (or any other) the simple fact that the whole ruling deals with real property, not intellectual property shows that Sony could get around it by simply exporting the design to another point of manufacture, if they wished to sell it abroad. Therefore, whatever their motives, Sony is obviously FOR the injunction.
TangoChaz
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TangoChaz
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Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because the
now all we have to do is hijack a plane to japan, grab a couple playstations and brandish them in front of us as we head to a plane destined for Cuba.
"Stand back or Solid Snake's gonna put a cap in your ass!!"
This is going to start a X-mas revolt in the states "Mom...you got me an X box instead of a PSX2??? ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS???? SOMEBODY GET ME A FUCKING GUN!!!!"
FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Video games... promoting violence??? What kinda crack is the Japanese government smoking?!
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Finally, a game system that lets you get some real work done!
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
And then there's Rainbow 6 teaching potential terrorists techniques to get bye anti-terrorist groups...;) wink wink
It doesn't have graphics processing hardware, it has graphics rendering hardware; so I really don't see how this could be used for much of anything else.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
I think craw made a good point regarding this, though it's hard to tell if he made a point at all. "All this crap has already been covered here when the specs of the PSII was first revealed. All of this was covered during discussion about Wassenaar (limits on theoretical operations per second).".
It's possible the Japanese are simply afraid of breaking the Wassenaar agreement (or somebody is), by releasing a console with enough computing power to do standard DES encryption at 128 bits or higher.
The PS2 may, though I don't know, already have the DES algorithm hardwired to authenticate Sony games, and therefore the new ability to program the unit easily would result in a very simple way to encrypt beyond the limits allowed for export.
These news reporters always get things like this wrong, or lie about the information they receive for ratings. I'm sure encryption is important in the guidance of tomahawk missles, perhaps the anonymous author of the article at Reuters limited (a respected journalism firm?) simply misused a quote.
Journalist train of thought:
"And why is the hardware of the Playstation 2 a threat"
"It contains encryption algorithms which break export regulations, and which are easily programmable"
[hmm, that's boring]
"And what is encryption used for?"
"Everything from credit card authentication to guiding tomahawk missiles"
That's where your news comes from.
Ace
well, any computing device could be used for 'Bad Things'tm. any desktop, laptop, handheld, whatever
. .
i mean, hell, i can use my calculator watch to calculate the correct angle at which to shoot my 'Real-Shitty-Ballistic-(nonpropelled)-Missile'tm.
i dont know. seems whack to me. another government of people who fear and fail to understand technology.
shaolin punk, activist post-industrial
Oh great, recruiting the next generation of super soldiers from the ranks of teens who spend too much time playing video games.
Where's my pong, dammit?
In space, no one can hear you moo.
It's been bombing since it's been released.
thank you.
... Get the Japanese government to enforce a weapons order on the export of >=2 PS2's, and you effectively cut out *all* foreign importer shops who would be willing to buy a bunch in Japan and sell them for $600 here in the US. In other words, only individuals can buy 'em directly from Japan, one at a time.
I bet we won't see this one get sorted out any time soon - at least not until after the US launch of the PSX2.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You won't even want to consider using a CPU from a consumer product because they're not harden for military use. One good warm sunny day or a sudden change in temp from going 70F to -60F in the upper atmosphere and pop, the missile's brainless. Most CPUs in satellites and even the space shuttle are no more powerful than 486s because it takes at least 5 years of extra developement to get a processor redesigned and tested for such environmental extremes, plus they don't need to be anymore powerful. Read a few inertial devices etc. for positioning, recompute the correction and turn the fins.
-- Making computers see, hear, and think... http://www.componica.com/
"What are we going to do tomorrow, Brain?"
"The same we do every day, Pinky, try and take over the world!"
"Now stop playing those games on our weapons development platform Pinky!" "Narf!"
This is similar to the Apple commercial with the tanks.
The fact is Sony is willing to use whatever FUD tactics it can to control it's profit base.
Just about any advanced circutry can be converted to weapons use... if you are from a country that doesn't have the advanced circutry. This is why, in the 80's the Russians were buying handheld Pac-Man games to study the technology. It didn't mean that the Pac Man machines were "dangerous weapons" it just meant that the Russians were really badly behind, technology-wise. The PS2 might be more powerful than, say, the stuff they have in Afganistan, but then so is the average laptop. It is certainly not more powerful than what we have in the US... scary to see marketing hype accepted as fact by the government of Japan.
So, Sony goes to the Japanese government and tells them, "We don't want any Sony Playstation 2s to be exported out of the country before they are released in other countries. Say it is because they might be used for dangerous weapons." The government of Japan says, "Yes sir, may we clean your shoes while we're at it?"
Sony gets free publicity, and maximum level security to prevent their valuable toys from getting out of the country.
Oh, and not to pick on Japan, because Sony is part of the Entertainment Trust, which, in this country, has managed to successfully equate content control with "anti-piracy" and has judges going along with it. Compared to Sony, Micros~1 are just amateurs.
It amazes me that people are still probably going to buy from a company that is this despicable and has had such a corrupting influence on the government of its own country and our country. Sigh... the power of advertising, I guess.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The linked article has an example about how the graphics processing capability is so great that it would be suitable in the head of a tomahawk missile that needs to 'see' where it's going. While everyone in /. is going to be cracking jokes about this (speak softly and carry a palm pilot with missile guidance), someone tell me, please, how feasible is this?
No really, I'm asking. I'm not technically proficient enough to dissassemble a PS2, nor do I know how its innards work. I am no circuitry expert, just a Geek who's not afraid to take a peek.
I'll tell you why I think this is wrong, so you guys tell me where it is I'm screwing up. Japan woke up and noticed that, well gee, consoles are getting damn powerful. They're (once again) just about on par with PC's. Apparently, they're also just about on par with the tech inside of a tomahawk missile's guidance system. The tomahawk needs to be able to quickly process where it's at, so it's gotta do image recognition, which is no easy feat. Well, it wasn't anyway.
Now all of a sudden a playstation's circuitry could supposedly in some half-ass way be re-wired to do this task. So all the terrorist needs now is.. all the rest... casing, explosives, triggers, fuel, launchers.
Gee ya know, I'd think if someone had access to those resources they'd have access to a CPU. Actually.. aren't CPU's right now about the same in terms of raw computing power as the next-gen consoles? Hey, ya know, those things cost just slightly more too. Hey and they don't have customn circuitry to futz with either, they're general purpose things. Wouldn't be too hard to get a little CPU/Mobo/Linux missile guidance system (heh), at least no less than it would to rip out the innards of a customn designed system.
It's a given that this is FUBAR, but the question is are we going to start seeing more of this? Wouldn't surprise me. PC's have a huge consumer market and a ton of people like us to drive software and hardware development forward. Military? Once it works, it works, why bother upgrading?
So... talk amongst yourselves
How many (other) people thought "PS/2? A weapons platform? I can't even get the microchannel support working!"
Please, call it something else, or I'll be confused forever!
(even "Sony PS2", as opposed to "IBM PS/2"...)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
this is an agreement between the japanese government and sony to restrict distribution of the ps2 worldwide before sony are ready to do so, plain and simple. it has nothing to do with the potential weapons abuse.
the key is the last sentence in the telegraph article:
"Sony said it did not expect the restrictions to affect PlayStation 2's release in other countries."
So, the technology inside is the same, still could be misused as they claim but soon it will be legal to be exported for the sole reason that it will be distributed by sony and not some third party. if this were truly a weapons concern, wouldn't you think that they would restrict sony from releasing it in other countries as the US once did for crypto?
Using my own experiences playing Swat 3 and Half Life, not to mention Super Tecmo Bowl on the original Ninetendo, I can safely say that the potential for the Playstation to be used as a passive weapon is quite real.
Think of it: I spent countless hours playing computer games when I should have been doing Calc II. The potential for a rouge nation to dump millions of playstation 2 systems into the US threatens the very viability of the US GDP.
Look at the recent declines in the stock market. They come very close on the heels of the Playstation 2's introduction. A coincidence..hardly.
No sig is worth reading.