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Sandia Labs Creates "Sim-Terrorist Attack"
linuxwrangler writes "This article in the San Francisco chronicle describes the new "Weapons of Mass Destruction Decision Analysis Center" software created at Sandia labs. Work started on the software, modeled after the popular Sim* series of games, well before 9/11. It is designed to simulate a "war room" atmosphere and looks like a cool way to put geek toys to practical use. Now if I could just download the tarball...." Be sure to examine the picture of it running on their CAVE like system.
I was in the airport VIP lounge en route to Seattle a couple of weeks ago. While in there, I noticed Bill Gates sitting comfortably in the corner, enjoying a drink. I was meeting a very important client who was also flying to Seattle, but she was running a little bit late. Well, being a straightforward kind of guy, I approached the Microsoft chairman, introduced myself, and said, "Mr. Gates, I wonder if you would do me a favor."
"Yes?"
"I'm sitting right over there," pointing to my seat at the bar, "and I'm waiting on a very important client. Would you be so kind when she arrives as to come walk by and just say, 'Hi, Ray,'?"
"Sure."
I shook his hand and thanked him and went back to my seat. About ten minutes later, my client showed up. We ordered a drink and started to talk business. A couple of minutes later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Bill Gates.
"Hi, Ray," he said.
I replied, "Fuck off, Gates, I'm in a meeting."
why a tar ball? why not a self installing exe?
I wonder if it will let you automatically create a web page describing your terrorist attack and its quirky habits?
Have these "scientists" learned nothing from the esteemed Dr. Falken?!?!
But i was playing Castlevania so it was all worth it!
That thing looks nothing like a CAVE. I worked at the Cornell Theory Center and my group used our CAVE a lot... it is ideal to cover 3 angles (via 3 walls and projection) for immersion, and a CAVE is typically used for more immersive visualizations than spreading out information ala' their display.
Theirs is more like a movie screen.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
check out those screens! Can you imagine the goatse man on one of those? Yeah, baby, yeah.
I cant believe Chiara is going to stay in and Roddy is going to get voted out!! WOWZERS
Two of the aircraft exceeded their software limits on 9/11.
The Boeing 757 and 767 are equipped with fully autonomous flight capability, they are the only two Boeing commuter aircraft capable of fully autonomous flight. They can be programmed to take off, fly to a destination and land, completely without a pilot at the controls.
They are intelligent planes, and have software limits pre set so that pilot error cannot cause passenger injury. Though they are physically capable of high g maneuvers, the software in their flight control systems prevents high g maneuvers from being performed via the cockpit controls. They are limited to approximately 1.5 g's, I repeat, one and one half g's. This is so that a pilot mistake cannot end up breaking grandma's neck.
No matter what the pilot wants, he cannot override this feature.
The plane that hit the Pentagon approached or reached its actual physical limits, military personnel have calculated that the Pentagon plane pulled between five and seven g's in its final turn.
The same is true for the second aircraft to impact the WTC.
There is only one way this can happen.
As well as fully autonomous flight capability, the 767 and 757 are the ONLY COMMUTER PLANES MADE BY BOEING THAT CAN BE FLOWN VIA REMOTE CONTROL. It is a feature that is standard to all of them, all 757's and 767's can do it. The purpose for this is if there is a problem with the pilots, Norad can fly the planes to safe destinations via remote. Only in this flight mode can those craft exceed their software limits and perform to their actual physical limits because a pre existing emergency situation is assumed if this mode of flight is used.
Terrorists in fact did not fly those planes, it is totally and completely impossible for those planes to have been flown in such a manner from the cockpit. Those are commuter aircraft, not F-16's and their software knows it.
Another piece of critical evidence: the voice recorders came up blank.
The flight recorders that were recovered had tape that was undamaged inside, but it was blank. There is only one way this can happen on a 757 or 767. When the aircraft are commandeered via remote control, the microphones that go to the cockpit voice recorder are re routed to the people doing the remote controlling, so that the recording of what happened in the cockpit gets made in a presumably safer place. But due to a glitch in the system on a 757/767, rather than shutting off when the mic is redirected the voice recorder keeps running. The voice recorders use what is called a continuous loop tape, which automatically re passes itself past the erase and record heads once every half hour, so after a half hour of running with the microphones redirected, the tape will be blank. Just like the recovered tapes were. Yet more proof that no pilot flew those planes in the last half hour.
Eight of the hijackers who were on those planes called up complaining that they were still alive. I'd bet you never heard about our foreign minister flying to Morocco and issuing an official apology to the accused, did you? No, terrorists did not fly those planes, plastic knives and box cutters were in fact too ridiculous to be true. Any of the remaining accused have certainly been sought out and killed by now.
Our information IS controlled
The cell phone calls from the aircraft could not have happened. I am a National Security Agency trained Electronic Warfare specialist, and am qualified to say this. My official title: MOS33Q10, Electronic Warfare Intercept Strategic Signal Processing/Storage Systems Specialist, a highly skilled MOS which requires advanced knowledge of many communications methods and circuits to the most minute level. I am officially qualified to place severe doubt that ordinary cell phone calls were ever made from the aircraft.
It was impossible for that to have happened, especially in a rural area for a number of reasons.
When you make a cell phone call, the first thing that happens is that your cell phone needs to contact a transponder. Your cell phone has a max transmit power of five watts, three watts is actually the norm. If an aircraft is going five hundred miles an hour, your cell phone will not be able to 1. Contact a tower, 2. Tell the tower who you are, and who your provider is, 3. Tell the tower what mode it wants to communicate with, and 4. Establish that it is in a roaming area before it passes out of a five watt range. This procedure, called an electronic handshake, takes approximately 45 seconds for a cell phone to complete upon initial power up in a roaming area because neither the cell phone or cell transponder knows where that phone is and what mode it uses when it is turned on. At 500 miles an hour, the aircraft will travel three times the range of a cell phone's five watt transmitter before this handshaking can occur. Though it is sometimes possible to connect during takeoff and landing, under the situation that was claimed the calls were impossible. The calls from the airplane were faked, no if's or buts.
I hope I made sense, if you have questions I will respond if possible. If I do not respond, please research this out yourself, search the boeing site, search the DARPA site, search were you have not searched before. Some of the information is classified and leaked by individuals, and it is also being scoured from the net. I have all of the original documents on my computer to safeguard against this.
Please do not ignore this, because only Norad has the flight codes for those aircraft, we did 911 to ourselves. Hitler had the Reichstag, we have 911. If 911 proves to not be enough to make the US citizenry set aside its rights for safety, the people who did 911 most certainly have access to nuclear material. 911 must be exposed for what it was before that material is used.
I'm glad to know that our elected officials will be prepared to deal with the threat of large monsters destroying our cities...
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Let's hope the simulation doesn't go haywire and start to distribute real anthrax samples!
All they have to do now is type "porntipsguzzardo" and the government has all the money they need to fight terroism.
I suggest installing more PD stations...
For the clueless this is a cheat code for SimCity2000 on the Mac
It looks a lot more like non-technical people spending government money and trying to come up with something to show for it. And not doing a very good job...
"looks like a cool way to put geek toys to practical use"
Geek toys are never of practical use. That's the whole point of them.
I laughed, at least.
Then again, there have been plenty of nuclear war sim-type games released throughout the years, so why would this be any different.
Damn...I just flamed myself.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Just go up to the menu and turn disasters off.
modeled after the popular Sim* series of games
Sim City: Do they include the scenario when the aliens visit?
The Sims: So will it take them 15 minutes to go to the bathroom, and set fire to the simulation room centre when trying to cook a snack?
I thought it was funny enough when games were used for real life scenarios. Esp. the designers of a major building, creating a virtual version in the Quake engine... and then prospective clients/investors took a virtual tour and promptly died when trying to use an evelvator (falling down the lift shaft didn't help either).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
anyone heard the Penny Arcade theme song? it kicks your ass and fucks your mom, all while getting drunk on monkey piss.
yup, its that great.
And on topic, I might add.
...just check out the Aeron chairs. They'll be bankrupt in a month.
Use your Blackberry Pearl as a Bluetooth Modem in OS X
...software run on Windows... people use giant projection screens filled mostly with empty space in dialog boxes yet don't have their own monitors, and sit in Aeron chairs... photos show infamous "text projected on a face" effect except that it's real this time, someone actually got a face in front of a projector, blocking it from all others...
Why does it all look like a PR stunt, dotcom style, or something from a low-budget TV series?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
the slashdot effect as a viable effect?
I wanted to see the site...and lookie there, its gone. Fear the slashdot.
This would undoubtedly lead to more violence in schools. They should put an NC-17 rating for this kind of games and enforce them.
It's hilarious, full of content, and it's even troll friendly. I know I've been spamming it a lot, but I'm sure many of you all will like it. Go ahead and mod me down, bastardo moderators. You all will never know the true glory that is Ablabla.org!
Visit it! Do it now!
Tijdens De Slag om Engeland weet een Engelse piloot na een werkelijk furieus luchtgevecht een Messerschmitt neer te halen. De Engelsman piloot is zo onder de indruk van de prestaties van zijn Duitse opponent, dat hij hem, bij wijze van hommage, bezoekt in het ziekenhuis. De Duitser is er niet best aan toe, dus vraagt de Engelsman of er misschien iets is wat hij kan doen.'Bitte, bitte,' antwoordt de Duitser. 'Mijn rechterbeen is geamputeerd, ziet u wel. Zou u het, tijdens uw volgende missie boven het Vaderland, naar beneden willen werpen?'Een paar dagen later keert de Engelsman terug om verslag uit te brengen. Mission completed!Helaas is het linkerbeen van de Duitse piloot inmiddels ook geamputeerd. Wederom verzoekt hij de Engelsman om boven Duitsland het been te droppen.Om een lange mop iets korter te maken: bij het volgende bezoek van de Engelsman blijkt dat nu ook de linkerarm geamputeerd is. Met zijn laatste krachten vraagt de gemutileerde Duitser zijn Engelse collega of hij misschien nog eenmaal...'Now wait a minute!' Interrumpeert de Engelsman, 'je probeert toch niet te ontsnappen, hè?'
Maybe they bought them at auction from MyLawnmowerPortal.Net?
'Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out.'
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
What are thousand-dollar Aeron chairs, which the dot coms were criticized for wasting money on, doing at a government lab?
That text is really sharp. It's amazing how the pale whiteness of her skin makes for a really good projection surface.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Well, according to your mom, the only way to go through life is with my penis up her ass. It's worked so far, and you were born because of it.
Now stfu you little turd.
Keep in mind that the value of such a simulation is NOT to play the game but to experience the decision-making cycle and understand the process of what comes at civic leaders with a potential pandemic on their hands.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Lunix is for the gays.
Oh well, since no one else has said it: THEY SHOULD OPEN-SOURCE THE PROJECT!!!!!
Just wonder if anyone's considered that one.
Posting as AC so I don't get credit for it.
Sandia Labs forget about their flashy crap while we real megalomaniacs play World Dictator with some other nifty game that involves WarGames like scenes. Rawr!
Hate me!
...before Maxis releases this as another cheesy $30 expansion pack for The Sims?
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
Sim my ass! There's no "war room" like my seventh grade arts class. That's what people should be worried about.
I wonder what addon packs it would have?
Sim Terrorism(R): Nuclear Winter anyone?
I thought Microsoft published this a while ago.
What I want to see is Osama getting it on with the attractive female maid.
I wonder what their child would look like. You may have to construct a cave attached to the house.
"You have chosen to distribute medication to halt the spread of the bioterror weapon. Windows must reboot to continue saving the world. Please wait."
"Shall we play a game"
I can save us all a bit of money by coding a freeware replacement for their programs... Here's the output from the beta program in action...
$ What happens when a nuclear device is used upon a city?
--> Many people die.
$ How do we prevent people from dying in a nuclear attack?
--> Delete all memory of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians dying in multiple nuclear attacks, then build forty thousand nuclear weapons at a cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars, then threaten to use them against any nation, peoples, race, organization, or other human population that you determine are unfit to live.
Clearly there's no more fine tuning to be done, so expect the tarball on freshmeat tonight.
Since they term the system: Weapons of Mass Destruction Decision Analysis Center, then obviously it deals from simple plagues to tactical nukes, no? The article mentions about a possible nuclear holocaust. They plan to distribute this to various public agencies. The only problem that I have with this is the fact 1) This has already been done by the military, playing "war games" of such where you have a group of military/civilian high-ranking officials, being presented with a situation, having a narrator provide more details and sparse messages that manage to get through.
The problem with allowing non-military public officials to use this software to possibly prepare for various "Attacks" of sort, is the issue of possible other means that could arrive from the military, since they are kept classified. Intelligence gathering and analyzing most probably does not play an issue in this situation. This is for the "anthrax attacks". And if it was a bioweapon to cause that many people to die, you would also have to deal with such things as A-4 Skyhawks with 80 rounds of Zeni missiles patroling the area, the National Guard mobilized, ports closed, airports closed, phone lines shifted for emergency use only, et cetera. I fail to see how this program could easily deal with the large amount of variables for a seemingly "attack upon the nation", without all the information for each and every military post, equipment, flight patterns, tours of duties, et cetera.
We have so much time, and so little to do - strike that! Reverse it. Tryn Mirell
This is just another Disaster type of Preparedness/Emergency Management (DP/EM) software. I had the chance to see similiar software used by large government installations/institutions. This particular one was purchased by Camp LeJeune developed by Applied Ordanance Technology. The typical scenario use was either for prepardness, running simulations of disasters (everything from terror attacks to floods), or for Emergency Management where emergency professionals would use the software on site at an emergency location to help plan their efforts. Usually all of this was tied into GIS/Mapping software compiled with all kinds of information. You could program the software to raise the water levels by X feet in one area, or map out affected areas depending on a WMD you specify, weather, social events, population, season, etc. It would even allow you to get all the way down into the nitty gritty getting detailed architectural plans of any building you specify. This is great for emergency personel who need to know what type of materials are stored in a building at a location before they enter.
Sure I guess video games are useful for combatting terrorism, but I think minimizing saber-rattling would work a little better. George W Bush: TR said "speak softly and carry a big stick" not "run around and attack countries because they're arab" or "support jerusalem because the damn palestinians are a bunch of arabs"
Come on, as "extreme" as these attacks are, it's not like they're unfounded. They hate the US because we're a bunch of saber-rattling bullies. If we simply butted out of the stupid conflicts into which we continually interpose ourselves, there wouldn't be so many people who hate the US.
you mean the WOPR?
Here is a 6 sided cave(like), and a 4 sided with movable walls... http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/about/otherLabs/index. html
----
http://subatomic.vrsource.org!!
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
I want one. This would be perfect for Half-Life..
That said, I think Sim-Terrorist actually sounds like both a good idea and a good game. Honestly, Counterstrike is based on an counter-terrorism scenario. Why couldn't you build a game where you're Tom Ridge, and it's your job to stop the fanatical flavor of the month.
Speaking of "fanatical flavor of the month", Who's it going to be next? Think I'm being too cynical? Think Quadaffi, Khomeni, etc etc etc. In America we NEED someone to hate, otherwise we won't feel like we're better than everyone else.
When the economy gets slow, we bomb stuff. Sometimes it's stuff we've never bombed before, but most often, it's the usual suspects...
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
on the left...is that San Francisco? One could speculate that the Golden Gate or SF is target #1...I knew there was something suspicious about that city.
At UF, we just had a NAVE installed (by students) this past year. Looks just like the one in the picture, except theirs is rounded.
The main difference is that a NAVE is MUCH cheaper to build. The above link has more details.
Now we know what Dick Cheney was up to all that time.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Lots more possibilities will arise once we get past our squeamishness; this will be a boon for the game industry! Sim Holocaust, Sim Plantation, Sim Jihad, even Sim Irish Potato Famine!
Look at the middle image. Clearly a Win32 app running under WinXP, right? It would make sense that all the computers used for the same project would be running the same OS, and that is likely what is happening.
However, on the left, we see a Windows 2000 style window. The two machines could still be configured the same, and the system would look like the picture, if the app running on the left was a Win16 app. This would suggest that the system is much, much older than we are led to think.
-twb
http://www.somethingawful.com/inserts/articlepics/ photoshop/fakegames/Dolex_sim.jpg
Is there anything else to say?
Anyone else notice that they have H. Miller chairs in the "cave"? Good to know that my tax dollars are going towards something as important as a $1200 chair.
www.bleepyou.com
they are making a game called "Postal 2" which is the follow up to Postal in which the howl point is that you go postal
on that note i really wanted a game which was kinda like columbine. maby like a counter-strike game where the terrorists are the shooters and the counter-terrorists are the cops and the hostages are the civilians. i would love to blow the heads of some jocks
P.S. im 16
P.P.S thank god i dont have a gun
Nothing unusual with this sim. Software similar to this is in wide spread use by the military, it's called Command and Control software or something similar. I saw a sim at a security industry trade show that simulated counter terrorism assaults on aircraft and buildings. You could load in CAD drawings, put in way points, set team targets, then click go and watch it work from the POV of each of the team members. Just like Counterstrike!
If God meant people to go naked, then they would be born that way.
Are you on speed or something?
I would have thought that using a matrix style war gaming would be far more appropriate as it allows much more versitility. Computers should be an aid to this process, not the exclussive medium.
Why all the anti-jock attitude in schools now days?
Osama Sim Laden
Sandia should be very experienced with mass destruction, after all, they've (along with Los Alamos) been developing weapons of mass destruction for decades.
Guess it takes one to know one.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Where can I purchase a copy? Is it multiplayer? :-) j/k.
Albeit, it would be really cool to try out.
~ kjrose
ummm, because jocks are complete morons, assholes, and they suck?