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The Pentagon, MMORPGs, and Catching Osama
MarkRH writes "I know, it looked like a troll to me too. But apparently a Pentagon-funded group, the Highlands Forum, is investigating the possibility of fighting terrorism by postulating that terrorist networks are similar to the online communities found in MMORPGs. By studying interaction within a community like Everquest, the military hopes to find hints on how to crack Al Qaeda." See also the "Uncloaking Terrorist Networks" post of several months back.
Could make a MMPORPG about catching Osama, they've already got a propaganda FPS game...
Banaaaana!
Personally, with the comments traded between gamers, i'm a little uncomfortable with anti-terrorist types studying gamers. Something that is commonly said in jest could easily be taken out of context by these government personnel and blown way out of proportion...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Finally, the age-old question is answered:
How can we play Everquest all day and get paid for it?
"Well, we didn't find Osama but my Human Leiutenant is as level 53!"
Does this make Everquest Gamers Terrorists?
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If PKers will now be called terrorists.
They'll pursue this for a while then quit - the false positives will be off the hook.
The thing is, most MMORG players in the USA are loyal Americans who'd love to help. Spying on them is just buring down the house to roast a pig.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
I doubt terrorists have the same immeadiate and direct communication that exists in on-line games. The less communication, the less chance for discovery.
In any case, I know MMORPG players. The only thing they accomplish in the real world is living in the basement and drinking Dew. Hell set up suspected terrorists with an EQ subscription and the only they they'll blow up in orcs.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
"Fsck you, we're in North Temple of Veeshan today."
"STFU our guild reserved it three months ago!"
"Piss off!"
"You piss off!"
(A random cadre of level 60+ wizards run by, complete with manaburn. "For Innoruuk!" They cast, take out three dragons, and then die to a mobile much lower level than they are.)
Meanwhile, back at the Bat Office..
Mr. Powell: Obviously, the Islamic Fundamentalists play Tier'dal Wizards.
Following this trend, this makes me want a "Bushes" White House add-on for the Sims.
Dude, where's my packet?
Is to subject them to l337 sp34k all day. U.S. pwnz Bin L4d3n.
Al-Qaeda is a loosely affiliated network of nodes trying to acheive a similar goal across large distances and online MMORPG is pretty analagous(when speaking in terms of mathematical models). I'm sure there are a few insights to be had.
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A government paid job playing^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstudying online games.
Where do I apply?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Fight terrorism by addressing the reason *why* these people are driven a level of frustration that would cause them to commit such acts.
Ask the average Joe on the street (in the US) about why September 11th happened and you'll hear something like, "evil doer". This befuddles me. These people aren't driven by pure evil but rather extreme frustration. Until the root of their frustration is addressed, I wouldn't be surprised if this continues forever.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
He pockets a BILLION dollars in aide money to his many bank accounts and then tells his people they are poor because of the evil west. Since you seem to be in touch with all these extremists please enlighten us why you find joy in having your children exploding in an attempt to hurt others? Notice its nobody middle aged or even old, just young kids that have been tought all their lives to hate the US. Now thats fucked up, using your children as ammunition to fight your war.
Waiting for your reply.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The Spanish American War
World War I
War on Poverty
World War II
Korean War
Vietnam War
War on Drugs
War on Iraq
War on Terror
(War on Iraq again?)
Sound familiar?
Question everything
Actuly, the US allows 10% more than needed, but Saddam uses 20% to buy weapons.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
They're not looking for Osama bin Laden's online character.
Still, I can't help but laugh at the thought of it:
"Sir, we've found him! He's playing EQ right now, under the character 'Jihad' as a Level 60 Shadow Knight!"
".....Damn! Look at that...he just 0wn3d that Level 60 Paladin in PvP!"
Zodiac Survey
We have *always* been at war with Eastasia.
Eurasia has always been our ally.
Oceania, Oceania, 'tis for thee...
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
I'm guessing that you're not launching Hellfire AGM's at Barbie's minivan.
In EverQuest, you play Soviet Russia
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
So now we're paying government employee's to play games? Can I have that job?
There is no analogy between everquest and terrorist networks. The later work in a defined organisational structure known as cells. These cells have very specific ways of communicating which guarantee anonymity to the maximum amount of cells.
Now how does this relate to how people form a group in EQ? Well, it just doesn't. EQ players don't need that form of anonymity. They don't have different cells working together towards the same goal. While I will admit everyone who plays EQ has the same goal of 'getting more xp'...that's not the same thing, is it? You don't need (or have) all these cells interconnected, talking to each other to 'overthrow a system'.
What the pentagon will find is the mechanics of how a gamne is played...which will bear no reemblance whatsoever to how terrorist cells are organised.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
because al-queda as a terror network is a virtual network, while the Rand people are treating it like a video game. i fail to see how a group who's main purpose seems to be to fuck our (in the US) shit up can be described in language remotely similar to everquest et al. i guess you could say that they act like a bunch of 12 year old PKers. maybe they are just pkers and the whole world is a game. *hits tilde* woah.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
I can just picture it, the people at the Highlands Group sitting around, clients gone for the recession, playing video games to pass the time. Then one of them goes, "Hey, the Pentagon is spending billions to fight terrorism, let's try to get them to pay us to play these games!"
And they did.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Should I be rolling on the floor laughing or scared out of my mind? God, I knew the government had some way out ideas, but I think they still need to get a clue when it comes to internet stuff. Appoint /. types to be their tech advisors!
The situation has greatly improved since the oil for food program was instituted.
Recently saw a Frontline episode where a Brit reporter toured Iraq. He went to the hospitals, went to the children's ward. Most of the children were in there for drinking untreated water. He asked the hospital administrator if they were in need of any drugs, nope. He went into a local pharmacy. Well stocked. He wandered the markets, plenty of food.
Q.
Let's see... my drugs support terrorism ... but my video game addictions help combat terrorism. Guess that makes us even again.
-Rabbit
If you want the full scoop on NCW, some DoD guys wrote an entire book on it.
Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority
I still don't understand it, though. I think the computer network analogy is a good one for conceptual purposes, but I'm not sure that's all there is to it.
(1) Bunny-hopping
(2) Camping
(3) Hacking the client
- undoware.ca
Great, now I know what my tax dollars are being used for.
When I read batshit insanity like this, it reminds me of the Nazis during their final desperate years of power coming up with some extremely wierd so-called weapons to defeat their enemies, such as the wind cannon, or the assault rifle that could shoot around corners. It also reminds me of the CIA's experiments with LSD on American citizens in the 60's.
Trying to find patterns in terrorism in a game is so absolutely brainlessly stupid I can't believe that some moron came up with the idea. Real people are infinitely more complex than a game, and real life suffering, oppression and bloodshed can not be simulated in a game, or else people would not be playing UT or Quake.
Aren't they desperate or what to try something like this???
They must be really really desperate, afterall Al Qaeda people are 'professional' (but let's say that professional into wrong direction damnit!)
No, this is not a troll but it really seems to be a very desperate act from desperate people. And afterall Al Qaeda people are professional, otherwise they wouldn't have pulled the thing last year. Although they might not do it for the cash, just for pure idioticy & wrong beliefs. It is not violence which makes the changes nowadays, it's the politics. i just wish that Osama Bin Laden's professionality went to the other way, quite the opposite direction, fighting against terrorism instead of being a terrorists....
Sigh, can i now go back to play CS, oh Please?
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
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These people aren't driven by pure evil but rather extreme frustration.
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Nobody acts without "reasons". Hitler published an impassioned rationalization for his upcoming genocide in Mein Kampf that, if you read it, sounds oh so similar to the B.S. moral justifications that you hear coming from Arafat, Saudi, or Egyptian officials.
You might blame the rest of Europe for punishing Germany too much for the rise of Naziism before after WWI. That doesn't absolve Hitler or his followers for the sins of WWII.
To me, the core of Islamic fundementalism is equally based in anti-semitism as Naziism was, and is nothing for us to sympathize with.
It only legitimizes these deviant beliefs to try to "understand" them. Since the radical followers of this ideology have as closed minds as any hard-core cult member, it's too late to try to deprogram them, especially when the country they are in is feeding their hatred with a steady dose of hate. All you can hope to do is neutralize their threat to the civilized world to such a degree that they realize on a practical level that they are just not going to get what they want regardless of their degree of sacrifice. And if this has no effect other than creating a slow and protracted ethnic suicide, one suicide bomber after the next, then so be it.
To reward that behavior with any sort of perceived dignity, sympathies, or undue attention will only further encourage it in a "natural born killers" sort of way. Attention on the overcrowded world stage is what they really want.
Reducing the equation to "evil doers", as simplistic as it may sound, is indeed the proper tactic, because let's face it, they've already dehumanized us in their eyes.
oh well, i'll bite.
What would be an acceptable way for an educated 3rd world citizen to protest strongly against, say: USA foreign policies, USA oil companies policies, USA interventions to overthrow regularly elected foreign governments who happen to not follow the US line, and so on?
For a US citizen, the way is to vote. But for a non-US citizen?
Part of the problem is globalism. We have globalism of effects (US, or EU, or whatever can have deep effects on foreign countries), yet those countries' citizen can't have a say on those politics which are applied to them. For all practical purposes, it looks very much like a dictatorship. And there aren't many "civilised" ways out of a dictatorship.
i had a sig, once..
And to think my taxes are helping pay for this. Sure my money's being spent in far worse ways, but I can think of so many better places to put it. It still amazes me we pay people to do this stuff.
Developers: We can use your help.
"character x" is planning to nuke "target y". . .
Just imagine an ECHELON analysis of that. . .
Oh, and the H2 Hummer is the ugliest thing I've had the misfortune of laying eyes on. Thinking back on it makes me want to stab out my mind's eye.
Murphy was an optimist.
Hezbollah: Can ne1 spare some plat?
Osama: Yes my brother, Death to America! Do you have the box cutter of holy might? Then to Jihad!
high-level black magic spells.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
He was working help desk for the University computer labs. He installed Everquest and played all his time, in between helping people out. He then sold his items on eBay at the end of the summer and bought a car.
He did all sorts of things on the school's time, like fill out surveys for money, etc.