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America's Army on Linux
jojor writes "It seems that icculus.org has gotten America's Army to run under Linux, as this screenshot will attest. America's Army is UT based and free (as in beer). More games for Linux, yippeh!" Awesome. I consider America's Army to be one of the best things my government has funded within recent history.
Yes, but the overall recruiting budget for the United States military is huge, and the total development costs for the game were a rather small part of it. Think about how many man hours it saves if even 0.1% of the people who play it come to the recruiter instead of making the recruiter come to them.
The military has a recruitment mission and for this mission it gets millions and millions of dollars. Have you any clue on how much advertising costs? So now the Army decided to spend of those millions on a game as a recruiting tool instead of lame Army of One and Be All You Can Be commercials. Pretty smart move, I think. It's not like that money was in a pot that was otherwise going to fund school lunches or something like that.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
Why not spend more money on preventing war instead of fighting war?
This may come as a suprise to you, but there are people in the world who want to kill you and me just out of spite. We who sit around on Saturday mornings sipping tasty caffienated beverages sometimes have a hard time relating to those in the 3rd world raised in highly religious environments where they are taught that all their problems are because of us, and the only way to fix it is with an AK or a suicide bomb.
When you try to act on this problem, you end up making the productive members of society give away huge amounts of their earnings because the only way to *prevent war* on a planet with limited resources and swelling population is to redistribute wealth. "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need." This leads to socialism or communism. People are not naturally inclined to work for the service of others. It is not natural for people to sacrifice the fruits of their labor for some larger social goal. Surely you learned something from the collapse of the Soviet Union, yes?
So sorry, but the old saying rings true: The best way to keep the peace is to prepare for war.
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It is a recruiting tool but not a bad idea overall. Consider how difficult selling enlistment in the armed forces is.Every little bit of positive PR helps achieve that goal. Having served 8 years in the Army, and being old enough to remember the draft, I really appreciate the importance of having a dedicated volunteer force rather than a conscripted army.
I agree, but maybe if they stopped chopping up benefits like the end of the various clubs, the price increases on the bowling alleys, and the re-introduction of the PX as something that actually saves you money (it's tax free, but you can find stuff for way cheaper off-base at Wal-Marts and Target), maybe they could get people interested by giving people benefits to join. Glorifying the Infantry (which, unless you are Special Forces, you probably will never be in a real combat situation) doesn't help much. Besides, most of the people I know who play this game don't want to join the Army. In fact, it sorta turns them off to the idea, because they get 0wned all the time.
I'm joining the Air Force. As a weatherman. In a nice and quiet domestic AFB (I don't fit the physical requirements for a combat-deployed weatherman).
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.
I'll help you out here. For all those "this war is about the U.S. getting oil" conspiracy theorists, read this article. I wish the internet had turned out different. People should be using it to read and learn. Instead they are using it to shout at the top of their lungs things which are false and need correcting. The internet has not improved the individual, it has acutely focused "group think" and our world is quickly becoming poorer for it. Jingoism and hatred for others is wrong, especially if it is unfounded and based on lies and propaganda.
Oh it's like the last few generations comic books, cowboys and indians, etc. There's NOTHING different except for the medium.
There is one important difference though. In books and movies and TV, the hero is invincible -- he can prance about in the open while being fired on by machine-guns and not get hit simply because he is righteous in some way. In FPS games, one realizes just how easy it is to die, and just how often the cause of your death can be through blind chance. In that respect at least, I think FPS games are a much more realistic, and therefor healthier, depiction of violence than say Holywood movies.
I've played America's Army quite a bit, and I'd have to say that this particular game is realistic enough that it made me think MORE about the real consequences of armed combat. That is no small thing because I spent six years in the Marine Corps.
About 1/2 the maps are ones where the teams fight with MILES simulation gear, and all the maps are 'one life to live' so when you peek around the corner and get killed, you have a few minutes to think about what would have happened in real life. This game is almost a simulation, and it is very well done.
What if they took that huge recruiting budget and instead raised pay for soldiers. I think I'd rather have more money than a guy telling me how much I'll get for college should I choose to go, over and over. If they were to pay like the private sector I think a lot more people would consider joining up.
sed -e 's/punch in the face/damage or disable opponent/'
But you can't gain ground without doing damage, or disabling your opponent. So all you can enforce is the status quo.
As for your examples, two of them were killed, and only through wars and acts of civil disobedience were their causes furthered.One is in exile only protected but the might of the country he is in. And one was protected by the threat of outside military forces or revolution.
Do you honestly think that passive resistence would ever work without the threat of military action or civil disobedience? The whole premise of passive resistance is predicated on the fact that at some level *someone* will protect them. Or that they will become martyrs and start a revolution.
I'm pretty sure that the Al Qaeda and North Korea are happy with underfunded, understaffed schools creating an illiterate, uneducated population.
On the contrary, an illiterate and uneducated population is more likely to follow it's leaders with passionate ferver... even if that leader is suggesting some pretty hair-brained ideas. Whereas, an educated population would be likely to question the motives, consequences, etc. of said idea. Sooo... if I were Al Qaeda or N. Korea, I'd be hoping that Americans are educated, so they don't blindly follow GW Bush to war...
Experiments must be reproducible; they should all fail in the same way.
Ah, censorship. It will make you look like an Dummkopf every time...
So what percentage of the tax that I and 280 million other people pay did this game cost? Maybe a penny per person. That would come to $2.8 million. It was well worth that penny.
On average we pay 300 billion to the military each year, so that would be around $1100 per person.
I think I have heard more complaints about that 1 penny than the $1100.00 that we all pay to defend our country and dominate everybody else.
I think this misses the point. Since the game is based on the unreal engine, and since the unreal engine runs in linux, I think the idea is to run the game natively in linux, not using wine.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
The examples of violence you mention are extreme examples. Violence happens all the time, just in more subtle ways, and not so subtle ways, the desensitization means *you just don't notice it*
-- when people get shot in movies, you aren't horrified, you enjoy it and pay to go see it again, that was entertainment, not violence! when you say a mean comment to someone, you don't realize the harm you caused, when you hear that the air force bombed a wedding party in Afghanistan or an innocent village, you don't care.
When WH Bush wants to go to war with Iraq to distract you from the state of the economy, you agree that we should "stop the terrorists", you don't worry about the American soldiers dying or the consequences to their families or the innocent Iraqis -- you just agree that we should "support the President".
When you hear about Enron cheating their employees out of their life savings, you have compassion, but you don't care enough to get active and make changes.
When you see a mentally ill homeless person on the street, you don't care. Bottom line -- violence is all around you, and you don't care -- you're like a fish in water -- you just don't notice it, or care enough to really do anything about it. If you were not desensitized to violence, you would be horrifed every time you saw someone hurt or killed in a movie or game, even though you knew it wasn't real. You would not consider it entertainment, just as the people watching gladiators fight in Rome considered it entertainment. It didn't bother them either -- they paid to see it too. You, my friend, are just one step away.