Slashdot Mirror
The Pentagon's Ultimate Home Theater
Steve Silberman writes "I was the first reporter to see the inside of a new battle-simulation system designed by the Institute for Creative Technologies, a 'military-entertainment' think tank sponsored by the Defense Department. Starting in September, Marines, infantrymen, and Air Force pilots will train for war in Matrix-like rooms in Oklahoma simulating urban and desert environments, with surround sound and photorealistic rendering of bombing runs and other scenarios. It may or may not be the future of military training, but it's certainly the future of home gaming. My article, 'The War Room,' will appear in the September issue of Wired."
Jesus christ, this is the sort of training they get?!
Limited Lethality my arse. Nothing dropped from a fighter-bomber can be considered "limited lethality" - Kinetic energy alone does a good job of eroding that particular definition
Bruha, it's "I See O" Hall, and I tell the tale of how the building got that weird name in the article.
Spoiler alert!
The last paragraph of the article gives the main surprise away of one of the best science-fiction books on Earth: "Ender's Game"
I recommend Ender's Game, easy to read and great, and recommend against reading the last paragraph of the article if you haven't already.
- -- Truth addict for life.
FWIW, pretty much everybody on the battlefield understands that he's fighting for a specific objective, and more importantly, for his buddies. "The country" is what makes idealistic kids enlist, but in a war zone, it's very far away; the guy to your left, the guy to your right, and the hill you're supposed to take are right there.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Coincidently, New York Times Magazine is also publishing a story about ICT in this weekend's edition:
S .html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/magazine/22GAME
The moderator who modded parent post "Overrated" obviously haven't played and/or watched multiplayer Quake I/II/III/QuakeWorld matches.
Bunny Hopping is a movement technique that appeared when players found out that they could use a design flaw in the Quake/QuakeWorld physics engine to increase their movement speed, by continiously jumping and strafing from side to side, while adjusting the view accordingly.
Players continued bunny hopping in Quake II and III, even though the physics engines were modified to discourage bunny hopping, the players found new techniques to keep on hopping.
In a typical Quake III match players almost always moves by bunny hopping unless stealth is required.
Sadr is no terrorist! When the poor, the recently unemployed (thanks to the US and their occupational government), the dispossessed Shiites wanted to fight, Sadr made the al-Mahdi Army out of them, and channeled their anger into peaceful protest. The US provoked them to anger beyond Sadr's control twice (by such freedom loving activities as closing down their newspaper). Then yes, they did fight, as a resistance force. If you haven't checked the Geneva Convention lately, it gives them every right to fight an occupation of their country. Everytime things get to the fighting stage, Sadr tries to negotiate a peaceful solution. He's no saint, but he isn't a terrorist either.
For those ignorant of such matters (I'm not because I looked it up), al-Mahdi is a relative of Mohammed who is supposed to return to fight injustice and tyranny, and to establish an era of peace. Everytime there is injustice or an occupation, the resistance (peaceful or not) invokes the name of al-Mahdi.
BTW, Sadr has a right to be in that shrine. He is distantly related to the guy the shrine honors. He is also the son of the Sadr that lead a rebellion against Saddam, the Sadr that was killed in that very shrine!
Bin Laden doesn't give a d*mn about your precious "freedom" (which apparently includes shutting down newspapers and ordering reporters out of Najaf on threat of being shot!). Bin Laden wants the infidel US bases away from Mecca (done). He wants the secular governments of Arab countries overthrown (partly done in Iraq and Afghanistan courtesy of the US). He also hates Israel and US support for its occupation of Palestinian lands and attacks on Palestinian people.
Sadr wants the US, its Coalition, and its puppet governments out of Iraq so they can have some nice elections, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, etc.
Iran, well that is a long story. Back in the 1950s, Iran had a nice democratically elected government, which the US hated. So in our first experiment in meddling (except for the creation of Israel), we sent the CIA in there to destabilize the government and put the Shah of Iran back in power. While this helped the US in the Cold War, the people of Iran, on the verge of a bright future of freedom, found themselves cursed instead with grinding poverty, police terror, and torture. Thousands died, because of the US. From this old sin of ours, springs forth Iran's current hatred and distrust of the US, and a dark and fearsome child: Terrorism!
In modern day Iran, the nuclear crisis has reached a new level: Israel and the US have threatened to bomb Iran's alleged nuclear facilities. Iran, for their part, has warned that the US has no monopoly on preemption: Iran will bomb Israel's nuclear weapon's facilities and attack the US in Iraq if they have reason to believe the US and Israel are going to carry out their threats. If the US and Israel don't quit making stupid threats and do some backpedaling, the US and Iran could be in a hot war by the end of the year!
As for cleaning our house, the Geneva Conventions are the house rules we wrote. The Nazis of old would love to see us breaking them, torturing innocents, becoming just like them! Abu Graibe probably gave Bin Laden a warm fuzzy too. Egypt is certainly grateful for the new torture techniques that they are now eagerly applying to their own people.
The more we torture, the more husbands we drag away in the middle of the night, the more countries we ruin, the more kids we shoot to bits in their parent's arms, the more anger we breed. The more anger, the more terror. You can't win this dirty. You can't hope to save freedom by destroying it. A complete withdrawal, not only from Iraq, but from the whole of the Middle East, especially of military support for Israel, might break the cycle and at least stop the creation of new terrorists. Otherwise, we continue to make terrorists faster than we can kill them: a war we can never win.
And then you can give this fancy training technology to fire fighters. At