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Government Linux Gaming Supercomputer
pupkick writes "Wired news has a story about a government supercomputer running Linux that 'pits two opposing teams of soldiers against one another in a fight for control over a city under siege.'"
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error: oxymoron overload!!!
"This technology has not really been used for immediate battle planning before," said Bob Lucas, a division director at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, or ISI, which helped port the Urban Resolve software to the Linux supercomputers. "The vast majority of people are computer-generated. Some are very complicated and consume a whole Pentium by themselves. Some are so simple, you can run a few hundred on a computer."
... ?
I wonder who they chose to model for the simple simulated persons
I guess it's part of the job...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
How about a nice game of chess?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/2 0/2013233&tid=126&tid=137&tid=185&tid= 14
I've heard of that. Isn't it called War Operating Planned Response, or WOPR for short?
I think there was a movie about it a while back.
Please select a game
simulate fighting republicans and democrats after their voting- supercomputer goes tits up on election day?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
This has very little to do with technology. Was simulations have occurred for eons. They are moving to electronic formats. The validity of these simulations is only as good as the understanding of the real life situation, modified down for the capability of the programmin team to capture this in a computer program.
The fact that it is running Linux is the only reason it appears on Slashdot. And it is the least interesting part of the article.
Thanks and have a nice day!
"Wicked sick!"
counter-terrorists win!
_+_+__+_+_+_+_+_+_+++
when i moo u moo - just like that
Between this, Tux Racer and xbill, Linux now has three games!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
They need to double check their facts:
From the story:one at the Maui High Performance Computing Center in Hawaii and the other at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio
From Photo Gallery: thanks to two supercomputers in Virginia and Hawaii.
How seriously can one base decisions on the results? We've had weather simulation software in development for decades and the weather man on TV still can't tell me if it's going to rain tomorrow. It seems this simulation takes human emotion/reaction into account on a large scale, I would think that is much harder to simulate than a weather pattern. Also, who is in charge of programming the human simulations? I would hope they would consult very closely with people actually from the area in question.
...Cougaar.
There are a bunch of distributed agents scattered around lots of machines; some use more resources than others, and the system moves them from machine to machine in response to high loads. Nifty stuff, and open source - BSD licensed!
The Army reading list
IIRC, Maxis, the company that brought you SimCity, SimEarth, SimTrain, SimAnt, SimWhatever has contracted with companies for several years providing its simulation engine for use in petroleum refinery research, manufacturing automation, factory floor managment simulation. I would be surprised if they HAVE NOT done similar work with DoD. Me thinks a nice beowulf cluster of xboxes running linux would make a nicer story...
Busy aligning my non-linear thoughts.
Linux NetworxTM EvolocityTM cluster supercomputer to study smallpox genomics in light of the threat of possible bioterror attacks here
The Linux open-source operating system powers a new government supercomputer that will help meteorologists forecast the weather more accurately. here
New SGI supercomputer to scale Linux to 1,024 CPUs
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications will use it for research here
And the list goes on and on.
Please login to access my lawn
'pits two opposing teams of soldiers against one another in a fight for control over a city under siege.'
So I imagine one groups of soldiers is led by Capt Harris and the other team is led by Lassard and that zany Police Academy squad (minus Mahoney of course).
..please report to the disintegration chamber. Your former city has been destroyed.
sigs, as if you care.
Not exactly a dupe, because it is referring to a different article, but this article is discussing the same project that was covered Wednesday in The War of the Virtual Worlds
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Back in the cold war there was a bit of a counter balance to the USA's military technology from the USSR, and both countries tended to support countries fighting against the other (see russian migs in Korea, US troops in Vietnam, Stinger missiles in Afghanistan). In the horrific act of war there was a counter balance to make things fairer, so technology alone couldn't prevail, and the most technologically advanced countries couldn't impose rules over their 3rd world adversaries. With the dissolution of the USSR this counter balance is relying on increasingly ancient Soviet technologies, which are becoming ineffective against Western military advances (how many planes did the Iraqi army shoot down? How did the Iraqi Soviet era tanks compare to the Americans) Not to sound like i am supporting one side or the other, or sound like i am supporting the actions of supposed terrorists, I am starting to think the idea of war in this world is getting a bit unfair and one sided. Some people put the defeat of the IRA partially down to the introduction of body armour for the british troops, their Armalites just weren't effective any more. How can peoples who want to fight counter this? The only weakness that currently can be exploited is Wide Spectrum electrical weapons (sorry probably wrong name), that can fry electronics of the more advanced Western armies (US army no longer teaches troops to read maps, only GPS). But this is increasingly countered by 'hardening' installations and equipment. Is there any wonder that 'terrorists' or 'rebels' have to resort to alternative weapon systems and war methodology? What hope do they stand in the modern battlefield? What hope for the future, China is the only real counter weight but they don't seem too keen on sharing. Whatever side you were on
No wait, they do... General Norman Schwarzkopf said he never understood the true meaning of the word Byzantine as it applies to politics until he had taken command in the middle east. And he had studied the area EXTENSIVELY prior to his deployment there. These systems are modeling behavior of of crowds, soldiers in combat, "battlefield detainees", traffic patterns, weather, weaponry, supply lines, AND the political climate. The people playing these games ain't high school video gamers. They are retired or otherwise very experienced military personnel that advise the JCS. All of them are very well educated in the art of war, and it's drawbacks. That's why they're so quiet about it.
It's a pity that in a battlefield simulation all that processing power would be wasted as I'd just be an immediate civilian casualty, but with luck I might manage to drop my old Laserjet 5M out the window on one of the combatants first.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Bush's suggestion that the only problem with the war currently was that we "won too quickly," that the enemy was supposed to stand, fight and be killed instead of retreating and coming back with car bombs the way they have, is ridiculous. It shows how out of touch he and his advisors are with the real world. All you have to do is look at American history: George Washington lost just about every battle he fought in, but the tactic of fight, retreat, and live to fight another day won the war.
Since they seem to be unwilling to learn from history, before our beloved administration engages in another wasteful bloodletting, maybe the high end of the chain of command should take a moment to see how regular people would fight if thrown into the situation.
Heck, make sure some 10-14 year olds are able to play. They're brutal! I remember when Warcraft came out, those little snots would pull some amazing tricks to kick butt right out of the gate. Remember the Grunt Rush offense?
The CB App. What's your 20?
I wonder if this urban conflic simulator includes factors such as the fact that airstrikes of any intensity will always lead to some civilian casualties, which will in turn lead to easier recruitment by the bad guys.
If this simulation doesn't include such social/psychlogical factors then I submit that it is pretty useless in determining the optimum strategy for urban conflicts.
"The old crusade days when you go into a city with catapults and rubble everything are over,"
Tell that to the people of Falluja right now.
Are air strikes really the most effective way to deal with insurgency/terrorism?
a story about a government supercomputer running Linux that 'pits two opposing teams of soldiers against one another in a fight for control over a city under siege.'"
Why is this news? The govt runs battle simulations on computers. Linux runs computers. What part of this didn't we know and why do we care?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
We really, really need a "-1; Bullshit" moderation option.
Chinese soldiers in Mexico?! Haha!
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!