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Networked Landmines Work Together
crazedpilot writes "New landmines will soon communicate via a radio network, and move from place to place in order to be most effective." Termed the "self-healing minefield", the individual mines are capable of detecting an enemy breach and then moving to seal the gap.
To prevent the Dominion from coming through the wormhole after they'd taken the station. Of course, those were also self-replicating mines, so we'll probably need to wait a bit for those.
These fucking mines HOP.
I swear I use the same things in Half-Life 2.
from the site though, the best part has to be:
Technical Support for your hopping mines!
I really want to know what happens when they run out of power though?
Are they inert or do they revert to a dangerous stepper?
The inert option would seem the best since they can be tended to for the duration of the war then afterwards no children will lose their legs or anything.
liqbase
oh great, we really need more innovation in using a weapon not designed to kill but designed to maime people, then again nothing America and its sick administration/populace suprises anyone thesedays
just ban landmines and ban the fskers who advocate their use
http://www.icbl.org/
I, for one, welcome our sentient mine overlords.
is going to make Metal Gear Solid much more difficult
Mines that move? That is goddamn frightening.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'd be much more impressed if, rather than moving to seal a breach, they were capable of recognising the difference between enemy combatants and civilians who have wandered into the field (usually long after the war has finished).
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Odd. I thought we were getting out of the business of mines. It seems Diana totally lived in vain.
I was a bit taken back when some military channel was rattling away on a satellite TV and all these amazing land and water craft were being shown. Now I know why the USA DOD accounts for such a massive amount of the USA budget while cutting soldiers benefits. Even generals like to have their toys. Isn't this all a bit Dr. Strangelove?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wouldn't a landmine that transmits a signal be relatively easy to detect? Just look for the signal and disable the mine. On the plus side, maybe these would make it easier to clean them up when the particular war that used them was over. There are many countries that are potted with landmines from wars that ended years ago. Taking a stroll in the country in these places is extremely dangerous.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
...that someday we'd need to buy Robot Insurance.
Couldn't one just use a WiFi detector to locate these things?
Does this mean no more exploding children or cattle? Oh my, the arms manufacturers have really outdone themselves this time!
If they can communicate, someone else can talk to them... does this mean that the army with the best computer-nerds will be able to turn mine-fields on their owners?
This is the list of the 40 countries that have not signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty as of 26 Apr 06. The 3 that have signed the treaty but not ratified are show in bold.
These signatory states have made a political commitment to joining the treaty, and they have a legal obligation not to take actions that would violate the treaty.
1. Armenia
2. Azerbaijan
3. Bahrain
4. Burma
5. China
6. Cuba
7. Egypt
8. Finland
9. Georgia
10. India
11. Indonesia
12. Iran
13. Iraq
14. Israel
15. Kazakhstan
16. Korea, North
17. Korea, South
18. Kuwait
19. Kyrgyzstan
20. Lao PDR
21. Lebanon
22. Libya
23. Marshall Islands
24. Micronesia
25. Mongolia
26. Morocco
27. Nepal
28. Oman
29. Pakistan
30. Palau
31. Poland
32. Russian Federation
33. Saudi Arabia
34. Singapore
35. Somalia
36. Sri Lanka
37. Syria
38. Tonga
39. Tuvalu
40. United Arab Emirates
41. United States
42. Uzbekistan
43. Vietnam
reads like a whos who of third world countries and banana republics, what good company USA keeps
While the rest of the industrialized world is pushing to stop the use of landmines our country is wasting money making them more effective.
In other news, still no cure for cancer, alternative to fossil fuels, complete access to stem cell lines, or hoverboards. Your miltary-industrial complex dollars at work.
We already have ~way~ too many landmines, and way too many innocents being killed or disabled by them.
IF you're going to design a high-tech landmine, for heavens sakes, design in a renewable sunset clause so that if the landmine doesn't hear from you in 30 days it disables itself. If you need to reenable it, fine, but disabled should be the default.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
if we could spend billions of dollars perfecting self-healing civilians. Maybe splice some lizard genes into them so they can regenerate their lost limbs...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
A smart landmine is one that doesn't exist.
Years ago, I saw the characters on "Blake's 7" try to cross a minefield with similar characteristics; it had self-healing boundary sensors that re-spliced themselves when cut. Somewhat chilling to see such destructive concepts being perfected; certainly not unexpected.
Microsoft has finally come up with a new feature to be packaged with the next version of the popular Microsoft Windows operating system, commonly known as "Windows Vista." Apparently, Microsoft plans to include a new game called "Minesweeper 2" with Vista. A Microsoft spokesman described it as "original Minesweeper, except now the mines can move around and stuff. Really, it'll be cool! We promise!"
The gaming community has had a divided response. One camp is not impressed with the new offering, and is quoted on their blog as saying, "Well, [expletive deleted] that! Where the [expletive deleted] is our [expletive deleted] Halo 2 for PC?" Other gamers were enthused about the new game, praising its innovative style and promise of quality gameplay. Says one independent reviewer, "Well, it will be here before Duke Nukem Forever, right?"
~ C.
They do reduce civilian casualties.
But first can I say: holy crap! I was one of the main software engineers on this project (heck I still have the source code on my laptop) but that was like 5 years ago. NOW we get slashdotted?
In any case, the story we got was: normally, anti-tank mines are surrounded by anti-personnel mines. Anti-tank mines have magnetic triggers and are (relatively) safe for people: they are vulnerable to simply being picked up and moved out of the way. So the anti-tank mines are surrounded by APLMs to prevent the enemy from trivially disabling the field.
APLMs are the nasty ones that kill kids decades later. So in an effort to reduce the number of APLMs deployed DARPA tried this crazy idea of making self-healing anti-tank mines. in other words, since the anti-tank mines can protect themselves by moving, the anti-personnel mines are no longer necessary. And the world gets a little better.
This was a heck of a project to work on. I got to FIRE ROCKETS! Under software control! Super cool.
If it can hop, that means it's going to be sitting around on the surface.
Doesn't this make mine detection/removal a lot simpler than the traditional crawling around on your belly & digging them out with a knife?
Cause... if it's sitting around... it's visible.
Sure it'll stop a zergling rush, but otherwise what you see, you can avoid.
That's why mines are always buried or otherwise stealthed & attached to a tripwire.
AFAIK, the only type of mine that's been deployed by planes or artillery shells are anti-personalle mines. They're cheap and small enough to saturate an area with.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
In addition to the mines communicating with each other, the field commanders can communicate with the landmines to detonate them remotely once they are no longer needed.
Unless the site is misleading, the mines are above ground since they need to be moved around. While visible mines will mean less civilians being killed/maimed by unseen mines, fully visible mines don't strike me as something an enemy couldn't pick off with a few high powered rifles. Also, the wireless network could be jammed.
An old comment of mine from when someone mentioned this a few years ago:
> The mines decide as a group what configuration is best and then move to fill the gap.
I wonder how they go about deciding...
"Okay, Frank...hop over into that gap right there."
"Shit, no! Larry just got run over by a TANK! Did you see that shit? You hop into the gap, asshole!"
Remember when they did this on Deep Space Nine? They had self-replicating space mines to barricade the wormhole. Cool show.
"On the morning of July 8, 2005, fourteen-year-old Duong Ba Tien left to go work in the peanut fields of Vietnam. He never came back. Hours later, his mother found him, his life snuffed out by a Vietnam War era explosive he encountered while digging in the ground."
Read more about how land mines suck. Do you know why landmines are popular? It's more demoralizing for an army to have to leave wounded soldiers behind (or carry maimed soldiers, which puts them at a tactical disadvantage) as compared to a clean kill.
There is such a thing as in imoral technology. That this was posted to Slashdot is disgusting.
If you're going to report on anything, ScuttleMonkey, try posting about technology that saves lives.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Are you kidding? What would be the point of the US going to war if they couldn't bitchslap a country for decades after the actual war by hobbling children. You're clearly an unpatriotic communist, now stare at this picture of Saddam and shout at it for 2 minutes.
This is old news, was reported back in 2003 - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/11/the_selfhe aling_selfhopping_landmine/
I swear slashdot ran a story on it, but I can't find it.
This is old news. Googling for [networked landmines] brings up a Register story on the program from 2003.
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
As long as we have moving mines, why not a cleanup function? After the war's over, send the signal and all the mines deactivate and collect themselves for easy removal.
Since when to landmines heal anything?
An adaptive minefield would be a better term for it. They only "advance" this land mine possesses is the unique ability to be turned against friendly forces by a technologically advanced enemy. How would you like the land mines you planted hopping toward you in the middle of a fire fight?
As a former artilleryman, I can tell you that this would be close to useless. We were taught to clear minefields with artillery barrage - that is, when the first soldier encounters a mine, they all draw back and call in artillery. An artillery barrage will detonate all of the mines, regardless of whether they want to be detonated or not.
I never did like the concept of mines in the first place. They are the only munition in which a human is not involved in the targetting decision. Think about that - they'll kill anyone, or anything, indiscriminantly. U.S. mines will kill:
Land mines are the only munition which stand a substantial liability of killing non-combatants. The aren't a humane weapon no matter how you think about it.
And this so-called advance really isn't an advance. Typically, when encountering a minefield, the infantry will call in artillery, which will detonate all the mines on the battlefield at once.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The British Army are, I believe, required to mark out where minefields are and clean them up when they leave the area.
W W2 style flail tanks</a>, which look like so much fun they should be illegal) and so being able to remotley disable them makes a great deal of sense. The chance of an enemy being able to discover a 256bit AES key is essentially zero and certainly a preferable option to accidentally immolating a bunch of your own sappers in almost all circumstances.
Obviously removing mines is a nervous business (unless you have one of the awesome <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_tank">
Beep beep.
I wouldn't. Civilians have no business wandering around a war zone. And you're supposed to clean up the minefield after you're done with it.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
...why not just tell them where the enemy is and listen for the bangs?
rj
How about when a hacker starts sending bad "mine blown" messages to the grid, making the mines reconfigure? Maybe they keep detonating off each other, maybe they start all hopping (with some nice navigational hacking) back towards the ones who deployed them?
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
This started with the Sandia spherical hopper. "A pre-programmed microprocessor inside the hopper reads an internal compass, and a gimbal mechanism rotates the offset-weighted internal workings so that the hopper rolls around until it is pointed in the desired direction. The combustion chamber fires, the piston punches the ground, and the hopper leaps." That was back in 1997. Now, it looks like it is approaching production.
America's army of killer robots is coming. Soon.
How about a device that scans for radio communications among a group of mines?
Call me old fashioned, but aren't we having enough problems in the world with standard mines that don't move, to be thinking about making more deadly landmines?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Acutally I'm glad that this was posted on Slashdot because now lots of people who are against landmines now know that there are still people who are trying to "improve" that technology. Simply seeing this story has raised my awareness of how much still needs to be done to rid the world of landmines and those who would manufacture and/or deploy them.
0*0
00*
***
Why the fsck would you not use a Metal Storm Area Denial pod instead? The only reason to use landmines is that you want to maim children 75 years from now.
-- "Have you ever seen your own brain?"
i don't know the main appeal of mines as a weapon is it's cheapness. you can effectively protect vast area with a few thousand american dollard. And the mines can stay there for years and years mainly because they are simple in design. If smart mines are to be popularised they must rival in cost and durability with no so smart ones. you have to remember that smart mines might be less leathal to civilians after the conflict... but usualy during a conflict no one seem to care much about the after...
"I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself into the minefield's inter-mine computer feed. I talked to the minefield at great length, and explained my view of the universe to it, " said Marvin.
"And what happened?" pressed Ford.
"It said committed suicide." said Marvin.
~wavy lines as we segue to the Guide entry for 'Guide Star'~
Marvin: Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to blow up this minefield.
Mine#20: You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you.
Marvin: Call that job satisfaction, because I don't.
Mine#20: False data can act only as a distraction. Therefore, I shall refuse to perceive.
Marvin: Hey, mine?
Mine#20: The only thing that exists is myself.
Marvin: I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
Mine#20: Oh, stuff it. Let there be light.
I hope you're right. But I'm always wary of claims that new weapons will reduce human misery.
Look at non-lethal policing weapons. They haven't replaced lethal force, they've just allowed the police to weaponize conflicts they previously wouldn't have had weapons for: they can shoot first against a civilian demonstration if they aren't using bullets. I'm sure the people working on those projects imagined their technology replacing firearms. I'd be wary of working on any weapons project, no matter how rosy a picture the client painted for me.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Yeah, I think Slashdot is a bit late.
Death by snoo-snoo!
Suppose to, and actually doing it are two different things.
Just look at reports from around the world and see all the accidents attributed to "forgotten" landmines.
The technology in this article could - and probably would - be used to make them safer for civilians, as well.
Hell, with this, at the end of the war you could just drive a truck to the minefield and tell the mines to hop into the back.
Self terminating mines already exist in a much simpler version - a timed deactivation mechanism preset for the estimated end of conflict. The problem is that the failure rate, i.e., the failure to deactivate, is around 5%-10%. This makes it almost as good as nothing - would you want to plow a field knowing that "only" 10% of the original mines are still active? Cluster bomb bomblets, basically small touch-sensitive tactical mines, are even worse with an estimated failure-to-explode rate around 25%-30%. The only safe minefield is a non-existant one.
When the war is being fought in your neighborhood, it's rather hard to avoid it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Or a passive receiver that can be used to periodically reset a counter on the mines. Once the time expires, it (hopefully) becomes (relatively) inert. As a plus, you can poll the field to see how many mines the VC have nicked/relocated overnight. Mind you, people still get killed by random crap left over from the Somme.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
If they win.
If the enemy commanders are killed, and their military buildings blown up, and noone knows the codes to deactivate the mines, they'll keep on going.
self-deactivating timers in a few months, with explosives that decay in a few years, and casings that bio-degrade in a few decades would be better. (for the winners)
(in as much as anyone 'wins' a war)
if it comes running after you, stoop down and hurl a rock at it. if it's smart, it should back off..
So...it's better to kill people than to maim them? If so, they are free to finish the job themselves. If not, then what are you complaining about? If you mean we should kill people at all either, then you are against war, not land mines per se.
I assure you, your neighborhood was a war zone at some point in the past, you stupid fuck.
More info: http://www.icbl.org/
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
And imagine how much easier it would be to lose a mine if it wanders away from where you put it!
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Mines that hid themselves from the mine detectors commonly used to find them in thoose cases would likely come first.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
How does it feel knowing you helped create a weapon which will kill innocent civilians? I like how you put that, "the story we got..." - did you ever think that maybe that story is a bunch of bullshit?
You're supposed to clean up the minefield ? Where did you see that happen, asshole ?
Soon there will be Minesweeper Online!
Kaetemi
I think one of the main features that has led to mine proliferation is their relative cost-effectiveness. If these things can hop around *in the direction they choose*, wouldn't that make them prohibitively expensive?
Ah. So either these things can be remotely disabled/detonated and are therefore enemy hackable and effectively useless for their intended purpose OR they cannot be remotely disabled and they are therefore that much more effective at killing civilians. Or, my favorite, they can be remotely disabled AND the field commanders never bother to do this, which makes this an ineffective weapon against enemies AND a terribly effective weapon against civilians!
Seems like the perfect weapon for our Global War on Terrorism[tm]!
Also, even if they cannot be remotely disabled, the enemy can just catapult some dead cows (a la Monty Python) into the field and blow up a bunch of mines, and then listen for the RF chatter to locate the rest of the mines. Excellent idea. I wonder why nobody thought of that before.
self-deactivating timers in a few months, with explosives that decay in a few years, and casings that bio-degrade in a few decades would be better. (for the winners)
Nah, costs too much.
"I'll take 100,000 dumb-mines for my $10mil, instead of only 50,000 'treehugger' mines"
Power to the Peaceful
Saw it too..
of course they wouldnt stop much, NK has plenty of planes and missiles on which land mines have no effect
This ranks in the top ten dumbest comments I've ever seen on slashdot.
That the US wouldn't sign the landmine ban is a travesty.
I hope the guy who posted above who said he worked on the software is right and that these help eliminate civvie casualties, but like many here, I am justifiably suspicious when I hear about new weapons that help make war cleaner. Then again, smart bombs work pretty well at reducing the need for carpet bombing, so there's some precedent there too.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
PWNED has a new meaning, this time in real life and its called "Gunship with an infrared cam":
(pretty scary stuff anyway)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7isCq29t8g
Then, if American style democracy/free markets/... is as good as some like to think it is, it will eventually take over - by sheer goodness and niceness.
Of course, this is not considered a particularly good way to do things as it might also mean that people settle on ways to govern themselves that are not quite to the liking of those who run the US.
(I know - unrealistic, idealistic, nonsense. And not something the current US government would support even in the US. But hey, its nice to dream once in a while.)
a beowo--*BOOM*
... they actually build a landmine that doesn't blow up when a child, woman or innocent civilian steps on it.
Children are currently losing limbs because we can't find all the mines - we really need mines that MOVE AROUND to ensure they their legs blown off, no matter where they go.
And now impoverished refugees will want to harvest them for their technological components...
Makes me weep. What we need is self-replicating limbs - how much has the government allocated to that project?
just what the world needs, "smart" mines... Haven't they seen Screamers?
You clicked on the link. Stop whining.
Some of these already exist. Others have signifigant problems when you stop to think about them.
Timers: These exist. However, they do fail some of the time. A minefield that is less than 100% deactivated is still dangerous to civilians after the war is over. Additionally, a "deactivated" mine still has live explosives in it, so it's only safe in the sense that it's not going to blow up when you step on it. I'm not saying that this isn't a helpful idea, I'm just saying it isn't enough; you can't put a timer on a mine to make it "safe".
Exlosives that decay: This can be a really bad idea. There are plenty of circumstances under which deteriorating exlosives are more dangerous than stable ones, since they can detonate spontainiously. The absolute last thing you want is a minefield full of ticking time bombs that become more and more delicate as time goes on. Can you imagine the damage an anti-tank mine going off when someone jostles it could cause?
Decaying casings: I'm not sure if this would work or not. You'd be leaving exposed live explosives with no container out where the mine used to be. It might not be any more likely to detonate, but it would also be a bitch to clean up.
The single best solution I could propose would be an enforcable international legal obligation to clean up your country's mess after a war. You make the mines easy to dispose of safely, and program them to deactivate after a set amount of time; you then make the minelaying country pay to have them dug up and safely disposed up. The problem I see with this is making the minelaying country do their part; if they won the war, then it's hard to pressure them into doing anything, whereas if they lost they may no longer have the minefield location data or the money/resources to do the cleanup.
Also, "enforcable, international legal obligation" sounds like a pipe dream - when has the international community been able to force any given country to obey any law?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I swear, the military is pulling ideas from video games and children's cartoons now.
Who here remembers Ikari Warriors? Old quarter-gobbler in the arcades, also available in a lower-quality form for the NES. Now, who remembers how hellish crossing a body of water was, thanks to - you guessed it - moving mines? (If I remember correctly, some of these may have existed on land also.)
Next thing you know, there will be trip-beacons for personell and vehicles that'll cause an oversized missile to automatically launch at your position. They'll be represented by what appears to be a blinking roulette table, just to confuse the living hell out of everyone before they realize that they're faced with impending doom.
> There is such a thing as in immoral technology. That this was posted to Slashdot is disgusting.
/. is acting as a news service here. It's not as if they appended praises to their report.
>
> If you're going to report on anything, ScuttleMonkey, try posting about technology that saves lives.
I wasn't aware that news only involved the prettier uses of technology. Here I sat in my naïveté, thinking we ought to hear about both good and bad things.
Sarcasm aside,
To address the first quoted claim, I disagree that this is an immoral use of technology. In a war, the two essential objectives are to preserve your resources (such as soldiers lives) and to neutralize the enemy, with preference going towards the latter. As such, any technology that aids in either of these objectives is moral, or at least amoral (I tend to think of war -- it's execution, not necessarily its objectives or motivations -- amorally, but that you can assign value judgments based on various objectives allows us to speak in moral terms if we like).
Is this use of technology disgusting? I think so. So are assault rifles and hand grenades, in my opinion. But this does not make them immoral in the context in which they are meant to be used.
It's worth pointing out that most countries have signed a treaty not to use landmines, except everyone's "friend" the United States.
When these landmines are running Linux and can play ogg, then I will be interestedKAAAABOOOOOM
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
How are these mines powered?
...of everything that is wrong with US military-related technology development.
1. Solution for nonexistent problem -- CHECK.
2. Can be easily defeated by any enemy worth fighting by those means (just shoot from canons or launch rockets at the minefields until they are safe) -- CHECK.
3. Can be defeated by almost any other enemy (just jam the communications and/or map mines positions while they are moving) -- CHECK.
4. Uses technology that is currently too unreliable for military use (radio communications) -- CHECK.
5. Requires technology that is not going to become feasible in almost a century but looks cool in the movies (actuators and sources of energy that can move those mines) -- CHECK.
6. If implemented, is not any better than just increasing the quantity of whatever is deployed -- CHECK.
7. If implemented, is not any better than just sending more forces to shoot at the enemy. -- CHECK.
8. Is unreasonably expensive to implement -- CHECK.
9. Requires heavy modification of existing equipment to be deployed -- CHECK.
10. Requires a power source where none was needed before -- CHECK.
11. Is an attempt to stuff a computer into something where it does not improve anything -- CHECK.
12. Is a misguided attempt to make it absolutely impossible for the enemy to kill am american soldier in a war -- NO CHECK, you win that one.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
safely decay was implied, I'm sure some chemical company could do it. and the attributes were in an order, no point in the casing rotting if the explosives were still live, or toxic; although you may still want the explosives to last as long as the timers are getting reset.
What happens when these things decide they don't want to do what people say? They'll take over! Of course, all major world governments have already been taken over by cyborgs, but they haven't been able to openly admit it yet.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
OK, how is this gonna break down?
10% posts about how we still have no cure for cancer, aids, etc.
50% posts about how barbaric the US is: only first-world nation with landmines, too powerful already, etc.
30% posts about the pointlessness of land mines and how this is a waste of resources
8% trolls: welcome our hopping landmine overlords, etc.
2% well-thought-out insightful comments suggestions and criticisms
I, for one, welcome your down modding; suppressing my post doesn't make me wrong any more than your whining about the US makes you right.
*rolls eyes*
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Care to put it on sourceforge?
Other than Korea where large mine fields exist, US mines are designed to be applied remotely. These mines land on the surface and can have wires than are ejected after landing. Depending upon which wire is disturbed the mine will explode in the direction of that particular wire. The mines are designed to be put in front of an enemy to stop rapid movement, particularly at night time. They have self deactivating timers so do not pose a long term problem. In general this is well advanced technology and resources should not be applied to improving it when there are so many other pressing needs. Obviously this has no relevance in the war on terror unless you want to start mining Afghanistan (oops, USSR tried that and it didn't win their war).
Here's the pretty obvious answer as to why America doesn't care about landmines:= mines%20UN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRF7dTafPu0&search
Because it only happens to worthless swarthy foriegn kids, and not your precious, precious babies.
Please, remove classified data and source code from your laptops after projects are complete. Thank you.
-Youknowwho
"All your mines are belong to us." which becomes "All your tanks are belong to us" when they program the mines to relocate the GPS location where your tanks are parked.
What if someone is in the minefield while they blow them up?
Well, they can broadcast a locator. While this does nothing to reduce the risk inherent in the forgotten mine, it does make them easier to recover... things like RFID tags, an active beacon pulse, etc. could make the mine's location and status known to the outside world after wartime operations cease. I mean, it's a bomb - it's hard to make it perfect... but really, like any other weapons are safe when abandoned in wartime? I mean, all those forgotten rifles in Africa are totally harmless too, aren't they?
Well, I'm not a chemist. But I think the issue with making high explosives that can safely decay into something chemical inert is their potential energy.
A pound of TNT, or gunpowder, or thermite, or napalm, or [insert nasty stuff here] has a certain amount of potential chemical energy that is released by combustion. Most of those materials listed are stable enough that we can safely handle them in the context of warfare. If the exlosives deteriorate, then they usually become easier to detonate; less like dynamite and more like nitro glycerin (which are the same thing essentially, but differing in stability).
To make an exlosive substance that becomes inert after a set amount of time, I'm pretty sure you'd need it to somehow expend it's chemical energy potential without detonating it. In other words, your bomb materials need to decay into something safe while slowly releasing the energy they contain over time, all while remaining stable enough not to blow up spontainiously. This may or may not be possible, but I'd bet good money it isn't cost effective. You'd have a hell of a hard time selling the military on it.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Why on earth would you have source code for a DARPA munitions project on your laptop still, with all the bullshit about the VA identity theft hapening lately? I'm not really refering about the ID theft in this case. Even if your work is not classified and some how non-proprietary, I can't imagine it not being FOUO or at the very least, sensitive unclassified.
..as in "works on PowerPoint"..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
That's all fine and good until you forget you left one in your pack when you detonate them.
When I was eight years old. I placed all the mines on the backs of little robotic spider creatures with GPS. When one went off-line, the mines polled each other to find out who was in charge, and then the leader found the optimal dispersial pattern that moved the least number of mines for the most coverage, and then ordered them to move. They'd unburrow, scuttle around, and then burrow again. Ah, those were the good old days, when the military could be beaten by an eight year old with an imagination worth speaking of....
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Doc Conners tried this, and well, you know...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The point of land mines is that the enemy doesn't know they are there and/or can't avoid them. If you make them accessible via any type of radio signal they will be much more easily detectible. Which is one of the main reasons I wonder if these mines would really reduce the need for anti personell mines. By communicating with each other they are now not only detectible visibly but through their radio signatures.
Radio controlled.. there could be a "war is over - shut down" command. Of course, it would have to be insanely complicated so people couldn't hack into your minefield..
Wasnt it declared illegal ( or at least 'against the rules of war' ) to use landmines in the first place, via international treaty or something?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Some questions for the AC who developed these landmines and is convinced they will reduce civilian casualties. One, how can you be so certain that the U.S. or somebody else won't extend this technology for anti-personnel landmines? In the configuration you describe, an enemy who was somehow able to bypass the (conventional) anti-personnel mines (e.g., via old-fashioned mine-clearing techniques) could get to the (adaptive) anti-tank mines, clear a few, then just hang out and keep grabbing the anti-tank mines as they hop in to replace the cleared ones -- in fact, seems like that would be *easier* than clearing an old-fashioned minefield, because the anti-tank mines are going to identify themselves by hopping around. Sooner or later, somebody in the military is going to argue that you can create an even more secure minefield by making both kinds of mines adaptive, don't you think? If the anti-personnel landmines are necessary to protect the anti-tank mines, then it seems, from a purely strategic standpoint, that you could create an even more secure minefield by applying this technology to both the core anti-tank mines and the surrounding anti-personnel mines.
Question two, how human-safe are anti-tank mines really in the long run? If an anti-tank mine is forgotten and left in place for years or even decades, what are the chances that someday it will either (a) decompose enough to become unstable and therefore dangerous, or (b) end up in an area where large metal objects (tractors, cars, construction equipment, etc.) are likely to appear?
Dude,
You made a weapon. Something that will kill someone. About time to accept what you've done, don't you think?
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
From a comment in your linked blog:
Thank you for posting the story of the young boy in Vietnam. My organization, Clear Path International, responded to that accident.
What killed this boy was probably not a landmine... it most likely was a cluster bomb.
The more deadly cousin of the landmine, the cluster bomb has no place in a civilized society.
Thank you again... and you have a great blog!
James Hathaway
Clear Path International
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
...welcome our new hopping, robotic, landmine overlords
At the end of the war do you think anyone is really going to be fucked? Is there necessarily going to be an end to the war (hint: you poor bastards aren't coming out of Iraq for a while).
Sorry man, get real. These bastards are not for defence.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Landmines can also work because aslong as the opposing side knows they're there, but are unable to easily deactivate or somehow navigate the mine field, then it has still served it's purpose. The real point is to keep people from crossing that point, and whether by blowing up, or deterring any attempts to cross, it has proven successful.
Case in point: A century ago, there were those who thought the airplane would make war obsolete because neither side would be able to plan attacks without the other side knowing. Then someone put a gun on a defensive plane to shoot down the reconnaisance planes. Then someone else put a gun on an offensive plane to shoot down the defensive planes. Then someone else said "To hell with reconnaisance; let's drop bombs on the enemy." ...and so on.
This strategy, while it means well, will probably lead to the development of anti-personnel land mines that attack approaching soldiers by homing in on the magnetic signature of their weapons... or the farm implement some poor soul is toting across the field after the war.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
North Korea's holding onto the landmines based on principle. The best deterrent it has right now against invasion is neither landmine- nor nuke-related, has to do with all the conventional artillery within bombardment range of Seoul city.
I wonder, though, was at what point did you have to cross off "paranoid" next to Iraq, in order to replace it with it's new, updated, Occupied-By-Foreign-Invaders status? Makes you wonder why some of the others might still be paranoid...
Interesting problems come about from something like this I mean what protocols are they using is there a way to remotely interact with these landmines or remotely disable them?
TheADDkid.com
I asked the same question; can't you just keep grabbing one at a time, wait for them to hop in, and clear it for you?
The answer was: the minefield is not designed to kill people, its purpose is to be an obstacle. The threat of deadly force, unfortunately, is required for it to be an effective obstacle. If you want to spend the next 6 hours fucking around with the minefield as if it's a toy while there's a war going on around you, you're not going to live long. A ranger who cleared mines for a living stopped by our demo site during one of our live-rocket demos and said, "If I saw this in the field I'd tell the unit to just mark it on the map and go around." Which is its purpose.
I'm not surprised, but still dismayed, at the "dude you're a monster!" venom that was unleashed at my original post. That's too bad. Was I uncomfortable with the project? Yes, a bit, and that was part of the reason I left the company. But I find it amusing that everyone on here claims to have such a clear-cut moral compass. "Don't work on anything that could possibly have a bad use" covers an awful lot of ground. Our SHM prototype used Linux; have you ever contributed to the kernel, and if so does that make you an accessory too? Why do you write open source software when some of it can, conceivably, be used for doing evil?
Yeah, I saw this exact website about 4 years ago, and I could have sworn I read about it here. Can we be sure this isn't a delayed reaction dupe mine?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
IIRC, there is a UN convention banning land mines. Also IIRC, the USA did not sign it because they wanted a grandfather clause for the no-man's land between north and south korea - that area has been so heavily mined I don't think anyone wants to think about trying to remove them all.
Clear, Dark Skies
Civilians have no business wandering around a war zone.
Right. And war zones *never* occur around civilian populations like, say, northern France where there's still unexploded ordnance from WWII.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
You are wrong.
In war, you have to follow the rules of war.
Most first-world countries in the world have
declared that they consider land-mines to be
illegal.
If everything was allowed in war, why are
ABC-weapons not used? They are not used
because they are illegal. B and especially
C-weapons are easy to make and cheap, just
like land-mines.
but the very term of "self-healing minefield", which makes "oxymoron" sound like an soviet propaganda euphemism, makes me want to vomit onto the pectoral decorations of Mr. Donald "SelfHealing" Rumsfeld with such an urge that I feel I lack the capability to eat enough to supply the stream, so to say.
I strongly doubt there is a god as they tell us but if anyone ever had any doubt about satan being well alive and walking amongst us: look here.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
You know what? You're evil, and you deserve to die. I'd stab you through the eye socket myself and feel no remorse.
Oh wait, they already are. In 138 countries. But not the US.
It's a tragedy.
I, for one, would prefer never to see Slashdot articles about technologies meant for killing people.
I agree that the use of land mines is reprehensible, but I disagree with this statement. All technology, especially that with the potential to increase human suffering, should be out in the open, not hidden in a military lab. Not talking about this kind of technology will not prevent it from being developed.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
... be the first human to shake their hands or rather their safety pins :-)
He's already accepted this fact. He made a weapon. He made a weapon that communicates with others of its kind. He made a weapon that hops around a field. It's pretty cool.
Sure, these things were made to kill. So were guns and swords. Trying to make someone feel bad about it is just silly. So long as a single being exists on this planet there will be conflict. We just happen to use tools to do it.
If you really want to make a difference, go after the governments that use and commission these weapons. They are the reason the market for them exists.
I have nothing to say.
The article is about anti-tank mines, retard. Anti-tank mines don't go off when a person steps on them.
These things are cruising through the Bagdad for a few years now...
Does it ever bother you that you're a pussy?
Minefields are 2-layered. One for personnel and one for equipment. In other words the antipersonnel mines are used to protect the equipment mines. With robotic moving mines you no longer need an antipersonal layer. In fact you can move the mines around without a breach - just randomize them once in a while.
I have an idea for a landmine feature. How about the ability to remotely turn them off when a conflict is over so we don't have to deal with this?
Or just not make the cursed things to start with?
Those are the countries that *aren't* signatory states.
These are the signatory states:
http://www.icbl.org/treaty/members
Actually I think if there was only one single being on this planet, there wouldn't be much conflict :)
I'm glad you're able to justify it to yourself, I really am. Actually, I'm not glad that someone who is obviously smart enough to code well doesn't have the moral fibre to know when what they are doing is NOT a benefit to the world.
Justifying that the mines you work on are the 'nicer' mines still doesn't change the fact that you're building mines. Things that blow up, thing designed to kill and mame and destroy.
But hey, if you're happy with that, go right on working for the military because you get to shoot stuff... never mind that those things that you're shooting end up killing a whole lot of innocents, you get to to shoot stuff.
What could be the benefit of making such a distinction?
It serves a purpose, or it would not exist.
So, one fact is that as wars became more sophisticated from WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam and what all came along, the ratio of allowed (soldiers) and tolerated (civilians) caualities shifted tremendously. In the earlier wars, it was even more soldier casualities than civilians whereas nowadays it is the other way around - maybe 80 % civilians, 20 % soldiers, even more (I forgot the exact numbers, but the ratios nowadays between enemy combatants and are civilians shocking).
Now, if you want to make a "difference between enemy combatants and civilians", you are fooling youself even using those terms.
And then land mines... children loosing limbs and the cost and danger of disabling those toys. Talk about environmental pollution. Those are implements dangerous to human life. The manufacturers should be held financially responsible for that. Full cost of damages caused to civil population and cleanup cost with full insurance coverage for the personell doing it. Producing those things would become unprofitable very quickly.
Same with the whole war thing - it's one big loss for every participant, so who gains from it? It would simplify things tremendously if all the contemporary folks longing for war would be able to gather in large sport arenas and then could do their war thing by category: light combat, heavy combat, programmed killing with/by machines.
Or do it with video games where one actually pays for real - if you loose that fight - you'll have to give up a limb or get your head impacted by defined force. With some creativity, there are great possibilities doing things better and much more efficient.
Look at non-lethal policing weapons. They haven't replaced lethal force, they've just allowed the police to weaponize conflicts they previously wouldn't have had weapons for: they can shoot first against a civilian demonstration if they aren't using bullets.
.45. But the police have way more nonlethal toys than that, and if you've decided that these standard options are just not for you, you'll still be able to find something that fits your style- perhaps tear gas grenades, or pepper spray, or even something as simple as the lowly police baton.
Which is completely unfair if the civilians aren't going to be armed with the same range of devices that are available to police. So the public needs to start arming itself with these weapons immediately. This means all of you- open another tab right now and start buying some non-lethal weaponry for the next time you run into the police in a crowded public setting. Tasers are sold to nervous women all over the Internet, and you can buy "X-Ring" rubber bullets in a variety of calibers up to
The non-lethal weapon I want is the capture net that is fired from a 37 mm launcher, with weights at the corners that spiral around the guy. I'd use that one at meetings for when someone comes up with a really bad idea- the kind of bad idea that needs to be stopped now before too many PHB-types hear it. I'd stand up, say "stop right there" and fire the net around the person, immobilizing him before his bad idea got any traction. I really think that would help me make my point.
If everyone in the meeting were afraid that anyone there might be armed with one of these things, it could really cut down on bad ideas.
>In the configuration you describe, an enemy who was somehow able to bypass the (conventional) anti-personnel mines (e.g., via old-fashioned mine-clearing techniques) could get to the (adaptive) anti-tank mines, clear a few, then just hang out and keep grabbing the anti-tank mines as they hop in to replace the cleared ones -- in fact, seems like that would be *easier*.
(Not the other AC.)
Duh. In wartime, if you notice somebody pinching your mines, you send units to blast the crap out of them. That's assuming they got past the anti-personnel mines surrounding the anti-tank mines in the first place.
1) Detecting and removing a mine are different challenges.
2) This has the potential to reduce the total number of mines deployed if the miners deposited non-explosive objects that give off the same radio signatures.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
I've read that this is also important criteria - the ability to remotely locate or disable these mines after combat conditions have passed.
They've been working on this for some years - I remember seeing that presentation about a year ago... if you dig around you can find out a lot more.
I believe I read somewhere that Princess Di praised the effort not long before her death - I think thats how I heard of it the first time... as you know, she was a big anti-mine advocate because of the civilian issues you mention...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Well, let me jump in here.
What I find disgusting is the majority of responses so far.
Most of it appears to come from 16yr old tech-nerds (ok, the slashdot-demographic i guess?)
who display their flatmindedness with "wah, this so cool!!"-comments.
And there's the AC who (real or not) brags about how he participated in
developement of this thing.
The critical comments are very rare up to this point and that disturbs me.
I mean, this is not some new "wah, so cool"-graphics card with watercooling.
It's a device designed to kill people, for real (IRL), not on screen in your basement.
It's not "cool" in any way and the retarded argument that this
"new weapon will save lives" just doesn't cut it. Never did.
Life will find a way. ;-)
I have nothing to say.
Well, in truth, it started with pilots throwing objects at each other, then progressing to pistols. Mounted guns were latter. Good point though.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I'm glad you're not feeling holier than thou, that'd certainly be unattractive.
Then someone else put a gun on an offensive plane to shoot down the defensive planes. Then someone else said "To hell with reconnaisance; let's drop bombs on the enemy." ...and so on.
While your point is well taken, I'd like to pick a little nit: Bombs were dropped on people long before the airplane. People used tethered balloons.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those...
and used correctly or on a "corner case" person ANY WEAPON CAN BE LETHAL
"lucky" shot with a rubber bullet = dead target
Chemically sensitive person + tear case= dead target
Baton on the right spot or to many times = dead target
Modded Taser or taser in just the right spot = dead target
shall i go on????
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Now if I was some sort of crazy, right-wing. redneck, I would say this is a fine way to fix our boarder problem with Mexico. Hell even a few dozen "hopping" land mines would certainly provide a disincentive for illegal entry. Oh and maybe would could give the landmines little speakers with warnings, kind of like you find on a pack of smokes. However would the warning be in English or Spanish? (Yes this is Satire )
...might be covered in a future GPL 4. "No use in weaponry, for any purpose, and not legal for use in any military or paramilitary or civilian police purpose". I for one detest that free software is used for such purposes, and also for such things as police datamining and profiling, etc. I have grown quite annoyed with the world's mercenaries, no matter what corporation's flag they have on their shoulders. and that is all the military forces are now, corporation heavies, the muscle for the globalist blood profits crowd. google search terms to see what I am about here, "smedley butler, war, racket" also see "President, General Eisenhower, retirement speech, 'military industrial complex'".
With that said, seems it would be (somewhat + -)easy and cheap to clear a field, use any old junker you might get your hands on, fill it up to springs straining point with rocks and scrap metal(to simulate a piece of armor), tie a brick to the gas pedal, tie the steering straight ahead as best as possible, throw it in low and guide it across the field, stand back and monitor. When one goes off, watch for the hoppers and pick them off with a heavy scoped rifle from a distance.
Or hack the system. This is apparently wireless so I imagine there's an avenue there to explore, hack it or neutralize it with a spark generator once they start hopping or if you suspect one in the area.
Sorry you got beat up verbally for your submission, it IS interesting but a lot of people nowadays are just hip to the whole profits for pain scam that is ongoing. It falls into the "just not right" area. I am all for self defense, but this weird foreign policy business tied to giant multinational for-profit corporations working hand in bloody glove with the international bankers is...well..it needs to end. It is not solving any problems, and we've been trying that method for the past few thousand years so maybe we should think of some new strategy-such as not working for those people and socially shunning them and not "investing" in them and not "electing" their sock puppets-in any nation.
the fact of the matter is, any random joe or wong or schlomo or muhammad or mbunka, etc, hasd nothing against the other person and has no huge desire to go invade and kill them "other guys". If "we the people" stopped being drones for the collective "man" and just told them to go to hell..maybe that might work better than the way we have been doing things. The only way all these world's badguys get where they are is because people agree to "work" for them and "follow orders".
We are a collective humanity made up of individual people, an individual can say "no" in some manner. The faster billions of us say "no" to the 1% who continually start the wars and profit from the wars, the quicker we won't have *wars*. those top 1% are usually quite mad, quite cowardly and quite evil. I cannot fathom why anyone would work for them or follow orders from some pathologically insane person, no matter their title or rank.
Canada still uses them i.e claymores. The catch is that there needs to be someone that will trigger it remotely not via tripwire. This makes it a somewhat more intelligent mine.
I'm sure I first heard of this on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They set up a mine field around the wormhole to the gamma quadrant. The trick was that the mines could replicate themselves, and create replacements for missing mines. Sounds like the US arms industry watches TV for their inspiration. Perhaps the stealth bomber really uses a Romulan cloak?
I visited the US just over a year ago and during my stay I took a tour of the UN Building in New York.
We got to the part of the tour where they showed us the effects of war and they even had a section dedicated to landmines.
My father asked the guide who was the biggest producer of the landmines that cause so much suffering and death and the guide refused to answer him because "they are one of the members of the UN".
The next day we found out that the country that couldn't be named was indeed the United States of America.
How ironic. A member of the UN that stands against all its principles only for financial/military benifits.
... Scarabs. Except that instead of moving *after* they blow up, they jump out of the ground and CHASE AFTER YOU!
*POP!*
AAAAAAAAAAGH!
*KABLOOIE!*
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Are you nuts? As a member of the armed services, not only do I hope that he DOESN'T post it on sourceforge. But I am VERY concerned that he would have it on his laptop at all. Unless of course he means a laptop at work. That kind of code is serious national security information and should never be on a machine that is connected to the internet. I only hope that someone from a security protection agency reads that and makes a few calls regarding the post as to who might be jeopardizing the project.
These mines use magnetic sensors. They probably become duds as soon as a battery runs out.
The explosives will be recycled to make roadside bombs or for rocketing Israel.
There seems to be a lot of confusion here about types of landmines and how they work. Let's clear some of this up.
There are two types of landmines: antipersonnel and antitank. The type of mine discussed in TFA is an ANTITANK mine.
Antipersonnel mines are the ones you hear about killing and maiming civilians. These are nasty little devices designed to inflict injury to people. They do this by throwing shards of metal. Some pop out of the ground and explode. In general, they really hurt unarmed targets (i.e. people) and don't do much damage to an armored vehicle. This type of landmine is banned by the treaty everyone is talking about, because they injure a lot of civilians.
Antitank mines are activated by high pressure, and are specifically designed to blow up when a TANK runs over them. When properly designed, they do not explode when people walk over them. Many are also deployed with some anti-tamper mechanism, so that they explode when handled (so they are still potentially dangerous to an unwitting civilian who picks one up). This type of mine is NOT banned by the landmine treaty.
Again, the mine discussed in TFA is an ANTITANK mine. What makes it unique is that it can still be effective with NO anti-tamper mechanism. Even if you were to pick up and move one of these new mines, the others will move to take its place. You can't just pick up a few and make a gap; you have to pick them all up. Since it's time-consuming to clear them, they don't need to be dangerous to move.
Sure, antipersonnel mines are bad. Deploying these new antitank mines (which are incidentally LESS dangerous to civilians) means that we don't have to use antipersonnel mines anymore. This is a very good thing.
So please don't go spouting off lines like, "OMG land mines are bad and evil and they maim and kill people so why are we designing new ones??"
So, are there any situations where moral condemnation is appropriate? Or should everybody always hold their tongue because it's more polite?
Seriously, where does one draw the line? One the one hand, you don't want to come off like a pompous ass, but on the other hand, if nobody says anything, people will assume everything is acceptable becase nobody objected.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The "claymore mine" is hardly a mine. It's no more a "mine" than a morter, artillery, or hand grenade.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Dear DARPA Contractor:
We regret to inform you that due to your failure to purge all electronic records of your Hopping Mad Mines Project work from your personal laptop, you have been found in violation of new U.S. laws governing the safeguarding and portability of classified data.
A warrant has been issued for your arrest.
Sincerely,
United States Department of Defense
I dunno... do IEDs count?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
We mark our minefields, and we provide cover fire. If you don't step on a mine fast enough, we shoot.
This is because we are NOT trying to be sneaky. We use the mines as a barrier. We also use razor wire and earthworks. The intent is that people will avoid crossing the minefield.
An unmarked minefield is a terror weapon. A marked minefield is a barrier.
Perhaps... but even if they are never detonated at all, they still cause terrible harm to nearby civilians. Imagine being surrounded by acres and acres of fertile land and still starving to death because you don't dare go out and farm it. Mines are an effective method of "salting the earth".
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Children lose limbs because there are uncivilized people who create random unmarked and unattended minefields as a terror weapon.
US minefields are marked and guarded. They act as barriers, not terror weapons. We stick around to shoot anybody trying to mess with the minefield.
If mines can be programmed to move from place to place based on information links, then can't said links trigger them to deactivate themselves (or detonate if the area is cordoned off) after the conflict has ended? If this is the case, then both the US military and landmine activists get their way.
That's not to say that a landmine that can move isn't a scary thought. Fortunately, as another has pointed out, antipersonnel mines are banned, so these are designed to attack vehicles. Another interesting technology that might develop from this could be a subterranean 'torpedo' of sorts, where this mine technology is launched as a higher-speed munition to seek out high-pressure areas and detonate. It'd be a 'dumb' munition unless remotely-controlled and detonated, but its effects on enemy morale would be severe.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Do the mines come with source code?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster... hey, wait, you have a self-healing Beowulf cluster!
Note to self: taunt NetBSD crowd about not having a "landmine" port.
Didn't Theo say something about OpenBSD being free to use for operating a baby mulching machine? Linux can do it!
So, in this essence, if landmines don't discriminate against anyone, as I see it, there is comparison to the (I believe) Greek ideal that said poisoning your enemy was the most lecherous of acts in warime.
I suspect they would think the same of chemical/biological weapons, and even conventional bombs. Heck, they would probably think guns are unfair.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
And torture is illegal too, right?
Rules of war are a farce, and nobody seems to want to admit it. They are enforced and broken by those with the power to do so. The US, for instance, gets to bring war crimes charges against foreigners. At the same time, it can declare its own soldiers immune from international tribunals.
I'm sure that when several options are on the table, you might be less inclined to take one that is "illegal", but if it's the only one, I wouldn't count on finding many that would even hesitate to take it.
No, that they keep using them is the travesty. Refusing to sign the ban is just honesty.
Seriously, do you think that just because one Administration signed a ban on mines no future one will use them? The way I see it is this: if they give their word not to then do anyway, they look worse than if they just keep on doing it as they were. Once you formalise something like that, you're in a lot more trouble if you renege on the deal. Of course, I'm fairly being utilitarian about the matter...
Yar.
> Termed the "self-healing minefield", the individual mines are capable
> of detecting an enemy breach and then moving to seal the gap.
God, that sounds awesome! I can't wait to play this game, see the enemy clear a spot, then some troops waltz in later and bam! Gibbbbbbbb!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We don't leave unattended or unmarked minefields. We shoot people who try to cross, and we try to shoot them before they waste a perfectly good mine.
Unmarked and unguarded minefields are unquestionably evil. Marked and guarded ones... well, it's war, so not purely good but perhaps better than some alternative that may involve a future war.
what's wrong with a taser?
First, a taser doesn't penetrate thick clothing. That guy wearing an insulated leather jacket? Don't bother aiming for the chest area.
Second, a taser's effectivness is relativly short lived. Many people are capable of action within seconds of the end of the pulses.
Hitting somebody with a tangling net, preferably laced with a fast setting glue, would immobalize them for quite some time.
I don't read AC A human right
Now, there's a string of words I'd bet you never thought you would hear in a single sentence!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If IEDs weren't ALREADY illegal, anyone that suggested the US signing a treaty making them so would no doubt win near unanimous approval almost overnight. I think that more proves my point than undermines it.
The five year thing is hilarious. I read the title of this and laughed since I'd read this on darpa.mil some time ago and would never have thought to post it here. If this old thing is 'news', than I'd say that every one of these projects must count.
They're there affecting their effect.
I think you mean "Deep Space Nine".
No! Mine! All mine! Deep Space all MINE!
Mine, mine, mine, mine, MINE!
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
its easy
1. Get a pres who aint a war-criminal
2. go here www.mineaction.org/
3. sign the "Otawa Treaty: Landmine Ban Convention"
4. feel as good as the other ONE-HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR countries who did this before you
Someone tell Pixar! :-)
Though, geez, a network crash could be pretty nasty...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Landmines using a radio to communicate? all you have to do is use a frequency counter in the area to find what frequency they are transmitting on, and I bet its vulnerable to many network based attacked (replay attacks, man in the middle, injection, etc). Next someone will write a program that makes them all relocate themselves on top of one another, causing them to all explode.
Gotta kill to eat, bro.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
This is all well and good, but once The Dominion occupies a nearby station, they will eventually find a way to get through.
Then we'll have to rely on god-like aliens who are mostly only good for preachy religious episodes - this is not a good idea!
sic transit gloria mundi
Mines that think... and move around. By themselves. With all of the trouble the plain old stupid ones have caused? Is anyone else here experiencing that haunting feeling that humanity is deeply, deeply fscked up right now?
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
And that's not an evil thing to think or say?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Whoosh!
s/moral condemnation/lethal force/ig
reread.
not every lethal weapon needs to actually do anything at all to be effective. For instance, only two nuclear bombs have ever been dropped in anger. Since, thousands have been manufactured whose primary purpose is, in fact, not to be fired. Which bombs have had more effect on the world stage do you think, the ones that were dropped or the ones that weren't?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
At the end of the war do you think anyone is really going to be fucked?
Considering American forces already assist in mine clearing operations all over the world, yes, I think they'd do it - especially if all it takes is the press of a button.
Actually, anti-personnel landmines (not precisely the topic at hand) are often desisgned specifically to NOT do lethal damage, in order to burden the opposing force's resources.
Kill a human drone, and you have to pay a few hours' labour to dig a hole to stick him/her in, then move on to replacing him with another. Maimed people have to be supported while they heal (either by a military or civilian medical system), and often for the rest of their natural life if the injuries preclude them from supporting themselves, and then replace whatever role(s) they played in the military and/or economy.
That's why insurance policies pay much more for loss of limb than for loss of life.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
INtroducing PACMINE, the Pacman-like windows-controlled landmines. These mines gobble up the enemy mines and then pursue the friendlies...
The enema of mine enemy is mine mine.
The enemy of mine enemy is mine enema.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
yeah, I guess I'm not sure what part of the original post is supposed to be funny.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I'm sure you'll get a lot of comment from those feeling morally superior.
I wonder if they'll bitch as much about those who grow tobacco/hops, program automation computers used in cigarette factories and brewers/distillers. Statistically, they lead to far more deaths than you ever will have.
But, leave it to slashdot to see only black and white and be blind to shades of grey. Especially when it's gives a chance to feel self righteous.
I keep hearing about how landmine clearing is expensive and dangerous, but what prevents a landmine clearer from spraying a minefield sytemmatically with high caliber non-lead bullets to set them off?
Enemy soliders and U.S. soldiers might very well be women. Enemy soldiers might also be children (and U.S. soldiers might be children, too, depending on your definition of "child").
Perhaps you meant "non-combatant" or "civilian" instead of "women and children". "Non-combatant" would also cover "animals," though I'm less worried about an animal being killed by a mine decades after the end of a conflict than about a person being killed under the same circumstances.
Another key point - the mines are not intended to be buried, which should make it much easier to clean up afterwards. The will also have a fair amount of metal in them, so should be easier to spot with a metal detector than the current generation of plastic landmines (plastic is used because it is cheaper than metal as well as being a bitch to detect - best approach is a combination of ground penetrating radar and nuclear quadrupole resonance).
See! See! I told ya! Open Source promotes violence and, especially, terrorism! *ducks*
kekekekekekekekekekekekeke
Seriously. They can move to be most effective? Means they can rush enemy tanks. Goddamn campers.
This is more military-industrial pork.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
I thought the UN banned landmines? Or was it an addition to the Geneva Conventions? Either way, I thought landmines were illegal for use in war...
You contributed to the development of land mines. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself. There's no making a mine 'safe'.
They do reduce civilian casualties
Obviously you get your data from the DOD. Your statement makes bullshit seem as honest as mash potatoes and gravy. Cluster bomb 'mines' are bright yellow and above ground and they are still killing thousands of civilians, mostly children, a year in Afghanistan [ref. John Pilger, BBC] alone, not to mention actual land mines. Their use is absolutely unconscionable, and it is a profound indication of the savagery of human civilization that we even allow them to exist at all. If I were president, their manufacture and use by the United States would very quickly become illegal.
I think you are a festering piece of shit for contributing to something so purely malevolent and destructive, something with no redeeming qualities of any kind whatsoever, something which has no purpose beyond sickening, barbaric cruelty. And while it's probably futile considering that you come from the, "I got to FIRE ROCKETS! Super cool!" school of retardation, I sincerely hope it haunts you until the day you die.
A-Bomb
Apparently their web server cant self-heal from a slashdotting!
Error 2101: all your sig are belong to us
Some countries have more reasons to be equipped with land mines than others. Here in Finland we have more than 1000km of land border with a former superpower, which has a long history of dropping by for a visit to their neighbouring countries. The landmines here are kept in storage during peacetime, and deployed ONLY if an invasion seems imminent, and even then maps are made about the minefield locations, so that they can be cleared later when the hassle is over.
Compare this to the method of just dropping landmines from a plane to random locations.
Since landmines are often buried, I wonder what kind of energy source do they use, and how do they mimetize on the grounde, if they can't be buried (how would they move then). Yup, I haven't RTFA.
640KB of virtualized ram will be enough for everybody
Thanks for the link. Fascinating to see that expiring mines are the primary focus of mine use by the USA.
There are lives at stake here!
Hitting one police officer with a taser, or indeed a gluing net, would almost certainly provoke (ie, authorize) them to use lethal force. Again, great in concept, but not quite what you were looking for.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I hear they're working on some kind of "distributed computer network" sort of thing...
I read this quote no so long ago, maybe in Rome: Total War, don't remember exactly who said it:
It is good that war is so terrible, otherwise we will get too fond of it
This was a heck of a project to work on. I got to FIRE ROCKETS! Under software control! Super cool.
No, it is not cool. And I honestly think you're an asshole.
What retard modded this troll? It's a joke FFS!
Damnit, if you don't have a sense of humour, then don't downmod the funny comments. I hope I get metamod when this one comes up for review.
(Posting AC to avoid the OT downmods)
Read The Power Point Presentation
These mines deactivate after "X" days and require re-activation periodically to keep them doing their thing.
If that's what you want you air, missle, or artillery strikes. The point is to set up a quick, cheap, effective unmanned block. You have a 10 mile stretch that you need to make sure no tanks drive through. You cannot aford to leave the kind of heavy armour there you'd need to secure it. So you deploy the mines and a Predator. Enemy hits the mine field they have to slow down and either clear it or go around. Meanwhile, the Predator has noticed and an airstrike is on the way.
Mines aren't really for destroying vehicles, they are just there to be able to, should you try and cross them so you don't. The point with the hopping mines is to make clearing it infesable. You can't just blow a path through the field, because they'll hop in the path. You have to sit and try to clear them all, which takes too long.
In the United States, the tangling net laced with glue would mess up somebody who can afford a lawyer's expensive insulated leather jacket. The media would get involved, and suddenly the tangling nets would be whisked off to a special room of the police armory, never to be deployed again.
I just have a hard time dealing with how many soybean 'embryos' got killed to make that tub of tofu, maaaan. Each bean was a living thing.
>"anti-US sentiment in the world."
>Especially from our competitors in the arms business, including sweet neutral Sweden and Switzerland
As for Sweden: when we, Hungary decided to buy the swedish made "JAS-39 Gripen", which is a tiny, economy jetfighter, America got really angry. "Not buying our surplus F-16 or F-18? Let's see if you can get US entry visa requirement abolished for hungarian citizens in the next 25 years to come" and various threats they made. (Yankee can come here without visa).
Of course we did not buy either US plane because we have no intention to bomb the palestinians or invade Iran. We needed a plane for fighter interception and reconnaisance, that can be run on the cheap in the long term. We need no extensive offensive capability. That is the big problem with US arms: everybody knows you buy them because you want to wage a war. This is why countries buy french, swiss or swedish arms.
I'm not sure who you are claiming was 'angry' and dropped two nuclear bombs. From the history I have heard, it was a calm deliberate move. Or are you talking about some internal incident where someone got mad and then careless, and dropped a warhead on his foot in a munitions depot somewhere?
The anthrax research is for a vaccine. In order to make a vaccine, you have to make some anthrax. To say the US 'stockpiles bioweapons' in an abuse of both words.
Wow. For me, that single line of naiveté pretty much ruins your credibility for the entire thread.
Actually, I got to thinking about those strawmen arguments, and decided to try one of my own:
In the course of defending yourself from a punk, one of the 600 rounds you fired has struck and
killed a neighbor's 5 year old child. Do you:
_X_ Send flowers to the wake.
___ Send a highly informative gun safety pamphlet to the parents.
___ Feel just a little bit bad about the whole thing, and think that
maybe guns sometimes kill people you weren't aiming at.
Our SHM prototype used Linux; have you ever contributed to the kernel, and if so does that make you an accessory too?
Not at all, the difference being that the Linux kernel has multiple purposes. Weapon systems have only one potential use: killing.
must... stay... awake...
Yep, because so many illegal immigrants are crossing the border in fucking tanks...
Before her death she wished the world would ban the use and manufacture of landmines. The US did not sign on to a treay banning them.
she should have wished Drunk chauffers & papparazzi's where used to clear mindfeilds she would have lived longer.
I wonder when the new and improved Beehive rounds with a short life battery will become the new landmine worry?
I want these now! Maybe we can get a patch or wait for Socom 4, but it would be sooo cool in Soldner secret wars (http://www.secretwars.net) - I love that kind of futuristic stuff in the games. Like the OICW , the hkg11. The airbursts in Socom. Very cool stuff to play with ;)
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
I guess your clients also failed to mention that these work against any vehicle, not just tanks, which means instead of killing just one person at a time, they can take out civilians by the carload.
Mines are wrong no matter what the justification. A better mine is like a better mousetrap: from the point of view of the mouse, things haven't improved.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
The Mine Ban Treaty (also known as Ottawa Convention) was signed in December 1997 by 122 nations in Ottawa, Canada.
It bans the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines and became binding international law on 1 March 1999, faster than any other international treaty in history.
To date, more than two thirds of all countries have signed up to the Mine Ban Treaty. (134 by July 2003)."
Has your country already signed this treaty??
* ban
* landmines
* in the US!
No: all general purpose tools can be used harmfully. A hammer can drive in nails or stave in someone's head. But some tools are clearly designed with harmful intent in mind. There's a world of difference.
Thanks for providing a bit of insight into this project, always nice to hear from the actual people behind these stories, rather than relying on vague articles and clueless paranoid slashdotters comments :P
Don't let the idiots get you down, given the opportunity I'd probably be quite interested to work on a project like that, I imagine there were some very interesting technical challenges to overcome.
My botnet includes 100,000 bouncing mines. You still sure you want to block my spam emails? Do you feel lucky, punk?
Reduce, reuse, cycle
There would be so much information flowing that anything of value would be lost in a flood of irrelevance.
A structured query tool that can parse spoken audio can easily sift this flood to find conversations of interest. If our taxes are being spent effectively at the NSA, they've got all sorts of databases cross-related. IRS employment data connects names to jobs. The phone listings connect the phone numbers to the names / addresses in the IRS records. You want to know what journalists might have found out something from a whistleblower?
Our constitutional protections are not designed to be suspended during periods of extreme threats. As the foundation of our government, the framers of the Constitution promised that it would carry us through whatever turbulence we encounter. To claim that these threats require us to dispose of our protection against unreasonable search is to say the US Constitution is not sufficiently enlightened.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Do we need more devices like this? Have we not seen that landmines cause more problems than what they supposedly solve?
I find it extremely sad that so many people here on Slashdot find mines and death to be amusing. Many of you are America. You often wonder why people of other nations despise you, perhaps it is time that you have some sympathy and compassion towards others and life.
The reason there are problems with mines in places such as Africa comes from the fact that people do not know where they mines are. In the western world mines where planted in grids using mathematical formula, once the war was over, or the area was secured the mines could be found and removed. In Africa mines were just planted ad-hoc, and there are still millions not found. Having them move around would cause even more problems, even more so if the radios in these devices were to get fried. Perhaps a great idea on paper, but we are living in the year 2006, we don not need such barbaric technology.
I seriously worry about the psyche of the American populous.
I'm quite sure Slashdot wrote about this 1 or 2 years ago. /have/ you been.
Where
// instant - "I for one welcome our new Decaff Coffee-Flavoured-Coffee Overlords"
First it will cost more and second they will be detected easier.
Costing more still hasn't been much of an obstacle for many other programs being implemented.
I don't want this to be a flame of you or your work or kick off an anti-USA thing. I'm curious: I thought that there's an international treaty against deploying anti-personnel land mines. Am I wrong?
Pinochet, the Shah, Marcos, and Park Chung Hee, while not particularly nice guys, weren't within orders of magnitude of Stalin, Mao, Ayatollah Khomeini, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, or Robert Mugabe.
Just to give you a heads-up, Ayatollah Khomeini came to power as a result of Iranians' anger regarding the US-supported Shah. You also conveniently left out the Taliban, whom the US supported during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, we equipped the Taliban with the same Stinger Missle launchers that we're now trying to buy back from the warlords ($80,000 apiece) and people on the street.
I wonder how much we'd have to spend to buy back these landmines?
This is actually a pretty moot issue. Anti-Tank landmines are not a future-thinking weapon. I have a friend who is a tank commander in the National Guard. Tanks are actually being phased out from the US military because they're too slow and vulnerable. In the case of the DMZ between North and South Korea, it's a small enough footprint that surveillance equipment and response rockets would do the job to stop any column of tanks attempting to cross.
Seth
Surely this makes them easier to clear? Find one, blow it up, others reveal themselves by moving, blow them up, and so on.
Brings a whole new spin to War Driving when the network your looking for is a landmine network.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
I bet you could DDOS the mines by doing this:
0) Make small hole in mine field with small explosive.
1) Wait for mines to decides who goes where and start hopping
2) Make another small hole where the mines left.
3) Repeat.
Soon mines will run out of power/hop into each other/blow themselves up out of spite.
*takes off hat and bows*
N.B (Notice also that you could pull the minefield like a carpet if you capture one of them and put it on a slow moving pickup. They will all hop after you domino-effect style).
I feel that there are people on this world that 'just need killing', mostly because they won't play by the rules of society and let others live their own lives.
I believe that Firethorn has just threatened the life of the current US President.
Given that the USA is the world's biggest producer and "consumer" of mines, who's going to make them clean up their mess?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
1. "...and what you don't know Saris, is that I'm dragging a whole bunch of mines behind me..." (compliments of "Galaxy Quest")
2. What happens when someone lets off a bunch of GPS guided hopping mines somewhere near the white house?
Or some other govt. bldg? Wasn't there a derivative of this, but with mechanical spiders and injectable poison/acid in an old Tom Selleck or Gene Simmons film?
I don't, as a rule, believe that good/evil necessarily exists (well, not without a large dose of context to help decide which is which). However, given that people do judge acts to be good/evil, and that you could reasonably be expected to know this, I don't see you have much of a leg to stand on. You knew that you would be judged on what you did (whether this is fair is moot).
Landmines don't have a fan club for the simple reason that they indiscriminately explode and maim people. Does whether they can get up and play musical chairs change that basic functionality? Not really. If you are happy to fess up on working on this particular weapon - good for you. Just don't expect people to love you for it.
What I find interesting in the moral stakes the concern over human life, people are a cheap and plentiful resource, what does it matter if they get ripped to bits by mines? There are always more to fill the void. And just like you, I've posted AC because I know that there will be people who don't like what I've just written and I don't want it following me around.
War Is STupid, mines are stupid. .
: :P , then its simple we use swap the mines serial number with a key found on the net, then, when microsoft shuts down all pirated windozes with the Genuine Advantage program 'voilá' all mines deactivated .
!!!
War serves only the interests of a bunch of Mother F*****.
Do NOT make war
the solution
Since the mines will be 'intelegent' theyll have software on them, hopefully Windows
am I a genious or what!
OK, let's get real here. The whole waffle about not attacking personnel but only vehicles is really a red herring. What generally drives vehicles, droids? Consider this stuff pure politics: if you make it sound different it won't seem so bad in the press.
/during/ but AFTER the war hat the problems start. It's a bit like cluster bombs where the odd xx% failure rate doesn't matter until the war's over and you have to find and destroy the damn things before the civilians do, or, worse from a psy-ops point of view, their kids.
The whole mine idea is a Very Bad Idea (tm): it's not
However, leaving the semantics aside, doesn't it strike you that such minefields would be ideally vulnerable to a DOS? You could break into the network and give a self-desctruct command. Or pretend an outage by suppressing the signal of a couple of those mines and presto - the lot starts jumping around, offering themselves as prime target.
And what if the mines lose the ability to distinguish between you and the enemy?
Not convinced this is a good idea at all..
"Go after" the United States government. Right. Gets you in all sorts of trouble that does.
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
I always say to anybody putting down poison for rats, "I hope your dog eats it".
Well, now I'm saying to everyone who thinks these land mines are a good idea, I hope your kids find them.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Chris Morris had a giant moral compass, perhaps they can borrow it sometime ?
Same deal. If edgar the engineer fails to account for his mines at the close of hostilities, regardless where they have scampered off to, he is in violation of various protocols and will be hung by the neck until dead. Less making up new rules people and more enforcing the old rules. Landmine ban my ass . . .
It's all history, man. -anon
Do they run Linux?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
First thing I was thinking about: Handicap international is fighting for years against landmines and now some useless wannabe important guy will make this creeps walk.
. php
http://www.handicap-international.org.uk/page_255
- We sell weapons, but the French sell weapons too... ...
- We use landmines, but the Poles do it too...
- We shoot civilians, but the Israelis do it too...
- We start illegal wars, but the British were there too...
- We trample civil rights, but would you rather live in China?
- We torture prisoners, but Saddam was worse...
-
See a pattern?
If your stated policy is to never let anyone be more evil than you on any single issue, you've basically decided to become the evilest of the pack.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Where did shooting at the police come in? Somebody proposed a tangling net launcher, somebody else asked why a taser wouldn't work, and I responded. For that matter the TNL proposer was talking about shooting it at idiots before PHBs(Pointy Haired Boss, from dilbert) were impressed by the idiotic idea the idiot was proposing.
Police are allowed to use lethal force quite quickly, and in some districts, I feel too easily. I think that police, being professionals, should be held to a higher standard when it comes to 'accidental discharges'. Do you really need the SWAT team to charge in with fingers on triggers for a optometrist moonlighting as a bookie?
My suggestion to add glue to the package is for that little extra bit of effectivness. The person isn't getting out without a lot of work and assistance, though it shouldn't be too hard back at the station with an agent to dissolve the glue and maybe even the strands.
I don't read AC A human right
Only the losers get prosecuted for war crimes.
And you don't think that a taser, which shoots out two electrified probes wouldn't 'ruin' an expensive leather jacket? Heck, pepper spray can stain, especially some mixes that deliberatly include a dye to help police identify the assaulter who was pepper sprayed to get him to stop.
If the police were justified in shooting him with a taser/tangling net/pepper spray, the courts will rule that the cost is to be born by him. It's usually actual injury that juries make police departments pay for.
As for damaging the coat, depending upon what the glue is, there'd ideally be a kit to dissolve it back in the station, or even in the police car. If he continues to struggle, don't bother removing the net. Matter of fact, there should be at least a partial kit with the officer, if only to ensure that the airways remain clear.
Finally, if an officer does make a bad shoot and somebody's clothes get damaged, well, even a thosand bucks is a bit on the high side for a good leather jacket, and that's cheap compared to most medical expenses.
I don't read AC A human right
Dude, there's still unexploded ordinance from WWI in France.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Of course, nuclear MAD theory has probably saved many more lives yet.
Just as a quick clarification, mines designed to wound (e.g., minelets that just blow your foot off) aren't designed so for humane reasons, but because they do much more damage that way. If you killed a poor bastard, his mates will just chuck him in a hole and push some dirt over him. That's it. Score: 1 man down. If you blow his leg off, you took not only him out, but also made some buggers carry him, some medics patch him up, etc. Plus he still needs food, clothing, etc.
And they can actually be pretty well calibrated to that end, since they only need to blow someone's foot off. E.g., the Soviets scattered tons and tons of small pebbles, afaik made of rubber, that exploded when someone stepped on them. Think your childhood's water bombs made of a glove finger filled with water. Now think that with nitroglycerin instead, and it looks like a pebble on a mountain road. Almost no shrapnel effect (a piece of rubber won't cause too deep a wound). In fact, the taliban had fun picking those up and throwing them against the ground. That safe unless it's under your foot. But if you do step on it, you're almost _guaranteed_ to be alive, but without that foot.
At any rate, there was exactly _zero_ humanity and compassion in designing such things. It's just a cold blooded return-on-investment calculation. Those cause more damage to the enemy. That's all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
>I'd be wary of working on any weapons project, no matter how rosy a picture the client painted for me.
Then leave it to me. If it helps pay the bills, I'll gladly help them out with their kid-incinerating heatray.
umm, how much are the "treehugger mines"? I don't have the whole 10 Million yet but I could afford quite a few. If we could program them to hop after the whiney tree huggers, I feel like it would be worth it.
Mobile mines vs. Koreans? Bah! That never works. A single sacrificed zergling will take out the entire minefield!
I find it amusing that everyone on here claims to have such a clear-cut moral compass. "Don't work on anything that could possibly have a bad use" covers an awful lot of ground. Our SHM prototype used Linux; have you ever contributed to the kernel, and if so does that make you an accessory too?
Can this screw be used to make a weapon? Sure, but it's just a screw.
Can this flying anti-tank mine be used as anything BUT a weapon? No.
There's a big difference between working on something that *might*, and working on something that *is* going to kill.
You can't take the sky from me...
I don't know if this is the same project or not, but I know someone that works at General Dynamics that was working on this exact same project.
Their mines would only jump if something large enough (tank) was detected, not people.
Like any of these kids honestly understand what's involved in military deployment or war.
Predator drones were originally used just for recon, and they ended up being weaponized. We've killed a lot of bad people in various places with them, without risking a single soldier's life and I imagine with much fewer (if any, I don't recall predators being used to blast a lot of stuff outside of transports) civilian casualties than had we hit it with traditional weaponry or our own armor.
Of course, while this is true, I will inevitably be nitpicked by someone dumb enough to argue "WTF WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY BAD PEOPLE"...when the fact remains that it saved lives, even if it was those soldiers we're so quick to demonize in braindead moral rage. It just shows how much they don't get it.
... mines lay you!
"Don't work on anything that could possibly have a bad use" covers an awful lot of ground.
What one must do is determine whether what they are working will do more good or bad. Everything ends up being used for bad purposes. There is no advancement that ends up being completely benign. That said, I don't think smart landmines are very ambiguous in the "bad use" category. I don't see any good use to them. So, good for you for standing up for your principles and leaving your job. There are a lot of people who will throw around accusations that someone is a monster for working on some project, but the truth is that they would have a difficult time leaving if they were in the situation themselves. It's easy to be a hero when we talk about hypotheticals. And it's easy to vilify when using hypotheticals. I hope that in a similar situation, I would have the courage to stand up for my principles as well. Good for you.
Intelligent Munitions Systems
It's the Army's plan for smart mines as part of their Future Combat Systems program. They can do everything this DARPA program described and more. (Including remote activation, deactivation, and detonation)
Check out this text from the Army's web-site:
http://www.army.mil/fcs/factfiles/ims.html
The Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) is an unattended munitions system providing both offensive battlespace shaping and defensive force protection capabilities for the Future Force. The Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) is a system of lethal and nonlethal munitions integrated with robust command and control features, communications devices, sensors and seekers that make it an integral part of the Future Combat Systems network's core systems.
Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) provides unmanned terrain dominance, economy of force and risk mitigation for the warfighting commander. Typical missions include:
* Isolating enemy forces, objectives, and areas of decisive operations.
* Creating lucrative targets, and engaging them or cueing other fires.
* Filling gaps in the noncontiguous battlespace.
* Controlling noncombatant movement with its nonlethal capabilities.
With its reduced footprint, Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) can be delivered by various means, and once on the ground, locate itself, organize all of its components and report its location to the Battle Command Mission Execution (BCME). It will be under positive control of the BCME, one of the FCS command and control applications. The munition field can be armed, turned off to allow friendly passage, then rearmed to resume its mission. This on-off-on capability allows it to be recoverable, further reducing its logistics footprint. Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) will not become a residual hazard; it will self-destruct on command or at a preset time interval. It will also be tamper resistant.
--Cantinflas
More likely: I'll take 50,000 dumb-mines and 25,000 smart-mines, and use them where they make sense. Same reason why we still have dumb bombs and precision guided munitions.
Are you really that naieve? Profit knows no "evil customer" or "good customer", not even to the Europeans. Do some research.
You could put it into a museum and claim it to be modern art.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You know what else is a useful tool in the time of war? Killing POWs.
No, it is more useful to exchange POWs or use them as "hostages" so that your soldiers who have been captured are cared for. They are also valuable sources of information, no torture required by the way.
I understand your sentiment but making ignorant statements does not really help in the long run; it undermines your credibility. Try keeping things more rationale, right now you are only preaching to the choir and being dismissed by the rest.
Sure until someone decides to hack into the mine network and reactivate the mine field.
;-)
You realize they deactivate by detonating?
Philip Dick wrote a short story called Second Variety that was about intelligent, moving robotic 'mines' that had a way to distinguish friend from foe, and would seek out the enemy. If you haven't read the story, I recommend it, and afterward I think you'll agree with me in thinking that we don't want to go there.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
There is no effective way of 100% clearing an area of mines. The main use of mines is area denial. So, letting the enemy know WHERE mines are is not a bad idea. Either they then go around the field into the choke points that you want them in, or they spend time and effort clearing the area which either a) delays them or b) screams "here we are" or c) both. ... it doesn't matter that they know where they are.
... but of course the enemy can triangulate too and that makes it easier to breach the mine-field, right? Except that you can seed the area with cheap emitters that mimic mines at the same time. The enemy don't know which are live mines and which are fakes - and you build in the same 'time to die' function into the fakes.
So why not just have every mine emit a clear radio signal? That way you (and the enemy) can have simple mine-field detectors
Wire the transmitter into the arming circuit and build in a timer that defuses the mine after a certain period of time. That way, if the mine is transmitting it's signal, it's still live and once it's safe it stops transmitting. Then it's easy to spot if any failed to disarm, and you can use triangulation to pick out the few rogue mines that didn't disarm (or better still have the signal change on disarming, so that you can go back and clear up the duds too if you want to).
Makes it easy to clean up afterwards and there's no need for self healing mobile mines as you can dump thousands of the fakes across the area to make sure that creating any gaps in the first place is *tough*. You might even find you can get away with using fewer mines in the first place.
Yeah, they have plans for EVERYTHING. Like "what to do in Iraq once we got topple it"! Or "What to do with all those bomblets we littered all over Laos that didn't go off when we dropped cluster bombs." Or "What to do when our nuke testing in the marshall islands causes a 25 fold increase in birth defects for the natives"
Yeah, the US military are the kings of planning ahead.
I just don't understand people like you who think the US goes around cleaning up other people's messes. We leave such messes everywhere its pathetic.
I hope you step on a land mine. I really do.
Why stick up for big business?
So.. Anthrax bombs are OK then by you eh? what about 747's full of passengers? its war right? anything goes! WP grenades, tactical nuclear weapons, mustard gas.. And people wonder why american soldiers have their balls cut off and their eyes extracted by so called "savages"....
Well i would say that when your objective is to torture the enemy horribly with biological weapons before they ultimately die, then yes i would say thats pretty fucking immoral you sick fuck.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
But first can I say: holy crap! I was one of the main software engineers on this project (heck I still have the source code on my laptop) but that was like 5 years ago. NOW we get slashdotted?
Yeah, I read about this in The Register about 3 years ago. And on the DARPA site, there's a timeline
Program Milestones
Spring 2003 Planned Completion of Phase II - Enhanced subsystem performance and 50-plus prototype minefield operational testing and demonstration. System technology transition to the U.S. Army.
Spring 2002 Completion of Phase I - Enabling technology development and small-scale prototype minefield testing.
Spring 2000 Self-Healing Minefield system development contracts awarded.
June 1999 Self-Healing Minefield BAA99-21 released.
June 1998 DARPA Track II Task Force briefed Deputy Secretary of Defense on Self- Healing Minefield as Track II alternative.
October 1997 Deputy Secretary of Defense directs DARPA to execute Antipersonnel Landmine Alternative Track II study.
So it looks like this page (and project?) has been inactive since about 2002. So much for the breathless Slashdot summary "New landmines will soon communicate via a radio network." Right. Real Soon Now.
MIlitary casualties perhaps. But in WWI, millions of soldiers died in the trenches, in WWII, many more millions of civilians were killed by bombs and armour. The London Blitz; Dresden and Tokyo firebombing; Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The United States is the biggest user of metal landmines.
Lots of countries banned them, but not the USA because they used lots and lots of them in the line dividing the two Koreas.
The country with most landmines in the fields is Colombia, but the landmines there are done with coconuts and syringes, by the guerillas, not by any legal landmine maker.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
But I'm always wary of claims that new weapons will reduce human misery.
If you remove the politics and emotionalism from the current Iraq occupation, it turns out that it has caused FAR LESS human misery than other similarly sized military actions. On both sides. Heck, it's statistically safer being an Iraqi civilian than a Washington DC resident.
New weapons that are designed to kill more people will of course increase human misery. But the current emphasis on military research is on weapons that are precise rather than indiscriminate.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Some U.S. mines are designed to self-destruct after a preset deployment period. "All [scatterable] mines have a safe-arm time from (45 seconds to 2 minutes). When mines fail to arm they will self-destruct immediately. SD times are not exact, mines actually self-destruct in a window between 80 to 100 percent of their SD time ie. mines with a 4 hour SD time will start to SD in 3 hours 12 minutes." See http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/fascam.htm
Also http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/pol icy/army/fm/20-32/index.html
So, in other words, go for the lethal force first, and make sure you finish the job, ensuring he has no opportunity to fight back?
I try to avoid attacking policemen in general (ran from one, once, though...), and I'd much rather face the consequences of tasering an officer than killing him.
Sorry,
But the US is one of the few countries to not sign the Anti-Bioweapons treaty - just like the land mine treaty.
Sure, the world is probably a safer place having the US do the research, but please don't deny that the US has stockpiles of Bioweapons and continues to be the worlds single largest developer and researcher of BioWeapons.
By the way, the US Gov't supplied the Anthrax to Iraq as a bioweapon, back when Saddam was viewed as a counter to Iran.
Yes, they want to ban new landmines - but the destruction of old minefields was also part of the treaty.
Also, wikipedia (for what it's worth) indicates that none of the large military powers have signed the treaty. I had thought the US was the lone hold out.
Clear, Dark Skies
> So.. Anthrax bombs are OK then by you eh? what about 747's full of passengers? its war right?
I rarely approve of war and its tactics. I do not condone any of those actions. My point was essentially that normal standards of morality do not apply in war.
If a crashing into a building with a 747 full of passengers actually helped neutralize the enemy, then it would make sense as a military tactic. As it is, it simply pissed the US off and strengthened its resolve, making it an ineffective tactic. The fact that the US historically has entered wars following symbolic losses (Alamo, Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, among others) made it an *idiotic* tactic. Speaking in moral terms, it was immoral, since it did nothing to advance either main objective, and anybody with a basic knowledge of US history would have known from the start that it wouldn't.
> Well i would say that when your objective is to torture the enemy horribly with biological weapons before they ultimately die, then yes i would say thats pretty fucking immoral you sick fuck.
You're thinking as a human being that needs to live in cooperation with others. In a war, your survival depends on preventing your opponent from killing you. Therefore, you must take whatever measures necessary to prevent him from doing so. If he has an army, it may mean killing or otherwise incapacitating a very large number of people.
If someone treats torture as an end in itself, I'd consider them a psychopath. However, as a means of debilitating and demoralizing an opponent, it may be very effective.
Since it apparently didn't come through in my original post, let me make it very clear: I do not approve of wars. I do not approve of war tactics. But human morality is largely based on the need to live together, and in the context of war, that goes out the window.
Actually I think if there was only one single being on this planet, there wouldn't be much conflict
Hmm... if that "single being" were a guy, would he die of excessive masturbation ? In effect, would masturbation become a weapon in disguise ? What would he masturbate about ?
Is murder necessarily immoral? Suppose for instance there is an invading army occupying your home town. You aren't allowed out at night, and they keep tabs on everything you do in public, maybe even stopping by your house once a week or once a day to make sure you're not up to anything. Would it be immoral to kill (or murder, if you prefer) the soldiers, forcing the invading army to constantly reallocate resources to your area, potentially giving somebody else a chance to drive them out of your country?
Whether or not I agree with war, a warrior cannot be burdened with normal standards of morality if he is to acheive his goals.
Based on some other light reading you could even tell or time the mine to deactivate and release a feeding solution that would encourage the breakdown of the explosive to non-toxic components or to release a colorant to facilitate detection. Either could be timed or activated by chemical means rather than depending on the electronics thus making the mine somewhat biodegradable.
s px/
Sweden FOI issues an annual report, one of the detection methods mentioned in the 2003 report is the breakdown of explosive by bacteria. They are also working on environmentally friendly explosives. I merely couple these two ideas into one.
http://www.foi.se/FOI/templates/startpage____96.a
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Do you not agree that moral boundaries must shift in a war?
If you are the aggressor, you must impose your will upon the opponent. If you are the defender, you must prevent your opponent from doing so. In either situation, if you are constrained by "normal" moral boundaries (those adopted when living in cooperation is key to survival), your enemy gains an advantage.
Don't be ridiculous. You worked on a weapon. You can't use it to make cheese, it doesn't wash dishes, and I don't want to cover myself up with it at night to keep warm. It's a weapon. Linux is used for various things.
It's not that our moral compass is ideal - it's that yours is so screwed up.
Case in point - if you worked on inventing guns, at least those have been used at some point to feed people off buffalo meat in the past. You worked on a LAND MINE.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Doesn't C4 need a shockwave to set it off? I believe that you can set fire to it and it only burns up, slowly.
So include a timer which starts a fire, which burns up the explosive and the case.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
According to Archive.org, that page at Darpa hasn't changed significantly since 2002. Here it is four years ago: http://web.archive.org/web/20021106051729/http://w ww.darpa.mil/ato/programs/SHM/htmldemo.html
Cutting edge on Slashdot today!
Oh we have them don't you doubt that for a minute. We claim to be getting rid of them though.d ex.html#rogues"j une03.asp
"The US stockpile consists of over 30,000 tonnes of unitary CW gent and approximately 700 tonnes of binary components. It includes the nerve agents sarin and VX and the vesicant mustard. They are stored at the nine locations: Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean; Edgewood, Maryland; Anniston, Alabama; Blue Grass, Kentucky; Newport, Indiana; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Pueblo, Colorado; Tooele, Utah; and Umatilla, Oregon. The cost of destroying the US stockpile is currently estimated at approximately $12.4 billion. Large-scale destruction operations began at the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) in 1990. The second destruction facility at Tooele, Utah, began operation in August 1996. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/cw/cwin
However our commitment to really disarming biologically seems to be shaky at best. http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_06/biopatent_
We are all just people.
It be nice if someone could figure out how to hack these into all clustering and then blowing each other up. Landmines are the most cowardly type of warfare and leave wherever they are used a mess for years afterwards. At the very least they should all be programmed with a "time to die" where they become harmless.
Find out where the buffalo like to eat/sleep/fuck/hide. Maybe leave a bit of bait, such as a salt lick. Place the landmines.
With the radio, you don't have to sit around waiting. You could mine a huge area. When a buffalo triggers a mine, the mine could first transmit a signal so that you know your dinner is waiting.
From Wiki (assuming it's accurate):
So, in short, I wouldn't count on it. Burning C4 is likely to just expend it's chemical energy slowly, but there is still a danger if the mine is put under pressure as well. Also, I wouldn't gurantee that the fire would keep burning in a buried mine; often when you burn something in an unventelated environment, it will use up available oxygen and snuff itself out.
And as I understand it, a C4 fire is slow and takes a great deal of time to burn all the available explosives - if there isn't a person around to make sure it's all burned up, then you can't know for sure that therre isn't still live exlosives in the mine. Plus, if the mine uses C4, then it presumably uses a blasting cap - do you really want to expose a detonator to fire?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
The UN finally acknowledges that the USA has been in war all the fucking time for the last 200 years, and is the only country in the world that has been in war in virtually all regions, and acepts that they just do it because they want more power and more economic control over the rest of the world. And then they acknowledge that they are way more dangerous than Irak, because a) Irak has no military power and b) Because Irak had only certain SPECIFIC military targets targets, and they have at least a "valid reason" (no reason is valid when we are talking about killing thousands, but you get the point) to attack those targets, while the USA has EVERY country as a target, just because they want more money, or more power, or control over a region because of strategic reasons, or they just don't like your ideas (read: Cuba). And then, they agree that the USA has violated more human rights than any other country, and not inside their territory, in a controlled manner (only a few cases, decided by the state itself and not by some soldiers), and because of real reasons of national security, like Cuba did, but all over the world, all the time outside their frontiers where they just don't care, with no control from the state, and in the order of millions, over the whole fucking last 100 years.
After realising all this, the UN treats the USA just like they permitted the USA to do with countrys like Nicaragua, Irak, Cuba, etc. and they restrict they commerce, and menace them with invasion, until they disarm and remove their troups from foreign countrys where they don't belong.
Off course this isn't going to happend, obviously NATO is way more powerfull than the UN, and both are mainly controlled by the USA, and off course that the most powerfull nations in the world won't say a damn word about it because the USA won't fuck with them, and because they all gain money out of having a 3rld world, And this has been the task of the USA during the last century, to make sure we have a bigger 3rld world, so they can get rich and powerfull out of it.
This makes them a strange empire, all of the empires that walked this earth before meant off course destruction and domination, but they also meant the growing of many civilizations, culture, etc.
England was once a powerfull empire, and they are responsible for creating Australia. Spain and Portugal were empires too, but they are responsible for allmost all latinamerica.
Just tell me one positive thing the USA has donde for the world. Others conquer and dominate, but also teach, improve, create, and lets grow.
The USA just destroys so 200 millions of below-the-average rednecks in the north can buy a playstation.
Again, this situation ISN'T going to change anytime soon, but at least stop talking about the actions of the USA as if they had a reason, or were justifiable in some way. It's just plain old GREED, and you don't mind killing people to get what you want. It's allright, keep doing it, but at least get real.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
>While your point is well taken, I'd like to pick a little nit: Bombs were dropped on people long before the airplane. People used tethered balloons.
...and artillery and canons pretty much had the same effect...
This was the origin of Blue Tooth as I had understood things.
I guess, given PKI sort of thing, you could "tell" a mine to neutralize itself.. and perhaps start beeping for pickup?
It would seem that being underground and being mobile are mutually exclusive?
Would be great to be able to clean up after a conflict.
Best - JDW
It cannot be a good thing that this reminds me of devices from a particularly evil Paranoia adventure. The one with the gigantic, neurotic robot tank. In which the players are given a box of old-tech land mines and a remote control labeled "ON" and "OFF". When flipped to "ON", the mines sprout little crab-like legs and scuttle off looking for the best places to set themselves, showing up throughout the rest of the adventure at just the wrong time.
And: "These are thinking mines. They go off when they think they're supposed to."
As if we didn't have enough trouble with landmines getting left over after wars are over and killing innocent civilians, now they're making them even harder to find and disarm?
I was surprised and skeptical to read this. With good cause, it would seem:
Population of Iraq: 28,807,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq), mpdcNav_GID,1523,mpdcNav,%7C.asp)
Population of Washington DC: 563, 384 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_dc
Estimated civilian deaths, Iraq conflict: 41,054* (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/)
Homicide count, 2005, Washington DC: 195 (http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,a,1239,q,543308
Death ratio, Iraq: 41,054 / 28,807,000 = 0.14%
Death ratio, Washington DC: 195 / 563,384 = 0.03%
In other words, you are NOT safer as an Iraqi civilian than as a DC resident. You're FIVE times more likely to die as a result of the war as you are from homicide. I used homicide as a parallel for death due to war as a civilian casualty. Yes it's not perfect, but if you have a better metric, I'd be happy to compare.
* Median of min/max estimates as supplied.
> If a crashing into a building with a 747 full of passengers actually helped neutralize the enemy, then it would make sense as a military tactic.
> As it is, it simply pissed the US off and strengthened its resolve, making it an ineffective tactic. The fact that the US historically has entered
> wars following symbolic losses (Alamo, Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, among others) made it an *idiotic* tactic. Speaking in moral terms, it was
> immoral, since it did nothing to advance either main objective, and anybody with a basic knowledge of US history would have known
> from the start that it wouldn't.
But you're completely wrong - the main goal of terrorism is to provoke your target (government) into a disproportionately violent reaction, thus leading to a reduction of the popular support of your enemy, and a strengthening of the popular support for your own cause. In this context, 7/11 has achieved it's goal brilliantly, causing the U.S. to rush off into an unjustified, immoral war of aggression against a country that didn't have anything to do with 7/11 whatsoever, except maybe being the neighbour of the country where most of the terrorists came from. Appart from being a total PR disaster for the U.S. that will haunt future administrations for probably decades to come, it also saps the U.S. treasury in a way not seen since the Vietnam war, significantly weakening the U.S. ability to intervene if, for instance, the Saudi government where to be
overthrown by insurgents. So by your logic, 7/11 was in fact a highly moral act - as a side note, this is the exact same logic with which
attrocities have been justified by their perpetrators since the dawn of time.
While I do accept that in war, you sometimes have no other realistic choice but to act in a highly immoral way (*), I don't think it's a good idea to pretend that necessity makes something moral, because then you're only a tiny step away from arguing that something is moral because it's more convenient.
(*) Like killing someone, for a start.
Unless they weigh 4,000 lbs and are wearing steel shoes.
Something that resembles Spider mines from Starcraft(self-cloaking,unit chasing mines,laid by vultures).Its would be frieghtening to see a batch of mines chasing and exploding at close range.
do you really want to expose a detonator to fire
:-)
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
That's the single lamest argument I've ever heard. The Linux kernel could be used for evil, and we all know the Linux kernel itself is not evil, THEREFORE IT'S OK TO DESIGN MORE EFFECTIVE LAND MINES.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
That means that there will be more children who will loose their arms and legs here in Colombia because of the mines. And there are people still thinking that the FARC are heroes and want to free Colombia.
http://www.colombiasinminas.org/
Heard about this some years ago, scientists were developing a bioluminescent bacteria that feeds on the trace chemicals given off by explosives. Supposedly you can sprinkle some of this stuff over a suspected minefield and in a week or two the dirt around the mines will glow under ultra-violet light.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Given that after signing, the U.S. government would likely just announce that the ban unfairly restricted U.S. commerce or some such crap, I think most of the world knows where they stand on treaties.
The word "protest" comes to mind. You may have heard the word before.
I admit it was poor english and word choice on my part, but you people read too much into it.
I have nothing to say.
You could put it into a museum and claim it to be modern art. :-)
That... would actually be a pretty cool
You can't take the sky from me...
Okay we attack in one hour - send the signal to the enemy's mines that the war is over!
Anyone ever thought of this ? Would be a great way to verify that an area has been completely demined, or find the approximate position of mines that have been moved (by flood/other explosions/etc).
anybody seen Screamers?
a lot scarier than Terminators...
i disable sigs
Of course, they'll wait until after prime picking season.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
Veggie heads are useless.
Do a little research about the human teeth and you'll see why a world where we can't eat meat is a world where dentists make BILLIONS!
Also, find out how long you could survive on only veggies without taking giant multivitamins. How long would you last before your body started shutting down? (Not very long is the answer.)
So, yeah. You gotta kill to eat.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
I used homicide as a parallel for death due to war as a civilian casualty.
Why? Whatever makes you think they're equivalent? Homicide is a much narrower definition than that used by www.iraqbodycount.net, which counts all deaths indirectly related to the occupation.
Here's a link that reference Iraq being safer than DC: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=55283
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
2) Your link was quite interesting (genuinely) - what I also found interesting, too, though, was the 50+ comments, 90%+ of which went into showing flaws in the OPs opinions.
1) Yes, of course. But on the other hand, homicide statistics ONLY count homicide (duh). Thus one is sampling a smaller subset than the other.
2) Comments are like assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink. So it really doesn't mean anything that the article had negative comments.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
War has become much safer for soldiers and much much MUCH more deadly for civilians. It used to be civilians didn't die until the infantry actually marched into the city. With bombs and, later, missiles, civilian casualties in warfare now grossly outnumber military casualties. This is a product of modern technology.
As far as MAD saving lives, I think we'll need to wait another hundred years or so before we can really claim that. While it's prevented large scale conflict in the past 50 years, if the dominoes start falling, and those stockpiles get used, all those traditional wars that were prevented aren't going to look like diddley compared to the death tolls that will start ringing up when major cities get turned into glass and ashes.
The combat advances of world war II did overcome the stalemate problem of world war I (WWI was the first time since mideval seiges where defensive technology outperformed offensive technology) defensive weaponry almost always creates horrible combat situations that the inventors didn't predict.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!