Slashdot Mirror
Videogames Used to Train Terrorists?
kalpatin writes "Reuters reports that videogames are being used to train terrorists. The title Counter-Strike is apparently being used as a tool to prepare individuals for a mission: blowing up an oil tanker. The ultimate goal is to 'make the strait of Hormuz impassable, the Jomhouri-ye Eslami daily reported. About two-fifths of globally traded oil passes through the channel. The game illustrates a warning by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said in June that oil exports in the Gulf region could be seriously endangered if the United States made a wrong move on Iran.'"
So now I'm a terrorist because I can use a mouse and a keyboard?
Insane bastard writers article
Posts article
Slashdot picks it up
???
Profit?
I swear if someone is training this way they are about as dangerous as your average DnD player with a sharp pencil.
I like muppets.
Where can we download a copy of their mission? I wanna try it!
That said, of course, if the US had a copy of their mission, they'd know the plan and how to guard it pretty well.
All you learn is how to move a mouse/controller.
I think that we should support any terrorist who wants to use a video game as "training". It will make them that much easier to capture.
It's designed to inflame Muslim passion against the United States and the Western world. The Iranian government in particular wants to distract its population from the failing economy. The radical president of Iran was elected to fix economic woes, but he has been sidetracked by international conflict. It's also meant as a threat: bomb Iran and we will cut off your oil supply. Only in the mind of Jack Thompson do video games train people to become professional killers.
I strongly doubt that the Iranians would not use Iranian special forces to accomplish such a mission and instead use a 15 year old kid who played the game two times. Instead they want the kid to join the Iranian military or just shut up about the poor Iranian economy.
It's a friggin' game. A lot of US-made games show conflicts in areas in the Middle East. Oooh. Terrorist training!
Well that's one way of looking at it. At the risk of godwinning myself, that condemns the US colonists, the French, Yugoslav and Soviet resistance to Nazi occupation and various other good guys to the criminal bin. In any case, resistance of this sort is NOT terrorism - terrorism is force against civilians for political purposes. In fact,the UN, in a general assembly resolution on terrorism, still affirmed the right of peoples to use force to resist racist, colonial and imperialist regimes.
Personally I'm of the opinion that if you are in someone else's country illegally as a member of an occupying army, then it's right, proper and decent of the local population to take potshots at you for any reason they so desire, but this is heading down the road of offtopic flamebait so I'll stop here.
Why are people in such an uproar about this acting as if Iranians can't play Counter Strike? There's a lot of clueless folks commenting on this...
As for a potential cultural aspect of this? I'm sure some Islamic groups make an uproar anytime Muslims are shown as "terrorists" in popular western games. It happens on both sides, just because you only see one side of it doesn't mean that the other side is sitting still.
For God's sake, these are the same people who burn churches and embasseys when a cartoon comes out of their main prophet, do you really think CS missions like Arab Streets simply go by unnoticed in their culture.
The bottom line is that no one is banning a single thing (that takes care of about 20% of the posts I've read so far), no one is doing anything different today than they have in the past and...
VIDEO GAMES STILL SUCK FOR LEARNING HOW TO USE FIREARMS!!
Let's not take this too seriously. There's nothing substantial to see here aside from people who are making this into something that it simply isn't.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Soooo, we can expect terrorists to be trying to snipe while doing a crouching bunny-hop? I guess it will at least make them easier to spot...
I'd think a better "training" tool would be a Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear type game, where the object is to succeed without the enemy getting a shot off.
This is total FUD BS. Oh noes! Teh terrorists are using verbal speech to perfect their terrorist tactics!!! Must ban verbal speech!!!1!
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
I think the actual mod in that situation would be -1, "The joke went over your head".
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
As for terrorist groups, the tactical mission of closing the Strait of Hormuz is completely out of reach, and even if it weren't, how's Counterstrike going to help them plan? I imagine that sea-borne terrorists would use light boats or diving gear and place improvised mines into the narrow shipping lanes. So how do you propose they use Counterstrike to plan their mission?
Right, you have no idea. That's because this story, like many others, gets written before anybody thinks about it. This is written simply because it fits the convenient script according to which "They're evil and they're plotting" - which is scare tactic that's supposed to make it easier for us to abandon our freedoms and turn them over to the government.
If you're in a CS-type firefight, you've already fucked up the mission.
There, you forgot to properly emphasize the most important insight. Computer games are not good training instruments because they are designed to be interesting, fun, entertaining. They're GAMES. If they actually dealt with hard problems in any respect, nobody would buy and play them.
And apparently all Iranians are terrorists now, too? I'm looking at you, racist article summarizer.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
Leave them alone. They're not trying to make a move on you.
If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no songs.