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Second Life & WoW Terrorist Training Camps?
Tech.Luver writes "theinquirer reports that 'Aussie Security experts claim that Second Life and online games such as World of Warcraft are being used to train terrorists.
Apparently there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups in Second Life and they use the site for recruiting and training. This is on top of the Second Life Liberation Army.""
Oh noes!
How do you kill...that which has no life?
No seriously, I think I saw a video of them training once(nsfw). They're in yer raids, ninjaing your epic loots.
Some people are so damn stupid. What bearing could this possibly have on real life? The only thing I can think of is that you're increasing the fat, out of shape, cheetoes consuming segment of the terrorist population...Scary stuff. They do enough of this "training", we could neutralize them with a gift of free broadband and some jolt cola.
The only way I'll believe that this is real is if we start getting evidence of terrorist attacks on gold farmers.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I just knew there was something fishy about that bukkake garden!
And I thought they were trained in those small trucks (Powell showed us) in Iraq. I was wrong. They are trained in the tubes.
This is news... The terrorists have less of a life than we do!
The game.
I thought Iraq was the main terrorist training camp, now that they can use 2nd life instead I'd expect things to calm down there a lot.
...by the time I post this:
If you play wow, you're supporting the terrorists!
Or,
So that's where they kept the WMDs.... In Ironforge!
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I'll believe it when I see a national landmark knocked over by a flying penis.
this completely explains osama bin laden's latest video, where he stomps grounding totems while enchanting AK-47s with +5 weapon damage.
also, when did we as a country stop blaming FPS games for violence and start blaming magical elves?
oh marmalade.
or was that supposed to be "get along"? whatev.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Wow, and you know what? There are even MORE terrorists training in this thing we call "real life"! Can you believe it? We'd better end this thing called life before they have a chance to do something!
All kidding aside, I bet there are "terrorists" using any form of communication that is there. Unless we live completely isolationist lives, never being allowed to interact with anyone, ever, people are going to *gasp* get together and talk about things, including terrorism. Focusing on video games is just stupid and a colossal waste of time.
today is spelling optional day.
You have to wonder about how someone can live with themselves for typing up this garbage, they go to collage do all sorts of stuff... and then this? People are blowing up corporate crap in SL because they don't WANT you there. As for using weapons in WoW to train for Rl? Uh where's my exploding sheep? :P
Cool!
The latest version of WoW now allows you to fight REAL TERRORISTS!! Experience the realism, the feeling of danger.. explore the mind of the insanely fanatic!
Sounds like a feature to me! True evildoers in a game.
The real question here is, "Is the US Military the Alliance or the Horde?"
It all makes sense now, the insurgents aren't fighting for political or religious reason, they're farming our soldiers for rare drops! And the reason they seem so eager to sacrifice a bunch of their own to kill one American soldier is because they've got rezzers on their teams.
The insidious bastards, applying WoW tactics to real life.
As much as I would like to comment on the state of the world and the absurdity of "security" "experts" (each requiring quotation marks to indicate irony), it looks to me as if that article is a spoof.
Who has been *called* a Second Life terrorist to debunk this rumor.
The SLLA isn't a real "terrorist" organization. It's a bunch of unfunny people who think that exploding picture replicators near buildings in SL comprises some sort of Jacobin revolution. I'm serious. Look at their white paper.
As for real terrorists: frankly, I hope they're practicing in Second Life. Because with all the other, harder-to-track ways they could be communicating information--IRC channels, encrypted and hidden forums, custom IM software, etc--they choose to use a public program in which anyone can access anywhere by default and the company religiously logs any and all chats that pass through their network and make it a point to discipline people on the basis of chatlogs.
So we should be so lucky to have terrorists so stupid that they'd communicate using SL--a clunky graphically terrible product that can't even properly form eyebrows, much less a complex trigger mechanism--as opposed to, say, sending a real video over some other quicker undetectable means.
And we have the perfect operative for the job. Someone who can blend in with the terrorist and provide this intel.
The only agent for this job is none other than LEEROY JENKINS!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
So in order to fight these terrorists, we should all go on a burning crusade?
I'm sorry, I don't feel right about that at all.
"Now I'm seriously serious!" - Serious Sam
So that's why the bombs in London and the Glasgow airport attack the other week failed miserably.
They thought their spell of detonation and shield of fire protection worked outside the game too.
the FBI take the easy route and bust them in WoW or Second Life...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Would they have considered their entire country to be a terrorist training camp if they applied their modern standards to their early country?
(Also, is there a reason the CAPTCHA word is "convicts"?)
Especially after the Haneef scandal. American and Australian intelligence is not to be trusted.
When we had the stories of criminalising people for fictional virtual pr0n in online environments, one of the responses to show how ludicrous this is was to suggest we start criminalising WoW players for virtual murder...
It's sad that everytime someone says "But you can't stop X, otherwise we might as well crack down on Y too, which would be silly", it's not long before Y becomes the Internet taboo which people also want to crack down upon...
Please tell me this story is just a parody?
Seriously though, I read the title and it would be something to expect on April 1st. "Terrorists are able to simulate real life weapons in World of Warcraft", yes because we know all terrorists can learn hand to hand combat via a video game where you click on a target and it mindlessly starts hacking away
Oh no... terrorists also use their tongues to speak. Quick, cut the tongues of everyone you think is a terrorist...
Oh no twice... terrorists use cars for bombs and transportation! Quick - destroy all cars, and cease manufacturing any new ones that are not STRICTLY for the use by Police, TSA, DHS, and RIAA...
We were spying on Iraq and listening to conversations between Saddam Hussein and his generals. We overheard Hussein mentioning that he had WMDs to his generals. This is the *intelligence* we had that led us to believe he had WMDs.
In all likelihood, they were playing one of the various war MMOs or online games and training. So when when we were listening, the context was lost.
The lessen learned is that playing online games can lead to off line wars.
(Of course, I'm being a bit sarcastic here.)
If you see gnomes spending too much time at the mailbox then they are probably characters of government employees reading others mail.
"Jihad Jihad" in Lineage 2 coming from one of the clan leaders while flying this dragon over Oren Castle I knew something was not right.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It's true. According to documents recently captured by the CIA, some of the plots they are working on include:
Baffling news today from the West Bank, where officials arrested six terrorists who were attempting to attack a local market. Apparently the terrorists tried to execute their attack by teasing several vicious dogs they found wandering in a nearby alley, then leading the dogs to the market as they ran towards it. Witnesses say that the terrorists ran into the market, waited until the dogs were right on top of them, then attempted to confuse the dogs in various ways. One terrorist wrapped himself in a camoflage cloak and hid behind a fruit vendors stand, while several others simply laid on the ground and played dead. All six terrorists were hospitalized with bite and claw wounds to their face and arms.
recent case of dr haneeef, the security forces lied - as was shown in open court - about what suspect said under interrogation.
aussies no better then bush, actually worse, consider treatmetn of aborigines
'jihad' is the new 'hittler'. Social mutants need something capable of eliciting a shocked response from people who aren't a member of their social group. Kids using extremist tags simply recognized it as a code word that is beyond the acceptable and practically guaranteed to get exactly the sort of response they are getting.
When EMP weapons, hovertanks, and mechanized walkers become available on the battlefield, they will be ready.
I hear they don't yet have the discipline to wait patiently for aircraft without many teamkills, but given time and unlocks they may become a formidable force.
next audio tape from osama will let us know we're going to be 'pwnd'.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
Once they get playing they won't be willing to quit long enough to attack in real life.
"Ahmad, we must go fight the Americans now."
"Maybe later, I am in an instance."
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
I wonder, would now be a good time to revisit my criticism that the OLPC laptops could easily be stolen my militias, and reflashed with survival manuals, cartography software, and secure mesh networking communication protocols?
:)
I figure people will either take me seriously, or get a good laugh. Either way seems like a net benefit for humanity
Play Guild Wars. No monthly fee and terrorist free since 2005!!!
I don't have a microwave. I do, however, have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
How much work is it to make a koran and a toilet in Second Life?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
But WoW would be useless for that, as compared to a game of "Capture the Flag" played out in the sticks, or even in the cities. It teaches you nothing about real-world communications problems, nothing about the real fear and uncertainty of being in the world, waiting for something to happen, nothing about tactics against humans.
WoW tactics boil down to tactics vs mobs, and tactics vs mobs. In the first you're fighting a bunch of simplistic AI, and in the second you're fighting a bunch of people who know they're not going to lose anything if they die, so they just do the lemming over and over until one side wins...It's a joke.
I can think of a thousand "games" that you could play in the real world that would actually get you useful skills, and useful training. Playing WoW, on the other hand, gives you the wrong kind of reflexes, zero physical conditioning, and no actual experience with moving around in the world.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
ACTUAL bad guys learning and practicing their horrific murder skills in a virtual environment?
Somewhere, Jack Thompson just got a chubby.
Jihadist's PoM Pyroblast crits an M1A1 for 13,000 HP M1A1 assplodes Think of the children.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I play Command and Conquer Generals almost all the time.
While I prefer to play as China and nuke the crap out of everything. I also like to play as GLA and send waves of suicide bombers at the other players bases. (Almost everyone likes to play as USA, how boring having to adhere to rules of war.)
cince games like C&C are FAR FAR better at training for strategy than the other two and also match the tools that the terrorists use, wouldn't decent strategy games like that work better?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As soon as a computer virus can infect a human being, as soon as code can break down a real life store, we'll talk about it.
'til then, excuse me while I spend my time with something more meaningful. Like, counting the tiles on the ceiling.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unless they're training to become furries or bondage queens I don't think we have to worry too much about SL. Seriously, it's not like you can learn to fly a jet or something in there (the vehicle controls are way too primitive), and it's not like SL behaves like the real world in most ways--you can detach your point of view and have it fly around for instance, or you can just fly around yourself. So what does that leave? Well, you can use it as a glorified chat channel, which seems fairly pointless. Also, the steep system and bandwidth requirements mean that you need to not be in some place that ends in -stan to even get in.
I read the internet for the articles.
when on a plane being hijacked. "We are the 1337 jihad. All your planes are belong to us. You just got pwn3d."
Sic Semper MicroSoft
Get these terrorists hooked on WoW, and they'll lose their will to do REAL terrorism. Even if they don't, their loss of muscle tone and weight gain will make them quite ineffective, barely able to hold an AK-47 much less fire it. Suicide bombers will be too weak to stand with their bombs on. And their pale skin will make them the laughingstock of all the other Arabs.
We must remain vigilant: This could be provide all the training would-be terrorists need to run around buying furry porn, attachable penises, and sparkly glowy rotating particle effects in real life.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die." -- H.P. Lovecraft
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -Mahatma Ghandi
At least they aren't using America's Army.
This article is frigging hilarious. I wonder what kind of weapons they are training with in WoW, that will make them better. I'm sure that all the coalition forces will be very scared to see a guy swinging something called [Whirt's Third Leg] coming at them, rather than using an [RPG]
Ah yes, I can see it now....
CoolMartyr: LuvztoJihadd, we are planning a raid, on the Devil Pig camp. Can you go tonight?
LuvztoJihadd: No, I am not keyed for it yet. My Al Qaeda faction rep is not high enough, and I am still trying to get the [Martyr's Blessed Explosives Vest] to drop in Iraq-temple.
CoolMartyr: Oh noes! We really need you to tank for us tonight. The other guys can't keep the Marines turned around long enough to keep them from breathing on us, and then we keep getting caught in the Air Support blasts, that keep wiping us. Last night my repair bill was over 20 gold.
LuvztoJihadd: I am sorry. I cannot get anymore rep from the flag burning repeatable quest. We need to go on some more instances so I can get my rep up.
CoolMartyr: What about your cousin? Can he go?
LuvztoJihadd: No. He just started the quest chain. You know, the one where you put nails in a container of gasoline, but it doesn't do anything? We was complaining, that he spend all his gold on the gasoline, and now he doesn't have enough gold to train, and he is still using the [Bent AK] for his main weapon, so he can't do enough damage to the Infidel Grunts to get any farther.
CoolMartyr: Damn it! Why can't anyone in our guild spend enough time to get enough rep so we can move on to the really cool instances? I am tired of wiping on the Marines all the time. I want to do end game raids, and kill the Great Satan.
LuvztoJihadd: I know. Maybe we should try playing SL some time. I hear there you can actually make money doing stuff. It has to be better than farming for gold all the time.
CoolMartyr: I have to go, my bed is telling me to get off the computer and go to bed. He says he needs it to work on some dumb digital Pearl Harbor project.
CoolMartyr has gone offline.
LuvztoJihadd: Lamer
LuvztoJihadd has gone offline.
Just the other night the wife and I were in a pick up group for Zul Far'rak and there was this Tauren Druid who was like...suicidal! He didn't have any care for survival! He just ran into everything in bear form! No care at all if he lived through it! He must have been a terrorist in training!
Or a ten year old half-wit...
Na, couldn't be that. He was a terrorist!
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
Don't forget that pirates that fund terrorism use the internet.. so everyone that is on line is aiding and subject to governmental investigation.
Oh, and they use roads, to get to and fro.. so that pretty much covers the ones that aren't on line.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Now if they would only fight their terrorist wars in SecondLife, wouldn't that be just peachy. That way I would only have to contend with the maintenance crew the next time I take a tube ride. Engines keep falling off, glue on the electric rails ignites etc. I'd much prefer if the gov didn't announce the next security threat, ignorance is bliss ...
I don't understand why they have to choose, Secondlife, couldn't they fork out on a Counterstrike server. After all I would have thought they would want to keep the 'training' secret.
davecb5620@gmail.com
I for one welcome our new digitally trained islamic-fundamentalist elf overlords
I spent some time infiltrating the WoW. Now that this news has hit the streets, I think it's safe for me to reveal what I learned there... to reveal our strategy for victory. All we need to do is find their graveyard and camp in it -- their equipments will be damaged when they respawn, giving us that much more of an advantage.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Dzokhar Dudayev, Chechen leader had his satellite phone tracked (NSA ?) and the Russians then used laser-guided missiles.
But then never assume terrorist when admin will suffice.
"discovered that its bomb was a computer server error that it was able to fix within a couple of hours."
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's a bunch of unfunny people who think that exploding picture replicators near buildings in SL comprises some sort of Jacobin revolution. I'm serious. Look at their white paper.
Or maybe it's a bunch of people who are really amused at how seriously people are taking this stuff.
Seriously, people. Just because someone writes a "white paper", doesn't mean they seriously believe what's written. Did it occur to you that half of the crap "terrorist" groups publish on the web/satellite TV etc is just to get a rise out of everyone else? Don't you remember middle school? How many times do we have to talk about trolls?
Please help metamoderate.
ROFL - seriously? having used http://babelfish.altavista.com/ a time or two I'd love to see a wannabe terrorist learn to make a bomb using a computer based language translator.
They'd blow themselves up in no time. Problem solved.
This is really good news. The military job in Iraq just got easier. Now all the terrorists will be easy to spot. They'll be the ones standing in the middle of the market square holding a big bomb, waiting for 5 minutes for the square to fully render, cursing about lag.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
And our guys train on America's Army. And this is news...why exactly?
Jihad 2.0
The Inquirer's headline: Second Life and WoW "plagued by terrorists"
The article pointed at by The Inquirer doesn't mention World of Warcraft except for in this idiocy from a think tank moron: Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments. Yeah, the next time that a terrorist busts into a crowded mall with his Stormherald and starts stunning the crap out of people with Mortal Strike will be the first.
Just stop linking The Inquirer already.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
or at least, from my mom's basement...
Oh yeah, I can see it now, terrorists running into a building, "DoTing" all the "mobs" inside, casting Frost Nova, then racing back out with the flag, using Rogues with crippling poison to cover their tracks.
Seriously, if the only people these guys can recruit are MMORPG heads, then the world has less to fear.
"Tonight we bring the war to the infidels and burn New York!"
"Sorry, can't do that, I need to run BGs to get my new dagger"
With all these bogeymen, 2nd Life is looking more and more like First Life all the time.
OMG TEH TERRISTS R IN T3H TUBES!!
Most. Ridiculous. Piece. Of. FUD. I've. Read. In. At. Least. Three. Days.
You just got troll'd!
Just a rationalization to monitor people using WOW and Second Life. Pretty soon they'll have an excuse to monitor anyone they want because of some affliation. Does anyone remember the Red Scare days when just subscribing to certain mainstream magazines was enough to get you under suspicion? The current administration are a bunch of freedom hating facistist that want the dirt on everyone possible. Knowledge is power and they want intel on everyone they see as a threat. That includes most Americans. If they're addicted to WOW I'd say the threat from those terrorist has been neutralized. Better to try to get more hooked on it then we can bargin with them for a few million in on-line gold than billions in repartions for all damage done by the war.
The US army is the mob which is by far the most outpowered of the game. It also aggros too easily and then attacks any faction present. It has even been seen travelling to far away maps and then attack other factions as well with no connexion to whoever aggroed it.
It should be nerfed as it removes all fun to the game.
OMG, we gotta TSA screen everyone before getting on the Goblin Zeppelins.
I'd be more concerned about Battlefield 2, Call of Duty, or some other games which are closer to actual battle scenes. But even they aren't close to reality; In these games, committing suicide for the cause (ramming a c4'd car into a tank) works because you respawn 10 seconds later.
Yeah, it seems goofy and far-fetched, but there seems to be no end of surprises about the way folks interact in/with virtual worlds.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
They're keeping Osama in Old Ironforge! Let's go ZERG him!
If the terrorists get dependent on constant heals, Power Word: Shield, and their felguards to win in combat, then they're only crippling themselves.
Noobs.
The US Army has been training heavily by playing Counter-Strike, so the free world should be safe.
M: So 007, I see from our logs you spend most of last month playing second life.
007: I was... uhhhh looking for terrorists - yes that's it they're using second life to train. And World of Warcraft, in fact I plan to spend next month doing a detailed survey of their training techniques, so if the department could see it's way clear to paying for my account...
This is on top of the Second Life Liberation Army.
Splitters!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Who sells them? Do they require fraction reputation? Can I grind to get them or are they boss drops? Can an egnineer or Jeweler upgrade them and what about invisibility-detection? Do they work in cat or bear form?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's a pretty stupid idea if the terrorists are going to run around blowing stuff up and taking people's airplanes, but there is no reason that should be the case. Second Life, WoW and other MMO's could very easily be a recruitment tools but not for traditional terrorist training activities. What about cyber terrorism? You get enough of them together and you don't need more than a couple tech savvy individuals to lead the groups, the rest of the mindless automatons just execute the actions/code they're given... That could actually be a pretty nasty terrorist attack if you hit the right areas. You start out trying to cheat in MMO's which, while not a perfect parallel, is pretty good training for trying to circumvent security measures in many programs. If you can cheat successfully in WoW and not get caught by the authorities you should have the basics at least of where to start working on something a little more serious. Don't put your blinders on just because in the past it's been all about explosives... That's almost as dumb as ignoring the warnings about people flying planes into buildings because someone hasn't done it yet.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I bet TIM would be a good terrorist training tool. Maybe then the best-in-class doctors would be able to build a working detonator?
Seriously, SL & WoW for training? Don't scare me much. I'd be more worried about a terrorist who did his trained using TIM and CounterStrike. OldSkool and dangerous!
On a serious note: Iraq has become a big terrorist training camp, breeding mean-ass terrorists with practical knowledge in wreaking havoc, mass murder and killing GI's.
Stop the brainwash
... and it's not even April 1.
*Terrorist #1: "What do you mean I have a squid on my face?"
*Terrorist #2: screw this guys. we don't even have a prophet in our group. i'm going fishing.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
Tech.Luver/Nick/Natalie, you make some serious points re: REAL groups using virtual worlds to recruit REAL people, perhaps for REAL endeavors.
The line between the "real" and virtual worlds really is beginning to blur.
It must be hard to continue making great points like this as a writer when so little has changed over the centuries in the "real world", besides technology that is.
Another thing that has not changed since ancient times are the REASONS REAL PEOPLE do what they do to get by. REASONS both REAL and imagined, but with REAL RESULTS on everyone else.
Consider that little has changed since Roman times except the "speed" of communication and transportation.
Everything else has stayed the same, same mind games being played convincing people to accept their lots, or to justify why some can force others into their fates via one mechanism or another etc etc ad nauseum.
What would you say if someone were to tell you that we are headed for a sociological change like none ever experienced before, making most of the ho-hum, rehashed, remashed social, heard it all before, human condition, political, finance, government etc, stories a thing of the past ?
Please consider the following precipice humanity is teetering on.
Teetering in a great way, we should say, since where we will be "falling" is a place that we have never, as a human race, experienced before.
For eons, humans have figured out ways to get other humans to do what they did not want to do themselves. [makes sense]
The game continues today, and no matter what anyone says, it is an ugly business and lots of mind games are involved.
For a while it was called slavery, at other times it was called serfdom, today it is called "not being in the upper class".
This occurred for many reasons, but perhaps the most important reason being that, UNTIL NOW, there simply was no other way for some to experience a life worth living without FORCING others, through various mechanisms, to live a life NOT worth living, without some serious self-deception that is.
We say until now because, NEVER before was it possible for something other than other humans, and systems of humans, to serve another group of elite humans, as well as humans have.
NOW we have TRUE ROBOTS, not the human kind which have toiled for eons.
These REAL ROBOTS, and A/I Expert Computer Systems, can do everything real humans servants have done, including the "Professionals" such as CPAs, Doctors, Lawyers, Journalists etc, and without complaining, rebelling, lying, backstabbing cheating etc.
Problem is the old system has so much momentum, and 90% of the humans alive today are essentially the elite human's servants, whether they realize it or not, that to reverse, or decompress this situation will cause tremendous cognitive dissonance in the masses, even some of the elite wont understand it.
Whole classes and subclasses of people have organically existed and been molded as servants to the current system and its upper elite, that many of them would not even no what freedom tasted like, it could be argued, and some would even rebel against their own emancipation, this is how great a change IS COMING.
Virtual Worlds will be an even bigger part of the world to come and can help us improve the real world.
To read more please visit: http://teaminfinity.com/robo_wageless_hsls_dn2 I can be reached here and would love to hear your thoughts Lore: sysop@TeamInfinity.com
The Future is already here, just unevenly distributed... THE ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY NOW! http://RoboEco.com/slash
lol how i mine 4 sarcasm?
Seriously, I can't say what is more hilarious;
The inherent sarccasm
or
that people are taking this seriously.
What are some of the first things you do once you get to Outlands, bomb throwing on the Path of Glory to name one.
The Gryphon bombing run is repeatable. Quick, round up everyone who has done that quest more than a couple of times.
Salzman from Accounting saw this day coming... We must use the Sword of a Thousand Truths!!!
(API) The old saying, "An army marches on it's stomach," is also true in asymetric warfare. During the critical months leading up to a terrorist attack, the average terrorist requires hundreds of meals. It's been discovered that some terrorists are getting these meals from McDonalds. . .
In case all the gamers out there don't bother reading a little trade news once in a while, it's worth mentioning that there are plenty of people putting together and actively supporting MMOG-ish things specifically for use by raised-on-games-generation recruits, and others. The training derived from time spent on these systems isn't so you can shoot straighter, or be able to run longer with an 80-pound pack on. It's so that when you actually do walk down a street or into a building with a particular purpose in mind, under some specific circumstances, you can tap into the deja-vu like power of having already DONE something like that before. Military people use such systems to make it easier for people about to be deployed to "see" what a crowded market looks like, and to have a sense of what it's like to remember where your hummer is parked, or where your team medic is in a crowd, etc., or how to parse crowd body language.
Think you might have a little trouble operating comfortably in a large group of western people in an urban setting as you go about casing a building or trying to meld in? SL or whatnot may not be a proper simulation, but it can take away the novelty of having to digest unfamiliar circumstances while still staying focused on what you're trying to accomplish. It's not any different than playing paintball as a way to learn how to think in evasive/predatory terms... doesn't make you better with a machine gun, or necessarily as fit as newly minted Marine, but helps.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Achmed carefully approached the ThePresident, careful not to generate aggro by getting too close. He sighted his blunderbus and used Hunters Mark to designate his target. The time was right, so he unleashed his Snow Leopard on one of the Secret Service Agents. Distracted by the Leopard the Agent moved to give Achmed a clear shot, so Achmed unleashed Serpent Sting on firing his load at ThePresident.....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Well, we've got a while before we have to worry. To get good enough gear to really hurt us, they're going to have to grind Crimson Jihad rep for months, not to mention Iranian Expedition rep if they intend to have any decent AOE gear.
well withing gambling being banned they need SOMETHING to keep users from leaving in droves. :-D
oh and you can find droves in shoppes right next to the naughty body parts, but they're exorbitantly expensive
From TFA (emphasis added):
I'm afraid the article lost all credibility with me after reading that bit.
Erskin
geek.
Instead of generating a lot of FUD why don't the CT folks view this as an opportunity? insert a sniffer, track these bozo's back to their machines and listen in to their cyber-converstaions? That way they might even develop some real intelligence (I know that seems to be an oxymoron where these folks are concerned) rather then get everyone upset that MMO's might be some kind of surrogate training camp for terrs.
Laugh all you want, but the terrorists are making video's. Someone captured this off SecondLife, and somethingaweful picked it up. Is is a really interesting look into the mind of a terrorist though. Scary.
i /second-life-sucks.php
Please note it is a little disturbing though (nsfw). Video is at the end of the page: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/second-life-safar
...be America's Army? Realistic weapons, realistic scenarios, realistic combat. All provided by the US Army.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
I was wondering why I couldn't find any Orb of Deception or Super Sapper Charge on AH.
Does USA have a virtual embassy in second life, like Sweden does?
Maybe they should prepare in case someone bombs them? E.g. in the style of Serious Sam that game is just full of suicide bombers.
The terrorists are colluding with the Dark Iron dwarves to blow up the Loch Modan damn! It had bin Laden's fingerprints all over it from day one, and now it's proven.
Name your Hunter's pet boar "Mohammed" Make a video for the net featuring decapitated heads from your quests Tailor a burqa wardrobe for those blood elf and night elf females Hide explosives in the wagon outside the AH in Stormwind Kill all the wine and spirit merchants The AFK guys in Alterac Valley are actually praying towards Mecca (For the Horde) Raid the Stormwind Cathedral. Leave no survivors.
GWB_TheDecider says hlp ne1! were find Osama need hlp w raid!
UTF-8: There and Back Again
these WAR CRIMINALS.
Lemme know when they show up on counterstrike... I've been waiting a looonnnng time to play against a good T team.
If you actually read the article, you'll find that WoW isn't mentioned as being an actual source of terrorist activity.. Only that they 'could.' Well, they 'could' use EVE Online. WoW is popular, so it is used. Lawdy lawdy, Save us from da Internets!
I thought I heard someone scream "LEEEEEEEEROOOOOOY JENKINS!!!!!!!!!!" In that last car bomb video on the news.
Whenever we hear such unsubstantiated, and unsubstantiatable, speculation of "what the terrorists are doing now that should cause FUD", we usually just laugh. Terrorists, in Second Life? You have got to be kidding.
Sometimes, though, we pause, consider the speculation, and some of us sometimes even buy it. And those speculations seem to make it to the mainstream news, creating FUD there. But when we howl at these howlers (sorry, had to, Harry Potter is still on the brain), derisively mock them for their illogic and their lack of evidence, these speculations nearly always die.
Causal link? Probably not. But there's still a correlation. And if I can laugh this sort of stuff into silence, and get back to some real progress (in society, in technology, in science) and some real news, all the better.
The lemming attack exists because it's a no-cost scenario, so everyone involved is willing to go for it, no matter how stupid the plan.
A suicide bomber, on the other hand, may not care about their life, but they care about spending it well, not just throwing it away. Additionally, not everyone has it in them to be a suicide bomber...You have to be willing, not just to kill yourself, but to kill yourself and take a bunch of people with you at the same time. You have to be able to overcome all kinds of fear and stress, or you have to be completely without hope of any kind. That is nothing you're going to get out of a video game.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Screw that. They'd honestly be better off in the long run to put that stuff plus some propaganda on the OLPC systems, then give them to the kids. That's the really scary part. If the wrong people handle the OLPC machines between the project sending them and the kids receiving them, it gives every kid in some town in Libya or Pakistan a chance to carry and spread al Qaeda propaganda. At the same time, though, those kids might still be able to get onto the Net and make their own information choices even if the laptops were compromised.
You've got to be fucking kidding me
Boy...They'd better pull out some digital eye wool for their digital politicians and pass a second life PATRIOT ACT....
Oh wait..this game is supposed to be fun - what do you do when your digital life starts to have all the 'fun" of your regular life (taxes, restrictive unconstitutional "laws," torture)?
Clearly to defeat a threat from a imaginary source, we need to send in not some lawyer but another imaginary hero of mythical proportions! Besides, I bet the machines in the CTU rock and will be easy for multi-boxing.
From the article:
"Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments."
So wait.. the next terrorist attack will be with bows, powder-shot rifles and ridiculously large and unwieldy (by a non-Orc, anyway) swords? Don't forget they'll come riding up and flee on the backs of giant cats and robotic birds.
Second Life being a potential training ground for terrorists is one thing - technically speaking, since you can buy land and do anything you want with it, you could indeed set up a mock environment and stage virtually anything. But WoW? Sounds like this Australian security company is just name dropping, honestly. They have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. None.
And where were the reporters and editors on this? Did they check this crap out AT ALL? I'm seeing more and more of these completely bogus news stories on supposedly upstanding news/media outlets. Like, far worse than before.
Sensationalist news for the win!
I just read the entire article from The Australian, and it was only slightly less amusingly inaccurate than the WoW quote from Kevin Zuccato. Unfortunately the "amusingly inaccurate" has quickly turned into frightening. Doesn't it scare you that someone who is in a position of political power and responsibility in "the war on terror" is willing to put their name next to such a laughably inaccurate statement? Is he truly that stupid, or is he just too lazy to bother checking facts? For that matter, what about his staffers? Or the reporter who took the quote, or the editor who gave it the OK for publishing? I mean, we're only talking about the most popular online game in the world here, I'm sure that there must have been an intern somewhere who's played it.
Unfortunately, the lack of critical thinking didn't stop at the thought of sword-wielding orcs on gryphons attacking government buildings, the bits on Second Life weren't much better.
The arguments basically come down to two things:
1. They can launder money through Second Life.
2. They can create elaborate simulations of locations in Second Life with which to practice operations.
The problems with #2 are mostly obvious, i.e., you can't just whip up an accurate model of a government installation (or even a public location) without detailed information about that facility. That means lots of reconaissance, collation of data, etc. If you have all of the info needed to create a realistic simulation in Second Life, then you have all of the info needed to create a realistic simulation in any other environment/medium as well. The issue isn't Second Life, it's the recon data that the terrorists presumably would have. But the reality is that such data is hard to come by, at least in quantities sufficient to be truly useful. So we can just whip out the magical Internet box to fill in the blanks, and suddenly Second Life has gone from being a stupid waste of time to being a Terrorist Training Simulator (TM).
Argument #1 actually does hold some water. It would certainly be possible to use Second Life to transfer funds from individuals in one location to another, or to even launder funds. But anything of the sort would have to happen in a very limited fashion on a very limited scale. Transferring $20,000 via Second Life is bound to attract a lot of attention. Transferring smaller amounts of money would probably be more successful, but also a lot less useful. And frankly, I'm not seeing Second Life as being any easier or more likely to be used for money laundering/xfers than other services like PayPal. But you know, it's that magical Internet box again so critical thinking has to go out the window.
As to "three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups in Second Life", one has to wonder a little. What makes them elite jihadist groups as opposed to regular jihadist groups? Do they hog all the dungeon raids or something, or does it just make things sound scarier? And how to they know that there are three jihadi terrorists registered? Are they really jihadi terrorists who are trying to recruit for real-world damage? Or are they pimple-faced 14-year olds who just want to smash up bits of peoples' online virtual worlds and are role-playing terrorists as part of "the game"? After all, I doubt that the people playing as prostitutes in Second Life are actually really prostitutes. For that matter, I am confident that most of the "women" in Second Life are actually men, but I doubt that any significant portion of them are transvestites or transexuals.
I swear, I will car bomb the first towel-wearing psycho I hear yelling "FIREBOLT!" on the streets.
Golden Rule: Jihad onto others before they Jihad onto you.
please tell the fbi that these dudes are hardcore 9/11 wannabes!
8 192753501
7 and 8 are welp groups!!! http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=3713 now youre going to dps very slowly!
but there are real terrorists here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=786692944
The Truth Is Out There:
But when the next major city's building is downed by a pack of giant floating hot pink phalli, they'll be saying "I told you so".
"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand." - Mark Twain
SS or it didn't happen...
Bin Laden pulled Bush and trained him on Iraq?
Damn griefer.
So, is Osama and his thugs gonna be jumping around New York in their next attack, firing frost bolts and casting arcane explosions? Seriously . . .
*headpalm*
REAL terrorists - not the wannabes that the FBI and Scotland Yard keep nabbing these days - train in real camps, not online. They use live ammo and construct real bombs. There's no other way to learn. You have to actually fire weapons, you have to actually recon a live target to detect the security patterns in use, etc. Only an idiot would rely on a simulation of a target that could easily miss critical details that would matter in a real operation.
The notion that the minor disruption of Al Qaeda's camps in Afganistan has forced them into using virtual simulators is complete nonsense. You can go practically anywhere in Afghanistan, Pakistan, indeed, throughout the Middle East and South Asia and find plenty of places to set up a small camp where you can train. You don't need a Camp Pendleton for this stuff. All you need is some empty space free from neighbors who will report you to the authorities - or you need bribed authorities, which is not hard to find in many countries.
And the notion that somebody is going to use "virtual bucks" to transfer operational funds is utterly brain dead. The Middle East has more than enough mechanisms for the untraceable movement of funds. They don't need to use some computer game to do it. That's idiotic.
Anybody with any knowledge of real terrorism knows this story is complete bunk.
These are "wannabe terrorist" hackers - the terrorist equivalent of "script kiddies."
The story is intended to justify regulating the Internet and fanning the "terror scare" flames, nothing more.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
How the fk can WoW be used to train terrorists? Does whatever "government intelligence" agency that pulled this one out of its ass seriously believe that fantasy is reality? Tell me how grinding for bears, collecting cloth to raise tailoring skill, casting spells, hitting things with swords and ... oh fk it, I'm about to have a Lewis Black moment. Wait! I think I know, WoW teaches cooperation and how to work as a team but so does high school football, the boy scouts and my employers weekly management team building exercises. Damn! Now I just told them where to look next. Look out B.S.A that kid that finished his nuclear energy merit badge is going to blow us up! Look out (small town high school) Your stat quarterback is going to run the nuke (built by the eagle scout) past the Infernals into the Black Temple and take out Illidan Stormrage. The IT department management team figured out how to do it all digitally!
GIVE ME A BREAK!
-iSpy23
Sorry sir. This is antiterrorhype. Terrorhype always seem to point people here. Logic and reason exist somewhere in between.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I guess now we have to fight them in side our computers - or they'll follow us home and then we have to fight here.
Its not the years, its the mileage
Counterstrike. This really is a great way to learn team coordination skills. One group I knew were big into researching real-world tactics and applying them in game. It was funny as sometimes they would dance like bees as their teamspeak server was down, got to do some'n to replace hand gestures.
Seems like everybody in power these days is paranoid???
While some of the hunters might wish for a Grand Marshal's Hand Cannon, lets face it the majority of us are happy with a 1H mace and a dagger (if you can double-weild).
So
for the non-WoW player some "gestures" can be carrried out by using / commands
--- This meme is memory intensive
I'd play Eve Online if I was them. It's very communication intensive, and the fleet battles include a lot of reconnaissance and tactics, it's a constant flow of decisions and giving exact and even complex orders. Also, you can bring on hundreds of people to the same place, I've once seen a blob of several thousands of people working in coordinated manner (alliances, corporations, distrinct special groups). You need to build command channels and stuff like that or it wont work.
Plus, in Eve everything *is* PVP. There's no one single thing of that game that would exist for non-PVP. There are safenets such as braindead "missions to run for money" to assist you in getting back on your feet for PVP though. In EVE you can lose practically everything. Your ship gets destroyed, it's gone, and some of them take even months or even years to get a hold of! Also you can (if you don't know your stuff) lose some of your experience and in-game character's abilities. This all is important because it changes your attitude towards the game. It's a real rush when you get hunted by someone larger and stronger than you and when you have to use all your skills to stay alive.
Actually when I got into CS I was just used to mindless jump in and shoot games. After playing long enough, I was much better at tactical group maneuvers such as providing cover fire while advancing, "slicing the pie," using distractions and finding good concealment. It also completely changed the way I look at hard and soft cover - shooting through weak cover makes a world of difference. ...the only downside was that with the same maps always being used, people had psychic sense for where to shoot to take out hiding enemies, which was only mitigated by doing silly things like standing atop exit signs above doorways (cs_backalley) or in the middle of hanging neon signs (de_vegas,) or doing big silly arial John Woo style jump-outs while shooting so you don't get your head shot through an opaque wall while hiding, haha...
But seriously though, any team that could even work half-assed as a team - or even had three members who had it together - would usually walk all over the other guys if they weren't as coordinated. I've also played WoW - Target enemy. Use damage-over-time spell, use instant damage spells, run up and beat on them. Not exactly a technique I see many terrorists using, haha
Does that mean I shouldn't have accepted that quest form the guy in robes standing outside the high school property. But he was holding up a yellow exclamation mark over his head!
Oh screw it - I don't need the faction points.
[Abandon Quest]