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Free DARPA Software Lets Gamers Hunt Submarines
coondoggie writes "If you have ever wanted to go torpedo-to-torpedo with a submariner, now is your chance. The crowdsource-minded folks at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency rolled out an online game that lets players try to catch elusive, quiet enemy submarines. According to DARPA the Sonalysts Combat Simulations Dangerous Waters software was written to simulate actual evasion techniques used by submarines, challenging each player to track them successfully."
Any word on how well Kiano Reeves does at this game?
let free range armchair analysts catch things they miss
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It almost seems like the military is trying to recruit some gamers. Possibly based on an online rating system?
I was pretty good at it when I was a kid.
At the end of your "mission" you're asked whether you'd like to submit your (anonymous) game to the DARPA for them to analyze your tactics and how well they worked out:
As you complete each scenario in the simulation you will be asked if you would like to submit data about your game play to our database for analysis. The data collected doesn't contain any information about you or your computer, or anything else outside of what you did with ACTUV and how well it worked. Good or bad, please agree to submit your data for analysis so that we can see what tactics work (or don't work!).
Who knows... somebody out there might come up with a strategy that nobody ever thought of before.
Anyone who's read Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card, is now fidgeting nervously.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
From the article: "Gamers will be virtually driving one of DARPA's Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessels (ACTUV) - basically sea-going drones DARPA wants to have built to track down real submarines."
How long before the actual drones are carrying torpedoes (or are themselves torpedoes), and there will be armchair NAVY operators shooting at vessels from the comfort of a naval base? It has worked similarly with Predator drones.
In Soviet Russia, Submarines hunt you!
Bradley Holt
So I'd be helping them with building better weapons (even unmanned killing machines!) by playing games? No thanks!
http://www.moonlight3d.eu/
...play a game?"
Enders Game to anybody else? Maybe DARPA is just telling us that this is a simulation
...Took "to the cloud!" a little too literally.
"Yeah, um, those enemy subs are... Simulations." ;)
You have been selected to defend the Frontier from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.
Any word on how well Kiano Reeves does at this game?
How would Sean Connery or Jürgen Prochnow do? (or Clark Gable/Burt Lancaster or John Mills or....)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Anyone know how it compares to American Army?
I wonder who shows up at your door when you get really good?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
The penis is evil!
The gun is good!
How about, Global Thermonuclear Submarine Warfare?
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Just don't ask me not to say "I told you so!" when the kids that are really good at this "game" start mysteriously disappearing!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This is based on the SCS:Dangerous Waters game you can buy I steam. I've owned a copy since it came out in 2006. It is a great game, although the multiplayer had a few bugs and the publisher (strategy first) went out of business. SCS makes the sims the US navy uses, so the realism in this game is quite good.
What Would Jimi Do?
Take too many drugs, choke on his own vomit, and die.
Are you sure you're choosing the right person to emulate?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The Slashdot post is about a cool game website. It has a link in it. Where does it go? Not to the game, but to Network World's article describing it. This happens ALL THE TIME, and it's is no coincidence: article authors are using Slashdot to drive traffic to their own sites. Network World in particular does this *constantly*.
Refuse to play along. Slashdot moderators should reject articles which don't link to original source data. "Scientists publish interesting paper" should link to the Nature journal article, not to Bob's Science Blog. "Company releases new geek toy" should link to the vendor's website, not myawesometoyblog.com. Make Slashdot an information source, not a spam factory.
No can do.
The acronym isn't l33t enough.
That other one they mention, though, the "Experimental Crowd-derived Combat-support Vehicle"? Which any normal editor would shorten to "ECDCSV", but DARPA's uber-h4xx0rs turned into "XC2V"? That's the one I want to drive into the valley of the shadow of death and fuck some charlie up with. Virtually, of course. Because if I care about its fucking acronym I'm not the type to be putting my fleshy mass in harm's way for some shit like freedom and rights and shit.
...can't they pipe real time sensor data into the internet, and let the gamers directly control the countermeasures? Why have a trained, staffed military when you can just start a new "battle" online that contains real data, rather than computer made up data for once? The gamers never even need to know!
What in the shit just happened
First, we learn that Richard Branson plans a "Virgin Oceanic Submarine". In the same day, we learn that DARPA has released a game that allows users to simulate hunting submarines.
I'm forced to conclude that somebody at DARPA really hates that Branson guy.
Mod parent up!
More likely it'll be
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/11/08/arts/09count600.jpg
Or Ender Wiggin.
I don't necessarily see a problem with this. Certainly there are abuses; I'll grant you that. However, I don't have a subscription to Nature, and I don't have the experience necessary to interpret Biology that "Bob" does. If the article linked has a decent analysis of the subject matter, I'd say that it's often more valuable to me than just the source data.
Ok, this thing looks cool and I totally wanna try it out, but there's no way in hell I'm downloading an executable from DARPAs website and running it on my PC. I suspect what they are really testing has absolutely nothing to do with submarines.
Is it really so hard to post to the actual source of this type of information? Instead submitter links to networkworld... which for some reason links to the leaderboard, but not the download site. For those wondering, here's the download link: http://www.darpa.mil/VideoFiles/ACTUV/DARPA%20ACTUV%20Game.zip
Well I for one welcome our Submarine Overlords!
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
https://actuv.darpa.mil/Default.aspx
Shall we play a game?
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Why choose space commanders for underwater battles? Anyway, Bean claims he was the brains behind the outfit.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Where's this online game again? I see a link that takes me to a link to a zip file.
On another note, I love links inside an article to take me to other places, but if it's about one specific link, put that in the notes at the bottom or something...
Who looks at the high score page with only one person and goes,"HA! He can't be that tough to beat."
God spoke to me.
If DARPA is does this, they are not doing it for grins and giggles, they are doing it to collect data on something. So what exactly is the data that this game is intended to generate?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No kidding. Usually I want to see the source, so I have to read the comments and hope some helpful kindhearted soul took the time to find it and post it as a comment. (This almost always happens, however.)
I was wondering what would happen if we were *really* in a war with someone like Russia, and you just THOUGHT you were playing a game, but come to find out you were really controlling some defense system, and just killed a few hundred people in the real world.
Greetings, Professor Falken. How about a nice game of chess?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The enemy's gate is down, Ender.
the enemy can even participate in deciphering the data. you're not telling them what you know, because every analyst gets a tiny bit of the picture. the only problem is too many poison nodes: nodes that make positive ids, but don't report it, on purpose (instead reporting to their own sub that they're being discovered). i guess they could also flood the system with false positives
poison nodes you could solve with redundancy: if 4/5 nodes report a positive, there is a disagreement where the poison node is found out. so you catch an operative instead of a sub
false positives also instantly announce themselves for being neutralized, so no more false positive squawking
use the power of patriotism is as your data processor. every mobile home in omaha, every retiree in coral gables, every apartment block in tacoma. its not an original idea: SETI, protein folding, the mersenne prime search, the mechanical turk project: this principle works
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If we catch a sub, do we get to keep it? I was looking at the jungle sub in a recent article, but would prefer one of these instead of one made using junked video game controllers. How mny tons of cocaine would one of these be able to carry (that being the measurements from the previous article).
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Many of us have institutional access to various journals or conference proceedings, but for those that don't, if a blog or site has a decent analysis but no link to the source from which they drew their analysis, then how can you trust anything they say? How can you critique, criticize, fact check, or investigate what they say without access to the original material? More importantly, why doesn't this worry you?
Linking to a blog is fine, so long as there is a link to the original source as well, either in the summary or the article (preferably the summary, since none of us actually read the articles). Facts are what nerds want. Interpretations and analysis are for everyone else.
I wonder who shows up at your door when you get really good?
Your mother. "In to bed, buster. Now!"
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I think the Time Cube guy got loose again.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There's no reason that they can't have both links in the summary though.
I am also annoyed by this most of the time, but isn't the solution easy: include links to BOTH. I can read "Bob's" blog if I want, or I can skip and go directly to the Nature article. If both aren't included, then reject it.
I am also annoyed by this most of the time, but isn't the solution easy: include links to BOTH. I can read "Bob's" blog if I want, or I can skip and go directly to the Nature article. If both aren't included, then reject it.
I already played this game in 1988 on my C64.
The game data that you submit can be analyzed by the machine leaning algorithms that will provide programming for the unmanned autonomous submarines, but the data can also be used by the submarines' captains, to help identify interesting pursuit scenarios that they might not have seen before. I suspect submarines will eventually have autonomous systems "helping" captains make decisions. Also they should probably offer to pay high performing game players to collect really good data, and could be done cheaply if third-worlders get on board.
Is only for Windows.
So where's the link?
Maybe it is the timecube guy. All I know is, that over the past several months I've seen several cryptic postings on /. in the same style as this post. None were nearly so long (thank gods) ... and the others were actually kinda interesting in a cryptic-doomsaying way. I was of half a mind to collect and collate those I saw, but then I got bored.
Bob's Science Blog
A friend of a friend tried to start a career as a DJ. He chose Bob Science as his stage name. He bought a bunch of expensive computer and mixing equipment. It didn't go anywhere and I think he quit it after like a month. That was probably 4 years ago, I still call him Bob Science.
each node you are giving a tiny chunk of data. its like you have a map 1 mile square, and you are giving each node only a square inch. doesn't tell the enemy how big you map is, how many nodes you have, how many datapoints, etc,. and each square inch is nameless: you can't tell where it's from. unless the enemy controls a lot of nodes, they know nothing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oh, and to justify my singling out of Network World for this sort of abuse: try search the Slashdot archives for "networkworld".
They get about a dozen stories a week uploaded to Slashdot, most of which are just generic nerd news reports, all of which include just a single link to Network World, never a link to original source reports. "FBI Wants You To Solve Encrypted Notes From Murder" links to Network World, not the FBI. "NASA Green-lights $16.5M To Advance Future Jets" links to Network World, not to NASA. And so on.
I don't mind if Network World dominates the Slashdot airwaves, they're submitting some good nerd news. But here at Slashdot we believe that if you take somebody else's idea and use it to make money, you should give everyone access to the original idea. What's true for software should be true for news too.
Your argument doesn't apply to this case: all of us are able to understand the original game.
Perhaps the editors should make a habit of replacing any link to a secondary source with a link to a different secondary source, just to prevent these abuses. It only takes a few seconds of googling.
Heres the link
https://actuv.darpa.mil/
Space warfare is a lot more like submarine warfare than land or air warfare.
Gravity is virtually negated. It involves a large, completely enclosed ship with 6-degree-of-freedom navigability and zero-velocity capability. And if you so much as open the door you're screwed.
The biggest differences are the viscosity, the visibility, and how far your screams will carry.
Wow, it's just like a being in the Navy. Except you have no training, no clue what's going on, no personal investment, and you ram their multi-million dollar tracker drone into fishing boats just to punctuate the tedium.
game
Gravity is negated you say? I somehow doubt that submariners would enjoy the prospect of placing their ships perpendicular to the surface... the submarine would likely be just fine, everything and everyone inside less so.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
In that case, there should be links to both. Even though I might not always understand the original papers, I still prefer to get the information from the original author (even if it's sometimes just the abstract and conclusions). Also, by linking to the original source, one has the choice to start with the simplified article to get an idea about the subject, and then move on to the real thing.
It's a fucking Winloze game... but do they tell you what the ystem requirements are ? NO!
Do we all run around with a Kalashnikov, it is after all the most used gun i the history ?
Gravity in space is totally dominate. To the point that space battles would be done over distance and times that make it nothing like submarine warfare. Stealth is all but impossible and it takes a long time to change orbit/direction , etc etc...
In short, space battles will be very boring.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Why is this not tagged Ender's Game?
obvious, really.
Then Bob should link clearly to the source, or, better, the Slashdot summary should have both, CLEARLY marked.
This article doesn't seem to have a link to the actual source. You have to take a link that is there and remove part of it.
Magnetic boots, just like in space.
Inertialess Drive
If it didn't already exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
And it doesn't already exist.