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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."
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
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.
You have been selected to defend the Frontier from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.
If you are a US taxpayer, you already are.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
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)
Perhaps, but more probably, they're just doing as they said. Gaining sample data for training their AI.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
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.
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
https://actuv.darpa.mil/Default.aspx
Lance Guest was the actor in The Last Starfighter not Kenny Reeves.
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
Are we at war with anyone with submarines this week?
Do U.S. intelligence services only monitor those vessels belonging to nations with which we are currently at war? When was the last time we went to war against Russia or China? How much do you want to bet that we are currently attempting to monitor the movements of Russian and Chinese submarines?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I do get it. Thing is I want my nation to have the biggest stick. I may help to keep the real wackos under control. History has shown time and time again that when democratic nations disarm the none democratic nation decide to start wars. No one starts a war they think they can not win. What is funny is that you are doing nothing but trying to make yourself feel superior. "Look at me I am not going to help develop weapons I am so enlightened". But you pay our taxes so you are still helping to develop weapons or will at some point in time. I will probably not play that game because I lack the time to even try it. I may because ASW is an interesting field of study and I like tactics and strategy. In the end it is you that do not get it. Your living in a fantasy world. Even if you live is Switzerland, Ireland, Canada, Japan, or Germany you are involved in weapons development because you are now or will be paying taxes and some of those taxes got to buy weapons and some of the profits of those weapons sales goes to improve weapons. You are just living in a your own little smug world of self delusion. Even just by using a PC or Mac to get on the internet you are helping. Those companies pay taxes that go to defense and the tech they develop and your purchase helps to lower the cost of goes into making weapons better and cheaper.
You are just playing a role and lying to yourself at this point. BTW the good thing about ASW is only combatants die when a sub is sunk. At least there is almost no risk of civilan casualties. Unlike what happens when a sub isn't sunk and it can fire SLBMs, Nuclear armed cruise missiles, regular cruise missiles, or even torpedos at merchant men.
Just keep up your little fantasy it will make you feel better while doing nothing of any value.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.