Hm. Not at all what I meant to post at the bottom of the comment.
What I meant to say, sintead of just blindly reposting the link, was:
--
Video game politics are much more interesting than movie politics (but less reported on) because the viewer is an actor in the story. Movies are just lecturing you, without interaction. This is a fascinating topic, if I can restrain myself from babbling incoherently about it.
Most of the posts are missing the games that REALLY have politics in them:
The Civilization (including Alpha Centauri) series. These games make certain political ideologies inherent in the game, as well as allowing players to make their own political choices. Alpha Centauri makes (implicitly) the point that a Fundamentalist religious government is a viable form of government, while on the other hand, implying that certain losses of liberty would take place. This is a very political statement. It lets you choose between horribly oppressing your citizens and letting them run free and happy -- (and lets you win either way) a VERY political choice.
The SimCity series is a perfect example of implicit rules -- it assumes that unless you, the Mayor (the government), do it, nothing will happen in your city. While fun for gameplay, does this send the right message? You can agree or disagree.
Does anyone remember Privateer 2? The finale of the game was you taking over your dead brother's interstellar crime ring that you'd been fighting the whole game. There's definitely some serious debate here, or with Jedi Knight, where if you make the "bad" choices, you become the Evil Emperor yourself. But if you look at the "choice" you make, it's certainly up to debate about whether it was right or wrong.
Someone above mentioned Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow. The makers of the game have very specific political beliefs, but they're pretty subtle in the game.
At any rate, I found this article to be very interesting, and expanded on some of the points it mentioned.
Exactly. It's similar to that concept, where "NARC" was you're going after the drug dealers in a very Reagan-esque way. The motto was: "Say no, or die!" That was a lot of fun. Here, you're defending America. It's funny, the marketing guys were saying, "Well, you know, we can't put the White House in there. That's just not going to work." And I go: "You know what? Do you have a problem defending your country? Maybe you need a new country." It's almost like we don't realize how lucky we are and what an easy life we have here in America and all the great things we have. Yet, it seems like we're not even willing to defend our country.
He's kidding here, right? He's just joking? He's not actually saying "gosh, the best way to defend America in the 80's was to randomly shoot drug dealers?" I loved NARC. It was an amazing game. But how can he criticize GTA for violence and depravity? Even if you think drugs should be illegal, what you did to them in NARC wasn't exactly "due process."
I'm mis-reading this somehow, right?
Re:Sithu Thein's comment is the most interesting
on
Girls in the Gaming World
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Last time I checked the x and y chromosomes were not linked to reflexes, hand - eye coordination, and visual acuity.
Actually, many game skills are sex-linked. Men are much better at focusing on single events. They would probably be best at first-person shooters. Women are much better at handling a number of events concurrently, and so might be better at say, real-time strategy.
What's the solution? How can we take their money?
on
Orwellian Tech Support
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· Score: 1
To me, whenever I hear stories like this, the first thing I think is: "if this sucks so much, how can I compete?"
If something sucks in the world, it's pretty likely that there's a way to start a company and compete with them, and win. (I won't accept bad tech support as a universal constant, like death and taxes)
I'm sure there are a few of you out there who are unemployed, (or looking for a better job) entrepreneurial, and smart, who could come up with a way to make money in this market where the competition is obviously not satisfying the demand. What kind of company would you create to compete with these terrible out-sourced call-centers? Let me hear your ideas!
True, and perhaps I am being overly critical of the article for presenting it like it was "new." But the technology for the "hyperkinetic rods" is not 21rst century. It could have been implemented long before now.
And also, the intellectual credit should go to the people who thought these things up -- such as Larry Niven for the hyperkinetic satellites, or A.C. Clarke for the low-level communications satellite. To have an article about such things and not to mention those who came up with the ideas is somewhat journalistically dishonest. It's like talking about the internet without mentioning that Al Gore invented it.:)
Yeah, part of the stuff I left out was heat-shielding, shuttle style. It would allow non-vertical atmospheric descent, and therefore increase the range of the satellite.
And you're right, something that you describe would be extremely destructive -- but what I think the military is looking for is pinpoint destruction -- one of these rods punching a whole through a tank rather than levelling a city.
If you want wholesale destruction, we can use our ICBM's. Or, if you really like destruction, you can fly a small craft out to the asteroid belt, pick up one the size of a football field, and drop it from the top of the gravity well. That'll get you a hole in the ground the size of Delaware. (Thank you, Robert Heinlein)
"I have a hunch that the US military already has missles that can take out a satelite, especially since ICBM's have been around for decades."
ICBMs have always been excellent anti-satellite weapons. They can easily reach the altitude, and once they detonate, the EMP will knock anything out of commission.
That being said, it is also ridiculously easy to modify conventional missles to hit satellites. The military does have this technology already -- you don't need a hunch.:)
Yeah, I was thinking this too. It doesn't cost much to wreck satellites. I don't know why people are afraid of missles or lasers when marbles hitting a satellite with that kind of velocity are going to annihilate them.:(
Very true. Detonations of a spaceship with an atmosphere inside will cause a sound you could hear at a short distance. The sound would travel (for a short while) along the expanding gas.
The satellite doesn't actually "fire" the rod. It just tosses it overboard, and then a small rocket on the projectile itself decelerates it at the right time for it to drop (gravity only) into the atmosphere.
Yeah, I agree. It sounds like the military and Wired just dredged up some old ideas and made a new.ppt out of them.
It seems that 23mm worked pretty well, as I'd imagine. Apparently "flinging chunks of metal at things really fast" works as well (better in fact) in space as it does on earth, and we don't need lasers or whatnot.
Anyone who has read sci fi knows that this stuff has been around for about 40 years. The principles haven't changed, and they're just being re-tread by the military.
The article seems woefully unknowledgeable about the physics of the situation. I'm only quoting the sci-fi authors who brought up these topics originally: (Larry Niven, A.C. Clarke, etc...)
"Even more outlandish is the Hypervelocity Rod Bundles research project. That effort calls for creating a system of metal poles, fired from space, that could strike anywhere on the planet. It's a long-held -- and long-ridiculed -- idea. Keeping the rods from liquefying as they enter the atmosphere is a daunting task,"
From what I know of the system (did not read the whole AF brief) the proposal is to have a satellite orbit geosynchronously relatively above the target, and just fire the projectile downwards. The heat generated by re-entry is because of the horizontal motion of the craft, but a projectile of this type would only have vertical motion with respect to the atmosphere, and therefore relatively little heat generated. Please correct me if I'm wrong, physicists!
"and could only deliver one-ninth the destructive energy per gram as a conventional bomb."
Given that the military already uses kinetic kill technology (horizontally fired from vehicles, no explosives) that are able to penetrate main battle tank armor, why would dropping a similarly size projectile from orbit (wouldn't the terminal velocity be tremendous) be less than traditional explosives? I'm confused by their assertion.
"In theory, lasers -- fired from the ground, from space, or from the air -- would bounce off these blimp-borne mirrors, to track or even destroy enemy missiles. " Why would you loft a laser platform into orbit and fire it through all that atmosphere down to a blimp, when you could just mount it on a large aircraft? The cost of getting it into orbit and having a blimp hovering around has to be less than strapping it into a 747, plus, you have less diffusion from a lower-altitude. Again, it sounds like the military is getting a little outlandish when simplicity might work better. (imagine that)
"But the Air Force report goes far beyond these defensive capabilities, calling for weapons that can cripple other countries' orbiters. "
Again, from what I've been told, it's not hard to destroy satellites. They are orbiting at ridiculously high speeds. Wouldn't just releasing a cloud of marbles (or even sand!) in their trajectory, orbiting in the opposite direction, easily shred the enemy satellite? The energy released by that impact would have a factor of twice the actual rotational velocity of the satellite -- a very large number, I would think. I don't think that there's any way to protect an orbiter from something like that. Again, if my physics is wrong, please correct me.
All of this seems to me like they're just ignoring physics (in arguments for and against the systems) just like those who said Goddard couldn't fly a craft in space because you'd have no air to push off of.
Sorry for the long post. This is just a very fascinating topic, and I suppose its good to see the media/military pick up on something that's only been fiction 'til now.
Slashdot Mirror
Strike Commander was an excellent game. Too bad my old computer at the time couldn't handle it.
But whacking those IRS planes was wonderful. I could do that all day.
Hm. Not at all what I meant to post at the bottom of the comment.
What I meant to say, sintead of just blindly reposting the link, was:
--
Video game politics are much more interesting than movie politics (but less reported on) because the viewer is an actor in the story. Movies are just lecturing you, without interaction. This is a fascinating topic, if I can restrain myself from babbling incoherently about it.
Most of the posts are missing the games that REALLY have politics in them:
The Civilization (including Alpha Centauri) series. These games make certain political ideologies inherent in the game, as well as allowing players to make their own political choices. Alpha Centauri makes (implicitly) the point that a Fundamentalist religious government is a viable form of government, while on the other hand, implying that certain losses of liberty would take place. This is a very political statement. It lets you choose between horribly oppressing your citizens and letting them run free and happy -- (and lets you win either way) a VERY political choice.
The SimCity series is a perfect example of implicit rules -- it assumes that unless you, the Mayor (the government), do it, nothing will happen in your city. While fun for gameplay, does this send the right message? You can agree or disagree.
Does anyone remember Privateer 2? The finale of the game was you taking over your dead brother's interstellar crime ring that you'd been fighting the whole game. There's definitely some serious debate here, or with Jedi Knight, where if you make the "bad" choices, you become the Evil Emperor yourself. But if you look at the "choice" you make, it's certainly up to debate about whether it was right or wrong.
Someone above mentioned Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow. The makers of the game have very specific political beliefs, but they're pretty subtle in the game.
At any rate, I found this article to be very interesting, and expanded on some of the points it mentioned.
http://reason.com/0404/fe.kp.free.shtml
Exactly. It's similar to that concept, where "NARC" was you're going after the drug dealers in a very Reagan-esque way. The motto was: "Say no, or die!" That was a lot of fun. Here, you're defending America. It's funny, the marketing guys were saying, "Well, you know, we can't put the White House in there. That's just not going to work." And I go: "You know what? Do you have a problem defending your country? Maybe you need a new country." It's almost like we don't realize how lucky we are and what an easy life we have here in America and all the great things we have. Yet, it seems like we're not even willing to defend our country.
He's kidding here, right? He's just joking? He's not actually saying "gosh, the best way to defend America in the 80's was to randomly shoot drug dealers?" I loved NARC. It was an amazing game. But how can he criticize GTA for violence and depravity? Even if you think drugs should be illegal, what you did to them in NARC wasn't exactly "due process."
I'm mis-reading this somehow, right?
Last time I checked the x and y chromosomes were not linked to reflexes, hand - eye coordination, and visual acuity.
Actually, many game skills are sex-linked. Men are much better at focusing on single events. They would probably be best at first-person shooters. Women are much better at handling a number of events concurrently, and so might be better at say, real-time strategy.
To me, whenever I hear stories like this, the first thing I think is: "if this sucks so much, how can I compete?"
If something sucks in the world, it's pretty likely that there's a way to start a company and compete with them, and win. (I won't accept bad tech support as a universal constant, like death and taxes)
I'm sure there are a few of you out there who are unemployed, (or looking for a better job) entrepreneurial, and smart, who could come up with a way to make money in this market where the competition is obviously not satisfying the demand. What kind of company would you create to compete with these terrible out-sourced call-centers? Let me hear your ideas!
Wow, see, this is why I wanted physicists to correct me. Thanks for the information.
I think I'll stick with programming, as opposed to giant doom machines in the stars.
Your history is correct. Such weapons do exist, but I don't think they're publicized greatly. (I could be wrong, of course -- I just haven't seen it)
True, and perhaps I am being overly critical of the article for presenting it like it was "new." But the technology for the "hyperkinetic rods" is not 21rst century. It could have been implemented long before now.
:)
And also, the intellectual credit should go to the people who thought these things up -- such as Larry Niven for the hyperkinetic satellites, or A.C. Clarke for the low-level communications satellite. To have an article about such things and not to mention those who came up with the ideas is somewhat journalistically dishonest. It's like talking about the internet without mentioning that Al Gore invented it.
Yeah, part of the stuff I left out was heat-shielding, shuttle style. It would allow non-vertical atmospheric descent, and therefore increase the range of the satellite.
And you're right, something that you describe would be extremely destructive -- but what I think the military is looking for is pinpoint destruction -- one of these rods punching a whole through a tank rather than levelling a city.
If you want wholesale destruction, we can use our ICBM's. Or, if you really like destruction, you can fly a small craft out to the asteroid belt, pick up one the size of a football field, and drop it from the top of the gravity well. That'll get you a hole in the ground the size of Delaware. (Thank you, Robert Heinlein)
"I have a hunch that the US military already has missles that can take out a satelite, especially since ICBM's have been around for decades."
:)
ICBMs have always been excellent anti-satellite weapons. They can easily reach the altitude, and once they detonate, the EMP will knock anything out of commission.
That being said, it is also ridiculously easy to modify conventional missles to hit satellites. The military does have this technology already -- you don't need a hunch.
Yeah, I was thinking this too. It doesn't cost much to wreck satellites. I don't know why people are afraid of missles or lasers when marbles hitting a satellite with that kind of velocity are going to annihilate them. :(
Very true. Detonations of a spaceship with an atmosphere inside will cause a sound you could hear at a short distance. The sound would travel (for a short while) along the expanding gas.
The satellite doesn't actually "fire" the rod. It just tosses it overboard, and then a small rocket on the projectile itself decelerates it at the right time for it to drop (gravity only) into the atmosphere.
Yeah, I agree. It sounds like the military and Wired just dredged up some old ideas and made a new .ppt out of them.
It seems that 23mm worked pretty well, as I'd imagine. Apparently "flinging chunks of metal at things really fast" works as well (better in fact) in space as it does on earth, and we don't need lasers or whatnot.
Anyone who has read sci fi knows that this stuff has been around for about 40 years. The principles haven't changed, and they're just being re-tread by the military.
The article seems woefully unknowledgeable about the physics of the situation. I'm only quoting the sci-fi authors who brought up these topics originally: (Larry Niven, A.C. Clarke, etc...)
"Even more outlandish is the Hypervelocity Rod Bundles research project. That effort calls for creating a system of metal poles, fired from space, that could strike anywhere on the planet. It's a long-held -- and long-ridiculed -- idea. Keeping the rods from liquefying as they enter the atmosphere is a daunting task,"
From what I know of the system (did not read the whole AF brief) the proposal is to have a satellite orbit geosynchronously relatively above the target, and just fire the projectile downwards. The heat generated by re-entry is because of the horizontal motion of the craft, but a projectile of this type would only have vertical motion with respect to the atmosphere, and therefore relatively little heat generated. Please correct me if I'm wrong, physicists!
"and could only deliver one-ninth the destructive energy per gram as a conventional bomb."
Given that the military already uses kinetic kill technology (horizontally fired from vehicles, no explosives) that are able to penetrate main battle tank armor, why would dropping a similarly size projectile from orbit (wouldn't the terminal velocity be tremendous) be less than traditional explosives? I'm confused by their assertion.
"In theory, lasers -- fired from the ground, from space, or from the air -- would bounce off these blimp-borne mirrors, to track or even destroy enemy missiles. "
Why would you loft a laser platform into orbit and fire it through all that atmosphere down to a blimp, when you could just mount it on a large aircraft? The cost of getting it into orbit and having a blimp hovering around has to be less than strapping it into a 747, plus, you have less diffusion from a lower-altitude. Again, it sounds like the military is getting a little outlandish when simplicity might work better. (imagine that)
"But the Air Force report goes far beyond these defensive capabilities, calling for weapons that can cripple other countries' orbiters. "
Again, from what I've been told, it's not hard to destroy satellites. They are orbiting at ridiculously high speeds. Wouldn't just releasing a cloud of marbles (or even sand!) in their trajectory, orbiting in the opposite direction, easily shred the enemy satellite? The energy released by that impact would have a factor of twice the actual rotational velocity of the satellite -- a very large number, I would think. I don't think that there's any way to protect an orbiter from something like that. Again, if my physics is wrong, please correct me.
All of this seems to me like they're just ignoring physics (in arguments for and against the systems) just like those who said Goddard couldn't fly a craft in space because you'd have no air to push off of.
Sorry for the long post. This is just a very fascinating topic, and I suppose its good to see the media/military pick up on something that's only been fiction 'til now.