Its more that I see the struggle between corporate superpowers and nation states causing a lot of pain for the human race.
As someone pointed out in another comment to my post, today its economic power that rules and economic warfare that is the future of war.
Heres the picture as I see it;
Nation states have been declining in power for some time now. Corporate superpowers have been increasing in power.
Economic warfare is the domain of the corporate powers not of the nation state.
Nation states still view armies and military might as their domain, their way of asserting dominance.
What we are seeing happening today in the world is essentially the last ditch effort of the nation state to assert itself.
Autonomous fighting machines fit into this picture because its one of the few ways that a sedentary, corpulent, democratic nation state can engage in the kind of warfare and military dominance that satisfies the typical national leaders need for a sense of control.
It will, of course, be the end of the road for them and the corporate superpowers would not stand in the way. Recall the adage 'give them enough rope to hang themselves'.
I'm not a total luddite, but I believe that humanity is more important than any machinery or technology and where tech is anti-life I am anti-tech.
I'm not opposed to autonomous vehicles per se, I am opposed to a particular (and obvious) use of such technology by individuals who do not have the interests of their fellow human beings at heart and whos sense of self esteem is boosted by sending other peoples children to die.
Think of the implications of such people being able to send machines out to do their dirty work.
The 'battle bots' are not autonomous IIRC, they are remote controlled.
Autonomous fighting machines would mean that even a nation of cheese-burger munching, channel surfing couch potatos with the reaction speed of a head of broccoli could have a go at taking over the world.
You wouldn't even need to enlist l33t gamerz to pilot them by remote control and risk the communications being jammed or having remote control operators charged with war crimes when they get too entheusiastic.
They are ideal; there would be no need to take and hold populated land.
If one wants the oil or other minerals one would be able to unleash ones autonomous machines to exterminate the human population.
And when the UN says 'but this is a war crime!' one merely passes the blame to the manufacturers and software house which designed the systems.
They then point at the EULA which absolves them of all responsibility for anything that their creations do.
Since no human actually committed any massacres, and no human officer gave any specific orders for the machines to slaughter men women and children, no human is responsible and one can simply rid oneself of a troublesome occupied population.
"So, I don't know. Even without griefers, I really can't see the MMO genre becoming _the_ killer genre that everyone and their grandma just has to play."
Until it becomes Better Than Life (tm) (see Red Dwarf).
Yes, its interesting how the internet has formed a kind of microscope into the human psyche.
Porno is a great example, as are online multiplayer games.
Its like the first people to look at water samples under the earliest microscopes; many were so disgusted with what they saw (microbes) that they never drank water again.
I think they were happy with whiskey or something. Theres a lesson for all of us there...
"On the other hand, there's one born every minute."
That might have been true in the 1800s but not any more.
(figures are approximate)
If one supported some hypothetical 'involuntary human extinction project' and arranged for 250,000 people to die this would only delay the population growth rate by about a day.
For example, on the moon there is no terminal velocity as there is no atmosphere.
Hence, when teenagers go to the moon (one day) there will doubtless be fatalities due to "Hey its low gravity! I can jump off this mountain and just float down! Hey watch this!" *splat*
"but most people who've spent the time to learn at that level also are mature enough to realize that there isn't much of a point to wanton destruction."
If only that applied to the guys in the Whitehouse, Dubyas boyz.
I never run games with admin privileges and I play a fair few games.
What I do is create a group (gamers) add it to my limited account and give this group full control of the games directories and associated registry keys.
This works on almost every game, so far with the exception of 'aliens vs predator 2' which totally refuses to cooperate; it complains 'no disc in drive'.
I think theres a bug in their copy protection implementation (civ3 conquests uses the same copy protection, but its fine).
Anyway, the workaround for this is to (ouch) download a cracked version wich copy protection turned off.
But thats just crazy; you have to run the cracked app as admin to install it. Do I trust it? Hell no. Not really.
But if I want to play the game I bought and not have to log in as admin to do it, thats preferable in my view. I am *not* going to surf the net and read email with admin privileges.
Oh and power user? Forget it; this group has write access to system folders and is almost as dangerous as administrator.
For me, the worst, most frustrating part is having to wear too many hats.
I find it really difficult to simultaneously do development and administration work.
For me, development work requires focus. I don't think I am too whacky there.
As an administrator, working on a collection of networks that have evolved over quite some time since well before I started working here, I have to be constantly vigilant and constantly available to deal with issues as they arise. I like to be proactive, finding and fixing things before they become an issue.
These (development and administration) are, I feel, incompatible.
If I am to do good development work, I need a clear head and focus; I can't keep being interrupted to deal with disasters ('Help! I deleted a critical database file! You have to restore it *RIGHT*NOW*!!!!!').
Doing proactive maintenance work takes time; if I am busy doing development work, I don't have time to do enough proactive maintenance. And believe me, we *need* proactive disaster avoidance work.
I think that more division of labor is required; I mean for heavens sake, its one of the first principles that programmers learn!
Slashdot Mirror
Well I believe that this is the case given the situation WRT landmines and clusterbomblets.
Thousands of children around the world are killed and maimed by these things every year.
Yet one hears nothing of international criminal cases or breaches of the geneva conventions and rules of war.
My assumption then, is that the use of untended weaponry absolves the deployer of any responsibility for civilian casualties caused by them.
IANAL.
"At that point, added territory is no longer a source of useful resources but only an administrative burden."
Only when the conquering power has to administer a native population which resents having been invaded.
Autonomous fighting machines offer a means to rid a location of its population without any problems with international law.
Think of them as roving landmines. They can kill indiscriminately with no legal burden on the nation which deployed them in the first place.
Its more that I see the struggle between corporate superpowers and nation states causing a lot of pain for the human race.
As someone pointed out in another comment to my post, today its economic power that rules and economic warfare that is the future of war.
Heres the picture as I see it;
Nation states have been declining in power for some time now. Corporate superpowers have been increasing in power.
Economic warfare is the domain of the corporate powers not of the nation state.
Nation states still view armies and military might as their domain, their way of asserting dominance.
What we are seeing happening today in the world is essentially the last ditch effort of the nation state to assert itself.
Autonomous fighting machines fit into this picture because its one of the few ways that a sedentary, corpulent, democratic nation state can engage in the kind of warfare and military dominance that satisfies the typical national leaders need for a sense of control.
It will, of course, be the end of the road for them and the corporate superpowers would not stand in the way. Recall the adage 'give them enough rope to hang themselves'.
I'm not a total luddite, but I believe that humanity is more important than any machinery or technology and where tech is anti-life I am anti-tech.
I'm not opposed to autonomous vehicles per se, I am opposed to a particular (and obvious) use of such technology by individuals who do not have the interests of their fellow human beings at heart and whos sense of self esteem is boosted by sending other peoples children to die.
Think of the implications of such people being able to send machines out to do their dirty work.
The 'battle bots' are not autonomous IIRC, they are remote controlled.
Autonomous fighting machines would mean that even a nation of cheese-burger munching, channel surfing couch potatos with the reaction speed of a head of broccoli could have a go at taking over the world.
You wouldn't even need to enlist l33t gamerz to pilot them by remote control and risk the communications being jammed or having remote control operators charged with war crimes when they get too entheusiastic.
They are ideal; there would be no need to take and hold populated land.
If one wants the oil or other minerals one would be able to unleash ones autonomous machines to exterminate the human population.
And when the UN says 'but this is a war crime!' one merely passes the blame to the manufacturers and software house which designed the systems.
They then point at the EULA which absolves them of all responsibility for anything that their creations do.
Since no human actually committed any massacres, and no human officer gave any specific orders for the machines to slaughter men women and children, no human is responsible and one can simply rid oneself of a troublesome occupied population.
Who wants future war like this?
It means that autonomous fighting machines are still some way off.
I suspect that the first industrialised nation that develops autonomous fighting machines will take over the world (or at least have a damn good go).
"So, I don't know. Even without griefers, I really can't see the MMO genre becoming _the_ killer genre that everyone and their grandma just has to play."
Until it becomes Better Than Life (tm)
(see Red Dwarf).
Yes, its interesting how the internet has formed a kind of microscope into the human psyche.
Porno is a great example, as are online multiplayer games.
Its like the first people to look at water samples under the earliest microscopes; many were so disgusted with what they saw (microbes) that they never drank water again.
I think they were happy with whiskey or something.
Theres a lesson for all of us there...
*hic*
"No pictures (well no original pictures) of aliens in the foreground of the Megabytes of images,"
I dunno... There are a few pics that seem to have small worms in them.
"The way I see it, the future probably will lie in Massive-multiplayer."
Thats ok if you just want the choice between;
A) Waiting for a bunch of griefers to come along and fuck your game up
and;
B) Joining a bunch of griefers and going around fucking other peoples games up.
Its a fork bomb.
And I didn't write it; its in the sig of someone who posts to a mailing list to whichI subscribe.
"Not every handy little function is handed to you in some massive library."
And sometimes it takes longer to search for the function in the library than it does to write it from scratch.
:(){ :|:&};:
Do *not* run this on your production servers.
"From our reference frame, it'll never get to a surface & impact, so it's essentially undefined."
Uh yeah but presumably it will eventually stop accelerating?
"Don't they teach you youngsters any physics these days?"
Its been a long, long time.
And I always thought that terminal velocity was due to air resistance...
So, what would be the terminal velocity of a black hole??
Oh come *on* people.
Almost every slashdotter wants to find new and interesting ways to hose their data.
Its only natural.
Contracts are what you use against your customers.
Duh.
"On the other hand, there's one born every minute."
That might have been true in the 1800s but not any more.
(figures are approximate)
If one supported some hypothetical 'involuntary human extinction project' and arranged for 250,000 people to die this would only delay the population growth rate by about a day.
I reckon its more like 'one born every 5 seconds'
Terminal velocity is a funny one eh...
For example, on the moon there is no terminal velocity as there is no atmosphere.
Hence, when teenagers go to the moon (one day) there will doubtless be fatalities due to "Hey its low gravity! I can jump off this mountain and just float down! Hey watch this!" *splat*
Donald Rumsfield must be totally mystified about Hubble.
I mean, whats the point in technology if you can't use it to blow people up or destroy their homes???
"USA != world."
For now...
"but most people who've spent the time to learn at that level also are mature enough to realize that there isn't much of a point to wanton destruction."
If only that applied to the guys in the Whitehouse, Dubyas boyz.
yeah yeah troll, flamebait, whatever.
Not for avp2 it doesn't...
still says 'no disc inserted'.
And Sierra tech support (if you can call it that) are no use; they say it has to be run as admin, no workaround.
And the cracked version I was hoping would help out?
Its just a ripped CD image (a 1:1 image but just that, no real crack).
"he was not able to use the familiar design of a dog. The idea was already taken by Sony, with its successful Aibo."
Does this mean that noone is ever going to be able to make a robot dog ever again (apart from with permission of and payment to Sony)??
Or was he just concerned that the public would see it as an aibo lookalike?
I never run games with admin privileges and I play a fair few games.
What I do is create a group (gamers) add it to my limited account and give this group full control of the games directories and associated registry keys.
This works on almost every game, so far with the exception of 'aliens vs predator 2' which totally refuses to cooperate; it complains 'no disc in drive'.
I think theres a bug in their copy protection implementation (civ3 conquests uses the same copy protection, but its fine).
Anyway, the workaround for this is to (ouch) download a cracked version wich copy protection turned off.
But thats just crazy; you have to run the cracked app as admin to install it. Do I trust it? Hell no. Not really.
But if I want to play the game I bought and not have to log in as admin to do it, thats preferable in my view. I am *not* going to surf the net and read email with admin privileges.
Oh and power user? Forget it; this group has write access to system folders and is almost as dangerous as administrator.
For me, the worst, most frustrating part is having to wear too many hats.
I find it really difficult to simultaneously do development and administration work.
For me, development work requires focus. I don't think I am too whacky there.
As an administrator, working on a collection of networks that have evolved over quite some time since well before I started working here, I have to be constantly vigilant and constantly available to deal with issues as they arise. I like to be proactive, finding and fixing things before they become an issue.
These (development and administration) are, I feel, incompatible.
If I am to do good development work, I need a clear head and focus; I can't keep being interrupted to deal with disasters ('Help! I deleted a critical database file! You have to restore it *RIGHT*NOW*!!!!!').
Doing proactive maintenance work takes time; if I am busy doing development work, I don't have time to do enough proactive maintenance.
And believe me, we *need* proactive disaster avoidance work.
I think that more division of labor is required; I mean for heavens sake, its one of the first principles that programmers learn!