My anti-terrorist tax dollars are spent on MMOs?

[Malacasta]

Fuck me, if the world can't get any crazier.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-28737,00.html

[Malacasta]

See, the irony here is that SLLA went belly up months ago because its members quit when it was discovered that SLLA was founded by a corporate intelligence firm.

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/...ond_life_.html

[kestra]

Mala, I don't think we should fuck! It would get weird.

[Darion]

Now -that- is bizarre! Not the sex thing, though that's also a little strange. I hear about Second Life once in a while because of things like this, but I have never actually heard of people sending resources to combat terrorism in a virtual world.

[Karmei]

Originally posted by kestra
Mala, I don't think we should fuck! It would get weird.

Throwing in my ever unseriousness... that WOULD help make the world get crazier.

[Malacasta]

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.

Come on... I haven't played the game in question and I'm just guessing about its arsenal, but are we really supposed to believe that a cursed-soul-sucking sword (+5) and magic missiles are the things we should be worried about in the fight against terror?

[Aristotle]

Well, the US Government licensed a game technology similar to Second Life called "There." "There" failed as a game, but it was a useful tool for simulating real cities and then using it to train soldiers on how to protect visiting diplomats, practice watching a check point, etc.

If the software can be used for counter-terrorism, surely it can be used to train for terrorism.

The article seemed to focus on Second Life, which is a lot different than Threshold type games. In games like SL and There you can actually build replicas of real life locations, benefit from a pretty decent physics engine, and actually simulate situations. I can see how that could definitely be used for terrorist training.

[Rosuav]

...spread across the world, using instant language translation tools to communicate...

Sorry, no. There is nothing that even approximates to Douglas Adams' Babelfish. Anyone who's worked with either linguistics or computer file formats (the two are quite similar, actually - but the latter is FAR simpler and more straightforward, imo!) will know that a language reflects its culture. Every language has words and phrases to express concepts unique to the culture that created it, and these concepts simply aren't reflected in other languages - so when you translate, you have to approximate somewhat. Hardest to translate are acronyms (do you translate the individual words, or do you transliterate the acronym and then explain it in some other way?), slang expressions, and humour. There will never EVER be an automated translator that can handle these. It's hard enough for a human to do it.

English, in spite of its many stupidities (in spelling, pronunciation, etc), has by far the richest vocabulary of technical terms. To see what happens when you translate things that don't translate, just look at a lengthy piece of software documentation that's been translated into German, or Italian, or Russian (especially as Russian doesn't use the Latin alphabet). You'll see a LOT of English words interspersed - because it's easier to transliterate and then explain a term, than to come up with a translation. Example: http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drup...ru?view=markup mentiones TeX, LaTeX, HTML, latex2html, and even "footnote" (presumably because it's a keyword that the program recognizes - Russian users of the program would simply have to know that that's what to type).

Yes, this simulated world MAY be a problem. But it's nothing like the degree of problem that someone's hyping it up to be.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Aristotle
If the software can be used for counter-terrorism, surely it can be used to train for terrorism.

And vice versa.

Ever since their invention, simulators have been used for both sides of the law. Computers are now powerful (and cheap) enough that anyone can have a pretty decent simulator in his hands. Game, or training tool? Apart from the increased cost for the increased realism, what's the difference between a flight trainer simulator and the flying games that people play on their PCs at home?

[Jidoe]

Computerized enviroment helps terrorism a lot.

I'm a bit skeptical about simulators and the such, but for example, the best practical software terrorist organizations use is GoogleEarth. The program enables the terrorists to pinpoint their targets without ever seeing it with their own eyes (though this method is of course still used if the target is near) and adjust their weapons (be it rockets, anti tank missiles or whatever) to the seeked target. An organization can plan a raid over a base that is basically far from sight - know its size, know how to get there (hidden spots) and many other details.

An then there's encrypted communication over the internet...

Anyway, I really don't think simulators pose any serious threat over the western world, but there are many other programs that do, and unfortunately, there is little we can do about it.