Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 05, 2006 11:30 PM
Make no mistake; I don't meant to lessen the horror and loss of September 2001. First, to provide the basic level of knowledge if it's lacking.
Janes is a publisher for the military primarily. They produce relatively detailed books on military technology and such for civilian consumption while the highly detailed stuff was, understandably, saved for military publication and reference. Like I said; the only civilian organization with an office in the pentigon.
Now, Janes also published a series of flight simulator games on the civilian side. Four or five of which are based on fixed wing and two based on helecopters. I liked the fixed win sims but for me, the game with real playability was the two chopper sims focusing more on the second; Longbow2.
With a child hood love of helecopters and a fix wing pilots license; I could spend hours buzzing around in the pilot see of an AH64 Apache chopper. Most people would be bored creaping up and over hills at five to ten feet off the ground for an hour just to zap a dug-in tank installation with a hellfire.
After Longbow2, they where still developing for later releases of flight sims. Trees and landscapes would become more realistic as technology permited. I believe one plan was to develop both future fixed wing and chopper sims along with a ground forces sim so all games could join into the same networked virtual combat.
Bam!.. a few minutes later Bam!.. and the towers came down. I don't mean to lessen the horrific loss in any way. I've close friends who lost family in the attack; not saying it wasn't a horrid traggedy in any way. I might point out that it happens daily in other countries yet that's not as news worthy as right there at home.
The 9/11 hysteria part is that after the traggedy, Janes scrubbed all plans for further flight sim development; too real, too accurate, too many details about military equipment. No futher fixed wing sims, no further apache sims, no commanche chopper sim (I'm guessing it would have been part of longbow3).
That alone doesn't constitute hysteria but in combination with the ongoing (five years now?) knee jerk reaction. When what happens daily in other countries happens to the states, they are flabbergasted yet still don't consider anything wrong with bombing the hell out of innocents as long as a few terrorists die in the cross fire. I'll give you a few examples in point form.
- Airport security only makes people feel safe, it doesn't even slow down professional criminals. In the words of George Carlin, drug dealers aren't having any difficulties getting "packages" across the boarder still.
- Personal security stores made a killing off the hype and blind reaction to the terrorist bogyman. Sky scraper personal parachutes, bio and chemical gass masks. We saw a boom in the paranoia industry probably not seen since the 50s when everyone wanted a backyard bomb shelter because of the red bogyman.
- Mosks and other religious buildings across the states where attacked and destroyed out of blind fear and ignorance. The Muslim faith does not condon violence any more than the Christian faiths. The text commnoly associated with terrorist activities is actually a basturdisation. What should be "if you die protecting our family and faith, you go to heaven" is currupted into "if you die attacking someone on the basis of your faith, you go to heaven". Ironicaly, the faith is actually a later brand of Christianity which in turn is actualy a later brand of Judaism. I don't want this to degenerate into an argument over religion though because no one will win that discussion.
- Movies which had shots of the trade towers in the background had to be scrapped, archived for a few years or edited to remove "the way it used to be". (over reaction?)
- Bush is now pushing the war measures act long than any, (repeat ANY), president since the founding of the United Sates
- Anything that can't be based on the basis of it's content alone is suddenly to fight terrorism, if that fails, it's to fight kiddy porn
- The daily threat report; you must be this scared to enter the country. Be afraid, be afraid, run around with your heads cut off, react, react, react to the invisible bogeyman we used to justify everything
- Heck, they used it to justify invading iraq for it's oil then later to justify invading afganistan for it's geographic possition as the gateway to oil. Of all the objectives the Seals had, they only acomplished taking the national office of Oil intact and left everything of lesser value to the ravages of combat.
- The Dixie Chicks. They're a freaking band; entertainers. The lead singer makes a statement to excite the audience at a concert (equivalent of saying "Hello , We Love You!" where the location is named because it provides a personal touch to the audience. Suddenly, they're not played on radio and pretty much rejected by people who'v been "loyal fans" all there lives over one casual statement. Like the song says; mothers teach there daughters to hate a complete stranger. (The technical term for the public reaciont is "Group Think" or the sheep effect)
- America is now being governed by fear run as a marketing campain which in itself is an absalute discrace to the horrific event it was spun off of.
- Consider all the buzwords we now have. It's not that day in september 2001; it's 9-eleven. It's not the feared reds or criminals anymore; it's terrorists and hackers. It's not restrictions of freedom; it's Security in this new world we live. It's not illegal spying on American citizens; it's the war on terrorism. Heck, there are no more goals or causes; everything now has to be a war on something. Here's a few that have been left out; the war on hunger, the war on deteriorating education.
The point of "9/11 Hysteria" is that the five year long knee jerk reaction continues without rational. It's a great marketing campain political goals, research grants and products the public is scared into thinking they need. There's a whole lot of fiction based on a little bit of fact because someone can profit.
Janes isn't publishing any more computer games (top five if not best combat sim games) because of the hysteria.
If I want to spend a few hours creaping around in a chopper five feet off the ground, I have to find the obsolete components to build a win95/win98 contemporary machine since the software won't run stably on modern hardware.
I'm sure I'll be labelled all sorts of mean names for expressing these points. It's not knew, I have this horrible trait that the government absalutely hates; I think for myself.
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Re:kinda conflicts with that whole 9/11 hysteria?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 05, 2006 11:30 PMJanes is a publisher for the military primarily. They produce relatively detailed books on military technology and such for civilian consumption while the highly detailed stuff was, understandably, saved for military publication and reference. Like I said; the only civilian organization with an office in the pentigon.
Now, Janes also published a series of flight simulator games on the civilian side. Four or five of which are based on fixed wing and two based on helecopters. I liked the fixed win sims but for me, the game with real playability was the two chopper sims focusing more on the second; Longbow2.
With a child hood love of helecopters and a fix wing pilots license; I could spend hours buzzing around in the pilot see of an AH64 Apache chopper. Most people would be bored creaping up and over hills at five to ten feet off the ground for an hour just to zap a dug-in tank installation with a hellfire.
After Longbow2, they where still developing for later releases of flight sims. Trees and landscapes would become more realistic as technology permited. I believe one plan was to develop both future fixed wing and chopper sims along with a ground forces sim so all games could join into the same networked virtual combat.
Bam!.. a few minutes later Bam!.. and the towers came down. I don't mean to lessen the horrific loss in any way. I've close friends who lost family in the attack; not saying it wasn't a horrid traggedy in any way. I might point out that it happens daily in other countries yet that's not as news worthy as right there at home.
The 9/11 hysteria part is that after the traggedy, Janes scrubbed all plans for further flight sim development; too real, too accurate, too many details about military equipment. No futher fixed wing sims, no further apache sims, no commanche chopper sim (I'm guessing it would have been part of longbow3).
That alone doesn't constitute hysteria but in combination with the ongoing (five years now?) knee jerk reaction. When what happens daily in other countries happens to the states, they are flabbergasted yet still don't consider anything wrong with bombing the hell out of innocents as long as a few terrorists die in the cross fire. I'll give you a few examples in point form.
- Airport security only makes people feel safe, it doesn't even slow down professional criminals. In the words of George Carlin, drug dealers aren't having any difficulties getting "packages" across the boarder still.
- Personal security stores made a killing off the hype and blind reaction to the terrorist bogyman. Sky scraper personal parachutes, bio and chemical gass masks. We saw a boom in the paranoia industry probably not seen since the 50s when everyone wanted a backyard bomb shelter because of the red bogyman.
- Mosks and other religious buildings across the states where attacked and destroyed out of blind fear and ignorance. The Muslim faith does not condon violence any more than the Christian faiths. The text commnoly associated with terrorist activities is actually a basturdisation. What should be "if you die protecting our family and faith, you go to heaven" is currupted into "if you die attacking someone on the basis of your faith, you go to heaven". Ironicaly, the faith is actually a later brand of Christianity which in turn is actualy a later brand of Judaism. I don't want this to degenerate into an argument over religion though because no one will win that discussion.
- Movies which had shots of the trade towers in the background had to be scrapped, archived for a few years or edited to remove "the way it used to be". (over reaction?)
- Bush is now pushing the war measures act long than any, (repeat ANY), president since the founding of the United Sates
- Anything that can't be based on the basis of it's content alone is suddenly to fight terrorism, if that fails, it's to fight kiddy porn
- The daily threat report; you must be this scared to enter the country. Be afraid, be afraid, run around with your heads cut off, react, react, react to the invisible bogeyman we used to justify everything
- Heck, they used it to justify invading iraq for it's oil then later to justify invading afganistan for it's geographic possition as the gateway to oil. Of all the objectives the Seals had, they only acomplished taking the national office of Oil intact and left everything of lesser value to the ravages of combat.
- The Dixie Chicks. They're a freaking band; entertainers. The lead singer makes a statement to excite the audience at a concert (equivalent of saying "Hello , We Love You!" where the location is named because it provides a personal touch to the audience. Suddenly, they're not played on radio and pretty much rejected by people who'v been "loyal fans" all there lives over one casual statement. Like the song says; mothers teach there daughters to hate a complete stranger. (The technical term for the public reaciont is "Group Think" or the sheep effect)
- America is now being governed by fear run as a marketing campain which in itself is an absalute discrace to the horrific event it was spun off of.
- Consider all the buzwords we now have. It's not that day in september 2001; it's 9-eleven. It's not the feared reds or criminals anymore; it's terrorists and hackers. It's not restrictions of freedom; it's Security in this new world we live. It's not illegal spying on American citizens; it's the war on terrorism. Heck, there are no more goals or causes; everything now has to be a war on something. Here's a few that have been left out; the war on hunger, the war on deteriorating education.
The point of "9/11 Hysteria" is that the five year long knee jerk reaction continues without rational. It's a great marketing campain political goals, research grants and products the public is scared into thinking they need. There's a whole lot of fiction based on a little bit of fact because someone can profit.
Janes isn't publishing any more computer games (top five if not best combat sim games) because of the hysteria.
If I want to spend a few hours creaping around in a chopper five feet off the ground, I have to find the obsolete components to build a win95/win98 contemporary machine since the software won't run stably on modern hardware.
I'm sure I'll be labelled all sorts of mean names for expressing these points. It's not knew, I have this horrible trait that the government absalutely hates; I think for myself.
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