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Comment by ivankirigin | Hacker News Reader

This was a horrible talk.

Some points were just false (war tech is not open source, china & india don't make US bots), lots of the visuals were misleading.

Some of his points were overly emotional and would better fit a middle school debate than TED.

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Open Source projects are used in war technology. Linux powers a lot of robots.

His point was that anyone could do it because it was open source. Robots indeed almost exclusively build in Linux. That doesn't mean their designs are open.

An exception might be the vibrant hobbyist small uav builder.

A hobbyist small UAV builder can indeed cause a lot of damage if he has evil intent. For instance, a small UAV with half a pound of high-explosive could glide over a "secure area" and try to hit a high-value civilian target. Much easier than detonating a car-bomb or trying to take someone out with a sniper rifle. Sharpshooters will have to scan the skies too (if they're not doing it already).

Fortunately, it's not exactly easy to buy IMU's, otherwise we would have heard of guided-missile hobbyists doing evil things. Also fortunately, GPS shuts down above a certain altitude and speed (not applicable to GPS units belonging to the U.S. military).

There are so many more people that know how to drive a car that this kind of threat is still nothing to worry about.

Lots of car bombers don't know there is a bomb in the car before it is remotely detonated.

Also, snipers are really, really effective, and again, are much more common.

Snipers are effective, but they can be detected using laser technology, and they can be neutralized by sharpshooters. What kind of counter-measure could one use against a UAV-bomb?

Aren't all of Pentagon's cool toys programmed in ADA?

I never heard of an open-source project based on ADA...

Not to mention that the "72 virgins" joke [1] was distasteful beyond belief.

[1] I assume it was meant as a joke because I find it hard to believe that someone who gives a talk at TED could be that ignorant.

Ignorant of what?

Of the reality?

Unfortunately, religious fanaticism is a reality. People do die and kill in name of a religion.

That's quite true. But it's also true that the "72 virgins" are not an explanation. The reality is much more complex than that.

The 72 virgins joke was a metaphor for all of the preposterous religious motivations behind suicide bombings.

Although it is true that there are almost always secular motivations as well, the metaphor is not dishonest and the joke is funny.

If you think that all suicide bombers are motivated by religious fanaticism, you really need to read a History book. Once again, that's a simplistic explanation that fails to take into account the full complexity of the reality.

Keep downvoting. It only makes you look like ignorants.

I don't downvote, but really, you should take a hint here. Write a post explaining _why_, and upvotes will come. Simple opinions are not encouraged on HN, they're usually considered spam.

Examples of suicide attacks which had no religious motivation:

- the Luftwaffe carried out suicide missions against the Red Army during the Battle for Berlin.

- the Japanese Kamikaze inflicted great damage in the U.S. Navy fleet in the Pacific.

- the Vietminh / Vietcong who used suicide bombers against the French Military and then against the U.S. Military.

Examples are abundant. It's true that many suicide bombers are motivated by religious fanaticism, but if we look further back in History, the pattern seems to be that suicide bombers are motivated by other kinds of fanaticism (e.g., nationalism) or simply by desperation. When one can't defeat a stronger enemy in conventional ways, suicide attacks can be a good option, as they inflict tremendous amounts of damage with little resources, and have devastating effects on the enemy's morale.

To cut a long story short: not all suicide bombers are created equal. The ones who carried out the 9/11 attacks are quite different from the palestinians who blow up a bus in Tel-Aviv, for instance. Failing to understand this reality is a serious mistake.

Kamikaze means divine wind. They were dying for the emperor who ruled by divine right. There was more religion in that fanaticism than you might think.

You have a point there. But it's also true that many Kamikaze believed that their suicide missions were the only way to save Japan, and hence their families back home.

If it was a joke, it flew over most everyone's heads, especially considering the way the presenter said it.

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