IJMC - Life Doesn't Quite Equal Reality

After a week with many others fairly similar to me...or at least closer 
than I usually find in day to day life...well, let's just say that 
returning to the swing of things isn't as smooth as one day to another. 
Monday, tomorrow, is gonna hurt. Hopefully not from the shears, but hey, 
that's just hair on my head.                                       -dave






From the newswire:

As any experienced programmer will tell you, software can take on a life
of its own. And sometimes, as this story from an Australian source shows,
they're not just speaking metaphorically...

The Defense Science Lectures Series related a story from the head of
DSTO's Land Operations/Simulation division. They've been working on some
really nifty military-grade virtual reality simulators. Most of the people
they employ on this sort of thing are ex-computer game programmers.
To create an extremely realistic environment, they decided to include
things like trees and animals. For Operation Phoenix out near Katherine,
the latter included kangaroos. In particular, they had to model kangaroo
with realistic movements and reactions to helicopters (since hordes of
disturbed kangaroos might well give away a low-flying helo's position).
Being good little programmers, they looked to see if they could find
pre-existing programming that demonstrated a similar behavior pattern.
They decided to steal some code which was originally used to model
infantry reactions under the same stimuli; they simply changed the mapped
icon, the speed parameters, etc. and had instant-kangaroos.
The first time they went to demonstrate this to some visiting Americans,
the hotshot pilots decided to get "down and dirty" with the virtual
kangaroos.  Screaming in at low-level, they buzzed the unwary kangaroos
and watched them scatter. Visiting Americans nodded appreciatively...  then
gaped as the kangaroos ducked around a hill and launched about two dozen
Stingers at the hapless helo!! The programmers looked rather embarrassed
at forgetting to remove the "defensive response" subroutine from the
infantry coding! The Americans left muttering comments about not wanting
to mess with the Aussie wildlife.

As an addendum, simulator pilots from that point onwards avoided kangaroos
like the plague, just like they were meant to do...